May 15,2008:
As with the original Taliban back
in the early 1990s, the main source of current Taliban gunmen are the Madrasses
(religious schools) in the tribal areas of Pakistan and northern Pakistan in
general. Radio intercepts, prisoner interrogations and captured documents
indicate that up to 60 percent of the Taliban found in southern Afghanistan,
especially in Helmand province, are Pakistanis.
These
Pakistani religious schools got a major boost in the 1980s when Saudi Arabian
religious charities flooded the area with preachers and cash, as part of the
Saudi support for the Afghans battling Russian troops across the border in
Afghanistan. The Saudi preachers brought with them the Wahabbi form of Islam
(which preaches hatred of non-Moslems and the need for forcible conversion of
all mankind). Soon, the schools were full of the children of Afghan refugees,
and these were the source of the Taliban manpower that entered the Afghan civil
war in 1995, and soon defeated or absorbed most of the warring factions. The
Taliban was still fighting some of those factions on September 11, 2001, and
were soon swept from power when the United States sided with the anti-Taliban
factions.
But the
Taliban remained strong in Pakistan, where a military government in the 1970s
had backed Islamic radicalism as a possible cure for the corruption that had
hobbled Pakistan since the nation was created 1947. Islamic radicalism did not
work, as the Islamic conservative politicians and leaders turned out to be as
corrupt and inept as their less religious counterparts. But that effort, and
the influx of Saudi clerics and money for madrasses in the 1980s, left the
Pakistanis with a powerful political force that was willing to use terror and
intimidation to get their way.
The
Taliban are particularly popular with the Pushtun tribesmen along the Afghan
border. The government has long (even before there was a Pakistan) been
reluctant to take on the tribes. Contain them, yes, but not invade with the aim
of changing their attitudes. But that is what the Pakistani government is under
pressure, from Afghanistan, the U.S. and NATO, to do. If the source of Taliban
recruits in Pakistan is not cut off, the fighting will drag on.