Defence`s Feeds

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Helena Gronberg in her recent blog contribution article – Is the time ripe for DDR in Myanmar? - rightly points to a classic DDR dilemma being faced in Myanmar.  This is focused largely on the sequencing of DDR efforts, pointedly D-D-then-R. In what is called classic or 1st Generation DDR lasting from around the late 1980s until the early

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The allegation that a British civilian policing body, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), helped draw up lists of Afghans for targeted killings in ISAF’s ‘kill or capture’ strategy in Afghanistan has re-surfaced. Two years ago, SOCA denied to a London court that it had supplied such intelligence for targeted killings in a case brought by an Afghan man, Habib Rahman. He had lost two brothers, two uncles and his father-in-law – all civilians – in a targeted killing in 2010. AAN’s Kate Clark has been examining the new evidence against SOCA and looking at what it might mean for the family members of those killed in the 2010 attack.

In November 2013, a judge in London decided Habib Rahman’s case would not go forward to judicial review – the procedure when a court judges the legality of a particular action or policy by the British state as it affects an individual claimant. The case had focussed on whether the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) was supporting targeted killing. SOCA had been named in a United States Senate report as one of the agencies contributing information to the list of individuals whom the military deem can be subject to targeted killing. This is the ‘Joint Prioritised Effects List’, commonly known as the JPEL. (1)

SOCA, it is alleged, had been drawn into supplying intelligence after drug traffickers began to be added to the JPEL in late 2008: the rationale for killing drug traffickers was that they were funding the insurgency. Financiers of wars are usually considered civilians so this was, in itself, a controversial and possibly illegal move (more of which later). Moreover, only the military enjoys ‘combatant privilege’; members of the armed forces can kill during wartime without it being considered murder. Civilian police cannot. The allegation that SOCA was involved in helping to compile the JPEL was, therefore, extremely serious, as one of Habib Rahman’s British lawyers, Rosa Curling explained, in July 2013 (see AAN reporting here and Leigh Day’s press release here):

As a civilian policing organisation SOCA has no legitimate or lawful role to play in the compilation or administration of this Kill List – it has no authority to be involved in military operations and the killing of individuals. The courts must urgently review whether SOCA’s and indeed the UK’s role in the compilation, review and execution of this list if unlawful.

Rahman’s lawyers accepted that they did not know if information from the UK had contributed to the attack on Rahman’s father-in-law and the other election campaigners in 2010. However, they hoped the challenge would force a more open examination of how Britain was allegedly contributing to drawing up and executing the JPEL, and whether guidance existed to ensure actions were within the law.

When the case came to court in November 2013, SOCA admitted it did pass on information to the military, but said it did so solely for legal, civilian, and policing purposes. (2) It said it was not involved in compiling or managing the JPEL kill or capture list and took no part in hostilities. The judge accepted the denial and ruled there was insufficient evidence for the case to go forward to judicial review.

Fresh evidence against British police

In a new report on the UK’s alleged involvement in targeted killing, the anti-death penalty, campaigning organisation, Reprieve, has gone back through various, mainly leaked documents and published what it says is new evidence of British involvement in targeted killings. One of the documents leaked by Edward Snowdon, it says, points to the British military both nominating targets for the JPEL and executing the targeted killings. (3) Reprieve also presents new evidence of the involvement of SOCA (which is now called the National Crime Agency or NCA) in drawing up the list of targets. It cites another leaked document, an article from an in-house newsletter from the National Security Agency (NSA), the US agency which compiles and analyses signals intelligence or SIGINT. The article was classified as top secret and published for an internal readership by the National Security Agency’s Southwest Asia Narcotics Division, known as ‘FGS2F’. It is titled: “SIGINT Helps Hobble the Taleban by Cutting off Their Livelihood”.

The article described how, from May 2008, FGS2F agents had been providing “real time support to counter-narcotics operations, targeting processing laboratories, traffickers’ compounds and the traffickers themselves as they were on the move.” (4) FGS2F agents, it said, were among those working at the counter-narcotics Interagency Operations Coordination Centre (IOCC) in Kabul. Where this gets closer to SOCA and its alleged involvement in the JPEL ‘kill list’, says Reprieve, comes in the management of the IOCC:

In terms of understanding the critical role played by the UK in all this, it is important to understand that the IOCC is led by both a director and a deputy director. Those positions are rotated between senior managers of the American DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] and the British SOCA/NSA [Serious Organised Crime Agency/National Crime Agency], with no other country providing candidates. For example, from January 2008, the director was a “British LE [Law Enforcement] agent of the Serious Organized Crime Agency.” (quotes in original) (5)

The fact that there was inter-agency cooperation on counter-narcotics is, of course, not controversial. However, in October 2008, NATO defence ministers introduced a new policy: ISAF would start targeting drug traffickers and they would be added to the JPEL for killing or capture. (6) Two months later, in December 2008, said the article by the FSG2F (the American National Security Agency’s Southwest Asia Narcotics Division), the deputy commander of ISAF Regional Command South declared that narcotics trafficking was now his number one priority. The piece said that by this time, 80 per cent of all counter-narcotics operations in Afghanistan were being driven by SIGINT (signals intelligence), whereas a year previously, almost all had been driven by HUMINT (human intelligence). This was thanks, “in large part,” said the self-promotional piece, “to the efforts of an FSG2F analyst embedded with IOOC in Kabul.”

The article gives an example of a success in the fight “against the narco-insurgency,” a strike against “primary target” Mullah Multan who had “made a rare entry from Pakistan into Afghanistan” (date not given). It said Multan’s drug convoy had been targeted by an air strike within hours of him crossing the border and although he survived, he lost “over three tons of opium along with 6 of his cohorts.”

More detail on the nature of the work being carried out by the IOCC emerged in an 11 May 2009 interview with a former director, Selby Smith (January 2006 to December 2008); he was an American from the Drug Enforcement Administration who had been seconded to the IOCC. Smith said that, in Afghanistan, the military were necessary for carrying out counter-narcotics operations because “law enforcements units cannot handle the complexity and size of the drug problem by themselves. The military is needed to knock the problem down to a manageable level.”

Since December 2008, Smith said, “Law Enforcement” (not specified, but it seems to refer to international law enforcement agents probably/possibly working in conjunction with Afghan police) had asked the military for and received approval for the following assistance: helicopter lift, intelligence, cordon security, medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) and Close Air Support (CAS), ie action against hostile targets that are in close proximity to friendly forces. Smith said the US and UK were providing “most of the Special Forces” and NATO/ISAF the Close Air Support. He continued:

The [Department of Defence] policy mentions the need for a more non-traditional approach. Military involvement in [counter-narcotics] is a way to do this. The change in policy says US troops are authorized to conduct military operations against drug trafficking targets when those military operations support the stability missions in Afghanistan.

 When asked whether, if the military did get involved, there would be “any negative consequences, i.e. 2nd and 3rd order effects?” the former director of the IOCC said, “Just more civilian casualties due to an errant bomb. The people shouldn’t be negatively affected because we’re there to help the Afghans under their law.”

Legal qualms from some in the military

Smith admitted there was some “reluctance from the military to get involved.” This reluctance was reported when ISAF first decided that drug traffickers could be targeted (see here, here and here). Possibly it came because, in Smith’s words, there was no longer “a need for there to be a nexus. All that’s required is a request from the Afghan law enforcement unit.” A nexus here would refer to a trafficker having to be also a belligerent in the conflict and under Taleban or al Qaeda command to be legally subject to a targeted killing. Under International Humanitarian Law, civilians, including drug traffickers, have to be “directly participating in hostilities” to lose their protected status and be legally targeted. Guidance by the International Committee of the Red Cross looking at what this phrase does and does not cover says: 

… recruiters, trainers, financiers and propagandists may continuously contribute to the general war effort of a non-state party, but they are not members of an organized armed group belonging to that party unless their function additionally includes activities amounting to direct participation in hostilities.

The same conclusion was reached in 2009 by two judges in Washington DC both of whom had to decide whether the US could detain alleged financiers of the Taleban or al Qaeda in Guantanamo Bay. Judge Walton ruled that, if financial support was sufficient to make one a member of an armed force, then:

“Americans during World War II who specifically contributed to war bonds, knowing that those funds were going to be used for the military to fight the battle, could have been treated as enemy combatants.” (7)

It is argued that drug smugglers who are not also combatants must be dealt with as a civilian policing matter, ie with arrest and trial, and with evidence of their wrong-doing presented before a court of law. The matter would be governed by International Human Rights Law which only allows the use of lethal force when it is strictly and directly necessary to save human life. Targeted killings of suspected criminals is generally held to be a violation of the ‘right to life’. (See a discussion here).

Habib Rahman’s Case

Habib Rahman, who brought and lost the 2013 request for a judicial review into the alleged role of SOCA in targeted killings in Afghanistan, lost five relatives in an air strike in 2010. Five other civilians were also killed in the attack, all campaigners in the parliamentary elections. The US claimed they had killed a Taleban commander, Mullah Amin, but an AAN investigation, which brought together interviews with US Special Operations Forces commanders, witnesses, survivors and Mullah Amin himself, revealed how intelligence had mixed up SIM phone numbers. A phone number belonging to Habib Rahman’s father-in-law, Zabet Amanullah, an agent in the elections, had been mistakenly attributed to a provincial Taleban commander, Mullah Amin. The military had then assumed everyone in the election campaign convoy were ‘Mullah Amin’s’ fighters. Zabet Amanullah was a famous figure provincially, well known in the presidential palace in Kabul and had appeared in local media during the election campaign. Yet, there had not been even the most basic background checks on him ahead of the attack to verify that he was the intended target. In other words, the misinterpretation of SIGINT (signals intelligence) had led to the killing of the wrong man and nine of his companions, all civilians, a mistake that would have been revealed by the most precursory HUMINT, (intelligence based on information from human sources).

As mentioned before, whether or not information from the UK had contributed to the attack on Rahman’s father-in-law and the other election campaigners in 2010 is not known, but it was a clear case of civilians being killed after intelligence had placed the wrong man on the JPEL for targeted killing. Rahman’s lawyers hoped the challenge would lead to the courts examining what Britain’s role was in drawing up that list.

The aftermath – still ­­– of the 2010 killings

Speaking after the new evidence against SOCA came to light, Habib Rahman described the continuing consequences of the 2010 air attack. It had left him looking after five households: his own, his widowed mother, his father-in-law’s and a brother’s (the other brother had been unmarried). Six years on, life remains a financial struggle, he said, and recently, the raw memories of the strike also re-surfaced:

Zabet Amanullah (his father-in-law) stood like a big mountain behind us, but now all the responsibility is on my shoulders. From every side there is pressure. After his death, his wife gave birth to a baby boy, Muhammad, and he had his six year birthday recently. But then he got ill in Takhar and we brought him to Kabul for treatment at the children’s hospital and then to Pakistan, but we failed. We lost him. If his father had been alive… he could have acted more swiftly. He could have done a lot more for his son.

The emotional impact of the deaths in 2010 had lessened over the years, but “the death of … Muhammad, 15 days ago,” he said, “somehow refreshed all the memories and feelings. It brought it all back.” As to the new evidence strengthening the case that UK police had been involved in targeted killing in Afghanistan, he said:

From the beginning until now, we’ve been asking for them to look at the evidence but no-one has listened to us. From the beginning until now, we have been running after this case and hoping those who were accused of this crime would be prosecuted. Instead, we have just faced more losses.

He had learned a lesson from the dismissal of the 2013 case, he said: “Only those who have power can get justice.”

Will the new evidence lead to fresh legal action?

If a civilian policing body like SOCA had been giving information that led to a person being identified for targeted killing, that would be a grave breach of British domestic law and International Humanitarian Law. Misleading a court of law would, in itself, also be a serious offense – if that, indeed, is what happened in 2013. Reprieve’s new report provides some additional evidence that British police were involved in drawing up the targeted killing list. It fleshes out the possible link between SOCA and the compiling of the kill list: SOCA was providing directors and deputy directors to the IOCC in Kabul at a time when it was allegedly providing intelligence for drawing up the ‘kill list’. Whether or not the new evidence will be enough to re-open Habib Rahman’s request for a judicial review is not yet clear. It appears not yet to amount to a ‘smoking gun’. However, it does strengthen the case for more investigation, and for more openness from the British government.

 

(1) The author of the US Senate report, Afghanistan’s Narco War: Breaking the Link Between Drug Traffickers and Insurgents, Douglas Frantz, had been working for the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator John Kerry (now US Secretary of State), when, he said, during a formal briefing, an officer explained, “We have a list of 367 ‘kill or capture’ targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and insurgency,” in other words, drug smugglers believed to be funding the insurgency have been put on the list of ‘insurgent leaders and facilitators’ for targeted killing or capture. Later, the US would come to consider drug traffickers’ financing so fundamental to the insurgency that they could be targeted.

 The Senate report said SOCA, along with the US and UK military, the US Drug Enforcement Agency and police and intelligence agencies from other countries had set up a group called the Joint Inter-Agency Afghanistan Task Force (JIATF). In a witness statement to the court, Frantz said:

… military and civilian officials had provided information about the effort to combine law enforcement and military authorities in a program to identify drug traffickers who were involved with financing the insurgency. People who met the specific criteria would be placed on the Joint Prioritized Effect List (JPEL), which would subject them to arrest and possible killing. My understanding was and remains that the JIATF was linked to the effort to identify people who qualified for inclusion on the JPEL. The briefing on the JIATF was conducted at the US military compound and it was attended by senior military and civilian law enforcement officers from the United States, Britain and Australia. The meeting was unclassified and not recorded, but the clear understanding was the information would be used in a subsequent public report.

In the Senate report, Frantz quotes an investigator with SOCA who was involved in the JIATF:

… [he] described the approach as a critical opportunity to blend military and law enforcement expertise. ‘In the past, the military would have hit and evidence would not have been collected,’ he explained. ‘Now, with law enforcement present, we are seizing the ledgers and other information to develop an intelligence profile of the networks and the drug kingpins.’ An American military officer with the project was blunter, telling the committee staff, ‘Our long-term approach is to identify the regional drug figures and corrupt government officials and persuade them to choose legitimacy or remove them from the battlefield.’

(2) SOCA told the court the Senate committee report had misunderstood its role. It did interact with the military and pass on intelligence, as legally allowed under the UK Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, 2005, and only for the purposes of “the prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of criminal offences whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere.” Such information, it said, would be given to ISAF to help it assist local law enforcement to make an arrest or prevent criminal offenses:

SOCA places restrictions on the dissemination of intelligence to the ISAF. Intelligence which is disseminated by SOCA is required to include handling conditions which require the express approval of the originator if it is proposed to use the material for military targeting purposes. If the mission is to arrest, with a view to criminal investigation and potential prosecution, SOCA would ordinarily be prepared to provide and/or allow the use of its intelligence. On the other hand, if the primary option for a mission is to use lethal force SOCA would not provide intelligence or allow the use of its intelligence in support of such a mission, save potentially where the individual who is the target of the operation poses a significant and immediate threat to the lives of others (and so such disclosure would be for the purpose of preventing a criminal offence).

(3) The leaked document is the JPEL list from August 2010 and has 699 targets. It lists the agency which nominated each target and the one responsible for executing the kill or capture operation. British involvement is inferred by ISAF Regional Command (then under British command) listed as one of the nominating bodies and a unit named as TF-42 being named as one the agencies due to carry out operations. Wikileaks had earlier revealed the existence of TF-42 as a UK Special Forces unit.

(4) The article named the following agencies: NSAW (Naval Support Activity Washington), FSU (Field Station Utah) and GCHQ, the British signals intelligence centre in Cheltenham, England. 

(5) Reprieve cites a 2014 presentation on counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan by the US Drug Enforcement Administration to a US Senate Caucus.

(6) Reprieve says it was Britain that first wanted to target heroin processing laboratories and drug stores, in 2001, quoting a report by Gretchen Peters for the United States Institute of Peace, How Opium Profits the Taliban (August 2009),

“The drug targets were big places, like small towns that did nothing but produce heroin,” a CIA official said. “The British were screaming for us to bomb those targets because most of the heroin in Britain comes from Afghanistan, but they [the US National Security Council] refused.” Afghanistan was and is the main source of heroin in Britain. In 2001, said Peters, it was the US which held back fearing collateral damage, ie harm to civilians and damage to civilian property.

(7) Walton ruled that the US president only has the authority to detain “persons who were part of, or substantially supported, the Taliban or al-Qaeda forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, provided that the terms “substantially supported” and “part of” are interpreted to encompass only individuals who were members of the enemy organization’s armed forces, as that term is intended under the laws of war, at the time of their capture.” Gheriby v Obama, Memorandum Opinion, Reggie B Walton (2009)

The other ruling against the US government came from Judge Bates in Hamily v Obama (2009).

 

 

On the one year anniversary of a major attack in Jurm in April 2015, and not long before the Taleban are expected to announce their new spring offensive, Badakhshis are nervously anticipating the year ahead. AAN guest author Bethany Matta revisits the attack, detailing how it happened and showing how the attack and its aftermath illustrate many of the security challenges Badakhshan still faces today. These include an expected persistent level of violence, a significant role played by foreign fighters and a continuing sense by the local population and security officials that the province is being overlooked.

The attack on the Dahan Ab-e Khostak base in April 2015

On Friday 10 April 2015, several hundred Taleban fighters launched a large-scale attack in Jurm. According to a local resident, it all started when an estimated 250-400 Taleban fighters from Khostak valley crossed the river sometime before midnight and made their way to the nearby ANA base at Dahan Ab-e Khostak in the village of Mail Astia. (1)  At around 2 am they launched a large-scale attack on the base and the surrounding outposts. Several Afghan unit commanders described receiving urgent text messages and phone calls from soldiers* under attack in outposts asking for help.

While the exact numbers of besieged ANSF are not entirely clear, the author was told that at the time of the attack about 70-120 security forces were present at the main base. Commander Muhammad, who was not present at the time (and who asked to remain anonymous), left immediately for the Dahan Ab-e Khostak base after receiving news of the attack. When he reached the main base at around 5 am, clashes had already been underway for several hours. The base had come under heavy fire that seemed to come from all sides and the soldiers’ ammunition was running low.

The clashes continued and by noon on Saturday 11 April 2015, the Taleban had captured the main base and all surrounding outposts. By that time, the soldiers had run out of ammunition – the main weapons caches had either been captured by the Taleban or spent by the Afghan forces. Despite repeated phone calls from soldiers to commanders and Badakhshan officials as well as to officials in Kabul throughout the late night and early morning, pleading for reinforcements, ammunition and air support, none had arrived.

It was only after the bases had fallen ­­– more than 10 hours after the onset of the attack ­­– that two helicopters carrying 50-60 ANA Special Forces finally arrived and started a counterattack against the Taleban in an attempt to push back the front line and reclaim the lost base and outposts. The Taleban managed to hold on to their gains for a while, and only retreated when they had emptied the base of everything they wanted to take with them. When the Afghan forces finally managed to break the frontline and recapture the lost check posts and the main base, the militants had disappeared into the Khostak valley, taking with them not only weapons and equipment, but also a large number of captured ANA soldiers. The Afghan forces did not pursue them.

In the aftermath of the attack, columns of smoke rose across the valley from the smoldering outposts. The remnants of the destroyed steel walls from the main base lay strewn about and several military vehicles jutting out of the river – perhaps signs of failed looting attempts, but according to soldiers and locals, these were vehicles that had run out of fuel when ANSF soldiers tried to escape the attack. The bodies of three dead soldiers were said to have been thrown in the river but were never found. The village of Mail Astia was deserted except for a few elders and local residents who collected the dead.

Impact of the Jurm attack

According to the Ministry of Defense (MoD), a total of 33 ANSF soldiers were killed, wounded or had gone missing; the ANSF claimed to have killed 20 Taleban and injured 17. The Taleban claimed to have killed 49 ANA soldiers. But according to the unofficial version of events – as told by Jurm elders, provincial council members and officials that spoke to the author after the attack – the number of casualties had been far higher. According to a commander who was present during the attack “69 ANA and police were killed, out of which 28 were beheaded.” This figure has since then been, unofficially, corroborated by other (government and civilian) sources.

The attack in Jurm district was certainly not the first large-scale attack in Badakhshan, but it stood out as it highlighted the growing insecurity in a province that was once considered one of the safest in the country. Moreover, the brutality of the attack shocked the nation (see reporting at the time here, here and here) and seemed to point towards an increased ruthlessness of the insurgency in Afghanistan’s north. What was particularly distressing to the local population was that most of the soldiers that were captured by the Taleban were subsequently killed, and that most of the killed soldiers were beheaded, despite the fact that local elders had been sent into the Khostak valley to negotiate their release.

The Taleban had reportedly placed the decapitated heads of the soldiers on rocks alongside of the road in Khostak valley. After a few days, village mullahs, imams and elders asked the Taleban to remove the heads, telling them it was “not good” and “un-Islamic.” The sight, a village doctor told the author, was making locals mentally ill. The Taleban, however, seemed to have deliberately tried to horrify the population, as in one case, a captured solider was forced to call his mother with the militants beheading him mid-conversation. (2)  In their defense, the Taleban argued that although beheadings were normally “contradictory to rules of engagement,” they were in this case justified in retaliation for the behaviour of the Afghan security forces during a clash in neighboring Warduj district on 20 March 2015. The Taleban claimed that during this clash, the Afghan soldiers  had violated Islam and the rules of engagement by shooting “martyrs in the face to the point that they were unrecognisable.”

What was particularly uncomfortable to admit for the local population was that the vast majority – and possibly all – of the security forces who were killed or beheaded were not from Badakhshan province. This sparked rumours that local soldiers had either been spared for some reason or had received advance warning about the planned attack. The idea that local security forces, aware of the threat, had possibly deliberately not informed their fellow soldiers of an imminent attack – thereby contributing to their deaths – added to the embarrassment.

Several Jurm residents remarked that some local community members had been so upset and embarrassed that they were ready to start an uprising against the Taleban, but had found little to no government support for this idea. “They [the government] were inactive,” a local elder said, a statement echoed by many others. This, in turn, affected the communities’ support for and their attitudes towards the government. Locals commented that the lack of a government response had driven some people to be more inclined towards the Taleban in the aftermath of the Jurm attack.

The incident, in general, was seen as showcasing the failure of the Afghan government to adequately deal with the growing challenges that the insurgency presents in the north. Media and parliament reacted strongly, accusing both the National Unity Government and the ANSF of negligence. Commander Muhammad summarised what the soldiers wanted to know: why the vehicles had had no fuel, why had the reinforcements not arrived on time, why had the government not compensated families whose sons were killed, and why had the government been so indifferent to the forces’ safety and the overall security situation in the area. Moreover, military and government officials told the author that although there are large stocks of ammunition across Afghanistan, these often do not reach the relevant ANA units in time because of poor lines of communication and lack of logistics, like in the case of the Jurm attack. This failure of the government to provide support to a base in need, but also to commit sufficient forces over a longer period of time, even after the attack, earned the government a lot of criticism.

The president, in response to the upheaval, flew to Faizabad on 16 April 2015, four days after the attack, to meet with security officials and representatives of the province’s districts.  At a press conference, the day after his arrival, he discussed the challenges facing the nation and praised the security forces, stressing that their sacrifices would not go to waste. The ministry of defense ordered an investigation, partly in response to allegations of negligence and complicity in the attack by the local security forces.

One year after the attack, there has still been no release of any official findings.

Accusations of complicity

Immediately after the attack, rumours and reports of complicity of locals and ANSF in the Taleban attack surfaced. One man in particular was singled out: Azizullah Raufi, the ANA commander in charge, who seems to have been the only official who was arrested immediately following the attack. A few more arrests were made after the prelimary MoD investigation, but a final report of the investigation was never issued and according to the district governor of Jurm, Abdul Wadood Sayedi, no one in Badakhshan has been charged so far.

Raufi, who was apparently arrested (but whose current whereabouts are unknown), was not at the Dahan-e Ab-e Khostak base at the time of the attack. General Sher Muhammad Karimi, then Chief of Army Staff, confirmed this when questioned by a parliamentary committee. Several Afghan officials said they thought Raufi might have received information about the imminent attack, after which he left for Kabul without permission and without informing his superiors.

According to Deputy Governor Bedar, it is not uncommon for families in districts such as Jurm, where insecurity is on the rise, to have members working with both the Taleban and the police, who may then exchange information and warn each other of impending attacks. “They are like partners-in-crime,” Bedar said. “When we start an operation, a security official may call a relative who is with the Taleban and warn him.” Parliamentarians from Badakhshan that the author spoke to agreed with this assessment.

Another important factor seems to have been the occurrence of pre-attack negotiations. According to residents, including District Governor Sayedi, several elders were asked to negotiate with local soldiers on behalf of the Taleban. The elders told the soldiers that if they left their weapons and walked away from the base, they would be left alone; if not, they would risk being captured, killed and possibly beheaded. The elders were left with little choice in the matter but to conduct these negotiations. The soldiers seemed to be willing to comply with the Taleban’s demands; indeed, as an elder reported, “They [the soldiers] did not fight or fire, they simply left the post and left all the arms, Humvees and ammunition to the Taleban.”

It seems, however, that it was mainly the local police, who laid down their weapons and fled the scene, leaving behind a sizable number of – largely ANA – forces not from the area. The fact that not all government security forces left explains the continued heavy fighting that took place throughout the night of the Jurm attack.

According to a ministry of interior official, the pre-attack negotiations are a cause for concern because they are used quite often by the Taleban, and quite effectively. Multiple incidents, similar in nature, were reported around Badakhshan and in other northern provinces before and after the Jurm attack (see for instance here and here). Deputy Governor Bedar also described how the five bases in Baharak and Zebak districts (to the east of Jurm), had been taken in a similar manner, despite each base having more than 200 ALP and ANP. As a result, large amounts of ammunition, weapons, and vehicles (including police Rangers and military Humvees) had been seized and are now used by the insurgents to fight against the Afghan government. (3)

According to several residents, the complicity in the Jurm attack may have gone even further. They related how the Afghan Local Police (ALP) commander Abdul Mulik, who commands a large militia, supposedly paid ANA commander Raufi millions of Afghani to let the bases fall to the Taleban (one million Afghani is almost 20,000 US dollar). Others said Mulik paid the Taleban who then bought the bases from Raufi and other check post commanders. Some argued that the deal – if there indeed had been one – was related to Abdul Mulik’s involvement in the illegal mining business (as a former district police commander he had in fact fought the Taleban in the past). Ahmad Javid Mujahiddi, the deputy head of the provincial council, said that the ANA base had probably been impeding Mulik’s illegal mining business, as its location was hampering access to the mine.

Role of foreign fighters

The attack in Jurm also illustrates the increased impact of foreign fighters on both the composition and strategies of the insurgency in northern Afghanistan after the military operation in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, which started in June 2014. Seasoned foreign militants were pushed out of Pakistan and entered Afghanistan – across its eastern borders via Nuristan, and in the north via the Shah-e Salim and Topkhana passes of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province – and the local Afghan Taleban helped them find places to settle, including in Afghanistan’s northern provinces. Government officials and residents of Badakhshan said the foreign fighters initially behaved as guests and their presence in the communities was not immediately noticeable. Many of them were Tajik and Uzbek by nationality (with a smattering of Chechens, Pakistanis, Uighurs and Arabs) – sharing similar physical features, language and customs allowed them to easily blend in with the local population.

At the same time even Badakhshis were taken by surprise by how quickly the numbers grew and by the impact the new arrivals started to have on the security situation. For example, in the summer of 2014, the Taleban took Azizurahman, a former border police officer, as a prisoner after they attacked a local police check post in Bashan, an area of Waduj district. He and 23 others were taken to Jurm district and held there for 47 days. As there was no jail to keep them, they moved along with the militants wherever they went. He estimated that during this time he had seen more than 500 Taleban in Jurm, most of them Afghans, but with a significant number of foreign fighters present as well. He could not recognise the languages the foreign fighters spoke. Other locals, who spoke to the author, also remarked that they often had difficulties discerning where the foreign fighters were from.

With the influx of foreign militants, brutal tactics, particularly beheadings, seemed to become increasingly common. Civilians reported that because the fighters were not from Afghanistan, they appeared to care less about the locals, which reportedly made it easier for them to commit atrocious acts, compared to local Taleban, who would presumably be more susceptible to local pushback. Beheadings, as seen in the Jurm attack, have thus far been used mostly as an intimidation tactic. According to local sources, it was militants from Tajikistan who carried out the beheadings during and after the Jurm attack.

Taleban strength since the 2015 Jurm attack

At the beginning of the 2015 fighting season, it became apparent that the militants had used the deep rifts and unlikely alliances between local players such as government officials, power brokers and militias to carve out safe havens for themselves in Jurm’s Khostak valley and neighboring Warduj district (see previous AAN report here). At the same time, the plethora of superficial attacks in quick succession across Afghanistan allowed the insurgents to divert the attention of the ANSF and to fatigue government resources. As a result, the Taleban was able to expand their influence and control, not only in Badakhshan, but also in other parts of the north, such as Takhar’s Darqad district. (4)

Since the Jurm attack in April 2015, the Afghan government launched a few operations to counter the insurgency’s expansion in Badakhshan, but the network of mountain passes, valleys and rivers that connects the districts of Yamgan, Jurm and Warduj makes decisive military operations difficult. Although a large security force can succeed in pushing back the militants into neighboring districts, the insurgents are able to return again as soon as the government forces retreat to their bases. This was the case, for instance, during the government operations that started on 22 January 2016 in Tagab district, which borders Yamgan district to the west. The operation involved a large force of 600-700 ANSF troops. According to a western security analyst, the Taleban initially held their ground but were soon pushed back. When the ANSF conducted a village-by-village clearance operation, a large number of Taleban escaped to the Teshkan area in the northern part of the district, while others made it over the mountain passes that lead into Jurm and Yamgan district in the east.

Following the operation in Tagab, there was a lull until 15 February 2016 when the Afghan government announced another operation, which began the following morning in Argo. Officials told the author that the Afghan forces would make their way into Khash district, and then Jurm and Warduj, in order to try to entrap the Taleban in the notorious Khostak valley (which they did not end up doing). (5) The operation started in Spin Gul Valley, about 25 kilometres southeast of the provincial capital Faizabad – one of three areas (the others being Kohestan and Yaftal, sub-districts of the provincial capital) where militants maintain a close enough reach to be able to enter Faizabad city. Security analysts claim that the operation in Argo did manage to cut off the militants’ escape routes, but based on previous experience in the area and the overall effectiveness of operations across the country, there is little reason to believe that the operation will have a long-term effect. Moreover, on the eve of 16 February 2016, after the morning’s operations in Argo district, an overwhelming force of militants launched attacks on Afghan security forces in the Amb-e Ardar area of Baharak and Sar-e Pol-e Sooch in Jurm. (7)  On 5 March 2016, seemingly in response, the ANSF launched an airstrike on Baharak district, Dashtuk and Amb-e Ardar area followed by a clearance operation.

Since then all operations in Badakhshan seem to have come to a halt, much to the concern of Badakhshan provincial council members and civil society activists. According to a military officer, future operations in Badakhshan are likely to merely consist of operations by police forces with some air support, as seen in the 5 March 2016 attack in Baharak. This will not significantly change the security situation in Badakhshan. According to a western official familiar with the security developments in the province, “Retaking ground is not part of the discussion. The focus is on the fragmentation and disruption of the Taleban.” For Badakhshan, this means those areas under Taleban control will most likely remain that way.

Afghan officials, reluctant to speak on record about the issue, have indicated that this may be part of a larger strategy. They said that deals are currently being struck in Warduj and Jurm between the Taleban and government district chiefs in order to prevent more bloodshed. One mentioned the example of such a deal in Sofian village of Warduj. According to a Ministry of Interior official, part of the Ghani administration’s approach was to cede territory to the Taleban in order to lure them to the negotiating table. A High Peace Council official said the main objective was to ensure that the Taleban is “no longer a brand” and that by supporting local Taleban groups across the country, the movement could be fragmented.

Whatever the case, the latest developments seems to have caused the government to not only shelve the operations it had planned to counter the growing militancy in Badakhshan, but also to halt its attempts to set up a permanent base in Faizabad. The base was meant to house the new 4th brigade and was supposed to have been completed before the last winter set in.

It seems fair to say that what appeared to be one of the insurgency’s main objectives of 2015 – creating unchallenged safe havens in Badakhshan – has indeed been achieved. Out of Badakhshan’s 28 districts, three are more or less under Taleban control as of early April 2016 – Jurm, Yamgan and Warduj – with some areas being contested due to the presence of ANSF bases, which the Taleban are trying to attack and overrun. Looking at the military’s plans or lack thereof for Badakhshan at the moment; it seems unlikely this situation will change.

Declining Resources

The mass attacks on government forces across Afghanistan in 2015 and early 2016 have had substantial effects on the morale and motivation of the Afghan forces. This comes on top of existing complaints that eat at the soldiers’ morale, ranging from wearing old, holey shoes and clothes, being fed bad food, and not getting paid; to commanders not responding to phone calls from their subordinates in emergency situations, and reinforcements arriving late, or not at all, when troops are under attack. These grievances, in turn, feed into the high rates of attrition and desertion, which have left Afghanistan with a shrinking ANSF. (6)  And then there are of course also the direct threats by the Taleban.

It is not clear how many security forces in Badakhshan have left their posts due to Taleban threats. Some of the soldiers who were given ultimatums to “leave or be killed,” eventually returned to their checkpoints, according to provincial council members. Some left Badakhshan to serve in the ANSF in other provinces, while others decided to leave the country altogether to find other work in Iran or Pakistan.

The international military forces also did not seem to have shown much interest in Badakhshan. Although at NATO operational meetings in 2015, it was frequently stated that Badakhshan was high on the agenda, the topic of conversation tended to consistently centre on Helmand. At one meeting, an official told the author that the Americans did not want to be fighting on behalf of local powerbrokers, suggesting that the Americans still believe the conflict in Badakhshan to be mainly a local one. ANA Chief of Staff, General Qadam Shah also said he thought the US was still operating on old intelligence, in particular from the Germans (who were stationed in northern Afghanistan from 2006 to 2013). He thought the Germans “told the US that the war in Badakhshan was a criminal war, a war over mines, between commanders, a narcotics war. This is outdated. Things have changed. The insurgents are active and are conducting their operations. Unfortunately NATO and the US do not believe this.”

Badakhshan, moreover, suffers from the ongoing competition for military material and capabilities – in the face of dwindling resources and a growing war: if a Humvee is sent to Helmand, it often means the force brigade in Badakhshan does not get one. Afghanistan also, to some extent, needs to compete with Iraq and Syria, particularly in the area of surveillance equipment. (7) And there seems to be a clear reluctance on the part of the foreign forces and donors to provide large amounts of military equipment, given the Afghan forces’ track record in terms of poor maintenance, theft and endemic corruption. The large amounts of equipment and weapons captured by the Taleban (or surrendered to them) often without a fight, only add to the picture.

Changes in the International Field

While Badakhshan is not seen as a priority by the US, and by extension NATO, Russia and Tajikistan have expressed increasing concern over the growing destabilisation in northern Afghanistan. In mid-January 2016, Tajikistan closed its consulates in both Faizabad and Kunduz, due to the increased insecurity. In March 2016, while the Afghan government carried out operations against the Taleban in Badakhshan, Tajik and Russian forces conducted joint operations on the Afghan/Tajik border. Assistance to the Afghan government currently consists of providing equipment, training and reinforcing the security infrastructure on the border, most notably with Tajikistan. It remains to be seen whether this will be expanded. According to sources close to the Taleban, the insurgents are likely to continue their push to control the border areas with Central Asian countries throughout 2016, possibly in an attempt to be seen as a legitimate or least ascendant power by Russia and the neighboring Central Asian countries.

In the meantime, there have also been reports that the shared concern over a growing IS threat have brought the Taleban, Russia and Iran closer together. The growing threat of IS in Afghanistan is also NATO’s main concern in Badakhshan, according to security officials. At the beginning of March 2016, the local Taleban reportedly arrested a number of suspected Daesh affiliates trying to recruit people in Jurm district, although whether this is true or not is unclear. The threat of IS in Afghanistan has often been used as a tool throughout the country by Afghan officials to try to attract western attention and support. Yet, according to a western military official, the announcement of active IS recruitment in Jurm may be premature; as Daesh is at the moment more likely to just be gathering intelligence on the dynamics in the north, than intending to start operations there.

What does the year ahead hold for Badakhshan?

Over the past year, little has changed in the province, other than a renewed commitment from the Taleban (including their foreign fighters) to continue their push for control. The ANSF have barely managed to keep the Taleban from spreading beyond Jurm, Yamgan and Warduj and have even struggled to achieve that. Local security forces, elders and powerbrokers are often caught between the two sides and continue to try to eke out the best deal for themselves, which sometimes is not much more than mere survival. The year ahead will thus be telling on many fronts: The effects of last year’s large scale attacks, like the one in Jurm, will become more evident, as will the government’s capacity and above all willingness to counter them. The security developments will not only be closely watched by the Badakhshis but also by the neighboring Central Asian countries, such as Tajikistan. Others such as Russia and Iran will keep Badakhshan on their radar, while watching for signs of the emerging of Daesh in the province. So one year after the Jurm attack and not long before the Taleban are expected to announce, and start, the 2016 spring offensive, Badakhshis have all reason to be nervously anticipating the year ahead.

* In the context of this dispatch, the term soldiers will be used to refer to any member for the ANSF, including ANA, ANP, Afghan Special Forces and ALP, unless otherwise specified as it was often not possible to discern which members of the ANSF respondents referred to.

Edited by Lenny Linke and Martine van Bijlert

Bethany Matta is a reporter and videographer based in Kabul, whose focus is mainly on northern Afghanistan.

(1) Khostak valley, still the main base of the Taleban in Jurm district today, consists of around 30 villages scattered throughout the main valley and the five sub-valleys that encircle it. The valley connects four Badakhshan districts: Zebak and Keran Wa Munjan in the south, Warduj in the east and Yamgan in the west.

(2) To add to an already troubling narrative, due to the lack of helicopters to transport the dead soldiers out of the district after they had been retrieved, their bodies sat outside for days. In some cases, it took ten days to return a body of a dead soldier to his family, the Deputy Governor Bedar told the author. Bedar, himself a physician by training, had been tasked, together with three other doctors, with reconnecting the heads of the decapitated soldiers to the bodies. Two heads were mistakenly attached to the wrong bodies, creating more agitation and adding to the already very palpable tension at the governor’s compound in the days following the attack.

(3) Military sources, intelligence and Afghan officials say that while the amount of military government equipment seized by militants certainly has added to their supplies, the real value of the seized ANSF vehicles is that they can be used as decoys in order to get close to or gain access to ANSF bases. Recently, stolen Humvees were used to attack a check post in Helmand, killing six security forces.

(4) Badakhshan was the only province in Afghanistan to firmly resist Taleban control when they ruled from 1996-2001. Locals used to point to this history to explain why there was no groundswell of support for the Taleban in the province, like in some other areas of the north, for example Kunduz. 2008 is considered the inception point of the insurgency in Badakhshan when residents first noticed a change in Warduj district. Residents recalled seeing only small groups of militants arrive at first, but then their numbers doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and by 2010 the district had been largely ‘overrun’ by the Taleban and fighting became constant. Several officials noted that Tiragon village in the south of Warduj had been particularly susceptible to extremist ideology because many children from that area had been sent across the border to Pakistan to study in madrasas. (Many Uzbek and Tajik families in northern Afghanistan send their children for madrassa education to Pakistan, mainly due to lack of development and poverty. Incentives include free room and board and often food with a small stipend.)

(5) The 16 February 2016 operations in Argo were said to also have included local militia groups (outside of the ALP framework) and what the government calls ‘uprising forces’ from Argo, Faizabad, Baharak, Warduj, Jurm, Khash, and Darayem. After the fall of Kunduz in September 2015 the government announced plans to expand the ALP program in the north and in October 2015, six months after the Jurm attack, Badakhshan received a big tashkil for “uprising forces,” a term essentially used in place of militia or armed men. However, there is little reason to believe the installment of these militias will result in anything other than short-term stability, if that.

(6) In August 2015, General John F. Campbell, the US Forces commander in Afghanistan, said that at least 4,000 Afghan security force members were deserting their posts every month due to mismanagement of staff, equipment and weapons. The ministry of interior denied this. A ministry of interior official, however, told the author that over a six-month period in 2015 more than 4,000 security force members had been killed and 6,000-7,000 wounded across all regions of Afghanistan.

(7) The US Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) system in Afghanistan is multi-layered, consisting of permanent air surveillance via security blimps attached to essential military installations, a variety of drones for specialized reconnaissance, satellite observation and high-flying surveillance planes. For non-priority areas, such as Badakhshan, the US relies on satellite observation and high-flying planes for surveillance only.

During the last fighting season, which started in April 2015, there were only 2 MI 35 (certified) assault helicopters for the whole country. Due to their frequent use and extensive maintenance needs, often only one was operational. Since then India has provided Afghanistan with an additional four MI 25 attack helicopters in November 2015.

The Afghan forces do have other helicopters, but they tend to be unfit for Badakhshan’s mountainous terrain and high altitudes, or are unable to deliver the precision targeting necessary to avoid the risk of mass civilian casualties. The military, for instance, has MI17s transport helicopters that have been retrofitted so they can also fire rockets, but they have a very limited precision and firing range. The two-dozen ND 530s aircraft that were provided by the US cannot operate in Badakhshan, because their engines do support high altitudes.

 

The Cipher Brief asked me to write a short piece on the impact of Russia’s economic downturn on prospects for the Russian military, as part of a series on Russian military modernization.

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The drop in Russian state revenues has affected Russian military modernization to some extent, though the Russian government has made an effort to insulate the military from budget cuts. Although the 2015 military budget was cut by five percent mid-year, the total allocation was still 25 percent higher than the previous year’s budget. This allowed the military to continue its modernization process, conduct operations in Syria, and fulfill its training and exercise programs.

With oil prices remaining low, the military is facing a more difficult financial picture in 2016. In November, the Finance Ministry announced that the total 2016 defense budget would be largely the same as in 2015. However, last month, an additional five percent cut was announced, which will result in the first annual net decline in Russian defense spending since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000.

As a result of the deteriorating financial outlook, the fulfillment of the 2011-2020 State Armament Program is now in question.

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