Taliban fighters finding refuge in provincial capital

QUETTA, Pakistan -- At a time when the Taliban is making its strongest push in years to regain influence and territory across the border in Afghanistan, this mountain-ringed provincial capital has become an increasingly brazen hub of activity by the Islamist militia.

Quetta serves as a place of rest and refuge for Taliban fighters between battles, a funneling point for cash and armaments, a fertile recruiting ground, and a sometime meeting point for the group's fugitive leaders, say aid workers, local officials, diplomats, doctors, and Pakistani journalists.

"Everybody is here," said Mahmood Khan Achakzai, a Quetta-based member of Pakistan's National Assembly, describing the routine comings and goings of senior Taliban commanders in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province.

The apparent ease of Taliban movement in and out of Quetta is set against a backdrop of increasingly bitter squabbling by authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan over who bears responsibility for the militia's use of tribal areas on the Pakistan side as a staging ground for attacks that have killed at least 180 NATO and allied personnel this year.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan earlier this month blamed Pakistan for orchestrating Taliban activity. Pakistan, a key ally in President Bush 's "war on terror," in turn accused Karzai of seeking a scapegoat for his own failures of governance.

Quetta is a microcosm for these tensions. Local Pakistani authorities maintain that they keep a tight lid on Taliban activity -- an assertion derided by many residents of this city of about 1.5 million people, and one backed by little demonstrable evidence.

Residents describe nerve-racking encounters with Taliban convoys bristling with weaponry, and volleys of automatic-weapon fire echoing from within walled-off madrasas. Taliban recruitment videos sell briskly at stalls tucked between gun emporiums and carpet shops of Quetta's raucous main market.

"For the Taliban, this is considered to be a safe haven," said Syed Ali Shah, a journalist who writes for the Baluchistan Times. "They come here, they regroup and retrain."

At a local madrasa, or Islamic seminary, black-turbaned young men gathered around a makeshift fountain recently, bathing before noon prayers. One, then two, then half-a-dozen of them aimed steely glares at outsiders lingering near the rusty green gate of the mud-brick compound.

The madrasa is one of dozens in and around Quetta at which Taliban ideology is openly preached. From these schools, willing foot soldiers emerge by the hundreds to join the fight against Western forces in Afghanistan.

The Taliban presence in Quetta is helped by the insular and secretive nature of Pashtun tribal society, the virtually unsecured border with Afghanistan, and the city's large population of Afghan refugees, with whom the militia's members can readily blend. The city also has close historic, ethnic, and cultural ties to the Taliban's birthplace, the Afghan city of Kandahar, a bone-jarring five hours away by road. Many Pashtun clans have roots on both sides of the border.

Afghan provinces lying close to Baluchistan have been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting this year between Taliban and allied forces. The bulk of more than 115 suicide attacks against coalition troops have taken place in or near Kandahar, which was the seat of Taliban power when the movement ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

In Quetta, it's almost as if the Taliban never went away.

Some Taliban-affiliated madrasas operate almost in the shadow of police and military installations. On the main road that runs from the border town of Chaman to Quetta, there is only one police checkpoint. Two police officers were recently seen sitting in a lean-to, drinking tea, and barely glancing up at passing cars.

Pakistani police in Quetta say they have rounded up hundreds of suspected Taliban militants in the past year, and report frequent raids on madrasas suspected of militant ties.

But one Western aid official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described such roundups as a "catch-and-release" program, with most of the detainees seen on the streets again within a matter of days.

Militants who are deported to Afghanistan can make their way back to Pakistan at will, either traveling by motorbike on unmarked border trails or joining the crush of up to 6,000 people, mainly Afghans, who cross the border daily at Chaman.

By mingling with refugees, wounded fighters are able to seek treatment in several Quetta hospitals, which on the whole are better equipped than those on the Afghan side . The International Committee of the Red Cross helps arrange medical care in Quetta for injured civilians, and says that inevitably some fighters slip in among them.

"According to international law, once a wounded combatant has put down his weapon, it becomes a humanitarian case," said Paul Fruh, who heads the Red Cross office in Quetta.

Although most local people are afraid to talk about sightings of senior Taliban figures, commanders are said to have unimpeded access to the city, even highly recognizable ones.

For the families of young fighters from Quetta and its environs, the subject of their decision to take up arms for the Taliban is taboo. A local leader said the tiny hamlet of Charqol, about a dozen miles northwest of Quetta, had produced half a dozen suicide bombers this year alone. None of their relatives were willing to talk.

The climate of fear extends to foreign humanitarian agencies, whose workers are required to have armed escorts whenever they venture outside Quetta.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Quetta was briefly shut down earlier this year in response to a Taliban threat.