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The Taliban-Al Qaeda Connection
Veronique de Viguerie / Edit by Getty Images
As Pakistan is rocked by new attacks, it’s nice to think America could focus on taking out al Qaeda without tackling the Taliban. Reihan Salam on the flawed premise driving the Afghan debate.
The case of Najibullah Zazi serves as a grim reminder that al Qaeda continues to plan deadly attacks against American civilians. Zazi traveled to Pakistan's rugged borderlands, where he connected with al Qaeda operatives who provided him with explosives training in the summer of 2008. The next year, a few months after he had returned home to the United States, Zazi began gathering explosive materials to launch an attack, one that could have killed dozens. Yet it's worth keeping in mind that this plot, however dastardly, pales in significance to the terror attacks of 2001, which demonstrated a level of sophistication and coordination that was truly terrifying. One gets the impression that Zazi, like the shoe-bomber and dozens of other crack terrorists, is not the sharpest tack in the box. Though al Qaeda is at least as committed to killing Americans these days as they were back then, the organization is now relying on a dwindling band of half-wits.
A Taliban victory would embolden the potential Arab recruits who are reluctant to join a fearful and bottled-up al Qaeda, not to mention inspire Saudi Islamists to opentheir pocketbooks.
After eight years of determined effort, the U.S. has destroyed most of al Qaeda's infrastructure and killed and captured dozens of its most formidable strategists and experienced fighters. What is left is a pathetic husk. As U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities in al Qaeda's shrinking sanctuary have improved, CIA drone attacks and special forces raids have grown far more likely to hit their targets. And so al Qaeda's once fearsome elite is spending almost all of its energy trying desperately to stay alive, which is to say that the terrorists are terrified. The destruction of al Qaeda central has meant that the global Islamist insurgency has become highly decentralized. Zazi's connection to al Qaeda marks him as the exception, as other would-be Islamist terrorists have been "self-starters" inspired by Osama bin Laden's ideology yet completely independent. For a time, there was a real concern that this made the al Qaeda threat more potent rather than less. The idea was that a leaderless Internet-enabled movement would prove impossible to defeat or even control. The prosaic truth is that it's impressively easy to monitor mad ravings on the web, and that disaffected youth can do far less damage than highly-educated hardened terrorists with millions of dollars in the bank. At this point, al Qaeda's only hope is that the Taliban, a movement Osama bin Laden mentored and nurtured, will help renew its strength by driving the United States and its allies out of even larger swathes of Afghanistan. Among other things, a Taliban victory would embolden the potential Arab recruits who are reluctant to join a fearful and bottled-up al Qaeda, not to mention inspire Saudi Islamists to open their pocketbooks.
• Ahmed Rashid: The Pakistan Army’s Political GambleAs President Obama weighs America's options in Afghanistan, which range from the horrific to the miserably bad, there is a growing sense, thanks in no small part to those successful drone attacks, that the U.S. can vanquish al Qaeda without also crushing the Taliban. Because the Taliban regime sheltered al Qaeda in the years before and immediately after 9/11, Americans tend to see the two organizations as inseparable. Yet there are obvious and important differences, including the fact that al Qaeda is a small organization of mostly Arab militants and the Taliban is an indigenous political movement that draws on the distinctive beliefs and traditions of the Pashtun people who straddle the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Within the national security establishment, many are comparing the Taliban to Lebanon's Hezbollah, a social and political movement that uses intimidation and violence as well as social services and slick propaganda to achieve its ends. al Qaeda, in contrast, has no real roots, and it certainly doesn't operate a meals-on-wheels program. While the Taliban and al Qaeda have been tightly coordinated in the past, we're now seeing the Taliban rise while al Qaeda declines. And if al Qaeda were truly destroyed, even a Taliban conquest of all of southern Afghanistan wouldn't be enough to bring it back. The trouble is that for all of the C.I.A.'s targeted killings, al Qaeda's command structure remains intact. The continued survival of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri means that an al Qaeda revival remains a very real possibility.
So while Vice President Joe Biden and anti-war liberals and conservatives believe we can simply take out al Qaeda without also fighting the Taliban, it's hard not to conclude that we need a stable Afghanistan if we really want to prevent the monster from reemerging. This is not the answer anyone really wants, least of all an American public that has grown weary of the casualties and the massive expenditures involved in fighting what often looks like an unwinnable war. But it's the only answer that doesn't rely on wishful thinking.
Reihan Salam is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the co-author of Grand New Party.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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A horribly speculative article. Sure, letting the Taliban be might embolden terrorists. Or the more moderate elements in the Taliban may come to dominate out of fear of us killing them. Who's to say? Certainly nothing in this article resembling a fact can be drawn upon to support the speculation.
The argument that Al Qaeda is now left with only the feeble-minded and retarded itself is grossly projected from one or two examples...
Terrorism is a continuing threat. If the United States and other parts of the West must keep a war going, it does need to be paid for. The U.S. spends money like water, but borrows to pay for that spending. America does not believe in taxes. If we don't start paying our bills when an economic recovery is in sight, we could doom ourselves without any terrorists invovled. So, the wars should be paid for and there should be a draft as well. It is not right that only the poor and undereducated (for the most part) fight our wars.
Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.
There's no solution that the west can make, forgetaboutit. Common sense says its their country, how aggrogant to think the "chattering class" can have any impact about daily life there.
This could be an open letter to president Obama, about his counterpart Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, and where Omar gets his moolah, but Obama will never see it.
This is the Afghanistan Solution, what we should do for victory, how exactly we should proceed, and why. We adopt this opium poppy strategy, immediately, or down the road we risk another terrorist attack in America, rivaling 9 / 11.
michaelslevinson.com
The key to winning Afghanistan and Pakistan, to finally dissolving al Qaeda and Taliban, is opium, father of all opiates, a state of the art blessing from Mother nature that eliminates pain. That dirt-cheap illegal heroin, illegitimate child of opium, readily bought on the streets of Manhattan began a sleepy Pashtun poppy, a plant, milked in Afghanistan, oceans away.
That 17% pure heroin baguette; available on select street corners everywhere, started out poppy grown in Afghanistan. 93% of the world's opium is grown and refined into heroin right on the Afghani farms! The other 7% of the world's opium is controlled and sold to big pharmaceutical outfits who manufacture heroin and from the heroin produce morphine and other pain killing derivatives.
Bill Gates must marvel at the industrious Afghanis for their market share. Monopoly! Irreplaceable, worldwide; a blessing for all sides, especially us, because controlling the poppy fields means we will have taken over the main source of income for the barbarian Taliban, the terrorist al Qaeda operation, the european drug cartels and the Western Hemisphere drug cartels.
The heroin, lifeblood for terrorists and drug cartels is smuggled throughout Russia, Eastern and Western Europe, with tons going by plane and ship to South America where, repackaged, its origin is disguised so no one gets wise; from there, routed to Mexican cartels, and from Mexico, into USA.
For the Western Hemisphere drug cartels this wholesale heroin represents billions of dollars in retail business. For the afghan farmer, the opium sales are more than one billion dollars. Then the smugglers, Taliban and al Qaeda get theirs, and so on down the wholesale line.
The key to stuffing Taliban and al Qaeda, eradicating their corruption of Afghanistan, is to choke the opium supply, which would wipe out the trade; and choke their criminal customers on our side of the sea. We want that!
The Taliban's and al Qaeda's end nets them millions of dollars, peanuts, falafel on the table for Taliban's "freedom fighters" over the border, in Pakistan; and money for the families of al Qaeda's suicide bombers throughout the region. Without the opium heroin trade, al Qaeda and Taliban would be decimated. The Western Hemisphere drug cartels, all the drug cartels world wide would lose hundreds of millions of dollars and be facing their own recession.
In Iraq, whoever is running the borders and roads, wins. In Afghanistan, the opium dollar is fueling both the war and the rejuvenated Taliban structure, enabling them to strike! Theirs is a poor country with a rich culture. Whoever controls the opium harvest will have battled for that right. The hardy farmers get only enough to live decently and plant their fresh poppy.
The Taliban "freedom fighters" would leave for home in a heartbeat, were they not getting fed. No food no money no fight. The Taliban "leader" has a payroll he must meet. Charismatic doesn't put food on the table. The opium proceeds cover that payroll!
President Obama is our Commander-in-Chief, the civilian boss in charge of our ribbon shirts, but his military bureaucrats, and the retired cable news talking heads are misreading and misleading the war. Controlling the opium poppy is the key to winning the war, to totally defeating al Qaeda, eliminating them as a terrorist force!
We don't need to build an Afghanistan army. The Afghani militias know how to fight. With a little structure and dollar support at the bottom, the farm level, the Afghanis will protect themselves. Abraham Lincoln established a sea embargo to win the Civil War. Without supplies by ship from Europe, the Confederate Army was doomed.
Our troops get killed on border patrols between Pakistan and Afghanistan to protect our way of life across the ocean. Yet a stone's throw away, Mother Nature's opium is grown for the terrorist's gain? How can our military be so dumb as to allow this to go on, creating millions of terrorist jihad dollars?
The only thing going across the Afghani/Pakistan border are paid fighters and convoys of drug smugglers. The Afghan opium is key. We own the opium and the country is ours. Free. Opium control means renegade Taliban, al Qaeda terrorists, and warlords are on the road again. Skedaddled or killed. (I like the idea of not killing anybody)
Our soldiers must begin digging foxholes in every opium field, making Cash In Advance deals with the Afghanis we are purchasing their opium crop for top dollar, in raw opium form. The farmers don't have to brew the black sap into a dangerous snowy heroin powder, so they are poppy plentiful, an ounce or two for the house, compliments of us.
Raw opium isn't dangerous. You won't kill yourself smoking opium the way you can overdose from a heroin syringe, so we want their whole crop raw, just like unrefined brown sugar.
The war momentum will immediately shift!
Instead of Taliban's "freedom fighters" picking us off as we patrol the dangerous Afghanistan border, we will occupy the poppy fields and wait for Taliban to show up, our invited guests. The key to Afghan quality of life, to shipping their kids off to the Ivy League is based on who gets to stash the cash from Afghanistan's opium crop. (Would Karzai and his drug dealing family in Kabul be benefactors?)
At the same time, on the diplomatic front we must push to reunite Pakistan with India. This will initiate an eviction of Taliban by the Pakistani people. For Pakistan, rejoining India means freedom, food, jobs, education, and a better life. Only their military bureaucrats are against this idea, and their minds could be changed with a passport, an SUV, and a forty acre guarantee in Montana.
Instead of a knee jerk reaction to my Red October reference to " Montana," by First Mate Vasily, just plant that idea above the fold in their newspapers! Wag the dog!
Sad, these policies, purchasing Afghanistan's opium, piecing off the Pak military, and reuniting Pakistan with India may be too progressive for Obama, and for Hillary Rodham Clintstone, too, but maybe not.
Certainly wagging this Pakistan-India dog will be incentive for the Paks to evict the Taliban and that is what we want!
The Paks have nothing under the Taliban gun but the killing of their own people. The Taliban bribed the Pak military for long-term safe journey with the opium money. That is how Taliban and al Qaeda established their footholds in Pakistan! Long term money to the Pak bureaucrats.
Many Taliban soldiers will change colors of their turbans and meld into the crowd when it is clear the opium crop is gone to a higher bidder.
In Afghanistan, we need to get busy, prepare the fields, create comfortable foxholes on every poppy acre, booby trap the brush surrounding with a safe swath to the farmhouse, and make it clear to the farmers, by CIA shelling out Cash In Advance, we are purchasing their whole raw opium crop but paying top refined heroin price, so the farmers are with us! Super incentive for the farmers. Less work more money.
Taliban, Al Qaeda and warlords will have to exit their caves and across the poppy fields instead of picking us off with roadside attacks. Retired military will be opposed to this poppy war, but hard pressed to tell you why. 93% of the world supply of the king pin of all pain relieving opiates is 93%. Microsoft Windows in 1991.
We are purchasing their poppy crop, and negotiating fair and square how much sticky black can be extrapolated from each plant.
The plants, ripening by day, are the draw for Taliban, al Qaeda and warlords to show, the only way for them to go, taking on our troops in the poppy fields.
When they come down the yellow brick road we can sting them from above. A couple drone attacks will turn them around in their tracks. No opium no paychecks.
The extra virgin first milk is scheduled to start tomorrow. Our enemies know that. The farmers will have been already paid in advance. At 4:00 a.m. we begin snipping every plant two inches above ground with two handle bush trimmers, chop chop, just like that. At dawn, we start stuffing wood chippers with chopped down poppy and spread the soil to fertilize next year's crop.
So good-bye Taliban grunt, and don't step on any land mines going home.
A couple million addicts in Europe will be going cold turkey! The European, Mexican and Columbian drug cartels will be out of heroin, and lose hundreds of millions of criminal dollars.
Regardless bureaucrats will be viciously against this operation. The status quo is how the rigid government's bureaucrats always want to go.
But with a cash infusion at the farm level, Afghanistan will begin to flourish. The Afghani people will start rebuilding their own country, without corruption from above, roads and schools decided by tribal leaders in the farm districts, with a helping hand from us. They will establish a government from the bottom up, without bureaucrats!
We must also purchase their whole marijuana and hashish crop, bringing each of the harvests to USA for medicinal purposes. Or run the risk that crop, too becomes an income for the terrorists. Afghani marijuana is the most potent in the world, best for relief of chemotherapy's side effects.
The opium pays al Qaeda's world salary. But who controls the opium in Afghanistan wins the war in Afghanistan and the terrorist war, world wide. Poppy strategy will accomplish our mission! Those opposed want things the way they are. Follow the money. The Columbian and Mexican drug cartels have fronted Mullah Muhammad Omar money to build his Afghan infrastructure! In the event we ignore the terrorist's cash cow, and leave, al Qaeda and Taliban, opium rich, will have the funds to execute all their murderous plans.
Wasn't the twin towers having been brought down before your eyes and Pentagon attack enough for you! The opium trade paid for the 9/11 tragedy, not bin Laden's personal money. We cannot risk allowing another 9/11 to repeat. We cannot!
michaelslevinson.com
youtube.com/poetprophet
Give it a rest with the Opium already! Part of the Strategy recently adopted includes taking out the opium and Educating the farmers on how to grow varieties of crops, and giving them Vouchers/ Seeds to grow something else. So thats not a new idea or the "Main Solution". Its just part of a broader strategy.... And what does Obama have to do with Mullah Omar?! makes you sound like an Ignoramus.. Would you at least admit that this administration has done a better job than any targeting and killing Top Terror Operatives?! And as for Pakistan been Bribed by the Taliban, i guess the U.S has been recently giving bigger bribes, because they have taken the War to the Taliban Stronghold.... That!.. is also part of a broader Strategy.
Mullah Omar is the leader of his flock. Obama the leader over here. Both are considered the leades of thie people. Drawing the connection is a satirical dig.
I am notin favor or against this administration or into comparing them to the last. The military has improved on targeting top terror operatives, with drones.
"taking out the opium and Educating the farmers on how to grow varieties of crops, and giving them Vouchers/ Seeds to grow something else," is the bureaucrat solution, lasting as long as it takes for the bureaucrat's HummVee to disappear in the dust.
Heroin is the best opiate for pain elimination! We should reverse our heroin laws instead of trying to get the Afghani farmers to plant arugula.
michaelslevinson.com
I hate to agree with anyone who writes a book about how the GOP can win the working class vote and return to power, but he might be right.
Al Qaeda grew up in Taliban Afghanistan and it might renew itself there. I do not see how Predator attacks could continue to be effective over such a large area as would be available. Also, how would we get intel in a Taliban controlled country? I am afraid we would looking for a needle in a haystack.
On the other hand, times have changed. It is harder for Al Qaeda to get money. The lack of any spectacular successes in recent years must have dampened enthusiasm for the cause. Every threatened nation is making great efforts to find terrorists before they strike.
My personal opinion is that Al Qaeda would become more of a threat in a Taliban controlled Afghanistan, but probably not much more. But I don't really know.
The main reason that I would advocate staying in Afghanistan, if there is a reasonable chance of success is that I would hate to see the people, particularly the women and children, left to the tender mercies of the Taliban.
Who first funded Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban and gave them hella weapons in the first place?? USA
To OliverKerr: The most effective way to "choke Afghanistan's opium supply" would really be to legalize opium. If it's not a black market drug/medicine, there would be no monopoly and thus no profit.
The 9-11 attacks were "so well orchestrated" because in all likelihood (from all my research), 9-11 was an inside job. Don't take my word though; do your own research: http://www.loosechange911.com/ http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
http://www.911truth.org/
This is all very nice and so forth, but did anyone hear today THAT THE CITY OF BALTIMORE WILL BE FORCED TO DECLARE BANKRUPTCY??? It's 'public servants' have conveniently bankrupted the City that they work for and their Pensions are evaporating as we speak.
Now, I do realize that a sand hill in the middle of bu**-F*ck nowhere is incredibly important and that BALTIMORE IS NOT. But that would only speak to the issue of how far flung and far afield the Nation has drifted as it seeks solutions to problems everwhere else except AT HOME.
Bring the troops home and stop the nonsense. Osama Bin Laden is dead.
What is teh real difference in ideology between Al Qaeda and the Taliban? Thy are just two branches of the Islamic fascist tree, and the regime in Iran is another one. And we have seen the kind of government they would set up in Afghanistan and Pakistan whenever they get the chance--an Islamic fascist police state that would be a base and breeding ground for people who want to attack the West. There is plenty of evidence of this for anyone who has eyes.
Let Europe take care of it. So far, they have expressed no interest in defending against the perceived threat that you seem paralyzed by and which is Bankrupting our Nation. We'll be more than happy to sell Europe all the bombs and munitions they need to engage the enemy should the Europeans show up to fight. It is not our war anymore, Osama Bin Laden is dead. We've exposed the truth of Islamic intent. Let Europe deal with their neighbors and not drag us under doing their bidding for them.
I think the mistaken premise here is that we should spend all this money going after any extremists who hate us in misbegotten parts of the world. It would be far more cost effective to take every last troop out of the middle east (where they engender hatred anyway) and spend 20% of the 200 billion or more we'd save every year to double the budget of the FBI and related agencies that protect us here. We need to go back to seeing terrorism for what it is, a law enforcement problem.
Adding to the FBI would also help address the very real threat of domestic terror as well as international terror. What has the billions in Iraq or Afghanistan done to protect us from the Abortion Clinic assassin or the Jewish Museum shooter?
The main goal of any government spending should be the betterment of the citizens of that government. So lets spend directly on protecting our citizens instead of wasting the money on hopeless wars thousands of miles away.
Finally, the world is taking note of my insightful and trenchant comments in the Daily Beast - the Taliban and Al Qaida are one and the same.
I find it very gratifying to know that I'm being listened to. Woo woo! Gnaa gnaa gnaa! Woo woo woo woo woo!!!
The Saudi connection runs much deeper than you imply, and they're not just writing the checks:
http://www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com
Although they're doing plenty of that, too:
http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/10/05/top_stories/doc4aca37b61a83682 2393274.txt#
The substandard results achieved in the Afghan theater to date are a function of a grossly underachieving American military brass. It is irrelevant whether we are fighting Al Qaeda or Taliban or both. What is relevant are the results which is measured by achieving a peaceful outcome of the conflict and withdrawal of our troops from the region.
The American military has consistently failed to deliver effectively on the results side of the ledger concerning this matter. That is because the military is in major need of reform. Even though it is technologically at the very pinnacle of the 21st century achievements, structurally, it is still a throw back to WWII and the Cold War. The recommendations that the military is making for the conflict in Afghanistan is rooted in these glaring deficiencies.
Until the military takes a good hard look at its mission and purpose within the context of the larger society and attempts to update those to the 21st century, we will be mired in Iraq and Afghan type wars for some time to come. I am not sure how, but it would be really beneficial to encourage the military leadership to begin recognizing the increasingly diminishing returns of their efforts and make a sincere attempt to fundamentally reform its command structure and purpose.
So enlist already, Reihan.
Thank you.
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