08 October 2001

Foreign pro-Taliban fighters inside Afghanistan (pre-hostilities)

(non-subscriber extract from Jane’s World Armies’ Afghanistan entry)

In itself, the presence of foreigners on the Afghan battlefield is scarcely new. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, thousands of volunteers from across the Islamic world joined the anti-communist jihad. However, following the 1992 fall of Kabul and the beginning of the civil war between the Mujahideen factions, the foreign presence dropped sharply as many young enthusiasts returned to radicalise Islamic movements in their home countries, or moved to conflicts where Muslims were not killing Muslims.

Since 1995, however, the rise of the Taliban movement has brought with it a major resurgence of the jihadi foreign legion. It has also changed its complexion in several notable aspects. Estimated by regional military and intelligence sources to number between 8,000 and 12,000, today's foreign combatants are more numerous than before. They are also better organised, and in many cases better equipped with heavier weaponry than their counterparts of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Operating at the centre of a global network of radical Islamists, they are evidently ideologically more focused than their counterparts of the 1980s.

Finally, the foreigners are far better integrated into the military machine of their Afghan hosts than was ever the case before. Indeed, constituting between a fifth and a quarter of total Taliban combat strength of 40,000 to 45,000, and in recent times frequently spearheading offensive operations, foreign units have become an indispensable element of the Taliban order of battle. This, in turn, has given their parent groups increasing organisational autonomy and political leverage within Afghanistan.

From the early days of a movement which found its earliest recruits among Afghan refugees studying in Pakistani religious seminaries, Pakistanis have constituted a clear majority of the Taleban's foreign fighters. Geographic proximity, ease of transport and the often seasonal nature of the fighting have meant that numbers have fluctuated from month to month. Current estimates indicate between 5,000 to 7,000 Pakistanis - or over half of the total foreign contingent - are operating in support of the Taliban. Increasingly ethnic Pashtuns from Pakistan's Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province border belt - who share a language and culture with the Afghan Taliban - have been joined by volunteers from Punjab, Sindh and Karachi.

For the purpose of analysis, the Pakistani contingent can be broken up into three broadly distinct but occasionally overlapping categories. The first and most numerous consists of youths recruited en masse from Pakistani madrassahs (seminaries) of the Deobandi school - particularly those affiliated to the Jamaat-e-Ulema Islami (JUI) party which maintains close links with the Taliban. Waves of madrassah youths, quickly mobilised and often with little or no military training, were particularly important in the period between 1995 and 1998 when Taliban advances often entailed heavy losses and the requirement for rapid reinforcements was paramount.

UF/Northern Alliance sources, however, believe that, more recently, losses and the uncertain military effectiveness of these volunteers have tempered both the enthusiasm at source and the demand from commanders within Afghanistan.

Fewer, but undoubtedly more effective on the battlefield, have been volunteers from Pakistan's militant jihadi organisations, most notably the Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (formerly Harakat-ul-Ansar) of Fazlur Rahman Khalil; and the aggressively anti-Shi'a factions, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and its smaller, more violent offshoot, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Both the latter factions have a record of sectarian terrorist outrages in Pakistan and several key figures are wanted by Pakistani authorities on terrorist charges. (Appeals to Kabul by Pakistan's Home Ministry for their extradition have been repeatedly ignored, however). In many cases, party-affiliated militants have had access to basic military training courses of up to 40 days before moving to the front. Training has usually taken place either at Rishkhor, the former Afghan Army 7th Division base on the southern outskirts of Kabul, or at camps in the

Zhawa complex near Khost on the Pakistan border.

Arabs constitute the second largest foreign contingent and, according to a range of UF/Northern Alliance and regional sources, their numbers have grown notably over the past 18 months. There seems little doubt at least 2,000 combatants - all apparently affiliated to and financed by Osama bin Laden - were active in support of the Taliban at the time of the September attacks in the US. One source monitoring the military situation estimated that up to 3,000 Arab combatants may have been in the field in September. Certainly an Arab presence, including numbers of civilians and their families, was quite open in the southern cities of Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar.

Reports from both Western and UF/Northern Alliance sources indicate Arab military camps, some of which double as training facilities, are situated at Ghaziabad and Darunta (east and west of Jalalabad respectively); Naghloo dam near Sarobi; Kunduz; and Kandahar airport. Recent unconfirmed reports suggest one, or possibly two, training facilities may also have opened in Herat province.

Both Arab instructors and trainees have been seen at Rishkhor, near Kabul. Following the August 1998 US cruise missile attack on training camps at Zhawa, Rishkhor expanded to become probably the biggest training base in the country, housing up to 1,500 trainees - Pakistanis, Arabs and others - as well as some 30 to 50 instructors (some of whom had moved from Khost). Courses covered basic field craft and small-arms training, graduating to specialised courses in support weaponry, demolition and escape and evasion. In June 2000, however, following international publicity and growing diplomatic pressure, the facility was emptied. Kabul-based journalists were permitted to visit it but official denials that foreigners had ever trained there were belied by large signs on buildings in Arabic and Urdu. More recently, Rishkhor has again been off- limits to outsiders and appeared to be being used for training, though whether of a new Taliban unit or foreign combatants remains unclear.

Following the Taliban's 1996 capture of Kabul, several hundred Arabs began serving on fronts on the Shomali plain north of the capital. According to UF/Northern Alliance military sources, many remain there today, based at the villages of Gozar and Tutakhan and commanded by a Tunisian with the nom de guerre of 'Abu Emad'. As hostilities intensified in the northeast, however, other units moved north, notably in May 2001 when a force of 1,000 Arabs and Pakistanis was pulled out of Shomali and flown north to Kunduz as part of the spring build-up against the UF/Northern Alliance. Other units have been reported in central and western Afghanistan operating as parts of Taliban flying columns used as quick reaction forces following UF/Northern Alliance attacks.

Generally, Arab units are deployed in an infantry role armed with nothing heavier than rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), PK machine guns and mortars. They are, however, widely recognised as currently the most aggressive and committed fighters in Taliban ranks. Significantly, among several hundred foreign POWs held by the UF/Northern alliance, there are scarcely any Arabs.

The growing isolation of the Kabul regime and international opprobrium it incurred even before September 2001 almost certainly increased the political influence of Osama bin Laden and his associates with the Taliban - influence cemented by the close personal relationship between Bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Indeed, several analysts believe Arab influence may have played a key part in the clearly political decision to defy the international community and destroy the Buddhas of Bamiyan - a move guaranteed to deepen Taliban isolation and strengthen the pact with bin Laden's Islamists.

Chechen units and the forces of the IMU constitute the other two main foreign contingents. While organisationally separate with distinct leaderships, links between

Islamist militants from the two ex-Soviet territories are longstanding and it seems likely that Chechens are today attached to IMU combat units. Other foreigners, including Pakistanis from the SSP and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, are also operating under the IMU's military umbrella. (Unclear, however, is whether southeast Asian militants from the southern Philippines and Indonesia operate with the IMU or with independent Pakistani units).

To the fury of Moscow, a Chechen embassy was first established in Kabul in January 2000 and Chechen consulates were later set up in Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif. As with the Arabs, there has grown up a civilian Chechen community in cities such as Kandahar and Mazar. Military bases have been identified at Kod-e-Barq outside Mazar; and at a facility just south of the highway between Tashkurgan and Mazar. At least one all-Chechen unit - a platoon of some 30 fighters - has been identified operating on the front line near Bagram airbase, north of Kabul.

While IMU leaders Tahir Yuldash and Juma Namangani have enjoyed sanctuary in Afghanistan since the Tajikistani civil war of 1992 to 1997, IMU numbers appear to have risen more recently as new recruits from Central Asia have joined units in Afghanistan. Diplomatic estimates put current IMU strength at between 1,500 to 2,000, including Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajkistanis, Xinjiang Uighurs, and some Pakistanis. This year the IMU is for the first time participating in the Taliban campaign with the unit stationed at Koh-e-Siah Boz. Other units are believed to be based at Deh Dadi, headquarters of the former Afghan Army 18 Division, 15 km west of Mazar.

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