Afghan government troops and North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces are
patrolling the southern town of Musa Qala after
driving out Taliban fighters who had been
entrenched there for 10 months. But even as the
troops searched for booby traps and stranded
militants, the Afghan Defense Ministry said
hundreds of Taliban fighters had launched a
counterattack in the nearby district of Sangin -
an area that includes a road project linked to the
reconstruction of the strategic Kajaki
hydroelectric dam.
The Defense Ministry
said the few remaining Taliban fighters in Musa
Qala ended their resistance on Tuesday after
Afghan and
NATO
troops moved into the district administrative
center on December 10.
The Taliban claimed
last week that they had as many as 2,000 fighters
in the area. Reports suggest many of those
fighters fled from Musa Qala into the mountains
further north.
In Musa Qala, residents'
lives appeared to be returning to normal after
most of the militants fled. Haji Abdul Karim, a
shopkeeper whose business had been closed because
of the fighting, told RFE/RL's Radio Free
Afghanistan that he opened his store on Tuesday
for the first time since last week. He added that
he hadn't seen any Taliban fighters in the town.
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan
correspondent Saleh Mohammad Saleh reported from
the town of Musa Qala that there is no sign of
fighting. But Saleh said the Taliban are claiming
successes elsewhere in Helmand province. "The
Taliban claim that they have taken many parts of
the Sangin district [to the south of Musa Qala],"
he said. According to Saleh, the Taliban claim
that their counterattack to the south has cut off
an important road that passes through the Sangin
district to link the strategic Kajaki
hydroelectric dam to the provincial capital,
Lashkar Gah.
The Afghan Defense Ministry
acknowledged that several hundred Taliban fighters
launched a counterattack against NATO and Afghan
government troops in Sangin district. But ministry
officials refuted the Taliban's claim that they
took control of parts of the district, saying the
militants were thwarted by Afghan and NATO troops
who had anticipated a counterattack in Sangin.
One man from Char Bagh - a village to the
south of Musa Qala and near Sangin district - told
RFE/RL that NATO air strikes are continuing to
target Taliban militants near Sangin. "As far as
the fighting in the town of Musa Qala goes, all of
the armed Taliban have left that area. But the air
strikes are continuing here," he said.
Taliban defections, arrests On
December 9, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he
made the decision to storm the town of Musa Qala
following reports of brutality there by the
Taliban and foreign al-Qaeda fighters.
Karzai also said the successful attack was
aided by some local Taliban leaders who had
switched allegiance to his government. Ali Shah
Mazloomyar, a Pashtun tribal leader in the Musa
Qala district, told RFE/RL there are reports that
other powerful Taliban commanders have been
captured by NATO forces.
"Abdul Rahim
Akhund, a commander of the Taliban in Helmand
province, was appointed by the Taliban as the
governor of this area. And another person, Abdul
Matin Akhund, was also a powerful man," Mazloomyar
said. "If these two people really have been
arrested, and another - Mullah Abdul Salam Akhund
- has really switched sides and joined the
government, it will certainly weaken the morale of
the Taliban because they cannot find such powerful
people who had so much influence in this region.
It will be very difficult for the Taliban to
replace these people."
After coming under
sustained Taliban attacks, British troops pulled
out of Musa Qala in October 2006 after striking a
heavily criticized truce that handed control of
the town to tribal elders like Mazloomyar. But the
Taliban seized Musa Qala in February and made it a
base for guerrilla operations aimed at thwarting
the reconstruction of the Kajaki Dam.
Of
the more than 14,000 reconstruction projects
underway in Afghanistan, NATO secretary general
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has described the Kajaki Dam
as the project with the most strategic and
psychological significance. The NATO chief says
the dam will provide electricity to more than 2
million people and their businesses in southern
Afghanistan once a giant power turbine is
installed and power lines to the city of Kandahar
are repaired. But to transport the giant turbine
to Kajaki, workers must first complete work to
improve the road that passes through the Sangin
district on its way to the dam site.
A
key location British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown on December 10 visited a British Royal
Marines base in Helmand province just 70
kilometers from the fighting in Musa Qala. Later
in Kabul, Brown insisted that the offensive
against the Taliban in the area will allow
reconstruction work to continue.
"This
action in Musa Qala is an example of how Afghan
forces - working with British and other forces -
can make a difference," Brown said. "And there is
no doubt that succeeding in Musa Qala will make a
huge difference, both to how people see the
weakness of the Taliban in the future and the
ability of the government to build, not just
militarily and politically, [but also] with social
and economic progress for the people of the area."
Meanwhile, Karzai says the high-profile
role of government troops in the battle shows that
the Afghan National Army is becoming more
sophisticated and able to provide security in
provincial regions of the country. "We would like
to have the international community continue to
add to the building of the Afghan forces -
continue to add to the 'Afghanization' of this
whole exercise so that Afghanistan can be ready in
time to take on the responsibility of defending
the Afghan country with Afghan institutions and
Afghan ability," Karzai said.
Ron
Synovitz covers Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq
as well as economic transition and human-rights
issues. He reported on the US Army's advance from
Kuwait to Baghdad as an embedded journalist
(March-April 2003). He has a master's degree in
journalism from Southern Illinois
University-Carbondale.
(RFE/RL's Radio
Free Afghanistan correspondent Saleh Mohammad
Saleh in Musa Qala and Jan Alekozai in Prague
contributed to this story.)
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(c) 2007, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the
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