05-15-2007, 09:07 AM
<b>EDITORIAL: Dadullah, Taliban, Afghanistan and Pakistanâs Afghan policy</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mullah Dadullah was about forty years old. He lost his leg in 1996 and routinely used Islam to justify extreme savagery on his victims whom he accused of âspying for the USâ. He worked on the principle of intimidation and was a hero to the many couch-potato Islamists in Pakistan.
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Mullah Dadullah adopted the âArab wayâ in using beheadings and suicide-bombers and held sway over territories in Pakistan where he hid while not out on operations in Afghanistan.
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<b>Significantly, Dadullah was also the Taliban âcontactâ with Al Qaeda and went public on the attack he had mounted â at the behest of Al Qaeda â at Shindand on the arrival of the US vice president Dick Cheney in Afghanistan recently</b>. Therefore his death is good news for the coalition forces because he was the first warrior who launched an attack on US forces when they arrived in Afghanistan in 2001.
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Pakistan has been claiming the anti-Uzbek uprising in South Waziristan as a measure of the success of its policy of making deals through Mullah Dadullah. But the truth about the Uzbek problem is quite contained. It is only the Zalikhel tribe which has reacted to some acts of marauding and cruelty by the warriors of Tahir Yuldashev, but the Yargulkhel tribe, first introduced to the Uzbeks by warlord Nek Muhammad, are loyal to the Uzbeks. The Uzbeks are connected to Al Qaeda together with the Turkmen, Chechen and Arab warriors in the region.
Dadullah was the Pushtun answer to the warlords of the Northern Alliance who dominate Afghanistan these days. Yunis Qanuni, Commander Fahim and others have a long-standing Indian connection and were known to keep their families in New Delhi during the toughest days of their resistance to the Pakistan-backed Taliban. The Pushtun Afghan President Karzai himself has lived in India and relates better to Indian officials than to Pakistani ones although he has also lived in Quetta. <b>Not only has India crept back into Afghanistan, most of the big reconstruction contracts are going to Indian companies, including a crucial road link to the Iranian port of Chahbahar on which India and Iran are collaborating against Pakistanâs interests.</b>
Pakistanâs strategy is hamstrung between the Taliban and India. Its first reflex is to counteract Indiaâs incursion into Afghanistan with a new policy. It sees India determined, in tandem with Iran, to reduce Pakistanâs hold over Afghanistan. But the Taliban-Pushtun option has its own dark underside: the Afghan Pushtun will not accept the Durand Line and will work towards realigning the Pakistani Pushtuns in favour of an independent Pushtunistan which, incidentally, includes Quetta. There is evidence that the population of the tribal areas of Pakistan is gradually inclining to Pushtunistan again. More ominously, it is Quetta where the Pushtuns (Achak, Popal, Saddo) belong to the Durrani confederacy of tribes and are more directly linked to Kandahar than the Pushtuns of the NWFP.
The Indian strategy in Afghanistan dates as far back as Pakistanâs own Kashmir policy. Clearly India wants to remind Pakistan that any forward policy on Indian-controlled Kashmir would be countered through Afghanistan. It is not for nothing that India has âprotestedâ to Pakistan over Islamabadâs treatment of the Baloch in Balochistan. When Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud ruled in Kabul in 1995, India flourished in the capital and Pakistanâs embassy was attacked. Pakistan hit back with the Taliban in 1996 <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mullah Dadullah was about forty years old. He lost his leg in 1996 and routinely used Islam to justify extreme savagery on his victims whom he accused of âspying for the USâ. He worked on the principle of intimidation and was a hero to the many couch-potato Islamists in Pakistan.
....
Mullah Dadullah adopted the âArab wayâ in using beheadings and suicide-bombers and held sway over territories in Pakistan where he hid while not out on operations in Afghanistan.
.....
<b>Significantly, Dadullah was also the Taliban âcontactâ with Al Qaeda and went public on the attack he had mounted â at the behest of Al Qaeda â at Shindand on the arrival of the US vice president Dick Cheney in Afghanistan recently</b>. Therefore his death is good news for the coalition forces because he was the first warrior who launched an attack on US forces when they arrived in Afghanistan in 2001.
....
Pakistan has been claiming the anti-Uzbek uprising in South Waziristan as a measure of the success of its policy of making deals through Mullah Dadullah. But the truth about the Uzbek problem is quite contained. It is only the Zalikhel tribe which has reacted to some acts of marauding and cruelty by the warriors of Tahir Yuldashev, but the Yargulkhel tribe, first introduced to the Uzbeks by warlord Nek Muhammad, are loyal to the Uzbeks. The Uzbeks are connected to Al Qaeda together with the Turkmen, Chechen and Arab warriors in the region.
Dadullah was the Pushtun answer to the warlords of the Northern Alliance who dominate Afghanistan these days. Yunis Qanuni, Commander Fahim and others have a long-standing Indian connection and were known to keep their families in New Delhi during the toughest days of their resistance to the Pakistan-backed Taliban. The Pushtun Afghan President Karzai himself has lived in India and relates better to Indian officials than to Pakistani ones although he has also lived in Quetta. <b>Not only has India crept back into Afghanistan, most of the big reconstruction contracts are going to Indian companies, including a crucial road link to the Iranian port of Chahbahar on which India and Iran are collaborating against Pakistanâs interests.</b>
Pakistanâs strategy is hamstrung between the Taliban and India. Its first reflex is to counteract Indiaâs incursion into Afghanistan with a new policy. It sees India determined, in tandem with Iran, to reduce Pakistanâs hold over Afghanistan. But the Taliban-Pushtun option has its own dark underside: the Afghan Pushtun will not accept the Durand Line and will work towards realigning the Pakistani Pushtuns in favour of an independent Pushtunistan which, incidentally, includes Quetta. There is evidence that the population of the tribal areas of Pakistan is gradually inclining to Pushtunistan again. More ominously, it is Quetta where the Pushtuns (Achak, Popal, Saddo) belong to the Durrani confederacy of tribes and are more directly linked to Kandahar than the Pushtuns of the NWFP.
The Indian strategy in Afghanistan dates as far back as Pakistanâs own Kashmir policy. Clearly India wants to remind Pakistan that any forward policy on Indian-controlled Kashmir would be countered through Afghanistan. It is not for nothing that India has âprotestedâ to Pakistan over Islamabadâs treatment of the Baloch in Balochistan. When Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud ruled in Kabul in 1995, India flourished in the capital and Pakistanâs embassy was attacked. Pakistan hit back with the Taliban in 1996 <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->