Courtesy of TIME
Hundreds of Taliban insurgents swarmed through a key district just outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Monday, sending residents fleeing in anticipation of retaliation by NATO troops. This latest Taliban assault in the Argandab district caps several weeks of increased fighting in the country's southern districts along the border with Pakistan, followed by a spectacular raid on a Kandahar prison, in which some 400 Taliban fighters were freed, according to officials. "My men have seen a few of the escaped Taliban prisoners among the fighters in Argandab," says district chief Ghulam Farouq.
Argandab, just 10 miles southeast of Kandahar, is famous for its lush vineyards and pomegranate orchards. It is also a key symbol for the insurgency. Soviet troops that took the rest of Afghanistan when they invaded in 1979 were never able to conquer the district. Its shady groves, raisin-drying barns and deep irrigation canals provide excellent cover for fighters. Kandahar residents worry that the militants could use it as a base for an attack on the city itself, in an attempt to regain their former power base. "Argandab is a strategic district, which the Taliban can use to threaten Kandahar," says former police chief Khan Mohammad. The Taliban have taken every village in the area except for the main town of Argandab, Mohammad says, and there are 40 to 50 Taliban fighters in each village. He worries the prison raid was a precursor to an attack on Argandab itself. "The Taliban have gained a lot of power with those who have been freed from the prison," he says.
Officials of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO's military arm in Afghanistan, are skeptical about reports of such high numbers of Taliban forces fighting together, but they say they are ready to respond to any threat. "In the wake of the jailbreak, we obviously have a different and more difficult security situation in Kandahar," says ISAF spokesman Mark Laity. "We are aware of the potential threat, and to that end we have already moved several hundred Afghan national army forces to Kandahar. We have also repositioned our international forces in the area."
A massing of Taliban fighters in Argandab is a departure from the militant tactics that have evolved over the past two years. In 2006 NATO forces soundly defeated a Taliban force in nearby Panjwai and declared the movement all but dead. An increase in suicide bombings and the utilization of improvised explosive devices to attack coalition forces since then has been interpreted as signs of weakness and desperation. Now it is starting to look like a recuperation strategy. Monday's raid, combined with Friday's well-planned jailbreak — the operation lasted just under 30 min. and involved two suicide bombers, plus militants mounted on motorcycles who systematically broke down every cell door in the facility — is evidence of the growing strength of the Taliban, whose fundamentalist Islamic regime was pushed from power when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
Both U.S. and NATO leaders have asked for more troops to counter the mounting threat of the Afghan insurgency, but to little avail. The war in Iraq has taken the lion's share of American resources, and other Western nations are reluctant to invest more troops. "Afghanistan is half again bigger than Iraq, and it has a population estimated to be 3 to 5 million more than Iraq," says General Dan McNeil, the former commander of ISAF. McNeil points out that there are only 65,000 international forces in Afghanistan, compared with nearly double that in Iraq. The effort "needs more flying machines, more maneuver units and more intelligence," he says.
But more troops will be of little use if Afghan insurgents are getting support and sanctuary across the border in Pakistan. McNeil, who spent 16 months in Afghanistan and left on June 3, blamed April's 50% increase in attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan's east and south on insurgents crossing the border from Pakistan. Despite "tactical success on the battlefield last year, we still have a lot of work to do," he told journalists just before departing the country. "As long as there are these sanctuaries that remain out of the reach of security forces here, long-term security and stability will be difficult to fully achieve."
Pakistan, which once supported the Taliban government in Afghanistan, is now suffering an insurgency of its own. Militants aligned with al-Qaeda have attacked security forces in the ungoverned tribal areas —and have sent suicide bombers to major urban areas such as Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. The Pakistani army has been unable to contain the militants. It has already lost around 1,000 soldiers trying. In an attempt to gain stability, the military embarked on peace negotiations with militant groups last December, which the newly elected government in Islamabad is backing. In exchange for pulling military forces out of the tribal areas, militants have agreed to stop attacking government institutions. But just a few weeks after news of the negotiations broke, Baitullah Mehsud, head of an umbrella group of insurgents called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, declared at a press conference that he would continue his jihad against foreign forces fighting in Afghanistan.
A new study released by the Rand Corp. and funded by the U.S. Defense Department claims that Pakistani intelligence agents and paramilitary forces have helped train Taliban insurgents and have given them information about American troop movements in Afghanistan. "Every successful insurgency in Afghanistan since 1979 enjoyed safe havens in neighboring countries, and the current insurgency is no different," said the report's author, Seth Jones. "Right now, the Taliban and other groups are getting help from individuals within Pakistan's government, and until that ends, the region's long-term security is in jeopardy." The Pakistani military has called the findings "rubbish."
During the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, Pakistan backed the Taliban by offering training, funding and weapons. In 2001 then President General Pervez Musharraf severed the ties, but many observers believe that some elements within the military have kept links, either for ideological reasons or in order to retain control over their neighbor. "I do not believe it is centrally directed or accepted," says a Western military official in Pakistan, "but I do believe there are individuals at the lower field levels who are maintaining ties with extremists, Taliban and maybe even al-Qaeda."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said he is fed up with Taliban militants using Pakistan as a sanctuary, and he announced at a Sunday press conference that he would send Afghan troops into Pakistan to hunt down Taliban leaders. "Afghanistan has a right to self-defense," Karzai said. Pakistani official reacted angrily, swearing to defend their territorial sovereignty. Relations between the two countries have always been fragile; Karzai's statement brought them to a new low. But instead of being chastised for his lack of diplomacy, Karzai received the blessing of U.S. President George W. Bush: "Our strategy is to deny safe haven to extremists who would do harm to innocent people. That's the strategy of Afghanistan; it needs to be the strategy of Pakistan."
Big Al - Support Advisory for www.MensForte.com
(Email your questions to me at bigal@mensforte.com)
"Top Penile Enhancement Products Tested & Reviewed!"
|
 |
