"The Taliban is growing and creating new alliances not because its sectarian religious practices have become popular, but because it is the only available umbrella for national liberation" -- says Pakistani historian and political commentator Tariq Ali.
"Something of a catchall term for loosely affiliated insurgents without a singular command structure. Often, the Afghan government favors the phrase 'enemies of the state' (New York Times July 24, 2007)"
"I guess you would have to say they were terrorists, but they were our terrorists so we called them freedom fighters."
"The long, hard slog against scrappy Taliban fighters" by H.D.S. Greenway | August 12, 2008
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.
'RAGTAG TALIBAN Show Tenacity in Afghanistan," read the headline last week. Washington and NATO capitals were reportedly "soul-searching" over how a disheveled insurgency had managed to "keep the world's most powerful armies at bay." This should hardly have come as a surprise.
There is a certain irony for those of us who were up on the North-West Frontier in the 1980s interviewing Islamic fighters who, from their safe bases in Pakistan, were making life miserable for the Soviets in Afghanistan. I once visited a training camp just over the border where insurgents were being trained in guerrilla tactics and in making bombs to be smuggled into Kabul. I guess you would have to say they were terrorists, but they were our terrorists so we called them freedom fighters.
And then we USED THEM for PATSIES on 9/11!!!!
As for the Russians, they were always being taken by surprise at the tenacity of their ragtag opponents.
And NOW the US is in that slipper!!!
The Afghan insurgents were masters of terrain. They knew how to flatten themselves on hillsides, their bodies covered by long cloaks with not even their fingernails showing lest they reflect light to passing helicopters overhead.
The Soviets tried to overwhelm the guerrillas with firepower, bombing villages into dust, causing more and more young men to join the resistance. The Afghans who had thrown their lot in with the Russians seemed evermore isolated in their cities while the insurgents roamed the countryside.
Sounds like IRAQ, too, doesn't it?
Today's insurgents, again from their safe havens in Pakistan, are making life miserable for foreigners in Afghanistan, only this time the foreigners are Americans and their allies.
Allah has always held a mighty hold over the Pashtuns of the frontier. During the Raj, the British fought endless campaigns against this or that jihad-driven uprising, right up until World War II drew Britain's attention elsewhere.
One such dust-up came when a Muslim captured a Hindu girl and forced her to convert. She was rescued, but the tribesmen were furious that the girl had been taken away from the embrace of Islam, and the voice of jihad was heard in the land.
A Mullah Omar of his time was the Faqir of Ipi, who right up into the 1950s bedeviled the British and then the Pakistanis trying to carve out an independent Pashtun state out of the frontier on both sides of the border.
When the British left they bequeathed to Pakistan the same old problem of tribal areas that were not fully absorbed into the state. And on the frontier soldiers from the Punjab are almost as foreign as Englishmen.
Listen to the quandary the British faced fighting on the frontier, as described by the writer John Masters, who served with the Prince of Wales's Own Gurkha Rifles in the 1935 Waziristan campaign. "The core of our problem was to force battle on an elusive and mobile enemy (who) tried to avoid battle, and instead fight us with pinpricking hit-and-run tactics." Only when the tribesmen tried to hold territory were they "pulverized." When they "sniped, rushed, and ran away we felt as if we were using a crowbar to swat wasps." America and NATO face the same problems today.
Long ago in Vietnam, Americans were constantly being surprised at the resilience of their ragtag enemies. The United States unleashed unimaginable firepower, tried to win hearts and minds, and reinvented counterinsurgency tactics that were learned in the Philippines in the 19th century but forgotten. Today the country is reinventing antiguerrilla tactics it knew in the 20th century but forgot.
Gee, he just SKIMS RIGHT OVER U.S. WAR CRIMES in Asia, doesn't he?
Nearly 600,000 dead in the Philippines and 2-4 MILLION in Vietnam!!!
And now as before, all on the basis of LIES!!!!
The story of the fight for Afghanistan is filled with what-ifs. What if the United States had concentrated on Afghanistan when the Soviets left? What if resources and attention had not been pulled from Afghanistan instead of invading Iraq? What if Omar and Osama bin Laden had not slipped through America's fingers to escape into the frontier territories?
What if the Amerikan MSM finally decided to start telling the truth?
The Taliban recognize no border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they know all the passes from which we watched a previous generation of insurgents slip through to fight the Soviets. The fighters know, too, that to win all they have to do is not lose, and eventually the foreigners will leave. The fate of Afghanistan will then be up to the Afghans. This is how it has always been."
And HOW IT SHOULD BE!!!!!!
