Lull After Musa Qala May be Temporary

I can hardly remember a night when we were not attacked, but after the fall of Musa Qala, it’s been a month since we have come under fire,” said the policeman standing guard at the checkpoint. “That clearly shows the Taleban are weak.”



The Afghan policeman, who did not want to give his name, was manning the Naray Manda checkpoint in Nad Ali, not far away from Helmand province’s capital, Lashkar Gah.



Musa Qala, the Taleban stronghold that fell to a combined Afghan/NATO onslaught in early December, had great symbolic significance for both sides in the conflict.



For the Taleban, it was proof that they could take and hold an area for months at a time, imposing their own form of government and enforcing their strict interpretation of Sharia law.



To NATO, especially the British forces in Helmand, it was an embarrassment, a constant reminder of a deal gone sour.



In October, 2006, the British withdrew from a punishing standoff with Taleban forces in Musa Qala, under a controversial agreement that ceded control of the territory to tribal elders. In February, 2007, the Taleban swept in, raised their flag and set about making Musa Qala their base. They held and governed the district for over nine months.



President Hamed Karzai criticised the British over Musa Qala in a widely publicised interview he recently gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos.



“It took us a year and a half to take back Musa Qala,” he told reporters. “This was not a failure. It was a mistake.”



But December’s battle also cost the Taleban dear, both in lives and in prestige.



Some are confident that the confrontation dealt a mortal blow to the insurgents.



“We have conducted many operations in this area,” said Assadullah Wafa, the governor of Helmand. “The Taleban have lost a number of high-ranking commanders. And now they have lost Musa Qala - their heart, the nest from which they operate. This has been the biggest blow.



“When we and the international forces captured Musa Qala, it was clear to every single Helmandi that the Taleban no longer had the power to be a nuisance to the government and the esteemed people of Helmand.”



Some of Helmand’s residents are not convinced that this is the case - especially those living in districts still under Taleban control.



Observers estimate that the Taleban control well over half of Helmand province. Outside a few well-fortified district centres, the insurgents are the dominant power, and in some areas government authority is a distant memory.



“You are crazy, my dear,” sighed Nadir Shah, a resident of Garmseer district, in the south of the province. “In Garmseer, day and night are the same for us. Every day there is fighting, there are bombs. Our children are dying. There are lots of Taleban patrolling the villages. I do not think that the Taleban are weak after Musa Qala. That’s just nonsense.”



Washir, north of Musa Qala, has received much less attention than its famous neighbour. But it fell to the Taleban just a week after Musa Qala, in February 2007.



Mullah Musafer is the spokesman person for the governor the Taleban have installed in Washir district, Mullah Amir. He dismissed any claim that the insurgents were on their last legs, suggesting that the loss of Musa Qala was just a temporary setback soon to be redressed.



“Neither I nor the rest of the Taleban think that we have lost Musa Qala,” he said in a telephone interview with IWPR. “If Allah is with us, we will recapture it soon. We still have our power, and we will continue our operations in the near future. It is just the rule in fighting – sometimes we are ahead, sometimes the Americans.”



Like many Afghans, Mullah Musafer does not distinguish between the nationalities of the various foreign units. The majority of the troops in Helmand are in fact British, along with Danish, Estonian and others.



In relinquishing Musa Qala, the Taleban are likely to have lost a lucrative source of revenue. According to press reports, dozens of heroin labs – perhaps as many as 70 – were located and destroyed in the district.



Taleban sources told IWPR privately that when the insurgents took control of the town in February, drug traffickers relocated there so as to be beyond the reach of the Afghan government and its international allies.



Afghanistan is the world centre of the opium poppy industry, supplying over 90 per cent of the heroin sold on the European market. Helmand alone produces more than half of the country’s total, its dry climate and the lack of stability making it an ideal site for the industry.



The opium industry provides the Taleban with funding, through tithes collected from poppy farmers and according to some reports, protection money paid by the smugglers.



Mullah Mohammad Ibrahim, who lives in Washir district, indicated that the loss of income from Musa Qala had had an operational effect on the insurgents.



“I am quite sure the Taleban are weaker now that Musa Qala is gone. It was a safe place for them, with a lot of heroin factories, and a very dense presence of drug smugglers, who were paying a lot to the Taleban,” he said.



“The fighters all over Helmand were receiving help from this one very rich district. And now the number of attacks is down, which means that the Taleban are weak.”



For a weary population, any halt in the fighting comes as a welcome relief, whatever the reason.



“I hope the Taleban are weakened,” said Tahir Jan from the Greshk district, a key area between Musa Qala and Lashkar Gah. “I dream of these people at night. Before Musa Qala, you could see fighting every day in Greshk, but now they have slowed down quite a bit.”



But others say that the slowdown in the fighting is a conscious policy devised in view of the unusually harsh weather. Helmand is normally mild, even in winter, but this year it has been cold and wet.



According to another Greshk resident, who would not give his name, “The Taleban don’t want to attack areas where people live when it is cold and raining. They are trying to win the hearts of civilians.”



He went on to warn, “After Musa Qala, the Taleban are preparing new attacks. They will soon open fire again on the police and the government people in the region.”



With their usual bravado, Taleban leaders reject any hint that they are running out of steam.



“The Taleban did not originate in Musa Qala,” said Ezatullah, a regional commander. “We came from Islam. As long as Islam exists, we will exist. We are a little quiet these days, because we are planning new tactics. Very soon the enemy will realise whether or not the Taleban have been crippled by Musa Qala.”



One Taleban member in the Nad Ali district was, however, ready to admit that the insurgents had suffered from the loss of Musa Qala.



“To be honest, we were damaged a lot by the foreigners and their planes,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We don’t really care about the police, but when we have to fight these foreigners, then people get killed. We lose fighters and we have to slow down. We don’t have the right weapons to attack their planes.”



This man suggested that the recent battle had thinned out the command structure, noting, “We do not have a local commander any more, and we have to take orders from someone far away.”



Zabiullah Mojahed, a Taleban spokesman, rejected any notion that the guerrillas had even been weakened, let alone badly damaged.



“The Taleban will never give up, we will never get tired,” he told IWPR. “This is just a tactic. We control more than one district, not just Musa Qala.



“Why do you say the number of attacks is down? We are attacking Americans and police everywhere, every day in different provinces. There is no evidence to say the Taleban are weak. We will never give up until our jihad succeeds.”



A policeman standing beside his green official vehicle in Lashkar Gah agreed that the Taleban were still a force to be reckoned with.



“The Taleban are not weak,” said the policeman, who did not want to give his name or even say where he was currently posted. “They are still powerful. The number of attacks has gone down because of the winter weather. Before the winter started, we were under attack every day.



“The Taleban are very brave. They just run towards us and pay no heed to the bullets we fire at them.”



Mohammad Ilyas Dayee is an IWPR staff reporter in Helmand.