By Sardar Ahmad
Agence France Presse, 02 January 2007
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Military forces battling Taliban-led unrest in
Afghanistan are increasingly targeting the insurgency's hardline leaders, believing the foot soldiers can be persuaded to drop the fight.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has been pushing this strategy in earnest since the start of a new operation in the volatile Panjwayi district of the southern province of Kandahar three weeks ago, officials said.
ISAF officials cite as a success the December 19 killing of commander Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, among the top leaders of the Islamist Taliban militia driven from power by a US-led coalition in late 2001.
The shift in focus comes after the bloodiest year of the insurgency: around 4,000 people were killed in 2006, most of them rebels, in some of the fiercest fighting since the Taliban were toppled.
Several ISAF airstrikes in the summer took out scores of fighters at a time, and sometimes civilians.
But "killing big numbers of Taliban is not the way out," a top-ranking NATO general told AFP this week on condition of anonymity.
While the number of Taliban fighters is unclear, they are said to run into several thousand with aggressive recruitment campaigns and fundamentalist madrassas, including in neighbouring Pakistan, providing a steady supply.
ISAF spokesman in Kabul, Major Dominic Whyte, said the new approach was "twin-track".
"That basically means there are some Taliban out there who want the Taliban regime and will not negotiate and they will not stop fighting until they are killed or captured," he said.
ISAF believes other recruits could be persuaded to stop fighting by being shown the hardliners offered "no future", unlike the government and its allies which are pushing development alongside military action, he said.
They included mainly men lured by money, Whyte said. Reports have said Taliban pay around five to 12 dollars a day.
In Panjwayi development projects worth several million dollars are intended to win over such men. ISAF says waverers will also have seen the Taliban is no match for the 37-nation alliance after 1,000 rebels died in a September operation.
ISAF has touted the operation as the Taliban's biggest defeat since 2001, despite steady reinfiltration and continued clashes.
It will not say how many men are at the helm of the insurgency. Whyte said there had been five targeted operations in the past three weeks and all were successful, notably the one that killed Osmani in the southern province of Helmand.
The slain commander, a close associate of Taliban head Mullah Mohammad Omar and Al-Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden, was said to be fourth in the ranks of the ousted Taliban leadership and one of the most senior members killed since 2001.
"There's a mixture going on of bringing out the less committed people and getting rid of -- either pushing them out or if necessary using military action against -- the tier one (the leaders)," said ISAF spokesman in Kandahar, Squadron Leader David Marsh.
About 20 low-level Taliban fighters surrendered last week, perhaps a small sign that the message is getting through, he said.
"This is a small indication perhaps things are beginning to split," Marsh told AFP at NATO's base in the southern city, which bears the brunt of the Taliban's regular suicide and roadside bombings.
The fledgling Afghan army has the same approach. "We can't kill all the Taliban," said defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi.
"What's best to be done is to get rid of the Taliban leadership and reconcile the rest of them who are just ordinary people that have joined the Taliban under certain situations," he said.
President Hamid Karzai has made regular appeals to this level of Taliban to sign up to a government reconciliation scheme launched in 2004 that offers amnesty if fighters pledge to lay down their arms.
The government said in October more than 2,000 Taliban and other Islamic fighters had taken up the offer, which excludes the uprising's leaders such as Taliban chief Omar.
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Citation: Sardar Ahmad. "Forces in Afghanistan shift focus to Taliban leaders," Agence France Presse, 02 January 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070102/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunresttalibannato
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