Afghan, Pakistan Taliban at odds

Ralph Peters:

As an intelligence officer or journalist, you've got to know which sources you can trust. And a source who's never let me down told me yesterday that the terrorist multinational based in Pakistan is coming apart.

According to this insider's insider, the Pakistan-headquartered Afghan Taliban is furious at the Taliban's Pakistani wing because its assaults on the Islamabad government triggered a stunning backlash.

Unleashed at last, Pakistan's military launched a series of offensives aimed at smacking down the domestic Taliban. But those campaigns also crippled the Afghan Taliban's freedom of action -- and the murky Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) has been killing any Taliban leaders who resist its guidance. (As I've noted in past columns, Islamabad intends to dominate any Afghan peace deal.)

Now Terrorist Mutt is blaming Terrorist Jeff.

The news gets even better. Both Taliban wings are mocking al Qaeda as a bunch of wimps unwilling to help with the fight. Under siege from drone attacks and special operators, al Qaeda has hunkered down -- and is no longer paying the rent to which the Taliban are accustomed.

There's more. Multiple reports tell of a "shootin' war" between the Afghan Taliban and another brutal Afghan outfit, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb e-Islami mujaheddin (who've inched toward a deal with Afghan President Hamid Karzai). Meanwhile, the ruthless Haqqani faction -- aligned with the Taliban -- is supposedly squabbling with everybody.

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But if things are going better within Pakistan's Wild Northwest, our peace-and-love policies inside Afghanistan are in a muddle. Officers worry that Gen. Stan McChrystal's ploy of warning the Taliban that we're coming to take back Kandahar may backfire.

This "look out, here we come" approach is meant to convince the Taliban to fade away before we deploy, thus limiting casualties and property damage. But reports claim the Taliban's doing just the opposite: stockpiling weapons and bombs throughout Kandahar.

Aware that we're hyper-sensitive to blood and rubble, the Taliban may try to turn Kandahar into a slaughterhouse for civilians, a long struggle for our troops -- and, ultimately, a wasteland. (Taliban strategists may have drawn a lesson from the First Battle of Fallujah in Iraq, which the insurgents lost in the city's streets, but won -- with the media's help -- at the political level.)

The upcoming Kandahar campaign's also complicated by the perceived need to have Afghan forces play a greater role. While letting Afghans bleed for their own country is theoretically the right answer, the Afghan National Army isn't ready.

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I think the Taliban will put on a show of force and then fade away in Kandahar. That has been their MO lately and living to fight another day is apparently important to them now that they are losing.

The infighting in what was a Taliban sanctuary is very good news. It should lead to more valuable intelligence for targeting Hellfire missiles. We need to keep the pressure on.

I am concerned about our catch and release strategy in Afghanistan. It means having to buy territory more than once, and the price is paid in blood.