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STRATFOR.com
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THE INTERNET SOURCE FOR GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE
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Opposition Leader's Death a Blow to U.S. Strategy
October 26, 2001
Summary
A prominent Afghan fighter who opposed the Taliban has been killed, apparently, while attempting to encourage defection and revolt among Afghan Pushtuns. The death of Abdul Haq demonstrates the difficulties in Washington's strategy of whittling down support for the Taliban, and it will discourage further Taliban defections.
Analysis
Taliban fighters captured and killed opposition figure Abdul Haq on Oct. 26. Haq, an ethnic Pushtun, reportedly infiltrated Afghanistan from Pakistan several days earlier in an effort to encourage other Pushtun leaders to desert the Taliban. Haq was a key player in the U.S. strategy of eroding support for the Taliban regime among ethnic Pushtuns. Although details of his capture and death remain unclear, his reported execution will set back efforts to encourage further Taliban defections.
This turn of events bodes ill for U.S. efforts to build an anti-Taliban coalition inside Afghanistan, which -- along with maintaining external support for its military activities -- is key to winning the war.
Haq was a hero of the Afghan-Soviet war in the 1980s, when he commanded forces fighting the Red Army in and around Kabul. After the collapse of a Moscow-backed Aghan government in 1992, Haq became security minister in an interim mujahideen government, but he quit politics and moved to the United Arab Emirates when civil war broke out later that year. He relocated to Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1999, when the Pakistani government began attempting to rein in the hard-line Taliban regime. In recent weeks, he has worked to build support for a post-Taliban government involving exiled King Mohammed Zahir Shah.
(The Rest of the Story)
(c) 2001 Stratfor, Inc.
Dan
Opposition Leader's Death a Blow to U.S. Strategy. . .