Hazara Nation

The Age

Tribal loyalties and traditions and border sanctuary for extremists are undermining efforts to secure peace in Afghanistan.

WHEN Australian troops moved deep into Taliban territory in the rugged Chora Valley to build three bases for the Afghan army, they employed 300 local tribesmen as labourers.

But was it a case of opening the door to the enemy? Mike Hindmarsh, the Australian general in charge of Australian operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, says it is likely that some of the workforce were Taliban fighters.

He believes they would not have been hard-core Taliban or al-Qaeda members but second-tier, part-time fighters called on to fight when numbers were needed. Some would be paid by the Taliban and some would be coerced, while others simply liked a fight.

When word went out that the Australians were recruiting labourers, they lined up for work with the engineers.

The Australians see it as a positive. They believe the experience could woo these tribesmen away from the Taliban and show others that they can earn money without picking opium poppies or helping the Taliban attack coalition forces.

The episode illustrates the complexity of a situation where Taliban fighters melt back into the civilian population after carrying out attacks, where every Afghan household is entitled to own a gun and where the Taliban use proceeds from poppy crops to pay tribesmen to join its ranks and make payments to families of those killed in action.

In borrowing from capitalism, the extremists sometimes prove more efficient than the Government in Kabul. A police reservist in the dangerous Chora Valley complained recently that he had not been paid for two months.

The Chora area is dusty brown, bare of vegetation except for the small and startlingly green belts where the locals have found enough water to grow poppies for heroin production alongside their food crops.

Despite claims by commentators that the war cannot be won, Australian Defence Force head Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston says Australian troops are winning their war at a tactical level.

He says they are continuing their push to clear the Taliban out of a large area of southern Afghanistan's Oruzgan Province.

A new strategic approach adopted by NATO is still being implemented. Houston says that as the NATO plan - involving more troops, increased training for Afghan forces and much more rapid rebuilding of the instruments of governance and health and education systems - widens, the overall situation will improve.

Houston says the war can be won with a properly co-ordinated civil and military strategy.

He says the Australian strategy of using special forces to track down Taliban leaders, hide-outs and bomb-making factories far from the Australian base at Tarin Kowt is working well.

It puts the insurgents on the defensive so that they find it much more difficult to mount attacks on coalition forces and the Afghan Army. It also leaves the reconstruction troops free to win over hearts and minds and shows the locals that the insurgents can be defeated.

"We've established coalition control over a huge area and in the ensuing years we will go further," Houston says.

He says Australian forces have killed or captured a significant number of insurgent leaders in recent months, though he won't say how many.

The special forces commandos and SAS troops told Houston that after the recent death of Lance-Corporal Jason Marks they were more determined to pursue the militants.

Houston says locals are increasingly unhappy with Taliban killings and are regularly pointing out to Afghan and Australian troops where bombs have been placed.

But tracking down insurgents living within a civilian population contains its own recipe for tragedy, as when special forces went to a qala, a homestead surrounded by high earth walls, to capture a Taliban leader. The Taliban fought back and a baby was found dead at the scene.

An investigation concluded that the Australians were not to blame for the baby's death, but the war in Afghanistan has a dangerous built-in multiplier effect with centuries of tradition obliging an Afghan who loses a family member to extract revenge on the killer or his tribe. Some deaths blamed on the Taliban are revenge killings by relatives.

NEIGHBOURING Pakistan is seen as barrier to victory in Afghanistan, with its mountainous border with Afghanistan providing a sanctuary for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

On his way to visit troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, Houston stopped in Islamabad for talks with military commanders concerned that their country is being tagged as "terror central".

Covering the visit, I was standing outside the Serena Hotel in Islamabad's diplomatic enclave when two Pakistani officers approached.

They offered me a lift to the airport and we followed Houston's well-guarded convoy as it wove through the streets towards the local air force base.

For 20 minutes the officers dissected Pakistan's situation. They were convinced that the war in Afghanistan would last 15 to 20 years and there could be no military solution.

They said the coalition nations must keep their promises to help build the economy because, if more people had jobs, fewer would be willing to fight for the Taliban.

The pair said the members of the NATO-led coalition, including Australia, must talk to moderates in the Taliban.

They also wanted help with military technology, including Australian-made unmanned reconnaissance planes fitted with sophisticated day and night cameras to help guard the 2400-kilometre border with Afghanistan.

They rejected suggestions their country was encouraging the Taliban, saying they had paid a heavy price with 1200 soldiers killed in counter-terrorism operations.

Pakistan's internal security problems could only be sorted out once there was peace in Afghanistan, the officers said.

The big question for the allies urging officials in Islamabad to shut down the Taliban's operations in Pakistan is not whether they have the will to do it but whether it is remotely possible.

Pakistan's new Government is trying to run a country with one foot firmly in the modern world - it was long ago able to build its own nuclear bombs - and the other in tribal areas where loyalties and traditions pay little heed to modern borders or to orders from Islamabad.

On the day that Houston arrived in Pakistan, 22-year-old Rafia Ditta went to court to plead for an order allowing her to marry the man she loved, against the wishes of her father. A posse of relatives turned up and shot her, then followed her to hospital where they finished her off.

While that was happening, Pakistani police picked up 13 religious extremists who burned down a girls' school; a suicide bomber from the local militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan killed himself, a police constable and two civilians and wounded 12 other in North-West Frontier Province; and a Taliban force fired on an army patrol, wounding a soldier. That level of extremism leaves Pakistan's security forces with little time or energy to seal the border with Afghanistan.

Adding to Pakistan's problem are the Pashtun people, Afghan refugees who fled across the border almost 30 years ago to escape the invading Russians.

Many have married and merged into local tribal groups, which are now obliged by thousands of years of tradition to protect them. An estimated 2 million are still in Pakistan.

All of that makes for heavy traffic across a mountainous border, and in a land where men are likely to carry an automatic rifle it is difficult to determine who is a Taliban member and who is a returning refugee or a visiting tribal cousin.

Houston emerged from this week's meeting in Islamabad saying he was impressed with the Pakistanis' determination to deal with the border problems.

"We are very keen to engage them on counter-terrorism tactics, techniques and procedures," he said.

While Pakistan's porous border is likely to remain a problem, Australians have been warned by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that more casualties are likely in Afghanistan.

He has also warned NATO that Australia is not providing an open cheque and Australia will not be sending more troops until NATO members increase their contributions.

In Oruzgan Province, the Australians are working with a much larger Dutch force that provides air and artillery support. The Dutch are likely to pull out most of their forces in 2010 and a key issue is what happens if Australia is asked to increase its force to fill that gap. It may have to deploy its new attack helicopters, if they are ready by then, jet fighter-bombers and a force similar to the 550-strong group that is about to be withdrawn from Iraq.

Houston says only that the Government has no plans to send more troops. "And the ADF is currently pretty stretched, particularly the army and particularly in the sort of capabilities needed in both Iraq and Afghanistan."