Who are the Taliban?

Something quite strange is happening in Afghanistan. Nato troops (largely British) are fighting a major offensive in many parts of the country and taking heavy casualties.

At homw we are told theya re fighting the "Taliban", but there sems something rather empty and unsubstantial about the name, I mean it comes across as though the spokesman were saying the "Enemy" or the "Devil". The word informs us that it is a foe to be fared and opposed, but gives us no further information about who these guys are.

This makes me suspicious as the Taliban/Terrorist label is used to suggest foriegn fanatics, faceless and rootless. We have no idea who the Leaders are, who is comanding these fighters, not even Mr Bin Laden has had a mention. No Taliban spokesman or leaders come on to our screens at night delivering words of warning and doom. There is nothing.

What exactly is going on? is this just another spin slight of hand to hide a rather more disturbing reality? I have a deep suspicion that the
word Taliban is just being used as a flag of convienience and in fact we are busy subduing Indigenous Afghan tribes who have failed to accept Khazi as there President.

If this is the case, this is a major departure from the War against Terror
and a move into really quite sinister areas.

DOes anyone have some hard information about NATO's opponents?

Yes, the Taliban. I am actually somewhat more familiar with them these days due to their recent activity in Afghanistan. They aren't like Al Qaeda at all. Here's an article to brush up your knowledge about these guys:



Yeah, it's by Eric Margolis so some of you guys may have different opinions on him, but he does give a good history of them.



Another one from him.



This one is from Syed Saleem Shazad. Although I don't really respect his articles (because he tends to overhype things), he does have some really decent information about the Taliban. He does regular reporting on them. You can find his articles when looking through the archives of atimes.com. I really hope that helps.

And a last very interesting article about why the Taliban is coming back:

So the implication from these articles is that the current action is the suppression of the local Pashtun tribes rather than seeking out and destroying foriegn militants.

In effect NATO is destroying the national opposition to the Khazi regime rather than actually conducting a war against terror.

Would you agree?

SampanViking said:

So the implication from these articles is that the current action is the suppression of the local Pashtun tribes rather than seeking out and destroying foriegn militants.

In effect NATO is destroying the national opposition to the Khazi regime rather than actually conducting a war against terror.

Would you agree?

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Oh definetely. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are completely different organizations. Both Al Qaeda and the Taliban found their roots after the Afghan conflict, but both went their very seperate ways. While Al Qaeda calls for a global jihad against America, Israel, and her allies, the Taliban is a simple nationalistic movement that wants its country back. Going against the Taliban completely takes away the focus from going against Al Qaeda. While NATO and the Taliban are slugging it out, Al Qaeda is secretly reforming and regrouping. A perfect distraction for Al Qaeda, wouldn't you agree? And since Pakistan-US relations are souring on a monthly basis, Al Qaeda has even less to worry about (the Inter-Services Intelligence has been the only intelligence agency on this planet to efficently break Al Qaeda's command structure and with Pakistan nowadays more and more unwilling to cooperate, that gives Al Qaeda a huge breathing room).

The performance of US special forces seems to be dissapointing so far and additionally to taking a good number of casualties they lost fighting efficency quite rapidly after some weeks in rugged terrain. Furthermore the US deployment is very expensive and current estimates put it at around 1$ bn a month which is 50-75% per capita more than in Iraq.

Pakistani army special forces could deal much more effectively with taliban groups but obviously this will not happen since Musharraf does not want to make himself dispensable for the americans. Obviously Condi Rice wants a person in charge in Islamabad who is much more subservient to US interests than the general and she makes no secret about that this person currently lives somewhere in exile! (who could that be ...??? )

@dear crazyinsane:
Musharraf does not support Mullah Omar and the other talib leaders that´s quite clear but perhaps he is clandestinely comfortable with the situation that the americans and also their awful puppet Karzai are bogged down in an endless struggle. (Some US and UK media are already spreading stories about the two faced Musharraf but as always they ingnore totally that he has foremost to care about Pakistans own interests and not to play the useful idiot for the US.) So, is this a fitting interpretation of the facts on the ground in Pakistan?:coffee:

This is a problem seen endlessly in Afghanistan-A foreign power comes in a tries to set up a government, the tribesmen resist and find refuge in areas that have never been controlled by any government, and the foreign power and its Afghan allies get bogged down. I think that the US would be well served to ditch Karzai and have a new president, to give the gov legitiamacy.

I guess I am worrying about how easily a fight against the Pashtuns in Afghanistan could very easily spread across the border and into Pakistan itself and all the consequences that such an action is likely to precipitate.

SampanViking said:

I guess I am worrying about how easily a fight against the Pashtuns in Afghanistan could very easily spread across the border and into Pakistan itself and all the consequences that such an action is likely to precipitate.

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That wasn't the case during the Afghan war with the Soviet Union and probably won't be the case here as long as the US doesn't attack Pakistan or send in special ops or what not.

Violet Oboe said:

@dear crazyinsane:
Musharraf does not support Mullah Omar and the other talib leaders that´s quite clear but perhaps he is clandestinely comfortable with the situation that the americans and also their awful puppet Karzai are bogged down in an endless struggle. (Some US and UK media are already spreading stories about the two faced Musharraf but as always they ingnore totally that he has foremost to care about Pakistans own interests and not to play the useful idiot for the US.) So, is this a fitting interpretation of the facts on the ground in Pakistan?:coffee:

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That actually is a pretty good analysis. I wouldn't know why Musharraf would even want to serve American interests over Pakistani interests (and we all know that it isn't in Pakistan's interests to get involved with any of America's on going conflicts).

crazyinsane105 said:

That actually is a pretty good analysis. I wouldn't know why Musharraf would even want to serve American interests over Pakistani interests (and we all know that it isn't in Pakistan's interests to get involved with any of America's on going conflicts).

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Musharaf knows what the end result is going to be. If the Americans haven't
done their sums why should Musharaf put his neck on the line ?

I believe that Musharaf knows that there is a grave danger that the war will
cross the border remember what happened to cambodia ?

The native afghans (the pashtuns) have spread from afghanistan to every
area of south asia in the last 5,000 years.

The calculation on the part of America was that it would be faced with a few million afghans nobody appears to have calculated that there are 30-40 million ethnic afghans in Pakistan, 20-30 million descendents of afghans in India, 5-10 million descendents of afghans in Bangladesh and heck there's a few hundred thousand in china, vietnam and the other countries who call themselves Pathan.

By making this a war against Pashtuns america has in effect taken on a population base which is 4 times larger than Iraq and half that of America.

If foreign forces are stunned by the capacity of the afghans to lose 100's of people in engagements it's because NOBODY calculated the recruitment pool
nor the hatred of afghans towards the so-called 'Northern Alliance' who were notorious for raping boys