Unity in Terrorism

the relationship between Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Militants in Pakistan

Simon Franzen

INSTMED 2012

E: o!ce@instmed.org W: instmed.org

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This paper examines the complex, often misunderstood, relationship between al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the various militant groups found in FATA (the Federally Administered Tribal Areas) in Pakistan, including the TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan). Much of what is commonly assumed about the Taliban, the TTP and al-Qaeda is based on misinformation, misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of historical events. The Taliban and alQaeda can in many ways be seen as sharing common values, although their ultimate goals remain very different. The Taliban were not part of the mujahedeen fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and emerged only in 1994. Al-Qaeda, for all the conspiracy, did not receive money from the CIA during the 1980s, and was only officially formed as an organisation in 1988. The creation of the TTP in 2007 is another matter, and was created as an umbrella organisation for various Pakistani militant groups, and maintains close ties with al-Qaeda. However, the Pakistani Taliban is not the same Taliban as the one formed in 1994, and although it swears its loyalty to Mullah Omar, its goals differ from that of the Afghani Taliban. We can speak of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in two broad strokes pre 9/11 and post 9/11. The attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon (as well as the failed attack on Washington DC with the hijacked flight 93), was the culmination of al-Qaeda as a tightly knit, hierarchical organisation. The subsequent War on Terror and the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 destroyed much of its organisational capacity; it also left the Taliban severely weakened. However, they both regrouped in the FATA region over a period of years, and al-Qaeda spread its ideology throughout northern Pakistan, coalescing with militant groups and local warlords. Before 9/11, al-Qaeda and the Taliban were very much two different organisations; today, it is not so simple, and in 2010, General David Petreus claimed that there is a symbiotic relationship between all of these different organizations: al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban ... They support each other, they coordinate with each other, sometimes they compete with each other, [and] sometimes they even fight each other. (cfr, 2010, http://www.cfr.org).

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This paper explores how this relationship came about, how it has evolved, and what it means for the future of combating al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and the TTP.

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While Al-Qaeda became the Worlds most infamous terrorist organisation after September 2011, the Taliban had come to prominence in the late 1990s, gaining their notorious reputation after the premeditated murder of the former President of Afghanistan Najibullah following their capture of Kabul on the 26th of September 1996. However, the underlying ideology of these organisations have a long and colourful history that dates back almost eight hundred years to the Islamic jurist Sheikh Ibn Taymiyya, born in 1263. According to Charles Allen, author of Gods Terrorists, Taymiyyas reinterpretation of Jihad lies at the heart of modern Islamist revivalism (Allen, 2007, pp. 45). Quoting two versus in the Quran, specifically chapters 2, verse 193 Fight against them until idolatry is no more and Gods religion reigns supreme. But if they desists, fight none except the evil-doers and chapter 8, verse 39 Tell the unbelievers that if they mend their ways their past shall be forgiven; but if they persists in sin, let them reflect upon the fate of bygone nations, Taymiyya could declare jihad in strictly literal terms: as unrelenting struggle against all who stood in the way of Islams destiny (Ibid, 2007, pp. 46). Although his teachings did not gain much traction during his own lifetime, his ideas lived on, and would eventually greatly influence what is today commonly known as Wahhabism, from the 18th century figure Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Today, his teachings form the basis for the Islam enforced in Saudi Arabia. Al-Wahhab went further than Taymiyya: the Wahhabi code stated that the moment a Muslim deviates from Al-Wahhabs interpretation of monotheism he became an unbeliever and the moment he became an unbeliever his life became forfeit (Ibid, 2007, pp. 56). A third vital influence for al-Qaeda and the Taliban ideology was the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, whose book Milestones, was published in 1964. Qutb argued that the Muslim community has long since vanished from existence, the community crushed under the weight of those false laws and teachings which are not even remotely related to Islamic teachings (Wright, 2007, pp. 30, quoting Qutb). His answer was to argue that We need to initiate the movement of Islamic revival in some Muslim country (Ibid, 2007:30, quoting Qutb), this was in order to fashion an example that will eventually lead Islam to its destiny of world domination (Wright, 2007, pp. 30).
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For this, wrote Qutb, There should be a vanguard which sets out with this determination and then keeps walking the path. I have written Milestones for this vanguard which I consider to be a waiting reality about to be materialised (Wright, 2007, pp. 30, quoting Qutb). Sayyid Qutb was hanged in an Egyptian jail in 1966 following dawn prayers, but his legacy, in many ways, lives on.

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In 1979, several events dramatically shaped the world view of Osama Bin Laden and his future deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. The year saw the overthrow of the Iranian shah by the Shia Islamist cleric Khomeini. This was the first Islamic takeover of a country and showed that the Islamists dream was eminently achievable (Wright, 2007, pp. 48). A second major event occurred on the twentieth November, the New Years day for the fourteenth hundred year in the Islamic calendar when an unknown number of men, women and children captured the Grand Mosque of Mecca on the last day of the Hajj, or pilgrimage. After two weeks of fighting the rebels surrendered, but not before hundreds of people were killed. The rebels had wanted to fundamentally change Saudi Arabia, believing it to have betrayed true Islamic values. They wanted to rupture diplomatic relations with western counties, throw out the Saudi royal family, stop oil exports to America, and throw all foreign persons out of the Arabic Peninsula. Osama bin Laden would claim in 1984 that that Oteibi [the leader of the insurgency] and his followers were true Muslims and innocent of any crime (Ibid, 2007, pp. 94). The demands made by Oteibi and the insurgency would later be echoed by Bin Laden. The third, and arguably most important event, was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. It was in Afghanistan that Bin Laden first met Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as the Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, who was to become a important figure for Bin Laden. By 1984 their acquaintanceship had deepened into partnership (Coll, 2009, pp. 253), as Abdullah Azzam and Bin Laden officially joined forces after Bin Laden argued that the Afghan fighters treated the few Arabs in Afghanistan as glorified guests, not as mujahedeen, and subsequently suggested to Azzam that we should take on the responsibility of the Arabs, because we know them better and can provide more rigorous training for them (Wright, 2007:102 quoting Bin Laden).

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Although there were not many Arabs in Afghanistan at the time, Bin Laden offered every Arab and his family who came to fight in Afghanistan a ticket, a residence and living expenses, roughly amounting to three hundred dollars per household per month. Azzam, in turn, produced a fatwa; eventually issued as the book In Defence of Muslim Lands in which Azzam argued that jihad was obligatory for every able-bodied Muslim (Wright, 2007, pp. 102). This was to be the basis for al-Qaeda, and four years later, on the eleventh of August a vote was taken in a meeting held by Azzam to create a new body to fight the retreating Soviets, who in May had officially declared it was withdrawing all troops from the country. A week later, on the 20th August, al-Qaeda alAskariya was officially established. It must here be noted that the so-called Arab contingent were a very small minority within the mujahedeen fighters. Of an estimated 175.000 Afghan mujahedeen, the number of Arab fighters at any given time in Afghanistan never amounted to no more than several hundred (Bergen, 2011, pp. 16). By 1992, al-Qaeda had settled in Sudan, but would return to Afghanistan in 1996, by which time the Taliban had conquered most of the country. The Taliban first burst into the scene in Afghanistan in 1994. Their rise to power in Afghanistan has been extensively covered by numerous authors, although some points are worth reiterating. Firstly, when the Taliban emerged, Afghanistan was in a state of virtual disintegration (Rashid, 2010, pp. 21). Many mujahedeen who had left Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew saw the ruinous state of the country and formulated a series of objectives. They aimed to restore peace, disarm the population, enforce Sharia law and defend the integrity and Islamic character of Afghanistan (Ibid, 2010, pp. 22). The exact nature and relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban at this point is difficult to ascertain, although the then Pakistani Interior minister Naseerullah Babar told journalists in Pakistan that the Taliban were our boys, following their capture of Kandahar in November 1994 (Ibid, 2010, pp. 29). Just before 9/11, the Taliban controlled more than 90 per cent of the country, with the Northern Alliance cornered in a small strip of land in north east Afghanistan. There are a number of observations which can be made here. Firstly, al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were not connected to the Taliban when they arrived in Afghanistan in 1996, instead living under the protection of the Jalabad shura until the capture of the city by the Taliban in September of that year.

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It was not until he met with the leader of the Taliban Mullah Omar in October in Kandahar, pledging his unconditional support and financial backing on condition he was given official Taliban protection (Allen, 2007, pp.292). The personal bond between the two men was sealed when members of their respective families married (Griffiths, 2009, pp. 229). A further important observation to make is that where the Taliban had no wish to export their beliefs or their doctrine (Ibid, 2009, pp. 228), bin Laden issued his Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places in August 1996, and praised martyrdom, writing Men of the radiant future of our ummah of Muhammad, raise the banner of jihad up against the Judeo-American alliance that has occupied the holy places of Islam (Burleigh, 2009, pp. 424). Although this was bin Ladens first such declaration, during his stay in Sudan, his imam Abu Hajer had in 1992 declared two fatwas the first one authorised attacks on American troops, the second one authorised the murder of innocent civilians; the original idea of al-Qaeda as a form of mobile army which would defend Muslim lands wherever they were threatened was replaced by a policy of permanent subversion of the West (Wright, 2007, pp. 175). After the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, it was, as Rashid writes, the end of an era. It changed the West, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the relationship between Pakistan and the West. Nothing has been the same since.

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It has been argued that since 9/11 al-Qaeda has metamorphosed from an organisation to a movement that can be called Al Qaedaism (Gul quoting Burke, 2010, pp. 12 13). This is vital if one is to comprehend the struggle now taking place in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in many ways explains the ongoing struggle in both countries. Following Operation Enduring Freedom, the USled invasion of Afghanistan, Rashid estimates that the Taliban lost eight to twelve thousand men, or roughly twenty per cent of their force, with double the number injured and up to seven thousand captured. The Taliban were seriously damaged, but not defeated (Rashid, 2010, pp. 220); to a large extent their leadership remained intact, and were able to reorganise in Pakistan. Bin Laden, although originally trapped in the Tora Bora Mountains, evaded capture and escaped to northern Pakistan, where he would elude capture for over ten years before finally being killed in May 2011.

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Once al-Qaeda and the Taliban had fled to FATA, they quickly began to use the respite to reorganise and re-equip. As many as ten thousand fighters were based in Kandahar in beginning of 2002 (Rashid, 2008, pp. 240). By late 2002 al-Qaeda set up training camps in FATA, and taught and recruited Pakistani and Kashmiri extremists. Pakistan had withdrawn troops from FATA to counter the threat of conflict with India, and so both the Taliban and al-Qaeda were free to move around at will (Ibid, 2008, pp. 244). Two years later, in 2004, FATA had become terrorism central - al-Qaeda was so well protected it was able to set up a media production arm, which in 2006 produced fifty-eight propaganda videos, treble the number of the year before (Ibid, 2008, pp. 278). In perhaps one of the most interesting books on the links between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Sayed Saleem Shahzads Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban documentes the transformation that took place within each of the organisations following their escape into Pakistan. Shahzad argues that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have never been identical in personnel or objectives, but that they still share a unique relationship, in which al-Qaeda aims to bring the Taliban and all Muslim liberation movement into its fold and to use them to forward its global agenda (Shahzad, 2011, pp. XVII). In doing so, al-Qaeda required a number of different factors, and Pakistans FATA provided the right setting. Pakistan was fertile ground for al-Qaedas extreme brand of Islam, and coupled with the popular firebrand anti-Americanism, Bin Ladens group was able to gain a strong foothold in the country. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the military dictator of Pakistan Zia-al-Huq worked to Islamicise the country, and the number of madrassahs in the country exploded. In 1979 there were 893 madrassahs, of which forty per cent were of the Deobandi school of Sunni jurisprudence; by the end of the 1980s, this figure had risen to more than sixty-five per cent (Allen, 2007, pp. 274 275). In 2002, the number of madrassahs in Pakistan were estimated by the minister of Religious Affairs to be ten thousand, with over seven thousand of them Deobandi. Out of 1.7 million enrolled students, 1.25 million were receiving a Deoband-based or Ahl-i-Hadith religious education (Ibid, 2007, pp. 275). The hard-line schools were often linked with the JUI (Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam), and were the schools from which the boys who later filed the ranks of the Taliban received their education (Allen, 2007, pp. 275). Disasterously, argues Gul, little attention was focused on the legacy of jihad (Gul, 2010, pp. 10). As such, by the time al-Qaeda moved into Pakistan, there were at least 600.000 youths who had trained and fought in Afghanistan and Kashmir since 1979, at least 100.000 Pakistanis were
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active in different jihadi cadres, and several hundred thousand people supported Pakistans Islamic religious parties (Shahzad, 2011, pp. 8). As such, Shahzad argues that although al-Qaeda initially struggled to acquire new allies in Pakistan, it was ultimately a relatively easy task because much of the groundwork had already been laid out (Ibid, 2011, pp. 10). Yet Pakistan did not see fighting between al-Qaeda and Pakistani forces until 2002 2003, which was followed in 2004 by the first peace agreement (the first of many that were to be broken) between militants and the Pakistani army. Significantly, the signatories representing the militants did not belong to the old tribal structures that had been in place for centuries. Instead they were Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathisers. Subsequently, al-Qaeda along with the Taliban re-emerged as a viable fighting force, with new tactics and gradually expanding support around the FATA. Not only did the conflict and violence spread to Pakistan proper, but the merge between the militants, al-Qaeda and the Taliban saw the increasing employment of suicide attacks, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The first suicide attack ever to take place on Afghan soil was the 9th of September 2001 attack on Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, al-Qaeda was behind the attack. But after that, not a single suicide attack was reported against US or Afghan forces, until 2004, when six attacks were reported early in the year. In 2005 twenty-one suicide attacks were reported, in 2006 the number was one hundred and thirty six, and one hundred and thirty seven in 2007. There were a reported 1100 casualties in 2006, and in 2007 the figure was an astonishing 1730 (Gul, 2010, pp. 132). In 2008, the head of al-Qaedas operations in Afghanistan, Mustafa abu al-Yazid, claimed suicide bombing was in accordance with Islam, saying it was a legitimate weapon against the enemies of Islam (Ibid, 2010, pp. 133). The first ever suicide attack in Pakistan occurred in 1995, and was conducted by an Egyptian; the second attack was in 2002 in Karachi. Between 2002 and 2006 there was a total of twenty two suicide attacks inside Pakistan, (Gul, 2010, pp. 135); in 2007 and 2008, there were more than one hundred and six attacks in the country (Ibid, 2010, pp. 145).

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The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban, or simply the TTP, was formed in December 2007. The TTP, argues Claudio Franco, was created on the basis of an anti-tribal, perhaps even pan-tribal, agenda ... the brains behind the TTP were able to introduce a mutual assistance
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mechanism designed to break the governments strategy, which was based on the tribes structural propensity for internal conflicts (Franco, in Giustozzi, 2009, pp. 280). Approximately forty militant commanders with some forty thousand men under their command formed the group in South Waziristan; almost all the top militant leaders operating in the tribal regions and NWFP (North Western Frontier Provinces) or their representatives who managed to set aside their differences (Hussain, in Lodhi, 2011, pp. 138). The TTP was quickly seen by Pakistan as an entity out of control, prey to al-Qaeda-leaning and Takfiri ideologies, yet he contends that based on current understanding of the organisation, the TTP is nothing more than a limb of the mainstream Afghan Taliban (Franco, in Giustozzi, 2009, pp. 281); still the TTP must be viewed as the most formidable fighting force within the FATA (Ibid, 2009, pp. 283). Hussain contends that the TTP charter clearly reflected al-Qaedas ideas, and that much of the top leadership has long standing ties to the organisation. Its first leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in August 2009 (the exact date is disputed) in a CIA drone attack in South Waziristan. Following the creation of the TTP violence in Pakistan went up, and in the period 2007 2009 more than three thousand people were killed in attacks. A further worrying development has been the failure of the international community to prevent the region to continue being a breeding ground for international terrorism. Almost all al-Qaeda related terrorist plots following 2004 can be traced back to FATA and Waziristan, including the July 7 attacks on London, as well as plots in Denmark and Germany in 2007. After the region was overwhelmed by the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, it is now easier than ever for foreigners to get in touch with al-Qaeda; prior to 9/11 it could take several months before a new recruit joined a training camp, but now it is reportedly just a few weeks (Rashid, 2008, pp. 82). Some of this can be directly laid at the feet of Pakistans ISI, and interviews in 2010 with former and active Taliban commanders have indicated that during the 2004 2006 period the ISI was actively encouraging a Taliban revival and assisting their war effort after two years of training Taliban on a large scale in Quetta and other locations (Riedel, 2011, pp. 81).

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This paper has shown the evolving nature of the Taliban and al-Qaeda over a period of time, primarily focusing on the post-9/11 world. We have seen adaptive shifts from both organisations, as they have successfully expanded to their surroundings in FATA and Waziristan, as well as the
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North-West Frontier Province. The creation of the TTP must be regarded a major failure for Pakistani long-term interests, and by default, for coalition forces in Afghanistan. In many ways, the fight in Pakistan and Afghanistan is not against the Taliban or against al-Qaeda, but against a neoTaliban force of various militant Islamic Jihadists, brought together through al-Qaedaism. In 2007, the same year the TTP was formed in December, Antinio Guistozzi argued that the old Taliban were turning into the neo-Taliban, as the movement was evolving in a number of ways: embracing new technologies, attempting to court educated constituencies, and embracing new sources of support. (Guistozzi, 2007, pp. 236). However, Guistozzi argued that the ideological aspect of the neo-Taliban was not well defined, and that the movement itself could take two paths. Either, become fully radicalised and become incorporated into a global jihadist perspective, or alternatively, following some form of settlement, become something akin to the Islamic parties of Pakistan, which combine reactionary attitudes with, for example, electoral competition (Ibid, 2007, pp. 236). Following the creation the TTP, the former would seem to be the case. By 2009, rifts between Pakistan and the U.S regarding the handling of the Taliban had flared up, and there were serious differences emerging between America and the various power centres in Pakistan which could adversely affect the entire region (Rashid, 2009, www.bbc.co.uk). These differences manifest as the US, Britain, France and NATO stake an enormous amount of political prestige on rapidly improving the security situation in Afghanistan and receiving more co-operation from Pakistan on combating the Taliban in both countries (Ibid, 2009, www.bbc.co.uk). While Pakistani officials were enraged about the use of drone attacks inside their own country, and insisted that the Americans share the technology with them, Western diplomats have claimed that Pakistan is choosing to fight only those Taliban who threaten the government, but refusing to act against those groups which are fighting in Afghanistan. (Rashid, 2009, www.bbc.co.uk). Rashid's article was accurate: it was written in July of 2009, and a mere month later, in August, the leader of the Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a drone led strike; in the same month, the Pakistani military abandoned plans to mount a military offensive against the terrorist group responsible for a two-year campaign of suicide bombings across the country as it concluded that a ground attack on its strongholds in South Waziristan would be too difficult (Ghosh, 2009, www.time.com). Yet 2010 saw a sudden surge in Pakistani military activity against the militants

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(Gul, 2010, pp. 213), although major targets such as Mullah Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are to this day still at large. Similarly, the Haqqani network, the Talibans real strength (Shazad, 2011, pp. 104), remains active, and should not, according to Guistozzi, be viewed as a separate body from the larger insurgency (Guistozzi, in Guistozzi, 2009, pp. 299). With the increasing number of drone attacks in the FATA region under the Obama administration, the death of bin Laden in 2011, and continued killing of many senior al-Qaeda and TTP leaders damaging their capabilities, it is tempting to be optimistic. However, it would be a mistake to presume an end to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan is in sight or expect a decrease in jihadist activity in FATA. It is impossible to imagine a situation in which the Taliban, TTP and Haqqani network will cease to fight - these factions depend on the ongoing struggle, they depend on the jihad for their survival and thus have to oppose any settlement. After all, if there's no war in Afghanistan, they have no reason for being (Semple, 2011, http://www.foreignaffairs.com). Yet, as has been demonstrated on a number of occasions, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are capable of restructuring, rebuilding and remodelling. To paraphrase Winston Churchill: the death of bin Laden did mean the end of al-Qaeda, or the beginning of its end. It is perhaps, the end of its beginning.!

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References
! Allen, C., 2007, God's terrorists: the Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad, Abacus, London ! Bergen, P, 2011, The Longest War: The Enduring Conict Between America and al-Qaeda, Free Press, New York ! Bruno, g., & Bajoria, J., 2010, Shared Goals for Pakistans Militants, [online] http://www.cfr.org Council on Foreign Relations available at: http:// www.cfr.org/pakistan/shared-goals-pakistans-militants/p22064 [accessed on 1st June 2012] ! Burleigh, M., 2009, Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, Harper Perennial, London ! Coll, S., 2009, The Bin Ladens: Oil, Money, Terrorism and the Secret Saudi World, Penguin Books, London ! Franco, C., 2009, The Tehrik-E Taliban Pakistan, in Guistozzi, A. (ed), Decoding the New Taliban, HURST Publishers ltd, London ! Ghosh, B., 2009, Pakistans Noncampaign Against the Taliban [online]www.time.com Time, available at: http://www.time.com/time/world/ article/0,8599,1919327,00.html [accessed 1st June 2012] ! Gul, I., 2010, The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistans Lawless Frontier, Penguin Books, London ! Griffiths, J., 2009, Afghanistan: Land of Conict and Beauty, Andre Deutsch, London ! Guistozzi, A., 2009, Conclusion, in Guistozzi, A. (ed), Decoding the New Taliban, HURST Publishers ltd, London ! Guistozzi, A., 2007, Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, HURST Publishers ltd, London ! Hussain, Z., 2011, Battling Militancy, in Lodhi, M. (ed), Pakistan: Beyond the Crisis State, C. Hurst & Co, London

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Rashid, A., 2008, Decent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Allen Lane, London

Rashid, A., 2009, Rifts emerge over tackling the Taliban [online] www.bbc.co.uk BBC, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ south_asia/8170142.stm [accessed 1st June 2012]

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Rashid, A., 2010, Taliban, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London Reidel, B., 2011, Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad, The Brookings Institution, Washington

Saleem Shahzad, S., 2011, Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11, Pluto Press, London

Semple, M., 2011, How the Haqqani Network is Expanding From Waziristan [online] www. http://www.foreignaffairs.com Foreign Affairs, available online at: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68292/michael-semple/ how-the-haqqani-network-is-expanding-from-waziristan?page=show [accessed 1st June 2012]

Wright, L., 2007, The Looming Tower, Penguin Books, London

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