Taliban's Muted Response Draws Attention

By DION NISSENBAUM And HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL

KABUL—When news of Osama bin Laden's demise ricocheted around the world, there was conspicuous silence from a crucial voice: Afghanistan's Taliban, his erstwhile host and protector.

While Islamist groups in Gaza and Egypt quickly came out to praise al Qaeda's founder and condemn his killing, the Taliban's top leadership kept quiet, summoning key commanders to their sanctuaries in Pakistan for urgent consultations.

Tuesday night, after nearly two days of unusual silence, the Taliban's well-oiled media machine finally issued a short statement saying there was no credible evidence from those close to bin Laden to prove he was dead. Conspicuously absent was praise for the Saudi fugitive and condemnation of the U.S.

The Taliban's restraint contrasted with groups such as the Palestinian Hamas. While the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, also started out by describing bin Laden's death as unconfirmed, he then declared that, "if it's true," the U.S. was guilty of "murdering an Arab and Muslim holy warrior" as part of its policy to shed Muslim blood. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood also criticized the killing.

Political analysts, U.S.-led coalition officials and the Taliban's own field commanders in Afghanistan on Tuesday grappled with what the Taliban leadership's stance signified. They debated whether it meant the Afghan insurgents felt they were in a politically weakened position and are therefore moving closer to opening peace negotiations with the Afghan government that could end the 10-year war precipitated by bin Laden's attacks on America. U.S. officials require the Taliban to sever links with al Qaeda as a condition for any agreement that would bring the group back into the fold.

"One of the biggest problems we had with the Taliban was: What are [they] going to do with bin Laden? They are not reacting because they are relieved," said Gilles Dorronsoro, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Bin Laden was a big problem for the Taliban."

The Taliban's one-eyed leader Mullah Mohammed Omar provoked the American-led invasion that ousted him and his movement from its perch of power as the rulers of Afghanistan by refusing to hand over bin Laden, then based there, to the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Bin Laden then escaped into the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

In recent years, as the Taliban mounted a nationwide insurgency against U.S.-led forces and President Hamid Karzai's administration, they have tried to play down their links to al Qaeda and bin Laden. The Taliban high command, which calls itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, has repeatedly said that its only goal is to drive out foreign "colonizers," and that it would maintain good relations with all of Afghanistan's neighbors once it returns to power.

"Those inside the Taliban movement have reached the conclusion that they need to find a way back inside the political system," said Michael Semple, a fellow at Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a former European Union diplomat who was expelled by Mr. Karzai in 2007 for contacting the Taliban. "Losing Osama means that the long-term great struggle against the West looks a lot less credible."

Hanif Atmar, a former Afghan interior minister who was fired by Mr. Karzai last year for opposing the peace outreach to the insurgency, gave a less charitable explanation: Pakistan-based Taliban leaders like Mullah Omar are playing nice because of mounting fears about their own security. "If Mullah Omar thinks bin Laden was also given protection and was found by the Americans," he must wonder, "Am I the next one?"

Although al Qaeda members represent a tiny percentage of the anti-Western insurgents fighting in Afghanistan, al Qaeda in the past two years made some headway in re-establishing training bases in northeastern Afghanistan, taking advantage of the pullback of American forces from the area. Bin Laden's ability to evade capture for such a long time, meanwhile, has made him a hero to many Taliban fighters.

The surprisingly cautious response of the Taliban high command to bin Laden's death has already generated frustration among some Taliban commanders inside Afghanistan, who say they expected their leaders to use the occasion as a rallying cry to intensify the war.

Taliban leaders, analysts say, run the risk of alienating their foot soldiers—and the Arab financiers who still support the Afghan insurgency—by not praising bin Laden as the Islamic world's most celebrated modern warrior.

"We are wondering why our leadership is not condemning...Osama's death. We had a gathering this morning and everybody was saying that the Taliban should take revenge," one Taliban fighter in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province said in a phone interview Tuesday. "He was the hero."

Taliban field commanders said they have been instructed by the Taliban high command not to make any statements about bin Laden's demise. Some of the most senior commanders went to Pakistan for consultations immediately after President Barack Obama's announcement Sunday, they said.

The Taliban's high command "might be playing a political game," said a commander in northern Kunduz province. "But I know for sure that every fighter is willing to avenge [bin Laden's] killing."

No matter how the Taliban leadership reacts in coming days, there was broad consensus that bin Laden's death wouldn't have a large impact on the high level of violence expected this year as insurgents launch their annual spring offensive against the U.S.-led coalition.

Knocking out senior militant leaders—let alone someone like bin Laden, who had little or no operational involvement in the Afghan war—rarely has a major impact on the battlefield, said one senior coalition official with experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"People have got to start waking up," the official said. "I find it very frustrating. Great, bin Laden's dead, but this is far from over."

—Maria Abi-Habib and Yaroslav Trofimov contributed to this article.