The myth of Talibanistan

[Thomas]

What do you think the afgans are going to say to the americans......we love the taliban?
Am sure the normal afghan loves the american army more then he loves his tribesman-relative-taliban friend?




Yes.......if it was better then what was there before......warlords-drugs-bandits ect.




Which group did mullah omar support that attacked pakistan?

Both groups of Taliban support each other, and have had joint bases in Pakistan. As far as the Drug/Warlords most support the Taliban. They work hand in hand in the drug trade.

 

[Thomas]

Arms provided by USA during Afghan jehad not by ISI , ISI only helped to make their government after Russian defeat nothing more, they try to implement shariah which was new experience for modren world .Agreed they did lot of mistakes

For Pakistani members

Shah swar hi girta hai medan jang me
Wo tifal kia giray gah jo gutno ka bal chali

Pakistan's material, financial, and training support to the Taliban has been well documented.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB227/index.htm

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB227/8.pdf

Washington D.C., August 14, 2007 - A collection of newly-declassified documents published today detail U.S. concern over Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban during the seven-year period leading up to 9-11. This new release comes just days after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged that, "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil." While Musharraf admitted the Taliban were being sheltered in the lawless frontier border regions, the declassified U.S. documents released today clearly illustrate that the Taliban was directly funded, armed and advised by Islamabad itself.

Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the documents reflect U.S. apprehension about Islamabad's longstanding provision of direct aid and military support to the Taliban, including the use of Pakistani troops to train and fight alongside the Taliban inside Afghanistan. [Doc 17] The records released today represent the most complete and comprehensive collection of declassified documentation to date on Pakistan's aid programs to the Taliban, illustrating Islamabad's firm commitment to a Taliban victory in Afghanistan. [Doc 34].

These new documents also support and inform the findings of a recently-released CIA intelligence estimate characterizing Pakistan's tribal areas as a safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists, and provide new details about the close relationship between Islamabad and the Taliban in the years prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Declassified State Department cables and U.S. intelligence reports describe the use of Taliban terrorist training areas in Afghanistan by Pakistani-supported militants in Kashmir, as well as Pakistan's covert effort to supply Pashtun troops from its tribal regions to the Taliban cause in Afghanistan-effectively forging and reinforcing Pashtun bonds across the border and consolidating the Taliban's severe form of Islam throughout Pakistan's frontier region.

Also published today are documents linking Harakat ul-Ansar, a militant Kashmiri group funded directly by the government of Pakistan, [Doc 10] to terrorist training camps shared by Osama bin Laden in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. [Doc 16]

Of particular concern was the potential for Islamabad-Taliban links to strengthen Taliban influence in Pakistan's tribal regions along the border. A January 1997 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan observed that "for Pakistan, a Taliban-based government in Kabul would be as good as it can get in Afghanistan," adding that worries that the "Taliban brand of Islam…might infect Pakistan," was "apparently a problem for another day." [Doc 20] Now ten years later, Islamabad seems to be acknowledging the domestic complications that the Taliban movement has created within Pakistan. A report produced by Pakistan's Interior Ministry and obtained by the International Herald Tribune in June 2007 warned President Pervez Musharraf that Taliban-inspired Islamic militancy has spread throughout Pakistan's tribal regions and could potentially threaten the rest of the country. The document is "an accurate description of the dagger pointed at the country's heart," according to one Pakistani official quoted in the article. "It's tragic it's taken so long to recognize it."

Islamabad denies that it ever provided military support to the Taliban , but the newly-released documents report that in the weeks following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 1996, Pakistan's intelligence agency was "supplying the Taliban forces with munitions, fuel, and food." Pakistan's Interservice Intelligence Directorate was "using a private sector transportation company to funnel supplies into Afghanistan and to the Taliban forces." [Doc 15] Other documents also conclude that there has been an extensive and consistent history of "both military and financial assistance to the Taliban." [Doc 8]

The newly-released documents also shed light on the complexity of U.S. diplomacy with Pakistan as the State Department has struggled to maintain the U.S.-Pakistan alliance amid concerns over the rise of the Taliban regime. In one August 1997 cable, U.S. Ambassador Thomas W. Simons advises, "Our good relations with Pakistan associate us willy-nilly, so we need to be extremely careful about Pakistani proposals that draw us even closer," adding that, "Pakistan is a party rather than just a mediator [in Afghanistan]." [Doc 24] In another 1997 cable, the Embassy asserts that "the best policy for the U.S. is to steer clear of direct involvement in the disputes between the two countries [Pakistan and Iran], and to continue to work for peace in Afghanistan." [Doc 22]

As to Pakistan's end-game in supporting the Taliban, several documents suggest that in the interest of its own security, Pakistan would try to moderate some of the Taliban's more extreme policies. [Doc 8] But the Taliban have a long history of resistance to external interests, and the actual extent of Pakistani influence over the Taliban during this period remains largely speculative. As the State Department commented in a cable from late-1995, "Although Pakistan has reportedly assured Tehran and Tashkent that it can control the Taliban, we remain unconvinced. Pakistan surely has some influence on the Taliban, but it falls short of being able to call the shots." [Doc 7]

Highlights

* August 1996: Pakistan Intelligence (ISID) "provides at least $30,000 - and possibly as much as $60,000 - per month" to the militant Kashmiri group Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA). Despite this aid, the group is reaching out to sponsors of international terrorism including Osama bin Laden for additional support, and may in the near future become a threat to Islamabad itself as well as U.S. interests. HUA contacts have hinted they "might undertake terrorist actions against civilian airliners." [Doc 10]

* October 1996: A Canadian intelligence document released by the National Security Agency and originally classified Top Secret SI, Umbra comments on recent Taliban military successes noting that even Pakistan "must harbour some concern" regarding the Taliban's impressive capture of Kabul, as such victory may diminish Pakistan's influence over the movement and produce a Taliban regime in Kabul with strong links to Pakistan's own Pashtuns. [Doc 14]

* October 1996: Although food supplies from Pakistan to the Taliban are conducted openly through Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISID, "the munitions convoys depart Pakistan late in the evening hours and are concealed to reveal their true contents." [Doc 15]

* November 1996: Pakistan's Pashtun-based "Frontier Corps elements are utilized in command and control; training; and when necessary - combat" alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. [Doc 17]

* March 1998: Al-Qaeda and Pakistan government-funded Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA) have been sharing terrorist training camps in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for years [Link Doc 16], and HUA has increasingly been moving ideologically closer to al-Qaeda. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad is growing increasingly concerned as Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a leader in Pakistan's Harakat ul-Ansar has signed Osama bin Laden's most recent fatwa promoting terrorist activities against U.S. interests. [Doc 26]

* September 1998 [Doc 31] and March 1999 [Doc 33]: The U.S. Department of State voices concern that Pakistan is not doing all it can to pressure the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden. "Pakistan has not been responsive to our requests that it use its full influence on the Taliban surrender of Bin Ladin." [Doc 33]

* September 2000: A cable cited in The 9/11 Commission Report notes that Pakistan's aid to the Taliban has reached "unprecedented" levels, including recent reports that Islamabad has possibly allowed the Taliban to use territory in Pakistan for military operations. Furthermore the U.S. has "seen reports that Pakistan is providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance and military advisors." [Doc 34]

 

[dabong1]

Both groups of Taliban support each other, and have had joint bases in Pakistan. As far as the Drug/Warlords most support the Taliban. They work hand in hand in the drug trade.

The taliban banned poppy production while they where in power or at least bought it down......do you agree with that fact or not?

The US is in power now and has been for a few years now....longer then the taliban where in power i think,how come you have not wiped out the drugs trade......or do we measure your failure by taking everything into account and give you the benfit of the doubt but can not offer the same to the taliban when they where in power.

I have no problem with the US killing al qaeda people....they attacked you and you have every right to fight back but by attacking the taliban who had nothing to do with the 9-11 you do not have my support.

 

[Thomas]

The taliban banned poppy production while they where in power or at least bought it down......do you agree with that fact or not?

Yes the Taliban while in power did work to eradicate the poppies. However they now pay the farmers to grow the opium. This is proven from interviews with he farmers themselves. The Taliban see the opium trade as a vital cash cow to fund their insurgency. Now the famers are caught in the middle. The U.S. is now considering paying the farmers to not grow the poppies. This will allow the farmers the income to feed their families. Not sure how well this will work though since the Taliban will simply put a gun to the farmers head to make them grow it.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Note this was written just prior to 9/11/2001:

Taliban Wipes Out Afghan Poppy Crop

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (February 15, 2001) 8:19 p.m. EST

U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer.

A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.

"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier -- a sea of blood-red poppies.

A State Department official said Thursday all the information the United States has received so far indicates the poppy crop had decreased, but he did not believe it was eliminated.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.

The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.

The U.N. surveyors, who completed their search this week, crisscrossed Helmand, Kandahar, Urzgan and Nangarhar provinces and parts of two others -- areas responsible for 86 percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan last year, Frahi said in an interview Wednesday. They covered 80 percent of the land in those provinces that last year had been awash in poppies.

"We have to look at the situation with careful optimism," said Sandro Tucci of the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna, Austria.

He said indications are that no poppies were planted this season and that, as a result, there hasn't been any production of opium -- but that officials would keep checking.

Poppies are harvested in March and April, which is why the survey was done now. Tucci said it would have been impossible for the poppies to have been harvested already.

Karim Rahimi, the U.N. drug control liaison in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, said farmers were growing wheat or onions in fields where they once grew poppies.

The Taliban enforced the ban by threatening to arrest village elders and mullahs who allowed poppies to be grown. Taliban soldiers patrolled in trucks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. About 1,000 people in Nangarhar who tried to defy the ban were arrested and jailed until they agreed to destroy their crops.

"The Taliban have done their work very seriously," Frahi said.

Shams-ul-Haq Sayed, an officer of the Taliban drug control office in Jalalabad, said farmers need international aid.

"This year was the most important for us because growing poppies was part of their culture, and the first years are always the most difficult," he said.

Tucci said discussions are under way on how to help the farmers.

Mullah Amir Mohammed Haqqani, the Taliban's top drug official in Nangarhar, said the ban would remain regardless of whether the Taliban received aid or international recognition.

"It is our decree that there will be no poppy cultivation. It is banned forever in this country," he said. "Whether we get assistance or not, poppy growing will never be allowed again in our country.

Afghanistan, Opium and the Taliban

 

[pak-marine]

If there that big how come they dont win elections......have massive rallies in support of the TTP.?

Dont seem to have done that well in the elections if there that wide spread.......or are they all PPP supporters during the day and taliban at night?

No doubt there is a problem of extremist in our country but i think its a minority that can be crushed thriugh debate and the gun.

Out of a population of 180million if v have even10% extremists thats makes an army of 2 million FYI its bigger than PA's man power! does this sound like a minor isue to u? In elections we didnt had a 100 or 90% turn out secondly the sort of thick skull these guys have do u really think they will go out and vote in elections??

 

[dabong1]

Out of a population of 180million if v have even10% extremists thats makes an army of 2 million FYI its bigger than PA's man power! does this sound like a minor isue to u? In elections we didnt had a 100 or 90% turn out secondly the sort of thick skull these guys have do u really think they will go out and vote in elections??

And out of the 180million deduct all those that have nothing to do with this......little children-woman-old people ect and how many have you got left?

If the mullah parties could muster the support off course they would go for an election win.....if there that thick skulled why have they been in elections before?
I do agree though there is a tiny group that can not be talked to or bought to the peace table and we must kill them all.

 

[dabong1]

Yes the Taliban while in power did work to eradicate the poppies. However they now pay the farmers to grow the opium. This is proven from interviews with he farmers themselves. The Taliban see the opium trade as a vital cash cow to fund their insurgency.

With nobody to fight would the taliban carry on with poppy production.
I am pretty sure that any plan the US has for afghanistan will only succeed once pakistan core interests are taken onboard.

Now the famers are caught in the middle. The U.S. is now considering paying the farmers to not grow the poppies. This will allow the farmers the income to feed their families.

And its taken the US how many years to figure that simple gem of common sense up.

Not sure how well this will work though since the Taliban will simply put a gun to the farmers head to make them grow it.

You seem to forget that the farmers are the taliban.

 

[gambit]

I have no problem with the US killing al qaeda people....they attacked you and you have every right to fight back but by attacking the taliban who had nothing to do with the 9-11 you do not have my support.

Please read my comment about this on post 52...

http://www.defence.pk/forums/pakistans-war/31393-us-biggest-threat-say-pakistani-polls-4.html

 

[waraich66]

Pakistan's material, financial, and training support to the Taliban has been well documented.

Pakistan: "The Taliban's Godfather"?

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB227/8.pdf

Washington D.C., August 14, 2007 - A collection of newly-declassified documents published today detail U.S. concern over Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban during the seven-year period leading up to 9-11. This new release comes just days after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged that, "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil." While Musharraf admitted the Taliban were being sheltered in the lawless frontier border regions, the declassified U.S. documents released today clearly illustrate that the Taliban was directly funded, armed and advised by Islamabad itself.

Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the documents reflect U.S. apprehension about Islamabad's longstanding provision of direct aid and military support to the Taliban, including the use of Pakistani troops to train and fight alongside the Taliban inside Afghanistan. [Doc 17] The records released today represent the most complete and comprehensive collection of declassified documentation to date on Pakistan's aid programs to the Taliban, illustrating Islamabad's firm commitment to a Taliban victory in Afghanistan. [Doc 34].

These new documents also support and inform the findings of a recently-released CIA intelligence estimate characterizing Pakistan's tribal areas as a safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists, and provide new details about the close relationship between Islamabad and the Taliban in the years prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Declassified State Department cables and U.S. intelligence reports describe the use of Taliban terrorist training areas in Afghanistan by Pakistani-supported militants in Kashmir, as well as Pakistan's covert effort to supply Pashtun troops from its tribal regions to the Taliban cause in Afghanistan-effectively forging and reinforcing Pashtun bonds across the border and consolidating the Taliban's severe form of Islam throughout Pakistan's frontier region.

Also published today are documents linking Harakat ul-Ansar, a militant Kashmiri group funded directly by the government of Pakistan, [Doc 10] to terrorist training camps shared by Osama bin Laden in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. [Doc 16]

Of particular concern was the potential for Islamabad-Taliban links to strengthen Taliban influence in Pakistan's tribal regions along the border. A January 1997 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan observed that "for Pakistan, a Taliban-based government in Kabul would be as good as it can get in Afghanistan," adding that worries that the "Taliban brand of Islam…might infect Pakistan," was "apparently a problem for another day." [Doc 20] Now ten years later, Islamabad seems to be acknowledging the domestic complications that the Taliban movement has created within Pakistan. A report produced by Pakistan's Interior Ministry and obtained by the International Herald Tribune in June 2007 warned President Pervez Musharraf that Taliban-inspired Islamic militancy has spread throughout Pakistan's tribal regions and could potentially threaten the rest of the country. The document is "an accurate description of the dagger pointed at the country's heart," according to one Pakistani official quoted in the article. "It's tragic it's taken so long to recognize it."

Islamabad denies that it ever provided military support to the Taliban , but the newly-released documents report that in the weeks following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 1996, Pakistan's intelligence agency was "supplying the Taliban forces with munitions, fuel, and food." Pakistan's Interservice Intelligence Directorate was "using a private sector transportation company to funnel supplies into Afghanistan and to the Taliban forces." [Doc 15] Other documents also conclude that there has been an extensive and consistent history of "both military and financial assistance to the Taliban." [Doc 8]

The newly-released documents also shed light on the complexity of U.S. diplomacy with Pakistan as the State Department has struggled to maintain the U.S.-Pakistan alliance amid concerns over the rise of the Taliban regime. In one August 1997 cable, U.S. Ambassador Thomas W. Simons advises, "Our good relations with Pakistan associate us willy-nilly, so we need to be extremely careful about Pakistani proposals that draw us even closer," adding that, "Pakistan is a party rather than just a mediator [in Afghanistan]." [Doc 24] In another 1997 cable, the Embassy asserts that "the best policy for the U.S. is to steer clear of direct involvement in the disputes between the two countries [Pakistan and Iran], and to continue to work for peace in Afghanistan." [Doc 22]

As to Pakistan's end-game in supporting the Taliban, several documents suggest that in the interest of its own security, Pakistan would try to moderate some of the Taliban's more extreme policies. [Doc 8] But the Taliban have a long history of resistance to external interests, and the actual extent of Pakistani influence over the Taliban during this period remains largely speculative. As the State Department commented in a cable from late-1995, "Although Pakistan has reportedly assured Tehran and Tashkent that it can control the Taliban, we remain unconvinced. Pakistan surely has some influence on the Taliban, but it falls short of being able to call the shots." [Doc 7]

Highlights

* August 1996: Pakistan Intelligence (ISID) "provides at least $30,000 - and possibly as much as $60,000 - per month" to the militant Kashmiri group Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA). Despite this aid, the group is reaching out to sponsors of international terrorism including Osama bin Laden for additional support, and may in the near future become a threat to Islamabad itself as well as U.S. interests. HUA contacts have hinted they "might undertake terrorist actions against civilian airliners." [Doc 10]

* October 1996: A Canadian intelligence document released by the National Security Agency and originally classified Top Secret SI, Umbra comments on recent Taliban military successes noting that even Pakistan "must harbour some concern" regarding the Taliban's impressive capture of Kabul, as such victory may diminish Pakistan's influence over the movement and produce a Taliban regime in Kabul with strong links to Pakistan's own Pashtuns. [Doc 14]

* October 1996: Although food supplies from Pakistan to the Taliban are conducted openly through Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISID, "the munitions convoys depart Pakistan late in the evening hours and are concealed to reveal their true contents." [Doc 15]

* November 1996: Pakistan's Pashtun-based "Frontier Corps elements are utilized in command and control; training; and when necessary - combat" alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. [Doc 17]

* March 1998: Al-Qaeda and Pakistan government-funded Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA) have been sharing terrorist training camps in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for years [Link Doc 16], and HUA has increasingly been moving ideologically closer to al-Qaeda. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad is growing increasingly concerned as Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a leader in Pakistan's Harakat ul-Ansar has signed Osama bin Laden's most recent fatwa promoting terrorist activities against U.S. interests. [Doc 26]

* September 1998 [Doc 31] and March 1999 [Doc 33]: The U.S. Department of State voices concern that Pakistan is not doing all it can to pressure the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden. "Pakistan has not been responsive to our requests that it use its full influence on the Taliban surrender of Bin Ladin." [Doc 33]

* September 2000: A cable cited in The 9/11 Commission Report notes that Pakistan's aid to the Taliban has reached "unprecedented" levels, including recent reports that Islamabad has possibly allowed the Taliban to use territory in Pakistan for military operations. Furthermore the U.S. has "seen reports that Pakistan is providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance and military advisors." [Doc 34]

Well engineered love story

I told you CIA/ISI both supported Afghan Mujahdeen (Talaban) in war againt Russia, Pakistan can not be blamed for Al Qaeda agenda ,which is independent organisation having no office but have network all over the world.


After Afghan-Russian Jehad, Pakistan had bilateral relationships with Talaban.Gen Zia had plan to support Kashmir Mujahdeen for which may be Talaban and Pakistan had developed understanding .

 

[Benny Goldenberg]

Thomas says .."Both groups of Taliban support each other, and have had joint bases in Pakistan. As far as the Drug/Warlords most support the Taliban. They work hand in hand in the drug trade".

According to Jason Burke (Burke by name NOT by nature!) ....

"Also, the Taliban do not get most of their money from narcotics, as is often said, but they receive a significant amount from private donors in the Gulf or elsewhere in the Islamic world who are much less keen to pay for violence directed at voting Afghans than strikes on western troops or their "stooges"."

Why Taliban high command prefers dead diplomats | World news | The Observer

You may remember Jason Burke from the BBC Power of Nightmares documentary (last 5 minutes). I believe he said something like Al Qaeda don't exist. After "7/7", he recanted. He definitely is improving over time with regards his "AfPak" commentaries.

 

[Thomas]

Thomas says .."Both groups of Taliban support each other, and have had joint bases in Pakistan. As far as the Drug/Warlords most support the Taliban. They work hand in hand in the drug trade".

According to Jason Burke (Burke by name NOT by nature!) ....

"Also, the Taliban do not get most of their money from narcotics, as is often said, but they receive a significant amount from private donors in the Gulf or elsewhere in the Islamic world who are much less keen to pay for violence directed at voting Afghans than strikes on western troops or their "stooges"."

Why Taliban high command prefers dead diplomats | World news | The Observer

You may remember Jason Burke from the BBC Power of Nightmares documentary (last 5 minutes). I believe he said something like Al Qaeda don't exist. After "7/7", he recanted. He definitely is improving over time with regards his "AfPak" commentaries.

I stand corrected new estimates now say that they receive less then originally thought. They only receive around 70 million a year. which would put donors in the higher category. However that still gives them complicity in the drug trade.

Taliban drug proceeds lower than thought, U.S. report says -- latimes.com