Word: jihadi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Afghans "have not been a major component of the transnational jihadi network," says Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis at the intelligence firm Stratfor. Afghan jihadis have tended to join the Taliban, which has traditionally limited its attentions to Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. But Robert Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, believes the Taliban's worldview has changed a great deal since the government it ran was overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. "The Afghan Taliban see themselves quite differently now from 9/11: many of the leaders now see themselves as part of the global...
...know about his associations in Pakistan. The FBI says Zazi has admitted he spent time at an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan in 2008, receiving training in weapons and explosives. If that is true, then Zazi could be a very valuable source of information on how al-Qaeda trains jihadis now. What U.S. counterterrorism officials know about jihadi training camps is based mostly on intelligence gleaned after al-Qaeda's bases in Afghanistan were overrun in 2001. Relatively little is known about the camps in Pakistan, which are located close to the border with Afghanistan...
...attempts by Karzai to reach out to Taliban leaders fizzled largely because the Taliban wanted a third-party to act as go-between. The President either sent his brother or a few Taliban defectors who were distrusted by their former jihadi comrades. Mullah Omar broke off talks through Saudi Arabia several months ago, saying that the Taliban would only talk with Karzai once all foreign troops had agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan. Taliban experts say that, if anything, the fraud-tainted elections have damaged Karzai's standing so badly that the Taliban and their supporters in Pakistan no longer...
Where did it go wrong? First, the U.S. and Karzai had different goals. The Afghan President wanted an amnesty extended to all Taliban, from their leader Mullah Omar down to the lowliest turbaned jihadi. "The Americans said 'No way. We don't deal with terrorists,' and they excluded the leadership," one senior Afghan official explained to TIME. One tactic that worked well in Iraq has not been used in Afghanistan. The U.S. forces in Mesopotamia were able to buy off the Sunni insurgency there by offering a monthly wage of $300 for each of 90,000 fighters. No such incentive...
...battle for Afghanistan, but first rose to prominence as a supporter of Abdullah Mehsud (no relation), a one-legged militant imprisoned at the U.S. prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, soon after the 9/11 terror attacks. Baitullah Mehsud quickly leapfrogged his boss, and his ascension up the jihadi ladder was made apparent in 2005, when - swathed in a black cloth to shield his face - he negotiated the public signing of a cease-fire agreement with the Pakistani government. (Read "Why Pakistan Balks at the U.S. Afghanistan Offensive...