Afghanistan (27 page)

The insurgents’ maximalist view of warfare and religious practice alike has made it hard for them to achieve control of the true center of gravity in any insurgency: the Afghan population. “[The insurgents] use extremist measures even at the risk of losing connection with the population,” said BG Marquis Hainse, CF.
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Yet their worldview takes them easily into moving the battlefield into other areas that may prove more decisive, such as culture, economics, and family life, in a way that their opponents have found difficult. Before the Taliban made their point by hanging supposed bandits and exploiters in Musa Qala in 2006, when they reentered the town after the British left, they hanged a 16-year-old that had participated in a government work-for-food program.
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Refugees from areas where the insurgents have seized control and have fled to Kabul or Kandahar city tell of schools being closed, clinics shut down (the sick were instead offered raw opium or folk medicine), and retribution exacted on local villagers. In southern Afghanistan in 2008–10, Pushtuns that had lived in their home districts under the pre-2001
Taliban were increasingly fleeting their current counterparts for the greater security of Kabul or Kandahar city.
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The insurgents have demonstrated an ability to moderate some policies. The Afghan Taliban groups have not reintroduced all of their pre-2001 social repression: destruction of tape players, beard inspections, mandatory haircuts. However, most of the insurgent leadership lacks the capacity to use a more nuanced approach toward the population when it comes to winning their support from the population, providing motivation for their use of intimidation and terror as their prime persuasive approaches to the Afghan population. “In Taliban expansion areas, they rely on intimidation rather than a positive agenda. . . . Don’t underestimate intimidation,” in the words of LTC Cavoli.
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Zoran Milovic, a public opinion researcher who has worked in southern Afghanistan, said in 2009: “You’re not going to criticize the Taliban in the south once you see what happened to the mullahs who did that.”
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Recruiting Insurgents

Despite heavy casualties since 2005, the different Afghan insurgent groups are unlikely to run out of recruits any time soon, as the Taliban culture is likely to provide them with all the Kalashnikov-carriers they will ever need. The current Afghan insurgents reflect the demographic realities of the borderlands: large numbers of young men with limited education and career and family prospects. Despite the large numbers of recruits from Pakistan and elsewhere now taking part in the Afghan insurgency, the majority of the insurgent fighting men are Afghans.

Warfare has become commercial in Afghanistan, a way for extended families to support themselves and achieve access to patronage, a trend that emerged during the anti-Soviet war and has continued since then. The large generation of young men far exceeds the numbers of jobs available to them. Cut off from the old ways of traditional Afghanistan or the Pakistani borderlands, the shift to a cash-based economy and the failure to develop attractive alternative livelihood has meant that the traditional agriculture of rural Afghanistan holds little appeal for them. The lower-level Taliban members are largely drawn from the unemployed and underemployed. This trend continued through 2008–10. A 2009 US
government estimate was that 90 percent of the insurgents were local, often recruited by money or kinship, ethnic, and patronage links, while some 10 percent were ideologically committed.
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The Canadian military reported that the vast majority of the prisoners captured in 2007 gave as their reason for fighting with the Afghan Taliban simply that they would pay them and no one else would.
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The Taliban provide cash payments for particular actions. Firing a couple of rockets at a NATO military position would earn Afghans as much as several months of day labor. A significant minority of the Afghan Taliban were pushed to join the insurgency by collateral damage by allied airpower, heavy-handed house searches, or extortionate Afghan policemen. One-third of a group of 42 Afghan Taliban prisoners taken by Canadians in 2006 had lost relatives to collateral damage.
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These incidents build on each other to create an atmosphere favorable to the insurgents. Insurgent IED attacks, in some areas, are blamed on Kabul or the coalition forces; every villager who goes to look for work in Pakistan or the Gulf is said to be in a secret USA prison at Bagram Air Base. But non-presence is certainly not an effective option. “The insurgents will control the population where the ANA is not protecting them,” in the words of COL McNiece, and then all inroads, strategic, cultural, and social, would be lost.
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Insurgent Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs)

As mentioned before, the insurgents have demonstrated a capability to evolve. “The Taliban does not fight very well” was LTC Cavoli’s judgment based on his 2007 tour of duty.
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However, since then, they and the other insurgent groups have visibly improved both their actions on the battlefield and, more significantly, their ability to use a range of asymmetric tactics that give them capabilities off the battlefield. By the end of 2008, overall insurgent attacks had increased over 40 percent from the previous year.

The Afghan insurgents, including but not limited to the Taliban, have increasingly turned to asymmetric tactics over the course of the insurgency, rather than relying on any single tactical approach including standing and fighting as they did against Operation Medusa in Panjwai district in Kandahar province in 2006 or indirect fires and the use of
mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The number of IED and roadside bomb incidents increased from 307 in 2004 to 3,276 in 2008.
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The trend has continued. There were 217 IED incidents in Afghanistan in August 2007, 386 in August 2008, and 969 in August 2009.
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IEDs caused 69 percent of ISAF casualties in 2008, increasing to 77 percent in the first six months of 2009.
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This shift to asymmetric tactics was reportedly after action reviews that led to orders issued from Pakistan by Mullah Omar, the Afghan Taliban leader.
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This shift to asymmetrical tactics was seen between 2007 and 2008, when insurgent offensive actions decreased from a 50 to a 40 percent ratio of direct fire. The use of IEDs and mines increased from 20 to 30 percent. Indirect fire attacks remained at 30 percent. The number of attacks did increase overall, however, in part as a reflection of additional coalition and Afghan troops operating in contested areas.
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By 2008–10, more sophisticated ambushes, widespread suicide bombings (frequently integrated with other attacks), mine warfare, urban terrorism, and widespread targeted assassinations had all increased.

Coordinated suicide attacks, often in urban areas, have been one type of asymmetric tactics where the insurgents have demonstrated increasing sophistication, capability, and boldness. Such suicide attack tactics were not seen in Afghanistan in the anti-Soviet conflict of 1978–92 or the 1992–2001 civil wars. “The suicide bomber is not there in Afghan culture,” BG Richard Blanchette, Canadian Forces, ISAF spokesman, said in 2008.
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Suicide bombers are frequently seen as being adapted from foreign groups, especially Al Qaeda and their allies among Pakistan-based groups; the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 is often cited as a model.
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In Afghanistan, suicide attacks as such started later, in May 2003, but increased steadily until the number of volunteers, especially foreigners, picked up to disturbing levels in 2005. By 2006, suicide attacks in Afghanistan reached an average of ten per month.
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Suicide attacks since then have increased in sophistication and damage. The coordination of attackers—both vehicle-borne and on-foot, with explosives and with rifles and grenades—and the targeting of high-value targets with political impact has been a feature of many Afghan insurgent suicide attacks. Dates with political impact have been selected for these
attacks. A series of high-profile suicide attacks have had an impact on Afghan political legitimacy, showing the government’s inability to provide security. These have included the November 2007 attack in Baghlan province, the January 2008 attack on the Serena Hotel, the April 2008 national day attack, the July 2008 Indian embassy attack in Kabul, attacks on the Ministry of Information in October 2008, three sites in Kabul including the Ministry of Justice in February 2009, and a police headquarters in Kandahar in March 2009.

The evolution of suicide attacks since they were introduced to Afghanistan has led to increased sophistication, featuring, instead of individual suicide bombers, multiple coordinated attacks, building penetration, taking of hostages and execution of prisoners (especially government employees).
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Embedding the actions of suicide attackers in a larger operation also helps ensure that the attackers retain direction and that they will not have to carry out their missions in isolation. There was considerable Afghan resistance to adopting suicide tactics in the initial years of the insurgency. The Taliban assassinated ulema that spoke against suicide attacks.
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Even in 2008, Maulavi Abd-al-Hadi “Pash Wa’l” bin-abd-al-Hakim, identified as Taliban military commander in Laghman province, was defensive about these tactics, indicating that they are still of questionable legitimacy. “We carry out martyrdom-seeking operations when needed. This happens when we cannot use other military tactics, therefore, we have used the tactics of martyrdom-seeking operations against the Crusading forces only once.”
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The move by different Afghan insurgent groups away from direct opposition to coalition and Afghan forces applies to other tactics, not just the recent spectacular suicide attacks. “Last year [2007], we had 50 guys attack a FOB [Forward Operating Base], now 10 men each [objective], a shift to more asymmetry, more events per insurgent, less loss per event,” COL McNiece said in 2008.
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He also saw it as part of a more sophisticated insurgency, better able to apply appropriate tactics and that “someone, somewhere is learning to combine IEDs, direct [attack] and indirect [fires].” “Smaller, decentralized, and more asymmetrical warfare” was how BG Blanchette described the insurgent trends of the past year in 2008. Yet this trend did not mean the insurgents had given up a
capability to mass forces when required. Groups of several hundred insurgents have made attacks, including the one that overran a joint US and Afghan National Army outpost at Komdesh in Nuristan in 2009.

On the battlefield, despite the insurgents’ access to clandestine arms markets and funding streams, as of 2008–09 neither their weaponry nor their battlefield skills match those of the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance of the late 1980s. Yet the insurgents have demonstrated a number of considerable strengths. They have an ability to use effective cell and small unit organizations that have contributed to their resilience and ability to quickly reorganize after setbacks. They have effectively used surprise and deception in their attacks. The spread of IEDs and other guerrilla techniques suggests that the current insurgents can draw TTPs and equipment from diverse sources, such as the Chechens and Tamils.
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Many of the Afghan guerrillas today have high-quality equipment, often bought on the international market. Other equipment appears to have been bought from the Afghan security forces.
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The availability of funding and access to world weapons markets makes the absence of certain types of weapons among the insurgent forces significant. The insurgents have used no anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) and few surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), even though these weapons were both used in the later stages of the 1978–92 conflict. This suggests that there has been a decision by someone to limit insurgent access to these weapons. It is unlikely that shortages of funding, training, and logistics facilities or availability of these weapons on the world market were keeping these weapons out of the hands of the Afghan insurgents in 2008–10.

Other sources of supplies to the insurgents have also been limited. Iran has limited its supplies to a few Explosive Formed Projectile (EFP) warheads for use in roadside IEDs and Chinese-made man-portable HN-5 SAMs. GEN Petraeus in 2009 described Iran’s “malign activity” as including, “to a limited degree, arming the Taliban in western Afghanistan as well.”
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Funding Insurgency

Former finance minister Ashraf Ghani has described the Afghanistan insurgency in 2009. “One of the best financed insurgencies, more diverse
and consolidated. They can buy a lot in a cash economy.”
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To compound an already-complex threat, the Afghan insurgency is cheap to run and has no shortage of funding.
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Like the transnational terrorism with which it shares its support network, the Afghan insurgency has access to multiple, redundant sources of funding, and narcotics cultivation and trafficking is often reported to be one of the most significant. “Powerful economic forces not run by fanatics living in caves bankroll these movements,” in the words of former AP Pakistan correspondent Gretchen Peters.
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Richard Barrett estimated that 20–30 percent of the total insurgent funding, some 60–70 million dollars, came from narcotics, with the bulk of the remainder coming from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
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GEN Petraeus put the percentage of insurgent funding from narcotics at about a third, with the remainder coming from donations, remittances, and criminal activity.
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The insurgents’ non-narcotics funding coming in from sources in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, and other Islamic countries is hard to estimate but is clearly extensive, as indicated by the level at which Afghan insurgents are able to operate. The relatively few names of Saudi and Gulf state nationals on the UN sanctions lists for such activities suggests more how little is known rather than the lack of support coming from there. The Afghan insurgents’ infrastructure of financial support includes not only the
hundi/hawala
money transfer system that has attracted much interest since 9/11, but also networks of legitimate financial institutions, couriers, facilitators, and sources of funding that are shared by transnational terrorists, Afghan and Pakistani insurgents, and narcotics traffickers alike. In 2009, the US government estimated the Afghan insurgents’ donation income in the past 12 months at about 106 million dollars, compared to 70–400 million dollars from narcotics in differing estimates.
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