Taliban Mostly Terrorists Or Mostly Nationalists?

TW: Over the next couple of days I am going to post some bearish views of our involvment in AfPak. These folks would hesitate to increase our footprint in Afghanistan. Next week I will post some more bullish sentiments on increasing our presence.

This piece argues a key point regarding who are the Taliban. AFCEA believes they are primarily Pashtun nationalists. This afternoon I will post an opposing perspective.

From AFCEA's Nightwatch blog:
"Al Qaida is not welcome in Afghanistan by either side of the fight...The Taliban resurgence is a home grown development that did not appeal to, rely on or seek Arab or al Qaida help, according to information in the public domain.

After their ouster from Kandahar in 2001, the Taliban openly derided the Arabs of al Qaida and blamed them for the Taliban’s misfortunes. They vowed never to allow the foreigners -- especially the haughty, insensitive Arabs -- back into Afghanistan, consistent with the history of Pashtun xenophobia...

The premise that Afghanistan would become an al Qaida safe haven under any future government is alarmist and bespeaks a lack of understanding of the Pashtuns on this issue and a superficial knowledge of recent Afghan history.

In December 2001, Omar was ridiculed in public by his own commanders for inviting the “Arabs” and other foreigners, which led to their flight to Pakistan. The worst atrocities committed by the vice and virtue cops of the Taliban government were committed by the foreign thugs who accompanied bin Laden, according to media reports at the time. The Afghans did not behave that way against their own people, though they were brutish against the Soviets.

There is no factual basis for presuming that support for international Islamic terror is the norm in Afghanistan, rather than a tragic mistake. More than a thousand years of history reinforces the ethnic trait of visceral hatred of outsiders of all kind. Omar’s experience with the bin Laden and the Arabs revalidates the ancient wisdom.

...Bin Laden and his acolytes were/are exporters of a toxic world view that took root in Germany deeper than in Afghanistan. The Taliban were focused on subjugating recalcitrant Uzbeks and Tajiks of the Northern Alliance, not on exporting terror. No Afghans attacked the World Trade Center.

Even today, Omar and his merry men do not push – as they easily could -- the age old idea of a greater Pashtunistan that would join Pakistani Pashtuns with Afghan Pashtuns and would split modern day Pakistan north to south along the Indus River. The point is the security situation could be much, much worse and has been in the past, if the Quetta Shura were as brutish as some claim.

There are no good guys, but any successful strategy in Afghanistan will include the Pashtuns in some kind of power sharing arrangement. No matter who governs in Kabul in the future, bin Laden and al Qaida will not find a safe haven in Afghanistan again because almost all Afghans continue to agree on that point after eight years.

For the record, the leading exporters of violent revolutionary doctrines today are the remnants of al Qaida in Pakistan and Iran via the Revolutionary Guards Quds force and its Hizballah proxies. Pakistan is just a regional supporter of terror against its neighbors, but so is India from time to time."