Who Are the Taliban? The Afghan War Deciphered

Just when the Obama presidency-to-be was revving up to introduce its new national security "team" and reformulate U.S. policy in Afghanistan and the Pakistani border regions, the Afghan War ratcheted up a notch -- and not because there was another missile strike from an American drone aircraft in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, or because yet more civilians died in U.S. military operations, or even because attacks by "the Taliban" rose yet again to new heights.

No, that ratcheting up occurred in Mumbai, India, where the planners of the murderous rampage by a crew of Kashmiri militants decided that stirring up a good old face-off between the two edgy nuclear powers of the subcontinent would be advantageous. A precision operation that managed to slaughter just about anyone in sight (including Indian Muslims) now threatens to change the nature of the Afghan War, heat up the conflict in Kashmir, and embroil the region in an even wider catastrophe, ending a period of easing tensions between India and Pakistan. Already Pakistan is threatening to transfer up to 100,000 troops from the borderlands with Afghanistan to the Indian border.

As Paul Woodward of the War in Context website wrote, "[W]hat we witnessed was a major move on President-elect Obama's chessboard of foreign policy even before he'd had a chance to lay a finger on any of the pieces." Tony Karon caught the essence of the larger political moment this way: "Provoking India would not only realign the interests of the Pakistani military and the Islamists, it would threaten U.S. efforts to reorient the Pakistani military towards domestic counterinsurgency, and to broker a deeper rapprochement with India -- a development U.S. analysts believe is key to resolving the conflict in Afghanistan."

In other words, the already expanding war in Afghanistan -- American supply routes through the Khyber Pass, for instance, have recently been endangered -- just expanded a little (or possibly a lot) more. It's a sobering reminder of a world that may be beyond the control of any national security team. And even as this occurs, what we here know about "the other side" in Afghanistan, generally known as "the Taliban," is modest indeed. Fortunately, Anand Gopal, a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, offers his second vividly reported post for TomDispatch, an on-the-ground look at who the Taliban -- "a slippery movement that morphs from district to district" -- really are. This timely piece represents a joint project of TomDispatch.com and the Nation Magazine, where a shorter version appears in print. Tom

Who Are the Taliban? The Afghan War Deciphered

By Anand Gopal

[This piece is a joint project of TomDispatch.com and the Nation Magazine, where a shorter version appears in print.]

If there is an exact location marking the West's failures in Afghanistan, it is the modest police checkpoint that sits on the main highway 20 minutes south of Kabul. The post signals the edge of the capital, a city of spectacular tension, blast walls, and standstill traffic. Beyond this point, Kabul's gritty, low-slung buildings and narrow streets give way to a vast plain of serene farmland hemmed in by sandy mountains. In this valley in Logar province, the American-backed government of Afghanistan no longer exists.

Instead of government officials, men in muddied black turbans with assault rifles slung over their shoulders patrol the highway, checking for thieves and "spies." The charred carcass of a tanker, meant to deliver fuel to international forces further south, sits belly up on the roadside.

The police say they don't dare enter these districts, especially at night when the guerrillas rule the roads. In some parts of the country's south and east, these insurgents have even set up their own government, which they call the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the name of the former Taliban government). They mete out justice in makeshift Sharia courts. They settle land disputes between villagers. They dictate the curricula in schools.