Banditry has always been a big problem in Afghanistan.
There has never been an effective national police force, and army operations merely caused the bandits to scatter back to their villages.
The basic problem is that there is not one Afghanistan, but hundreds. Each tribe and warlord has its own army which polices its neighborhood. Everything outside that area is considered potentially hostile territory. Men are free to go outside the tribal area and become bandits. Loot taken in battle (or armed robbery) has always been a big deal in Pushtun tribal culture.
So while most Afghans can understand the usefulness of keeping the main road from Kabul to Kandahar open, many of those same Afghans condone their kinsmen robbing people on that highway, as long as it's done to "strangers" (not from our tribe or, even better, foreigners.)
While a lot of Afghans, especially those living in urban areas, try to get away from these medieval attitudes, the majority of those in the countryside are more traditional in their attitudes. This is where a lot of the violence comes from.
Journalists tend to blame it all on the "Taliban," but in fact, most of it is just those gun totting country boys doing what they've always done. More are on the payroll of some drug gang, than a Taliban outfit.
Life would be so much easier, so the conventional wisdom goes, if peace could be obtained by just destroying the "Taliban." But the real enemy is a set of cultural attitudes that aid and abet the lawlessness. It's a much more elusive target.
Cities like Kabul have become very different parts of Afghanistan. You see lots of women without veils (even as Western media report "Taliban terror creeping into Kabul"), and men without beards. Videos and music are freely available, as are alcoholic drinks.
A lot of these city slickers are fresh from the country, where the restrictive lifestyle of "tradition" continues to drive the more adventurous away. This is the sort of thing that offends tribal and religious leaders. These guys don't want change, because it tends to mean less power and money for them. That's why the Taliban has such a following in the countryside, and not in the cities.
News reports about Pakistani troops exchanging fire with NATO and U.S. helicopters at the border appear to be more stories than news. Many of the border guards (a force recruited from local tribes) are pro-Taliban (or on the Taliban payroll), and quick to fire on aircraft and any armed men they are not familiar with.
That's been going on for decades, and was the cause of tension with the Russians in the 1980s.
Real violence between Pakistan and the United States is unlikely, because the U.S. is the major financial and military supplier for Pakistan. Thus without U.S. support, military upgrades don't happen and the economy tanks. Religion is one thing, defense and economics are something else (that is more important to more Pakistanis).
Meanwhile, the government makes the right noises about "defending Pakistan's borders" while doing nothing to actually interfere with American operations on either side of the border.
Over 20,000 Pushtuns have fled from Pakistan into Afghanistan to avoid the violence between Taliban gunmen and the Pakistani army.
The Pakistani Taliban are under attack in several areas (Waziristan, Swat Valley and Bajaur) and losing in all of them. The head of the Pakistani Taliban has just died, after being ill for several months, leaving behind a power struggle. The Pakistani Taliban is in disarray and falling apart. This is being felt in Afghanistan, where fewer "volunteers" are coming across to help out the Taliban there.
In the face of this, the Afghan Taliban say they will keep fighting throughout the Winter. NATO responds by announcing another Winter offensive. This will get interesting, because NATO forces are more mobile in Winter.
Traditionally, Afghans stay indoors during the Winter. Getting a chill can be fatal, and the rain, snow and ice make it difficult to get around.
The government has again openly called for Taliban leader Mullah Omar to come negotiate with the government. This comes in the wake of several years worth of successful negotiations with lower level Taliban leaders.
Many of these guys have left the Taliban as a result. There are also reports, denied by the government, that Saudi Arabia is sponsoring secret peace talks between the government and the Taliban.
One has to ask, why would the Taliban want to negotiate? Put simply, while the drug gangs are doing well (despite heroin production falling 20 percent from last year), the Taliban are on everyone's hit list, and are taking a lot of hits.
Now defeated al Qaeda operatives are moving in from Iraq and elsewhere, and blowing people up. That generates more hostility than support, and this hurts the Taliban as well.
Within the Taliban, a debate is on over how to deal with the lack of progress. The Taliban have been able to generate more violence, and dire headlines in the West, but not much else.
True believers are getting discouraged.
U.S. and NATO commanders believe they can largely shut down the Taliban and al Qaeda if they have some more troops. The U.S. has agreed to send three more brigades next year. NATO nations, urged on by France, are trying to muster more troops for Afghanistan.
By next year, changes in Pakistan, and growing attacks on Afghan drug gangs are expected to weaken the Taliban even more.
The new government in Pakistan is behind the recent army offensives against the Taliban, and has just replaced the head of their intelligence agency, the ISI, which originally invented the Taliban back in the 1990s.
The ISI has long been full of Islamic conservatives, but the new head is different. How different will become apparent by early next year.
The U.S. Department of Defense has admitted that its main intel operation, the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) has successfully completed a two year test of allowing more DIA counter-intelligence teams to, well, "details were not revealed".
Normally, such overseas counter-intelligence operations involve feeding false or misleading information to enemy intelligence organizations, or finding out about enemy (or normally friendly nations) attempts to obtain American secrets.
The two year old test used the newly created Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) for these operations. The CIFA will now be merged in with yet another new agency, the Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center. The DIA, and other Department of Defense inel operations (the army, navy and air force each have their own), have longed engaged in counterintelligence work. So why yet another such organization? The three services each have specific counter-intel needs.
But this new DIA operation can concentrate on big picture operations. There is also the need for more counter-terrorism efforts in general, at least since September 11, 2001 and the apparent renewal of the Cold War.
Pakistan's main intel agency (ISI), for example, has been a major target, because ISI harbors many pro-Islamic radical members. That means some people in ISI not only have more knowledge of al Qaeda and Taliban operations than they acknowledge, or share, with the U.S., but also pass on information to the terrorists.
DIA has long used U.S. Army Special Forces operators for all kinds of intelligence work, and that has increased enormously since September 11, 2001. Special Forces people have been getting more specialized intelligence training, and used as field operatives (out of uniform). The Special Forces are one of the largest pools of people who speak the language, know the culture, and are trained to deal with violent situations in exotic parts of the world.
The DIA, and the rest of the intel community, has also been recruiting thousands of new intel operatives, and some of these have proved quite capable (most, alas, have not, but that is normal in this business.) The operators who have a talent for this kind of work are given more resources, and opportunities, which is apparently one of the reasons for the new DIA counter-intel operations. The DIA also has a lot more money for exotic and his risk ops. Unfortunately, it will be two or three decades before details of some of these operations become public. Some of these ops are stranger than fiction. But that's the norm when it comes to counter-intelligence work.
The Afghan government believes that key leaders in the Pakistani army and intelligence service (the ISI) are still making deals, some of them secret, with the Taliban and Islamic radical groups, to make it easier for Afghanistan to be attacked, while providing Pakistan some immunity from terrorism. This kind of cynical arrangement is a staple of politics, especially in the Moslem world.
Islamic radical groups will grant such immunity from attack in return for favors, then later resume attacks. So while the Afghan accusations may sound bizarre to Western ears, they make a lot of sense along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Behind the scenes, the U.S. is trying to get the Pakistani army and ISI to change their strategy, but that is not easy. The generals leading both organizations (and the current head of the Pakistani military used to head ISI) are more concerned with self-preservation in the long term, than in eliminating Taliban activity inside Afghanistan. To the Pakistani generals, the Taliban are just another in a long line of tribal troublemakers. And it's traditional to deal with these fellows using bluff and bluster, rather than anything more expensive (like bullets and soldiers lives). Ideally, you'd like to get the tribes fighting each other, which is exactly what is happening when the Taliban go to Afghanistan. This year, however, there is an additional complication. Several thousand al Qaeda terrorists (or recruits) have showed up, the aftereffect of the al Qaeda defeat in Iraq. It's not yet clear how many of the al Qaeda men will cross the border, or stay and try to take control of Pakistan. The ISI is negotiating, hoping to get most of these new thugs into Afghanistan. But al Qaeda needs Pakistan as a base, and NATO is leaning on Pakistan hard to not allow that.
The Taliban have developed more effective tactics this year. After a disastrous outing last year, the Taliban were under a lot of pressure to reduce their casualties this year, and they have. The Afghans have always been adaptable, especially when it is a matter of life and death, and there have been many small changes in Taliban tactics to counter the greater lethality of NATO forces (who use UAVs, smart bombs and better trained troops). Taliban forces now operate in smaller groups, keeping weapons (which can be identified from the air by UAV or aircraft cameras) hidden, and concentrate forces just before an attack. Cell phones and walkie-talkies make this easier. Taliban will also break off an attack quickly, knowing that the smart bombs are on the way. The Taliban will stay near the Pakistani border, because the Americans and NATO rarely pursue, although smart bombs are more frequently dropped on the Pakistani side. But once a group of armed Taliban have made it into Pakistan, they can melt into the civilian population. Which leads to another popular Taliban tactic, using civilians as human shields. It doesn't always work, and when it doesn't the Taliban are quick to claim another NATO atrocity. The Taliban have also been using a growing number of deceptions to try and get NATO smart bombs or artillery to hit friendly targets. A favorite one on the border is to fire mortar shells at NATO troops on one side of the border, and at nearby Pakistani border guards just across the frontier, to try and deceive NATO and Pakistani troops into believing they are firing at each other. NATO counter-fire radars have spotted the shells, and traced them all back to the same location. But such radars are not always available, and sometimes this trick works. Another deception is feed bad intel to the followers, and try and trigger a missile or smart bomb attack on civilians.
This year's Taliban tactics, however, are more disruptive and less concerned with taking permanent control of territory. The Taliban is trying to disrupt the Afghan government control (which was never very great to begin with), and wear down the foreign troops (and cause popular discontent back home that will lead to NATO forces being recalled). The Taliban are playing the long game, which is how things are done up in these hills, when you are dealing with a more powerful opponent. The Taliban have no doubt that their foe (the Afghan government and their foreign allies) are more powerful. The foreign troops in particular, are very deadly. The older Taliban, who fought the Russians in the 1980s, note that the NATO and U.S. troops are all equal to the small number of commandos the Russians used. Back then, the only Russians the Afghans feared were the few thousand paratroopers and Spetsnaz commandos they sometimes encountered. When that happened, the Afghans knew it was time to retreat, quickly. But now, even the Afghan Army troops are more lethal. They have been trained by the Westerners, and that has made a difference. But most of the opponents the Taliban face are anti-Taliban (or pro-government, there is a difference) tribal fighters. The "Taliban War" is basically a tribal conflict, just as it was back in the 1980s, against the Russians, and in the 1990s, when the Taliban captured Kabul, and almost took over the entire country (cut short by the U.S. invasion of late 2001.)
The Taliban are paying more attention to extortion and taking over business operations, on both sides of the border. The Taliban may be on a Mission From God, but God's children have expenses and must get paid. The more the better. The tribal areas are poor, and the Taliban attracts a better grade of roughneck if they can pay better. The Taliban leaders, in particular, want more reliable gunmen, if only to provide themselves with better personal security. NATO has stepped up efforts to track down and kill the Taliban and al Qaeda leadership. This is happening more often, and is disrupting Taliban operations in areas where key leaders are taken out. The American get more cooperation from Afghans in this, because the Taliban have increased their attacks on reconstruction projects. This year, more efforts are being made to kidnap foreign aid workers, and hold them for ransom. The Taliban could kill these guys, but the ransom routine has the same demoralizing effect on the aid workers, and raises badly needed cash as well. In the last week, two French aid workers were grabbed, and two Turkish ones were released, after ransom was paid, after being held a week.
The U.S. is doubling the number of MRAPs (armored trucks designed to deflect mine and roadside bomb explosions) in Afghanistan (to 1,600). These must be driven in from Pakistani ports. That will come in handy, because the Taliban are trying to take down the road based NATO supply line, that stretches from the Pakistani coast into Afghanistan. These trucks are protected by lucrative security arrangements made with tribes that "own" the roads. These guys don't like seeing this income threatened by a bunch of religious fanatics. Most of this fighting is taking place on the Pakistani side of the border, and NATO has quietly told the Pakistanis that if these supply lines cannot be protected, NATO would have to come in and do it. This, more than anything else, motivates the Pakistanis to tone down Taliban violence, at least on the Pakistani side of the border.
July 16, 2008: Despite new tactics, the Taliban still get chewed up pretty badly. A Taliban war band, of about 300 men, was spotted as it crossed over from Pakistan, and quickly jumped on by NATO troops and smart bombs. About half the Taliban were killed, and the rest wounded, captured, or scattered. It's catastrophes like this that force the Taliban to pay better, and to encourage their commanders to keep their fighters dispersed. But many of the Taliban big shots are traditionalists, and just love the feeling of leading a column of several armed men through the mountains. It's a tradition that's become an expensive luxury, one that often costs you your life.
Banditry has always been a big problem in Afghanistan. 
