Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban

    Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban

    GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer.

    When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives.


    Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.

    The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.

    They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.

    Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.

    Their growing numbers point to the worsening problem of lawlessness in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which they use as a base to train alongside militants from Al Qaeda who have carried out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe, according to Western diplomats.

    “We’ve seen an unprecedented level of reports of foreign-fighter involvement,” said Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “They’ll threaten people if they don’t provide meals and support.”

    In interviews in southern and eastern Afghanistan, local officials and village elders also reported having seen more foreigners fighting alongside the Taliban than in any year since the American-led invasion in 2001.

    In Afghanistan, the foreigners serve as mid-level commanders, and train and finance local fighters, according to Western analysts. In Pakistan’s tribal areas, they train suicide bombers, create roadside-bomb factories and have vastly increased the number of high-quality Taliban fund-raising and recruiting videos posted online.

    Gauging the exact number of Taliban and foreign fighters in Afghanistan is difficult, Western officials and analysts say. At any given time, the Taliban can field up to 10,000 fighters, they said, but only 2,000 to 3,000 are highly motivated, full-time insurgents.

    The rest are part-time fighters, young Afghan men who have been alienated by government corruption, who are angry at civilian deaths caused by American bombing raids, or who are simply in search of cash, they said. Five to 10 percent of full-time insurgents — roughly 100 to 300 combatants — are believed to be foreigners.


    Western diplomats say recent offers from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to negotiate with the Taliban are an effort to split local Taliban moderates and Afghans who might be brought back into the fold from the foreign extremists.

    But that effort may face an increasing challenge as foreigners replace dozens of midlevel and senior Taliban who, Western officials say, have been killed by NATO and American forces.

    At the same time, Western officials said the reliance on foreigners showed that the Taliban are running out of midlevel Afghan commanders. “That’s a sure-fire sign of desperation,” General Champoux said.

    Seth Jones, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, was less sanguine, however, calling the arrival of more foreigners a dangerous development. The tactics the foreigners have introduced, he said, are increasing Afghan and Western casualty rates.

    “They play an incredibly important part in the insurgency,” Mr. Jones said. “They act as a force multiplier in improving their ability to kill Afghan and NATO forces.”

    Western officials said the foreigners are also increasingly financing younger Taliban leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas who have closer ties to Al Qaeda, like Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed. The influence of older, more traditional Taliban leaders based in Quetta, Pakistan, is diminishing.

    “We see more and more resources going to their fellow travelers,” said Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan. “The new Taliban commanders are younger and younger.”

    In the southern provinces of Oruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand, Afghan villagers recently described two distinct groups of Taliban fighters. They said “local Taliban” allowed some development projects. But “foreign Taliban” — usually from Pakistan — threatened to kill anyone who cooperated with the Afghan government or foreign aid groups.

    Hanif Atmar, the Afghan education minister, said threats from foreign Taliban have closed 40 percent of the schools in southern Afghanistan. He said many local Taliban oppose the practice, but foreign Taliban use brutality and cash to their benefit.

    “That makes our situation terribly complicated,” Mr. Atmar said. “Because they bring resources with them, their agenda takes precedence.”

    Large groups of Pakistani militants operate in southern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials. In the east, more Arab and Uzbek fighters are present.

    Mr. Bataloff, the Russian arrested in a burqa, insists he is a religious student who traveled to Pakistan last year to learn more about his new faith. In an hourlong interview in an Afghan jail in Kabul, he said his interest in Islam blossomed three years ago when he was living in Siberia.

    “First, I heard from TV, radio and newspapers about Islam,” he said in Russian. “I found Islam had a lot of good things, especially that Islam respects all prophets, including Jesus.”

    But he declined to describe many details of his trip and grew angry when asked about his personal background. “Homicide and suicide is not allowed in any religion,” he said, when asked about the allegations against him. “Why are you asking me these questions?”

    Mr. Bataloff said he grew up in Siberia, but would not identify his hometown or region. He said he could not remember the names of the Pakistanis he met or the two Afghan men who drove the pickup truck.

    He said he decided to go to a predominantly Muslim country last fall to study Islam and learn about “the morals, the customs, the ethics and the literature.” He flew alone from Russia to Iran, he said, and met a Russian-speaking “guide” in the airport.

    After spending 10 days in Iran, he crossed into Pakistan and traveled to North Waziristan, a remote tribal area that is a longtime Taliban and Qaeda stronghold. There, he spent a year living and studying in a small mosque in Mir Ali.

    Pakistani security officials say the Islamic Jihad Union, a terrorist group led by militants from Uzbekistan, operates a training camp in Mir Ali.

    [In mid-October, in some of the heaviest fighting in four years, the Pakistani military said 50 foreign fighters were among 200 militants reported killed in three days of clashes around Mir Ali. The dead foreigners were said to include mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks, as well as some Arabs, the army said.]

    Some of the suspects arrested in a failed bombing plot in Germany in September received training in the tribal areas, according to German officials. Several men involved in the July 2005 London transit bombings and a failed August 2006 London airliner plot did as well.

    Mr. Bataloff said he met no foreign militants in his 10 months in the tribal areas. But American military officials said he had told interrogators that he had attended a terrorist training camp in North Waziristan. He said local militants forced him to go to the camp and taught him how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle, the officials said.

    “I didn’t have any specific teacher,” he said, when asked about Pakistanis he met there. “There were local people who knew the Koran.”

    A second foreign prisoner produced by Afghan officials identified himself as Muhammad Kuzeubaev, a 23-year-old from Temirtau, Kazakhstan. Afghan officials said he was a bombmaker arrested in September in Badakhshan Province in northern Afghanistan.

    In an interview, Mr. Kuzeubaev, who also spoke fluent Russian, said he was visiting Afghanistan as a tourist. “I was close to the border,” he said. “I thought I would go explore the country.”


    In Badakhshan, he said, two Afghan men abducted him and demanded he join Al Qaeda. He agreed to do so fearing he would be killed, he said. That night, the men showed him parts of a suicide vest and promised to take him to Pakistan for training.

    “They showed me the explosives, the vest and grenade,” said Mr. Kuzeubaev. “The next day, they brought some kind of weapons.”

    Two days later, Afghan police officers surrounded the house and arrested him, he said. Afghan interrogators beat him, chained him to a wall and prevented him from sleeping for four days, he said.

    “They are saying, ‘You are the man who was making the vests,’ ” said Mr. Kuzeubaev. “But the ammunition and other explosives were not mine.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/wo..._r=2&ref=world
    It is interesting that some Russian Moslems have joined the Taliban "concert"!

    Islamic ideology apart, could it be that the Russians are in the "paying back" mode for what the US did when their surrogate ruled the mountains? Or is it a way to ensure that the Russian Moslem are 'gainfully occupied" so that they do not create similar problems at home?!

    That Pakistan would have a finger in the pie is an old hat. It is in the interest of Pakistan to keep the Pashtuns busy in the name of Islam, rather than having them think of Pakhtoonistan (union of Pashtun territories of Pakistan and Afghanistan that was divided by the British with their Durand Line). The fact that the Durand Line is questioned and it expired in 1993, when the Treaty expired has really scared Pakistan out of its wit, more so since Afghanistan has refused to renew the same! Therefore, it is obvious that the Pashtuns have aspiration of a Pakhtoonistan! Hence, it is in Pakistan's interest to keep the area active so that none have the time to think about the Durand Line and the future and call of Islam is headier than sub culturalism or subnationality since Islam is above the issue of Nations!

    Therefore, it is in the interest of Pakistan and 'other' countries to keep the Afghan pot boiling!


    "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

    I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

    HAKUNA MATATA

  • #2
    I think it's volunteer work. I don't think that Putin has any credible program for diverting the attention of domestic radicals else where.

    Comment


    • #3
      Feanor,

      Such volunteers can create problems at home after the volunteering is over.

      Ask Pakistan. ;)

      Bomb a day and parts of the country are burning! ;)

      The US also learnt the hard way - 9/11!

      And UK giving asylum to whole lot "Freedom" movements - 11/7!

      It returns to haunt!


      "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

      I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

      HAKUNA MATATA

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Ray View Post
        Feanor,

        Such volunteers can create problems at home after the volunteering is over.

        Ask Pakistan. ;)

        Bomb a day and parts of the country are burning! ;)

        The US also learnt the hard way - 9/11!

        And UK giving asylum to whole lot "Freedom" movements - 11/7!

        It returns to haunt!
        These volunteers are already causing problems at home, before the work had even started. Chechen Republic of Ichkeriya anyone?

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Ray View Post
          It is interesting that some Russian Moslems have joined the Taliban "concert"!

          Islamic ideology apart, could it be that the Russians are in the "paying back" mode for what the US did when their surrogate ruled the mountains? Or is it a way to ensure that the Russian Moslem are 'gainfully occupied" so that they do not create similar problems at home?!
          Kremlin no likee Moslem Fanatics. At any level you look at it, they have no interest in the situation officially:

          1. "Paying back" the US means that US presence in Central Asia will be prolonged - which is the last thing that Russian strategists wants (OK make it the second-last thing). US always comes with lots of baggage, which will stay even if somehow one manages to force US to leave. Look at the spectrum of troubles US bring to Kremlin - you have Borat upsetting the Red Sultans; you have Europeans upsetting the heroin trade; hell, you even have small groups of Korean EJs. Who needs that kind of trouble to today's operations just for paying back something that happened 20 years back? No sir, Russia wants US to leave as quitely and peacefully as possible.

          2. Russian surrogates are ruling the country now. Who do you think kept the Northern Alliance commanders alive during the time when Talibunnies ruled 95% of Afghanistan? Do you think that the aid came without strings attached? The men may have passed into US camp now, but I bet Kremlin has enough strings to get its occassional wished fulfilled. As far as Russia is concerned, it has won. The US has snatched a victory from the belly of defeat for Russian interests, Russia has no interest in throwing that sure victory for an effort of dubious value.

          3. Kremlin strategists play with rabid pups as well as formidable mastiffs, but not with rabid mastiffs: Moslem fanatics fall into the last category. Kremlin knows that these guys are certifiably rabid - not even on the hottest day of the Cold War did anyone dream of attacking New York and Washington DC, or executing third-party schoolchildren one-by-one. Kremlin also knows that these guys are BIG - their reach extends well into 20+ million of Russia's own Moslems. This is definitely one big, dangerous puppy. It is too friggin' heavy to throw into the neighbors yard, too friggin' mad to play with. Russian probably calaculate to shoot these, rather than export and keep the fingers crossed.

          Comment

          Working...
          X