Under cover, Taliban bring back administrative setup

Feb 8, 2011,

Forward Operating Base Andar (AFGHANISTAN): Midway through December, Afghan police officers arrested a man who had hidden a fake bomb near a government office in Miri, a village in eastern Afghanistan. The man, who gave the name Muhammad Mir, confessed, saying he wanted to gauge the security force\'s reactions to a Taliban attack, according to American intelligence officials.



A paper found in his pocket, though, proved more significant than evidence of the Taliban\'s reconnaissance. It was handwritten in Pashto, and when translated, it revealed a tax-collection ledger of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — the resurgent Taliban. Muhammad Alnabi, it showed, had paid the Taliban 1,600 afghanis, or about $37. Sergeant Akbar had paid 700 afghanis, and Abdulla Kaka had remitted 6,500, funds for a so-called shadow government to carry on its fight.



The scrap in Mir\'s pocket, hinting at both boldness and organization, became one part of a gradually expanding portrait of how the Taliban has organized and fought its guerrilla war in a corner of rural Afghanistan.



The picture is of an underground government by local fighters, organized under the Taliban\'s banner, who have established the rudiments of a civilian administration to complement their shadowy combat force. They run schools, collect taxes and adjudicate civil disputes in Islamic courts. And when they fight, their gunmen and bomb makers are aided by an intelligence and support network that includes villagers, who signal for them and provide shelter, and tunnels in which to elude capture or find medical care.



As part of the Obama administration\'s campaign to subdue a sprawling insurgency and create a durable Afghan government, the military sent thousands of soldiers last year into rural areas under the influence, if not outright control, of the Taliban. One of those task forces, the Third Battalion of the 187th Infantry Regiment, arrived in Miri in September to help establish a government presence in a place where government had been sporadic for a decade.



Its analysis, revealed through interviews with commanders, soldiers and analysts, nonetheless sketches a tactical, social and visual map of an organization that is at once widespread but rarely seen by outsiders. And it presents an implicit reminder of the difficulties facing the Pentagon\'s plan to turn over areas like this one, with its determined and deep-rooted insurgency, to Afghan security forces by 2014.
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