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Anand Gopal | Mar 8th, 2010 | Center for International Governance Innovation (Blog Post)
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It was late November, 2001, and the Taliban were on the run everywhere in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance had captured Kabul and much of the rest of the country; only parts of the southwest—including the province of Helmand, remained in the Taliban’s hands. In Marjah, a quiet market town near the Helmand desert, the dying Taliban were making a last stand against a local tribal commander named Abdur Rahman Jan. The battle lasted for nearly two days, and many reinforcements came from the surrounding areas. But the Taliban, beleaguered around the country and bereft of public support, soon succumbed; Jan’s force overran Marjah and the Taliban fled in disgrace. Jan went on to become Helmand’s police chief under the new government of Hamid Karzai. His close friend Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, a strongman with deep pockets and roots in the area, became the governor. The two quickly populated the seats of local government with their friends, family members and those from their tribes. The local government revenues became part of their personal piggy bank, locals say, and they became heavily involved in the opium business. They marginalized other tribes, destroyed the poppy fields of rivals, took bribes and kickbacks for government contracts and filled the ranks of the police with hated former mujahedeen commanders. One resident of Marjah told me, “The police were the biggest criminals. We were more afraid of them than of anyone else.” |
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Anand Gopal | Feb 24th, 2010 | The Christian Science Monitor
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KABUL–Pakistan has arrested nearly half of the Afghanistan Taliban’s leadership in recent days, Pakistani officials told the Monitor Wednesday, dealing what could be a crucial blow to the insurgent movement. In total, seven of the insurgent group’s 15-member leadership council, thought to be based in Quetta, Pakistan, including the head of military operations, have been apprehended in the past week, according to Pakistani intelligence officials. Western and Pakistani media had previously reported the arrest of three of the 15, but this is the first confirmation of the wider scale of the Pakistan crackdown on the Taliban leadership, something the US has sought. |
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Anand Gopal | Jan 28th, 2010 | The Nation Magazine
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One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town’s bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost’s dusty streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to kidnap government workers, but they had never heard of the young man. Even the governor got involved, ordering his police to round up nettlesome criminal gangs that sometimes preyed on young bazaargoers for ransom. But the hunt turned up nothing. Spring and summer came and went with no sign of Ismatullah. Then one day, long after the police and village elders had abandoned their search, a courier delivered a neat handwritten note on Red Cross stationery to the family. In it, Ismatullah informed them that he was in Bagram, an American prison more than 200 miles away. US forces had picked him up while he was on his way home from the bazaar, the terse letter stated, and he didn’t know when he would be freed. In the past few years Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan’s rugged heartland have begun to lose faith in the American project. Many of them can point to the precise moment of this transformation, and it usually took place in the dead of night, when most of the country was fast asleep. In its attempt to stamp out the growing Taliban insurgency and Al Qaeda, the US military has been arresting suspects and sending them to one of a number of secret detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families. These night raids have become even more feared and hated in Afghanistan than coalition airstrikes. The raids and detentions, little known or understood outside the Pashtun villages, have been turning Afghans against the very forces many of them greeted as liberators just a few years ago. |
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Anand Gopal | Jan 6th, 2010 | The Wall Street Journal
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WASHINGTON — The suicide bomber who killed seven Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors and a Jordanian intelligence officer was a double agent the CIA had recruited to provide intelligence on senior al Qaeda leadership, according to current and former U.S. officials and an Afghan security official. The officials said the bomber was a Jordanian doctor likely affiliated and working with al Qaeda. The Afghan security official identified the bomber as Hammam Khalil Abu Mallal al-Balawi, who is also known as Abu Dujana al-Khurasani. The Pakistani Taliban also claimed that Mr. al-Balawi was the bomber, Arabic-language Web sites reported Monday. Mr. al-Balawi was brought to the CIA’s base in Khost Province by the Jordanian intelligence official, Sharif Ali bin Zeid, who was working with the CIA, according to the Afghan security official. |
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Anand Gopal | Dec 5th, 2009 | The Wall Street Journal
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KABUL–The Taliban said in a statement Saturday it would provide a “legal guarantee” that they would not intervene in foreign countries if international troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the closest the movement has come to publicly distancing itself from Al Qaeda. The Taliban have “no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal guarantee if the foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan,” the group said in a statement emailed to news organizations. The statement did not specify what such a guarantee would look like. A Taliban spokesman was not available for comment. |
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Anand Gopal | Dec 1st, 2009 | The Wall Street Journal
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KABUL — Some powerful Afghan politicians and tribal leaders have expressed doubts that more U.S. troops can turn the tide of the war, as President Barack Obama prepares to unveil a new Afghanistan strategy Tuesday. President Barack Obama has been briefing allies about his plans for Afghanistan. He’s expected to tell the public — and lawmakers — how many more troops he’ll send and that it’s not an open-ended commitment. Video courtesy of Fox News. “We should focus on building the Afghan security forces, not sending more troops,” said Sebgatullah Sanjar, the chief policy adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. |
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Anand Gopal | Nov 28th, 2009 | The Wall Street Journal
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KABUL — The U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government are launching an initiative to persuade Taliban insurgents to lay down their weapons, offering jobs and protection to the militants who choose to abandon their fight. While President Hamid Karzai’s government has been trying to woo these insurgents for years, the new program marks the first time that the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces are systematically reaching out to Taliban fighters. The tactic comes as the U.S. prepares to announce Tuesday how many additional troops it will send to Afghanistan as part of a new strategy aimed at bringing the eight-year war to a successful end. U.S. officials also hope America’s European allies will raise their troop contributions as part of the new push. |
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Anand Gopal | Oct 24th, 2009 | The Wall Street Journal
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By Yochi Dreazen and Anand Gopal KABUL — The collapse of security in the southeastern Afghan province of Khost is highlighting the difficulties of trying to contain the Taliban. In 2007 and early 2008, troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division waged a long, bloody and seemingly successful campaign to push Taliban fighters and their allies from the Haqqani terrorist network out of Khost. Diplomat Richard Holbrooke, now President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the region, wrote an op-ed calling it “an American success story.” Today, Khost is one of the most dangerous provinces in Afghanistan. Afghan officials say the number of militant attacks in the province is up at least 31% so far this year. |
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Anand Gopal | Oct 17th, 2009 | The Wall Street Journal
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By Anand Gopal and Joe Lauria KABUL — President Hamid Karzai failed to win a decisive majority in Afghanistan’s election, an official familiar with the ballot counting said, a development that has the two top candidates stepping up power-sharing talks to avoid a protracted runoff. Results of an audit of suspect votes from the August polls are expected Saturday, Afghan authorities said. Investigators at the U.N.-backed Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission are expected to discard enough votes as fraudulent to trigger a runoff between Mr. Karzai and lead challenger Abdullah Abdullah in coming weeks. According to Afghan and Western officials in Kabul, Mr. Karzai and Dr. Abdullah are exploring a deal to end the country’s political crisis by forgoing a second round and crafting a power-sharing arrangement. |
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Anand Gopal | Oct 9th, 2009 | The Wall Street Journal
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KHAS KUNAR, Afghanistan — U.S. and Pakistani troops recently planned a pincer movement to catch insurgents crossing the border from Pakistan into this troubled corner of northeastern Afghanistan. The U.S. would block the narrow mountain passes while the Pakistani army attacked militant positions on the other side of the border. The operation failed. The reason, according to the Americans: Their partners in the Afghan Border Police had informed the insurgents, allowing them to slip away. “Every time we tried it, there was a leak,” says Lt. Ryan Keogh, a company commander who helped to plan and execute the operations. “If we can’t rely on the Afghans in this fight, then we are going to be here for a long time.” Counting on Afghanistan’s security forces to help stabilize the nation is seen as vital if the international force is to turn around a deteriorating security situation. |
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