Some see rift between Taliban, al-Qaida

WASHINGTON — A growing number of Taliban militants in the Pakistani border region are refusing to collaborate with al-Qaida fighters, declining to provide shelter or assist in attacks in Afghanistan even in return for payment, according to U.S. military and counterterrorism officials.

The officials, citing evidence from interrogation of detainees, communications intercepts and public statements on extremist Web sites, say that threats to the militants’ long-term survival from Pakistani, Afghan and foreign military action are driving some Afghan Taliban away from al-Qaida.

As a result, al-Qaida fighters are in some cases being excluded from villages and other areas near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where they once received sanctuary.

Al-Qaida’s attempts to restore its dwindling presence in Afghanistan are also running into problems, officials say. Al-Qaida was forced out of Afghanistan by the U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban in 2001, and it re-established itself across the border in Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden and other leaders are thought to have taken refuge.

Al-Qaida is believed to have fewer than a hundred operatives still in Afghanistan. Though mounting attacks there is not the network’s main focus, it remains interested in striking U.S. and other targets.

But its capabilities have been degraded in recent years, and such attacks now require assistance from the Taliban or waiting for fleeting opportunities, such as the suicide bomber attack against a CIA base in Khowst in December by a Jordanian double agent who had promised U.S. officials intelligence about al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader, Ayman Zawahiri.

Last year, the organization began offering stipends to Afghans who would escort its operatives into Afghanistan, but there are indications many Taliban are refusing this inducement, one U.S. official said.

“The Afghan Taliban does not want to be seen as, or heard of having the same relationship with, AQ that they had in the past,” said the senior official, who is familiar with the latest intelligence and used an abbreviation for al-Qaida.

Indications of al-Qaida-Taliban strains are at odds with recent statements by the Obama administration, which has stressed close connections among militant groups to help build support from the Pakistani government and other allies to take them on all at once.

U.S. officials remain unsure whether the alliance between al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban is splintering for good, and some regard the possibility as little more than wishful thinking. A complete rupture is unlikely, some analysts say, because al-Qaida members have married into many tribes and formed other connections in years of hiding in Pakistan.

But the tension has led to a debate within the U.S. government about whether there are ways to exploit any fissures. One idea under consideration, an official said, is to reduce drone airstrikes against Taliban factions whose members shun contacts with al-Qaida.

One of the goals of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan is to isolate extremists, both within al-Qaida and the larger Taliban movement, while encouraging low- and mid-level Taliban fighters to renounce ties with al-Qaida and reconcile with the Afghan government.

Tactics such as drone strikes and a stepped-up campaign of targeted killings by U.S. Special Operations troops and an intensified military campaign in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have raised the risks to Taliban fighters who assist al-Qaida, the U.S. official said.

The arrest in recent months of several top Afghan Taliban leaders may also be leading some Taliban to reassess their ties to al-Qaida in hopes of easing pressure from the Pakistani intelligence service, which long allowed the Afghan Taliban to operate relatively unbothered.

Officials acknowledge there is little evidence to suggest Mullah Mohammed Omar, the top Taliban leader, favors cutting ties with bin Laden and other top al-Qaida leaders, relationships that go back nearly two decades.

“Al-Qaida has been a very valuable resource to the Taliban in the past,” said a U.S. official. “And I haven’t seen the evidence they really want to cut them loose.”

Unease with the continuing relationship is most apparent among the Taliban’s mid-level commanders and their followers, U.S. officials said.

Though they have a common enemy in the United States and a common interest in maintaining their sanctuary, al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban have seen their goals diverge somewhat. The Taliban has focused on moderating its image as part of its campaign to retake power in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida has drawn closer to other militant groups in Pakistan’s tribal belt that are seeking to overthrow the Pakistani government.

Al-Qaida still has a close relationship with the leaders of the Haqqani network, a militant Afghan group based on the Pakistani side of the border in North Waziristan.

The Haqqani group, named for its founder Jalaluddin Haqqani, continues to cooperate with al-Qaida despite suffering substantial casualties over the last year and a half in CIA drone strikes, officials said.

The apprehension about continuing cooperation with Al-Qaida is especially strong among members of the Quetta shura, the council of Afghan Taliban leaders, based for the last nine years in the southeastern Pakistani city of Quetta. Several top shura members have been arrested by Pakistani security services, officials said, which has left the organization in disarray.

Even in the Haqqani organization, some low- and mid-level Afghan fighters are growing leery about continued collaboration with al-Qaida, a U.S. official said.

“If the Taliban is telling them to get lost, that creates a problem for al-Qaida,” said Barbara Sude, a former CIA terrorism analyst now at the Rand Corp., a policy research organization. “Maybe that’s the beginning of what we’re seeing.”

In the past, al-Qaida was able to offer the Taliban bomb-making experts, experienced fighters and large amounts of cash for operations in Afghanistan in return for haven in Taliban-controlled areas near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

But al-Qaida’s resources and manpower have been diminished over the years.

“Many (Taliban) do not see AQ bringing that much to the current fight,” said a military official. “ A lot of their resources have dried up, and the quality of their fighters has been significantly degraded.”

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