The Bush administration is alarmed, according to a Western intelligence
official close to the administration. He said that while senior members
of the administration consider the situation in Iraq to be not as bad
as portrayed in the press, in Afghanistan the situation is worse than
it has been generally portrayed.
The fact that American troops are pulling out of southern Afghanistan
in the coming months, and handing matters over to NATO peacekeepers,
who have repeatedly stated that they are not going to fight terrorists,
has given a lift to the insurgents, and increased the fears of Afghans.
The arrival of large numbers of Taliban in the villages, flush with
money and weapons, has dealt a blow to public confidence in the Afghan
government, already undermined by lack of tangible progress and
frustration with corrupt and ineffective leaders.
===================================================================
PERHAPS THEY ARE BEING SUPPORTED BY PAKISTAN AGAIN OR BY ROUGE ELEMENTS
OF THE PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT
===================================================================
Taliban threat is said to grow in Afghan south
TIRIN KOT, Afghanistan- Building on a winter campaign of suicide
bombings and assassinations and the knowledge that American troops are
leaving, the Taliban appear to be moving their insurgency into a new
phase, flooding the rural areas of southern Afghanistan with weapons
and men.
Each spring with the arrival of warmer weather, the fighting season
here starts up, but the scale of the militants' presence and their
sheer brazenness have alarmed Afghans and foreign officials far more
than in previous years.
"The Taliban and Al Qaeda are everywhere," a shopkeeper, Haji
Saifullah, told the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt.
Gen. Karl Eikenberry, as the general strolled through the bazaar of
this town to talk to people. "It is all right in the city, but if you
go outside the city, they are everywhere, and the people have to
support them. They have no choice."
The fact that American troops are pulling out of southern Afghanistan
in the coming months, and handing matters over to NATO peacekeepers,
who have repeatedly stated that they are not going to fight terrorists,
has given a lift to the insurgents, and increased the fears of Afghans.
General Eikenberry appealed for patience and support. "There has not
been enough attention paid to Uruzgan," he said in a speech to the
elders of Uruzgan Province gathered at the governor's house in Tirin
Kot, the provincial capital. "I think the leaders, the Afghan
government and the international community recognize this. There is
reform coming and this year you will see it."
The arrival of large numbers of Taliban in the villages, flush with
money and weapons, has dealt a blow to public confidence in the Afghan
government, already undermined by lack of tangible progress and
frustration with corrupt and ineffective leaders.
This small one-street town is in the Taliban heartland, and the message
from the townspeople was bleak.
Uruzgan, the province where President Hamid Karzai first rallied
support against the Taliban in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks,
is now, four years later, in the thrall of the Islamic militants once
more, and the provincial capital is increasingly surrounded by areas in
Taliban control, local and American officials acknowledge. A recent
report by a member of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan shown
to The New York Times detailed similar fears.
The new governor, Maulavi Abdul Hakim Munib, 35, who took up his
position just a month ago, controls only a "bubble" around Tirin Kot,
an American military officer said. The rest of the province is so thick
with insurgents that all the districts are colored amber or red to
indicate that on military maps in the nearby American base. Uruzgan has
always been troublesome, yet the map marks a deterioration since last
year, when at least one central district had been colored green, the
officer said.
"The security situation is not good," Governor Munib told General
Eikenberry and a group of cabinet ministers at a meeting with tribal
elders. "The number of Taliban and enemy is several times more than
that of the police and Afghan National Army in this province," he said.
Uruzgan is not the only province teetering out of control. Helmand and
Kandahar to the south have been increasingly overrun by militants this
year, as large groups of Taliban are reportedly moving through the
countryside, intimidating villagers, ambushing vehicles, and spoiling
for a fight with coalition or Afghan forces.
Insurgents also have the run of parts of Zabul, Ghazni and Paktika
Provinces to the southeast, and have increased ambushes on the main
Kabul-Kandahar highway.
The Bush administration is alarmed, according to a Western intelligence
official close to the administration. He said that while senior members
of the administration consider the situation in Iraq to be not as bad
as portrayed in the press, in Afghanistan the situation is worse than
it has been generally portrayed.
Asked about the surge in Taliban activity in southern Afghanistan, a
Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said: "We have seen Taliban activity
fluctuate from time to time." The British-led NATO force taking over
from the American troops in the south "has well-equipped, well-led and
fully prepared forces to operate in this challenging environment and
deal with any threats," he added.
He noted that the United States would continue to be the largest
contributor of troops to Afghanistan, and would continue to have
primary responsibility for counterterrorism operations and for training
Afghan Army units, even with NATO taking over in the south.
In one of the most serious developments, some 200 Taliban have moved
into the district of Panjwai, only a 20-minute drive from the capital
of the south, Kandahar, Mr. Karzai's home city. The police and
coalition forces clashed with them two weeks ago, yet the Taliban
returned, walking in the villages openly with their weapons, and
sitting under the trees eating mulberries, according to a resident of
the district.
The resident, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said the
Taliban had been demanding food, lodging and the Muslim tithing, zakat,
from villagers. Their brazenness and the failure of the United
States-led coalition to deter them is turning public opinion about the
effectiveness of the government.
For the first time the Afghan government has sent 500 men of the newly
trained Afghan National Army to the neglected province. The official
police force of Uruzgan is 347 strong, with 45 men deployed in each of
the five districts, but far fewer actually turn up for work. American
officials estimated armed Taliban in the province numbered from 300 to
1,000 men. The governor estimated there were 300 armed insurgents in
each district.
The Taliban are warning the people to expect more attacks, the
shopkeeper, Mr. Saifullah, told General Eikenberry. "During the day the
people, the police, and the army are with the government, but during
the night, the people, the police, and the army are all with the
Taliban and Al Qaeda," he said.
Another man, Rahmatullah, told the general that his brother had been
arrested by American forces and the raids and house searches had made
the young men take to the hills to join the militants. "Release my
brother and the tribal elders will persuade the young men to come back
home and stop fighting," he said.
"The unemployment rate is very high and the people of Uruzgan are very
poor," said Mullah Hamdullah, the elected head of the provincial
council.
Unsure of the strength and commitment to fight of the incoming NATO
forces - with British, Canadian, Dutch and Australian contingents -
Afghan provincial officials, who stand first in the Taliban's firing
line, have demanded that Mr. Karzai provide them with hundreds more
police officers and weapons.
The governors of Uruzgan and Kandahar both said in interviews that they
have lobbied the president for a force of 200 police officers for every
district - four times current numbers - and to provide more resources
to equip and supply them properly.
In a recent strategy review, Mr. Karzai agreed to increase the
government presence in the frontline provinces, his chief of staff,
Jawed Ludin, said. "We are increasingly hearing this, that there only
40 officers per district, and half of them are protecting the district
chief as bodyguards, and the other half are on leave," he said.
A deputy minister of the interior, Abdul Malik Siddiqi, told the
gathering that the government had a plan to send 200 to 250 police
officers to each district of Uruzgan, and to find resources to equip
them and pay their salaries.
General Eikenberry expressed caution about the idea, warning that there
were not enough trained officers to send to the area, and more
important, a lack of good leaders to control those police forces.
Uruzgan has suffered from a lingering Taliban presence and its
forbidding terrain, which has made security and governing extremely
difficult, resulting in neglect from the central government, he said.
There has been no police reform or training here, no presence of the
Afghan National Army and virtually no development, he said.
General Eikenberry is hoping to turn things around this year with new
and better local leaders. "Now we see a lot of those conditions
changing," he said, in an interview in the cockpit of the C130 military
plane on the way to Uruzgan. Replacing the governor, and police and
intelligence chiefs, should allow for reform and better governance, he
said. Some 500 men of the national army have been deployed in the
province and the police should receive better resources.
Hopes are pinned on Maulavi Munib, an educated, religious man from
eastern Afghanistan, who was deputy minister of tribal affairs of the
Taliban government. He is starting from scratch since the former
governor sold all his vehicles, including police vehicles, and all the
arms and ammunition owned by the province.
Governor Munib's past brings an added complication, since he remains
listed by the United Nations Security Council sanctions committee as a
wanted member of the Taliban leadership, which technically bars any
government from providing financial, technical or military assistance
to his province.
The Afghan government has formally requested that he, and three other
former Taliban officials, including two members of Afghanistan's new
Parliament, be removed from the list, a process that demands the
agreement of all Security Council members, but Afghan officials said
Russia remained opposed to the proposal.
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