Jihad Road to Afghanistan opens after truce in Pakistan

By Nadeem Sarwar Nov 1, 2011, 12:09 GMT

Peshawar, Pakistan - After years of fighting and hundreds dead, the Taliban have convinced tribesmen in north-western Pakistan to re-open the road through the mountains to Tora Bora in Afghanistan, the militants said.

The 35-kilometre stretch of road in Kurram district was closed in 2009 by local Toori tribes, mainly Shia Muslims, after clashes with rival Sunni tribesmen, who sympathize with the Taliban.

The concrete highway provides a rare access route through the forbidding, snow-capped mountains for Islamist insurgents to launch attacks on NATO forces over the border in in Afghanistan.

Its re-opening is the result of negotiations facilitated by the Haqqani network, a group of Taliban described by the United States as the deadliest insurgent outfit in Afghanistan.

'The road is open now and our people can move freely,' said a local Taliban commander who spoke on condition of anonymity.

'We have been provided two compounds along the border where mujahedin can take rest before they enter into Afghanistan or after returning from there,' he said.

The road stretches from Red Bridge near Parachinar, the district's main city, along the Kurram River to the border village of Teri Mangel and up through the Kharlachi Pass on the Afghan border.

It was built by the Pakistani Army in the early 1980s to transport ammunition, medicines and high-energy food supplies provided by the West to the mujahedin fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

While Pakistani officials know it as the Defence Road, the militants have renamed it Jihad Road.

During the resistance against the Soviet forces, Shiite and Sunni Muslims rubbed along fine, fighting side by side in Afghanistan.

The Toori tribes provided Sunni fighters, led by veteran commanders Jalaluddin Haqqani, Maulvi Younis Khalis and Gulbedin Hikmatyar, not only with safe passage, but also food and shelter.

According to intelligence sources in Islamabad, Pakistan army tanks rolled over the pass and into the Afghan capital to help the Taliban take power in 1996.

In 2002, with inter-tribal relations still sunny, the road was open when Osama Bin Laden fled the Tora Bora caves on horseback into Kurram, an area renowned for its crystal clear water streams, pine-clad mountains, wild fruit and honey, and sanitary weather.

Bin Laden stayed in Toori villages, tribal sources said, before he travelled further into Pakistan, ending up in the north-western city of Abbottabad where he died during a US commando raid in May.

But in the mid-2000s, tensions started to grow between the Shia Toori and the Taliban-linked Sunnis.

Things reached a point of no return in 2007 when some Toori tribesmen attacked a procession of Sunni Muslims in Parachinar, triggering a conflict that closed the Defence - or Jihad - Road in 2009 and led to hundreds of deaths on both sides.

In retaliation, Taliban and their allied Sunni tribes blocked the main road linking the Toori areas with the rest of the country.

Shiite Muslims were forced to cross into Afghanistan, move east and then back across the border to Peshawar if they wanted to travel to other parts of Pakistan.

The closure of their main Jihad Road was a major loss for the Taliban, especially the Haqqani network, an intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

To reach Afghanistan from their Pakistani bases, their missions had to set out from Mir Ali, 100 kilometres further south.

But in early 2011, with backing from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency, the Haqqani network facilitated talks in Islamabad between representatives of Toori tribesmen and several local Sunni clans.

Ibrahim Khan and Khalil Haqqani, two younger brothers of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the head of the network, took part as guarantors.

A ceasefire was called, the Shia Toori tribesmen agreed to re-open the crossing into Afghanistan, and the Sunnis committed to lifting their restrictions on the road linking the region with the rest of Pakistan.

On the record, officials have denied the Taliban's involvement in any of the negotiations.

Hamid Hussain Turi, a representative of the Shia tribesmen, said they have never allowed the Taliban free passage for their raids.

Sahebzada Mohammad Anis, a government official in the area who opened the road blocked by Sunni groups on Sunday also refused to confirm the Taliban was involved.

'Under the deal all roads have been opened,' he said without providing further details.

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