Afghanistan's Eastern Front
Along the Pakistani border, al Qaeda and Taliban fighters take their best shots
Across the border from Custer and his 82nd Airborne forces in Khost is what one government official refers to as "Suicide Inc., an al Qaeda and Taliban joint venture" based near the extremist stronghold of Miram Shah, Pakistan. Several loosely affiliated suicide cells send more and more young men into battle strapped with increasingly potent explosives. Suicide attacks increased sixfold in 2006 to 150, spiking after a September "peace deal" between Pakistan's Musharaf and leaders in the country's tribal areas, where Taliban and al Qaeda interests still hold sway. Senior Afghan intelligence personnel and U.S. officers believe that terror tactics seen in Iraq are fast "migrating" here. A new report to the U.N. Security Council states that suicide bombers attacking Afghanistan, usually with foreign funding, have been "emboldened by their strategic successes, rather than disheartened by tactical failures."
A local religious leader in Khost refers to the bombers as Osama bin Laden's "bastard children." Mothers and fathers lost to war, they have been schooled to kill in Pakistan's anti-American madrasahs, or religious schools. At least some of them are being pushed across the border with a nod and a blessing from Egyptian Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's wizened and bespectacled ideological lieutenant, say Afghan intelligence officials.
Al Qaeda also has cells inside Afghanistan—more precisely in Kunar province, which adjoins Pakistan's Bajaur tribal district where U.S. missiles targeted Zawahiri last year. Another Egyptian is ensconced in the Korungal Valley highlands, where 16 U.S. Special Forces on a mission to assist four Navy SEALs perished after being shot down in their M-47 Chinook transport helicopter in June.
"Abu Ikhlas, the Egyptian, was my student during the war against the Russians," says Mullah Nakibullah, a soft-spoken imam, who commanded hundreds of jihadis in the war against the Russians and now supports the Afghan government. "He is about 35 years old now and very ill tempered, but he is a good bomb and gun maker."
As elsewhere in the Islamic world, al Qaeda is mostly a facilitator. Bin Laden's experts channel and direct anti-American sentiment within disparate, home-grown Islamic groups and launch young men down the "buzrao" toward martyrdom.
Prisoners. Inside the medieval confines of the Tarta Beg fortress in Khost, several recently captured insurgents are on display. Clad in a prison gown, Hassan Khan, handcuffed to his first cousin, claimed he had been "forced to transport guns and shoot" at an Afghan police post by men with foreign accents. "They escaped, but we were arrested," he said, while eating a freshly plucked Pakistani tangerine. "We are all al Qaeda."
An American officer, Lt. Robert Marshall, who monitors guerrilla engagements in Khost and helps call in U.S. air support, says, "We talk to al Qaeda and the Taliban all the time over our shortwaves. They can also hear the Afghan comms [communications], and so they know when we are on the way and they take off."
Terrorist harassment comes in many forms. Last month, militants intercepted supply trucks headed to a remote U.S. base in Kunar province and systematically chopped off noses and ears from six drivers. A recent set of posters on display in mosques and on roadsides in the Khost region warned Afghans who collaborate with the U.S. infidels "one last chance" to leave their jobs and save their lives.
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