The BBC report provides remarkable details on a ?war council? meeting among an eclectic collection of militant groups in the town of Barawal Bandey and offers insight into the kaleidoscopic landscape of rebel, terrorist, and criminal actors populating the militant and insurgent milieu in Afghanistan . Further, these details provide evidence to support a series of analyses in these pages (see the April 19 WAR Report, and the March 29 WAR Report) that have discussed the invigoration of the insurgency and the potential for synergistic alliances to form between these militant groups.
Of particular note is the range of militant actors in attendance at this militant ?summit? and, thus, the range of potential nexuses. In addition to the son of Afghan warlord and designated terrorist, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar , a representative of al-Qaeda , Abu Khalid al Misir, was reportedly present and offered on behalf of Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers , support and expertise from the operatives fighting in Iraq . This would support earlier TRC assessments that al-Qaeda has sought to invigorate the insurgency in Afghanistan and that there has likely been an infusion of fighters and ?state-of-the-art? terrorist tradecraft?weapon engineering and tactics?proliferating into the Afghanistan insurgent ranks from Iraq. As the BBC reporter and other analysts have noted, this proliferation likely explains the recent emergence and upsurge of suicide bombing attacks in Afghanistan .
The presence of representatives from the Pakistani militant group Harkatul Mujahideen , reportedly likely speaking on behalf of other Pakistani groups, would suggest their involvement in cross-border insurgent activities and the attendant likely tacit involvement of certain Pakistani intelligence elements, namely the ISI, in allowing them to do so.
Add to this, recent reports of Afghan provincial governing officials? corruption and collaboration with Taliban elements and druglords, and analysts agree that it has become increasingly difficult for the Karzai government to extend its writ into the rebel hinterlands. As TRC analyses in these pages have noted, the indicators that the Taliban are cultivating a certain measure of societal support and/or quiescence for their activities and that they are entrenching a more clandestine and permissive operational space in areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands remains a serious cause for concern.
According to the BBC report, the goal of the meeting was reportedly to develop closer alliances among groups for insurgent activities and coordinate attacks in the south, south-east, and south-west regions of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has suffered an upsurge in insurgent attacks, and their geographic scope has spread beyond the south, the heretofore central rebel region.
As these militant actors coalesce and synergize their activities?particularly in receiving support from al-Qaeda elements and the Taliban?s development of societal support and their co-opting of provincial leaders?the Taliban and its entourage of militant actors seem to be growing robust in militant capabilities and in political and societal power. As such, insurgent attacks are likely to continue to grow in lethality, pace, and geographic scope in the near-term. The strategies to combat this growing insurgency are multifaceted but center on empowering the Karzai government to extend its writ throughout the country, reducing the levels of corruption among provincial leaders, stanching the flow of materiel, operatives, and other support from Iraq and Pakistan, and redoubling nation-building efforts to win over local Afghans to support and aid the government in combating insurgents.