Poetry of the Taliban causes a stir

To St Antony's College, Oxford this afternoon for a presentation by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn of their latest book, Poetry of the Taliban, (Hurst, 2012). Alex and Felix have lived on and off in Kandahar for some years and have immersed themselves in the culture of the city and its people.
In this fascinating book they have edited a selection of poems they collected from the Taliban's official website. The translations themselves were done by Mirwais Rahmany and Hamid Stanikzai. They divide the poems into those written before 9/11, poems of love and pastoral subjects, religious poems, poems of discontent, those that are explicitly war-related ('The Trench') and those that measure The Human Cost.
It may at first seem curious that a movement that banned television and singing should be so fond of poetry, but there is no contradiction. Poetry has been a fundamental part of Pashto and Dari-language culture for hundreds of years, as well as being an art form allowed and encouraged by radical Islamists, as long as certain rules were obeyed. Even Osama bin Laden wrote poetry.
This point appears to have been lost on some people, not least Col Richard Kemp (rtrd.), commander of British forces in Afghanistan in 2003, who told the Guardian: "What we need to remember is that these are fascist, murdering thugs who suppress women and kill people without mercy if they do not agree with them, and of course are killing our soldiers. It doesn't do anything but give the oxygen of publicity to an extremist group which is the enemy of this country."
His views would not be recognised by Major Henry George Raverty, a British Indian Army officer who fought in Swat in 1850 and was later garrisoned in Peshawar. Raverty, who was clearly somewhat more enlightened than Kemp, wrote Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans (1862) and The Gulshan-i-roh: being selections, prose and poetical, in the Pashto, or Afghan language (1867). Like many Army officers of the time, Raverty believed in knowing your enemy and not forgetting that they too were humans.
None of the animosity towards the book was visible at St Antony's where the audience made clear their appreciation for the book and the boldness of the editors in making it happen.

ISAF capture/kill operations decline - report

 A new report from the Afghanistan Analysts Network on ISAF capture/kill operations, written by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, shows a significant fall-off in such operations from June 2011, possibly due to the departure of General David Petraeus, whose command saw an increased emphasis on such actions.
The authors' data comes from ISAF press releases, of which there were 3,771 between 1 December 2009 and 20 September 2011. These releases report a total of 3,157 incidents, during which 3,873 individuals were reported killed and 7,146 were detained.
The authors point to inconsistencies in ISAF's terminology, with the terms 'facilitators' and 'leaders' often used interchangeably. About five per cent of those killed and 13 per cent of those detained during these operations are described by ISAF as leaders or facilitators.
The reason for the decline in capture/kill operations since June this year is now the subject of much speculation in the military. Yesterday, Maj. Gen. Michael Krause, deputy chief of staff for ISAF, said that for the first time, Taliban attacks in Afghanistan are declining - they were lower in the past two months than during the same time period last year. Krause also revealed that ISAF had intercepted a communication from the Taliban's "inner shura" admitting that their summer campaign to take back the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand had "utterly failed."

Taliban and al-Qaeda 'distinct groups with different goals'

"The Taliban and al-Qaeda remain distinct groups with different goals, ideologies and sources of recruits; there was considerable friction between them before September 11, 2001, and today that friction persists."
This is one of the main findings of a study of the relationship between the two organisations, published today by the Centre on International Cooperation and written by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn.
Separating the Taliban from Al-Qaeda: the core of success in Afghanistan also argues that elements of current US policy in Afghanistan - especially night raids, house searches and attempts to fragment the Taliban - are "changing the insurgency and inadvertently creating opportunities for al-Qaeda to achieve its objectives and preventing the achievement of core goals of the United States and the international community".
The authors argue that there is room to engage the Taliban on renouncing their relationship with al-Qaeda and providing guarantees against the use of Afghanistan by international terrorism.
These findings are worthy of notice, not least because the authors, who have spent several years as almost the only Westerners living in Kandahar, are well equipped to know the views of the Afghan Taliban. They edited Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef's autobiography, My Life with the Taliban and have access to people who are close to the Taliban leadership.
They point out that the original Taliban leadership around Mullah Omar was never very close to Osama bin Laden and that he exploited his friendship with regional leaders, in particular with the Haqqani clan, and ultimately betrayed the trust shown to him by Mullah Omar. But as military attrition has hit the Taliban, a new younger generation of fighters, radicalised by the events following 9/11, is now in place and more sympathetic to the al-Qaeda programme of international jihad. This nexus is being intensified as a result of current US policy in Afghanistan.
This short paper is well worth reading, although it is limited in its scope. It does not, for example, go into much details of the links between the Haqqani clan and the Arab fighters around bin Laden or indeed the other foreign fighters based in Pakistan's tribal territories. Nor does it discuss the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. More information is certainly needed on these relationships.

Frontline Club event on the Taliban

Tomorrow night (Tuesday) I will be chairing a discussion at the Frontline Club in London on 'Understanding the Taliban'. Amongst the panel will be Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn - the only two Westerners living in Kandahar. They are also responsible for editing My Life with the Taliban, the autobiography of Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan.
The event is already a sell-out, but I will report on it here. And I thoroughly recommend the book, which I will be reviewing shortly.
Update: The event was a great success. As well as the two previously mentioned speakers, Horia Mosadiq from Amnesty International and journalist Ken Guest also took part in the panel discussion. You can listen to a podcast here.

Afghan Taliban: more information please

Jeffrey Dressler and Carl Forsberg of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War have had another go at trying to explain the functioning of the Quetta Shura of the Taliban (QST) in a new report called The Quetta Shura in Southern Afghanistan: Organization, Operations and Shadow Governance.
Dressler's competent last effort, Securing Helmand, was not specifically about the Quetta Shura, but it covered many of the issues contained in this latest report.
But it has to be said that both reports are frustrating. There is plenty of detail about attacks carried out by the Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, but little if any new information about how the organisation operates and how it is evolving. We still know almost nothing about the leadership. Who is in the Quetta Shura? Where do they come from? What is their background? None of these points are answered. Only four or five members of the QST are mentioned by name.
Then there is the question of the relationship between the QST and both al-Qaeda and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Following the suicide attack on the CIA base at FOB Chapman in Khost on 30 December all three organisations claimed responsibility. Are they really that close? If so, why did the QST issue a statement in the summer distancing itself from the TTP and saying that it no longer wanted to be known as the Taliban? Why indeed did Mullah Omar issue a new rulebook for the organisation last year stressing the need for ethical behaviour by its fighters?
And on foreign fighters, what is the situation? Dressler makes a strong case to support the argument that there is a large presence of foreign fighters in southern Afghanistan under the command of the Taliban. Others suggest that there may be only a hundred or two. If anything, it would appear that most foreigners are travelling to Pakistan to fight with the TTP. Indeed, another Jordanian was killed there this week, this one allegedly a bodyguard of al-Qaeda's No 3, Mustapha Abul Yazid . There is little evidence - certainly in terms of jihadist obituaries - of large numbers of foreigners dying in Helmand.
More light will be shed on the Taliban with the publication of their former Ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Zaeef's, autobiography, My life with the Taliban, next month. More on that soon. For those of you in London, Alex Strick Van Linschoten, who edited it, will be talking about the book at SOAS on 21 January and at several other venues subsequently. For some reason the Mullah himself cannot make it. The UK official launch will be held at the Frontline Club on 9 February.