Fifteen years of regret: The ex-Taliban commander who now lives in hiding

Los Angeles Times ^ | July 21, 2019 3 AM | Stefanie Glinski

[Zhang Fei]

Abdullah said most of his orders came from Peshawar, a city in Pakistan where many Afghan Taliban commanders still live and are educated, and a short drive — about two hours on well-paved roads — from Bati Kot.

It was the health facility explosion, in which several workers were injured and a much-needed clinic being built was left in rubble, that made him rethink his role.

“Before giving orders to destroy it, I went to have a look. I saw the construction workers. They were laboring away in the hot sun, stacking heavy bricks. We desperately needed healthcare at that time and were in the process of getting it. The explosion leveled it all.”

For Abdullah, things changed from there on. The bombing didn’t sit well with him, and he traveled to Peshawar soon after, trying to meet his commanders to officially resign from the Taliban.

“I was beaten and sent to prison for three months,” he remembered, saying he only made it out by promising that he would take up the fight again. In return, the Taliban promised a higher salary; $320 or 50,000 Pakistani rupees, the currency predominantly used in Nangarhar, a province bordering the Durand Line between the two countries.

Yet Abdullah had made up his mind.

“My hope was for jihad, but I was wrong for 15 years. I knew I needed to leave at all costs. The Taliban was using Islam’s name, but that’s not what they were fighting for. Many orders came straight from Pakistan, and I realized they were destroying Afghanistan.”

In the middle of a clear starry night, he fled Bati Kot in a red Toyota Corolla, a friend behind the wheel. His family followed soon after and, since the escape, they have been on the run.

[Zhang Fei]

Taliban deserter left after Trump started his term. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. Increased airstrikes can be demoralizing.

[Amberdawn]

Well, to paraphrase Golda Meir, until the Islamofascists love their children more than they hate the West, nothing will change. Yes, there will be one or two defectors from the “cause”, but for young, uneducated males in that part of the world, ‘jihad’ makes them “men” and gives them a purpose, and a sense of power.

[Zhang Fei]

[for young, uneducated males in that part of the world, ‘jihad’ makes them “men” and gives them a purpose, and a sense of power.]

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Tens of thousands isn’t that many. The thing about counterinsurgency is the need for patience. People talk about how wars used to be decisive and quick. Total war is decisive. But the friendly death toll from total war is massive. 300,000 GI’s died fighting Germany during WWII in less than 4 years. Less than 1% of that have died in Afghanistan. And the financial cost of total war is huge. WWII cost 2 years of economic output, as military spending was ramped up to 50% of the economy for 4 years. Whereas total appropriations for the Afghan campaign have amounted to about $1T over 18 years, or about 15 days of economic output.

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files?file=2018-10/54219-oco_spending.pdf

[Amberdawn]

IF counter insurgency is making inroads, that’s one thing, but I haven’t seen much talk of that on the military blogs I read. I agree total war is horrendous, but it has the salutary effect of winning outright and sends a message to others.

[IronJack]

Aside from the fact that savages gotta be savages, why would anyone blow up a healthcare clinic? Was it tainted by Western hands? Was it not halal? Was it just capable of doing some good, and therefore not in keeping with the murderous cult that is islime?

WTF is wrong with these vermin that they can't let even the most benign thing survive?

[TheNext]

LA Times, NY Times, always beginning with some rambling, wayward irrelevant story. They cannot just briefly just say the point.

Blah blah blah, I have no time for blah blah.

[Zhang Fei]

[I agree total war is horrendous, but it has the salutary effect of winning outright and sends a message to others.]

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Winning out right is possible with counterinsurgency - it just takes decades. There’s nothing uniquely incompetent about either this Afghan government or our counterinsurgency methods. It just takes a while to grind the opposition down when you can’t resort to Alexander-style methods that simply kill all the men (and occasionally, the entire population):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thebes#Destruction_of_Thebes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_campaign_of_Alexander_the_Great#Cophen_Campaign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Gaza#Consequences_of_the_siege
https://www.livius.org/sources/content/diodorus/alexander-sacks-persepolis/

Columbia fought a 50-year counterinsurgency campaign. It wasn’t high-intensity and only hundreds of thousands were killed, out of a current population of 50m, less than 1% of the total number. Whereas Germany lost 10% of its population during WWII. The idea that we shouldn’t do counterinsurgency because it takes a long time is like saying we shouldn’t fight crime because it’s a never-ending effort.

[Zhang Fei]

[Aside from the fact that savages gotta be savages, why would anyone blow up a healthcare clinic?]

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It’s not a religious thing. Insurgents can’t have the government doing good things for the population. To get recruits, insurgents have to maximize the population’s dissatisfaction with their lot in life. Having them blame the government for infant mortality and deaths from disease is helpful to the cause. That’s why the Taliban will bomb infrastructure and deny responsibility. Same kind of thing happened in Vietnam. And Iraq.

[Zhang Fei]

[Aside from the fact that savages gotta be savages, why would anyone blow up a healthcare clinic?]

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Most people aren’t so devout that they’ll deny the reality of their personal experiences. When a government clinic doctor saves your son, you won’t necessarily be the best friend of the entity that did the saving, but it will affect your readiness to strike out against that entity. Because you never know when another family member might need medical care. That’s just basic human instinct. It’s also why Israelis spend money treating Syrians who are otherwise hostile to them. And it’s why the Taliban destroy government infrastructure - to prevent the populace from forming any attachment to the ruling power.

[The Antiyuppie]

Good job, LA Times. Describe the friends car. Why?

[Amberdawn]

I wasn’t linking the two in an either/or scenario, just making comments. The Afghans are largely uneducated, the exception being perhaps the “elites” in Kabul. In the 1960’s, the women there wore skirts and went to college. I imagine that the uneducated out bred them and when radical islam made a comeback in Iran and elsewhere, it was only a matter of time before they made their presence felt. The Soviet Invasion was an impetus. I’m also thinking of Erdogan in Turkey. The secular Turks are being outnumbered by the more religious.

[etcb]

But the friendly death toll from total war is massive. 300,000 GI’s died fighting Germany during WWII in less than 4 years.

Surely you are not equating the Taliban and their war fighting ability with Germany which at the beginning of WWII had a modern army, navy, air force and most importantly, a well developed industrial base. The power imbalance between the Taliban and United States is much greater than between the US and Iraq during the first Gulf War.

[Zhang Fei]

[Surely you are not equating the Taliban and their war fighting ability with Germany which at the beginning of WWII had a modern army, navy, air force and most importantly, a well developed industrial base.]

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Actually, the Taliban is far stronger than Germany in the sense that it has staying power resulting from the American unwillingness to commit atrocity. Using Alexander’s rules of engagement, the US could kill every single person in Afghanistan with conventional weapons while losing at most a few pilots (only when CSAR efforts go awry) and drones. Current technology gives us the ability to kill anything that moves, 24 hours a day, weather permitting. But current mores prevent us from even waterboarding Taliban suspects we capture let alone slaughter the entire population*. That’s where the Taliban’s superiority lies - our unwillingness to do things the Alexander way.

* It wouldn’t even have to be the entire population. Alexander needed to live off the locals. He killed masses of people as an example to the survivors, and the rest fell into line in order to be allowed to continue existing.

[Zhang Fei]

Germany’s docility after the war was probably in part because we had killed, collectively, about 10% of its population, most of them fighting age men. If, after 9/11, we had killed 4m fighting age male Pashtuns, I suspect the country would be mostly pacified today.

[mrsmith]

Alexander is an excellent example to make an excellent point!

But, practiically not very helpful.
There’s been a few thousand years of advance in counter-insurgency tactics. It’s not just a matter of mores, but success. As you say it takes a little longer.
Typical of today’s mehod is the yrian/Russian “descrimanate” (barely) bombing of rebel areas.

[Zhang Fei]

[There’s been a few thousand years of advance in counter-insurgency tactics. It’s not just a matter of mores, but success. ]

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Advances in mores, declines in success rates. The Greeks ruled Persia for ~240 years after Alexander killed every man in Persepolis, the Persian capital. That’s about as long as the Republic has been in existence. Andrew Jackson extinguished Indian resistance by forcibly moving them into randomly-selected wastelands. Not quite as brutal as Alexander and not quite as effective, but good enough for the relatively small numbers he had to deal with. Alexander had little choice given that his men were few, and enemy civilians numerous.

https://www.livius.org/sources/content/diodorus/alexander-sacks-persepolis/

[mrsmith]

Vietnam is a good example of the success of “newer” tactics.
We “lost”, but today they are an ally.
Compare to ME where “Alexandrian” tactics are used and they never make peace with one another.

(Must point out that “insurgency” tatics have evolved in the cuuple thousand years since Alexander too...)

Hard call: do you want a friend in a generation, or a dead enemy now?

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Abdullah said most of his orders came from Peshawar, a city in Pakistan where many Afghan Taliban commanders still live and are educated

Pakistan comes in at #4 in the list of nations receiving the most US aid. They harbored Osama bin Laden, they harbored his son, they harbor the Taliban - and we pay them to do it.

[sport]

They have to do something to earn their money.

[Zhang Fei]

[Compare to ME where “Alexandrian” tactics are used and they never make peace with one another.]

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But they haven’t. If Alexander’s tactics were used in Syria, millions of Sunnis would lie dead in mass graves and most of the rest would either have fled the killing machine facing them or pledge their fealty to Assad. The reason Assad hasn’t? He literally isn’t strong enough in the face of Turkish and foreign Arab financial and material support for the rebels. And then there’s the strong likelihood of regime-ending Western air attacks against his regime if he openly slaughters hundreds of thousands of Sunnis.

Now, if the Sunnis had won, hundreds of thousands of non-Sunnis would probably lie in mass graves. So it’s possible to rationalize some of the draconian things he is doing now - he is fighting for the lives of the Alawites who, unlike him, can’t leave in the event of defeat. But the likelihood is that absent the possibility of outside intervention, if he had done a Hama-style massacre in every locale he pacified, Syria would be at peace today. Even though that fell far short of Alexander’s massacre of every male inhabitant, it brought decades of peace from Islamist radicals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre

But he’s not at liberty to do this today, given the possibility of Western intervention.