Speaking to the Nation in September 2002, President Bush officially announced the defeat of the Taliban and Al-Qaida in Afghanistan and said that Afghanistan was liberated from brutal oppression and, "the terrorists who wanted to occupy Afghanistan now occupy selves in Guantanamo Bay." Afghanistan witnessed a relatively peaceful time from 2002 until early 2006 when the first signs of the Taliban's strengths and return were observed. In the spring of 2006, the Taliban carried out their largest offensive since 2001, attacking British, Canadian and Dutch troops in southern Afghanistan.
Hundreds of Taliban swarmed into the south, setting up checkpoints, assassinating officials and burning schools. Suicide bombings quintupled to 136. Roadside bombings doubled. All told, 191 American and NATO troops died in 2006, a 20 percent increase over the 2005 toll. For the first time, it became nearly as dangerous, statistically, to serve as an American in Afghanistan as in Iraq.
The US Ambassador in Kabul, Mr. Neumann, said that while suicide bombers came from Pakistan, most Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan were Afghans. Captured insurgents said they had taken up arms because a local governor favored a rival tribe, corrupt officials provided no services or their families needed money.After cutting assistance in 2006, the United States plans to provide $9 billion in aid to Afghanistan in 2007, twice the amount of any year since 2001.Despite warnings about the Taliban's resurgence from Mr. Neumann, Mr. Khalilzad and military officials, Ms. Rice said, "there was no doubt that people were surprised that the Taliban was able to regroup and come back in a large, well-organized force."
In October 31, 2007 the New York Times quoted from the Guardian the first ever deployment of hundred of the Taliban fighters in strategic areas in Kandahar and warned it as the ousted group's decision to come back in Afghanistan. In the same year, the initial attempt to negotiate with the Taliban started, but was not viewed as a priority to Afghan government and NATO forces.
The Guardian revealed that in response to Afghan government's peace offer, the Taliban prepared a list of three pre-conditions for peace that included surrender of 10 southern provinces to the Taliban, release of their prisoners from Guantanamo within six months and the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan. This list of demand was passed to the Afghan government through the Taliban's former Foreign Minister, Mullah WakilMotawakil and the Taliban's former Ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaif, who had been released from Guantanamo in 2004.
According to the Guardian, the Taliban's list was prepared under an extreme condition when the group faced frustrating military defeat in Pakistan and Afghanistan and lost some of its key members like Mullah Dadullah, who was killed in a special operation in Afghanistan, Mullah AkhtarOsmani who was killed while crossing border to Afghanistan and Mullah Bradar who was arrested in Pakistan.
In July 2007, the Taliban kidnapped 23 South Korean aid workers from a highway in Ghazni province, which has proximity to Kabul and further displayed the group's growing power. In 2009, Afghanistan conducted the second presidential election and Hamid Karzai was declared the winner with widespread charges of fraud and corruption.
As Afghanistan was going through serious security perils and political instability at home, and declining support to the mission abroad, the President placed peace talk to the Taliban as his top priority. Both before and after the election, he promised to put an end to the war through negotiation.
In June 2010, the International Kabul Conference was held in Kabul with participation of all NATO member countries, Afghanistan's neighbors and representatives of major international institutions. The Afghan government submitted a doctrine to the Conference in which the government had classified the Taliban into extremists, moderate and some "disaffected brothers" and had requested the international community's confirmation to accept the moderate Taliban and talk to the disaffected once. The government also requested international community to remove the Taliban leaders' name from the United Nations' black list so that they can be given opportunity to come to the peace talks.
In july 2010, Afghanistan conducted the national peace Jirga to decide about the Taliban's future. The hand-picked and highly selective Jirga members passed a 76-article statement calling on the government to immediately start negotiation with the Taliban.
The Jirga also emphasized on a completely Afghanized peace process and explicitly urged the US to stay away from it. Unlike the Taliban that provided three clear prerequisites for peace talks, the Afghan government and international community have unilaterally requested the Taliban without any red-line or core values that needed precedence to peace. This trend has gradually divided the political leadership in Kabul and a new era of inter- government conflict and division was inflamed.
The worst scenario occurred between President Karzai's Office and the National Directorate of Security (NDS) the country's spy agency and the main actor in pursuing, hunting and interrogating the Taliban fighters and activists. In early 2005, NDS under the progressive and efficient leadership of Amrullah Saleh, had placed agents in the Tribally Administered areas of Pakistan to find out whereabouts of Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden.
After intensive searches and intelligence gathering, NDS informants gathered useful information that Osama was not in this area. The NDS informants had strong belief that Osama was living in a small town near Abbottabad, where five years later he was found and killed. In early 2006, NDS's finding was shared with the Pakistani leadership and President Musharraf himself in a meeting of both head of states and intelligence chiefs. President Musharraf angrily reacted to Saleh's report calling him lowly and not suitable to teach him intelligence.
The NSD was viewed as a progressive and growing institution by many Afghans and international missions for its proactive counterinsurgency role, but elements inside Afghan government believed that the spy agency's leadership was too harsh towards the Taliban and reports of torture of the Taliban prisoners were brought in to the media to further defame and undermine the agency.
As a sign of fragmentation and inter-government, in early 2010, a man claiming to be representing the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Mansour approached the NDS to speak for Mansour and open a door for negotiation. NDS personnel closely examined and scrutinized his identity and discovered that everything was false and closed the case.
But later, he was able to contact other Afghan officials, including the Office of President and was able to meet the NATO commander and Afghan President. After he left Afghanistan, officials came to know that the NDS' initial finding was true, but was not trusted because of serious inter-governmental conflict and miscommunication.
The change of guard in NDS in 2010 was highly suspicious and was attributed to the inter-administration conflict and some external pressures. Many developments have happened over the course of time, everything in the ground confirms that the fundamentalist group is no more a spent force, but a strategic threat that has seriously confused the Afghan government and international community where to place them. (To be Continued…)