Le Figaro : Afghanistan : 'Bin Ladin probably dead'

Afghanistan : 'Bin Ladin probably dead'

Commentary by political analyst Gerard Chaliand | le 16 juillet 2007

The situation in Afghanistan is confused and complex. The regime will not collapse, the Taleban are not about to prevail, and their eradication can be ruled out as long as their sanctuary in Pakistan guarantees a continued insurrection. So we will be there for as long time, and the United States is devoting renewed interest to Afghanistan, now that the fiasco in Iraq is acknowledged. Some 11 billion dollars has been allocated to this country during the past six months, which contrasts with the modest level of reconstruction aid during the past five years.

The southern and eastern areas are essentially Pashtun zones experiencing an insurrection whose scale is no longer in question, since last year. Despite British efforts, Helmand province has not been brought back under control, while Kandahar province, where the Canadians are fighting, is being harassed, and its governor was wounded in a suicide attack in May. The Dutch are in difficulties in Uruzgan province. Other southern provinces are in dispute, often to the Taleban's advantage - Ghazni, Zabul - east of Paktia, where Jalaluddin Haqqani's anti-government forces are also active - and Paktika, where Gulbuddin Hikmatyar's men are also fighting.

But the North of the country is virtually free from Taleban incursions and the West is relatively secure. Kabul itself suffered some dozen suicide attacks during the first six months of the year, but the population's everyday life is basically normal - that is, they have an average of two hours of electricity a day, and recent urban developments on the hills around the city have no running water.

On the military plane, according to CAPS (Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies,) during the first five months of the year there were 500 violent actions, including almost 60 suicide attacks. The coalition forces, which lost 191 men last year, suffered 40 losses between January and May, the Afghan national Army only 26, and the police just over 300. One thing seems certain: neither the Afghan Army (less than 40,000 men,) albeit better equipped this year, nor the police (50,000 men,) whose corruption is notorious, will be able to do without the presence of foreign troops in the coming years. The "Afghanization" of the war will not happen overnight.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF,) composed of 37 countries under Anglo-Saxon command, comprises 36,750 men, including 25,500 from combatant nations - the United States (15,000) Britain (5,200) Canada (2,500) the Netherlands (2,200) Australia (500) and so forth. The other NATO countries dealing with training tasks include Germany (3,000) Italy (1,950) France (1,000) Turkey (800) Romania (750) and Spain (550).

France's involvement is more than modest. It should be strengthened. Though geographically remote, the Afghan theatre, where we have been present in various ways for a long time already, is important, and we must participate there more activity, at least in training tasks, lest we agree to provincialize ourselves vis-a-vis the participating countries.

The United States has at least 15,000 men there within the framework of Operation Enduring Freedom, including special forces such as the Frontier Corps, not counting the presence of security firms performing various tasks, some of them military. In other words, on top of these 15,000 men, we can probably add a further 10,000. The opacity of some units' operations does not make it easy to determine their numbers.

Foreign troops, principally American, are increasingly unpopular. Since the absolute priority is to limit their own losses, aerial bombardment is increasingly frequently taking the place of combat on the ground. Civilian casualties are paying the price, which has prompted the head of state to echo their protestations. ISAF itself is worried about the US special forces' methods when they affect their combat zone. A major pendulum swing has begun whereby foreign troops are regarded with hostility even though they support the regime.

The Taleban, who have suffered heavy losses - including that of Mullah Dadullah, their military leader, in May - seem to be divided. But they have made some progress during the past year. On 31 May they succeeded in downing a Chinook CH-47 helicopter, which could be worrying, since most of the security operations use helicopters.

However, it is difficult to assess how people in the Pashtun area feel about them. Are they using terror to assert themselves, as Kabul keeps saying? Or does the fact that they speak the country's language, unlike the foreign troops, enable the insurgents to establish control, to ensure security without using coercion? One thing is certain: they exploit the media, often more skilfully than the Afghan state.

On the domestic plane, the head of state is considered irresolute, and the government weak and corrupt. Perhaps we should add that, contrary to the tradition of Afghan leaders, Hamid Karzai does not resort to the physical "liquidation" of his opponents, but co-opts them. Very few Afghans believe that the regime will succeed in improving their lot. The country's economic growth is not benefiting the population, and the 11 billion dollars allocated to reconstruction is nowhere to be seen in everyday life. Unemployment affects 35 per cent of the population and officials are underpaid. Some 70 per cent of people over 15 years old are illiterate, and the proportion is even greater among women, who moreover continue to submit to forced marriage and other traditional forms of violence.

Even without the Taleban, Afghanistan would be the scene of sharp political conflicts. In the North a National Front has emerged as a platform for many people's ethnic and political dissatisfactions. At Sheberghan in June Uzbeks loyal to General Dostom, who demanded the (Pashtun) governor's resignation at a peaceful demonstration, were shot at by the Army, and seven of them died.

In the South elements associated with Gulbuddin Hikmatyar are very much in evidence and have connections even within the administration. The presidential majority faces a tough political struggle.

The major external problem is clearly Pakistan, which is more unstable than ever, with, moreover, considerable Talebanization in the tribal areas and beyond. Let us remember that the US intervention in fall 2001 was prompted by the Al-Qa'idah attacks and the refusal of Mullah Omar, the Taleban's supreme authority, to hand over his guest, Usamah Bin-Ladin.

Al-Qa'idah Ideology Endures

Now, despite official accusations that the insurrection is helped to a greater or lesser extent by some 1,000 Al-Qa'idah combatants - mainly Uzbeks, but also a handful of Chechnya and Uigurs - the fact is that the Taleban are Pashtun and the foreign elements, who were hit hard in March by Commander Nasir, a Pashtun who joined the Pakistanis, took refuge in North Waziristan, in the Pakistani tribal zone, and the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. The terrorist training camps no longer exist, and the very few volunteers coming in from abroad undergo just a few days' specific training, usually in explosives handling, at the radical madrasas or supporters' apartments. Al-Qa'idah's original structures have been mostly destroyed (Muhammad at-Atif, former second in command, was killed in November 2001 in a US air raid in Kabul) or captured (Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, chief of operations, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, head of logistics; and Zin Abidin Abu al-Zubayda, head of recruitment, were arrested in Pakistan between 2002 and 2003). As for the leaders of the movement's regional branches, most of them were neutralized in 2006. This was the case with Saudi al-Muqrin in Saudi Arabia ("Al-Qa'idah in the Land of the Holy Places") and Jordan's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq ("Al-Qa'idah in the Land of the Two Rivers.") Two survive - Algeria's Abdelmalek Droukdal, who in January renamed his movement "Al Qa'idah in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb," and Malaysia's Noureddine Top, one of the last of the authors of the Bali bombing (October 2002, in which 202 died) still at liberty, who is continuing Jemaah Islamiyah's internationalist struggle in Indonesia.

Al-Qa'idah is now apparently led by Egypt's Ayman al-Zawahiri and a dozen deputies including Libya's Abu Layth. They seem to be in hiding along the Afghan-Pakistani border, and it is difficult to establish how well they can communicate with their supporters in the rest of the world. Be that as it may, they have launched a trend, and new jihadist cells, autonomous but less professional, are regularly formed by imitation, as shown by last week's events in London and Glasgow. Bin Ladin's latest video appearance dates from December 2004. Since then two audio recordings of his voice have been broadcast, though it has been impossible to date when they were made. In June [September] 2006 a DGSE [French General Directorate of External Security] note was revealed by L'Est Republican which said that, according to Saudi intelligence, Bin Ladin had died of an illness several months earlier.

Now rumours in the Pakistani-Afghan zone, but also leaks from intelligence services involved in the antiterrorist struggle, suggest that Bin Ladin is dead. Personally, I think his death is likely. Did we ever have confirmation of the demise of Abu Nidal, who for so long dominated the news about terrorism in the Near East?

Al-Qa'idah's ideology endures, and this movement still has a future, but most of the "global ware on terrorism" was created for political purposes by G.W. Bush's rhetoric. Since 12 September 2001 jihadists worldwide have successfully perpetrated some 40 major attacks, killing a total of no fewer than 3,000 people. As much as September 11. This is a modest record for an organization that promised the apocalypse, but we have probably not heard the last of it.