 | Not much new for RB'ers in this article, but notable for being published in Frontier Post, the National Daily Published form Peshawar and Quetta. |
At a time when the Taliban are making their strongest push in years to regain influence and territory across the border in Afghanistan, this mountain-ringed provincial capital has become an increasingly brazen hub of activity by the Islamist militia. Quetta serves as a place of rest and refuge for Taliban fighters between battles, a funneling point for cash and armaments, a fertile recruiting ground and a sometime meeting point for the group's fugitive leaders, say aid workers, local officials, diplomats, doctors and Pakistani journalists, Los Angles Time reported on Sunday. "Everybody is here," said Mahmood Khan Achakzai, a Quetta-based member of Pakistan's National Assembly. Quetta is the capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. The apparent ease of Taliban movement in and out of Quetta comes against a backdrop of increasingly bitter squabbling by authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan over who bears the responsibility for the militia's use of tribal areas in Pakistan as a staging ground for attacks that have killed at least 180 NATO and allied troops this year. Afghan President Hamid Karzai earlier this month blamed Pakistan for orchestrating Taliban activity. Pakistan, a key ally in President Bush's war on terrorism, in turn accused Karzai of seeking a scapegoat for his own failures. Pakistani authorities in Quetta insist they keep a tight lid on Taliban activity - a claim derided by many residents of this city of about 1.5 million people, and one backed by little evidence. Residents described nerve-racking random encounters with Taliban convoys bristling with weaponry, and volleys of automatic-weapons fire echoing from within some walled-off madrasahs. Taliban recruitment videos sell briskly. "For the Taliban, this is considered to be a safe haven," said Syed Ali Shah, a journalist. "They come here, they regroup and retrain." At a local madrasa, or Islamic seminary, black-turbaned young men gathered around a makeshift fountain on a recent day, making ablutions before noon prayers. One, then two, then half a dozen of them aimed steely glares at outsiders lingering near the rusty green gate of the mud-brick compound. Taliban ideology is openly preached at dozens of madrasahs in and around Quetta. From these schools, willing foot soldiers emerge by the hundreds to join the fight against Western forces in Afghanistan. The Taliban presence in Quetta is helped by the insular and secretive nature of Pashtun tribal society, the virtually unsecured border with Afghanistan and the city's large population of Afghan refugees, with whom the militia's members can readily blend. The city also has close historic, ethnic and cultural ties to the Taliban's birthplace, the Afghan city of Kandahar. Afghan provinces lying close to Baluchistan have been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting this year between Taliban and allied forces. The bulk of more than 115 suicide attacks against coalition troops have taken place in and near Kandahar, which was once the seat of Taliban power. Today in Quetta, it's almost as if the Taliban never left. Some Taliban-affiliated madrasas operate almost in the shadow of police and military installations. Pakistani police in Quetta say they have rounded up hundreds of suspected Taliban militants in the past year. |