Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Dissension in the ranks of the Taliban
Carlotta Gall reports in the NY Times that there is a growing dissatisfaction within the Taliban between the mid level commanders who are doing the fighting, and dying, anf the top level leadership safe in Pakistan.
The differences point not just to the increasing stresses on the battlefield for midlevel Taliban commanders like him, but also to the difficulty of ending the insurgency as long as the Taliban’s top leadership has sanctuary in Pakistan, which has long protected and sponsored the Taliban.An opportunity to divide and conguer the Taliban, perhaps? Not really, because when all is said and done.
Secure across the border, and tightly controlled by Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies, the top Taliban leadership remains uncompromising. At the urging of their protectors in Pakistan, Taliban members say, they continue to push midlevel Taliban commanders back across the border to carry on the insurgency, which extends Pakistan’s influence in southern Afghanistan.
The midlevel commanders have little choice but to comply, as they also depend on sanctuaries in Pakistan, where they maintain their families, say residents in Kandahar who know the Taliban well. The Taliban commander said in his interview that the field commanders would obey their orders to resume the fight, however reluctant they might be.
“We are tired of fighting and we say this among ourselves. But this is our vow, not to leave our country to foreigners.”...Who among the Karzai Boys mob would say and believe something like that?
In the end the Taliban would return to their own land, he said. “This is our country, these are our people, and we have only to retreat and wait and use other tactics.”
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