Baluchistan and the coming war on Iran
- From: "Mobius" <mobius@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:21:26 -0700
from the August 29, 2006 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0829/p06s01-wosc.html
Baluchistan and the coming war on Iran
With violence rising in Afghanistan - including a suicide
bombing Monday - attention focuses on Pakistani city.
By David Montero | Correspondent of The Christian Science
Monitor
QUETTA, PAKISTAN
Imadad Ullah isn't afraid to talk about being a Taliban student,
even after two of his friends walked away when the topic came up. They might
have good reason: Mr. Ullah says that Taliban members are arrested every day
in this region.
His friends wandered back into their madrassah, where some 50
other Afghan Taliban study. But Ullah remained seated by the roadside some
20 miles from Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan Province. Ullah
wouldn't answer if he or his friends had plans to fight jihad in
Afghanistan. He only spoke of the prowess of those already fighting.
"We are fighting. We have a lot of ammunition in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban fell, we kept a lot of ammunition in the mountains," he
says.
Ullah is one of an untold number of Afghan Taliban living inside
this provincial capital and its environs, according to local officials,
residents, and journalists. His presence throws a spotlight on a contentious
debate: British military and Afghan officials have said this capital, which
lies about 60 miles from the Afghan border, is the base of operations for
the Taliban. Insurgents, they say, cross into Afghanistan for deadly
attacks, then recuperate and plan back in Pakistan - where they are safe
from allied troops and feel little pressure from Pakistani forces.
These accusations have only intensified as violence in
Afghanistan has escalated this year to the worst level since the US-led
ouster of the Taliban government in 2001. Monday, a suicide bomber in the
southern Afghan province of Helmand blew himself up in a crowded market,
killing 17 people and wounding 47.
Pakistani officials admit the presence in their country of some
Afghan Taliban - after all, the police have arrested several Taliban
officials and commanders and uncoverered Taliban bomb factories after
accidental explosions in Quetta. But officials here testily deny that
Pakistan has become a Taliban base. Such allegations, they suggest, cannot
be corroborated for the same reason that Pakistan hasn't been cracking down
more: There is no simple way to identify who is and who isn't a Taliban
fighter.
"[Taliban fighters] may be coming. I'm not disputing that," says
Chowdhury Muhammad Yaqoob, the inspector general of police in Quetta. "The
border is porous. People keep moving in and out," he says. But he denied
that any Pakistanis were going to Afghanistan to fight.
And he and other local police say they cannot arrest everyone in
Quetta who wears a turban, which is traditionally associated with the
Taliban. There are 400,000 Afghans living here, almost all the men wearing
the traditional headdress, along with many Pakistanis.
The problem was etched in sharp relief in mid-August, when
police arrested 29 wounded Afghan men from Al-Khair, a private hospital in
Quetta. The police said 10 had been fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan, and
hailed the arrests as a symbol of their crackdown on Taliban fighters. But
hospital officials at Al-Khair and others say they have no reason to believe
the men were fighters.
"We haven't seen anything that will give us the sense that these
are Taliban. They are simple Afghans. All have long beards and turbans. He's
not carrying any rockets," says Muhammad Amer, a hospital administrator. The
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which referred the men from
Afghanistan, also says there is no way to confirm if the men are Taliban.
Paul Fruh, ICRC's head of office in Quetta, adds that innocent civilians are
wounded in southern Afghanistan every day - and that many of the men are
afraid to seek medical help because they are often falsely accused of being
Taliban.
More concrete evidence does exist, however, suggesting there are
more concrete leads to follow. Mr. Yaqoob, for example, referred to a recent
raid on a house that uncovered materials for improvised explosive devices,
which are commonly used against allied forces in Afghanistan.
"Should our entire intelligence agencies be working on this?
That's probably what the Western world wants. But there are other problems
in this country," Yaqoob says.
Local residents take exception to this stance, saying anyone who
has lived for a long time in Quetta knows where the Taliban and its
commanders live.
"You can usually make out these people. They have very costly
vehicles," says Tahir Mohammed Khan, a former federal information minister
and now a human rights activist. "They're moving around openly. I know them
in a social context."
Like many others, Mr. Khan could not provide specific names or
addresses, but he listed the general areas where the Taliban dwell:
Pashtunabad, a bustling enclave with narrow lanes, and also the adjoining
Satellite Town. Local journalists also pinpoint Eastern Bypass, a sprawling
brick warren on the outskirts of town.
Yaqoob, the police chief, maintained that his force always
seizes upon actionable intelligence. In October 2005, police arrested the
Taliban's chief spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, who they said had been living
in Quetta.
Although it is difficult to assess precisely how many people
have taken up arms to fight, there is no shortage of sympathy for the
Taliban here.
"I'm not asking anyone to take part in [the war in Afghanistan].
But we have an ideology; we support those people who have a right to fight
against foreign invasion. If someone decided to go, I would support him,"
says Hafeez Fazal Mohammed Barech, Quetta president of Jamiat Ulema-e Islam,
a hard-line Islamist party. His remarks seem to be typical of the Pashtuns
living in Quetta, who constitute a majority of the city's 2 million
residents. Mr. Barech, however, denied that madrassahs like his
organization's provide militant training.
Around dinner tables and in drawing rooms, many residents of
Quetta suggest that theirs is becoming a captured city. "The whole of the
city, by its attitude, is Talib," says Mr. Khan, the activist. "Their
thinking, their culture, everything is like the Taliban."
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