AFTER A breakfast of oval-shaped unleavened bread, cheese, amber-coloured local honey and green tea, all served on plastic sheeting rolled out on the floor, we sit and wait for the men who have promised to meet us.
The rendezvous point is a mud-walled compound near Gardez, the ramshackle town that serves as the capital of Paktia province in southeastern Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan. This is a family home and every so often, a toddler peeps shyly around the door before running off to hide behind his mother’s voluminous skirts. The room where we sit cross-legged has white walls and no decoration save for carpets woven in traditional Afghan styles and brightly patterned rectangular floor cushions to lean against.
Suddenly the man who brought us here enters the room and gestures for us to stand up as another man walks in. This, we are told, is M. He is in his forties and joined the Taliban in the 1990s. He has six children, two daughters and four sons, all of whom live in Waziristan, a restive tribal region across the border in Pakistan which is home to many of the Taliban high command as well as the upper echelons of al-Qaeda. M is based out of Zurmat, a town some 20 kilometres from Gardez which is considered the nucleus of Taliban activity in Paktia.
“It is safer for my family to live in Waziristan,” he tells me. “We fighters go back and forth.” For M, the answer to the question of why he is fighting is simple. “American soldiers came to my country. I wanted to fight to get them out,” he says. “I am Muslim, and every Muslim must work to ensure our countries stay Muslim.
“It is my holy obligation to fight the invaders. I will fight every country that has a hand in my country.” M has agreed to meet me at the request of a senior Taliban figure who, I am told, has responsibility for around five undercover Taliban groups in the Gardez area.
During our entire conversation, he barely glances in my direction, focusing instead on the male translator. He speaks of a Taliban that is biding its time for a renewed offensive in the coming months as more than 17,000 extra US troops arrive in Afghanistan to bolster the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). “We are preparing for a new round of fighting. The Americans may have airplanes but in a few months there will be more face-to-face fighting,” M warns.
He claims the plans will involve attacks on cities and towns, including the capital, Kabul.
M defends the insurgents’ increased use of suicide bombings. In an interview with The Irish Times last week, Isaf’s deputy commander, Lieut-Gen Jim Dutton, said Isaf interpreted the resorting to such tactics as a sign of weakness on the part of the insurgents rather than strength.
M is defiant. “We do not have the weapons the Americans have, we have no airplanes, but we have suicide bombings.” He is somewhat nonchalant when asked about the Taliban’s links with al-Qaeda militants. “Al-Qaeda helped the Taliban so the Taliban will help al-Qaeda,” he shrugs.
But, he adds, the Taliban’s goals are limited to Afghanistan. “We want peace in our land and an Islamic government,” he explains.
Some time after M leaves the high-walled compound, three men arrive together. One, who goes by the alias of Haqparast (Righteous), has rheumy eyes set in a weathered face though he tells me he is only in his forties.
He leads a group of 20 men but says little. Next to him sits K, a rangy man with a pinched face who wears a dark grey salwar kameez and a black striped turban. K receives an allowance from Waziristan to run a unit of 40 men – known as the Motorcycle Group – responsible for patrolling the road from Zurmat to Paktika province. He too says little.
With them is H, a tall, well-built man in his sixties. He wears a navy-threaded cream turban arranged in thick coils on his head, a moss-green woollen shawl and white shalwar kameez. A former mujahideen commander during the war against the Soviets, H fought alongside Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the leading figures in the Afghan jihad. The associations Haqqani forged with Osama Bin Laden and other Arabs at that time remain strong today, and he and his thirtysomething son Sirajuddin now direct legions of insurgents from their redoubt in Waziristan, as well as providing sanctuary for foreign fighters and groups, including al-Qaeda.
The aging Haqqani, who locals say kept a house in Gardez during the Taliban regime, has exploited his old ties with people like H to keep his ranks swollen with men ready to launch attacks within Afghanistan. H’s story says much about how the insurgency in Afghanistan has broadened beyond the remnants of the original ideologically-driven core of the Taliban that ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.
“Although people like H were prepared to work with the new [post-Taliban] administration . . . now they find zero government presence in their home area, and lots of anti-government militants,” says one source familiar with his story. “For them it becomes a pretty obvious choice to sign up with the insurgency – they get reactivated as commanders and get an allowance to keep a couple of dozen fighters . . . This is about the insurgency tapping into the resources of the old commander networks.”
Asked why he joined the insurgency, H responds with another question. “If I came to your home and started fighting you, what would you do?” He complains about US air strikes that result in civilian casualties. “Why do the Americans attack our villages from the air, our wedding parties? Why do they kill small children in this way? They won’t come fight us face to face . . . I don’t like war but I have to fight the Americans.”
H is scathing about Afghan president Hamid Karzai, whose government he accuses of corruption. “Karzai doesn’t work for Afghanistan,” he says. “The Americans have him by the neck.”
Initially dismissing the suggestion that foreign elements are assisting the insurgency – “No one is helping us, just God and the Afghan people,” he declares – H later admits that Arabs and Pakistanis play a role.
His vision for Afghanistan is of a country free of foreign troops and ruled by “God’s book, the holy Koran, and God’s law, the sharia,” he says. “If the American soldiers are out of Afghanistan, the country will be like a garden.”