Taliban roaming freely in Afghanistan: Newsweek
DM Monitoring

KABUL—Until earlier this year, contacting the Taliban inside Afghanistan was a dangerous ordeal. Most were in hiding, living in the shadows in remote mountain areas. I could communicate with rebel commanders only by satellite phone. When I could arrange a clandestine meeting, the journey to the rendezvous site was hazardous, and once there, commanders and fighters were reluctant to talk or show their faces for security reasons.
Now the situation in Afghanistan has become tougher for American and NATO troops-but easier for me. As a result of the Taliban offensive that kicked off just before last spring, I’m dealing with a different insurgent movement. Significant guerrilla units are actively operating near major towns and even within a two-hour drive from Kabul. I can contact commanders easily on their cellular phones. They are more confident, are eager to talk and have started inviting “trusted” journalists to visit their newly secured zones. In September I visited a senior commander and more than 100 of his well-armed fighters lounging inside a bustling village that is located within sight of the main road and only a few miles from an American military base in Ghazni province. Villagers went about their daily chores, paying little attention to the gunmen. Days later I was even able to bring along my American colleague from news-week to meet guerrillas in another village nearby.
Most commanders and fighters now freely pose for photos. Still, it’s a risky business. In November, as I waited near a main highway in Ghazni, I was kidnapped by four heavily armed Taliban on motorcycles. They bound my hands and took my wallet, camera, cell and satellite phones, and the car I was riding in. Luckily, a commander happened by and probably saved my life. Even so, when I was released, the gunmen told me to run and not look back. I feared they’d shoot me in the back, but they never fired. And one evening at dusk recently as I was driving out of another Taliban area, an armed man riding on a motorcycle roared up and flashed his headlight. I froze in fear. But his intention was friendly. He warned me somewhat belatedly that my car had just driven through a minefield.
Agencies add: America’s top intelligence officer has warned Pakistan that it will soon have to decide what it can do about its tribal leaders’ failure to prevent the movement of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters across the Afghanistan border.
“Sooner or later, the government will have to reckon with it,” US Director of National Intelligence John D Negroponte was quoted as saying on Friday during a meeting with Washington Post editors and reporters.
But with elections in Pakistan coming, the United States understands that President Pervez Musharraf “has a domestic political balancing act to perform,” he added. In September, representatives of the Pakistani government signed accords with tribal elders in North Waziristan in which those leaders agreed that they would not allow border crossings “for any kind of militancy.”
In return, Pakistani army units withdrew from that area. Negroponte said that the “tribal authorities are not living up to the deal” and that back-and-forth travel by the Taliban and others “causes serious problems.” Although Negroponte said that the growing Afghan insurgency is “no threat to the central government in Kabul,” he noted that it is not clear whether the Nato forces there are large enough to handle the renewed fighting expected in the spring when the weather clears.
His downbeat assessment was supported by a recent report by Anthony H Cordesman, a former Pentagon official who has just returned from Afghanistan where he received briefings from a US embassy team, including US military commanders, the Post said. The Afghan insurgency grew in the past year because of financial an military aid from a sanctuary in Pakistan, while the weak Kabul government has not received enough military and economic support from Nato and the United States, according to Cordesman.