Declassified Document Of The Week

H/T to Unredacted at the National Security Archive for a very timely find on this week's Document Friday.

It's a State Department INR memo to the SecState dated November 7, 2001, reporting that "urban Pakistanis" polled immediately after 9/11 supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan at greater levels than before. In fact, almost half of respondents favored increasing support to the Taliban.

The survey was conducted amongst “urban Pakistanis,” beginning “shortly after September 11″ 2001 and “almost all interviews” were conducted before the United States started bombing Afghanistan. In other words, the window that a westerner would assume that Pakistanis would probably have had the absolute lowest amount of support for the Taliban.

Not the case. The survey asked: “As you may know, our [Pakistani] government has been generally supportive of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. In the future, would you like to see our government strengthen its support for the Taliban, reduce its support, or maintain support for the Taliban at about the same level as now?”

The vast majority –46 percent– favored “increasing support for Mullah Omar’s regime.” Only a paltry 14 percent favored reducing support. The INR concluded that the Pakistani public “saw the Taliban more favorably than it had before the September 11 attacks.” And that Pakistanis “believed by a sizable majority that the Taliban are not a threat to stability in the region and that Pakistan’s ties with the Taliban are good.”

In a week when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff accused the Pakistani government of supporting the Afghan Taliban, it is sobering to realize how deep and pervasive popular support for the Taliban runs in Pakistan.

Find of the Week: Peshawar Cable # 01030 (November 1994)

Unredacted, the blog of the National Security Archive, has a nice find this week - a 1994 reporting cable from U.S. Consulate General Peshawar, Pakistan, on the origin and formation of the Taliban.

Here's the cable, and here's how Unredacted describes it:

Today’s document is one from our growing Afghanistan collection and is an example of what happens to the “raw” wikileaks field reports after they are “digested” and melded into more comprehensive (and we hope) accurate reports. This 1994 cable is entitled “New Fighting and New Forces in Kandahar.” The “New Forces” are the Taliban. It’s a gripping read.

-- snip --

The cable reports that the Taliban, described as a “new phenomenon” which was “largely drawn from religious students that did not fight in the Jihad,” had captured the key border town of Spin Boldak and gained control of the highway to Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second most populous city. It also tried to explain the Taliban’s origins, motivations, and backers. The Taliban, according to the author, was a “new phenomenon” in the Afghan calculation.

-- snip --

Moreover, this “new phenomenon” was a formidable fighting force. After taking over the important border crossing at Spin Boldak (likely with the help of Pakistani mortar fire), the Taliban quickly “cleaned up” the strategically-critical Kandahar-Herat highway. And “cleaned up” meant summarily hanged persons operating “independent toll [bribery] stations.” Just a month after taking their first town, the Taliban was poised to capture Khandahar.

And who was funding this formidable force? Probably Pakistan. According to “some sources,” the Government of Pakistan provided the Taliban with weapons so new that “they were still in their grease.” It’s also likely that the Pakistani army provided rocket fire while the Taliban captured Spin Boldak. The Taliban, for its part, claimed it was acting independently. Other documents [here] confirm that the ISI was essential to the Taliban’s rise.

Close Encounters of the Third (al-Qaeda Leader) Kind

The WaPo has an interactive timeline of U.S. drone attacks on high-value Taliban and al-Qaeda targets since Obama took office. There were only two such attacks during 2009, but there have been five so far this year. Expect many more.

Could the Peshawar Attack Backfire on the Taliban?

The Atlantic magazine has an article speculating that Monday's attack on the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, could turn out to be a strategic error on the part of the Taliban.

Why the Taliban's U.S. Consulate Bombing Could Backfire:

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed credit for a devastating attack on the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, a city of three million just miles from the Afghan border. Could the Taliban group, despite its aim to topple Pakistan and expel the U.S., unintentionally do what the last three U.S. presidents have been unable to: Align Pakistani and U.S. interests against the Taliban and al-Qaeda?

-- snip --

Ironically, the militants that so threaten Pakistan are the state's own creation. During the Afghan civil war of the 1990s, Pakistan constructed along the Afghan border a vast infrastructure of madrassas and Islamic charities meant to train and fund an endless stream of militants ...... But in the years since, with [Ahmad Shah] Massoud now long gone, the fundamentalist insurgents have increasingly turned their efforts against Pakistan itself, which the insurgents see as too secular and too close to the U.S. The madrassa-opium-insurgency triangle functions as a self-sustaining and independent fighting force, which has careened out of Pakistan's control. Like Frankenstein's monster, the creation has grown too strong and turned against its creator.

-- snip --

The good news is that these [Talaban attacks on Pakistani targets] are spurring Pakistan to finally turn against the pro-Pakistan militants they've long supported or tolerated. In recent weeks, Pakistan has won praise from U.S. officials for arresting a string of Afghan Taliban leaders. As anti-Pakistan groups like the TTP continue to intermingle with state-nurtured militants like Jalaluddin Haqqani, Pakistan will no longer be able to turn a blind eye. Since the 1998 attacks on American embassies in Kenya, the U.S. has struggled and failed in lobbying Pakistan to turn against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. aid money could not bring Pakistan around, but a common enemy just might.

I suppose stranger things have happened.

Terrorist Attack On U.S. Consulate General Peshawar

A photo taken today outside the entrance to the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar







The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, has issued a statement condemning today's attack on U.S. Consulate Peshawar:

April 05, 2010

Islamabad - The United States condemns the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate General in Peshawar today. At least two Pakistani security guards employed by the Consulate General were killed in the attack and a number of others were seriously wounded. The coordinated attack involved a vehicle suicide bomb and terrorists attempting to enter the building using grenades and weapons fire. This attack, and the one earlier today in Lower Dir which killed and wounded many others, reflects the terrorists' desperation as they are rejected by people throughout Pakistan.

Personnel at the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar are at the forefront of U.S. support for the Government of Pakistan's security and development agenda in the FATA and NWFP. The U.S. is grateful for the support of Pakistan's security forces in Peshawar, who responded quickly to this attack in support of the U.S. Consulate.

The Taliban, and specifically Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, has taken responsibility for the attack, according to local news media.

Evidently, the consulate's security measures prevented the attackers from succeeding in getting a vehicle-borne explosive device inside the consulate grounds. However, two of our local guards were killed and others were injured. As always when our security measures frustrate a terrorist attack, my reaction is to see this as something less than a victory. They lost, but we didn't really win.

As for details of the attack, take all immediate reports with a big grain of salt. That said, the best news media reporting I've seen as of noon today came from France 24:

At least six militants armed with explosives and two car bombs targeted the heavily guarded US consulate in Peshawar, a city of 2.5 million on the edge of Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, setting off multiple explosions.

The United States condemned the "terrorist" attack, saying at least two Pakistani security guards employed by the consulate were killed and a number of others seriously wounded.

"The coordinated attack involved a vehicle suicide bomb and terrorists attempting to enter the building using grenades and weapons fire," said the US embassy in Islamabad.

Police said two car bombs exploded -- at a checkpoint 50 metres (yards) from the mission and the second laden with about 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of explosives close to the consulate gate, followed by an exchange of fire.

North West Frontier Province information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told reporters that five security officials and six militants were killed, comparing the attack to last October's assault on Pakistan's military headquarters.

"The terrorists used similar tactics and the same pattern they adopted in the GHQ assault. They had vehicles, they had rocket launchers and they had suicide attackers," he told reporters at the main hospital in Peshawar.

The security barrier near the US consulate gate was damaged, and shells from rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades were left lying in the area, which was sealed off by Pakistani police and army.

There was some video taken during the attack (see here and here), but it doesn't tell you much other than to substantiate the reported size of the explosive charges.

It was a busy day for the Pakistani Taliban. Shortly before the attack on our consulate, a suicide bomber struck a rally held by a Pashtun nationalist party, killing 41 persons. Also today, the Taliban attacked a NATO fuel truck terminal in northwest Pakistan, torching tankers used to supply fuel to NATO coalition forces in Afghanistan.

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Note: The car bombs that were intended for our consulate seem to have done significant damage to a nearby Pakistani military office building, as well as to some military residences. Photos of that damage - like the one below, which I saw on both BBC and CNN - could be misleading. Just to clarify things, that building is not / not the U.S. consulate.

Al Qaeda Documents Found in Taliban Compound

This is a significant find, if it is verified. The UK Guardian, among other news outlets, is reporting that Pakistani troops have discovered passports belonging to al Qaeda figures in a Taliban compound in South Waziristan.

Some quotes from The Guardian's story, Al-Qaida connection: Foreign passports linked to attacks on west recovered:

Pakistani troops sweeping through the mountains of South Waziristan have discovered startling evidence that appears to show a direct link between the lawless tribal belt and al-Qaida attacks in America and Europe.

Last week soldiers raiding Taliban compounds in Shelwasti village, on the edge of the Mehsud tribal territory, recovered a passport in the name of Said Bahaji, a German national accused of being part of the Hamburg cell that coordinated the September 11 2001 attacks.

They also found a Spanish passport in the name of Raquel Burgos García, whose Moroccan husband, Amer Azizi, is accused of playing a role in the Madrid train bombings of 2004.

-- snip --

If authenticated, the documents provide stark proof of what western allies have insisted upon for years, but which Pakistani officials have only recently accepted – that the tribal belt, particularly South and North Waziristan, is the de facto headquarters of al-Qaida, and that Osama bin Laden is most likely hiding there.

Some Dissenting Opinion On the Nobel Peace Prize

(image from al Jazaeera)





You know that things are getting weird when you can't tell news from parody without checking the original source. This afternoon, I saw a Canadian newspaper report that a Taliban spokesman had denounced the Nobel peace prize committee for its award to Barack Hussein Obama, but there is such an outpouring of jokes today about that award ("Obama wins Eurovision Song Contest" ... "Obama declared winner of Florida 2000 recount" ... "Obama tugs on Superman's cape" ... "Dan Brown announces Obama is the son of Jesus and Mary Magdalene" ... "Obama wins all the gold medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics" and so on and on) that I had to go to alJazeera.net to make sure the story was genuine.

It was. Here are the key quotes:

In Afghanistan, the Taliban mocked the award, saying it was absurd to give it to Obama when he had ordered 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan this year.

"The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the 'Nobel prize for escalating violence and killing civilians'," Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, told the Reuters news agency.

In the Middle East, Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, was more sceptical. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas prime minister in Gaza, said: "Unless real and deep-rooted change is made in American policy towards recognising the rights of the Palestinian people, I would think such a prize would be useless."

Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a religious party in Pakistan, said: "It's a joke. How embarrassing for those who awarded it to him because he's done nothing for peace. What change has he brought in Iraq, the Middle East or Afghanistan?"

Most of the on-line reader comments that I browsed through shared the Taliban's sentiments.

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Update - Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, doesn't sound much happier than the Taliban's spokesman over Obama's Nobel prize.

British Footballer Playing for the Other Team

The British press is reporting on a rather poignant piece of evidence that native Britons, or at least British-raised persons, are fighting in Afghanistan for the Taliban: the discovery of a Taliban fighter's corpse with an Aston Villa Football Club tattoo:

"We've known for a long time that foreign fighters, many with thick Birmingham accents, have been recruited to fight against us for the Taliban.

"Some of the linguistics specialists have picked up West Midland and Manchester accents too.

"But it was a shock to hear that the guys we were fighting against supported the same football clubs as us, and maybe even grew up on the same streets as us.

-- snip –

A Government official, who wished to remain anonymous, added: "There will always be a number of people who are radicalised in this country and want to leave the UK.

"The details of Aston Villa fans in the Taliban does not shock or surprise me.

"We have never had any hard and fast evidence to tie all of these snippets of information together, but we are sure they equate to a wider ongoing radicalism in the UK."

There has been no official comment yet from the Aston Villa Football Club.