Afghanistan Attacks

Germany Upping Pressure in Hunt for Taliban Leaders

By SPIEGEL Staff

Part 2: Five Active Terror Cells in Kunduz Area

The Bundeswehr and BND believe that there are now five active terror cells in the Kunduz area. There are approximately two dozen names on a most-wanted list maintained by German intelligence since 2007 and made available to ISAF troops. The man at the top of the list, Mullah Salam, has a legendary reputation in northern Afghanistan.

Salam, a Pashtun, is about 40. A new photo presented by General Azimi depicts a bearded man with a receding hairline, with a placid smile on his face and a mobile phone in his hand. It is the first photo of Salam, and it will soon find its way into every manhunt dossier.

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The mullah is believed to be behind virtually every attack on the Bundeswehr and to receive his orders directly from the Taliban leadership in Pakistan. Last year, Salam told SPIEGEL, in a threatening statement, that he would exact revenge for every Afghan killed, "until we have driven the Germans out of Kunduz and all other occupiers out of Afghanistan." KSK troops have hunted him several times, but he has repeatedly managed to elude them. His name also appears on ISAF's "Joint Priority Effects List," informally known as the "capture or kill" list. Anyone appearing on this list is to be apprehended -- dead or alive.

Salam's men pay close attention to what happens in Kunduz. Word has spread of the arrest of Abdul Razeq and of another KSK joint operation with the Afghan army, in which seven insurgents were shot dead, as well as various US military operations in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban has become more cautious, and Salam is believed to have retreated to Kandahar. But his deputy, Mullah Shamsullah, remains in Kunduz.

"Many of Us Are Tired of Fighting"

Shamsullah, a Pashtun, met with us in a dirty hotel room at the Ariana Guesthouse. Mobile phones are not allowed. "If I were to use my telephone," he says upon arrival, "they would capture or kill me within a few hours."

His mouth is motionless, but his eyes reveal how wary Shamsullah is. His name is on the top-10 list in General Azimi's office. He was arrested recently, but managed to get away with the help of police officers. He says that he sleeps in a different location every night, for security reasons. Two of his men stand guard at the door, keeping an eye on everything that happens around the dingy hotel.

The meeting runs on longer than the originally agreed 15 minutes. Shamsullah, speaking with unexpected frankness, talks about the strict orders he receives from Taliban leaders in the Pakistani city of Quetta to stand firm in the struggle against the Germans. He says he wanted to leave Afghanistan for Pakistan, but that the Taliban leaders had put their local fighters under heavy pressure in recent weeks to increase the number of attacks. "Many of us are tired of fighting and being constantly hunted," says Shamsullah, "but the pressure from Pakistan is extremely high."

Shamsullah is in charge of the Taliban's efforts in their local stronghold, Chahar Darreh, the district where the religious extremists are seeking to close girls' schools. In a sense, the Taliban commander and the German Foreign Minister are opposing players. Shamsullah and his people have formed a task force against girls' schools in Kunduz.

Steinmeier has established a task force in Berlin charged with coming up with a response to the Taliban's efforts. Despite the high priority assigned to the program, the German diplomats have yet to come up with a solution to Shamsullah's offensive.

One of the emergency measures the state secretaries devised in their meetings at the Defense Ministry is the establishment of a stabilization fund for Chahar Darreh. The Foreign Ministry and the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development have made half a million euros available to improve relations with village elders in the wake of the anticipated fighting. The money is intended for reconstruction projects, including schools and other public buildings.

The fund will also provide local farmers with informal compensation for any damage the Bundeswehr inflicts during its battles with the Taliban. The idea is not bad, in principle, but it also shows how helpless the German government is in its approach to Afghanistan at the moment.

At the German camp in Kunduz, soldiers have little faith that the emergency assistance, diplomatic pressure and military action will lead to decisive improvements. The Bundeswehr has just spent about €130 million ($182 million) on an order for two defense systems, from defense contractor Rheinmetall, each of which consists of six automatically controlled 35-millimeter cannons. At 1,000 shots per minute, as the manufacturer claims, they are capable of "destroying incoming rockets in the air, before they reach their targets."

RALF BESTE, MATTHIAS GEBAUER, HOLGER STARK, ALEXANDER SZANDAR

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan