Fears of Swat Valley spillover in Tajikistan

[EagleEyes]

Fears of Swat Valley spillover in Tajikistan

TAVILDARA, Tajikistan: A secretive military operation has raised fears that militants fleeing Pakistan and Afghanistan may be slipping into Tajikistan, threatening a fragile peace in the ex-Soviet state.

Since May, Tajik security forces have set up a tight security cordon and engaged in gunbattles with armed groups in an area close to the Afghan border.

Officials call it a counter-narcotics operation, but diplomats and residents at the foot of the soaring Pamir Mountains fear the government has been battling insurgents, possibly fighters linked to the Taliban.

‘We know that something has happened, that most probably it involves the people who have been mentioned, and that it is probably a spillover from the Swat Valley operations,’ a senior western diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Fighting between Taliban militants and the Pakistan army in Pakistan's Swat Valley had already raised concerns that militants with ethnic ties to ex-Soviet Central Asia could seek refuge inside Tajikistan.

US President Barack Obama has sent thousands more US troops to Afghanistan in a bid to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And that is not necessarily good news for Tajikistan, which went through a civil war after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union as militant groups like the Islamist Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) flourished.

Groups like the IMU — designated a terrorist organisation by Washington — were pushed into Afghanistan after a 1997 peace deal ended the civil war. But in recent weeks, signs have appeared suggesting that the militants are back.

The nearby town of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, after years of relative stability following the 2001 US-led invasion, has seen a surge of violence believed to be Taliban fuelled.

And the Tajik government said on Saturday that it detained five ethnic Chechen Russians who were selling drugs to fund militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — a rare admission of the presence of foreign fighters.

A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity during a recent visit to Central Asia, told AFP that Washington was closely monitoring the outflow of militants since the beginning of the Swat operations.

‘I think we are seeing, looking globally, that al-Qaeda is relocating its forces into the rest of the world,’ he said.

Tajikistan, the poorest of the ex-Soviet republics, shares a long and mostly unguarded border with Afghanistan, making its rugged mountains a logical gateway into Central Asia and beyond.

‘We don't need anyone to help us fight’

During a recent visit to the Rasht Valley, long a stronghold of Tajikistan's Islamist opposition, government checkpoints maintained a chokehold over long stretches of punishing mountain roads leading into the area.

In the regional capital, Garm, local Islamist fighters loyal to Tajik warlord Mirzokhoja Akhmadov waited outside a hotel, staring ominously from their Russian-made four wheel drive van.

Before bundling into the vehicle for the drive to Akhmadov's compound, one of his lieutenants pointed toward the mountains that ended in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.

‘There is a pass here that they can easily pass through,’ said the lieutenant, who asked not to be named because he did not have the permission of his commander.

‘It may already be happening,’ he added.

Dressed in traditional robes and with a flowing white beard, his commander, Akhmadov, confirmed there had been several months of heavy fighting.

But he denied that fighters were coming from Afghanistan, saying that the government was battling local militants angered by pitiful conditions and state repression.

‘We don't need anyone to come in from outside to help us fight,’ said Akhmadov, a feared commander from the 1990s civil war.

Many fear that Tajikistan's militants could be bolstered by the global financial crisis, if Tajik labourers return frustrated and penniless from mothballed construction sites in Russia and Kazakhstan.

Officials from Tajikistan's western-funded Drug Control Agency (DCA) said operations in the Rasht Valley were part of an annual anti-drug operation called Poppy-2009.

Tajikistan is a main route for drugs smuggled out of Afghanistan, the world's largest heroin producer.

‘This is a routine annual anti-drug operation, and is not connected with anything else in any way,’ DCA director General Rustam Nazarov told AFP.

However locals say the government has refused to explain the operations, leading many to forge conclusions based on their own experiences.

In mid-May, a neighbour turned up at the ramshackle home of a village elder in a remote mountain hamlet not far from the garrison town of Tavildara.

The elder, who asked not to be identified for fear of government reprisal, said the neighbour had ferried foreigners — possibly Chechens — in his taxi from the capital Dushanbe to an isolated village nearby.

‘All they had with them were suitcases filled with bread and sweets,’ he related from their conversation.

‘And they tried to pay with euros and Russian rubles. They didn't have any local money at all. What can we do with rubles and euros? People here don't even know what the exchange rate is.’ — AFP

DAWN.COM | World | Fears of Swat Valley spillover in Tajikistan

 

[waraich66]

Recently Russian and US signed agreement for alternate arm supply route for ISAF, may be mullah omer also got news of this agreement, definately he will try to block their supply line if it is through tajikistan.

 

[ajpirzada]

^^quite possible.

 

[Cheetah786]

Good news is s.h.i.t is leaving us and going back home

 

[BATMAN]

Good news is s.h.i.t is leaving us and going back home

They will not go back until foreign boots leave Afghanistan.
This **** can't do **** if they are not provided with weapons, finances and most of above intelligence and inside help.

It would not have been possible to sustain war with USSR without US dollars, weapons and air crafts.
I have no reason to believe that this time around the TTP war budget is any less than what use to be the budget of Mujahedin in USSR war.

It i sobvious to me that TTP have all the potential to out smart Pak army in war spending.

 

[kidwaibhai]

this is not good news for anyone. this can also have a spillover effect in china. their Uighur populated provinces are already very tense. with the crazies destabilizing Tajikistan things could get very very ugly. lets hope that the pakistani army can eliminate them before they reach tajikistan

 

[muse]

It's interesting that an entire Afghanistan supposedly under US control is between Pakistan and Tajikistan -- and yet these terrorists seem to traverse Afghan territory under US control unmolested.

If the explanation presented would be that Kunar is under nominal control, fair enough, but is Badahkshan also under nominal control?

 

[muse]

Dostum, Shebergan and Swat



Thursday, July 16, 2009
Ikram Sehgal

President Obama on Monday ordered US security officials to look into allegations that the Bush administration resisted efforts to investigate a CIA-backed Afghan warlord over the killings of hundreds of pro-Taliban prisoners in 2001. The prisoners were in the custody of Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum, a prominent warlord who served as chief of staff of Afghanistan's post-Taliban army and remains a prominent member of the Karzai government. The killings of hundreds of Pakistani citizens contributed to the emergence of Maulana Fazlullah as a militant leader in Swat. Obama told CNN's Anderson Cooper that "the indication that this had not been properly investigated was just recently brought to my attention."

On Dec 8, 2001, I had written, "Rashid Dostum, who is a law unto himself in his Uzbek home base of Mazar-i-Sharif, sees others as interlopers. The foreign fighters in Konduz who were tricked into surrendering to Rashid Dostum were dead men walking, given his track record there was no way they would ever walk out of Qila-i-Janghi alive. However one cannot for a moment believe or accept that civilised nations like the USA and UK will countenance such a massacre of prisoners in cold blood, whatever the circumstances." For eight years till Obama came along, the atrocity was ignored. Maybe there is hope for justice in this world after all.

Witnesses told The New York Times and Newsweek in 2002 that over a three-day period hundreds of Taliban prisoners were slain in the desperate uprising in Qila-i-Janghi fortress prison which was put down by Dostum's troops in November 2001. The survivors were stuffed into closed metal shipping containers and given no food or water. Many suffocated or were killed when guards shot into the containers. A recently declassified 2002 State Department intelligence report states that one source concluded that about 1, 500 Taliban prisoners died, including hundreds of Pakistanis. Most of them were those who had been led into Afghanistan from Pakistan by Sufi Mohammad. Their bodies lie buried in a mass grave in Dasht-i-Leili, a stretch of desert just outside Shebergan. Fearful of the anger of the parents of the young innocents he abandoned to their deaths, Sufi Mohammad, the Pied Piper of Konduz, and darling of the Pakistani electronic media for some time this year, chose to stay safe in prison in Pakistan, ceding authority by default to his brutal son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah.

Desperately attempting to get attention of the powers-that-were, I had written almost five years ago to the day on July 12, 2003, "Our religiously idealistic young men went to fight the Soviets in great numbers, these were fresh recruits from the Madrasas motivated by their religious leaders (like Sufi Mohammad) to go to the help of Afghans, not out of love of money but out of love for their brethren in Islam. And what did they get in return? The Afghan element among the Taliban force defending Kabul melted away at the approach of Northern Alliance (mostly Tajik) troops, leaving a screen of Pakistanis within Kabul. Almost to a man these Pakistanis were murdered cold in blood by the Tajiks. In many cases the poor Pakistanis were made to lie down in drains and than shot dead like dogs. Worse happened in Konduz, where a force of 8,000 Taliban led by Mullah Dadullah negotiated a surrender to "General" Rashid Dostum commanding the "Jumbish Milli," and Mullah Atta Mohammad of the Northern Alliance. About a 1,000 or so hardened fighters refused to surrender and broke out, about 6,000 (a majority of them Pakistanis) were tricked into surrendering to Dostum by their leader Mullah Dadullah. There is an Indian canard picked up by some in Pakistan that 6,000 Pakistanis were airlifted from Konduz overnight, even the US with all its aviation resources would not be able to evacuate 300 each night from the Konduz airstrip in those circumstances. Almost all the Afghans, including Mullah Dadullah, were given food and water (it was the month of Ramazan) by Dostum and allowed to go off into the night. The Pakistanis paid the price for their (Afghan's) freedom. Arabs, Chechen and (mostly) Pakistanis were packed into container trucks. On Nov 29, 2001, the first convoy of 13 trucks (each packed with about 150 prisoners) set out from Qala Zeini for Shebergan. The next day another convoy of trucks came to Shebergan. According to Newsweek's eyewitness accounts, most were tied up like cattle, this fate was especially reserved for Pakistanis. Many had already died due to dehydration and suffocation, more than a 100 dead in some containers, only 20 or 30 surviving. The International Red Cross representatives applied to see the "Qila Janghi" prison on Nov 29 but were not given permission till Dec 10, 2001." Despite the abundance of evidence, nobody in Pakistan's ever discussed this atrocity. Mention was barely made in the media, Shebergan never happened!

Given Obama's directive, will Rashid Dostum, one of the most brutal warlords in a country that is known for its cruelty and bestiality even in normal circumstances, survive his criminal war excesses? More importantly, will those CIA operatives who not only participated in this crime but were accessories to the cold-blooded murders be indicted by the US government? By the way Rashid Dostum maintains one of his wives in Islamabad, or did till very recently, through whose benevolent courtesy is (or was) this local "logistics" arrangement possible? Our rulers certainly lack self-respect in accommodating even outright war criminals. Those in positions of authority during Musharraf's reign are accessories to war crimes by their deliberate criminal negligence in not making Sufi Mohammad answer for his cowardice and turning a blind eye to Dostum. Will the final act of Konduz and Shebergan be enacted in Swat? Will the blood of our youth being spilt in Swat wake this nation to the bloody excesses perpetrated and those responsible be indicted? If Kargil is an example, they never will be!


The writer is a defence and political analyst. Email: isehgal@pathfinder9.com

---------- Post added at 02:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:25 AM ----------

An American and a Pakistani



Thursday, July 16, 2009
Adnan Gill

Believe it or not, there was a time when Americans and Pakistanis were actually allies in letter and in spirit. It was the time when Gitmo and suicide bombers were not part of the lexicon. It was the time when the Cold War was at its height and Pakistan and the US were both members of SEATO and CENTO. The stage was Calcutta and the year was 1971. That's when a young US marine sergeant saved the life of a young Pakistan army captain on the run for his life. On July 16, 1971, he had just escaped from an undeclared Indian Prisoner of War (PoW) Concentration Camp at Panagarh, about 100 km west of Calcutta. It turns out that he was the first ever PoW to have escaped from Indian PoW camp. If it wasn't because of the marine sergeant, the hunted Pakistani would have been shot at sight 38 years ago today.

In a sea of Indians, the young captain navigated his way to the American Consulate General in Calcutta. The consulate was only a stone's throw away. But it's as if the lady luck was bent on making an ugly example out of the escapee. Anything that could have gone wrong, did. The hunted young man had to quietly pass by the consulate, because all the access points to it were blocked by the police. The young captain hadn't escaped the concentration camp to give-up. Dusk was approaching fast. Dusk meant curfew time. He sat in a park to contemplate his next move. Something had to be done fast. Somehow, the Pakistani manages to call the American consulate from a nearby Post Office. A young American marine sergeant answers the phone. The marine comes to the rescue of the hunted Pakistani and comes out to meet him.

With no time to spare, the duo decided to go through the gauntlet armed with confidence only. Both men walked through the police checkpoints, the gamble paid off; both entered the consulate safely. Even though, it looked like the worst was over, the Pakistani wasn't out of the woods yet. He still had some way to go before he reached safety in Pakistan. To cut a long story short, loaded with courage and ingenuity, and with the help of Americans, the Pakistani was able to beat the odds stacked against him.

No, it's not fiction. As thrilling it may sound, the story is true. The name of the Pakistan army captain is Ikram Sehgal, and the name of the marine sergeant is Frank Adair.

While the American didn't think much of it; the Pakistani couldn't forget the chance encounter. The Pakistani would spend next three decades looking for the American, he never forgot the man who saved his life. Finally, his perseverance pays off. Yet one more time, the US marines would help out Sehgal. Thanks to an American general, the Pakistani tracked down the American in California; the very same American who saved his life 38 years ago.

Ikram Sehgal went on to become not only a top businessman but one of the most well-known media persons in Pakistan. For his part, after serving his country with honours, Sgt Frank Adair joined the Los Angeles Police Department from where he retired as a detective.

I am the lucky one who enjoys the trust of heroes in their own right. And best of all, I walked away with a true story of luck, valour and courage, thanks to the American and the Pakistani; Sgt Adair and Capt Sehgal.



The writer is a US-based freelance contributor.

 

[S-2]

Muse,

"...yet these terrorists seem to traverse Afghan territory under US control unmolested."

An odd comment for somebody, I'm certain, aware of RC-North and its German command as well as the intensely remote, narrow and long borders above Chitral and the Northern Territories which extend to China.

These shared borders of four nations- PRC, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan- are likely uniformly guarded poorly in this specific region. Equally, the extensive length of the shared Pakistani border with the Wakhan Corridor means Tajikstan is but a few short miles away across a very narrow strip of Afghan land.

This specific area has long been suggested as a likely entry point to Pakistan for Euro, Chechyan and Uzbek A.Q. affiliates. From Chitral, they proceed down the Konar river valley to Nuristan/Konar/Bajaur and do their thingy.

Flyin' too far below the radar just now with too many higher profile problems on the agenda.

Sorry. Beez dat way, bro.

 

[Awesome]

Muse,

"...yet these terrorists seem to traverse Afghan territory under US control unmolested."

An odd comment for somebody, I'm certain, aware of RC-North and its German command as well as the intensely remote, narrow and long borders above Chitral and the Northern Territories which extend to China.

These shared borders of four nations- PRC, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan- are likely uniformly guarded poorly in this specific region. Equally, the extensive length of the shared Pakistani border with the Wakhan Corridor means Tajikstan is but a few short miles away across a very narrow strip of Afghan land.

This specific area has long been suggested as a likely entry point to Pakistan for Euro, Chechyan and Uzbek A.Q. affiliates. From Chitral, they proceed down the Konar river valley to Nuristan/Konar/Bajaur and do their thingy.

Flyin' too far below the radar just now with too many higher profile problems on the agenda.

Sorry. Beez dat way, bro.

And then you all will declare war on Tajikistan in the next 5 years instead of nipping the problem in the bud right now.

The problem is the lack of cooperation and Pakistani input in the War on Terror on the Afghan side. When Pakistan drives the Taliban out of its areas, they will undoubtedly come home to Afghanistan. Wouldn't it be great if you guys are waiting for them with guns and kill them as they come in? This seems like an obvious strategy but it doesn't happen.

A lot of people escape to Afghanistan when the going is tough in Pak and the other way round too.

You guys leave this sort of work to the Afghan Army, who would rather shoot at the Pakistanis than anyone infiltrating in. There will be enough Afghans under the Indian payroll who would not like to see any such expunging of Taliban from Pakistan permanently.

 

[S-2]

"And then you all will declare war on Tajikistan in the next 5 years instead of nipping the problem in the bud right now."

Yeah...right. Just "nip" away. If we could, I'm sure we would. Sounds like you could secure the Chitral border and solve the problem too. Have you?

Afghanistan, to seal the Wakhan corridor properly, would have to guard the length of it's Tajik AND Pakistani borders.

They should but that won't happen for quite awhile, I imagine. At least as long as for you to do the same on your side and the Tajiks to do the same on their side.

"The problem is the lack of cooperation and Pakistani input in the War on Terror on the Afghan side."

Sure. You've been the models of cooperation so it's a one-sided issue, is it? That's simply not so. It took forever to get you to provide your allocated officers to the Torkum Control Center. Meetings with our counterparts have proved chancy and lethal affairs at times.

This cuts both ways at a minimum.

"When Pakistan drives the Taliban out of its areas, they will undoubtedly come home to Afghanistan."

I'll not hold my breath for you driving any "good" taliban out of Pakistan and back to Afghanistan. They seem, to date, largely immune and mainly in the south in any case.

"Wouldn't it be great if you guys are waiting for them with guns and kill them as they come in? This seems like an obvious strategy but it doesn't happen."

As to the rest (i.e. the "bad" taliban, Hekmatyar, Haqqani, Faizullahs crew, et al), I don't know that the Americans ignore any opportunities to destroy these beasts. We are eager to coordinate our activities with yours so far as I'm aware along the Bajaur, Korrum, Mohmand, and Waziri length of the border.

"You guys leave this sort of work to the Afghan Army, who would rather shoot at the Pakistanis than anyone infiltrating in."

Do we? Yeah, we hardly tote our weight in combat and usually are found shivering in our beds from fright...

"There will be enough Afghans under the Indian payroll who would not like to see any such expunging of Taliban from Pakistan permanently."

I know what you mean. I've been amazed at the Pakistanis here of late still eager to see the "good" taliban usefully employed in pursuit of those ol' traditional strategic depth goals too.

Seems old habits die hard.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Seems old habits die hard.

Of course - so long as the Indians are bent upon not giving up their East Pakistan ways.

 

[waraich66]

Seems old habits die hard.

Bad experience is necessary for good experience , US should learn from bad experience of UK in Afghanistan, but old habits die hard

The First Anglo-Afghan war resulted in the famous battle of Khyber Pass (1842), where nearly 16000 White British troops and their non-White Indian recruits were trapped and killed by the Afghans.

 

[Javed3]

S-2: The US should work out a deal with the impoverished Tajikistan government and place a Marines battalion in Wakhan strip and Tajik Pamir passes. The "deal" may include the Russian Army commander in Dushanbe. With a little investment in coordination with Agha Khan trust the whole area can be stabilized and US lives in northern Afghanistan protected.
Dont ever try to get things done on the cheap using the freebie resources of Pakistan Army. Spend a penny to protect US interests.

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

I know what you mean. I've been amazed at the Pakistanis here of late still eager to see the "good" taliban usefully employed in pursuit of those ol' traditional strategic depth goals too.

Yup we will continue to employ them till the Indians will employ the bad talibans and you will provide them the cover in Piplanistan.