Nuristan
in Fall
After a tough start, Nuristan
province has passed the summer without further serious traumas. Still, all the
pre-existing concerns about an insurgent takeover of the whole province are
still there, just probably postponed to next year depending on the early onset
of winter. In order to prevent this from happening, it is high time to develop
a new, comprehensive strategy to enhance state presence in the forsaken
province, and none but the Afghan government can work that out, according to
AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini.
The start of
summer 2011 caught most of those following – albeit from afar – events in
Nuristan, with a sense of impending tragedy. Something irreversible seemed
about to happen in the remote province. Insurgents had been for months in
control of a district centre, Waygal, and were routinely threatening or briefly
storming several others and even closing in onto the provincial capital, Parun.
The government and ISAF attitude vis-à-vis this onslaught looked passive, to
say the least (for further report see our previous blog , and
journalist colleagues' Coupling
the situation in Nuristan with the aggressive stance of the insurgency on other
fronts, some colleagues could not resist drawing a parallel with the Tet
Offensive . But the
insurgency in Afghanistan, at least that operating in Nuristan, is not the
Vietcong and things follow their own, rather peculiar course.
June and the
first part of July were, in fact, hectic months. In particular, the insurgents
tried to establish a firmer control over their main border-crossing route into
Nuristan through the Gawardesh valley (administratively split between Kamdesh
and Kunar’s Nari district). The valley is accessible from the Pakistani side
through a choice of comparatively easy mountain passes (some under 2700
meters), which moreover lie close to the major highway connecting Chitral with
the rest of the country (to the top of the main pass is a nice twelve
kilometres trek from National Highway 45). The use of the passes by insurgents
has been reported for years, and consequently Gawardesh has been dotted by
Afghan Border Police (ANBP) checkpoints. It is these checkpoints that were
massively attacked and in some cases overran between 5 and 7 July by a mixed
group of Afghan and Pakistani Taleban, before the border police supported by
the Afghan army (ANA) managed to repel the attackers.
On the other
hand, the undeclared siege of Parun extended into the summer, although direct
attempts at storming the provincial capital did not occur after mid-June. The
insurgents occasionally put more pressure on the beleaguered town by occupying
positions on the main (and only) road connecting it with Asadabad in Kunar and
with the outside world. The road was not reopened in any way to traffic
until August when a security convoy bringing badly needed supplies made it to
the city. Even after that, the road remained extremely vulnerable to insurgent
activity, as it is to this day.
So, Nuristan
came out of the summer more or less as it had entered it, an isolated province
where the balance of forces is slowly but steadily turning against the
government, and where nobody is actually governing. Only two major changes
happened there in the course of this potentially fateful summer: in August the
provincial governor was replaced and a fortnight ago a military operation was
eventually mounted against insurgent-held Waygal.
But for the
moment, these two events can only be interpreted as symptoms that the situation
is unbearable and something needed be done on part of the Afghan authorities
and the ISAF. Their overall value for improving the dire situation of Nuristan
is far from clear.
The former
governor, Jamaluddin Badr, had been often criticised for his excessive degree
of absenteeism from his troubled seat, and this even by Nuristan’s standards
(reportedly many of the provincial council members and other government
officials spend most of their time in Kabul or Jalalabad). AAN was told, for
example, that after the 2009 presidential elections, Governor Badr did not
visit Nuristan for nine months. ‘Even when he was there, he would not move a
step out of his compound in Parun’, a local official recalled. In the second
half of August 2011, Badr was replaced by Tamim Nuristani who had already held
the governorship from 2006 to 2008. Even though he ran restaurants in the US
for most of the ‘1990s, Tamim Nuristani seems to be well connected with
all the major jihadi political factions. He is the brother-in-law of the
Jamiati, Massud Khalili, who was a close friend to the late Ahmad Shah Massud,
has family relations with a local prominent Hezb-e Islami commander, and
reportedly his early appointment was supported even by Sayyaf*.
Interviewed
soon after his appointment, Tamim Nuristani sounded optimistic about his
chances to improve the situation and declared his will to bring
insurgent-controlled areas back under the government grasp without recourse to
military action . In fact,
it seems his family connection with Abdul Ghaffur, a prominent Hezb commander
of Kantiwa, was once sought by the government with a view to entice the latter
to come in from the cold. According to a local analyst, Karzai approached Tamim
Nuristani shortly before the parliamentary election last year and told him not
to campaign, that he would be made governor instead, provided he was able to
broker a deal with Abdul Ghaffur similar to that the government had with the
other prominent Hezb commander in Nuristan, Mawlawi Sadeq, informally in
control of Kamdesh district.
Deals under
the table, even if successful, would not be a sufficient solution for
Nuristan’s governance problems. The long years of absenteeism on the part of
state institutions have left their mark. In the words of a Nuristani graduate, ‘the distance between the people and
the government has increased’ and ‘the insurgents increasingly fill the gap’.
Moreover, some locals interviewed were afraid that governors and other
officials are forwarded from Kabul to the province to exploit the lucrative
opportunities offered by their position on behalf of their political patrons
(mainly reconstruction projects by the PRT, although they have dwindled in
recent times, or timber and gems smuggling – and, of course, there is also the
traffic of old Soviet weapons coming down from Badakhshan). In this way, Jamaluddin
Badr was allegedly financing Sayyaf's Da'wat-e Islami offices in
all four provinces of the Eastern region with the profits made as governor.
As for the
other ‘big event’: the re-capture of Waygal district, which since March had
turned into an insurgent stronghold from where attacks on the surrounding areas
were planned, did not bring any long-term effect. The joint
Afghan-international operation that started on 20 September led to a brief
occupation of the district centre, the death of a number of insurgents and
their decamping to safer side valleys. But no government presence was
re-established in Waygal. It is even reported that as soon as the Afghan and
ISAF troops withdrew, the insurgents moved to occupy the district centre again,
and eventually desisted only after the entreaties of locals. They, already
uneasy about the massive influx of militants from other areas during the period
of Taleban sway, were left to mourn 17 civilians killed during the military
blitz (other sources say 19), among them Juma Gul Khan, a respected elder and
former official of the Tahkim-e Solh commission (Mujaddidi’s early
version of the High Peace Council) in Nuristan. Thus, in the best scenario,
Waygal will remain a sort of no man’s land, due to the locals’ unwillingness to
bear the brunt of further attacks from either side. This is no success for a
government, of course.
The security
situation remains then a priority for any realistic approach to the province.
The scanty deployment of Afghan security forces is always highlighted when
talking to locals, and there is no ANA presence except for that at the PRT base
in Kalagosh of Nurgram district, oddly located in one far-off corner of the
province and often termed by locals as being ‘in Laghman’. The police garrison
of Parun was mainly left to defend itself against overwhelming numbers of
insurgents through the summer and, if they managed to successfully, it is
difficult to see how even smaller detachments in the districts could. Even when
reinforcements were sent for specific operations like the relief of Parun in
August or the recent capture of Waygal, they were withdrawn shortly after.
After
reviewing the costs and benefits of their previous FOB (Forward Operation Base)
experience in Nuristan and northern Kunar, Coalition troops ended up without a
clear COIN strategy in the region. It seems now, after the announced shift to
the East in ISAF’s strategic focus that they
will re-enter at least some of the abandoned areas, as they are already doing
in the Pech valley on Nuristan’s outskirts. However, one wonders what their new
course of action will be. Judging by the last months, ISAF will focus much more
on providing air support for the ANA blitzes. Unfortunately, we have fresh
evidence of the failures of such a strategy. In late May, when a large group of
insurgents attacked Doab district centre, the US airstrikes wrought havoc on
the amassed rebels, the police (both garrison and reinforcements), and the
civilians alike, with estimates ranging from 150 to 250 victims, maybe a third
of whom on the wrong side.** On 31 July, a helicopter strike meant to help the
supply convoy headed for Parun hit an Afghan National Police (ANP) checkpoint
on the Kunar-Nuristan border, killing four. To add insult to injury, the
surviving twelve ANP personnel were detained by the ISAF troops landing on the
scene.
It is clear
that if the human and natural terrain of Nuristan proved nightmarish for ground
operations, it is as much difficult for air and commando warfare. Evidently,
detailed intelligence and understanding of ‘what’s going on down there’ is
destined to vanish in the fog of war once there are no boots on the ground and
the quality of communication with the Afghan counterparts deteriorate.
A temptation
could then be that of shaping the new COIN strategy much more on the role of
local militias - sorry, Afghan Local Police (ALP) units. The diffused presence
of armed locals defending main villages and roads would hinder insurgents’
build up and freedom of movement, and help government claims to be in control
of the province. Probably not. This time it is not only about the standard
concerns which ALP creates countrywide, although these are present as well. For
example, would it be wise to arm different communities and to exploit rivalries
in a notoriously clannish, fragmented and revenge-driven environment as
Nuristan's?*** And the degree of control the
central government could be fairly expected to have on such units would be even
lower than in other provinces. Moreover, in the case of Nuristan the ALP will
simply not be enough. Judging by the sheer numbers the insurgents have been able to amass in
the past, no ALP unit would stand a chance of fighting them back without
massive air support from the Coalition and the subsequent, unavoidable
casualties from 'friendly fire', 'collateral damage' or any way you choose to
call it. The presence of even a few, selected US mentors embedded with the ALP
for the sake of communication and intelligence, on the other hand, would
irreparably spoil the efforts at removing from the local conflict the
problematic presence of those 'infidels, invaders, colonialists and crusaders'
- or more simply 'foreigners' - which is one of the main propaganda tool
for the Taleban and was one of the rationales behind the US withdrawal from the
area in 2009-2010.
In fact,
many locals would maintain that it was shortly after the arrival of NATO
troops, in 2004-2005, that the Taleban were able to make inroads in Nuristan
for the first time. Paradoxically, Pakistani militant outfits like Lashkar-e
Taiba or Harkat ul-Mujaheddin, now also engaged in the fight against
the Afghan government and its international backers in Nuristan, could probably
boast of older roots in the region than the Afghan Taleban, which never ruled
Nuristan during their Emirate.****
So, if it is
true that sending back US troops to garrison isolated FOBs in the middle of the
Hindu Kush would not help (and it is improbable that it could be considered a
viable option by the US government), what are the options left to avoid the
gradual but inexorable slipping of Nuristan beyond the pale of possible claims
of control by the Afghan government?
I
happened to hear or read comments as of late of the peculiarities in
Nuristani people’s history and character which make them impatient of external
authorities and foreigners in general. It may well be so. But I could probably
use similar arguments for at least ten other historical regions inside
Afghanistan, arguing in support of exactly opposite thesis and outcomes. It is
true, as all Nuristani interviewees said, that there is presently a huge gap
between the government and the people of their valleys, but it stems more from
the absence of organized state institutions for the last thirty years
(including the predatory and ineffective behaviour of those half-present in the
last decade) than from the fierce and independent customs of the ‘Kafirs’ of
old.
The Afghan
government should indeed multiply its efforts at establishing a stronger
presence in the province, both in terms of security forces and of the quality
of governance. Changing a governor or striking the insurgents here and there
will not prove enough if mechanisms for co-opting the communities - on a firm
basis, not through secret deals with commanders or with militia projects - and
bringing back the idea of belonging to a country are not enabled. Examples?
This year the ANA answered the repeated calls for help made by Nuristani
notables saying it did not have the human potential to send reinforcements.
Fine, then they should recruit new levees locally to be deployed in site after
training, not under commanders-dominated ALP structures, but in a proper chain
of command and control, and make sure they are not ghost soldiers or their
salaries are not pocketed by corrupt officials or officers. At least it would
bear more results than relying on NATO airstrikes, handing over to militias and
wait until the locals are thoroughly antagonized.
Nuristan has
also been plagued by the problem of an insufficient road network, not least
this summer when Parun was almost starved by the insurgent blockade. The old
project of a trans-Nuristan road, which got shipwrecked somewhere during the
first governorship of Tamim Nuristani, could be resuscitated, and its
construction assigned not to big firms with a political backing and economic
interests in delaying their job, but to the local communities who are to
benefit from both the work it creates and its completion. Providing them with
the technologic expertise and means do not necessarily imply creating room for
huge bribes and bringing in ‘infidel’ engineers. And, a truculent attitude by
the insurgents against infrastructure works that are perceived as ‘useful’ and
‘national’ will probably show that indeed Nuristanis are intolerant also of
this kind of foreign interference. More effectively so than asking old jihadi
commanders to fight their former comrades for the sake of an ALP salary or the
control over a few villages.
The solution
thus sketched may sound very simple
and dull, and I am sure that it would prove much more difficult and stimulating
a job, if ever anybody in the Afghan government were to try an do it. Or Kabul
can just sit and wait until Parun falls, and then split Nuristan on the
administrative map between Laghman and Kunar, as it used to be before 1994, so
that the government does not have to admit that a whole province was lost to
the insurgency.
* Sayyaf’s
influence in Nuristan’s politics seems to have become considerable in the last
years, as Jamaluddin Badr is a member of his party, Da’wat-e Islami, and
himself is said to entertain relations even with Nuristani senator Qari Qayum.
Notwithstanding the connection between Badr and some religious militant outfits
with a long history in Nuristan (many interviewees reported that one of his
brothers enrolled with Lashkar-e Taiba and even went to fight in
Kashmir), Sayyaf’s Wahhabi credentials and the existence of a minority of
Nuristanis professing the Salafi tenets do not seem to have played any role in
his interest for the province. In the weeks preceding the governor’s
replacement, some Nuristani officials in Kabul were publicly supporting the
candidacy of Eng. Amir Jan Nuristani, a former provincial deputy governor.
**
Apparently, the insurgents there comprised large numbers of common villagers
who had been gathered and spurred to engage in jihad for the occasion by a
religious preacher in Mandol district. Also, according to a Nuristani source
interviewed by AAN, half of them withdrew when they found out that in Doab
there were no ‘kafirs’ to be fought, but only Afghan policemen.
*** Nuristan
was not included in the list of provinces with established ALP projects
released by the Ministry of Interior in July, but AAN heard of an ALP being
formed in Wama in August – and of squabbles between the (former) governor and
the chief of police of Nuristan to get hold of the budget for it. In the same
district, fighting due to the rivalry between a local pro-government leader and
insurgents from Gosalak, in the adjacent Chapadara district of Kunar, was
reported in the first half of July. Armed and antagonized local communities,
personal enmities between commanders, corrupted government officials: all the
ingredients for an (unsuccessful) ALP program seem to be there.
****
Connections between pro-Pakistan Kashmiri militant outfits and some jihadi
networks in Nuristan and Kunar date to the late 1980s. This could explain the outrage
of Pakistani security forces at seeing cross-border attacks coming from
militants based on the Afghan side in a quarter where they least expected that. The reaction
of the Pakistani army has been all but helpful, consisting in a criminal
shelling of Afghan territory which lasted for the best part of the summer, and
has sporadically resumed of late. Another strange and still unclear incident
was the reported inroad of Pakistani patrols into the Gawardesh valley on 24
September, where they told local villagers to leave as they were dwelling
illegally on what was Pakistani territory.
www.aan-afghanistan.org
www.aan-afghanistan.org
thanks Fabrezio for the report
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