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By ERIC SCHMITT
Published ion International Herald Tribune, December 26, 2010
WASHINGTON The deadliest group of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan has not conducted a complex large-scale attack in the capital city of Kabul for seven months, its momentum stymied as elite American-led commandos have escalated raids against the militants bomb makers and logisticians.
But in a testament to the resiliency of the fighters, the so-called Haqqani network, and a nod to the fragility of the allied gains, the White House is not trumpeting this assessment. Instead, it is tucked into a classified portion of the Obama administrations year-end review of its Afghanistan war strategy, and senior American officials speak of it in cautious terms, as if not wanting to jinx the positive trend.
That is because even in its weakened state, the network remains the most formidable enemy that American troops face in Afghanistan, and the group is showing signs of adapting its tactics and shifting its combatants to counter the allied strategy, American commanders say.
Theyre financed better, theyre better trained and theyre the ones who bring in the higher-end I.E.D.s, said Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell, the top allied commander in eastern Afghanistan, referring to improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs, which the Haqqanis have employed with lethal efficiency in the past several years.
In many ways, much of the war in Afghanistan, particularly in the rugged eastern part, is a war against the Haqqani family, whose patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a legendary guerrilla fighter in the Central Intelligence Agency-backed campaign to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. His son Sirajuddin now runs the groups daily operations from his haven in Pakistan, and he has made aggressive efforts to recruit foreign fighters from the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in Central Asia.
The Haqqani network is considered a part of the Afghan Taliban, and is a key ally and protector of Al Qaedas top leadership, whose members are believed to be hiding in Pakistans remote border regions. American and other Western intelligence officials believe that Pakistans powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, shields the Haqqanis in exchange for the networks attacks against Pakistans archrival, India, in Afghanistan.
American intelligence officials say that the Haqqani network planned the attacks in 2008 in Kabul against the Serena Hotel and the Indian Embassy. It has also been linked to the suicide bombing of a C.I.A. outpost in Khost last December, and has held an American soldier, Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, since he was kidnapped after walking off his Army base in Paktika Province in June 2009. The Haqqanis finance their operations with timber smuggling, kidnapping ransoms and donations from wealthy Persian Gulf individuals, intelligence officials say.
NATO commanders and senior Obama administration officials take heart in the fact that the Haqqanis have not conducted a complicated attack in Kabul since a suicide bomber steered his explosives-laden Toyota minibus into an American convoy on May 18. The attack killed 18 people, including 5 American soldiers and an officer from Canada, and wounded at least 47 civilians.
Allied officials attribute the tactical success to several factors. A sixfold increase in the past year in the number of Special Operations raids against insurgents, including the Haqqanis, has disrupted the militants operations. In the past three months alone, commandos have carried out 1,784 missions across Afghanistan, killing or capturing 880 insurgent leaders.
About one-third of those operations were directed against the Haqqani network, a senior NATO official said. He and two other NATO officials agreed to speak candidly about current operations if they werent quoted by name.
At the same time, 5,400 additional American ground forces have been deployed to eastern Afghanistan, bringing the total there to nearly 37,000. Combined with increased Afghan army, police and intelligence service operations in and around Kabul, the troop surge has hampered the Haqqani networks ability to run suicide bombers in a crucial corridor between Kabul and Khost, adjacent to the groups Pakistan sanctuary, allied commanders and independent counterinsurgency specialists say.
Were going after their networks the I.E.D. suppliers and bomb makers, and lead fighters, said the senior NATO official in Kabul.
To help offset the withdrawal of some troops from isolated outposts in the east, NATO has increased surveillance drone flights and positioned 68 tethered balloons with cameras and other sensors along the border with Pakistan, a senior allied official said.
Inside Pakistan itself, 99 of the 112 airstrikes launched by C.I.A. drones this year have been directed at North Waziristan, the operations hub for the Haqqanis as well as one of their Waziri allies, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, according to Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal, a Web site that monitors the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yet so wily and tenacious are the Haqqanis that Kabul is rife with rumors that their attacks in the capital have subsided for other reasons. One suggests that President Hamid Karzais government is paying the Haqqanis not to attack, while another suggests that the ISI has told the Haqqanis to back off in order to keep them in the mix for any Afghan reconciliation talks. NATO, Afghan and Pakistani officials deny such maneuvering.
American and NATO officials say the increased operations have degraded the Haqqani network in its stronghold of Paktia, Paktika and Khost Provinces, but not its ability to attack.
While targeting multiple training camps and rat lines have yielded short-term gains, the resilience of the HQN in the area has made quantifying these gains difficult, a second NATO official said in an e-mail, using the abbreviation for the Haqqanis. The network continues to recruit fighters and take measures to conceal the extent of damage to their capacity. At this point, the effort has disrupted, rather than dislodged the Haqqani network.
A recent report on the Haqqani network by the Institute for the Study of War, a research organization here, concluded: The population that Haqqani relies on for recruits, shelter and support has grown increasingly frustrated with the preponderance of civilian casualties and the death of recruits in Haqqani-linked operations.
In a sign of their resiliency, the Haqqanis are moving north and west to avoid the Special Operations raids and drone strikes, and take advantage of ties to family and criminal networks there, American intelligence officials say. The insurgents are taking advantage of targets of opportunity and responding to pressure, rather than any concerted efforts to try to expand their influence, the second NATO official said.
In addition, American commanders say the Haqqani network has shifted from staging complex attacks against targets in Kabul, to smaller suicide-bombings and a series of furious, largely successful assaults this past summer against remote American outposts near the border with Pakistan.
On Dec. 19, Haqqani-linked insurgents armed with AK-47s and grenades opened fire on a bus carrying Afghan army trainers. One attacker ran into the bus and blew himself up, killing five officers and wounding nine others.
Afghan and allied commanders say that the increased raids against the Haqqani network are just a piece of the broader counterinsurgency strategy of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, and the Karzai government, to win over the population with good governance and economic opportunity, as well as with improved security.
And this puts the United States in direct competition with the Haqqanis. The Haqqani networks goal remains territory, said a third NATO official in Kabul. While it does not have the capacity to unseat the government in Kabul, nor to really govern, it wants to seize territory because that allows it to generate income Mafia-like.
Published ion International Herald Tribune, December 26, 2010
WASHINGTON The deadliest group of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan has not conducted a complex large-scale attack in the capital city of Kabul for seven months, its momentum stymied as elite American-led commandos have escalated raids against the militants bomb makers and logisticians.
But in a testament to the resiliency of the fighters, the so-called Haqqani network, and a nod to the fragility of the allied gains, the White House is not trumpeting this assessment. Instead, it is tucked into a classified portion of the Obama administrations year-end review of its Afghanistan war strategy, and senior American officials speak of it in cautious terms, as if not wanting to jinx the positive trend.
That is because even in its weakened state, the network remains the most formidable enemy that American troops face in Afghanistan, and the group is showing signs of adapting its tactics and shifting its combatants to counter the allied strategy, American commanders say.
Theyre financed better, theyre better trained and theyre the ones who bring in the higher-end I.E.D.s, said Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell, the top allied commander in eastern Afghanistan, referring to improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs, which the Haqqanis have employed with lethal efficiency in the past several years.
In many ways, much of the war in Afghanistan, particularly in the rugged eastern part, is a war against the Haqqani family, whose patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a legendary guerrilla fighter in the Central Intelligence Agency-backed campaign to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. His son Sirajuddin now runs the groups daily operations from his haven in Pakistan, and he has made aggressive efforts to recruit foreign fighters from the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in Central Asia.
The Haqqani network is considered a part of the Afghan Taliban, and is a key ally and protector of Al Qaedas top leadership, whose members are believed to be hiding in Pakistans remote border regions. American and other Western intelligence officials believe that Pakistans powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, shields the Haqqanis in exchange for the networks attacks against Pakistans archrival, India, in Afghanistan.
American intelligence officials say that the Haqqani network planned the attacks in 2008 in Kabul against the Serena Hotel and the Indian Embassy. It has also been linked to the suicide bombing of a C.I.A. outpost in Khost last December, and has held an American soldier, Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, since he was kidnapped after walking off his Army base in Paktika Province in June 2009. The Haqqanis finance their operations with timber smuggling, kidnapping ransoms and donations from wealthy Persian Gulf individuals, intelligence officials say.
NATO commanders and senior Obama administration officials take heart in the fact that the Haqqanis have not conducted a complicated attack in Kabul since a suicide bomber steered his explosives-laden Toyota minibus into an American convoy on May 18. The attack killed 18 people, including 5 American soldiers and an officer from Canada, and wounded at least 47 civilians.
Allied officials attribute the tactical success to several factors. A sixfold increase in the past year in the number of Special Operations raids against insurgents, including the Haqqanis, has disrupted the militants operations. In the past three months alone, commandos have carried out 1,784 missions across Afghanistan, killing or capturing 880 insurgent leaders.
About one-third of those operations were directed against the Haqqani network, a senior NATO official said. He and two other NATO officials agreed to speak candidly about current operations if they werent quoted by name.
At the same time, 5,400 additional American ground forces have been deployed to eastern Afghanistan, bringing the total there to nearly 37,000. Combined with increased Afghan army, police and intelligence service operations in and around Kabul, the troop surge has hampered the Haqqani networks ability to run suicide bombers in a crucial corridor between Kabul and Khost, adjacent to the groups Pakistan sanctuary, allied commanders and independent counterinsurgency specialists say.
Were going after their networks the I.E.D. suppliers and bomb makers, and lead fighters, said the senior NATO official in Kabul.
To help offset the withdrawal of some troops from isolated outposts in the east, NATO has increased surveillance drone flights and positioned 68 tethered balloons with cameras and other sensors along the border with Pakistan, a senior allied official said.
Inside Pakistan itself, 99 of the 112 airstrikes launched by C.I.A. drones this year have been directed at North Waziristan, the operations hub for the Haqqanis as well as one of their Waziri allies, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, according to Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal, a Web site that monitors the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yet so wily and tenacious are the Haqqanis that Kabul is rife with rumors that their attacks in the capital have subsided for other reasons. One suggests that President Hamid Karzais government is paying the Haqqanis not to attack, while another suggests that the ISI has told the Haqqanis to back off in order to keep them in the mix for any Afghan reconciliation talks. NATO, Afghan and Pakistani officials deny such maneuvering.
American and NATO officials say the increased operations have degraded the Haqqani network in its stronghold of Paktia, Paktika and Khost Provinces, but not its ability to attack.
While targeting multiple training camps and rat lines have yielded short-term gains, the resilience of the HQN in the area has made quantifying these gains difficult, a second NATO official said in an e-mail, using the abbreviation for the Haqqanis. The network continues to recruit fighters and take measures to conceal the extent of damage to their capacity. At this point, the effort has disrupted, rather than dislodged the Haqqani network.
A recent report on the Haqqani network by the Institute for the Study of War, a research organization here, concluded: The population that Haqqani relies on for recruits, shelter and support has grown increasingly frustrated with the preponderance of civilian casualties and the death of recruits in Haqqani-linked operations.
In a sign of their resiliency, the Haqqanis are moving north and west to avoid the Special Operations raids and drone strikes, and take advantage of ties to family and criminal networks there, American intelligence officials say. The insurgents are taking advantage of targets of opportunity and responding to pressure, rather than any concerted efforts to try to expand their influence, the second NATO official said.
In addition, American commanders say the Haqqani network has shifted from staging complex attacks against targets in Kabul, to smaller suicide-bombings and a series of furious, largely successful assaults this past summer against remote American outposts near the border with Pakistan.
On Dec. 19, Haqqani-linked insurgents armed with AK-47s and grenades opened fire on a bus carrying Afghan army trainers. One attacker ran into the bus and blew himself up, killing five officers and wounding nine others.
Afghan and allied commanders say that the increased raids against the Haqqani network are just a piece of the broader counterinsurgency strategy of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, and the Karzai government, to win over the population with good governance and economic opportunity, as well as with improved security.
And this puts the United States in direct competition with the Haqqanis. The Haqqani networks goal remains territory, said a third NATO official in Kabul. While it does not have the capacity to unseat the government in Kabul, nor to really govern, it wants to seize territory because that allows it to generate income Mafia-like.
