[Richard]

Is Baghlan province in the north of Afghanistan on the way to becoming a new stronghold of the insurgents? Two incidents symbolise this trend. On 20 May, one of the most powerful anti-Taleban commanders in the north, Mohammad Rasul Mohseni, died in a suicide attack. On 4 May, three Afghan police and one German soldier were killed in an ambush by insurgents. With the withdrawal of German troops scheduled for June, Deedee Derksen, Claudio Franco, Gran Hewad and Christine Roehrs look at the security situation and the shifting power structures on the ground.

And so it goes...

Richard

Baghlan On The Brink: ANSF Weaknesses And Taleban Resilience
AAN, 31 May 2013
Part 1 of 2

The death of Mohammad Rasul Mohseni in a suicide attack was a major success for the Taleban in their pursuit to get rid of anti-Taleban provincial powerbrokers.(1) Mohseni, a Tajik connected with the late Burhanuddin Rabbani’s Jamiat party, had a long history of fighting the Taleban. His home district, Andarab in the south-eastern mountains bordering Panjshir, is locally known for its fierce fighters. Because they traditionally carry long knives, their nickname is barchadarha – knife-holders. Mohseni was known for being able to call out hundreds of barchadarha who were in his service. He carefully maintained his militias’ strength throughout the years – he was in his fifties when he was killed – but also adopted a political profile.

Officially, Mohseni had been chairman of Baghlan’s provincial council for the last eight years. Unofficially, he played a much bigger role. He appointed allies in the provincial police leadership, in the local attorney general’s office, the NDS and even the governor’s office. He was also involved in setting up the new Afghan Local Police (ALP) forces in Baghlan – militias meant to act as a first line of defence against the Taleban. His death is a significant event in Baghlani politics and the ripples it will cause could further destabilise the security situation, particularly after the remaining German forces – 450 soldiers based in Pul-e Khumri – withdraw in June.

Indications are that Baghlan, so far a province without a consistent security profile – for months quiet, then suffering from outbursts of violence – could evolve into a stronghold of the insurgency in Afghanistan’s north. Interviews with insurgency representatives conducted and cross-checked over months indicate that, today, between 2,500 and 3,000 fighters are deployed in Baghlan. Taleban Nizami (Military) Commission sources said that, in 2008, there were around 1,800 fighters only. This would mean an increase of at least 700 fighters over the past five years. According to ISAF, 4,500 Afghan national security forces (including ALP) are based in Baghlan.

The Taleban also appear to have established a new, more effective command structure, similar to most provinces in the country’s north and east. Previously, Taleban insurgents in Baghlan were mostly organised in semi-autonomous Afghan fronts (mahaz) with independent funding streams. Today, all five mahaz active in Baghlan answer to one central organisational and financing body in Peshawar, the so-called nizami (military) commission. This accounts for improved coordination on the ground and curbed internal competition for influence and funding. (For more information on the ‘Changes in the Insurgency’s DNA’ see Claudio Franco’s earlier blog here.)

How could the insurgency gain so much strength in Baghlan and what does it mean for the future?

Baghlan was a comparatively quiet province in the years following the collapse of the Taleban regime in 2001. However, some parts of Baghlani society became frustrated with the new political order when the local government, especially the security apparatus, came to be dominated by mainly Tajik officials affiliated with the Jamiat party. This was despite the province’s ethnic diversity – there are not only Tajiks living there, but also Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Turkmens and Ismailis. Political support from Kabul tended to follow ethnic lines, especially during election times: whereas the Jamiati powerbrokers supported the mainly Tajik Jamiat affiliates, President Hamed Karzai and the people around him were often perceived to support Pashtun groups.

Neither the Afghan government nor ISAF countered the growth of the Taleban in those early years, as an AAN report found in 2011. According to its authors, Antonio Giustozzi and Christoph Reuter, the Taleban ‘recruited largely among the descendants of the third wave of Pashtun migrants from the south, who ended up getting humble jobs and little or no land’. Indeed, a current source from the Taleban military commission confirmed that the insurgency still focused on Baghlan because of its comparably large Pashtun population which facilitated the insurgents’ penetration of both territory and influence over the area’s society. Later, they also incorporated Uzbeks, Turkmens, Aimaqs and, to a lesser extent, Tajiks. Giustozzi and Reuter wrote that, ‘ISAF and the Afghan government neglected early warnings in Kunduz and Baghlan with negative consequences… Their reluctance to acknowledge the Taleban’s growth grew from disbelief [at] the Taleban’s ability to recruit non-Pashtuns.’

The Taleban also grew because they were able to take sympathy and territory from the Gulbuddin Hekmatyar-led Hezb-e Islami (HIG), which is traditionally strong in the province.(3) Between 2007 and 2009, HIG insurgents and the Taleban competed for influence among the province’s Pashtun population until the tussle became a short but fully fledged conflict. The Taleban managed to wrestle local support from Hezb-e-Islami, leveraging the widespread complaints about the conduct of HIG insurgents, who were repeatedly accused of robbing and kidnapping people. In 2009, the HIG-led insurgents were badly defeated by the Taleban. Such developments encouraged the Hezb-e Islami insurgents to join the government and international coalition forces, mainly under the guise of pro-government militias, which later merged into the ALP.

The Hungarian troops, who took over the ISAF PRT in Baghlan from the Dutch in 2006, ‘had neither the resources nor the political will to control large parts of the province’, Giustozzi and Reuter stated in their 2011 paper. This changed only after German and American troops started operating in Baghlan in 2009. Then in 2010, US Special Forces started conducting capture-or-kill missions. These operations hit the Taleban badly, eliminating parts of their local command structure and taking away some of their territorial gains.

By the end of 2010, four Baghlani shadow governors had been killed or captured and, ironically, it was the extremely successful campaign of targeted killings by US Special Forces that sped up the Taleban’s reorganisation process. Command positions that became vacant were quickly filled by better-trained mid-ranks aligned with the new, Peshawar-led command-and-control structure established in the province between 2008 and 2010.

Following this reorganization drive, the Taliban also adopted a new military strategy. Baghlani mahaz commanders interviewed in January 2013 said, ‘we do not want to repeat our mistakes in Helmand and Kandahar,’ referring to instances when international operations intermittently forced the Taleban to withdraw from areas they had occupied. Today, the Taleban try not to concentrate large numbers of fighters in the same district to avoid airstrikes and raids. The new strategy, tested in Baghlan and other provinces, was for small groups to target local authorities and gain influence in local social structures instead of trying to capture territory when it could not be held. This also means that a high number of fighters does not necessarily translate into a high number of attacks, but the Taleban can still be influential.

Without the support of the local population, the Taleban would have never come so far in Baghlan, even with a sophisticated organisation and strategy. Baghlan’s weak local government provides fertile ground for insurgent activities. In interviews with Taleban commanders from Baghlan in 2011,(2) a recurring theme in the answers about why they had started fighting was the ‘corruption of the local government’ (meaning that government officials ask for bribes, grab land, harass villagers and enjoy impunity). A western official well informed on Baghlani politics summed up the problems leading villagers to actively support the insurgency or having little resistance to being forcibly recruited: political marginalisation, encroachment by the dominating Jamiat faction, the bad behaviour of militias and rivalry between government officials.

A 2005 US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks provides more detail: at that time, it said, Afghan National Police (ANP) and the Highway Police competed for a share in the province’s drug trafficking business. The involvement of local government officials in drug trafficking was confirmed in an interview by a well-informed Afghan government official in Kabul. A 2006 US diplomatic cable also reported major land grabbing disputes, ‘particularly in Killagay [Kelagai] district, where Tajiks reportedly have been taking land previously held by absentee (and some returnee) Pashtuns. These disputes have been further complicated by an influx of Ismailis (Hazaras) also intent on obtaining land in the fertile area.’ Similar issues, including some with ethnic overtones, continue to fester in Baghlan.

A German ISAF spokesman based in the north told AAN that ISAF is now already seeing local powerbrokers, including those connected with organised crime, compete for post-German troop withdrawal positions. ‘The struggles for power and resources have started’, he said.

(Cont'd)