SECRET TALKS AHEAD OF OFFENSIVE AIMED AT TALIBAN

Secret talks are taking place with the Taliban even as the U.S. and its NATO allies are getting ready to launch a major offensive against them, and as the Pakistan military prepares for a push into tribal areas, including the once quiet and picturesque Swat Valley. All of this comes at a time when the Taliban have increased their stranglehold on parts of Pakistan and are threatening NATO supply lines into Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes the Saudis are holding secret talks with members of the inner circle of Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Omar. The aim is to forge a dialogue between the U.S., Pakistan, the Afghan government and the Taliban. The Saudis were big supporters of Taliban fighters in the 1980s when they were battling the Soviets under the banner of “The Mujahideen.” A decade later, rich Saudis financed Taliban-run religious schools, which preached an extreme form of Islam. Now, Saudi Arabia sees itself as a mediator and has been acting in that role for over a year. In late 2008, representatives of the Saudi government held talks with Taliban leaders, making sure not to attract media attention. As part of the process, the U.S. released several important Taliban fighters from detention at Bagram airbase so they could take part in a dialogue about how to resolve the conflict.
But those secret talks have not deterred the Taliban from tightening their grip on parts of Pakistan and of building a stronger presence in Afghanistan. That appears to indicate that if the Taliban were to engage in formal talks towards a settlement of the Afghan problem they would wish to do so from a position of strength. While Afghanistan is an issue the incoming Obama administration intends to tackle with a big troop increase, the threat from the Taliban in Pakistan is much more worrying. It has taken years for U.S. and NATO military planners to recognize that the problems of Afghanistan have been steadily flowing into Pakistan since 2001 and subsequently feeding back into Afghanistan, fueling an insurgency in both countries. It was only in 2008 that NATO realized the Khyber Pass, through which NATO receives most of its supplies, had become an unstable region due to insurgent activity, which emanated not only from the Taliban but also from foreign fighters and Islamic militant groups that have sprung up throughout Pakistan’s tribal provinces.
After the defeat of the Taliban, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, many Taliban fighters fled across the border to Pakistan where they were welcomed in provinces like Waziristan. For the next four years, they rebuilt their organization and expanded to other tribal areas, unhindered by the Pakistan military or its intelligence services, which historically had close links with them. By the end of 2005, Taliban leaders had agreed that their goal was to defeat NATO in Afghanistan and create a Pashtun state within Pakistan itself. They also reached an informal arrangement with the Pakistan military, headed by General Pervez Musharraf, that neither side would attack the other. That ensured the Taliban were able to expand and operate in tribal regions with impunity. It also allowed Al Qaeda to regroup and over time to insert its fighters into Taliban ranks.
Just like they did when they controlled Afghanistan, the Taliban have burned down schools and imposed strict Islamic rules on the areas they rule. Even in the Swat Valley where there is a large Pakistan military presence the Taliban operate openly and run their own Sharia courts. Much of the Taliban’s growing influence has developed under the noses of the Pakistan authorities and beyond the gaze of western intelligence agencies who for too long paid little heed to what was occurring in Pakistan. Last year, there were more suicide bombs attacks in Pakistan than there were in Afghanistan. As a consequence, the Pakistan military is finding it difficult to contain a growing insurgency that stretches from the Afghan border into the Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province and even into Islamabad, the nation’s capital. Militants have also been recruiting and organizing in Karachi, the main port and industrial center.
The Pakistani military comes from within the second largest Muslim population in the world, numbering 173 millions, and as such has always shown a reluctance to deal with its own people, many of whom share a deep suspicion of the West and an Arabist view of the world. The majority is Sunni, hence the close ties to Saudi Arabia, which has one million Pakistani immigrants within its borders.
For the U.S. and its allies, the use of predator drones, and Special Forces teams, to strike at Taliban and Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan is not enough to dampen the threat and growth of the insurgency there. Essentially, it is the job of the Pakistan military to establish the rule of law over tribal lands but the military is finding difficult to handle the task because the problem was allowed to fester for too long. Close to three hundred people, including civilians, insurgents and members of the Pakistan security forces were killed in January and just as many injured. In one incident in the Swat Valley, the Taliban beheaded six captured soldiers in a town square. They also murdered a rival cleric and eight of his entourage. They constantly kill people in public, claiming they are spies for the U.S. and the Pakistani security forces. In that way, they establish a reign of terror that prevents local people from opposing them or informing on them. They have also had no difficulty acquiring weapons because Pakistan and Afghanistan are both awash with guns, many of them having been supplied to the Mujahideen by the U.S. in the 1980s. The Taliban have also raided security forces’ arsenals in outposts along the Afghan border and have disarmed militias paid by the U.S. and Pakistani-Afghan authorities to confront them.
Pakistan’s central government would prefer to see a negotiated settlement with the Taliban but that may not be what the Taliban have in mind while they ramp up the violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan. From a NATO perspective, defeating the Taliban cannot be achieved unless the Pakistan military is fully engaged. The Obama administration has made it clear to Pakistan that it will not get billions in aid if its military does not toe the Washington line. The U.S. and its NATO allies reckon if there is ever to be a successful exit from Afghanistan, it can only happen when the Taliban have been deprived of bases in Pakistan. That has to be the prerequisite for gaining the upper hand in future talks with the insurgents. The only problem is whether the forthcoming offensive, especially in Pakistan’s tribal regions, it too little too late. Some observers now see the parts of Pakistan controlled by the Taliban as a state within a state. If that were true, it poses a serious threat to the future stability of Pakistan. Whatever the outcome of the planned offensive, it is unlikely the Taliban will be defeated. That will leave the Saudis with plenty of opportunity to undo some of the damage they did by funneling tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban over the years for the building of madrassa schools that provided a constant supply of young fighters to the war against the U.S.in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It will be up to the Saudis to demand that the Taliban enter formal talks to seek an end to the conflict in Afghanistan. However, even that might not resolve the problems the Pakistan military will continue to face over who controls large swathes of the nation.