NGOs and attitudes to the Taliban

Ashley Jackson of the Humanitarian Policy Group and Antonio Giustozzi from King's College London have produced an invaluable discussion paper on the Taliban's attitude to NGOs.
Talking to the Other Side: Humanitarian engagement with the Taliban in Afghanistan looks in particular at Faryab and Kandahar provinces, noting that whilst at a leadership level there are clear attitudes towards foreign NGOs, at a local level commanders exert considerable discretion and flexibility.
Although senior and provincial Taliban leaders state that where an aid agency obtains its funding does not influence access, in practice many local commanders are suspicious of projects funded by ISAF troop-contributing countries. They were also hostile towards Western notions of women's rights. "In general, but particularly pronounced at local level, there is deep and prevalent hostility towards aid organisations and a general difficulty in distinguishing between different actors (NGOs, UN agencies, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), for-profit contractors, Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and so on)."
This is an extremely useful report that highlights the dilemmas facing local Afghan staff who may recognise the need to speak to Taliban power brokers, but are prevented from doing so by a culture of 'don't ask, don't tell', within NGOs. That in turn increases the risk that local staff will be seen as 'spies' working for foreigners.

Taliban trying to expand into remote areas

In the fifth paper on Afghanistan from the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) Antonio Giustozzi takes a look at the composition of the Taliban in areas outside the Pashtun belt, from which it has traditionally recruited.
The Taliban beyond the Pashtuns argues that the Taliban has started making significant inroads among other ethnic groups and has coopted bandits and disgruntled militia commanders previously connected to other organisations. There is also some evidence of small groups of ideologically committed Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmen from the north of the country joining the Taliban.
The Taliban is actively seeking to expand the conflict to northern and other remote areas: "There is evidence that human resources have been committed, with hundreds of cadres having moved north and west, while funds and weapons might be on their way," says Giustozzi. However, he says that despite a clear intention, the overall success of the project is not yet clear: "If there is little doubt about the Taliban’s intentions, the issue of what potential exists there for the insurgency to expand among non-Pashtuns remains open. As of late 2009, the largest contribution to the Taliban insurgency north of the Hindukush was still coming from Pashtun communities in Kunduz and Baghlan."
He notes that the alliance between the Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) has made it easier to recruit young Uzbeks, but points out that memories of the Taliban occupation of the north in the 1990s are still very bitter. Amongst the Tajiks, only a few from Logar have so far joined up.
However, "Undoubtedly there is a reservoir of highly conservative attitudes in the more remote parts of Afghanistan, which is likely to predispose some communities to receiving the Taliban message with a sympathetic ear."

Negotiating with the Taliban - report

A new publication from the Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics provides a useful summary of the background to the discussion on negotiating with the Taliban.
Negotiating with the Taliban: Toward a solution for the Afghan Conflict, is largely written by Talatbek Masadykov, together with Antonio Giustozzi and James Michael Page.
Masadyakov is currently Chief of the Political Affairs Division of the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA). In order to prepare this paper he took four months research leave in 2008, which he spent as a Visiting Fellow at the Crisis States Research Centre and travelling around the region.
One section of the report stands out and I will quote it at length:
"(The United Nations') List 1267 − expanded after September 11, 2001 and last updated on October 10, 2008 − now features 142 individuals associated with the Taliban,and 243 individuals and 113 entities or other groups and undertakings associated with Al Qaida. Despite reconciliation with the Karzai government by senior listed Taliban such as Mullah Mutawakil, Mullah Zaeef, Mullah Salaam Rocketi, Mullah Khaksar and others, none has been de-listed, largely as a result of differences among permanent UNSC members.
"Up to one third of those Taliban now on the Consolidated List also feature on ISAF and OEF target lists. Several have been killed in combat. Under heavy pressure from the US and the UK,Pakistan has placed a small number of anti-government elements under house arrest in Quetta and elsewhere. This has not prevented them from continuing to exercise authority in their respective organisations.
"The vast majority of insurgent commanders now operating in Afghanistan are not listed: they are too young to have participated in the Taliban regime. Apart from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani themselves, almost no Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin or Haqqani network commanders feature on the Consolidated List."
A very useful and timely publication, particularly in the light of reports that the UN head of mission in Afghanistan, Kai Ede, met with representatives of the Taliban in Dubai earlier this month. Today, the Taliban's Leadership Council denied the reports: " The Leadership Council considers this mere futile and baseless rumours, being a machination against Jihad and Mujahideen who are waging Jihad against the invaders. The Leadership Council once again emphasises continuation of Islamic Jihad against all invaders as a means to frustrate these conspiracies."

Three books worth reading

I've come across several fascinating books recently that should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand events in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
First, The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen (Hurst and Co, London 2009), a former Australian army officer and now a leading expert on guerrilla warfare and chief counterterrorism strategist for the US State Department. Although it is not solely about Afghanistan, Kilcullen's clear thinking shines out of this book.
There are too many gems of insight in this book to list them all, but here are a few of the more salient points. He argues that the insurgency in Afghanistan is not primarily focussed on overthrowing the Afghan state, but on consolidating the Pashtun areas under their control - on both sides of the border.
He says the strategy is not a classical Maoist protracted warfare insurgency: "A Maoist approach seeks victory through a displacement strategy of building what classical counterinsurgency theorists call 'parallel hierarchies' - a competitive system of control tantamount to a guerrilla counter-state in permanently liberated areas - which then spread across the country and seek to defeat the government in, eventually, a relatively conventional war of manoeuvre. Rather the Taliban appears to be applying an exhaustion strategy of sapping the energy, resources and support of the Afghan government and its international partners, making the country ungovernable and hoping that the international community will eventually withdraw in exhaustion and leave the government to collapse under the weight of its own lack of effectiveness and legitimacy."
How true! He contrasts the Taliban's concentration on providing governance (including courts) in the areas it controls, to the actions of the Karzai government which ignores these issues.
Kilcullen also point to the importance the Taliban attaches to propaganda, again in contrast to both the Afghan government and the Coalition forces: "The insurgents treat propaganda as their main effort, coordinating physical attacks in support of a sophisticated propaganda campaign."
All is not lost, according to Kilcullen, who point to the insurgents' in ability to break out of their Pashtun/international jihadi circle and spread into other ethnicities or language groups.
A second book that also makes fascinating reading is Decoding the New Taliban, edited by Antonio Giustozzi (also published by Hurst & Co). The essays it contains include 'The Taliban and the Opium Trade' by Gretchen Peters, 'The Taliban in Helmand: An Oral History' by Thomas Coghlan, 'The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan' by Claudio Franco. There are ten further essays and many insights in all of them.
Finally, I thoroughly recommend Talibanisation of Pakistan: From 9/11 to 26/11 by Pakistani journalist Amir Mir (Pentagon Security International, New Delhi, 2009). Mir's relentless investigation into the nexus between the TTP and the Pakistan military and intelligence communities is superb, showing as it does how the very forces nurtured by the ISI as an instrument of foreign policy turned on their masters and now threaten the stability of the state itself.