Where the Taliban and al-Qaida cross-fertilize

Jim Maceda Correspondent

KABUL, Afghanistan — NBC News’ Jim Maceda is on assignment in Pakistan and Afghanistan reporting on the unruly tribal area between the two nations. In a Q&A, he discusses the threat presented by the resurgence of the Taliban in Pakistan and the organization's close ties to al-Qaida. 

You were recently in Pakistan, which is reportedly a safe haven for both the Taliban and al-Qaida. Did you see evidence of that on the ground there? Absolutely, there is a sense that there is a sanctuary inside the tribal belt of Pakistan — that semi-autonomous strip of land just east of the border with Afghanistan — for both the Taliban and al-Qaida. In that region, there is a belief that there is a state within a state now operating five years after the fall of the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

How did this happen? Well, the world basically turned its eyes away from Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban. They were focused on al-Qaida in the tribal areas, along that border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but as many international Taliban experts will tell you, neither the U.S. nor Pakistan felt pressure to go after the Taliban. Both countries considered it to be a local problem, not an international threat.

What happened was in November or December of 2001, the Taliban fled Kabul and went into Pakistan. Over the past five years, they have recruited thousands of young Pashtun men — usually from the madrassa [relgious] schools. They have encouraged them with ideas of jihad, relatively high salaries, and they’ve managed to create command and control centers in that strip of territory that is not under the control of the Pakistani government or army.  

So, yes, there is a Taliban sanctuary. What complicates things is that foreigners can’t go into this tribal area. Pakistani journalists even, if they are not from the tribal areas, go in at their own risk. So a lot of what’s going on in there goes unreported and that makes things even more difficult to understand and react to.

On video that has been smuggled out of places like north and south Waziristan and other provinces like Bajur along the tribal belt, you see frightening things. You see armed Taliban walking the streets of the capital of southern Waziristan like they are deputy sheriffs keeping the order. They are a religious police. I’ve also seen copies of pamphlets smuggled out the region with edicts from the ad hoc Taliban government telling men that they must not shave their beards and imposing taxes on everyone to support mujahedeen fighters.

So, that type of state-within-a-state reality is spreading. It’s growing because the U.S. can’t send ground troops into the tribal areas. And we’ve seen the kind of negative response when the Pakistan government moves in an aggressive way into those areas. 

You saw recently the reaction to the Bajur madrassa school stike — allegedly by Pakistani forces, although there is a strong belief here that the strike was launched by the CIA — the reaction was incredible anger throughout the territories.

So, Pakistan’s President Musharraf sees himself struggling to find a strategy to deal with this growing problem of a Taliban sanctuary right in his country. If he strikes too hard, then there is a backlash. But, if he doesn’t strike hard and continues trying to make peace deals and truces with local tribes, then there is often a rise in the cross-border attacks. So that’s counter-productive as well.

Right now there is no answer; there is only the question: What do you do about this sanctuary? Counter-terrorism experts will tell you, you can not win against a counter-insurgency that has a sanctuary in another country. It never happens. And that is what’s at stake right now.

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