In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

or two shura members, as did a more important commander who operated in a wider geographic area. One UN study found that “there is no area ownership among TB [Taliban] commanders. Several TB commanders may carry out operations in the same area of operation without recognizing a hierarchy amongst them. Regular competition between commanders seems to be the norm rather than the exception.” It continued: “Once commanders grow in importance by laying claim to military success they receive special attention from al- Qaida and foreign donors. They subsequently adopt a more independent stature and start individual fundraising.”⁹

Insurgent groups conducted a wide variety of attacks against U.S., Coalition, and Afghan security forces as well as Afghan and international civilians. They generally yielded the population centers to U.S. and Afghan forces, choosing instead to base operations in rural areas. They staged ambushes and raids using small arms and grenades, and they shelled U.S. and other NATO troops using 107-millimeter and 122-millimeter rockets and 60-, 82-, and 120-millimeter mortars. The weapon that received the most media attention was the improvised explosive device (IED), which was particularly effective against Coalition ground convoys. Most shelling and rocket fire was not accurate, though there was some evidence that insurgent forces considered the simple harassment of enemy forces and populations to be valuable. Insurgent groups, especially the Taliban, also succeeded in capturing government installations, villages, and occasionally district centers, though usually for brief periods. They intimidated local villagers by distributing shabnamah, or night letters, leaflets that warned villagers not to cooperate with foreign forces or the Karzai regime. In addition, insurgents conducted targeted assassinations, torched reconstruction and development projects, and set up illegal checkpoints along major roads.¹⁰

The Taliban and other groups also began to stage kidnappings. Taliban commander Mansour Dadullah acknowledged: “Kidnapping is a very successful policy and I order all my mujahideen to kidnap foreigners of any nationality wherever they find them and then we should do the same kind of deal.”¹¹ Kidnappings were increasingly used to raise money. They had been profitable in Iraq, especially since a number of governments—such as France and Japan—paid ransoms for the release of hostages.¹² This practice had caused L. Paul Bremer to send out a memo to foreign embassies in Iraq condemning ransom payments. Bremer’s words were just as true for Afghanistan as they were for Iraq: “There is no greater spur and no greater encouragement to hostage takers, than the payment of ransom money in return for the liberation of hostages. Such payments make hostage takings more likely; they increase the level of jeopardy for present and future hostages; and they have the potential to fund the procurement of weapons that will be used to continue the terror that is damaging this nation and killing its people.”¹³

In Afghanistan, there were strong indications that foreign governments, including South Korea and Italy, paid for the release of hostages. ¹⁴ In 2007, dozens of hostages were taken, including an Italian journalist in Helmand Province, two French and three Afghan aid workers in Farah Province, two German engineers and four Afghan nationals in Wardak Province. The worst incident involved the kidnapping of twenty-three South Koreans in Ghazni Province. But the kidnappings were only the beginning. One Taliban military official said: “Our military tactic is to control a district center, kill the government soldiers there, and withdraw to our mountainous strongholds, where it would be very difficult for the government to pursue us.”¹⁵ Some, if not many, of these tactics, techniques, and procedures were similar to those used by mujahideen forces against Soviet and Democratic Republic of Afghanistan army forces during the Soviet-Afghan War.¹⁶

In such southern provinces as Helmand, insurgents deployed in larger numbers. In 2002, they operated in squad-and platoon-size units. In 2005, they operated in company-size units of up to a hundred or more fighters. In 2006 and 2007, there were a few cases in which they operated in battalion-size units of up to 400 fighters, though they deployed in smaller units as well.¹⁷ This suggested that insurgents moved around with more freedom without being targeted by Afghan or Coalition forces. They also shifted from hard targets, such as U.S. and other NATO forces, to soft targets, such as Afghans involved in election work, nongovernmental organization workers, Afghan National Police, and Afghan citizens believed to be cooperating with Coalition forces or the Afghan government.

Some of the most brutal incidents were the executions by insurgents of “collaborators” who sided with the Afghan government or Coalition forces.¹⁸ Taliban fighters killed Islamic clerics critical of their efforts, including Mawlawi Abdullah Fayyaz, head of the Ulema Council of Kandahar.¹⁹ Schools were increasingly targeted, and as one Taliban night letter warned: “Teachers’ salaries are financed by non-believers. Unless you stop getting wages from them, you will be counted among the American puppets.”²⁰ This rationale also extended to election candidates and members of Parliament, since “the elections are a part of the American program” and those who participate in the elections “are the enemies of Islam and the homeland.”²¹

The “New” Taliban

The Taliban was the largest of these groups. Its leadership’s ideological vision did not change significantly after its regime’s overthrow in 2001, and its senior leaders remained motivated to impose in Afghanistan a radical interpretation of Sunni Islam derived from the Deobandi school of thought.²² The Taliban’s primary means for accomplishing this objective were to overthrow the new Afghan government, break the political will of the United States and its Coalition partners, and coerce foreign forces to withdraw. They patiently prepared to outlast the international presence in Afghanistan. “We do have to bear in mind however that in an insurgency of this nature the insurgent wins if he does not lose and we lose if we do not win,” noted a British government assessment. “For the insurgent this places considerable emphasis on astute information operations, management of perceptions, retaining consent of the local population (by whatever means) and being patient. The longer he endures the more likely he will just wait out the counterinsurgency effort.”²³

The Taliban included an influx of new members—sometimes referred to as the “neo-Taliban” who were recruited at madrassas and other locations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.²⁴ The Taliban organization that emerged over the course of the insurgency involved two main tiers. The top tier included the leadership structure and key commanders. They were motivated by a radical version of Islam and saw the insurgency as a fight between Islam on one side and Western infidels and the West’s “puppet government” in Kabul on the other side. The Taliban’s inner shura was responsible for strategic decisions and for addressing the most egregious problems. Examples can be found in the Taliban Code of Conduct (Layeha), which included orders not to engage in separate negotiations and to report captures and wait for leadership decision.²⁵ Following the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime, the leadership moved to Pakistan. The top tier included the leadership structure and key commanders and was run by a shura headed by Mullah Omar.

With Mullah Omar at the top, the Taliban shura was divided into a series of functional committees: military, propaganda, finance, religious, political, and administrative. At various points, key members of the inner shura included such individuals as Mullah Omar, Mullah Berader (former Taliban governor of Herat), Akhtar Muhammad Mansour (former Taliban head of aviation), Mullah Nuruddin Turabi (former Taliban justice minister), Mullah Abdul Jalil (former Taliban minister of foreign affairs), and Noor Muhammad Saqib (former chief justice of the Supreme Court). Regional shuras in such locations as Peshawar and Waziristan also included political, military, finance, and other committees.

The bottom tier of Taliban guerrillas included thousands of local fighters—men from rural villages paid to set up roadside bombs, launch rockets and mortars at NATO and Afghan forces, or pick up a gun for a few weeks or months. The Taliban also organized a parallel Afghan government, which included governors for Afghan provinces and ministers for such areas as defense and justice.²⁶

While the Taliban remained a puritan religious movement, it had little political vision other than the establishment of sharia law. As scholars Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy maintained, the Taliban had little beyond “the Shari’a, the whole Shari’a, and nothing but the Shari’a.”²⁷ Mullah Dadullah Lang, the Taliban military commander who was killed by U.S. forces in 2007, declared: “We are not fighting here for Afghanistan, but we are fighting for all Muslims everywhere and also the Mujahideen in Iraq. The infidels attacked Muslim lands and it is a must that every Muslim should support his Muslim brothers.”²⁸ This argument was echoed by other insurgents, such as former Taliban spokesman Mofti Latifollah Hakimi: “The issue of Afghanistan is connected with the ongoing war between Islam and blasphemy in the world. Mullah Mohammad [Omar] is representing a huge umma, and a large nation is behind him.”²⁹ The Taliban used young Pakistan-trained mullahs to glorify their cause in mosques in Afghanistan’s east and