Put the Taliban on the terror list, already
Tuesday, June 23rd 2009, 10:52 AM
Hardly a day passes without some news outlet reporting yet another Taliban atrocity, attack or kidnapping. The harrowing ordeal and recent escape of New York Times reporter David Rohde is just one window into the vicious tactics employed by this group.
But here's news that may surprise most Americans and surviving Taliban victims: The State Department's top diplomat, Hillary Clinton, and her predecessors haven't designated it a foreign terrorist organization. What's it going to take?
The Taliban have shocked the conscience of every decent global citizen by engaging in a reign of terror against noncombatants and enemies since gaining control of Afghanistan's government in the mid-1990s. While ruling Afghanistan, the Taliban sheltered Osama Bin Laden and his minions, they destroyed the country's education system in favor of schooling by Muslim clerics teaching little more than Koranic verses, and they banned women from attending school. After being removed from power by American and Afghanistan Northern Alliance forces in 2001, they have gradually grown in strength - largely the result of benefiting from opium poppy drug trade revenues and intimidating and terrorizing local populations.
According to the International Council on Security and Development and BBC reports, the Taliban currently control and/or have a permanent presence in 72% of Afghanistan and 62% of northwest Pakistan, respectively. The group endangers the freely elected Afghan and Pakistani governments and their people, American troops and U.S. regional security interests - and if it ever gains control of any of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, it will directly threaten global peace and security.
Since foreign terrorist organization (FTO) designations play a critical role in fighting terrorists, curtailing support for terrorist activities and pressuring groups to get out of the terror business, the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, requires the secretary of state to provide Congress, by April 30 of each year, a full and complete report on terrorism with regard to those countries and groups meeting criteria set forth in the legislation.
The report submitted to Congress by Clinton for 2008 identified four nations and 44 groups engaged in various degrees of terror activities. The Taliban are not among them.
To receive an FTO designation, groups must meet the following criteria:
1. Be a foreign organization. The Taliban fit that bill. This Sunni Muslim fundamentalist group operates exclusively in Afghanistan and Pakistan and practices the strictest form of Islam. It grew out of an Islamic religious school student movement in the two countries' sprawling Pashtun regions. The group and its affiliates draw primarily from a tribal network of 40 million Pashtuns residing in those two countries, particularly poverty-stricken and undereducated youth who receive indoctrination in jihad in local mosques and madrasahs. Its two most prominent leaders, Afghanistan's Mullah Mohammed Omar and Pakistan's Baitullah Mehsud - along with ally Bin Laden - are believed safely havened in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled territory.
2. Engage in terrorist activity. The Taliban measure up here, as well. The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center reported for 2008 that, "according to open source reports, the Taliban, more than any other group, claimed credit for the largest number of \[terrorist\] attacks and highest fatality totals." The list of Taliban-attributed attacks presented in this report includes a horrifying array of kidnappings, beheadings and bombings of innocents in buses, hospitals, public areas and events, private residences and mosques.
3. Threaten the security of U.S. nationals and the national security of the United States. Again, the Taliban check the box. Presidents George W. Bush and Obama have judged acts committed by the Taliban and their leaders to be threats to U.S. national security, foreign policy and citizens. Since American military action commenced in and around Afghanistan, U.S. casualties total 632 killed and 3,122 wounded (most through hostile action by Taliban jihads), with combat and assistance expenditures totaling more than $250 billion.
Neither the Bush nor Obama administrations has articulated the reasons for failing to designate the Taliban as an FTO, and congressional overseers haven't publicly asked them why. The most reasonable assumption is that administration officials were hopeful that nonlisting would eventually facilitate rapprochement with "reconcilable" Taliban elements.
To date, the facts prove this option illusory. A much better case could be made for placing the group on the list and afterward using delisting the group, or elements of it, as an inducement to give up the fight.
Leaving the Taliban off the State Department's terror list diminishes the report's value, undermines the department's credibility and could further threaten U.S. national security. Let's hope Clinton reverses course soon - for the sake of American troops, U.S. embassy personnel and others who are risking their lives daily in and around Afghanistan in defense of the United States.
Gedrich is a foreign policy and national security analyst and served in the State and Defense departments.
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