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Anand Gopal | Aug 26th, 2010 | The CTC Sentinel
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By Matthew DuPee and Anand Gopal In March 2010, clashes erupted between two of Afghanistan’s most important insurgent groups in northern Baghlan Province. A days-long battle between Hizb-i-Islami and the Taliban left nearly 60 militants and 20 civilians dead. Hostilities between the two sides flared again in Wardak Province in July, where ongoing clashes killed 28 Taliban fighters, including an important local Taliban commander. The skirmishes, sparked by the growing reach of the Taliban and turf battles between the two groups, mark a significant fissure in the country’s militant movement. This article provides a closer look at these frictions and at Afghan government and Coalition efforts to exploit them. Read the full report here. |
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Anand Gopal | Jun 29th, 2010 | The New Republic
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On a balmy summer’s day in the village of Hiratian in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, locals found the body of eight-year-old Dilawar hanging from a tree of a small fruit farm. Taliban fighters had accused the boy of spying for the American forces and had kidnapped him, strung him up and left his body to sway in the wind for hours for all to see. The murder was horrifying, yet few villagers would come to the defense of anyone charged with spying for the hated foreign forces. But slowly, the details of the story emerged. The Taliban in the area were involved in a weeks-long campaign to collect donations — money, food or weapons — from the local population. They had demanded either a large sum of money or a weapon from Mullah Qudoos, the ill-fated boy’s father. Qudoos, poor and jobless, had neither. So the insurgents took his son as revenge and killed him as an example. |
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Anand Gopal | Jun 9th, 2010 | The Christian Science Monitor
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Kabul, Afghanistan–Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a veteran Afghan warlord, heads the only one of three main insurgent groups that is holding direct negotiations with the government. His group, Hizb-e-Islami, controls large swaths of the north and east, and in March it delivered to Kabul a 15-point peace proposal. But any deal with Hizb-e-Islami remains far off, due to disagreements over when foreign troops should leave and when to hold new elections. And it is not clear that stronger groups such as the Taliban would follow suit. Mr. Hekmatyar, who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan, discussed the peace negotiations with the Monitor in a rare e-mail interview, with high-ranking associates of his verifying his identity. Here are excerpts from the interview. |
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Anand Gopal | Jun 5th, 2010 | The Center for International Governance Innovation
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Wardak province, a rustic region of verdant dales and twisting streams that borders Kabul, is home to one of the untold stories of the Afghan war: over the last nine months, U.S. forces have quietly decapitated the Taliban’s leadership in the area. Through dozens of nighttime raids, U.S. Special Operations Forces have succeeded in killing or capturing a number of important Taliban commanders. Dozens of notorious insurgent leaders who have ruled Wardak for five or six years unmolested have suddenly been removed from the picture, marking one of the biggest setbacks the Taliban has faced on the ground in recent times. |
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Anand Gopal | Jun 2nd, 2010 | The Christian Science Monitor
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Kabul, Afghanistan - A leading Afghan insurgent says his group is ready for a peace deal, as more than a thousand delegates gathered in Kabul Wednesday to discuss ways to quell the violence in this war-ravaged country. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of Hizb-i-Islami, one of Afghanistan’s three main insurgent factions, told the Monitor in an e-mail interview that his group decided to open talks with the Afghan government after US President Barack Obama and other Western leaders mentioned the possibility of starting to withdraw troops as early as July 2011. “They said that the chaos in Afghanistan does not have a military solution. They said they could not defeat the opposition to this regime by fighting,” Mr. Hekmatyar wrote from an undisclosed location. “Because of that, we gave a complete and logical proposal” for peace to the government. |
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Anand Gopal | Apr 30th, 2010 | The Christian Science Monitor
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Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan —In the days leading up to the launch of a major US military offensive in the Afghan town of Marjah in February, Taliban commanders in the area received a surprise visit. It was from a charismatic man of medium build, intense eyes, and a knack for fiery oratory. In a brief meeting, he rallied the troops, discussed strategy, and disappeared into the night. Most of the commanders present there in late January had not met him before. But in southern Afghanistan he needed no introduction. He was Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, the man who some Western officials and insurgents say is now the day-to-day leader of the Taliban. “He has tremendous power now,” says a tribal elder in the southern province of Helmand, who knows Mr. Zakir and met with him recently. “He can design military strategy and appoint or fire” Taliban shadow governors.
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Anand Gopal | Apr 27th, 2010 | McClatchy Newspapers
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ACHIN, Afghanistan — The detritus of tribal war litters the road that leads into this quiet mountain hamlet in eastern Afghanistan. The charred bodies of vehicles and the skeletal remains of destroyed houses fill the desert that flanks the road. Most of the shops in the main bazaar are shuttered, and some residents have packed up and left. Achin district, a home of the Shinwari tribe, is part of an ambitious countrywide U.S. push to fund tribal militias to stand against the Taliban and stabilize the violence-plagued region. A months-long feud between Shinwari clans has brought Achin to a standstill, however, threatening to undermine the effort and illustrating the difficulties in enlisting tribes to combat the insurgency. |
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Anand Gopal | Apr 19th, 2010 | The New America Foundation
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Militancy and Conflict in Pakistan Policy Paper North Waziristan, the second-largest of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, is the most important springboard for violence in Afghanistan today, much as it has been for decades. The most important militant group in the agency today is the Haqqani Network. The legendary Afghan mujahideen commander Jalaluddin Haqqani left his native Khost province and settled in North Waziristan’s capital, Miram Shah, in the mid-1970s; his son, Sirajuddin, was raised in the area.[i] Jalaluddin quickly became the most important mujahideen commander in eastern Afghanistan during the 1980s; Sirajuddin now manages the network his father built, employing it to support violence against U.S. and NATO forces. Like his father, Sirajuddin uses North Waziristan to recruit, as a safe haven, and for strategic depth. North Waziristan is well-suited for all of these purposes because of its geographic isolation, difficult terrain, and relatively stable coalition of tribal militants.
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Anand Gopal | Apr 1st, 2010 | The Christian Science Monitor
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Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan–Lashkar Gah is typical of the conservative, war-battered towns of southern Afghanistan: few women on the streets, the constant drone of helicopters overhead, concrete blast barriers everywhere. Yet here in the provincial capital of Helmand Province, where NATO forces just waged its biggest offensives against the Taliban in nine years, one structure near the town’s center stands as a testament to more normal times. Locals are reopening the Lashkar Gah Cinema Hall, the only movie theater in all of southern Afghanistan. For years it sat damaged by numerous wars and shuttered by Islamic extremism. Its resurrection is hoped to bring a rebirth of artistic expression in this restive corner of the country. |
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Anand Gopal | Mar 23rd, 2010 | The Christian Science Monitor
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Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan–Weeks after a major United States-led offensive overturned Taliban rule in the southern Afghan town of Marjah, another force continues to hold sway over the population. “We are ruled by fear now,” says Gul Muhammad, a shopkeeper from the dust-caked market town, speaking by phone. “We don’t know who will ultimately win here, or who will end up back in power.” Stuck between the Taliban, an untested new governor, and predatory former leaders trying to reclaim power, many of Marjah’s residents say they are afraid to cast their support in any direction. Yet establishing a suitable local government that wins over this hesitant population is one of the biggest and most important challenges the US faces. It could determine the success of the offensive, one of the largest in the nine-year Afghanistan war and a high-profile test of the US’s “clear, hold, and build” strategy. |
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