History > 2006 > USA > Wars > Afghanistan (II)

Afghan Detainee Beaten, Doctors Testify

August 11, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:06 p.m. ET
The New York Times

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- A medical examiner testifying in the assault trial of a former CIA contractor said Friday that an Afghan detainee he interrogated probably died from injuries sustained during a beating.

A second doctor told the jury that a series of kicks to the groin could have fractured Abdul Wali's pelvis and caused other internal injuries that led to his 2003 death.

David Passaro, a former Special Forces medic working in Afghanistan as a CIA contractor, is accused of beating Wali during a 2003 interrogation about rocket attacks on a remote base housing U.S. and Afghan troops. Defense attorneys have said Passaro never hit Wali.

The doctors' statements came after several Army paratroopers testified they saw Passaro hit Wali repeatedly with a metal flashlight and kick him in the groin.

Dr. Reinhard Motte, a medical examiner from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., told the jury he believes Wali died from internal injuries caused by the beating described by the soldiers. He said the beating could have ruptured an intestine and caused an infection.

''If I were to write a death certificate on Abdul Wali, I would write blunt force abdominal and pelvic injuries,'' Motte said.

Dr. Anthony Meyer, the chief of surgery at the University of North Carolina hospitals, said Wali's most serious injuries ''would be the two described kicks to the perineum, the area between the thighs, and the hit to the abdomen with the flashlight.''

Meyer said during cross examination that he couldn't give an exact opinion about what led to Wali's death since he had viewed only 12 photos of his body and heard descriptions of his treatment.

But on further questioning from prosecutors, he said Wali ''most likely died from sepsis infection or blood loss progressively over the course of two days.''

CIA investigator Fred Klare testified Friday that Wali's father wouldn't allow an autopsy, or even tell the Americans where his son was buried.

Passaro, 40, faces four counts of assault and, if convicted, up to 40 years in prison. He is not charged with Wali's death.

He is the first American civilian charged with mistreating a detainee during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The prosection was expected to rest its case Friday afternoon.

Passaro is standing trial in his home state under a provision of the USA Patriot Act allowing charges against U.S. citizens for crimes committed on land or facilities designated for use by the U.S. government.

    Afghan Detainee Beaten, Doctors Testify, NYT, 11.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Prisoner-Abuse-CIA.html

The Coalition

U.S. Hands Southern Afghan Command to NATO

August 1, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 31 — NATO on Monday took over command of international forces from the United States in southern Afghanistan, where the fight against the Taliban insurgency has turned more deadly than at any time since American forces ousted the radical Islamist movement in 2001.

The transfer will allow the United States to shift more of its 22,000 troops in Afghanistan toward the border with Pakistan, where leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda are believed to have taken refuge and continue to operate across a porous frontier.

It will also mean a far larger military role for the 18,000 NATO troops here, which will be embarking on one of the most difficult tasks of its 57-year history.

The NATO forces have been in Afghanistan since 2003, but in a peacekeeping role in the largely quiet north. They will now lead the fight against the Taliban, as well as take on powerful drug lords who are backing the insurgents.

As if to underscore the challenges, a car bomb exploded in the eastern province of Nangarhar, killing 8 people and wounding 16, as NATO and American generals presided over a flag ceremony marking the transfer of command in an air-conditioned hangar miles away at the southern air base of Kandahar.

Clashes between insurgents and troops of NATO and the United States-led coalition continued over the weekend, with a number of insurgents killed or captured, the Afghan Defense Ministry reported.

Anticipating the transfer, Taliban insurgents have stepped up their campaign since the spring. They have used car bombs and roadside bombs, assassinated local officials, attacked government posts and gathered in ever larger numbers to fight with international forces.

The attacks have terrorized local people, and the perilous security across the south has halted virtually all development and reconstruction projects and helped turned the population against the Afghan government and its foreign backers.

The Canadian, British and Dutch troops who make up the bulk of the NATO forces in southern Afghanistan now face an enormous challenge in turning the situation around.

The new NATO commander, Lt. Gen. David Richards of Britain, will command 18,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan. The United States coalition commander, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, will remain in Afghanistan in command of 18,000 American troops under a coalition flag.

The commanders stressed that the transfer would enhance security and the international commitment to Afghanistan.

“I hope and believe the huge significance of this renewed international commitment will not be lost on the majority who yearn for peace, stability and increased prosperity we came here to deliver,” General Richards said in a speech to a select audience of government and provincial officials. “These millions of people should be reassured that they will not be let down,” he said, according to Afghan news agencies.

General Eikenberry, who has spent the last months calming Afghan fears over the withdrawal of United States troops from southern Afghanistan, repeated his own message. “The United States will not leave Afghanistan until the Afghan people tell us the job is done,” he said. “The war on terrorism began here in Afghanistan and it continues today. We must never forget that.”

NATO will have soldiers from 37 countries under its command in the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, deployed in the northern, western and southern parts of the country.

The NATO deployment will bring thousands more troops to southern Afghanistan, the Taliban heartland, where insurgents have mounted a vigorous campaign this year.

Already, NATO forces have encountered stronger resistance than they expected as they moved into the area over the last several months. Sixty-eight troops from the international forces have died so far this year, most of them American but some Canadian and British.

So far the pace of casualties exceeds that of 2005, when 86 troops died in the worst year for coalition forces since American troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after its Taliban rulers harbored Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

General Richards has said he plans to do things differently from the United States-led forces, and emphasizes the importance of development and aid to rural communities. But first he has to bring a modicum of security. At the moment, his troops are still battling for control of several districts.

In a news conference this weekend, he said he hoped to set up secure zones in the south within the next three to six months. But he said that the current military presence would be needed for 3 to 5 years and that a foreign military presence would be required in Afghanistan for 15 years to ensure stability.

As it pursues its goals, NATO has already been accused by officials from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission of causing civilian casualties in airstrikes against insurgents. In many areas, the population is so alienated from the government and local authorities that simply supporting the government is a liability.

NATO’s command in southern Afghanistan will also change the regional dynamics, in relations with neighboring Iran and in particular Pakistan, which has been accused by diplomats of not doing enough to stem cross-border infiltration of Taliban insurgents who are using Pakistan as a safe haven.

Increasingly, diplomats and military officials have called for Pakistan to act to apprehend the Taliban leadership, which they say is operating in Pakistan’s unruly province of Baluchistan.

Pakistan’s chief military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, welcomed the NATO deployment in southern Afghanistan, saying Pakistan had long called for more security forces in Afghanistan to stem violence that threatens the region.

“The earlier the situation stabilizes, the better it is for Pakistan,” he said in an interview over the weekend.

Pakistan has increased its troop presence in the southern border region in coordination with NATO, he said, and detained 200 Afghans in the past month, among them some Taliban members.

NATO’s expanded role will allow the United States to move some American troops from southern Afghanistan to the eastern region where the bulk of the 22,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan are deployed in provinces along the border with Pakistan.

Other American forces are engaged around the country in training the fledgling Afghan National Army in counterterrorism operations and in reconstruction. Some 3,000 American soldiers in southern Afghanistan were to come under NATO command as of Monday.

An additional 10,000 or so of the remaining American forces will come under NATO command in the fall as the alliance assumes command for the eastern sector of the country as well.

Counterterrorism operations will remain under United States command, and they will have authority to operate in any part of Afghanistan under an agreement with NATO, said Col. Tom Collins, the chief United States military spokesman.

The planned drawdown of 3,000 American troops from Afghanistan, announced by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the spring, has not materialized in the face of the surge of violence.

The bomb explosion in Nangarhar killed five policemen and three teenage civilian bystanders, said Aimal Pardis, the chief of the public hospital in Jalalabad, where the bodies were taken.

Sixteen people were wounded, five of them seriously, he said. The bomb was planted on a police car and was detonated as the police officers emerged from a mosque on the edge of town after attending a memorial service for Younus Khalis, an elderly jihad leader who opposed the American intervention in Afghanistan.

    U.S. Hands Southern Afghan Command to NATO, NYT, 1.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/world/asia/01afghan.html?hp&ex=1154491200&en=d9e86b00154bb3c7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

NATO Takes Over in Southern Afghanistan

July 31, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:22 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- NATO took command of southern Afghanistan from the United States on Monday, and the new commander of the push to pacify the insurgency-wracked region vowed that he would not fail millions of Afghans seeking peace and stability.

An American soldier holding the flag of the U.S.-led coalition walked out of a tent shading U.S., European and Afghan officials from the baking sun, and was replaced by a soldier with the banner of the new NATO-led force.

U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry transferred command to British Lt. Gen. David Richards, telling the audience at the dusty airfield outside the main southern city of Kandahar that, ''The United States will not leave Afghanistan until the Afghan people tell us the job is done.''

The NATO alliance's southern deployment includes some U.S. troops, effectively making Lt. Gen. Richards the first non-U.S. general to command American forces in combat operations, officials said.

''I hope and believe the huge significance of this renewed international commitment will not be lost on the majority who yearn for peace, stability and increased prosperity we came here to deliver,'' Richards said. ''These millions of people should be reassured that they will not be let down.''

The ceremony took place against a backdrop of continued violence. A bomb blast intended for a provincial governor killed eight people at a mosque service. And officials said that more than 30 Taliban had been killed in clashes Sunday, most in southern provinces where NATO has taken command

About 8,000 mostly British, Canadian and Dutch troops have deployed in southern Afghanistan as NATO's International Security Assistance Force expands its presence from the more stable north and west of the country.

The mission is considered the most dangerous and challenging in the Western alliance's 57-year history. It coincides with the deadliest upsurge in fighting in Afghanistan since late 2001 that has killed hundreds of people -- mostly militants -- since May.

''Those few thousand who oppose the vast majority of Afghan people and their democratically elected government should note this historic day and should understand they will not be allowed to succeed,'' Richards said.

Taliban-led rebels have stepped up attacks this year, sparking the bloodiest fighting in over four years and threatening Afghanistan's slow reconstruction and democratic reform after a quarter-century of war.

The insurgents have escalated roadside bombings and suicide attacks, mounting brazen attacks on several small towns and district police stations -- a tactic rarely seen in the previous four years.

NATO hopes to bring a new strategy to dealing with the Taliban rebellion: establishing bases rather than chasing militants. It is also wants to win the support of locals by creating secure zones where development can take place.

But questions remain whether it can quell the violence enough to let aid workers get to work in a lawless and impoverished region, where about a quarter of Afghanistan's huge opium crop is grown.

Another challenge for NATO will be to stem what Afghan and some Western officials say is cross-border infiltration of militants from neighboring Pakistan.

Eikenberry said the United States remained committed to Afghanistan.

''The war on terrorism began here in Afghanistan and it continues today. We must never forget that,'' he said.

He told the ceremony, attended by Afghan officials, and officers and diplomats of nations who have contributed to the NATO force, that the international community, too, must remain ''fully committed.''

''The war on terrorism began here in Afghanistan and it continues today. We must never forget that,'' the American general said. ''The United States will not leave Afghanistan until the Afghan people tell us the job is done.''

The U.S.-led coalition now is focusing its attention on eastern Afghanistan, where al-Qaida and Taliban also are active.

The U.S.-led coalition first deployed in Afghanistan nearly five years ago to unseat the hard-line Taliban regime for harboring Osama bin Laden.

Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said the increase in NATO forces would not mean a cut in the support from the United States, which he thanked for its contribution in bringing ''peace and security to a war-torn nation.''

NATO conducted aerial combat operations during the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, but has yet to conduct major ground combat operations since being founded in 1949 as a deterrent against the Soviet bloc.

The takeover in the south follows three days of intense fighting that left more than 50 Taliban and eight others dead.

A bomb planted in a car exploded near a mosque Monday in Farmay Adha, an area 12 miles south of the Nangarhar provincial capital of Jalalabad, killing eight, including five police and three children, officials said. Sixteen others were wounded.

Thousands of mourners had gathered in and around the mosque to mark the death of Younis Khalis, a former mujahedeen commander and Islamic hard-liner, who died July 19.

The provincial police chief, Gen. Abdul Basir Solangi, blamed the Taliban for the bombing, which he believed was aimed at Nangarhar provincial Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai, who drove away from the mosque minutes before the explosion.

Sherzai escaped a May 3 assassination attempt when a bomb planted in a jeep exploded outside his office.

Some 200 Afghan forces killed 23 Taliban insurgents Sunday in raids on two hide-outs near the Helmand provincial town of Garmser, which Taliban forces overran and briefly took control of earlier this month, police said.

Another 10 insurgents were killed Sunday while fighting Afghan troops in clashes in southeastern Paktika province, and four were detained. Four militants died in separate explosions while planting bombs in southern Kandahar province.

Coalition and Afghan troops killed 20 militants on Saturday in southern Uruzgan province, where some 1,500 Dutch troops have deployed.

On a visit to Afghanistan on Sunday, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said many Taliban fighters were crossing from Pakistan to stage attacks, and urged Pakistan to step up efforts to stop them.

Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in its war on terrorism, says it does all it can to patrol the porous Afghan border.

    NATO Takes Over in Southern Afghanistan, NYT, 31.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html?hp&ex=1154404800&en=59ca171a3c20db51&ei=5094&partner=homepage

23 Taliban Fighters Killed in Afghan Raid

July 31, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:51 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan forces killed 23 Taliban insurgents in raids on two southern Afghan hideouts, a district police chief said Monday.

The raids took place Sunday near the Helmand provincial town of Garmser, which Taliban forces overran and briefly took control of earlier this month.

Some 200 Afghan police and soldiers, backed by coalition aircraft, traced a group of militants to a mountain hideout in the Khwajamo district, near Garmser, sparking a two-hour battle that left 10 Taliban dead, said local police chief Ghulam Rasool.

Several hours later, police located dozens of insurgents hiding in mountainous terrain about 12 miles away. Thirteen Taliban were killed and one policeman was wounded in a subsequent firefight, Rasool said.

Afghan authorities beefed up the number of security forces in Garmser after Taliban militants chased a small police contingent out of town and held the city for several days before U.S.-led coalition troops and Afghan forces wrested it back following a brief battle.

Suspected Taliban militants also fired a rocket at an Afghan girls' school in neighboring Kandahar province Sunday, wounding one student, the U.S.-led coalition said in a statement Monday. The condition of the wounded girl was unclear.

The Taliban prohibited females attending school, deeming it contrary to Islam. Since being toppled in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces, Taliban holdouts have routinely attacked schools for educating females and teaching subjects other than Islamic studies.

The violence happened as NATO forces assumed control Monday of military operations from U.S.-led troops in southern Afghanistan, which has witnessed increased insurgent attacks on foreign soldiers and Afghan authorities.

    23 Taliban Fighters Killed in Afghan Raid, NYT, 31.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Taliban-Raid.html

Editorial

Losing Ground in Afghanistan

July 23, 2006
The New York Times

Things are not going well in Afghanistan, the original front in the war on terrorism.

American and NATO casualties are rising in some of the deadliest fighting since 2001. The Taliban are enjoying a resurgence in presence and power, especially in their traditional southern and eastern strongholds. And with civilian casualties mounting and economic reconstruction in many areas stalled by inadequate security, the American-backed government is in danger of losing the battle for Afghan hearts and minds. If this battle is lost, there can be no lasting military success against the Taliban and their Qaeda allies.

There is still a chance to turn things around. The first step must be enhanced security, so that foreign and local civilians can carry out reconstruction projects. That will require a large and long-term foreign military presence, with a large American component. Unfortunately, Washington is headed in a different direction. With the Army overstretched in Iraq and Congressional elections coming up, the Pentagon is moving to prematurely reduce already inadequate American troop strength.

The plan is for European and Canadian NATO forces to step in and provide security for civilian teams in southern and eastern Afghanistan while the remaining Americans concentrate on fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda. This is a new variant of the Bush administration’s misbegotten theory that Americans should be war-fighters and leave nation-building to others.

There are two big problems with this. First, in violent situations like that in southern Afghanistan, NATO can assure security only if America, its leading member, provides reconnaissance, transport and combat support. Second, the idea that American troops are there not to bring security to Afghans but to hunt down the Taliban — and too bad if Afghan civilians are caught in the cross-fire — is a disastrous approach to counterinsurgency warfare. It has not worked in Iraq and it is not working in Afghanistan.

In the end, international military efforts can only buy time to build an Afghanistan its own people will fight to defend after Western troops leave. In addition to foreign aid, that will require improved performance by the government of President Hamid Karzai, which has been plagued by corruption and hobbled by the alliances it has made with local warlords to extend its authority beyond Kabul.

In particular, the Karzai government has not made much of a dent in Afghanistan’s hugely profitable drug trafficking operations. Corruption and governmental feckless are only partly to blame. This is an area in which Afghanistan’s multiple problems have begun to feed off one another. A lack of credit and security has left farmers few economic alternatives to opium. Drug revenues feed corruption and make the warlords who run many of the trafficking rings more powerful. They, in turn, use their additional money and influence to recruit more fighters and expand into new areas, promoting wider instability.

Building a stable Afghanistan that can stand up to the Taliban once Western soldiers leave is going to take many years, many billions of dollars and more foreign troops for longer than most Western governments are now prepared to contemplate. Yet signs of fatigue with the Afghan mission are already beginning to appear in Western capitals, including Washington. These must be resisted.

Washington made the mistake of premature disengagement once before, after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal. That opened the door to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Sept. 11. If America now means to be serious about combating international terrorism, it cannot make the same mistake twice.

    Losing Ground in Afghanistan, NYT, 23.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/opinion/23sun1.html

19 Taliban militants killed in attack on Afghan police

Posted 7/13/2006 2:28 AM ET
AP
USA Today

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — Coalition and Afghan forces killed at least 19 Taliban militants during an insurgent attack on a police headquarters in southern Afghanistan, the governor's spokesman said Thursday.

Taliban militants poured into the Helmand provincial town of Nawzad around midday Wednesday and set up positions around a police compound where Afghan soldiers and police, along with coalition forces, were based, spokesman Ghulam Muhiddin said.

"The Taliban surrounded this area, including a nearby bazaar, and told all their shopkeepers to leave before attacking the compound with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades," Muhiddin told The Associated Press.

Coalition warplanes launched several airstrikes, killing 12 militants after hitting a Taliban vehicle and another seven when they struck an insurgent position near the compound, Muhiddin said.

Separately, a bomb rigged to a hand-powered tricycle for the disabled exploded and wounded four people in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif early Thursday, local police official Nasseruddin Hamdad said.

    19 Taliban militants killed in attack on Afghan police, UT, 13.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-07-13-afghanistan-violence_x.htm

Rumsfeld says NATO buildup in Afghanistan does not mean U.S. departure

Updated 7/11/2006 3:03 PM ET
AP
USA Today

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Afghan government leaders Tuesday that NATO's growing security role here does not mean the United States is preparing to end its involvement after nearly five years of war.

"I get asked from time to time: Does the fact that NATO is coming in mean the United States is going to leave and lose their interest? The answer is an emphatic 'no,'" Rumsfeld said at a joint press conference with President Hamid Karzai after arriving unannounced in the capital.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. military, which now has about 23,000 troops in the country, will remain part of the NATO-led security force that is due to take command in the U.S.-controlled south in coming weeks. He would not say whether U.S. troop levels would go up or down in the short term.

"So I can assure you that the United States will continue to be interested, committed and involved to success here," he added.

Later Rumsfeld flew by UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter to Kandahar, the southern city that had been a traditional stronghold of the Taliban, which sheltered Osama bin Laden and provided training areas for his al-Qaeda terrorist network until the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001.

Hours earlier, an MH-47 helicopter leaving the scene of a joint U.S.-Afghan Army raid in Helmand province was apparently forced to make a controlled crash landing after coming under fire by small arms and losing all power systems.

Officials said it was not clear whether the helicopter was shot down, but it was so badly damaged while crash landing that it was deemed beyond repair and was destroyed by a U.S. airstrike. No one aboard was injured.

Aware of the incident, Rumsfeld's party decided to continue with their plan to fly to Kandahar and then take helicopters to the town of Qalat in Zabul province, along the Pakistan border. The 35-minute helicopter rides to and from Qalat were completed without incident.

In Qalat, Rumsfeld met with the provincial governor, Del Bar Jan Arman, who has impressed American officials with his energetic approach to working with U.S. and allied forces in Qalat to accelerate reconstruction and other humanitarian work while also fighting the Taliban.

Arman fought the Russians during their occupation in the 1970s. He fled to Pakistan during the Taliban rule, and last year he was appointed Zabul governor by Karzai.

Speaking to reporters outside Arman's office compound, with the governor at his side, Rumsfeld applauded him as "a very serious, talented leader."

Speaking through an interpreter, Arman told reporters he was confident the Karzai government — with vital help from the United States — had momentum in the fight against the Taliban.

"With their help we will be able to resolve a lot of issues and also fight the terrorists until our last blood," he said.

U.S. officials hope the Qalat project can be a model for economic and political progress as well as improved security elsewhere in Afghanistan. But in recent months the Taliban has resurged with greater organization and better armaments.

The U.S. pledge to remain committed in Afghanistan requires a difficult balancing act by the Bush administration.

On the one hand it wants to give the Afghans reason to hope that they will succeed against long odds, after decades of war, occupation and drought. On the other hand the administration worries that guaranteed assistance will diminish the incentive for Afghans to make progress on their own.

Just that point was brought to the fore when Karzai was asked at the press conference in Kabul whether he was asking the United States to provide more troops and more help in other forms.

"Yes, much more," he replied. "And we'll keep asking for more. And we will never stop asking."

Rumsfeld chuckled a little. Just a little.

    Rumsfeld says NATO buildup in Afghanistan does not mean U.S. departure, UT, 11.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-07-11-rumsfeld_x.htm

Rumsfeld arrives in Afghanistan

Tue Jul 11, 2006 2:42 AM ET
Reuters
By Kristin Roberts

KABUL (Reuters) - Power vacuums in areas of southern Afghanistan where the government has little presence have contributed to rising Taliban violence more than three years into the U.S.-led war, a senior U.S. commander said on Tuesday.

Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry said that while the Taliban is more organized than a year ago, it may not be stronger. Instead, Taliban fighters are benefiting from the lack of strong Afghan security forces to combat the insurgency, Eikenberry told reporters.

"It's important to remember that the areas the Taliban is operating in are areas that the government of Afghanistan has not heretofore had the strength and the presence. So it's not a question of the enemy being strong; it's very much a question of the institutions of the state of Afghanistan still moving slowing to stand up the Afghan security forces," he said.

Eikenberry's comments come as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit a day after meeting with officials in neighboring Tajikistan.

Rumsfeld, on his 11th trip to the country, was set to discuss the escalating violence and plans for NATO to take over military operations in the southern part of the country this month.

That transition to NATO leadership is on track, Eikenberry said. Ultimately, NATO will take the military lead throughout Afghanistan.

Violence in Afghanistan, where operations are often overshadowed by fighting in Iraq, has grown this year, due in part to narcotics trade that American officials say is funding Taliban activities.

Defense Department officials regularly cite the role of Afghanistan's drug trade, much of which moves north through Tajikistan to markets in Russia and Europe, for the increase in violence.

Rumsfeld on this trip to the region has reiterated that view and on Monday dismissed arguments that the U.S. military's focus on fighting in Iraq has allowed narcotics trafficking and violence to rise in Afghanistan.

The Afghan insurgency has adopted new tactics in its fight, making more use of the roadside bombs that have plagued U.S. forces in Iraq, according to Eikenberry. But he said intelligence does not indicate that Iraqi fighters are migrating to the war in Afghanistan.

The U.S. commander also said the source of violence in Afghanistan is more complex, involving not only Taliban forces but also drug traffickers, tribal disputes over territory and general "criminality."

"The causes of violence in Afghanistan, and here we're talking particularly southern Afghanistan, the causes of violence are complex. It goes beyond extremist, militant Taliban fighters," he said.

    Rumsfeld arrives in Afghanistan, R, 11.7.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-07-11T064147Z_01_L111950_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN-USA-RUMSFELD.xml

Rumsfeld, in Tajikistan, Urges Tough Stand Against Taliban

July 11, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan, July 10 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said while traveling here for talks on Monday that proceeds from the rampant narcotics trade in Central Asia were fueling the insurgency in Afghanistan, with the Taliban insurgents making common cause with heroin traffickers.

Intelligence reports indicate that Taliban militants are offering protection to Afghan drug traffickers in return for money to finance the insurgency, Mr. Rumsfeld said. “Any time there’s that much money floating around and you have people like the Taliban, it gives them an opportunity to fund their efforts,” he said.

He made the remarks while traveling to Tajikistan, an impoverished former Soviet republic and one of the main smuggling routes for heroin coming from Afghanistan. He met Monday evening with President Emomali Rahmonov and other top officials about how to strengthen security along the Afghan-Tajik border and other issues, officials said.

Though American officials have warned for several years that the heroin trade is fueling corruption in Afghanistan’s fledgling government, Mr. Rumsfeld’s comments indicated growing concern that the problem could be contributing to violence, particularly in the south, where the Taliban are strongest and much of the country’s heroin is grown.

He called on governments in Russia and Europe, the destination for much of Afghanistan’s smuggled heroin, to do more to reduce demand for drugs and to aid President Hamid Karzai’s Afghan government.

“Western Europe ought to have an enormous interest in the success of Afghanistan, and it’s going to take a lot more interest on their part for the Karzai government to be successful,” he said. He added that he was worried that the drug trade “could conceivably end up adversely affecting the democratic process in the country.”

At a news conference with Mr. Rumsfeld, Tajikistan’s foreign minister, Talbak Nazarov, complained that Tajikistan “is always blamed as the country that serves as the transit point for Afghan drugs.” But seizures of drugs by the border police were up substantially this year, he said.

Britain has lead responsibility for assisting the Afghan government with counternarcotics activities, and some American officials have privately been critical of its efforts, saying it has not put enough effort into eradication of this year’s opium poppy crop, which is forecast to be one of the largest ever.

The State Department financed a $700 million eradication effort last year, but it was plagued by delays and other problems and eliminated only a small amount of poppy acreage.

Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged that the number of Taliban attacks may be up this year. But he said the Taliban’s increasingly brazen tactics had made it easier for American, Afghan and NATO forces to find and attack them.

“Every time they come together,” he said, “they get hit and they get hurt. So the fact that we see a somewhat different method of operation during this period is correct, but it has not necessarily been disadvantageous because the more that are in one place, the easier they are to attack.”

    Rumsfeld, in Tajikistan, Urges Tough Stand Against Taliban, NYT, 11.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/world/asia/11rumsfeld.html

Rumsfeld in Tajikistan to review military cooperation

Mon Jul 10, 2006 11:04 AM ET
Reuters
By Kristin Roberts

DUSHANBE (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Tajikistan on Monday to discuss the war in neighboring Afghanistan and additional military cooperation after losing access to a base in Uzbekistan.

Tajikistan has become strategically critical to the United States and its operations in neighboring Afghanistan. The loss of base access in Uzbekistan and ongoing talks over continued access to an air base in Kyrgyzstan have enhanced the importance of Tajik cooperation.

"Our goal for our country is to have as many countries cooperating in the global war on terror and providing as many types of cooperation as they feel comfortable providing," Rumsfeld told reporters while traveling to Dushanbe.

"In any situation where you have only one way to do something, you can become a captive and that's not a good thing for our country," he said.

The United States has what defense officials call a gas-and-go arrangement with Tajikistan, allowing official U.S. aircraft to refuel in Tajikistan. The country has also given the United States over-flight rights.

"They've been very cooperative with the global war on terror and helpful since almost the beginning," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld will discuss the possibility for additional basing opportunities or a more robust presence in Tajikistan, according to a senior defense official.

But Tajikistan's border security and the narcotics trade, which U.S. officials say is funding a re-emergence of the Taliban insurgency, remain challenges.

Rumsfeld's trip to Tajikistan, his first in a year, comes as the Taliban's insurgency has grown and become more sophisticated, due at least in part to profits from the drugs trade running from Afghanistan north through Tajikistan to Russia and Europe, U.S. defense and drug officials say.

Rumsfeld said the United States was aiding Tajikistan in its border security and counter-narcotics efforts, but he did not comment on what more the United States wanted the Tajik government to do to curb the drug trade from Afghanistan.

"There's clearly a desire on their part and a recognition on their part that it's important that that be done," he said.

Rumsfeld plans to meet with Imomali Rakhmonov, who has ruled the impoverished mountainous country since 1992, as well as the country's foreign minister and defense and security ministers.

The U.S. defense secretary also plans to discuss Tajikistan's regional relationships, and the "effectiveness" of regional partnerships, a senior defense official said.

Former imperial master Russia continues to play a role in Tajikistan, keeping as many as 5,000 troops there, the official said on Sunday night.

While the drug trade heads north into Russia, so do legitimate trade and communications. The United States, among other countries, is funding infrastructure improvements aimed at creating a roads system through Central Asia to the Arabian Sea, eliminating the need for goods to go through Russia.

    Rumsfeld in Tajikistan to review military cooperation, R, 10.7.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-07-10T150347Z_01_L10369030_RTRUKOC_0_US-TAJIKISTAN-USA-RUMSFELD.xml

40 Suspected Taliban Killed in U.S. Strike

July 10, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:27 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- A U.S. warplane bombed a militant hide-out in a raid by Afghan and coalition forces that killed more than 40 suspected Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan on Monday, coalition officials said.

An Afghan army soldier was killed and three coalition forces wounded in the fighting near Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province, said Sgt. Chris Miller.

The coalition soldiers were in stable condition, he said, declining to give their identities or nationalities.

Maj. Mike Young, a media relations officer for the U.S. Air Force, said a B-1B bomber plane dropped four ''precision-guided munitions.'' A coalition statement said the Afghan and coalition forces had also traded small arms fire with the militants.

Clashes in neighboring Kandahar province and around Afghanistan over the weekend killed at least 19 militants and a Canadian soldier and wounded at least nine other insurgents and five Afghan forces, officials said.

The south has been gripped in recent months by the worst violence since a U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Taliban militants have launched suicide attacks, bombings and assaults on security forces in the hardline militia's former heartland. Thousands of Afghan and coalition forces have gone on a counteroffensive.

More than 700 people, mostly militants, have died in the violence since mid-May, according to Afghan and coalition casualty figures tallied by The Associated Press.

NATO is set to take over command of the international security forces in the south next month from the U.S.-led coalition. Canadian, British and Dutch troops are deploying in the region.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday called a meeting of a special committee of Afghan, coalition, NATO and U.N. representatives set up to address urgent security and reconstruction issues, a statement from his office said.

    40 Suspected Taliban Killed in U.S. Strike, NYT, 10.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

A Drive to Root Out the Resurgent Taliban

July 8, 2006
The New York Times
By TYLER HICKS

American and allied troops are engaged in their biggest operation against Taliban forces in Afghanistan since they drove the fundamentalist movement from power in 2001. These photographs were taken over two weeks in June with Charlie Company, Fourth Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, near Hazarbuz, in Zabul Province.

The Americans face the hard job of trying to tell local farmers from Taliban insurgents, who have gained strength across southern Afghanistan. The Americans set up a base, then probed into villages. They were soon ambushed. The Taliban can easily persuade or coerce villagers to assist them. They arm the villagers or equip them with radios. Almost any man is suspect. During one raid, which was typical, the Americans separated the men. Homes were searched, and the men were marched to the base for questioning.

The Americans feel the hands of those who claim to be farmers, to make sure they are rough. They check under the men's shirts for calluses from carrying rifle clips, or for bruises from firing rocket-propelled grenades. As often is the case, almost all are released for lack of evidence.

Col. Tom Collins, the American military spokesman in Kabul, said, "We have intelligence that leads us to a certain village where there are antigovernment elements and we take in those we find, screen them, and some are then let go immediately, but they still have to be questioned."

The day after the raid, the Americans were ambushed again, this time at their base. Automatic rifle fire sprayed just inches above a row of soldiers as they lay resting.

On the final day of the operation, a raid on a village sent several men fleeing for the mountains. They were met by American Ranger Scouts. Three men were captured. They confessed to being Taliban fighters and were brought back to the base to be handed over to the Afghan authorities.

    A Drive to Root Out the Resurgent Taliban, NYT, 8.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?hp&ex=1152417600&en=c6a048cc11928f08&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Taliban Kill Afghan Interpreters Working for U.S. and Its Allies

July 4, 2006
The New York Times
By RUHULLAH KHAPALWAK and CARLOTTA GALL

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, July 3 — Troops of the American-led coalition in this country are taking a hard look at their security procedures after the deaths of at least 10 Afghans working as interpreters for the coalition in the last month, a military spokesman said Monday.

Some were killed while accompanying foreign troops during combat, but others seem to have been singled out by Taliban insurgents for working for the coalition, other interpreters said.

Most of them are young Afghans who have taken English language courses in Afghanistan.

Taliban-led violence has increased significantly in the last six months, with insurgents making a determined show of force as NATO prepares to take over military command of southern Afghanistan from the United States later this month.

Many civilians have been caught in the violence, including more than 100 employees of the United States Agency for International Development in the last three years, according to the departing chief of the agency's mission in Afghanistan, Alonzo Fulgham. Most of those killed were Afghans, he said.

A spokesman for the coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, Maj. Quentin Innis of Canada, said that it was not clear if the interpreters had been killed specifically because of their work, but that coalition officials were concerned about the trend.

"It is a concern for us when any Afghans get killed," Major Innis said. "We are looking at how we can step up security."

Five of the interpreters were killed in a bus bombing on June 15 on their way to work at the American base outside Kandahar, the major said. Two were killed during combat operations in southern Afghanistan in the last month, he said, one on Saturday while working with British troops in Helmand Province, and the other in Zabul Province while working with American troops a month ago.

Three others were killed this week when they were driving west of the city of Kandahar and reached a Taliban checkpoint, Major Innis said. The interpreters were armed and engaged in a gun battle, he said.

A fourth interpreter managed to escape, a colleague said. The four were working at an American Special Forces base on the north side of the city.

One interpreter interviewed by telephone, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said he had resigned on Saturday because of the threat of violence. Taliban supporters spread leaflets warning people not to work for the foreign military, he said, adding that he knew of two additional colleagues who had been killed in the last week.

One, named Ahmed Shah, was shot and killed by Taliban insurgents while picnicking with friends in Sangesar, a town west of Kandahar, last week, the interpreter said. When the Taliban came across the group, they accused Mr. Shah of working for the American military. When he told them he would quit immediately, they reportedly said, "It's too late," and shot him dead in front of his friends, the interpreter said, citing witnesses at the picnic.

He added that another interpreter was shot dead in the street in the past week in Loya Wala, a northern district of the city. He said the victim, whom he did not identify by name, had received threats from the Taliban to give up his job with the coalition but had continued.

The interpreter who resigned on Saturday said he had felt under threat for some time and always covered his face with a scarf as he entered and left the Americans' Kandahar base. He said he had noticed men sitting on motorbikes outside the entrance watching who was going in and out of the base and suspected that they were Taliban spies.

A translator working for The New York Times in southern Afghanistan has also received indirect threats from people known to be close to the Taliban. The people said he had been spotted driving into the Kandahar base, described his car and cited the license plate.

The message from the Taliban, passed to a relative: "Tell him to stop working for the Americans."

The Taliban have killed aid workers, teachers, mullahs, tribal elders and civilian government officials in the last two years, in a campaign the insurgents say is aimed at undermining confidence in the government and the foreign forces.

A suicide bomber blew himself up in Kandahar outside a government guesthouse at 9 p.m. Monday, killing one policeman and wounding three other people.

Another bomb exploded in a women's classroom at the University of Herat on Monday, killing one student and badly shaking six others, a police official said. The bomb was left in a trash can, but it went off after the class had finished, when most students had left the room, said Nisar Ahmad Paikar, chief of the criminal department of the police in Herat.

Ruhullah Khapalwak reported from Kandahar for this article, and Carlotta Gall from Kabul. Sultan M. Munadi contributed reporting from Kabul.

    Taliban Kill Afghan Interpreters Working for U.S. and Its Allies, NYT, 4.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/world/asia/04afghan.html

U.S.-Afghan Foray Reveals Friction on Antirebel Raids

July 3, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 2 — A joint military raid by American and Afghan forces on an unobtrusive house here in the capital on March 20 has pointed up the tensions between the American military and the Afghan Defense Ministry over the conduct of counterinsurgency raids, particularly in Kabul, the Afghan defense minister says.

The raid, in which six men were detained, was led by masked American special forces, and included eight members of a unit of the Afghan National Army. The involvement of Afghan soldiers prompted the defense minister, Gen. Abdur Rahim Wardak, who had no advance notice of the raid, to bar Afghan Army personnel from taking part in any raids on houses or compounds.

"We really are trying not to get involved in these policing jobs at all, because that would ruin" the army, General Wardak said last week. "We want to just be in support of police, but not doing a policing job."

The American military, which has in the past resisted Afghan pressure for greater control of counterinsurgency operations, defended the use of Afghan soldiers in the raid. "Depending on the intelligence received and how time-sensitive an operation is, combined forces must often act quickly, using available resources and expertise for the particular mission required," Lt. Col. John Paradis, an American military spokesman in Kabul, wrote via e-mail.

"The team was operating on very credible, detailed information, a tip, that certain individuals were linked to several anti-Afghan activities, including the use of I.E.D.'s," Colonel Paradis wrote, referring to improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs.

Five of the men detained are sons of the head of the household, Hajji Aminullah. The brothers are well-known athletes — one a boxing champion and trainer, another a member of the national volleyball team — and never took part in fighting or politics, let alone insurgent activities, their father said. "My sons are not those type of people, to be involved in drugs or terrorism," he said. A neighbor who is a friend of the youngest son was detained but released two days later.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has taken up the brothers' case with the American military. "The issue we are bothered with is to get a response for the father and family, who are desperately waiting for news," said Ahmed Nader Nadery, the deputy commissioner.

The men are being held in the American detention center at Bagram Air Base, near here. Like most of the 500 men held there, they have no right to know the charges against them and no access to court proceedings, a lawyer or their families, except through short notes passed by the Red Cross, which told the family the men were there.

Getting rid of the black hole that detention at Bagram represents and ending raids and other American military activities that cause resentment among Afghan civilians are aims of the government, General Wardak said.

Afghanistan is fighting the most serious insurgent activity in four years, and, with the American-led coalition, has mounted a broad offensive across five provinces.

On Sunday, two British soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were killed in fighting with insurgents in Helmand Province in the south, military officials said, and a military helicopter crashed near Kandahar Air Base. No information on casualties was available.

Despite the continuing violence, the Afghan government says that raids, detentions and attacks on civilians are causing it to lose the public trust. "We have now an understanding that we should be very careful first to rely on very correct intelligence, because there have been cases where the wrong intelligence has resulted into wrong arrests," General Wardak said, speaking in English. "We think first it is a police job to search a place, and still we would not like the foreign forces to do the searching." The Afghan authorities have to be told of any raid and before any arrest is made, he added.

"We have been talking about this for quite a while," he said. "It has been gradually improving."

Next year the Defense Ministry is to take charge of a secure wing of Pul-i-Charkhi prison, on the eastern edge of Kabul, to guard nearly 100 Afghan detainees set to return from Guantánamo Bay, he said. They will be afforded full judicial rights, he said.

Afghan Army personnel are permitted to search houses only when pursuing militants on the battlefield and when no police unit is with them to do the search, General Wardak said.

The commander of the Afghan soldiers who took part in the raid, Lt. Col. Sher Ahmed, 51, confirmed that Afghan soldiers had been ordered not to take part in future raids. "We got an order that this should be the first and last operation raiding a house," said Colonel Ahmed, commander of the Third Company, First Brigade of the Afghan Army's Central Corps.

Captain Muhammad Nabi, 46, of the Third Company, which is based here, took part in the raid. His unit had gone out that day with American forces on a patrol to Logar Province, south of here, and on their return to Kabul went to Khair Khana, a district of Kabul, and surrounded a house, he said.

The raid was uneventful. He said that as far as he knew nothing incriminating was found. Mr. Aminullah, the owner of the house, said that he went to the neighborhood mosque for evening prayers around 7:30 p.m. and that soldiers prevented worshipers from leaving the mosque until 11 p.m.

He was allowed back into his house as his five sons, Muhammad Yousuf, 35, Muhammad Mohsin, 33, Muhammad Rahim, 31, Muhammad Nassar, 28, and Muhammad Saber, 20 — were being led away. "One did not have any shoes on, so I gave him mine," he said. The soldiers had discovered a large amount of cash in the house, and Mr. Aminullah said he snatched it back, explaining that it was his own money.

Hamidullah, 21, a neighbor and close friend of Mr. Saber, who had been sitting with the brothers, was also detained. "They started kicking the gate, and we thought it was thieves," he said. "They ordered us to lie face down." Then he was stood up and questioned, he said. "They started saying: 'You have narcotics. Where is the heroin?' I said, 'If you find any heroin in my house, you can shoot me,' " he said.

"We have been neighbors for 15 years, and I told them there were never any political problems going on here or in any house around," he said.

The American soldiers confiscated the brothers' cellphones and $4,900 that a business partner had given Mr. Rahim, more than 30 videotapes, mostly Western movies and sports events, and a big bag of sports equipment, Mr. Hamidullah said. The six were taken to the army base at Darulaman, where they were held in a wood hut, furnished with Army cots and guarded by three American soldiers, Mr. Hamidullah said. They were blindfolded when taken out individually for questioning by Americans or to visit a plastic portable toilet, he said. They did not see any Afghan soldiers while there, he said.

The next day Mr. Hamidullah was questioned about the brothers. The American interrogator told him that nothing had been found and that they would be released. he said. But after two nights at the base, he was driven out blindfolded by an Afghan translator and dropped on the main road, while the five brothers were transferred to Bagram, he said. The Defense Ministry has confirmed that the five men are there.

Mr. Aminullah said he suspected that his sons' former partner in the business deal, Abdullah Shekib Satari, had planted false information to avoid paying money he still owed them after they withdrew from a joint investment in a sports shop.

Mr. Satari, who is general secretary of Afghanistan's boxing federation and ran unsuccessfully for Parliament last year, denied in an interview in his sports shop that he had anything to do with the arrests. "They are my best friends, and I want to help them," he said. "They did not have enemies."

Sultan M. Munadi contributed reporting for this article.

    U.S.-Afghan Foray Reveals Friction on Antirebel Raids, NYT, 3.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/world/asia/03afghan.html

4 G.I.'s Die in Afghanistan; Qaeda Deputy Attacks Foreign 'Infidel Forces'

June 23, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 22 — Four American soldiers were killed and one was wounded in a battle with Taliban insurgents on Wednesday in the far northeastern region of Afghanistan, the American military said Thursday.

The latest casualties came during military operations against insurgents across eastern and southern Afghanistan, and as the fugitive second in command of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called on Afghans to rise up against the foreign forces in the country.

"I am calling upon Muslims in Kabul in particular and in all Afghanistan in general and for the sake of God to stand up in an honest stand in the face of the infidel forces that are invading Muslim lands," he said in a videotape broadcast Thursday by Al Jazeera television, wearing a white turban with an automatic rifle next to him, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Zawahiri, who is believed to be in hiding along the Afghan-Pakistani border, called on "the young men of Islam, in the universities and schools of Kabul, to carry out their duties in defense of their religion, honor, land and country."

President Hamid Karzai, at a news conference on Thursday in Kabul, urged other nations to reassess their approach to curbing terrorism in Afghanistan, saying that the deaths of hundreds of Afghans in fighting with American-led forces was "not acceptable," news agencies reported.

The four American soldiers were killed in the mountainous province of Nuristan, one of the country's most inaccessible regions, "while conducting security operations to interdict enemy movement through northern Nuristan," the United States military said in a statement.

Coalition aircraft joined the fighting, but it was not clear how many rebels were killed, the military said. The wounded soldier was in stable condition.

Suspected Taliban militants also bombed two coalition convoys in southern Afghanistan late Tuesday, killing a civilian bystander and wounding 13 people, including 6 Canadian soldiers, the American military said.

Violence has increased sharply in Afghanistan in recent weeks, as suspected Taliban insurgents have appeared in large numbers across the south and east, attacking government and foreign forces. Military officials say the attacks are an attempt to thwart NATO forces as they move in to take over command of southern Afghanistan from American forces.

Mr. Karzai has been weakened by the strong show of force by fighters suspected to be from the Taliban, in particular in his home province of Kandahar, and by recent riots in Kabul, in which many protesters shouted slogans against him as well as his American backers.

Showing frustration at the news conference, Mr. Karzai said the approach being taken by coalition forces to hunt down militants did not focus on the roots of terrorism itself.

"We must engage strategically in disarming terrorism by stopping their sources of supply of money, training, equipment and motivation," he said.

Mr. Karzai has called on neighboring Pakistan to tackle militancy on its side of the border, and to apprehend Taliban leaders who find sanctuary there.

"We know the causes," he said. "There are shortcomings and inabilities in our system; that weakness is present all over the country. But there is no doubt it is largely because of foreign factors, terrorism and planned and coordinated attacks."

Mr. Karzai added: "That means the world should go where terrorism is nourished, where it is provided money and ideology. This war of terrorism should not be limited to Afghanistan."

He said that 500 to 600 Afghans had been killed in recent weeks, and that even if they were Taliban, "they are sons of this land."

The 3½-minute videotape of Mr. Zawahiri, titled "American Crimes in Kabul," appears to have been made the day after an accident in Kabul on May 29, in which an American military truck crashed into traffic, killing five people and setting off the deadliest unrest in the capital since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

"I direct my speech today to my Muslim brothers in Kabul who lived the bitter events yesterday and saw by their own eyes a new proof of the criminal acts of the American forces against the Afghan people," he said on the videotape. "Don't trust these infidel invaders or their agents who want to transform you into oppressed, enslaved people."

    4 G.I.'s Die in Afghanistan; Qaeda Deputy Attacks Foreign 'Infidel Forces', NYT, 23.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/world/asia/23afghan.html

Revived Taliban waging 'full-blown insurgency'

Updated 6/20/2006 9:52 AM ET
USA TODAY
By Paul Wiseman

PANJWAI DISTRICT, Afghanistan — In their biggest show of strength in nearly five years, pro-Taliban fighters are terrorizing southern Afghanistan — ambushing military patrols, assassinating opponents and even enforcing the law in remote villages where they operate with near impunity.
"We are faced with a full-blown insurgency," says Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia.

Four and a half years after they overthrew the Islamic militia that had controlled much of Afghanistan, U.S.-led forces have been forced to ramp up the battle to stabilize this impoverished, shattered country. More than 10,000 U.S., Canadian, British and Afghan government troops are scouring southern and eastern Afghanistan in a campaign called Operation Mountain Thrust.

Even before fighting heated up this spring, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, warned Congress that the insurgents "represent a greater threat" to the pro-U.S. government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai "than at any point since late 2001."

More than 500 people — mostly insurgents — have died since mid-May in the fiercest fighting since the fall of the Taliban regime. Since Operation Enduring Freedom began in October 2001, more than 300 U.S. troops have died, 165 of them killed in action. NATO's 36-country International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has lost 60.

Despite the damage they can do, the insurgents do not have enough support to topple Karzai, who was elected two years ago and enjoys international support. "We are not in a situation yet where the Karzai government is threatened," says Joanna Nathan, Afghan analyst for the International Crisis Group, a non-profit research organization. But in places where they are strong, the insurgents have been able to harass government operations and relief efforts — so much so that reconstruction has come to a virtual standstill in the south and east.

"It is hurting us," says Afghan Finance Minister Anwar ul-Haq Ahady. "We build a school, and they come and they burn it. We build a clinic, and they come and burn it. We build a bridge, and they knock it down. Security is the No. 1 issue."

Fears of new 'training camp'

The fear is that an ungovernable Afghanistan will revert to what it was before the overthrow of the Taliban: a failed state that can spread instability across Central Asia and be used as a launchpad for international terrorism. "If the Taliban get their way, Afghanistan will again become a training camp for terrorists," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told CBC, Canada's public broadcaster, this month.

The influence of the fundamentalist Islamic militia is obvious in Panjwai district, in the heart of Taliban country. Villagers in this dry, dusty plain 15 miles west of Kandahar say they are trapped between the Taliban and the U.S. and Afghan troops hunting them. If they cooperate with the coalition or with the Afghan government, they risk Taliban reprisals.

Just outside Makuan village here, Noor Mohammed, deputized as a security guard at a radio tower, goes to work in plainclothes. "If I wear a uniform, they will kill me," he tells Canadian army Capt. Jonathan Snyder, 24, who is patrolling the area two days after a Canadian convoy was ambushed nearby. Snyder is exasperated: "You shouldn't fear for your life," he tells the frightened man. "They should be fearing for their lives because of you."

The insurgency is a loose alliance of Taliban guerrillas, followers of former prime minister and fundamentalist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, al-Qaeda terrorists recruited from across the Islamic world, opium traffickers and local fighters whose murky motives are rooted in tribal politics.

Taliban commander Mullah Dadallah told al-Jazeera television last month that the insurgents can call on 12,000 fighters. In an interview, Taliban leader Naseeruddin Haqqani says there also are hundreds of suicide bombers. The Taliban's claims probably are exaggerated, Rashid says, but they can draw on hundreds of fighters.

The insurgency began a few months after U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban out of the Afghan capital, Kabul, in November 2001. It became more effective two years ago, when insurgents switched to new tactics, including breaking up into small groups of 10 fighters or less, attacking "soft" civilian targets and limiting head-on confrontations with coalition and Afghan troops.

Like their counterparts in Iraq, the insurgents use the Internet to pick up tips on making roadside bombs, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, has said. They increasingly rely on suicide bombers. Writing in The New York Review of Books this month, Rashid noted 40 suicide attacks in the past nine months vs. five in the previous five years.

Franchising terror

Insurgent leaders — such as Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar; Jalaluddin Haqqani, father of Naseeruddin Haqqani; and Hekmatyar, who heads the radical Islamic Hizb-i-Islami group — "do not exert power the way a military general does," Seth Jones, an analyst for the California-based think tank RAND Corp., wrote in the spring edition of the journal Survival. Instead, they leave "tactical and operational" control to local cells, "which act as franchises."

Al-Qaeda, which supports the insurgency with training, supplies and occasionally manpower, operates much the same way.

The loose alliance opposed to the Karzai government and the U.S.-led reconstruction of Afghanistan has gained strength because:

•The insurgents have found sanctuary in Pakistan, "fairly brazenly" staying "beyond the reach of Afghan and international security forces," Nathan says. Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), supported the Taliban against rival Afghan factions when the fundamentalist movement formed in the mid-1990s. Pakistan's military regime wants to counter the separatist instincts of Pashtun tribesmen who live in both countries. The government's pro-Taliban policy changed under U.S. pressure after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Rashid says Pakistan has done nothing to eliminate Taliban forces operating openly out of Baluchistan, a Pakistani province opposite southern Afghanistan. The reason, he says, is that the Baluchistan insurgents are "pure Taliban" — remnants of the ISI-supported fundamentalist regime that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The insurgents based in Waziristan, by contrast, include many foreign jihadi fighters and members of al-Qaeda — fighters the United States has pressured Pakistan to pursue. "That suited the Pakistanis quite well," Rashid says.

•Ordinary Afghans won't risk their lives to support Karzai's government, which many view as weak and corrupt. Afghanistan's problem is "not necessarily the strong enemy," Eikenberry said in Washington last month. "It's the very weak institutions of the state."

The government also is widely seen as corrupt and dominated by warlords linked to the bloody civil war during the 1990s. "Day by day, corruption, bribery and narcotics go up," says Noor ul-Haq Ulumi, a member of the Afghan parliament from Kandahar. "Weak governors we have every place. They think only about their benefit, not their country's benefit."

•The United States and its allies have scrimped on money and manpower, critics say. Rashid says Iraq has distracted the United States from the difficult tasks of subduing the Taliban and rebuilding Afghanistan. "For Afghanistan, the results have been too few Western troops, too little money and a lack of coherent strategy," Rashid wrote in The New York Review of Books.

According to RAND, international aid to Afghanistan equals $57 per person, compared with $679 in Bosnia and $206 in Iraq. RAND also found that Afghanistan has one soldier for every 1,000 people vs. seven in Iraq, 19 in Bosnia and 20 in Kosovo. RAND's Jones reckons Afghanistan needs 200,000 Afghan and foreign troops and police officers to establish order. The country has about 120,000.

Insurgents test the resolve of NATO forces in the process of taking over combat responsibility from U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan. The incoming NATO commander, British Lt. Gen. David Richards, insists NATO forces "will deal most robustly" with insurgents.

Rashid says the rules of engagement are "incredibly unclear."

"They bifurcate NATO into countries that will fight and countries that won't fight, and that's a dangerous thing," Rashid says.

The insurgents are eager to bloody the NATO newcomers, to find out which ones will fight and to target those that won't. "This is a testing time, a transition time, and is likely to be messy," Nathan says.

Insurgents "are betting that the West doesn't have the political will to remain in Afghanistan for the long run," Jones wrote. "Proving them wrong is the key challenge."

Sending troops to back Karzai's government and keeping them there is "a sacrifice worth making," Nathan says. "Sept. 11 demonstrated what happened last time the international community abandoned Afghanistan."

Contributing: Zafar M. Sheikh in Islamabad, Pakistan; wire reports

    Revived Taliban waging 'full-blown insurgency', NYT, 20.6.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-19-taliban-afghanistan-cover_x.htm

Violence

Afghan Guerrillas Kill 32 With Ties to Legislator

June 20, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 19 — Suspected Taliban guerrillas in the southern province of Helmand ambushed and killed 32 people on Sunday, all of them relatives and tribesmen of an influential member of Parliament, among them a former local government official, the legislator said Monday.

The attack, in broad daylight, was the latest sign of the strength of the suspected Taliban insurgents in Helmand, a poppy-growing province where NATO and the Afghan Army have recently increased their troops in an effort to contain the spreading insurgency.

The legislator, Dad Muhammad, who was the intelligence chief of Helmand after the fall of the Taliban and is now an elected member of the upper house of Parliament, said his 15-year-old son and two of his brothers, one a former chief of the Sangin district, were killed in the fighting, which lasted most of Sunday.

Another son of Mr. Muhammad was among five people wounded, he said. Ten more people were missing and thought to have been abducted by the insurgents. All of those killed were relatives or supporters, he said.

Mr. Muhammad and the brother who was the former district chief have worked to rid the area of the suspected Taliban insurgents, who are believed to be in league with drug traffickers in the poppy trade.

"We buried 32 people," he said. "Ten are missing. They are in Taliban hands, we don't know if they are dead or alive." He ruled out a personal vendetta, though, and said the Taliban had about 2,000 fighters in the area.

Mr. Muhammad, speaking in Kabul, said it was too dangerous for him to travel to his home. His surviving relatives were now under siege from the Taliban in their home in the town of Sangin, he said.

The attack took place a mile outside Sangin, a mile or two from a military base where British and Afghan Army troops are stationed, but neither the local police nor the military came to their aid, he said. It was unclear whether the military knew of the attack.

Mr. Muhammad said he had been told that the attackers first ambushed the car of the brother who was the former district chief at 7 a.m. as the brother was returning home with four other family members. When his second brother, Mr. Muhammad's sons and tribesmen came to the brother's aid, he said, they were also attacked and fought a fierce battle until 3 p.m.

    Afghan Guerrillas Kill 32 With Ties to Legislator, NYT, 20.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/world/asia/20afghan.html

Afghan coalition forces kill 45 militants

Posted 6/17/2006 1:18 AM ET
AP
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Coalition forces attacked Taliban militant camps in southern Afghanistan, killing about 45 insurgents, coalition officials said Saturday.

On Friday, Afghan and coalition forces surrounded a "known enemy camp" in Khod Valley, Shaheed Hasas district of Uruzgan province, killing an estimated 40 fighters, the military said in a statement.

"Coalition forces tracked the development of this meeting until there were more than 50 extremists gathered before attacking the compound," said military spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick. "The compound was severely damaged, and we anticipate most of those present were killed."

In a separate incident, Afghan and coalition forces conducted a raid on a Taliban compound near Tarin Kowt, the capital of Uruzgan, killing five insurgents, the military said. They also seized about eight pounds of opium.

The combat operations were part of Operation Mountain Thrust, the largest anti-Taliban military campaign undertaken since the former regime's 2001 ouster in an American-led invasion.

More than 10,000 U.S.-led troops were deployed this week across southern Afghanistan to quell a Taliban resurgence and prepare the ground for the imminent takeover of military control by NATO-led forces.

Earlier this week, coalition forces said they killed an estimated 40 militants in a remote, mountainous area of southeastern Paktika province in operations in support of Mountain Thrust. One coalition member was wounded in that operation.

U.S., Canadian, British and Afghan troops have fanned out over four restive provinces — Helmand, Uruzgan, Kandahar and Zabul — to hunt down Taliban fighters blamed for the surge in ambushes and bombings.

Extremist forces, primarily Taliban, have been stepping up attacks against coalition and Afghan troops across the country, particularly the south, in the bloodiest campaign of violence launched since 2001. More than 500 people, mostly militants, have been killed in the past month.

    Afghan coalition forces kill 45 militants, NYT, 17.6.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-17-afghan-violence_x.htm

More than 30 killed ahead of U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan

Updated 6/15/2006 1:53 AM ET
USA Today

MUSA QALA, Afghanistan (AP) — Coalition and national troops battled militants in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the eve of a sweeping anti-Taliban offensive by U.S.-led forces — their biggest since the Islamic extremist government's 2001 ouster.

Some 26 militants were slain in an attack on mountain positions in Paktika province, said provincial Gov. Akram Khelwak. Helicopter gunships and artillery fire supported ground troops; one Afghan police officer was wounded. Also in Paktika, four civilians died when rebel rockets slammed into their house, the provincial government said.

Elsewhere, a bomb hidden on a bus carrying Afghan laborers from a coalition base in Kandahar city exploded Thursday, killing 10 and wounding 15, police said. The workers were employed at the Kandahar Airfield, the coalition headquarters in southern Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, in volatile Helmand province, U.S. troops in sweltering heat built sand barriers and guard outposts around a small forward operating base in support of Operation Mountain Thrust. Soldiers around the base's perimeter fired rounds from 119-millimeter howitzers into the vast desert.

"We do it so they know it's here and they know it could be pretty bad for them," said Lt. Col. Chris Toner, commanding officer at the base in the Musa Qala district, 180 miles from the base in Kandahar.

"This terrain up here favors the defender," he said. "I'm sure they know how many vehicles we have here, that we have artillery here, but that's OK — I know what they know."

Some 11,000 troops have deployed for the offensive in Helmand, one of four mountainous and desert-filled southern provinces being targeted. British, Canadian and Afghan troops are joining U.S. forces in the offensive, expected to start Thursday.

Even as they prepared for the operation, U.S.-led forces came under attack from the militants they aim to eliminate.

On Tuesday, suspected Taliban fighters ambushed a 10-vehicle combat logistics convoy in Helmand's Sangin district, killing one U.S. soldier and wounding two, and sparking a battle that left 12 militants dead or wounded, Toner said Wednesday.

About 100 British troops quickly air-dropped in to support the patrol, said coalition spokesman Maj. Quentin Innis. The fighters fired on the convoy with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles, disabling three vehicles and forcing U.S. troops to spend the night there, Toner said.

Another coalition soldier was killed in combat Tuesday in the eastern province of Kunar; the soldier's nationality was not released, but U.S. troops have been fighting alongside Afghan forces in the remote region, which borders Pakistan.

Afghanistan has been wracked by its bloodiest violence since the U.S.-led coalition invaded after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and toppled the Taliban government for harboring Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda supporters.

Operation Mountain Thrust seeks to squeeze Taliban fighters responsible for a spate of ambushes and suicide attacks against coalition forces and Afghan authorities. It will focus on southern Uruzgan and northeastern Helmand, where the military says most of the militant forces have gathered. Operations will also be conducted in the former Taliban strongholds of Kandahar and Zabul.

"This is not just about killing or capturing extremists," U.S. spokesman Col. Tom Collins said in Kabul, announcing the operation.

"We are going to go into these areas, take out the security threat and establish conditions where government forces, government institutions, humanitarian organizations can move into these areas and begin the real work that needs to be done," he said, referring to reconstruction efforts.

Limited operations began May 15 with attacks on Taliban command and control and support networks. According to U.S. military and Afghan figures, about 550 people, mostly militants, have been killed since mid-May, along with at least nine coalition troops.

The offensive is the start of what the military says will be major and decisive anti-Taliban moves lasting through the summer. Reconstruction projects will also be done in the region.

Taking part in the operation will be about 2,300 U.S. conventional and special forces, 3,300 British troops, 2,200 Canadians, about 3,500 Afghan soldiers and coalition air support, said Maj. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, U.S. operational commander in Afghanistan.

The offensive is the largest launched since 2001. But U.S.-led troops have conducted large-scale operations elsewhere in Afghanistan involving several thousand soldiers, particularly in the east near the Pakistani border where Taliban forces routinely attack U.S.-led troops from towering mountain ranges.

Taliban militants have launched more suicide bombings against coalition troops in recent months, and staged nighttime attacks on government headquarters in small villages. The Taliban campaign, officials say, aims at convincing villagers the government cannot provide security, as well as to test NATO forces moving into the area.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force takes command in Afghanistan from the U.S.-led coalition in late July or early August. It will have 6,000 troops stationed permanently in the south, double what the coalition has had in recent years.

    More than 30 killed ahead of U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan, UT, 15.6.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-15-afghanistan-offensive_x.htm

Taliban Surges as U.S. Shifts Some Tasks to NATO

June 11, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 10 — A large springtime offensive by Taliban fighters has turned into the strongest show of force by the insurgents since American forces chased the Taliban from power in late 2001, and Afghan and foreign officials and local villagers blame a lack of United States-led coalition forces on the ground for the resurgence.

American forces are handing over operations in southern Afghanistan to a NATO force of mainly Canadian, British and Dutch troops, and militants have taken advantage of the transition to swarm into rural areas.

Coalition and Afghan forces now clash daily with large groups of Taliban fighters across five provinces of southern Afghanistan. In their boldest push, the Taliban fought battles in a district just less than 20 miles outside the southern city of Kandahar in late May, forcing hundreds of people to abandon their villages for refuge in the city and in other towns as coalition forces resorted to aerial bombardment.

The Taliban are running checkpoints on secondary roads and seizing control of remote district centers for a night or two before melting away again. In the most blatant symbol of their dominance of rural areas, the Taliban have even conducted trials under Islamic law, or Shariah, outside official Afghan courts, and recently carried out at least one public execution.

"The situation is really, in the last four years, the most unstable and insecure I have seen," said Talatbek Masadykov, who is in charge of the United Nations assistance mission in Kandahar.

But he said accounts of just how bad the security situation was differed, particularly after a surge of fighting just west of Kandahar in recent weeks.

"From different tribal people we are hearing that the Taliban are regrouping," he said, "and from government officials that security is improving."

One international security official in Kandahar, who has several years of experience in Afghanistan and asked not to be named because of the nature of his information, said members of American and Canadian Special Forces units had told him that they were "not winning against the Taliban."

"If the central government does not act and coalition forces do not increase, I think it will be impossible to say what will happen," he said.

This week, clashes have occurred in Oruzgan, Zabul and Helmand Provinces, with the coalition and Afghan Army forces reporting successful missions in which they killed several dozen Taliban fighters. But Afghans in the Char Chine district of Oruzgan Province said that coalition forces had shelled civilians as they were packing up to leave their nearby village, Pir Jawati.

Eleven people were killed, including an old woman and four children, said Mirwais, a shopkeeper in Char Chine who goes by one name and was contacted by telephone. Two suicide bombs this week in Kandahar and Khost killed at least four civilians and a roadside bomb killed three men in a government convoy south of Kabul, the capital, on Saturday.

Officials in the American-led coalition say the Taliban suffered a severe blow when American warplanes bombed the village of Tolokan, not far from Kandahar, on May 21, as part of a four-pronged operation by Afghan and coalition forces over several days.

The bombing killed at least 35 civilians, and immediately afterward much anger was directed at the 25,000 American forces still in Afghanistan, prompting President Hamid Karzai to visit the site.

But local residents say the public mood quickly shifted against the Taliban, as the Tolokan bombing drove home the risk to villagers who, whether because of coercion or cooperation, allow the insurgents into their homes. It also underscored the heavy civilian toll the fighting was taking.

Many Afghans said they simply wanted one side, any side, to bring security.

Southern Afghanistan is the birthplace of the Taliban movement and has remained a stronghold as the Taliban have staged a steady comeback since their fall from power in December 2001.

For several years, they could only field a few hundred men in scattered groups in mountainous areas. Now the Taliban claims to have 12,000 fighters, while coalition estimates add up to perhaps half of that.

Even though several hundred insurgents may have been killed in fighting this year, the Taliban are recruiting ever greater numbers of local people, the officials said.

Many Afghans interviewed expressed frustration that the American-led coalition, which showed such strength in 2001, was now failing to stem the resurgent Taliban and that as a consequence people were dying.

Col. Ian Hope, the Canadian commander of coalition forces in Kandahar Province, acknowledged that his forces had been spread too thin over the past two months to stem the sudden surge in Taliban fighters. But he said that should change with the addition of more Afghan forces and now that British and Dutch forces were getting into place. "It will not occur again," he said. "It's dangerous for people to lose confidence in us."

NATO has deployed a 9,700-member force in Afghanistan that will grow to 16,000, with 6,000 deployed in southern Afghanistan, one of the most restive regions. While NATO is deploying troops, the United States will reduce its force by about 3,000 and keep 20,000 in the country under a separate American chain of command. The American forces will keep responsibility for the volatile eastern region that abuts some of the most lawless areas in Pakistan.

Even though the Tolokan bombing may have hurt the insurgents, local residents say, the Taliban presence remains strong, and villagers dread the prospect of more violence. They complain they are caught in the middle of fighting that pits the Taliban against the government and their foreign allies.

Hajji Agha Lalai, a tribal elder and provincial councilor from the Panjwai district in Kandahar Province, gathered elders in his house several weeks ago to discuss what to do about the intensifying conflict. At a meeting that was held a day after the Tolokan bombing, he said, the death toll finally drove home a consensus: the Taliban must go.

"Everyone swore that we would cooperate with each other and not let the Taliban fight in our district," he said. "We are not going to pick up guns and fight the Taliban; we are going to go with bare hands, and come out of our houses and tell them: 'You have to kill us first before you can attack the government and the coalition from here.' "

A month ago, 200 to 300 Taliban were moving freely in the Panjwai district and the adjoining district, Zhare, the governor of Kandahar Province, Asadullah Khaled, said in an interview.

After the Tolokan bombing, the coalition forces and government estimated that the Taliban lost up to 80 men in new fighting and reported that the insurgents had pulled out of the district. "The situation in Panjwai has completely changed," Mr. Khaled said.

Colonel Hope, who took part in the operation in Panjwai, said that the presence of the Taliban was much reduced.

"We believe there are a number of small groups, numbering 10 or 5 men, who want to stay and will change their tactics to I.E.D. attacks," he said, referring to improvised explosive devices like roadside bombs. "For this reason we need to maintain our presence and security in these districts."

Yet others, foreign and Afghan officials, were far more pessimistic in their assessments and said urgent and strong action from the coalition and government forces was needed to stem the Taliban advance.

The United Nations agencies in Kandahar reduced their international staff to 25 from 36 because of the security situation, and those staff members not withdrawn from the area were gathering at night in two central guesthouses for safety, said Mr. Masadykov, the head of the assistance mission.

The government lost control of the Chora district in Oruzgan Province to the Taliban for several days at the end of May, until American and Afghan forces mounted an airborne assault to take it back.

In neighboring Helmand Province travelers have reported that the Taliban are running a series of checkpoints north of the main highway up to the towns of Sangin and Kajaki.

At least 200 families have fled their homes in the Panjwai district and taken refuge with relatives in the district center, while more have come to Kandahar, said a tribal elder, Muhammad Alam Agha.

A former mujahadeen commander and landowner in Panjwai, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from the Taliban, said, "We told the government for months that the situation was bad, that the Taliban were coming and killing people and that it would get difficult if they became too numerous."

He and many other villagers abandoned their farms and brought their families to Kandahar. "The Taliban could get into the city, if the government is still sleeping," he said. He added that he had seen members of the Taliban walking around in Kandahar. "I don't think the government can turn it around now," he said.

The Canadian commander of forces in southern Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. David Fraser, is firmly optimistic. "The Taliban have this great ability to blend into the villages and towns," he said in an interview at his headquarters at the Kandahar air base. "But they are not the superstars people make them out to be. They are capable fighters but defeatable."

Yet Afghans reported that security had become so bad that people said they did not care which side won, as long as someone took control and ended the fighting.

"We are going mad now," said Lala Jan, 19, a farmer from Deh Rawud in Oruzgan Province, one of the most strife-torn areas and a Taliban stronghold. "From one side we have the government and Americans, and on the other side the Taliban. When the Taliban come in, they enter without asking, and it's the same with the Americans. We cannot tolerate any of them."

Even more evident is the growing public dissatisfaction with the government, especially with the rampant corruption and venality of local officials, which has played into the hands of the Taliban, who are remembered for running a relatively corruption-free government.

Some people have turned to the Taliban to settle local disputes, in particular in parts of Helmand where they dominate, said the director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar, Abdul Qadar Noorzai.

The United Nations special rapporteur for independence of the judiciary, Leandro Despouy, condemned the public execution of a man accused of a crime, Badshah Khan, after a trial by a Taliban court in the remote mountainous province of Daikundi last month.

There is often no government presence in such remote areas, and the Taliban seem to be influencing those tribal leaders who usually decide local matters. "It is entirely unacceptable for a nonstate entity, such as the Taliban, to exercise a state function by trying and punishing an alleged criminal," Mr. Despouy said in a statement. "The return to the practice of making a public spectacle of the execution harks back to the worst excesses of the old regime."

    Taliban Surges as U.S. Shifts Some Tasks to NATO, NYT, 11.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/world/asia/11afghan.html?hp&ex=1150084800&en=720b7392d7a1edac&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Deadliest three weeks in Afghanistan kill more than 500

Posted 6/10/2006 9:54 PM ET
AP
USA Today

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The worst three weeks of violence since the fall of the Taliban have left more than 500 people dead, the U.S.-led coalition said Saturday.

Fighting on Saturday killed six insurgents and three police, officials said. Late Friday, a top Afghan intelligence agent narrowly survived a bomb attack on his convoy that killed three other people near the capital, Kabul.

Much of the recent Taliban fighting is believed funded by the country's $2.8 billion trade in opium and heroin — about 90% of the world's supply.

The daily violence has raised fears of a Taliban resurgence almost five years after the Islamic extremists were driven out by a U.S.-led invasion for harboring al-Qaeda.

More than 44 militants were among those killed in the last week. More than 30 of them died in a battle with Canadian and Afghan troops in Zabul province on Monday, a coalition statement said.

A coalition spokesman, Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick, said there would be no letup in attacks on militants.

"We will not be deterred from our mission to provide a safe and secure environment to the Afghan people," he said in a U.S. military statement.

In an apparent attempt to kill Kabul's director of government intelligence, Humayoon Aini, a bomb ripped through the first car in his convoy late Friday, killing a local politician and two other people, said Kabul's police chief, Amanullah Ghazar.

Aini, who was in the second car, was unhurt, Ghazar said. The intelligence director had been returning to the capital from a meeting in a neighboring district, Ghazar said.

In southern Zabul province Saturday, Afghan troops battled insurgents for hours, killing two and capturing two, before dozens of others fled into nearby mountains, army commander Gen. Rehmatullah Raufi said.

The Afghan Interior Ministry announced that in the past week 9 tons of opium and 88 pounds of heroin have been seized in raids across the country.

The United States, Britain and other countries are spending hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the drug business.

    Deadliest three weeks in Afghanistan kill more than 500, UT, 10.6.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-10-afghanistan_x.htm

Afghans Raise Toll of Dead From May Riots in Kabul to 17

June 8, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 7 — Nine days after the worst riots here in the Afghan capital in years, officials raised the death toll to 17 from 12 on Wednesday, and said that 140 people remained in detention, accused of involvement in the rioting.

At a rare news conference, the chief of the National Security Directorate, Amrullah Saleh, said that the riots on May 29 were a spontaneous reaction to a traffic accident caused by an American military truck, and that there was no proof of any political motivation or planning behind the violence, though some of those detained belonged to criminal gangs or political groups.

"We cannot reject the possibility of anything yet," Mr. Saleh said. "There were some instigators, people from small bands or groups in Kabul, but so far we have not reached the final conclusion to be able to say a certain political organization was orchestrating the riot."

A Ministry of Interior official, Abdul Jabar Sabit, seemed to contradict Mr. Saleh's assessment. In a separate news briefing, he said the riots appeared to have been organized.

"We think it was very coordinated, and it spread all over the city very quickly," Mr. Sabit said. People carried banners that bore political slogans, and some men were arrested with leaflets encouraging people to protest on the day of the riots, he said.

He defended the performance of the police that day, saying that rather than firing on the crowd, as some have reported, the police in some cases abandoned their posts, which rioters then ignited.

Witnesses also contended that American soldiers had fired into the crowd. The United States military has said it is investigating and cooperating with the Afghan investigation.

Since the riots, about 250 people have been detained, 140 of whom remain in detention, Mr. Saleh said. Of those, 52 have confessed to attacking public buildings and 10 of them are accused of instigating the violence, he said.

Mr. Saleh gave as an example one man who he said was seen setting fire to vehicles in the parking lot of the commercial television channel Ariana TV in southwest Kabul. The man then moved toward the Parliament building and was arrested there, accused of inciting people to violence.

Mr. Saleh said the man was believed to belong to a criminal gang.

"He has given some more names of people who were cooperating with him, who had the same idea, and who had gathered because of the same action," Mr. Saleh said. "Whether these people were receiving commands from any political group or criminal group has not come out yet from the investigation yet, and it needs time."

Abdul Wahab Khetab, director of the Ministry of Interior's criminal department, said the death toll after the car crash and subsequent rioting was 17 and included a policeman.

Mr. Khetab said that about 194 people had been treated in Kabul hospitals for injuries received that day, but that only 13 remained hospitalized a week later.

Asked about reports of double or triple the official number of deaths that day, Mr. Saleh acknowledged that the death toll could be higher, saying the official count listed only those registered in hospitals.

"We are an Islamic country, and based on our traditions, it is not obligatory to first take dead bodies to the hospitals to register them before burying them," he said.

Sultan M. Munadi contributed reporting for this article.

    Afghans Raise Toll of Dead From May Riots in Kabul to 17, NYT, 8.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/world/asia/08afghan.html

Americans Fired Into Crowd, Afghan Says

June 1, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 31 — American soldiers involved in a vehicle crash here on Monday that set off rioting then fired into the crowd of protesters and killed four people, according to the chief of the highway police in Kabul, Gen. Amanullah Gozar, who saw the accident.

Three people died in the crash caused by a runaway United States Army truck, and four people died of gunfire from the last vehicle in the convoy as the American forces extricated themselves from an increasingly hostile crowd, General Gozar said in an interview on Wednesday.

He dismissed rumors that had spread through the city that the American soldiers deliberately rammed vehicles, even including his own car. "I can say clearly it was an accident," he said.

The United States military initially said in a statement that the truck had a mechanical failure and called the incident "a tragic accident." It said there were "indications" that "warning shots over the crowd" had been fired from at least one military vehicle. General Gozar's account is the first declaration from a senior Afghan official that American soldiers directed lethal fire on the crowd.

An American military spokesman, Col. Tom Collins, said he had not heard that the last vehicle had fired into the crowd or that four people had been killed by Americans. "Our soldiers believed fire was coming from the crowd, and they fired their weapons in self-defense," he said.

He said soldiers in one vehicle had fired their weapons over the heads of the crowd, adding that a thorough investigation was under way and that all the soldiers would make statements to the investigators. "We are examining all information; it will all be part of the investigation," he said.

The deaths of civilians, in the initial car crash and in the protests that followed, prompted the worst anti-American riots in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban four years ago. Protesters fought the police and ransacked the offices of foreign organizations across the city. Twelve people were killed, including one policeman, and 138 were wounded as the police and Afghan Army soldiers struggled to contain the violence, police officials said.

General Gozar, who is a powerful commander of the Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban, dismissed suggestions that politics, or factions opposed to President Hamid Karzai, had driven the protests, and blamed the violence on criminal elements who took advantage of the situation. He also criticized the Kabul police for not being prepared to contain the violence and said the president had asked him at midafternoon on Monday to move to the center of the city with his highway police officers to help put down the riots.

Colonel Collins said the soldiers stayed at the crash scene for 45 minutes until a relief vehicle arrived to tow the broken truck away, and reported that one civilian man had been killed in the car crash and six had been injured, two of them seriously. The soldiers provided first aid to the injured until ambulances arrived to take them away, he said.

General Gozar, whose house overlooks the main road into Kabul from the north, said he heard a truck horn on Monday morning and looked out his window to see the driver of a heavy military truck waving frantically to people to get out of the way. The truck hit a station wagon, then two military vehicles in the convoy, and then was swallowed by a dust cloud at the foot of the hill, he said.

When he arrived at the crash scene a few minutes later, the American soldiers had stopped their convoy and were treating the civilians injured in the other cars, while others stood guard, he said. A crowd of shopkeepers and pushcart operators gathered and began pelting the soldiers with stones. The police could not contain the crowd, and finally the American soldiers escaped, he said.

"The first American vehicles were firing in the air, but the last one fired at the people," he said. As the American soldiers escaped, leaving four people dead, the crowd turned on the Afghan police, burning one of their cars and stabbing a policeman, he said. The riot quickly spread. "People were really angry," he said.

General Gozar briefed President Karzai on the episode, and said he told the president that while it was clearly an accident, the behavior of the Americans had contributed to the people's anger. Arrogant driving — driving fast or not allowing cars to overtake their convoy — irritated people, he said. People were also angered when the soldiers prevented them from approaching the crashed cars to help the injured, he said.

In more violence in southern Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents overran and burned down the administration and police offices of a district in Oruzgan Province on Tuesday night, in one of the most blatant challenges to the government and foreign forces stationed in the province.

About 40 police and administration officials fled the district center to another location under siege by Taliban militants, said Ruzi Khan, the former police chief of the province. A Taliban spokesman, Qari Muhammad Yousuf, confirmed that the attack had occurred.

In a separate insurgent attack, the deputy police chief of neighboring Zabul Province was killed Wednesday in an ambush.

Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed reporting for this article.

    Americans Fired Into Crowd, Afghan Says, NYT, 1.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/world/asia/01afghan.html?hp&ex=1149220800&en=3e6e764bc40332da&ei=5094&partner=homepage