Afghanistan 'falling into Taliban hands'
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Resurgent Taliban closing in on Kabul: report
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3.15pm GMT
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday November 21, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into the group's hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area.
Despite the presence of tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid, the insurgents, driven out by the US invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries," the Senlis Council says in a report released today.
On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people, who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change".
It says that the frontline is getting ever closer to Kabul - a warning echoed by the UN, which says more and more of the country is becoming a "no go" area for western aid and development workers.
The council goes as far as to state: "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when this will happen and in what form. The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm for Afghanistan before time runs out".
Its 110-page report coincides with an equally severe warning from Oxfam. In a report for the House of Commons international development committee, the humanitarian and aid agency warns that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating significantly with the country's problems exacerbated by corruption in central and local government.
The report warns that urgent action is needed to avert a humanitarian disaster in which millions of Afghans face "severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa". Though the country has received more than $15bn in aid since 2001, the money is not getting to the people who need it most or to projects that could lead to sustained improvements in their lives, Oxfam says.
At least 1,200 civilians have been killed so far this year, it adds - half in operations by international or Afghan forces. There are four times as many air strikes by international forces in Afghanistan than in Iraq, Oxfam notes.
Senior British and US military commanders privately agree despite their public emphasis on short-term successes against Taliban fighters.
The insurgency is divided into a largely poverty-driven "grassroots" component and a concentrated group of "hardcore militant Islamists", says the Senlis Council, which has an office in Kabul and field researchers based in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southern Afghanistan.
It says that the Nato-led International Security Force, Isaf, should have double the current number of 40,000 troops and should include forces from Muslim countries as well as those Nato states which have refused to send troops to the country or insist, like France and Germany, that they must not be involved in combat operations.
There is no sign, despite pressure from the US and Britain, of any move within Nato to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.
While western governments, like the Senlis Council and Oxfam, are increasingly concerned about the lack of effectiveness of President Hamid Karzai's government, there is no agreement about how to solve the problems.
While the Senlis Council wants Nato forces' provincial reconstruction teams to take on a bigger role distributing aid, Oxfam says the military should stick to providing security. And while the council says opium poppies should be bought by the international community and used licitly for medical purposes, Oxfam argues that such a project would be impossible given the current state of Afghanistan."
Nov. 6 Incident Drawing Scrutiny to Security Forces
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 21, 2007; A01
BAGHLAN, Afghanistan -- Mohammed Asadullah, a high school teacher in this quiet northern town, was lining up his students to greet a group of visiting legislators from the capital when the bomb went off, hurling bodies into the air and sending up a cloud of thick, dark smoke. What happened next, he and other survivors recounted, was worse.
"The bodyguards got nervous and started shooting. The police started firing, too. They even tried to shoot me," the teacher said Monday, angry tears coming to his eyes. He pointed to a charred, splintered pine tree where the bomb had detonated. "It was horrible. People were running and screaming, but it just went on. Five other teachers were killed by bullets, and so many students. They should all have been in class studying."
The horrific Nov. 6 incident outside the New Baghlan Sugar mill, which left 70 schoolchildren, six members of parliament and half a dozen other people dead, was initially described as Afghanistan's worst terrorist attack to date in two years of suicide bombings and other assaults by Taliban insurgents. It was also seen as an alarming sign that extremists had extended their reach into peaceful northern regions of the country.
But the Taliban immediately denied responsibility for the bombing, and over the course of two weeks marked by emotional funerals and rising public anger, witnesses have emerged to lay blame on Afghan security forces who, for still unexplained reasons, retaliated with such sustained and wild barrages of gunfire that they killed many survivors of the blast.
Both the magnitude and the murkiness of the slayings in this remote town, previously cut off from insurgent violence by the Hindu Kush mountain range, have shaken the country. The deaths of so many children in a culture where family is paramount have added to the sense of outrage.
The event has generated fresh criticism of the government's poor security record, unleashed conspiracy theories and reinforced concerns about the number of former anti-Soviet militiamen, sometimes of questionable training and loyalty, now being employed as bodyguards by various individuals, groups, private firms and public agencies.
According to an internal report by the U.N. assistance mission in Kabul that was obtained by the Associated Press, some security guards fired "deliberately and indiscriminately" into the crowd of children and others who had been sent to the mill gates to greet the VIPs. The report, which has not been officially released and is one of several conflicting accounts of what happened, said that the gunfire had caused up to one-third of the casualties and that there had been virtually "no effort" by Afghan authorities to identify or punish the shooters.
Afghan officials initially attributed the entire death toll to a suicide bomber and suggested the punctures in many of the victims' bodies had been caused by ball bearings in the bomb, not bullets. Now they say that a more thorough investigation is underway and that they expect to release the findings by the end of this week, after a group of legislators returns from conducting its own probe.
"We have some preliminary results, but the investigation is not over yet," President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said at a news conference Tuesday. Disputing allegations that gunfire had killed a large number of the victims, Hamidzada said that witnesses and local officials had been questioned and that he expected the forthcoming official report to be "definitive and bulletproof."
Karzai, in an interview in his palace in Kabul on Tuesday evening, said he had been "deeply hurt" by the killings in Baghlan and had tried to travel there to meet with victims' families last week before bad weather canceled his trip. He said he later spoke to them by telephone.
The president suggested that "recklessness" on many sides was to blame for the deaths in Baghlan, adding, "There is no way it will go unanswered."
Karzai has been described as increasingly frustrated by the poor performance of the Afghan police, based in the Interior Ministry, and he has publicly accused the ministry of corruption and incompetence. He has also expressed exasperation at the tendency of foreign donors to bypass his government and deal directly with private contractors.
A particular source of complaint has been the dozens of private security companies that operate in Kabul and other cities with little oversight, often employing former Afghan guerrilla fighters. The Karzai government has raided several of these firms in recent weeks, seizing equipment and weapons.
"This bodyguard culture is killing Afghanistan, and we have to remove it," Karzai said in the interview.
A new report prepared for the United Nations by the group Swisspeace found that Afghan and foreign security firms in Afghanistan employ 18,500 to 28,000 men. It said that although the companies may provide security for their clients, they are viewed by the public as creating a "sense of distrust and insecurity." Reasons include their ties to local militia bosses, their heavily armed presence, their rudeness toward civilians and their alleged ties to crime.
In Baghlan, the security personnel at the scene of the bombing included a mix of local police and teams of bodyguards for each legislator and other officials; former militia commanders were among those in the crowd. When the blast occurred, witnesses said, gunfire erupted in many directions and lasted several minutes. When it was over, bodies were strewn across the scenic, tree-lined driveway and field surrounding the mill.
The protracted absence of a satisfactory official explanation of the incident has bred numerous rumors of political plots and counterplots. Many center on the most prominent victim, Sayed Mustafa Kazimi, 48, a member of parliament and former commerce minister who had recently become the spokesman for the main coalition opposing Karzai.
Kazimi was a rising political star from the country's long-suffering ethnic Hazara minority. Since the bombing, posters of his face under the headline "Martyr," together with smaller portraits of his five slain bodyguards, have been plastered on shops and utility poles throughout West Kabul, a Hazara stronghold where thousands attended a memorial ceremony for Kazimi on Nov. 8.
Some opposition figures have suggested that the government orchestrated the entire incident to get rid of Kazimi, who was being groomed as a rival to Karzai and his camp in elections two years from now. Other observers have hinted at an equally dark plot by rival groups within Kazimi's United National Front coalition that mistrusted his ambitions and close ties with Iran.
"With all the delays, the people are wondering a great deal, and they have many questions," said Kazimi's younger brother Sayed Ali, who has now inherited the leadership of his political party, National Pride. "I am not accusing anyone, and I have patience to wait for the final report, but it must be neutral and clear about what happened. The government needs to say something to the people to make them calm."
The confusion and official silence surrounding the slayings have been especially hard on the families of the children who died that day, leaving them torn between grief and suspicion. Dozens of families in the small Baghlan community lost a child in a few moments of lethal chaos, and one sugar mill worker named Asadullah, 44, lost three of his five sons.
"I was at work when I heard the explosion outside and then all the gunfire," he said, staring at his parlor carpet Monday and fingering his untouched glass of tea. "I thought my boys were safe in school, but then someone told me they had all been sent to meet the guests from Kabul. I rushed over there, and I saw blood and smoke and people running. I saw so many bodies on the ground, and I could hardly bear to look. Then I found Zaki, and Khoshal, and Wisal. All dead."
Glancing up with reddened eyes, Asadullah grimaced in anger.
"The government always says that such killings are done by the enemies of Afghanistan, but this time we Afghans killed them," the grieving father said. "We took them from school and made them stand by the road, and they died. I am a good Muslim, so I must believe this is God's plan. He gave us sons and He took them away, but I would like to know why.
