KABUL - Taliban militants are targeting
Afghan government officials in yet another nod to
Iraqi insurgents, marked by a spike in
assassinations and attempted attacks in recent
weeks that coincide with a greater reliance on
suicide terrorism and the use of imported bomb
technologies.
The killings appear to
represent a systematic campaign to undermine the
weak government of President Hamid Karzai, both to
create fear in urban centers with a heavy security
presence and distant provinces that have in past
months experienced the
bloodiest fighting since the
hardline movement was ousted five years ago for
harboring al-Qaeda operatives.
"This
really is a deliberate campaign to assassinate
Afghan officials," Barnett R Rubin, a leading
expert on Afghanistan at the Council on Foreign
Relations, told Asia Times Online. "We have seen
well-placed suicide bombers operating more
effectively than they ever have before."
Suicide attacks have killed seven
government officials so far this year, with many
near misses. The upward trend began when Paktia
provincial governor Abdul Hakim Taniwal, a Karzai
confidant, was killed along with two aides on
September 10 outside his office by a suicide
bomber, followed by another strike at his funeral
service the next day that claimed six lives.
A district police chief, an intelligence
officer and an administrator in the eastern
province of Nangarhar died on October 9 when a
roadside bomb ripped through their vehicle en
route to check on a school that had been torched.
Last month, a gunman killed Safia Ama Jan,
the director of the Ministry of Women's Affairs in
Kandahar province, a Taliban stronghold, after
which four other female state employees opted to
quit their posts. Two other provincial governors
have since escaped assassination attempts,
including one last month in which a suicide bomber
killed 18 people outside the governor's compound
in Helmand province. This week a provincial
councilman was slain in Kandahar, prompting the
council to double the amount of bodyguards on
hand.
Targeted killings are not entirely
new to Afghanistan: Karzai himself survived a
September 2002 assassination attempt by an alleged
former Taliban member in Kandahar just months
after assuming power. Such ambush tactics were
previously used by mujahideen to lethal effect
against pro-communist Afghan government officials
during the jihad against the 1979-89 Soviet
occupation.
Over the summer, North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops clashed
with a bolder, regrouped Taliban force in pitched
battles across hard-scrabble swaths of the
southern and eastern provinces that were reported
to have killed hundreds of fighters. Military
officials concede there has been "a slight upward
trend" in "hit and run" attacks against government
targets, but insist civilians - at 155 killed, and
counting - remain the most common victims in what
can often only be described as indiscriminate
violence.
"Based on the significant defeat
dealt them in Kandahar this summer and elsewhere
after trying to take on [the International
Security Assistance Force - ISAF]) more or less
conventionally, we do have evidence and intel to
suggest that insurgents have reverted to
hit-and-run tactics to include attempts against
officials," Major Luke Knittig, an ISAF spokesman,
told Asia Times Online.
Incidences of
suicide terrorism, once virtually unknown in
Afghanistan, have more than doubled since last
year and the use of remote-detonated technologies
as advanced as any used in Iraq, according to
experts, is proliferating as foreign jihadis
provide training and bounties to poor Afghan
recruits the state has failed to protect.
Additionally, videos of beheadings are in
circulation and the Internet has become a prolific
outlet for Taliban propaganda.
The
increase in attacks has prompted officials in
volatile areas to beef up security details and set
up new checkpoints around government agencies,
while many staff simply refuse to show up for work
or have abandoned their jobs. The perpetrator of
the September 30 suicide bombing outside the
Interior Ministry in the heart of Kabul was
reportedly looking to detonate his explosives near
a group of state employees before being confronted
by a police officer.
Faced with mounting
concerns across a country where all but two of 34
provinces have recorded violent attacks, despite
the presence of 20,000 NATO troops and a similarly
sized US force, Major Knittig cited the work of
provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) charged
with providing security and developmental aid in
areas the state cannot reach. PRTs were stationed
next to governors' compounds, he said, to enhance
protection of officials along with an increased
emphasis on joint patrolling.
Asked
whether more could be done to fight targeted
killings, another military source, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, noted that several
government officials "enjoy popularity and status
outside their appointed or elected position and as
such are less than desirable as targets".
Rubin, who spent time with Taniwal five
weeks prior to his death, maintains that stemming
targeted killings is "not a military issue" but a
matter of turning up the pressure on neighboring
Pakistan to clamp down on Taliban bases in lawless
tribal areas within its borders where militants
are organizing and staging attacks.
He
said the assassinated governor had no doubts
Pakistan continued to support the movement, and
coalition forces would be best served by
pressuring Islamabad to prevent cross-border
infiltration and extradite seized fighters to
Afghanistan. Instead of a heavy-handed solution,
Taniwal advocated integrating Taliban elements
into civil society as a political party,
comparable to the Jamaat e-Islami, an Islamic
political movement in Pakistan.
The
Taliban leadership has different plans. Fugitive
leader Mullah Omar, now believed to be hiding near
Quetta in Balochistan province, southwestern
Pakistan, pledged on Monday that the movement
would escalate its offensive to a "surprising
level" as winter draws closer, a time when
fighting traditionally comes to a halt.
"By the will of Allah, the fight will
intensify in the coming few months," the one-eyed
leader with a US$10 million bounty on his head
said in a statement posted on the Internet. "Our
predictions about the war have proved right in the
past. I am confident that our fight will gain a
strong foothold in the near future."
Jason Motlagh is deputy foreign
editor at United Press International in
Washington, DC. He has reported freelance from
Saharan Africa, Asia and the Caribbean for various
US and European news media.
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2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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