Be the Insurgent to Fight Insurgency

Every time some of us Afghans become a bit hopeful about the plight of this country, a series of suicide attacks on civilian centres packed with people change our hopes to despair.

More than six suicide attacks in the past five weeks in Kabul, Khost, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Kunduz and Faryab have taken the lives of around 200 ordinary Afghans fighting for survival on a daily basis. While these are the official numbers on the national television, the real death toll has risen much more.

A number of Afghan journalists and activists had gathered one evening last week to share the growing tensions of the country, but we were saddened as TOLOnews aired the video of the would-be suicide bomber in Kabul Bank who shot people with so much joy.

The conversation continued ... " There is a pattern. As the counter-insurgency takes momentum, and the Taliban get weaker, we get more suicide attacks, particularly on civilian targets ...and its happening as the General in a hurry (hinting towards Gen. Petraeus) is being applauded for shortening the long war- so these attacks on Afghan civilians have an international impact as well,"said one of the Kabul-based news publishers.

Many of us in that circle came to a conclusion that was already clarified somehow by the President's Spokesperson earlier this week. Whenever Afghan government vows to be making progress in terms of its security responsibilities, we have more attacks even in the relatively calm regions that destabilise the whole country.

The terror and havoc created by the video of the attacker from Kabul Bank in Jalalabad is palpable on the faces of every Afghan you meet on the streets of Kabul. Some of us thought that such a merciless momentum of killing civilians caused by the insurgent and Taliban masters is a reminder that the High Peace Council should rather travel to Islamabad more often than going to Guantanamo to free the tools of the insurgency, instead should focus on the sources.

According to the NDS Spokesperson, almost 90 percent of the recent suicide attacks were commissioned in tribal areas of Pakistan, but that is not a news anymore. What is more important for Afghanistan to understand and prevent at this level is the latter part of the NDS report; which says that all these suicide attacks have been carried out by young kids who have been either brainwashed by the insurgent propaganda machinery or forced to blow themselves up. Furthermore, NDS stated that young kids are being kidnapped and forced into suicide terrorism.

However, we don't see any efforts underway to prevent young kids in Afghanistan from the grip of insurgency.

These suicide attacks don't only kill civilians but have more influential messages. Recent attacks on big shopping malls in Kabul, a bank in Jalalabad, an ID registration office in Kunduz and a Friday Buzkashi game in Faryab are attacks on the indicators of progress and modernisation in Afghanistan. The insurgents and their masters are very successful at penetrating into the hearts and minds of Afghans and creating further terror, something that Afghan government and its allies have badly failed to achieve.

At the same time, Afghans are tired of the blame game. Every now and then a governor, an NDS official or the leadership condemn the neighbours and the story is over. But the next day we wake up to another suicide attack or bombing. What is more absurd about these blame games is the failures of the overall structures responsible to protect civilians to prevent these attacks when they know the source of terror.

Many of Afghans in the bubble of Afghanistan's ‘middle class elites' who have greater expertise, understanding and outreach inside the country are somehow forced into corners and they end up being political activists, analysts or commentators in the media. The government should be utilising its grasp of Afghanistan issues in fighting the ongoing insurgency. Instead, the Afghan government is getting rid of reformists and technocrats struggling for progressive development in Afghanistan as a goodwill gesture to its ‘angry brothers' who continue slaughtering Afghan nation.

Today the interest of millions of common Afghans are being sacrificed for the political advancement of a group that has only harmed Afghan nation and there is literally no ways for the nation to convey these fears to a government they have voted to. Considering the recent upheavals in the Middle East and some parts of Africa, it will not be too far when the Afghan nation would stand up against ongoing political oppression being inflicted upon them.

Though coming from diverse backgrounds, many of us in that conversation had one solution for counter terrorism -- be the insurgent to fight the insurgency in Afghanistan. Use the same propaganda machinery to weaken the momentum created by the insurgents. Show quick response through prosecution and punishment of the captured bombers in the public eye - condemn suicide terrorism as part of a national campaign declaring suicide terrorism as an act of sedition and anti-Afghan patriotism and invite Afghan nation to fight anti-Afghan patriot elements. That is how we can unite the Afghan nation against terror.

General McChrystal has a similar lesson to share with the decision makers of Afghanistan:

"In bitter, bloody fights in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it became clear to me and to many others that to defeat a networked enemy we had to become a network ourselves. We had to figure out a way to retain our traditional capabilities of professionalism, technology, and, when needed, overwhelming force, while achieving levels of knowledge, speed, precision, and unity of effort that only a network could provide. We needed to orchestrate a nuanced, population-centric campaign that comprised the ability to almost instantaneously swing a devastating hammer blow against an infiltrating insurgent force or wield a deft scalpel to capture or kill an enemy leader...."

And the conversations were interrupted by our fifty-year-old cook who came to invite us all for dinner but had a more interesting message: "We fought world powers, but can't fight these hired killers? If the political leaders today announce that the Afghan nation should unite against their enemies and save their motherland, the next day all of us will be at the borders defending this nation..."