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Afghans say the Taliban problem lies in Pakistan | World View | 05/16/2011
Sen. John Kerry is making a high profile visit to Pakistan, trying to convince its leaders to crack down on the Afghan Taliban who find shelter within its borders.
But here in the Taliban's onetime capital Kandahar, located only an hour from the Pakistani border, Afghans are skeptical that the Pakistanis – and their Interservices Intelligence Agency or ISI –will listen to Kerry.
Just about everyone I've met here – including a school headmistress, seamstress, NGO head, laborers shopkeeper, journalist or engineer, and government officials – firmly believes the ISI is the puppeteer that runs the Taliban, in order to use them to control their Afghan neighbors. But most are so nervous about the Taliban and ISI that they don't want to be quoted by name.
Twenty six suicide bombers blew themselves up last weekend in a spectacular attack on government buildings and police stations all across Kandahar city, and most people believe they were either Pakistanis or Afghan youths who trained at Pakistani religious schools.
I was driven around Kandahar and shown the shell pocked buildings from which these youths fired on the headquarters of the mayor, the governor, the security police and the regular police. The father of one bomber who was from Kandahar said on TV that the boy went to a madrassa in the Pakistani border town of Chaman. He said the Taliban had called him to say he could find his son's body at Mirwais hospital in Kandahar.
"You go to war in Afghanistan but not with Pakistan. Why bomb us? Why not bomb the ISI?" I was asked by a hydraulic engineer named Abdullah as we sat at his dining table. He wasn't joking.
Abdullah recalled the days in 1997 when the ISI sent thousands of young Pakistani men across the border to help the Taliban take control in Afghanistan. Urdu speakers from Pakistan's Punjab province were patrolling Kandahar's streets, manning checkpoints. "They were controlling the city at night."
Now, he says, the ISI "brainwashes people, trains them, gives them the vests and tells them "the key to paradise is in your hands."
It seems that everyone one talks to has an anecdote about ISI misdeeds. One Afghan humanitarian aid worker told me : "The son of a doctor we know from Oruzgan wanted to go to school in 2005 when there were no opportunities there, so he ran away to Pakistan. There are recruiters at the border waiting to take boys to madrassas in Chaman. They offer food and shelter. The doctor's son spent six months there and he later told us not a single day was spent learning to read and write but all the training was to shoot and become a suicide bomber. He finally escaped back to Afghanistan."
A former police employee told me: "The killing of Osama bin Laden doesn't make a difference to us. The Quetta shura is what's important to us." He was referring to the Afghan Taliban leadership council, led by Mullah Omar. U.S. officials and Afghans believe the Taliban leadership is based in Quetta, a large Pakistani city about five hours drive from Kandahar, while Pakistani officials have long insisted there is no such shura.
"There are 12,000 madrassas in Pakistan that produce 120,000 students a year, " the police employee said, as we sat on low cushions drinking green tea and eating slices of cucumber. His colleagues nodded in agreement. "This produces all the manpower to destabilize the area."
One of his colleagues named Nurallah added: "I am an ordinary person and I can show them the Quetta shura. In Quetta every mosque has hundreds of Taliban. Why doesn't America take a stronger position against Pakistan? You support Pakistan and they use the same money to support terrorism."
Sen. John Kerry is making a high profile visit to Pakistan, trying to convince its leaders to crack down on the Afghan Taliban who find shelter within its borders.
But here in the Taliban's onetime capital Kandahar, located only an hour from the Pakistani border, Afghans are skeptical that the Pakistanis – and their Interservices Intelligence Agency or ISI –will listen to Kerry.
Just about everyone I've met here – including a school headmistress, seamstress, NGO head, laborers shopkeeper, journalist or engineer, and government officials – firmly believes the ISI is the puppeteer that runs the Taliban, in order to use them to control their Afghan neighbors. But most are so nervous about the Taliban and ISI that they don't want to be quoted by name.
Twenty six suicide bombers blew themselves up last weekend in a spectacular attack on government buildings and police stations all across Kandahar city, and most people believe they were either Pakistanis or Afghan youths who trained at Pakistani religious schools.
I was driven around Kandahar and shown the shell pocked buildings from which these youths fired on the headquarters of the mayor, the governor, the security police and the regular police. The father of one bomber who was from Kandahar said on TV that the boy went to a madrassa in the Pakistani border town of Chaman. He said the Taliban had called him to say he could find his son's body at Mirwais hospital in Kandahar.
"You go to war in Afghanistan but not with Pakistan. Why bomb us? Why not bomb the ISI?" I was asked by a hydraulic engineer named Abdullah as we sat at his dining table. He wasn't joking.
Abdullah recalled the days in 1997 when the ISI sent thousands of young Pakistani men across the border to help the Taliban take control in Afghanistan. Urdu speakers from Pakistan's Punjab province were patrolling Kandahar's streets, manning checkpoints. "They were controlling the city at night."
Now, he says, the ISI "brainwashes people, trains them, gives them the vests and tells them "the key to paradise is in your hands."
It seems that everyone one talks to has an anecdote about ISI misdeeds. One Afghan humanitarian aid worker told me : "The son of a doctor we know from Oruzgan wanted to go to school in 2005 when there were no opportunities there, so he ran away to Pakistan. There are recruiters at the border waiting to take boys to madrassas in Chaman. They offer food and shelter. The doctor's son spent six months there and he later told us not a single day was spent learning to read and write but all the training was to shoot and become a suicide bomber. He finally escaped back to Afghanistan."
A former police employee told me: "The killing of Osama bin Laden doesn't make a difference to us. The Quetta shura is what's important to us." He was referring to the Afghan Taliban leadership council, led by Mullah Omar. U.S. officials and Afghans believe the Taliban leadership is based in Quetta, a large Pakistani city about five hours drive from Kandahar, while Pakistani officials have long insisted there is no such shura.
"There are 12,000 madrassas in Pakistan that produce 120,000 students a year, " the police employee said, as we sat on low cushions drinking green tea and eating slices of cucumber. His colleagues nodded in agreement. "This produces all the manpower to destabilize the area."
One of his colleagues named Nurallah added: "I am an ordinary person and I can show them the Quetta shura. In Quetta every mosque has hundreds of Taliban. Why doesn't America take a stronger position against Pakistan? You support Pakistan and they use the same money to support terrorism."