By Ron Moreau , Sami Yousafzai | May 28, 2012 1:00 AM EDT
Qari Jamal has returned safely from a reconnaissance mission in Kabul. Short, thin, and immaculately dressed, the fresh-faced 25-year-old relaxes in a house near the Afghan-Pakistan border and tells how he toured the city with his digital camera, looking like an innocent civilian as he scouted sites for future Taliban attacks. “The work is both easy and difficult,” he says. “We have to photograph and survey the area, get the exact GPS coordinates, and note the daily movements of the security forces guarding the installation, without getting caught.” Polishing his glasses on his long, spotlessly white shirttail, he mentions one of the targets he and other undercover Taliban have been casing near NATO headquarters: the Ariana Hotel—a CIA operations center, Jamal calls it. “This is a most attractive target for the fedayeen,” he says. He’s talking about suicide bombers.
The young Afghan belongs to a dangerous new breed of Taliban militants. He grew up in a city, not in a mud-hut village in the backcountry, and he got his education not only at a madrassa but also at a public high school in Pakistan, and then at a college where he majored in information technology. His beard is neatly trimmed, and he doesn’t even carry a gun. Instead, he says, his weapons are a MacBook computer, a clutch of mobile phones, and an array of IT gadgets, from digital cameras to webcams and GPS devices. Citified techies like him are playing an essential role in helping the guerrillas to reshape their strategy with attention-grabbing surprise assaults in places that previously were spared from the heaviest fighting.
As brutal as the Taliban’s leaders can be, they’re not stupid. After two years of losing ground to the Americans in the countryside, they’ve concluded that splashy operations against urban targets have big advantages over attacks in rural areas: they generate more local and international publicity, require fewer fighters, and give the insurgents the appearance of being stronger than they may actually be. “This year 70 percent of our focus will be on the cities,” says a Taliban commander in Ghazni province who has seen the latest strategic plan for urban warfare from the Taliban’s ruling council, the Quetta Shura. “That’s the best way to put pressure on the government and the Americans, and to show them that we are as strong in the cities as we are in the countryside.”
The deadly new campaign has already begun. Immediately after President Obama’s latest surprise visit to Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul this May, a team of Taliban suicide bombers attacked a residential compound where Americans and other foreigners were living on the outskirts of the capital. Seven Afghans were killed in the assault. The previous month, guerrillas wielding machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and small arms had seized two high-rise construction sites in Kabul and opened fire on NATO headquarters, the Afghan Parliament, and the American and several other embassies. The attack mirrored a similar operation the insurgents launched against the U.S. Embassy and the NATO command last September.
Most other news outlets have attributed practically all of the recent attacks in Kabul not to the mainstream Taliban but to the Haqqani Network, an allied but distinct insurgent group. Those reports have it wrong, Taliban sources insist. Senior Taliban commanders boasted to Newsweek of those attacks at the time, and some expressed frustration that the Haqqanis were given credit. Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, confirms to Newsweek that the recent attacks in the capital were carried out by regular Taliban under the direction of Hajji Lala.
That’s the code name used by the Taliban’s seniormost commander in the capital, Mullah Hayatullah—the mastermind of the new urban strategy, according to Jamal and other Taliban sources. A logistics expert who keeps a steady stream of money, arms, and explosives flowing steadily into Kabul, he’s also the Taliban’s chief of operations on the eastern front and the Quetta Shura’s shadow governor of Kabul. Lala’s bloody résumé doesn’t end there. Mashal says he was probably behind the assassination of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, the chairman of Karzai’s High Peace Council.
As if that weren’t enough, he’s also believed to have orchestrated the assassination of another High Peace Council member, Arsala Rahmani, on May 13. Rahmani had been the Taliban’s deputy education minister before the fall of the regime in 2001, and before his death he was said to maintain close ties to his former associates. The Taliban’s chief spokesman, Zahibullah Mujahid, has denied that his group had any part in either killing, but senior Taliban sources tell Newsweek that the militants are determined to eliminate anyone, whether on the Kabul side or within their own ranks, who promotes peace negotiations between the insurgency and Karzai’s administration. The Taliban made an exception of sorts for talks with the Americans in Qatar, in hope of winning the release of senior insurgent commanders from Guantánamo Bay, but they abruptly broke off the dialogue in March, calling it “pointless.”
Instead, Taliban leaders have set out to transform and revitalize their war against Karzai and the Americans, assembling dozens of technologically sophisticated young militants like Jamal to help make it happen. The young wizards use their specialized skills to perform all sorts of essential duties, not only gathering and transmitting intelligence but facilitating communications and maintaining electronic security as well. They’re particularly valuable in urban reconnaissance. As experienced city dwellers they know how to blend in, checking out potential targets, ambush sites, and escape routes without attracting attention where an ordinary village-bred guerrilla couldn’t help being conspicuous.
Qari Jamal has returned safely from a reconnaissance mission in Kabul. Short, thin, and immaculately dressed, the fresh-faced 25-year-old relaxes in a house near the Afghan-Pakistan border and tells how he toured the city with his digital camera, looking like an innocent civilian as he scouted sites for future Taliban attacks. “The work is both easy and difficult,” he says. “We have to photograph and survey the area, get the exact GPS coordinates, and note the daily movements of the security forces guarding the installation, without getting caught.” Polishing his glasses on his long, spotlessly white shirttail, he mentions one of the targets he and other undercover Taliban have been casing near NATO headquarters: the Ariana Hotel—a CIA operations center, Jamal calls it. “This is a most attractive target for the fedayeen,” he says. He’s talking about suicide bombers.
The young Afghan belongs to a dangerous new breed of Taliban militants. He grew up in a city, not in a mud-hut village in the backcountry, and he got his education not only at a madrassa but also at a public high school in Pakistan, and then at a college where he majored in information technology. His beard is neatly trimmed, and he doesn’t even carry a gun. Instead, he says, his weapons are a MacBook computer, a clutch of mobile phones, and an array of IT gadgets, from digital cameras to webcams and GPS devices. Citified techies like him are playing an essential role in helping the guerrillas to reshape their strategy with attention-grabbing surprise assaults in places that previously were spared from the heaviest fighting.
As brutal as the Taliban’s leaders can be, they’re not stupid. After two years of losing ground to the Americans in the countryside, they’ve concluded that splashy operations against urban targets have big advantages over attacks in rural areas: they generate more local and international publicity, require fewer fighters, and give the insurgents the appearance of being stronger than they may actually be. “This year 70 percent of our focus will be on the cities,” says a Taliban commander in Ghazni province who has seen the latest strategic plan for urban warfare from the Taliban’s ruling council, the Quetta Shura. “That’s the best way to put pressure on the government and the Americans, and to show them that we are as strong in the cities as we are in the countryside.”
The deadly new campaign has already begun. Immediately after President Obama’s latest surprise visit to Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul this May, a team of Taliban suicide bombers attacked a residential compound where Americans and other foreigners were living on the outskirts of the capital. Seven Afghans were killed in the assault. The previous month, guerrillas wielding machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and small arms had seized two high-rise construction sites in Kabul and opened fire on NATO headquarters, the Afghan Parliament, and the American and several other embassies. The attack mirrored a similar operation the insurgents launched against the U.S. Embassy and the NATO command last September.
Most other news outlets have attributed practically all of the recent attacks in Kabul not to the mainstream Taliban but to the Haqqani Network, an allied but distinct insurgent group. Those reports have it wrong, Taliban sources insist. Senior Taliban commanders boasted to Newsweek of those attacks at the time, and some expressed frustration that the Haqqanis were given credit. Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, confirms to Newsweek that the recent attacks in the capital were carried out by regular Taliban under the direction of Hajji Lala.
That’s the code name used by the Taliban’s seniormost commander in the capital, Mullah Hayatullah—the mastermind of the new urban strategy, according to Jamal and other Taliban sources. A logistics expert who keeps a steady stream of money, arms, and explosives flowing steadily into Kabul, he’s also the Taliban’s chief of operations on the eastern front and the Quetta Shura’s shadow governor of Kabul. Lala’s bloody résumé doesn’t end there. Mashal says he was probably behind the assassination of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, the chairman of Karzai’s High Peace Council.
As if that weren’t enough, he’s also believed to have orchestrated the assassination of another High Peace Council member, Arsala Rahmani, on May 13. Rahmani had been the Taliban’s deputy education minister before the fall of the regime in 2001, and before his death he was said to maintain close ties to his former associates. The Taliban’s chief spokesman, Zahibullah Mujahid, has denied that his group had any part in either killing, but senior Taliban sources tell Newsweek that the militants are determined to eliminate anyone, whether on the Kabul side or within their own ranks, who promotes peace negotiations between the insurgency and Karzai’s administration. The Taliban made an exception of sorts for talks with the Americans in Qatar, in hope of winning the release of senior insurgent commanders from Guantánamo Bay, but they abruptly broke off the dialogue in March, calling it “pointless.”
Instead, Taliban leaders have set out to transform and revitalize their war against Karzai and the Americans, assembling dozens of technologically sophisticated young militants like Jamal to help make it happen. The young wizards use their specialized skills to perform all sorts of essential duties, not only gathering and transmitting intelligence but facilitating communications and maintaining electronic security as well. They’re particularly valuable in urban reconnaissance. As experienced city dwellers they know how to blend in, checking out potential targets, ambush sites, and escape routes without attracting attention where an ordinary village-bred guerrilla couldn’t help being conspicuous.
