Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Sunday Herald:

HAJI MOHAMMED Karim, a towering Pashtun in a black turban who carried his crippled son in his arms, had come in search of a magical cure to the graveside of Kandahar’s al-Qaeda martyrs.

The Arab cemetery where 70 jihadis and their families were buried after they were killed in an air strike in 2001 has become a shrine for desperate Afghans. The graveside was crowded with childless women seeking sons and the fathers of mentally disabled boys. “They were foreigners but they left their homes and families to fight for Islam,” said Karim. “They are an example for us like our Taliban fighters today.”

The Arab cemetery, full of the green flags of martyrdom, is in the heart of Loya Wyala, a north Kandahar slum and Taliban stronghold. Its jumble of mud-brick homes is notorious for its thieves, gunmen for hire, and the longing of its jobless young men to fight foreign soldiers.

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In recent weeks Nato troops have swept through looking for crude bomb factories and arms caches prepared for the annual spring fighting season, which started last month as the snows melted in Afghanistan’s mountain passes.

For two summers now, Taliban fighters have been slaughtered in unequal battles against heavily armed Nato forces in the pomegranate orchards and opium poppy fields of southern Afghanistan. But this year they seem to have learned from their mistakes, and instead of fighting a tribal war of ambush and attack they are looking to their old al-Qaeda allies for inspiration.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a commander close to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, promised new tactics in this spring’s Hibrat (”teaching a lesson”) offensive. He said: “We are making attacks against Nato forces by IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and the results are very good. The enemy are suffering. There will be suicide bombs as well.”

The new strategy has already had a deadly effect. Four servicemen have been killed in recent weeks in and around Kandahar, including two US marines from the 3500-strong force sent last month to boost Nato troops.

Nato insists it is winning the slow battle against the insurgents, killing numerous mid-level enemy commanders over the winter. But there is no shortage of new recruits. Kandahar’s slums are full of bored young men drawn to the glamour of jihad, while disgruntled tribes, poppy farmers whose crops have been eradicated and villagers who have lost relatives to Nato bombs all provide a pool of manpower. The Taliban say there is a one-year waiting list to become a suicide bomber.

There are also fears that a more ruthless generation of Afghans from the religious schools across the Pakistan border is filling leadership gaps as the Taliban old guard is killed off. In 2006 suicide bombing was so new and controversial some Taliban traditionalists took out newspaper adverts distancing themselves from it and blaming foreign jihadis. Now there is little debate.

In the past fortnight, Kandahar has been hit by two suicide bombers, just days after one in Pakistan, the usual pattern as a new class of “graduates” leaves a madrassa over the border.

Analysts say Taliban attacks are up by about a third this year on last year, with many of them aimed at soft targets, like Afghan police and officials. Inside Kandahar, fewer Afghans now dare speak out against the Taliban after a murder campaign last year against clerics who condemned suicide bombing.

Mullah Brother, the new military commander-in-chief, has promised to target Afghan government officials in a bid to paralyse the already weak administration in southern Afghanistan.

Haji Mohammed Iesah Khan, the anti-Taliban leader of the Achakzai tribe, said Kandahar’s poor and uneducated turn to the Taliban because they have lost hope. He said only about one in 10 Pashtuns in the south support the Taliban - about the same as support Nato and the Kabul government, with the majority unhappy with both sides.

The Taliban’s ruthless new tactics may backfire, he said. “If they kill more civilians and more Afghans, they will lose the support of the people for sure. The poor go to the Taliban because they have lost hope, not because they believe in the Taliban.”