AFGHANISTAN: Continuing Violence Mars Healing Efforts

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Saeed Zabuli and Najib Khilwatgar - Pajhwok Afghan News*

KABUL , Jan 31 2006 (IPS) - As Afghan leaders and international donors meet in London to discuss a new blueprint to rebuild and stabilise this war-shattered country, continuing violence and suicide attacks in the restless southern provinces overshadow the agenda.

Ending Wednesday, the two-day meet began with envoys from some 70 countries and international bodies pledging to maintain financial support for Afghanistan, which remains plagued by violence and poverty, four years after the fall of the fundamentalist Taliban regime.

In 2005, at least 1,600 people, including 91 U.S. troops, were reported killed in militant violence, led by a seemingly resurgent Taliban.

Last month in Kandahar, the former stronghold of the Taliban, more than 30 people including a senior Canadian diplomat were killed in suicide attacks – which are new in Afghanistan but have been showing an increasing trend in recent weeks.

On Jan. 31, Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said 36 suspected Taliban supporters were arrested during search operations in Kubi and Loya Wila.

A day earlier, the Afghan army claimed it had made two separate arrests of ”would-be suicide bombers” in Kandahar city. Mohammad Fazal Afzal, commander of the 1st Battalion of the provincial army corps, said a man who wanted to crash his explosive-laden van into a vehicle carrying Romanian troops, instead hit a truck in panic.

Afghan soldiers, already tipped about the plot, arrested the would-be bomber, and seized missiles, gas capsules and explosives.

“A taxi driver had informed us just an hour earlier that a suspected vehicle was on its way from the Spin Boldak town to Kandahar city. The Romanian troops turned off the road; the oncoming van hit a truck. Fortunately, the explosives inside the van failed to go off,” said Fazal.

There are currently about 18,000 U.S.-led coalition troops deployed mainly to the south and east of Afghanistan and heavily involved in combating Taliban remnants. Additionally, 10,000 NATO troops are deployed, mainly in the central and northern provinces. The Afghan National Police force now has nearly 58,000 trained officers,

Spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Major Andrew Elmes told reporters on Jan. 30 that the NATO-led international peacekeeping force will be deployed soon in the six southern provinces of Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan, Helmand, Nimroz and Farah.

Some of forces would be working under the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) framework, running both security operations and reconstruction projects, he added. Others would be engaged in the fight against drugs and counter-insurgency operations in the country’s most violent and Taliban-friendly areas.

Major Elmes said the promise by British defence minister John Reid on Jan. 26 to send about 4,000 soldiers to Afghanistan had helped the ISAF to go ahead with its plan to extend its presence to the south.

The spokesman also said their efforts to find any trace of a Turkmen helicopter which had been missing since last week as it was flying from Pakistan to Turkmenistan have failed so far. The helicopter was returning from Pakistan’s Peshawar to Turkmenistan after its chartered mission with the International Committee of the Red Cross finished on Jan. 20, when it disappeared over Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-led coalition forces’ spokesman Lt-Col Laurent Fox said 2,500 to 3,000 soldiers would be replaced with NATO-forces, but neither Elmes nor Fox gave a clear timing for such change.

“The exact time of withdrawal of the coalition force is not clear since it depends on the situation in the region, but still it is likely to take place in the coming summer,” said Fox.

Afghan authorities accuse Pakistan of fomenting trouble and sheltering ‘insurgents’ across the border. Kandahar governor Asadullah Khalid told reporters on Jan. 29 that nine armed suspects, including two Pakistani nationals, were arrested in the border province.

The previous week, Kandahar police arrested two Afghans with explosives strapped to their bodies and motorbikes, saying that the two wanted to blow themselves up in the troubled city.

On Jan 29, a convoy of U.S. forces was attacked in the southern Kandahar province, but no casualties were reported. Gen. Rahmatullah Raufi, senior official of the Provincial Army Corps, said the attack had occurred at Tarank in the Kandahar province.

”Afghanistan’s transition to peace and stability is not yet assured,” the Afghanistan Compact, a five-year development plan to be signed in London this week acknowledged.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and several foreign ministers are attending the London meeting co-chaired by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

(*Released by arrangement with Pajhwok Afghan News)