Taliban support escalating as civilian death toll mounts:
US cluster bombing
provokes anger
Taliban build base inside Pakistan
Colony provides medical care, cash and food
Rory Carroll in Quetta
Thursday October 25, 2001
The Guardian
Taliban infiltrators are quietly colonising Pakistani border areas and
setting up a logistics base which is being boosted by volunteers, medical
treatment, cash and food.
US warplanes roar overhead on their way to Afghanistan but they cannot
touch the Taliban networkers who are successfully tapping religious, tribal
and family ties, making the wild, sun-baked plains of Baluchistan province
a sanctuary from the bombing.
Several times a week ambulances deposit wounded fighters at hospitals in
Quetta, the province's biggest city, and in the opposite direction new
recruits and former veterans, including doctors, make the six-hour car
drive to Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual stronghold in southern
Afghanistan.
Daily donations collected at mosques, bazaars, homes and offices now exceed
£10,000, according to Said Sanan, a Taliban officer who defected to Pakistan
two weeks ago. "Baluchistan is important to the Taliban. They are soaking up
the support."
In an ominous development for the allies, two US helicopters came under
fire in Pakistan earlier this week as they tried to retrieve the wreckage of
another helicopter which crashed during a raid.
Some analysts say Baluchistan could become a rallying point from which
militants could launch a guerrilla campaign against a post-Taliban
government should they be ousted from Afghanistan.
Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, has discarded his
country's alliance with the Taliban in favour of cosying up to Washington
and the army and intelligence services appear to toe the new line.
But perhaps because popular support for Mullah Mohammad Omar's regime
has never been higher there is little crackdown on Taliban visitors. In
Quetta's Gulshan district there is a lane locals have christened Taliban Road.
Three white flags, an Islamic emblem, flutter over the 18ft brick walls
ringing a compound at No 21-8, and several times a day the pink corrugated
doors swing open for a small fleet of Hiace vans to go about their business.
Fighters fresh from surgery at nearby hospitals recuperate in the shaded
courtyard before returning to jihad. Recruiters seeking volunteers among
the Pakistani youth stay here, as do quartermasters who stock up on
supplies. The vans melt into refugee columns at the border crossing of
Chaman, 80 miles to the northwest, and surgeons in at least two hospitals
are understood to operate discreetly and for free.
Pakistani security forces patrol the vast frontier but their chances of
intercepting the Taliban or its material are minimal. Last week an Oxfam
water engineer discovered 135 rocket-propelled grenades and five
anti-tank mines in the air vent of an underground pipe.
The Taliban's popularity grows as the bombing continues. "My God, it is
terrible, the Taliban's support is increasing by the day," said Maudir Bakht,
a political scientist at Quetta's university. "Before the bombing they were
disliked by a majority of Pakistanis but now there is a level of moral and
humanitarian support which may start turning military."
Professor Bakht said Afghan refugees risked turning Baluchistan into the
staging post for a new civil war in Afghanistan should a pro-western
government replace an ousted Taliban. "We should not let them in," he said.
The violent street protests which convulsed the city at the beginning of the
air campaign have been snuffed out by police bullets but beneath the surface
Quetta is churning.
Abdul Khaliq is the richest man in Pashtoon Abad, a thriving satellite town
of 200,000 Afghan refugees who fled the Russians 20 years ago. "I never
supported the Taliban and nor did my neighbours but now we are totally
behind them. We are collecting money and are waiting for the call to fight." |
