Afghanistan

What NATO and Kabul can learn from their enemy.

By Patrick Devenny

Last month during a visit to Kabul, Afghanistan's minister of the interior, Hanif Atmar, showed Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen and Amb. Richard Holbrooke a particularly sobering map. Atmar shaded two thirds of Helmand Province in Afghanistan's south -- an area home to about 750,000 Afghans -- to denote its status under Taliban control.

It is not news that swaths of Afghanistan -- particularly rural Pashtun areas in the south -- now fall under the influence of the Taliban's "shadow government." What has been overlooked is why. Force certainly plays a part as the Taliban conquers new territory. But it's the insurgents' management structure -- one that supplements rather than supplants existing tribal structures -- that explains the Taliban's staying power. NATO and Kabul aren't being outfought in Helmand; they're being outgoverned.

So far, NATO has responded to Taliban expansion by reinforcing its units in the area, boosting its firepower, and combating the poppy economy through interdiction and crop substitution. That's the easy part. The real challenge will come after territory is regained and NATO begins its fight for the population -- not just the land. To get this next phase right, NATO and its Afghan allies would do well to take a lesson from the force that has been managing much of the south for the last two years: the Taliban. Yes, time to take advice from the enemy. What methods of "guerrilla governance" are attracting the support of local populations? And how could NATO and Afghan forces use them to "clear, hold, and build?" 

There is no better place to start than the Taliban's court system, staffed by groups of religious scholars who review disputes over land allocation and property rights -- issues of vital importance in pastoral Afghanistan. There are a dozen or so courts like this in Southern Afghanistan who settle cases and sentence local criminals. Their justice is visible, immediate, and familiar to Afghans who have relied on informal conflict resolution for centuries. The courts' attraction is rooted in the absence of effective alternatives, rather than ideological affinity. Afghans, desperate for some measure of order, will often turn to Taliban courts even if they do not support the organization's overall goals. Indeed, though many have dismissed the courts as a mere PR gambit, a sideshow to the Taliban's main operations. But PR might be just the point: The courts are better at gaining local support than dozens of gunmen or bomb-makers ever could.

If NATO and the Afghan government want to cement any future military gains in the south, they will have to offer an alternative to justice à la Taliban. The official answer is to build up the nascent Afghan court system -- a near impossible long-term task unlikely to win hearts and minds anytime soon. Realistically, another option would work far better: accept informal local and tribal courts as reality and explore new avenues of interaction and, possibly, support. In the near-term, that is far more doable than fixing a judicial system that is largely perceived as corrupt and is certainly understaffed. (There are just six judges in Kandahar to serve nearly 1 million people.)

Relying on traditional mediation under tribal or religious elders is hardly a radical idea; the U.S. military in Iraq has been doing it for years. In areas with strong tribal authority and sparse government representation, U.S. military units have been walking a tightrope -- implicitly allowing tribal law while halting any excesses.

In Afghanistan, the existence of local courts is a fait accompli -- the only question is who will influence them, NATO or the Taliban? Captain David R.D. Nauta, a Dutch legal advisor writing in NATO's in-house journal, recently endorsed tribal law as a stopgap measure. The formal court system, he writes, is "two decades away," and informal courts, which are "crucial to restore some degree of rule of law," need to be utilized by NATO and Afghan forces in the meantime.

In the coming months, NATO forces will venture into areas long held hostage by the Taliban or affiliated elements. If they bring empty promises of a fair justice system in some distant future, the Taliban will be handed a victory, regardless of the military situation. Or, if NATO takes a chapter from the Taliban book, it might just beat the insurgents at their own game.

Patrick Devenny is an employee of the U.S. Department of Defense. The views expressed in this article are his own.

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

Want to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban? Stop thinking of them as terrorists.

By Gretchen Peters

The Obama administration has promised "a new way of thinking about the challenges" facing the United States in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it's also high time it starts thinking in a new way about America's enemies themselves. The Taliban and al Qaeda have long portrayed themselves as holy warriors, battling under the flag of Islam. Most people in the West have accepted this characterization, imagining them as long-bearded fanatics, while Washington constantly refers to them as "terrorists" and "extremists." No doubt they are. But, having studied their operations at the village level in Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than three years, another descriptor also seems useful to me: criminal. When you examine the day-to-day activities keeping their networks financially afloat and probe how they interact with local communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban and al Qaeda start to look a lot more mafiosi than mujahideen.

In the last eight years, the Afghan Taliban have greatly expanded their illicit activities, morphing into a force more violent and ruthless than when they were in power from 1996 to 2001 and building up an economic empire worth almost half a billion dollars. Their activities are diverse: In some parts of the south, they collaborate with drug traffickers to dictate poppy output. They provide armed protection for opium convoys leaving Afghanistan's farm areas and protect heroin labs along the Pakistan border. In addition, they work with kidnapping rings that have snared diplomats, journalists, U.S. contractors, and wealthy local businessmen. They cooperate with gunrunners, human traffickers, and the smuggling gangs that illegally export millions of dollars worth of Afghan antiquities.

They also extort monthly payments from legal Afghan businesses, terrorizing village shopkeepers and even nationwide cellphone providers, attacking their homes and premises if they don't comply. District-level Taliban commanders collect fees as high as $250 per truck passing through their control zones from import-export firms and trucking companies, even "taxing" the tankers carrying jet fuel to NATO air bases in Kandahar and Bagram.

The Afghan Taliban aren't the only ones using criminal proceeds to finance their operations. Thieves recently looted a money market in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi, later delivering the cash to Baitullah Mehsud, who leads the Pakistani Taliban. There are also indications that al Qaeda operatives help move shipments of refined heroin as they leave the Afghan border area and head toward Central Asia and Europe, precisely where one stands to profit most.

Viewing the Taliban and al Qaeda as criminals doesn't mean ignoring the threat they pose to the West. In fact, criminal activity makes them even more dangerous overseas. Opium profits help pay for weapons and explosives used to kill U.S. soldiers on the Afghan battlefield. Criminal proceeds could help fund future 9/11-style attacks, making it imperative to degrade these sources of funding.

But the new paradigm could offer some extraordinary opportunities for fighting this thriving underground economy. When President Barack Obama speaks of confronting "a common enemy" that threatens the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, his condemnation of extremism doesn't always resonate in the border areas where the insurgents and terrorists rule.

With the help of local researchers, I have interviewed hundreds of Afghans and Pakistanis who live along the frontier. In these deeply conservative Muslim communities, where religious leaders hold tremendous authority, few dared speak out against people who define themselves as "holy warriors." But when we framed the insurgents as criminals, they opened up, describing in clear detail how the militants' illicit activities directly and adversely affect their lives. Speaking in terms the people there can understand will improve America's ability to win local support for the critical task of cutting off terrorist leaders from their illicit profits. In Islam, there is no one more reviled than a thief.

Gretchen Peters is the author of the forthcoming Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

U.S. drones have executed dozens of alleged al Qaeda members along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But is silence on this counterterrorism tactic the best strategy?

By Stuart Gottlieb 

If you were under the impression that U.S. President Barack Obama's promise to craft new counterterrorism policies "in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals" could be accomplished without exposing dangerous contradictions, consider this:

Since Obama's swearing-in, the United States has executed dozens of suspected al Qaeda leaders and operatives without court hearings, the presentation of evidence, or the involvement of defense lawyers. These executions, typically carried out by missile strikes from unmanned CIA drone aircraft, have taken place in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Scores of civilians, including many women and children, have reportedly been killed or maimed in the strikes.

Calls for granting habeas corpus rights to Guantánamo detainees and outrage over the Bush administration's harsh treatment of enemy combatants have dominated the headlines. Yet this side of the U.S. war against al Qaeda and its affiliates is little discussed and even less deliberated.

But with tensions rising in Pakistan and around the Muslim world over the brutality and high civilian death toll from these targeted assassination attacks, the United States' day of reckoning regarding this policy may soon arrive as well. As we learned from the Bush administration, there are tremendous costs to aggressive counterterrorism policies, especially when their purposes are not clearly understood. Unless Obama candidly explains how targeted killings fit within his overall counterterrorism approach, he faces similar difficulties and the possible exhaustion of goodwill toward his new administration.

Indeed, although targeted killings can be justified on national security grounds -- to weaken the capability of Taliban and al Qaeda forces to carry out attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere -- they run counter to Obama's espoused counterterrorism ethos. Assuring the world in one breath that "America does not torture" suspected terrorists, while in another ordering Hellfire missile strikes that can burn victims alive, is unsustainable from both policy and diplomatic perspectives. How does the U.S. president explain why one suspected terrorist leader held in Guantánamo gets a team of lawyers fighting for his day in court, while another is killed in his car along with his family?

To justify these targeted killings, the Obama team needs to acknowledge two things. First, that the threat from al Qaeda and its affiliates remains so dire that the United States needs to engage in practices that in some contexts would be war crimes. Second, that some of the former Bush administration's most aggressive and controversial policies remain necessary in the conflict against al Qaeda, including targeted killings (admittedly a preferable alternative to a ground operation, which could leave scores of U.S. troops and Pakistani and Afghan civilians dead as well).

Obama has taken great care to level with the American people about the current financial crisis. He has made clear that there are no silver-bullet solutions and that returning to sustained economic growth will require difficult trade-offs.

This same candor is needed in the fight against global terrorism, whether on the frontiers of Pakistan or elsewhere. Although this might not mesh well with Obama's overall message on the terrorist threat and his administration's response, in the case of targeted killings, actions are already speaking more loudly than words.

Stuart Gottlieb, a former Senate foreign policy adviser, directs the Policy Studies Program at Yale University's MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images 

Is Islamabad next?

By Shuja Nawaz

The coordinated attacks by the Taliban in Kabul on the eve of U.S. Amb. Richard Holbrooke's arrival were no coincidence. Apart from ratcheting up fear among the citizens of Kabul, these attacks may well reflect a sense of desperation on the part of the Taliban. They fear that the impending arrival of additional troops in Afghanistan and simultaneous attempts to begin a dialogue with elements of the Afghan insurgency could leave them isolated. Hence the need to show their strength and ability to penetrate and attack the government in Kabul at will. Apart from showing off their military prowess, the Taliban wish to highlight President Hamid Karzai's inability to control even his own capital. There may be a regional strategy behind this approach.

In Islamabad, intrepid local journalist Hamid Mir, who in the past has managed to get interviews with militant leaders of all ilk, reported in The News today growing signs of an impeding attack on the capital of Pakistan. There, painted signs on walls warn even other militant leaders, who might be distancing themselves from the Taliban's puritanical dogma, not to collaborate with the "pro-American Zardari government."

So, an attack inside the Pakistani capital cannot be ruled out, and indeed might be imminent.

The aim there might be to hasten the government's retreat from normal rule of law in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas and Swat in favor of a sharia-based system, using the Taliban's convoluted interpretation of Islamic traditions. The Taliban's strong selling point is the absence of good governance and speedy justice in both the tribal areas along the Afghan border and inside the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. If the government resists the temptation to buy them off with sharia laws, it will have taken a first step in reasserting its supremacy. If it chooses to fold, then the Taliban pressure will only increase, and they will attempt to spread their system to other parts of Pakistan, using fear and intimidation, as appears to be the strategy in Afghanistan.

President Karzai may need to show the same resolve and demonstrate his ability to provide good governance in Kabul and the countryside, if he wishes to be reelected in the summer. Given how rapidly U.S. support for him is diminishing, Karzai's efforts may well become an academic exercise as time runs out on his term in office. The challenge for those who wish to succeed him will be to show how they can bring a clean and responsive government to Afghanistan that relies on shared power with the provinces rather than a centralizing of authority in Kabul. In the final analysis, good governance and speedy justice are likely to be the most effective riposte to the Taliban's terror tactics.

Shuja Nawaz is the Director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council and author most recently of FATA: A Most Dangerous Place (CSIS 2009).

Photo: SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images