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Afghanistan,
Iraq-style
By Golnaz Esfandiari
The Taliban and their allies have markedly
increased attacks in the southern and eastern
regions of Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of
hundreds of people.
The fatalities include
16 US soldiers killed when their Chinook
helicopter was shot down on June 28 - one of the
heaviest US casualties since the 2001 ouster of
the Taliban - and 21 people killed in a suicide
bomb attack in Kandahar, also in June, at the
funeral of a senior cleric assassinated days
earlier.
Adding to the US's woes, on
Monday four al-Qaeda prisoners escaped from a
detention center at Bagram air base north of
Kabul. Hundreds of US and Afghan troops supported
by helicopters hunted on Tuesday for the four Arab
men - the first ever to escape from from the
heavily guarded center at the main US base in
Afghanistan.
The detention center has
housed hundreds of militant suspects since US-led
forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 for
refusing to give up al-Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden. They have included senior al-Qaeda suspects
arrested in neighboring Pakistan and elsewhere. A
US military spokeswoman said about 450 militant
suspects were currently held at the base.
The intensification of violence in Afghan
appears to bear out comments from the Defense
Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak earlier this this
month that he had received intelligence that
al-Qaeda was regrouping and intended to bring
Iraqi-style bloodshed to Afghanistan.
And
he said on Monday that foreign fighters from Arab
and neighboring countries were carrying out
attacks with the Taliban. "Following the melting
of the snow [in March], there has been a
significant increase in terrorist attacks, more
than we expected," Wardak said.
His
comments came as authorities in southern
Afghanistan confirmed the death of 10 Afghan
police officers. Six of them were beheaded and
their bodies and heads were dumped near the border
with Pakistan. Beheading has been rare in the
conflict in Afghanistan.
Afghan Interior
Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said on Monday that the
police officers had been abducted on July 8
following an ambush in southern Afghanistan's
Helmand province. "In Helmand, in the Deshu
district, a patrolling group of Afghan border
forces came under attack by a large number of
terrorists while it was traveling from Barancha
region to Rubatak," Jalali said. "As a result of
the fighting, unfortunately, they took with them
10 members of the border force, they martyred four
of them in one place, the other six men were
killed just 200 kilometers away from the Pakistani
border. Then the kidnappers escaped to the Gerdi
Jangal border."
Jalali condemned the
killings as un-Islamic and inhuman. "Those people
who commit such crimes are not Muslims and they
are not human beings because this is against Islam
and humanity," Jalali said.
Afghan
officials have said that the Taliban and their
allies are stepping up their attacks in an effort
to disrupt upcoming parliamentary and local
elections. The scheduled September 18 elections
are considered another key step in the
Afghanistan's path towards recovery.
Afghan election officials say that three
Afghans working in support of the elections have
been killed in recent months.
Vahid
Mozhdeh, an Afghan writer and security expert
based in Kabul, believes that the attacks are
aimed at creating fear among government forces to
force them to quit. "One reason that can explain
the stepping up of [attacks] is the wish of
al-Qaeda for the Americans to be blighted in
Afghanistan as they are in Iraq and to suffer more
casualties," Mozhdeh said.
Mozhdeh told
RFE/RL that Taliban forces and their allies were
becoming more organized. He said they were
changing their tactics and using more effective
explosives.
"Fewer fighters are involved,
they come and attack using motorbikes and quickly
escape," Mozhdeh said. "The Taliban want to put
people and the coalition forces against each
other. They conduct operations somewhere and then
leave and then coalition forces carry an attack
against them there but mostly civilians get hurt.
We've been witnessing a series of suicide attacks,
which in the past had not been common in
Afghanistan. Therefore, we see that the experience
of violence is spreading from Iraq to
Afghanistan."
Copyright (c) 2005,
RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington DC 20036 |
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