Doubt.

Nitin Pai has a great post on what he calls the Military-Jihadi Complex in Pakistan:

Confusing? Well, yes. But even so, it should be clear that other than Messrs Mehsud and Fazlullah (who form the core of the Pashtun militant groups that form the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) the Pakistani military establishment is comfortable with the other jihadi groups—whether it is Mullah Omar’s Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahideen and groups fighting in Afghanistan, like the Haqqani militia.

And if there is a problem between Mehsud & Fazlullah and the Pakistani government, it is largely due to the deployment of the Pakistani army in FATA. But to the extent that Pakistan’s military establishment complex finds it unacceptable for the Pashtun tribesmen to extend a Taliban-style regime over FATA and NWFP—which will happen if the army backs out completely—this creates trouble for both Pakistan’s civilian government and the military establishment…

Further, the alliance between Mullah Omar and the Pakistani military establishment may well have survived the Bush administration. But there are signs that under Barack Obama, the United States might attempt to crush the Quetta shura, despite Pakistan’s best attempts to convince it otherwise. In the event that the United States manages to sever this alliance then Mullah Omar might well make common cause with Messrs Mehsud and Fazlullah, thereby driving the Pakistan military establishment to side with the United States. Indeed, this is the outcome that Richard Holbrooke and General David Petraeus should be working towards.

Omar making common cause with the TTP, and everyone teaming up against the Pakistani government? Well, along comes Bill Roggio with quite a scoop:

The Shadow Army is active primarily in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Northwest Frontier Province, and in eastern and southern Afghanistan, several US military and intelligence officials told The Long War Journal on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The paramilitary force is well trained and equipped, and has successfully defeated the Pakistani Army in multiple engagements. Inside Pakistan, the Shadow Army has been active in successful Taliban campaigns in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, and Swat.

In Afghanistan, the Shadow Army has conducted operations against Coalition and Afghan forces in Kunar, Nuristan, Nangahar, Kabul, Logar, Wardak, Khost, Paktika, Paktia, Zabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar provinces.

“The Shadow Army has been instrumental in the Taliban’s consolidation of power in Pakistan’s tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province,” a senior intelligence official said. “They are also behind the Taliban’s successes in eastern and southern Afghanistan. They are helping to pinch Kabul.”

Afghan and Pakistan-based Taliban forces have integrated elements of their forces into the Shadow Army, “especially the Tehrik-e-Taliban and Haqqani Network,” a senior US military intelligence official said. “It is considered a status symbol” for groups to be a part of the Shadow Army.

So, if I am to read his report correctly, and you should really read the whole thing to double check if I’m reading this correctly, then the Peshawar shura, the Quetta shura, Hezb-i Islami Gulbuddin, the Haqqani Network, the three or so various Pakistani Taliban groups, and al-Qaeda have all formed an al-Qaeda super brigade, responsible for all of our problems? That almost sounds too good to be true.

Now, The Long War Journal‘s Bill Roggio and I have had dust-ups before. I’m certainly in no position to question his readership, or even his integrity (meaning: I don’t think he’s a bad person when I criticize his site’s reporting). Certainly, he has developed some good sources within the Intelligence Community, who leak to him sometimes-sensitive or even classified information about the War on Terrorism, much as Bil Gertz has (or I should say had0 his sources at the Pentagon who did the same for him. But my biggest problem with his site’s content isn’t that it is provably wrong, it is more than he relies for his scoops almost exclusively on anonymous sources. Much like the problems MSM outlets ran into during the runup to the Iraq War, when you don’t allow your readers to know the biases and histories of your sources, or perhaps more ominously when they can spread whatever story they want without much fear of punishment, then a news consumer if left in a difficult position: do I believe someone telling me something so secret he can’t reveal his identity? Is that a trustworthy motivation?

I’m not certain it is. For one, this whole thing just doesn’t scan. Neither Hekmatyar nor Haqqani had shown much interest in joining the Taliban when it was legitimately conquering territory and reaching out to them for support and companionship; what has changed since late 2007 or so to change this? Roggio’s anonymous officials don’t say. For another, Roggio references only his own reporting on this topic, which is contradictory: in 2007, he reported there were over 200 armed groups operating in the tribal areas; in the January report he cites as evidence the new super brigade exists, he still lists the Taliban and al Qaeda as separate (and I’ve never been comfortable with how he used Omar’s and Mehsud’s Talibans interchangeably). Now they are all working together, under… well, under whose leadership again? When it comes to naming senior commanders within this group, they can name the actual commanders of all the sub-groups. But who leads Brigade 055? I see the reference to killing its previous leader in October of 2008, but four months on I can’t see any reference to who runs it now. What’s missing?

I am leaving open the possibility of me being way wrong, but something about this just doesn’t feel right. Then there’s this:

The Shadow Army is organized under a military structure, a US military intelligence officer familiar with the situation in northwestern Pakistan informed The Long War Journal. There are units analogous to battalion, brigade, and division formations found in Western armies.

The military organization has a clear-cut command structure with established ranks. A senior al Qaeda military leader is placed in command of the Shadow Army, while experienced officers are put in command of the brigades and subordinate battalions and companies.

I’m afraid this has stretched my credulity to the breaking point. A single Army brigade has 3-5 thousand people in it; a division is composed of several brigades and is usually around 10,000-20,000 people and is commanded by a major general. There is no way in hell there are entire divisions of al-Qaeda super-soldiers in Pakistan. Similarly, if the Shadow Army was organized according to such a rigid hierarchy, then the almost weekly decapitation Predator strikes over the past year should have had some sort of effect on their command and control capabilities, right? They haven’t. Something does not smell right about this.

I’ll tell you what. This smacks me as SPECTRE thinking (yes, the evil super-group from the James Bond movies). It is a way to invent an unprovable super villain that handily excuses our own role to play in our failures in the region (that is, the many ways we, by our own actions, have made the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan worse). What’s more, there are indications here that these anonymous officials don’t fully know what they are referring to.

A look at the clothing of the fighters gives a good indication of the identity of the fighters, an expert on al Qaeda told The Long War Journal. The length of the pants of pictured fighters is described as being at “al Qaeda height” — meaning only al Qaeda and allied “Wahhabi/Salafi-jihadis” wear their pant legs this high.

“The extremists who follow al Qaeda’s religious beliefs think that pants must be at least six inches above the ground because there’s a hadith [a saying of the Prophet Mohammed] that says clothes that touch the ground are a sign of pride and vanity,” the expert said. “This, along with the new dyeing of men’s beards red or yellow is a sure sign of al Qaeda-ization.”

The type of masks worn and the tennis shoes are also strong indicators that these fighters “are non-Afghan fighters,” an expert on the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan said. “Those types of masks I have seen, and they are always on the Pakistani side of the border,” the expert said. “The tennis shoes and socks are a big indicator that they are non-Afghan fighters, probably Pakistanis or Arab/Central Asian fighters.”

Clearly, an al-Qaeda.

Again, the mysterious experts who cannot speak their name. This is just plain old wrong. According to the picture Roggio himself used as evidence of the Shadow Army, they are wearing shalwar kameez, local, and VERY COMMON clothes whose pants are “at least six inches above the ground.” Most people in the FATA and Afghanistan wear these clothes, there is nothing unique or special about them (which is the problem — you actually can’t tell who the bad guys are by looking at their clothes, which is something I thought we all realized in 2001 or so).

Secondly, the assertion that dying one’s beard—presumably, given the area, henna—somehow marks one as being “al qaeda-ized” is just batty. Lots of Pashtun men dye their beards red or yellow (or flourescent orange), and sometimes it is because Mohammed did. This does not make them al-Qaeda, unless AQ has suddenly become more like Late Night Shots than an actual terrorist organization.

But after all this weirdness that doesn’t quite add up, Roggio then declares the Shadow Army behind the attack on the VPB in Want, Nuristan last summer that killed nine U.S. soldiers, and the ambush of a French convoy in Sarobi district of Kabul province last August that killed ten French paratroopers, as well as all militancy movements in the NWFP and FATA. He is absolutely right to point out that Pakistani military operations have actually made the area worse, but it just seems too pat to blame it all on the Shadow Army of al Qaeda and congratulate ourselves on our own cleverness.

Then there are the Pakistanis to deal with. Not the officials, or even the locals in these areas. I talk of Pakistanis like the outspoken Let Us Build Pakistan, which most certainly does not see the work of a hidden secret super brigade of al Qaeda behind every Taliban attack:

In the Ferozkhel area recently, two groups of the Taliban fought each other and there were several casualties. The dispute was over whether or not to return a Shia boy who had been kidnapped by them to his family in exchange for one of their (the Taliban’s) colleagues.

I’m not sure what to make of all this. The idea of a super secret al Qaeda brigade that multiple intelligence officials will only leak to a single internet journalist actually being as massive and important as it is portrayed to be is a little much for me to swallow. Given the other inconsistencies, and unexplained phenomena that would really require more explanation to be convincing (especially the bit about clothes and dyed beards), I’m not ready to accept that Brigade 055 is back in business. It’s too convenient for other things, and ignores way too much recent history in the area.

This post was written by...

Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.

Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust

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