The battle for Afghanistan: Zabul and Uruzgan

Both major parties have committed to continuing the deployment of Australian troops in Afghanistan\u27s Uruzgan province. This research paper examines the factors behind the Taliban\u27s resurgence in Uruzgan and the neighbouring province of Zabul. The relatively early resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan and Zabul provinces is linked to a combination of factors, including (1) the historical links of the Taliban movement to the area, which provided a robust and revivable network of fighters and supporters; (2) the behavior of local Karzai-era strongmen who used their links to the government and the U.S.-led war to target and marginalize their rivals; (3) the general backwardness of the area and the near-total lack of attention by the government; and (4) the existence and expansion of cross-border resourcing and militant command-and-control networks in Pakistan. The Taliban in Uruzgan and Zabul have their roots in the anti-Soviet resistance, in particular the early fronts based on local religious networks. Although the movement fractured early on, more sharply in Uruzgan than in Zabul, it retained a certain cohesion that was strong enough to allow for it to be revived twice: first in response to the chaos under the mujaheddin government of the early 1990s, and second under the Karzai regime when former Taliban fighters and marginalized tribes were targeted and mistreated by the pro-government strongmen and their international allies. This paper aims to explore in more detail the roots and resurgence of the Taliban in Zabul and Uruzgan, in an effort to tease out some of the recurring themes. The first section of the paper discusses the area’s main loyalties and fault lines, as well as the evolution of the Taliban movement in the two provinces, from the anti-Soviet resistance to the establishment and fall of the Islamic Emirate. The second section focuses on factors that facilitated the revival of the movement as a potent insurgency. The third section discusses the current nature and structure of the movement in Zabul and Uruzgan. Finally, the fourth section discusses the impact of the international military operations on the situation in the provinces. The information and analysis in this paper is based on more than 300 in-depth interviews over several years with tribal elders and community leaders, NGO workers, teachers and doctors, local government and security officials, villagers, former and present Taliban commanders, local politicians, and to a lesser extent international analysts. Most conversations took place between November 2005 and July 2010, although some are from an earlier date