By Peter Kelly.
The Taliban has hurt the only power to protect it for decades
Today, on 16th December 2014, the Taliban made the most tragic and devastating error since 21st September 2001. On that date thirteen years ago their representatives chose to defy the US rather than enforce the eviction of 9/11-planner and Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. They did so in the face of international condemnation and a hostile UN Security Council, the first and last time the Americans would be written a blank military cheque by the international community.
Thirteen years ago their error in judgement resulted in the end of their control over Afghanistan and loss of the Afghan civil war. A war that, until that point, they were winning. Despite expressing their regret and sadness for those killed in the twin towers attacks and wish for Bin Laden to leave their borders they responded to an aggressive United States with defiance and threats.
Only one thing saved them from eradication in the years following, the protective shield of the Afghan border with Pakistan. The Taliban was created by Pakistan and they were protected by it. In the lawless wilderness of the federal North West, alongside the border with Afghanistan, they thrived. From their safe haven they launched an insurgency across Afghanistan, less intense and violent than that in Iraq but no less resilient and eroding.
As the US continued to turn its back on Palestine, invaded Iraq, let loose their Private Military firms and left Guantanamo Bay open, they were losing the war of hearts and minds. The ranks of the Taliban swelled, branches such as the Haqqani Network became deadly and influential forces in their own right. As Al Qaeda faded from the world stage the Taliban lost nothing of their grip over the border regions. They thrived under the lacklustre eye of the Pakistani military and a political elite torn between control over their state and the important strategic shield the Taliban represented against a NATO and Iranian-dominated Afghanistan and a bargaining chip against the West.
This shield has shifted very little in the last decade. The military has grown less tolerant, more aggressive in its attempt to stamp out the Taliban’s stronghold in the mountainous regions. But every time they took territory the Taliban took it back, every time they killed scores of militants scores more joined them. Nothing changed.
That changes today.
Today the Taliban carried out an attack barbarous even by their standards, a horrific display of debased morals and desperate violence. This month the Pakistani military has killed hundreds of their number in a concerted campaign, and their response has been to massacre children. Over a hundred school children slaughtered in an attack the militant group has attempted to explain as revenge.
No attempt at denial, no sympathy or sorrow. Nothing of the moderation which tampered their response to 9/11. They have committed a grave error, one which may well lead to their end.
The children they have killed are the children of soldiers, of the local community. They are not westerners, they are not members of another religious group. They are Pakistani Muslims of the very groups that the Taliban draws its recruits. The impact of this tragedy will be widespread:
- They will feel the unrestrained fury of the Pakistan armed forces. There havealways been links between Pakistan’s security services and the Taliban, but in targeting the children of soldiers the Taliban has abandoned what remains of these links. The military response will be swift and overwhelming, bearing none of the restraint it once had.
- The political elite will be forced to abandon their sympathy for the group. They will not hold back the will of the part-independent military in its revenge, and will lose public backing for expressing sympathy for the fight of the Taliban against western oppressors. Their condemnation will release the military to act as it wishes.
- Anti-US sentiment will drop, if only moderately, as backing for the Taliban drops with it. Both these shifts will be small publicly, as those who back the group generally despise the military. However, both will be enough to hurt the Taliban’s recruitment efforts. As they lose hundreds more in the military response to come their operational numbers will fall dramatically.
- Pakistan-Afghan-US military cooperation may increase for the first time. Should this happen the Taliban’s days as a military force are numbered. They have been saved by their ability to operate cross-borders whilst their opponents do not. If this balance shifts they will be incapable of holding on to their mountainous territories.
The Taliban has been waging a war won not with guns, but with minds. By winning the moral high ground over the imperialistic oppressors of the West they have recruited young men in their thousands, a never-ending stream of new members which has made them impossible to beat.
In today’s massacre they have abandoned that high ground. They have betrayed the people who defend them, they have targeted the innocent and challenged the military to strike back with force they have never before wielded. Today’s tragedy is the most significant mistake made by any Islamist militant force in over a decade. In sowing nothing but sorrow to Pakistan they will in turn reap their own.
