Understanding the Pak Army offensive in Kurram

A timely report from Jeffrey Dressler at the Institute for the Study of War on the Pakistan Army's current offensive in Kurram in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) says that the insurgency in Afghanistan's Eastern region is likely to benefit from the action.
Dressler explains that the action is aimed at curbing the activities of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), whose supporters have been involved in the capture and murder of Shias living in the region, while giving more freedom to the Haqqani network to launch attacks into Afghanistan.
The Shias live in parts of Kurram that control access to Afghanistan, which explains why the Haqqani network - which is strongly supported by the Pakistani military - spent months negotiating a peace agreement with them so that the Shias could travel safely through surrounding Sunni areas - in exchange for transit rights for Haqqani fighters to Afghanistan. Unlike the TTP, which directs much of its activities towards the Pakistani state, the Haqqanis are oriented towards fighting in Afghanistan and rely heavily on the Pakistani Army and ISI for political and financial support.  Their agreement with the Shias was put in jeopardy by the actions of local TTP commanders who continued to target Shias for purely sectarian reasons.
Dressler points out that the Pakistani military action is targeting only selected pockets of militants, while groups that have recently declared a truce with the Pakistani military or are aligned with elements of the security establishment are allowed room to expand. These include, for example, Fazal Saeed's group. Saeed - who has added the name Haqqani to his own - announced in June that he was defecting from the TTP and setting up a new organisation - see my report on this development here. He denounced the TTP for using suicide bombers to attack "mosques, markets and other civilian targets" and said he was redirecting his followers to cross the border and fight in Afghanistan.
Dressler makes it clear that the Pakistani military has little interest in curbing militancy in the region. It is simply taking on those elements of the TTP that have turned on their former mentors, solely in order to strengthen the insurgency in Afghanistan.

The Haqqani's shaky peace deal in Kurram Agency

When Sunni and Shia tribesmen in the strategically important Kurram Agency in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas signed a peace agreement in February this year, it was clear that something was afoot. The two groups had been at each other's throats for several years. Shia members of the Turi tribe living in Upper Kurram had been the subject of a murderous campaign by neighbouring Sunni Bangash tribesmen and had been cut off from the rest of Pakistan by ambushes and road blocks that had seen hundreds of Shias taken out of buses and murdered at the side of the road. The main road to Peshawar, for example, had been closed since 2007, despite attempts by the Pakistani army to keep it open. According to some accounts, the Shias have been armed and supported by the Iranian regime, which is also predominantly Shia.
Much of this anti-Shia violence has been directed by Hakimullah Mahsud, now leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, but once its emir in Kurram, Orakzai and Khyber. Mahsud is vehemently anti-Shia, regarding them as 'pagans'. He has encouraged his fighters fleeing the Pakistani offensives in both South Waziristan and also Swat to regroup in Orakzai and Kurram and to take on the Shias.
The peace agreement was brokered by the Haqqanis, the family/tribal group who make up one of the main factions of the Afghan Taliban - whose members come from the Zadran tribe. The so-called Haqqani network is now recognised as the most sophisticated and capable insurgent organisation in Afghanistan, operating out of its main bases in North Waziristan.
Under pressure from the CIA drone campaign in North Waziristan and with the support of elements of the Pakistan military, who provide their finance and weapons, the Haqqanis have been looking to move their operations into Kurram, which provides easy access to Afghanistan. Kurram suits the bill perfectly, as it served as a major staging post for attacks against Soviet forces during the 1980s. Osama bin Laden helped build some of the training camps in the region and it is thought that the remnants of al-Qaeda - as well as other foreign forces in the region such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan - and also Pakistani jihadist groups close to the military such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba will benefit from the peace deal with the Turi tribe.
According to a new report from the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project , written by Jeffrey Dressler and Reza Jan, the Haqqani's move into Kurram will have negative consequences for security and stability in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. They say it will become more difficult to identify, track and strike these groups once they have relocated.
This may be true, although it can hardly be in Iran's interests to allow the Taliban to come to power in Afghanistan. Nor is it likely that the deeply sectarian Sunnis under the command of Hakimullah Mahsud will be able to restrain themselves from killing Shias for very long, thus provoking yet another round of bloodletting in the region. This is a very shaky peace agreement indeed.

'Remarkable gains' in Helmand - report

The second of Jeffrey Dressler's two reports on Helmand for the Institute for the Study of War argues that US Marines and Coalition forces have made "remarkable gains" in the province by taking back key terrain previously controlled by the Taliban.(The first report can be found here).
Dressler argues that Taliban supply lines have been disrupted, that safe havens and support zones have largely been removed and that the Taliban has been forced out of the main populated areas in Garmser, Nawa, Marjah and Nad Ali.
As a result, Taliban-initiated violence have fallen considerably since its peak in 2009. In Marjah, for example, daily security incidents have dropped from several dozen to single digits. While the 215th Corps of the Afghan National Army has improved with mentoring, police were found to be so predatory that tribal elders have helped in the recruitment of indigenous police who more accurately represent the local tribal makeup.
The military action has successfully disrupted the narcotics trade, with estimates that insurgents received around 50 per cent less money from the Helmand drug trade in 2010 compared to 2009, resulting in a cash flow problem for them.
Problems remain, says Dressler, including political interference from allies of President Karzai and also a lack of capable civil servants.
Reconstruction projects have helped attract local support for the government, with around 4,000 people employed each day. Schools and healthcare facilities have been built. Furthermore, 71 percent of Helmand residents currently describe their living conditions as "good," an increase of 27 percent since late last year. Of those surveyed, 59 percent give positive marks to the availability of jobs, up nearly 50 percent from last year.

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.