[iwar] [fc:U.S.,.Pakistani.Efforts.Not.Yielding.Significant.Defections]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-26 17:23:07
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Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 17:23:07 -0700 (PDT)
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U.S., Pakistani Efforts Not Yielding Significant Defections 


By Molly Moore and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 26, 2001; Page A01 


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 25 -- U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agencies,
hobbled by weak contacts and deep distrust, have failed to engineer any
significant defections from the military ranks of Afghanistan's ruling
Taliban, according to officials familiar with the efforts.

The failure to lure defectors is a major setback for a central aspect of the
strategy to topple the radical Islamic militia, the officials said.

Intelligence operatives trying to undermine the Taliban in Afghanistan's
southern and eastern provinces have met "stiff resistance" from even the
most ardently anti-Taliban tribal leaders, senior Pakistani intelligence
officials said.

Washington's expectations that some key tribal leaders and moderate Taliban
military commanders would be willing to turn against the Taliban soon after
bombs began to fall on Afghanistan were "horrendously naive," said one
Western official monitoring the intelligence agencies' attempts to foment
dissent.

A Pakistani journalist with extensive experience in Afghanistan, Rahimullah
Yusufzai, said: "There were expectations that the Taliban would not be able
to stay in power, there would be defections, there would be local divisions
against them. Nothing of the sort has happened. None of the expectations
have been fulfilled."

The failure to persuade even the most vulnerable leaders to sever their ties
with the Taliban, coupled with the Taliban's resilience in the face of the
U.S.-led bombing campaign and the squabbling of Afghan factions competing
for power in a post-Taliban government, points increasingly to what one
official here forecast as "a long and messy" U.S. intervention in
Afghanistan.

Pakistani and Western officials blame the failures in sowing dissension
within the Taliban on a combination of poor intelligence contacts and
powerful religious and cultural bonds between even the most marginal
commanders and the Taliban leadership.

Part of the problem stems from an abrupt shift last month in the agenda of
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), which helped to create
the Taliban in 1994 and has sustained it since. Under pressure from
Washington to purge his government of Taliban sympathizers, Pakistan's
president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, revamped the ISI leadership and ordered
the agency to switch almost overnight from overt operations supporting the
Taliban to covert attempts to overthrow it.

As a result, the Taliban and its supporters developed an immediate distrust
of their former patrons. ISI operatives who previously had worked openly in
Afghanistan had to be pulled out of Taliban territory for their safety,
leaving Washington and Islamabad with a human intelligence vacuum in a place
where they had hoped to be active, authorities here said.

"We had human assets all over the country from our two decades of
involvement in Afghanistan," said one senior Pakistani intelligence
official. "The nature of the current operation is such that our assets have
turned into liabilities."

"They clearly haven't had a single major defection since September 12," said
Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author of a best-selling book about the
Taliban. "That is a disaster. But how can Islamabad create defections when
you have essentially betrayed the Taliban in the flick of an eyelash after
seven years of being with them?"

At the same time, some Pakistani intelligence officials concede that the ISI
has been far more enthusiastic in its pursuit of a post-Taliban political
alternative than in its efforts to bring down the Taliban. One intelligence
official described contact with ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders in southern
Afghanistan on the issue of military defections as "exploratory," but called
efforts on the political side "very intense."

Even those attempts, however, have been "without any tangible results," the
official said.

ISI officials are not the only people trying to turn Taliban supporters and
tribal leaders against Afghanistan's current rulers. Afghan exiles living in
Pakistan are reportedly going to Afghanistan to build political support for
a post-Taliban government and to encourage defections.

Hamid Karzai, a prominent Afghan tribal leader who lives in the southwestern
Pakistani town of Quetta and is among numerous exiled leaders eager to
regain some of their former power in Afghanistan, has been meeting with
Pashtun tribal leaders inside Afghanistan for the past 2 1/2 weeks,
according to his associates.

But one associate declined to characterize Karzai's progress other than to
say,"There's a lot of work to do. He's doing well."

Current and former Pakistani intelligence officers point out that,
regardless of issues of credibility and intelligence, they have little
leverage to help them move Afghans away from the Taliban. Despite reports
that the United States is providing money for bribes and holding out the
possibility of leadership roles for defectors in a future government,
Pakistanis explain that Afghanistan's ancient and complex web of cultural,
religious and family ties often proves impervious to outside offers of
material gain.

Most of the Taliban's founders and top leaders are from the Pashtun ethnic
group, which is Afghanistan's largest, accounting for about 40 percent of
the population. "During the Afghan war we used Islam, Pashtun nationalism
and Afghan history to drive Afghans against foreign invaders," one
intelligence official said. "In the present situation, we can't use any of
them to trigger an intra-Pashtun coup against the Taliban.

"Pashtun tribesmen may change their political loyalties overnight, but it is
unnatural to expect them to turn their weapons against fellow tribesmen to
help foreign invaders," the official added.

Likewise, many ISI officers were less than enthusiastic about orders to
approach friends in the Taliban and ask them to turn against its leader,
Mohammad Omar. Those who were still able to approach tribal leaders or
Taliban commanders in southern and eastern Afghanistan made only
half-hearted attempts to persuade them to defect, some intelligence
officials said.

"These [ISI] officials share Pashtun culture, deep religious upbringing and
rich traditions with Afghans," said one official.

At the same time, the slow-moving and fractious effort to create a
broad-based government to replace the Taliban and to identify Afghanistan's
future leaders has yielded few potential Pashtun candidates.

"You cannot have defections until you have somebody there to defect to,"
said Rashid, the author.

And although there is widespread disaffection among everyday Afghans, and
some local leaders, with the Taliban and its severe form of rule that
largely restricts women to their homes and bans most forms of entertainment,
defection remains out of the question for many.

"It would not be easy for them to defect even if they wanted to," said
Yusufzai, the journalist. The Taliban "is not a political movement, it's a
religious movement. That makes it more cohesive and stronger in terms of
commitment and belief."

Most of the Taliban's leaders were impoverished students at religious
schools in Pakistan, where poor families sent their young boys to be fed,
housed and schooled in the teachings of the Koran, the Islamic holy book.

"For the first time, these people tasted power," Yusufzai said. "They know
if they are out of power, they will be hunted down in each and every village
and each and every house. That is the reason they will never defect or
surrender."

Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan. Correspondent John Pomfret in Quetta
contributed to this report. 


© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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