Taliban's by sympathy base intact

By Sreedhar

Sympathizers of the Taliban-alQaeda in countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE feel that they are upholding their "faith" by supporting the Taliban-al-Qaeda combine. It was argued extensively by intelligentsia in the Islamic world that Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is the primary reason for this sense of injustice among the Muslims. Since the enemy is more powerful, they argue, the aggrieved can adopt any means to achieve their objective. They also that it is their moral duty to support people who are fighting for the cause of their faith. Their logic is also quite persuasive.

Those men, when fighting the Red Army from 1979 to 1989, were declared as friends by the US; at that point of time whatever they did was justified in the name of a justifiable cause. The same men while fighting for their own cause suddenly became 'terrorists'. All this leads one to conclude that whatever measures are adopted by the great powers to eliminate the Taliban-al-Qaeda, the latter cannot be eliminated totally. They can at best be silenced temporarily.

This regrouping and sympathy led to guerilla attacks by the Taliban-al-Qaeda combine. According to one Pakistani commentator, the rocket attacks on US-occupied Khost airbase on the night of 3 March 2002 was an incident in which the Americans were targeted. The US military authorities claimed that the two rockets failed to cause any human or material damage at the airbase. The US warplanes retaliated by bombing suspected rocket-launcher sites near Khost town.

Later reports indicated that the US had lost one of its soldiers in Khost, when a teenager reportedly ambushed a convoy. Another American soldier was wounded in the attack. Media reports indicated that up to end March 2002, Khost and the adjoining Paktia and Paktika provinces remained hostile territory for the American even though some tribal commanders crossed over to the side of the US.

The US-held Kandahar airport came under repeated attacks by unidentified gunmen. The airport, which serves as the biggest US base in Afghanistan, has been attacked quite a few times since November 2001 despite its extraordinary security. The airport, which also houses contingents of Australian, Canadian and German troops, is likely to remain a primary target for remnants of the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda.

A convoy of US troops was also fired at near Jalalabad during the Tora Bora campaign late last year. An American soldier was injured in the attacks. The killing of a CIA official, Johnny Spann, during the Taliban prisoners' uprising in the Qala Jhangi fort in Mazar Sharif was the first reported American casualty in combat in Afghanistan. It was followed by more American deaths in plane crashes in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The downing of the MH-47 helicopter by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters in the combat area near Gardez, capital of Paktia province neighbouring Khost, and the death of six US soldiers in the incident early this year is another indication that the Americans would continue to suffer casualties while serving in a dangerous place like Afghanistan. It would certainly embolden all those who want the US and its allies to poll our their troops from Afghanistan. The more the Americans stay in Afghanistan, the more they would become embroiled in local disputes and expose themselves to retaliation.

Taliban supreme leader, Mohammad Omar, was not taken seriously when he vowed to wage a guerilla war against the US military in Afghanistan. As has been mentioned earlier, his Taliban fighters failed to put up much resistance in the face of the intense US aerial strikes and most of them made a hasty retreat from town after town. Unlike the Taliban, Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda fighters fought until death in Tora Bora, Kandahar airport and a few other places. About a dozen injured Al-Qaeda fighters admitted to the Mirwais hospital in Kandahar before the fall of the city of Anti-Taliban forces also preferred death over surrender and died fighting the US soldiers and their Afghan proxies.

The appearance of the so-called "shabnamas" (night-letters) in Afghan cities such as Kandahar, Jalalabad and Khost in early 2002 was another cause for alarm for the US and its alliance forces. The pamphlets, mostly in Pashto and some in Perisan Dari, declared "jehad" against the foreign troops in Afghanistan as mandatory and urged the Afghans to evict he "occupation forces" from the homeland. They also warned the Afghans cooperating with the USA of serious consequences.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), after enjoying a degree of support in Kabul, is also attracting some criticism. By their own admission, the British troops in the ISAF have been fired at thrice in Kabul. They have suffered no casualties until now, but it seems the British troops are the primary targets for those opposed to the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan. One reason behind the attacks could be historical because Afghans are very mindful of their history. The British and Afghans fought three wars in the past, when the former tried to colonise Afghanistan. The Afghans put up a stiff resistance and won their independence.

The return of British troops to Afghanistan is not a very welcome move for some Afghans conscious of their past. Besides, the British troops are seen by many Afghans as America's stronger allies and are thus blamed for the ongoing military campaigns in Afghanistan. The British troops also earned the enmity of many in Kabul when they killed a man who was trying to take his pregnant sister-in-law to hospital in Kabul at night.

In spite of all the support mobilized by the US from its allies and friends across the globe, the sheer logistics of fighting a war in a country, which is 20,000 miles away, is not an easy task. It is going to be a prolonged and time-consuming war. In addition, the sheer identification of the enemy, the Taliban-al-Qaeda leadership and cadres, is also not going to be an easy task. As one Taliban sympathizer told me, "Every Afghan living in Pakistan cannot be targeted. The carpet bombing has reached its saturation point in terms of eliminating the Taliban-al-Qaeda cadres." In addition, if we go by US literature's portrayal of Osama bin Laden, he is till around in Afghanistan/Pakistan, knowing fully well that his Pakistani sympathizers can play any number of games to keep the US at bay in tracking time down.

Apparently, the Taliban-al-Qaeda combine is working on the principle of tiring out the adversary. If the US and its allies get stuck, like in Vietnam, the domestic pressures in those countries will automatically force them to withdraw. As one commentator put it, the US and its allies are going to commit mistakes like they made on 30 June 2002 (many in a marriage party were killed after being mistaken for a Taliban-al-Qaeda group), and people are going to protest over it. The situation can be cleverly exploited by people like Osama to turn the tide against the US in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In this game of patience, it is extremely difficult even for a superpower to sustain itself for a prolonged period across the seven seas.

At this point of time the Taliban-al-Qaeda combine is down but not out. They surrendered Kabul but not beyond that. There seems to be an element of truth that a low intensity conflict, more in the form of guerrilla warfare, will continue in Afghanistan for quite some to come. In the process what the US Central Command incharge of operations in Afghanistan can do and cannot do in an unconventional war fought by unconventional means, is being clearly exposed. For the time being the Afghans, tired of more than two decades of war, may feel comfortable with the US efforts. But the Taliban-al-Qaeda has been allowed to escape and regroup itself in Pakistan and the US is now completely dependent on Pakistan to achieve its war objectives.

From the Indian perspective, the US war on terrorism has reached a dead end. Some feel it may continue for years and the US many slow down the tempo of operations. The cumbersome ground operations in Pakistan are a time-consuming process with a fair amount of uncertainties. If by any chance the Taliban-al-Qaeda leadership is caught, the US may immediately call off the war. In such a situation, the compromises the US is making in fighting this inconvenient war would leave some legacies like it did at the time of the 1979-98 US war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; drug money being one example. That means India has to prepare itself to fight its war against terrorism, which has become transnational in character. The convergence of Indian and US interests is, therefore, accidential and limited to fighting terrorism.

BWC an exercise in futility?

By Kalpana Chittaranjan

The recent Moscow siege and Bali bombings prove beyond doubt that fighting terrorism is a constant global battle and akin to fighting a hydra-headed monster with endless heads. Also, September 11th and later events have shown that motivated terrorists will stop at nothing, while at the same time pushing the envelope to come up with more and more potent bang-for-the-buck destructive scenarios. Casualties in the thousands as a result of terrorist attacks becoming a more frequent occurence are not unthinkable or far-fetched.

Biological weapons (BW), which fall under the classification of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) because of its potential capacity to wreak havoc on a large scale, have already been sought in the weapon arsenals of the Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. It becomes imperative then for nation-states to prevent such weapons from falling into wrong hands. In fact, international efforts to curb the spread of BW resulted in the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention opening for signature as far back as on April 10, 1972 in London, Moscow and Washington, DC., after having been negotiated from 1969-1971. When the treaty came into force on March 26, 1975, it became the world’s first disarmament agreement as it banned not just the use but also the production of a whole class of weapons. Article I of the 15-article treaty, which is its fulcrum, states:

"Each State Party to this Convention undertakes never in any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile, or otherwise acquire or retain:

Microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes;

Weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict."

From having just 43 member states in 1975 upon ratification by the three depositary states of the USA, former Soviet Union and UK, it has now grown to 146 state parties that have ratified it with 8 signatories.

From the beginning, the US has played an important role in the formation and direction of the BWC. After announcing a unilateral renunciation of the first use of lethal or incapacitating chemical agents and weapons and an unconditional renunciation of all methods of biological warfare on November 25, 1969, it extended the ban to cover toxins on February 14, 1970. This was followed by similar announcements by countries like Canada, Sweden and the UK, which announced that they neither had stocks of BW nor intended to produce them. This resulted in the declarations being generally welcomed and contributed towards creating an atmosphere that was conducive to the undertaking of a commitment in the form of a binding international instrument to ban the use of BW.

As it became apparent in course of times the BWC suffered from a total lack of effectiveness as it did not have verification or enforcement measures, its history has since been attempts at giving the Convention effective instruments to have the means of catching cheaters. When a Special Conference of the BWC state parties met in Geneva in September 1994 it agreed that an Ad Hoc Group or AHG would be established ‘to consider appropriate measures, including possible verification measures, and draft proposals to strengthen the convention, to be included, as appropriate, in a legally binding instrument....’

Before the AHG met for the twenty-third time from April 23 to May 11, 2001, its negotiators had arrived at a 250-page draft, containing over 1000 brackets (indicating points of disagreement), known as the "Rolling Text". However, a 210-page compromise proposal for the Protocol known as the "Composite Text" was tabled by the AHG chairman Ambassador Tibor Toth of Hungary three weeks before the start of this session, to try and break the impasse in the negotiations as well as to reduce the points of disagreement. By the end of the session, the composite text had become the de facto basis of the Protocol.

US objections to the draft protocol were out in the open when the AHG met for its twenty-fourth and last scheduled session from July 23rd to August 17th 2001 during which the US Ambassador Donald Mahley announced on July 25th that his country could not accept it as it would ‘not improve our ability to verify compliance’ with the BWC’s global ban on BW and ‘would put national security and confidential business at risk’. All hopes for progress at the session vanished. The AHG failed in its mandated task of completing negotiations on a Protocol before the Fifth BWC Review, which was held at Geneva from November 19 to December 7 last year.

Less than two hours before the Conference was to end, the US proposed that it terminate the AHG’s mandate, which would have put a complete stop to a little more than a decade’s effort to strengthen the Convention. In order to prevent outright failure, the ninety-one states that were present, adjourned the Conference untill November 11-12, 2002. The US stand was surprising to many - given the US anthrax attacks in September-October 2001 as also the likely imminent threat of biological weapons being used against the US and its interests as prime targets by terrorists.

Following the Review Conference, President Bush announced proposals to strengthen the Biological Weapons Pact on November 1, 2001, in which he proposed a series of steps that state parties to the BWC could take, to strengthen it. However, these measures would not involve the AHG’s draft proposal. When the US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John R Bolton gave a speech in Tokyo on August 27 this year he spelt out the US position on the BWC. His speech made clear why the US under the Bush administration so vehemently objects to the AHG and its draft proposal. He said:

The United States rejected the draft protocol for three reasons: first, it was based on a traditional arms control approach that will not work on biological weapons; second, it would have compromised national security and confidential business information; and third, it would have been used by proliferators to undermine other effective international export control regimes....

Subsequently, Administration officials stated on September 18, 2002 that the draft protocol would not work and therefore, should not be salvaged. Earlier, it was reported that the US was attempting to cut short the RevCon meet. Senior US diplomats attending preparatory meetings in Geneva had threatened to publicly identify suspected treaty violators unless the conference was abbreviated and discussions about the draft verification protocol were avoided and said that they would oppose any further treaty meetings until the next review conference scheduled for 2006.

Meanwhile, alternative modalities to the draft proposal have been proposed. A Green Paper issued by the British Government on April 29 this year, entitled "Strengthening the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Countering the Treat from Biological Weapons" gives possible measures for consideration. Also, Jonathan Tucker, who had earlier been an arms inspector to Iraq and presently directs the Chemical and Biological Weapons Non-proliferation programme. At Monterey Institute of International Studies, called for a multilateral convention to improve security over biological agents in laboratories, which would reduce the threat of bioterrorism.

He proposed a biological security convention modeled on the 1994 Nuclear Safety Convention, which is an "incentive instrument" that does not enforce compliance but relies on member states recognizing the mutual benefit of nuclear safety. Tucker’s convention would be a "simple document because it would lack on-site verification provisions and avoid politically contentious topics such as export controls on dual-use equipment or technology transfer."

It has recently been reported that US efforts to develop non-lethal weapons and biological agents, ostensibly for defensive purposes, might undermine biological and chemical non-proliferation agreements. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will be publishing an article by Malcolm Dando, an international security professor at the University of Bradford, UK and Mark Wheelis, a microbiology professor at the University of California, which spells out several US research programmes that appear to violate the BWC.

While commenting on last year’s anthrax attacks, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg has pointed out, "Paradoxically, however, by breaking the taboo on using biological weapons, the attacks have engendered a threat that could dwarf Sept. 11. Modes of successful attack and public response have now been demonstrated for the instruction of future terrorists." Sadly, the US superpower status and its position on the AHG and draft proposal make it highly unlikely that the BWC will have verifying and enforcement measures anytime soon, which is bound to further delay global nonproliferation efforts of biological weapons.