Radical Islam Watch

BARMAL, Afghanistan - Handcuffed and weary, three confessed Taleban fighters told this week how they crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan to carry out a “jihad” against troops after mullahs said it was their duty as Muslims.

The young men — two Pakistanis and an Afghan — were captured after a fierce five-hour battle in Paktika province Tuesday, just a few kilometres (miles) from the border.

During the battle, 24 of their fellow fighters were killed. The bloodied and broken bodies were later shown to reporters by the Afghan army at a base in Barmal district.

The dead were mostly Afghans but included an Arab, Chechens, Pakistanis, Turks and a man from Yemen, an officer said, citing information from the captured three, identity cards and, in one case, a name on a bullet belt.

“Mullahs in Pakistan were preaching to us that we are obliged to fight jihad in Afghanistan because there are foreign troops — there is an Angriz (British) invasion,” dishevelled Alahuddin told reporters.

“A Pakistani Taleban commander, Saifullah, introduced us to a guide who escorted us to Barmal,” he said. “Then he left and we joined a group already here and came to the ambush site.”

His group of 32 Taleban lay in wait for an army convoy, launching a clumsy attack mainly with AK-47 machine guns.

The Afghan soldiers and their International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) counterparts retaliated. Two columns of support quickly arrived and surrounded the attackers as attack helicopters were called in.

One of the dead had a Pakistani ID document on his chest when he was shown to reporters, while the others had other papers on them that the Afghan army said gave their nationalities.

A few hours later, the three men were on the floor of a helicopter with their eyes taped shut being taken to Kabul for interrogation.

Alahuddin was from Miranshah in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area that is just on the other side of the border with Afghanistan’s Paktika.

The Pakistan government last month signed a truce with the area’s pro-Taleban tribal elders who agreed to stop militants from crossing the border to carry out attacks in support of the Taleban insurgency.

In return the Pakistan army — which says it has 80,000 men along the border to stop infiltration — cut back its presence.

Political analyst Samina Ahmed, from the International Crisis Group, this week called the deal “irresponsible to say the least”.

For “all practical purposes, now the Taleban are running the show,” she told a meeting in Brussels.

Another of the captured men, the confused and clearly uneducated Zahidullah, was also from Miranshah. He said that he too was brought into the fight by a mullah who put him in touch with the Taleban.

“We came to Afghanistan to carry out jihad against British forces — as Muslims we are obliged to do jihad against them, this is what we were told,” he said.

There are around 40,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, around a half of them Americans. Just over 5,000 are from the British army, which also has one of its generals, David Richards, in command of the ISAF force.

The US-led coalition that works alongside ISAF and the Afghan security forces said last month it had seen a 300 percent increase in incidents in the area since a North Waziristan truce reached weeks before the September accord.

General Murad Ali, the deputy commander of southeastern military corps, was proud of the actions of his men in the counterattack, seen as a sign of the increasing professionalism of the Afghan army.

He openly accused the Pakistani military of aiding the Islamists tearing at the fragile young Afghan democracy.

“They cross into Afghanistan even in areas where Pakistani posts are installed, but they are not prevented. They carry out attacks and then return.”