Kandahar:
Recent defeats and general weariness after nine years of war are creating fissures between the Taliban's top leadership based in Pakistan and midlevel field commanders, who have borne the brunt of the fighting and are reluctant to return to some battle zones, Taliban members said in interviews.
After suffering defeats with the influx of thousands of new American troops in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand last year, many Taliban fighters retreated across the border to the safety of Pakistan. They are now coming under pressure from their leaders to return to Afghanistan to step up the fight again, a Taliban commander said. Many are hesitant to do so, at least for now.
"I have talked to some commanders, and they are reluctant to fight," one 45-year-old commander who has been with the Taliban since its founding in 1994 said in an interview in this southern city. He spoke on condition he not be identified because he was in hiding from American and government forces. "Definitely there is disagreement between the field commanders and the leaders over their demands to go and fight."
The differences point not just to the increasing stresses on the battlefield for midlevel Taliban commanders like him, but also to the difficulty of ending the insurgency as long as the Taliban's top leadership has sanctuary in Pakistan, which has long protected and sponsored the Taliban.
Secure across the border, and tightly controlled by Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies, the top Taliban leadership remains uncompromising. At the urging of their protectors in Pakistan, Taliban members say, they continue to push midlevel Taliban commanders back across the border to carry on the insurgency, which extends Pakistan's influence in southern Afghanistan.
The midlevel commanders have little choice but to comply, as they also depend on sanctuaries in Pakistan, where they maintain their families, say residents in Kandahar who know the Taliban well. The Taliban commander said in his interview that the field commanders would obey their orders to resume the fight, however reluctant they might be.
In a meeting across the border in Pakistan this month, Taliban leaders ordered each commander to send four or five men back into their home areas to resume operations by planting bombs, he said. "While commanders are worried for their lives, they have to go, or at least send some people," he said.
Some of the dissension in Taliban ranks stems from raids by American forces, which have been specifically aimed at eliminating Taliban field commanders. The raids have taken a toll on the quality of the Taliban's fighting forces and exacerbated differences between the fighters on the ground and their leaders giving orders from their sanctuary in Pakistan.
One close supporter of the Taliban in Helmand Province said that the insurgents had lost 500 fighters there last year, including virtually all the known commanders. Those who survived remonstrated with the leadership in Pakistan over why they had to sacrifice so many men.
The accounts of divisions between the Taliban leadership and its field commanders come on top of reports from American military officials of new frictions within the top Taliban leadership, which is believed to be based in the western Pakistani city of Quetta.
In an assessment of the war written in January to his troops, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said that there were "numerous reports of unprecedented discord among the members of the Quetta Shura, the Taliban senior leadership body."
A NATO intelligence officer in Kandahar said that he had received one report of a knife fight in a Taliban leadership meeting in December, which he said was a sign of growing internal tensions. People have to leave their guns outside the meeting room, which explains why someone might pull a knife, the officer said.
He also cited divisions over a suicide bombing at a wedding in Kandahar Province last year that was organized by a more radical field commander, without the approval of the Taliban leadership. Some of the younger, more radical commanders have come up through the ranks to replace those who have been killed.
During the fighting in the fall, the Taliban commanders sometimes found their calls for help going unanswered, according to American military officials. One group, in Sia Choy, in the Zhare District of Kandahar Province, appealed for help from commanders to no avail.
Taliban groups to the north, in Arghandab, also flatly refused to help, said Capt. Matthew Crawford, a senior intelligence officer with the 101st Airborne Division.
"There is a definite reluctance to come back into this area," Captain Crawford said. "I don't think they were prepared for how we approached the problem."
The raids have eroded Taliban morale, said Maj. Chris Cavin, chief of operations for the Second Brigade Combat Team from the 101st Airborne Division, fighting in Zhare.
"It created a sense of anxiety," he said. "Now at night you start thinking, 'Wow, that guy got taken, that guy got taken.' You have got to start switching places in the middle of the night. You have got to start being careful how you communicate with others, because, are you a target or not?"
He wears leather shoes with no socks, despite the near freezing temperature, and sat without hesitation on the cold floor of the unfurnished meeting place for an interview.
He admitted that the Taliban forces had taken a battering in the recent fighting and that some were losing heart. "Compared to two years ago when people were willingly going to fight, that mood is reduced," he said. "We are tired of fighting and we say this among ourselves. But this is our vow, not to leave our country to foreigners."
Taliban commanders were even discussing the option of peace talks, but say they will only negotiate with the Afghan government after foreign forces leave, he said.
The Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, recently exhorted his men in an audio tape to keep fighting, the commander said.
"His words have a very powerful effect on us," the Taliban commander said. "We obey his orders, every Talib does, and we believe in him."
Despite the setbacks, the commander made light of the Taliban's loss of territory around Kandahar in recent months. Taliban casualties were lower than claimed by NATO forces, he said.
Most of his men had pulled out and would wait and prepare for an offensive in the spring when the weather is warmer and the trees provide cover, he said.
"It will not be difficult," he said. "We do not bring in tanks and heavy equipment. What we bring is very light and simple," he said.
In the end the Taliban would return to their land, he said. "This is our country, these are our people, and we have only to retreat and wait and use other tactics."