By Abdul Haleem, Lin Jing, Xinhua,
Kabul : A glance to the ongoing Taliban-led militancy and the increasing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan illustrates the bleak feature of its impact on the region.
Emerged as a fighting force in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province in 1994 and ousted from power by a U.S.-led military invasion in late 2001, remnants of the radical hierarchy have regrouped and begun fighting back Afghan and the international troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The militants moreover have been fighting Pakistani government for its support extended to the U.S.-led coalition forces in war on Taliban and al-Qaida operatives in the region.
Conflicts and Taliban-related insurgency had left more than 8,000 people dead in the deadliest year of 2007 since the collapse of Taliban regime while so far this year over 2,000 people including some 700 civilians have been killed.
In their latest wave of violent attacks, the militants targeted Indian embassy with an explosive-laden car on July 7, killing 41 and injuring 141 others. A similar terrorist attack in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad a day earlier on July 6 left over a dozen people dead and some more injured.
Consisting largely from Pashtun, an ethnic group living on the either side of the Durand Line, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the outfit in a string of attacks last June smashed Kandahar jail in south Afghanistan and freed more than 1,000 inmates including some 400 Taliban fighters.
Similarly, in the same month on the other side of the border the Taliban operatives briefly overran Bara town in the semi-autonomous Khyber tribal area close to Pakistan city of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
Following the footprint of their fugitive leaders, Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar and al-Qaida head Osama Bin Laden, Pakistani militants’ commander Baitullah Mehsoud has vowed to continue Jihad or holy war.
Keeping in mind the geographically important location of Afghanistan and Pakistan as the two countries link South Asia to central Asia, there would be no durable stability in the region without peace in the two neighboring states.
However, Taliban nexus with al-Qaida network and backing poppy cultivation in the areas they have grip have already plunged Afghanistan into turmoil and the international failure to curb their activities have made durable peace a dream for the people of the militancy-hit region.
More than 80 percent of Afghanistan’s 8,200 tons poppy harvested in 2007 had been produced in Helmand province where Taliban fighters are more active than in other provinces.
Afghanistan exports 93 percent of illicit opiates to the world, according to Brigadier Parvez Khalid Babar, Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) chief of NWFP,
Moreover, militants in both side of Afghanistan and Pakistan became the greatest beneficiaries to the drugs export, Babar noted in a program organized by the ANF in NWFP marking the World Anti Narcotics Day on June.
He also stressed that Pakistan’s federal government struggles this year to contain and eradicate poppy in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) where both the Pakistani Army and the Frontier Corps NWFP are combating militancy.
More than 70,000 international troops under the command of NATO and U.S. in coordination with Afghan army and Pakistani troops have been combing up the region particularly the rugged terrain along the Afghan and Pakistan borders to kill or capture key leaders of militants but so far in fiasco.
The chief suspect of 9/11 attacks on the United States Bin Laden, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar and their associate Baitullah Mehsoud, are alive and active in the region but all the efforts have failed to locate them.
Parallel to military hunt down, the United States in efforts to capture or kill the most wanted men, Taliban chief and al-Qaida leader, has fixed head prices ranging from 15 million U.S. dollars to 50 million U.S. dollars, but all in vain as both the fugitive leaders have been leading their fighters against U.S. and allies in Afghanistan.
Mullah Omar’s vow to “continue Jihad or holy war till the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan” and international forces’ failure to annihilate his hardcore fighters from the country clearly speaks of prolonged instability in the post-Taliban central Asian state and surrounding nations.