Azizullah, the serious-minded son of a Pakistani farmer, yearned for martyrdom, his family said. The Taliban made his wish come true.
The zealots inspired him to jihad, trained him to shoot and dispatched him to fight the infidel Americans across the border in Afghanistan. So it was fitting that after he died last week, trapped under a hail of American firepower, a procession of black- turbaned men brought him home.
In Bagarzai Saidan, a village in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, hushed mourners streamed to Azizullah’s grave. A waft of incense clung to the evening air. The Taliban flag fluttered at one end of the grave; the black and white standard of Jamiaat Ulema Islam (JUI-F), an extremist Pakistani religious party that helps to rule Baluchistan, protruded from the other.
An hour earlier a radical cleric, Maulana Abdul Bari, addressed the village from a mosque. ”Azizullah was a true martyr, his place in paradise is guaranteed,” he said, his words echoing through a loudspeaker.
Azizullah died in Panjwayi, a violent district of Kandahar province where United States A-10 ”warthog” planes pounded a religious school filled with Taliban. The battle was the climax of Afghanistan’s bloodiest week since 2001. A succession of firefights raged across Kandahar and Helmand, where 3 300 British troops are being deployed as part of an ambitious Nato mission.
What worries Western commanders and their Afghan allies is not just the intensity of the storm but its direction. The Taliban recruit, resupply and coordinate their war effort from Pakistan, according to Western and military officials. The insurgents slip across at several points along the 1 500km border, a largely unpatrolled stretch of sand, rock and mountain. But the weakest blindspot is in Baluchistan.
A vast and largely lawless province, Baluchistan offers a range of hiding places. Returning from Azizullah’s funeral, this correspondent passed young men sauntering down the road or hunkered over tea at roadside cafes. All were dressed in inky black shalwar kameez and roughly tied black turbans — dress that is not native to Baluchistan but in Afghanistan is associated with the Taliban. Some insurgents melt into the camps that house more than 231 000 Afghan refugees in Baluchistan. Others shelter in madrassas run by local sympathisers such as JUI-F.
But the Taliban nerve centre is allegedly in the provincial capital Quetta. Once a British colonial garrison town, Quetta has long been a home to spies, smugglers and fighters. During the 1980s it was a base for Afghan mujahideen battling Soviet troops inside Afghanistan.
Today it still has a pungent air of intrigue. Police at checkposts guard for Baluch nationalist guerrillas who have dramatically escalated a bombing campaign against the state. Government intelligence agents sit indiscreetly in the lobby of the Serena hotel, tracking the movements of visiting foreigners.
Diverted Western aid, such as American vegetable oil and United Nations sheeting, are on sale in the main bazaar. For those interested, so are guns, heroin and hashish smuggled across the border from Afghanistan.
The Taliban presence is a matter of sensitivity for the Pakistani government. Relations with Afghanistan are at their lowest level in years, following criticism that Islamabad is doing little to close down the Taliban war machine.
Pakistan argues it is being unfairly blamed for an Afghan problem. Officials say it is impossible to seal a border populated on both sides by Pashtun tribesmen, who consider it a colonial anachronism. Up to 15 000 people pass through the main checkpost at Chaman every day, said military spokesperson Major General Shaukat Sultan. ”Everyone looks like a Taliban. You can’t arrest them all.”
Pakistan has taken other steps to address Western and Afghan concerns. Posters, calendars and audio cassettes celebrating Taliban ”martyrs” have been removed from shops. Four months ago police arrested more than 50 radical clerics who defied a ban on broadcasting sermons over loudspeakers. But many believe it could do more. Suspicions linger that elements within the country’s intelligence services take a lacklustre approach to clamping down on the Taliban fighters they once helped to arm and indoctrinate.
A Western intelligence source said several Taliban leaders are living in Quetta. But although Pakistan has killed or detained more than 1 000 al-Qaeda suspects since 2001, according to one recent report, it has only picked up a handful of Taliban militants.
The Taliban’s true strength, however, is felt across the border. Over the past six months the insurgents have ratcheted up their campaign to overthrow President Hamid Karzai’s Western-backed government — an idea that once appeared quixotic but has now acquired some potency. At least 32 suicide bombs and almost daily roadside bombs so far this year reveal an enemy that is better organised, funded and motivated than ever before. ”It hasn’t been this bad since 2001,” said a Westerner with several years’ experience in Kandahar. ”And I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.” — Â