Chris Wattie - Contact Charlie: The Canadian Army, the Taliban, and the Battle for Afghanistan

Chris Wattie was a senior national reporter with the National Post, and one of the first Canadian reporters embedded with the army when he accompanied Canadian troops on the International Security Assistance Force mission in Kabul in 2003. Wattie lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Quetta, Pakistan

NovemberDecember 2005

Sometime in the late winter of 2005, a small group of Afghans made their way to a compound on the outskirts of the frontier town of Quetta in northwest Pakistan. They probably drove in a small convoy of two or three dusty Land Roversthe vehicle of choice among the warlords, smugglers and strongmen who roam Quettas maze of streets and high-walled compounds.

The men were Taliban and their convoy had come a long way on this particular cold winter day, driving for hours through Baluchistans sparsely populated mountains and high plateaus, and speeding past the small towns and even smaller villages huddled together in the territorys handful of fertile valleys. The drivers would have chosen their way carefully from among the thousands of roads and tracks that criss-cross the vast and largely lawless border province, avoiding major towns and the rare signs of authority.

The Taliban tried to keep a relatively low profile in Baluchistan and most particularly in Quetta, the sprawling capital of the Pakistan province. It was an area they had openly dominated during their years in power in Afghanistan. Now, the nineteenth- century British garrison town served as the base of operations for the insurgency they were fighting just over the border, and while they had many allies and supporters in the cityincluding Quettas nominal government and many of the regions Pashtun tribal leadersthe hard-line Islamist militia that had run Afghanistan until 2001 did not want to draw too much attention to themselves. The Pakistani government occasionally swooped into Quetta to exert what little authority it had in the region by arresting militantsusually local Baluch separatist guerrillas, but sometimes Taliban leaders as welland there was always the danger of a precision air strike by the hated and feared Americans.

Quetta has a long and colourful reputation as a haven for smugglers and guerrillas. It served as a home base for the mujahedeen during their guerrilla war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the Taliban used it as a supply centre in the early 1990s, when they were extending their power from their base in the southern half of Afghanistan to eventually cover most of the country. The Talibans sponsors and advisors in the Pakistani Inter-Service IntelligencePakistans powerful spy agencywere based in and around Quetta as well, and after September 11, 2001, the city was a natural bolt-hole for Taliban leaders fleeing the U.S.led coalition in Afghanistan that chased them out of power in a few weeks. The region is still thick with Afghan refugees crowded into camps first set up during the Red Armys long and brutal occupation, and the Taliban fit seamlessly into the mix of spies, drug dealers and gun runners that dominate the town.

The Pashtuns who dominate southern Afghanistan and make up almost the entire leadership of the Taliban have always regarded the international border with Pakistan as a fiction perpetrated by ferrenghi (foreigners) and for more than a century have used Baluchistan as a hideout. The territorys local government was dominated by Pakistans powerful religious parties and from the very beginning of the Talibans exile from power, the central government in Islamabad was less than enthusiastic in its pursuit of them. The few army or government officials turned a blind eye to the young men who filled Quettas winding streets and bustling bazaars, eyes lined with kohl and dressed in well-worn black turbans and khameezthe baggy, pyjama-like garments common throughout central Asia. Their black- and-white garb, well known in Afghanistan as the unofficial uniform of the Taliban, could be seen in tea houses and madrassas (religious schools) throughout Quetta. Until a recent crack-down, the walls of the city had been lined with posters hailing Taliban martyrs. While Pakistan denies it, western intelligence officials have long known that the Taliban use Baluchistan as a headquarters, setting up safe havens for their fighters in dozens of heavily defended compounds in and around the city, recruiting youths from the local madrassas and organizing and supplying their campaigns in Afghanistan. Their insurgents can walk or drive across the porous 1,500-kilometre-long border at any one of dozens of mountain passes or desert tracks.

The line of Taliban vehicles roaring through Quetta on that winter day in 2005 had come down one such road. Although the drivers and gunmen had made the trip many times before, they were cautious, even when they reached the relative safety of Quettas bustling, colourful streets.

Their leader, surrounded by bodyguards and lieutenants, was a tall, muscular man with a typical weather-beaten Pashtun facea prominent hooked nose, broad features and a bushy dark beard under a loosely knotted turban. His black eyes, said by those who knew him to be his most striking feature, usually exuded intelligence, ferocity and charisma. But on this cold day in the high mountain city they were probably thoughtful, watching the passing mud-brick walls and buildings as the convoy splashed through pools of muddy water left by the winter rains.

The convoy was carrying Mullah Dadullah Akhund, one of the movements key commanders, to a meeting of its leadership to discuss plans for the coming years campaign against the U.S. and their allies in Afghanistan. The meeting would focus largely on the much-anticipated arrival of more than one thousand Canadian soldiers who were then training in western Canada to deploy to the restive Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan, the heartland of the Talibans ongoing insurgency. Mullah Dadullah had come to Quetta with a plan that hinged on the Canadian battle groups move south. It was a daring proposal, completely in character for a commander who had in a few short years developed a reputation for audacity and ruthlessness even among the Taliban. Dadullah is believed to have hatched his plan during the previous years fighting, when he is known to have been present in the region around Kabul, the Afghan capital, where more than one thousand Canadian soldiers had been stationed since 2003.

At the time, Canadian intelligence officers did not know about the Taliban leaders council in Quetta, nor were they aware of Dadullahs interest in their battle group, which was to arrive in Kandahar the following February. But in the months after the summer offensive, they pieced together a picture of how the Taliban likely planned and organized its months-long series of attacks on NATO troops in the southern half of Afghanistan. Much of what they believe happened is surmise, based on past experience and information on other Taliban leaders and the groups decision-making processes.

The Canadian intelligence community had certainly heard of Mullah Dadullah in late 2005. He was about forty years old, although like many Afghans he looked older, aged by decades of hardship and fighting. And like most of the senior Taliban leadership he was missing a limb, in his case a leg lost to a land mine during the fighting that followed the retreat of the Soviets from Afghanistan and the eventual collapse in 1992 of their puppet government in Kabul. He was the Talibans commander in the five southern provinces, including Kandahar, and a well- knownand greatly fearedfigure throughout the country.

Even by Taliban standards Dadullah had a reputation for brutality. While he was a front-line commander in northern Afghanistan in the late 1990s, fighting rebels against the Talibans hard-line Islamist regime, he would make a point of casting the first stone at public executions of women convicted of prostitution. The charge was often a legal fiction, levelled against women the Taliban believed were supporting the rebels. He was also well known for personally presiding over public hangings, usually from atop a construction crane raised in the central square of a city or town for that specific purpose.