Victoria Burnett
Boston Globe
July 11, 2004
KABUL, Afghanistan -- After US-led forces began pounding Afghanistan with bombs in October 2001, the Taliban regime collapsed in less than six weeks.
But almost three years later, the coalition that dispatched the regime continues to battle its remnants, who are waging a violent campaign to disrupt elections in October that would mark an important step in Afghanistan's transition to democracy.
Almost daily, militants whom Afghan and US officials identify as Taliban or allies of the renegade former prime minister, Gulbuddin
Hekmat yar, attack remote police or government posts, plant mines on roads used by nongovernmental organizations or election workers, and ambush convoys of relief workers or troops in the south.
Afghan and US officials and analysts point to three main factors in the Taliban's continued ability to carry out such attacks:
A US-led military strategy that focused narrowly on catching prominent Taliban and Al Qaeda figures, and that pits a largely conventional army against an elusive guerrilla force.
A lack of reach by the Afghan government in isolated areas where the militants are active.
Continued support from areas across the border in Pakistan.
''It was not our plan to invest ourselves in nation-building," Carl Conetta, director of the Project for Defense Alternatives, a think tank
based in Cambridge, said of the US military's role in Afghanistan. ''Our general strategy was never to exercise complete control over the country."
In an effort to reverse a tide of violence that has killed hundreds across southern Afghanistan since early last year, the US-led
coalition has expanded from about 11,500 at the end of 2003 to about 20,000, of which 17,000 are US forces, including at least 2,000 Marines.
The coalition includes 4,000 special forces soldiers from different countries, according to Colonel Walter Herd, outgoing head of special forces in Afghanistan.
The coalition has shifted its focus from tactical to ''stability" operations, said Lieutenant Colonel Tucker Mansager, a coalition
spokesman. It is deploying small units of fighters in remote areas for weeks at a time, rather than identifying targets, attacking
them, and then pulling back to bases, he said.
''Before, we were never anywhere long enough," Mansager said in a recent interview in Kabul. ''A lot of it is about killing terrorists,
but a lot of it is building up the confidence of the people."
To support this new emphasis on stability, the coalition has significantly beefed up its chain of civilian-military units, called
Provincial Reconstruction Teams, across the south. It has raised the total from four at the end of last year to 16 as of last week. It has put all forces in a given area -- be they conventional Army and Marine units, civil affairs or special forces -- under control of a
single commander. The strategy is called ''area ownership."
''We've poured more people in, and we have people spread about doing reconstruction work. This resembles typical counterinsurgency strategy, which the Marines are historically good at," Conetta said.
But as the coalition has shifted tactics, so have the Taliban. After taking heavy losses in pitched battles, militants now tend to operate in groups of five to 30 rather than mustering large numbers, a leading Afghan security official said on condition of anonymity.
The change was evident after fierce clashes in Dai Chopan, in Zabul Province, in August 2003. That battle involved hundreds of suspected Taliban, of whom dozens were reported killed.
The violence has hindered election preparations. The first direct presidential vote will take place on Oct. 9, officials announced
Friday. But a parliamentary election, to have been held simultaneously, was put off until the spring.
In the past two weeks, authorities have accused militants with ties to the Taliban of two deadly attacks on women election workers in the eastern province of Nangahar. One woman was killed on Thursday and another was wounded when a mine exploded under a car carrying workers in Nangahar's Khogyani district.
On June 26, a bomb on a bus carrying the election workers in Nangahar's capital, Jalalabad, killed three women. The driver, who
hopped off just before the blast and was arrested, is suspected of links to the Taliban, said Faizanulhaq, spokesman for the Nangahar provincial governor's office, who like many Afghans goes by one name.
In the deadliest attack on prospective voters, gunmen abducted and killed as many as 16 Afghan men from buses traveling through the central province of Oruzgan on June 25, according to Haji Obaidullah, chief of Khas Oruzgan district. The gunmen, whom senior Afghan security officials say were identified as supporters of the ousted Taliban regime, allegedly shot the men because they were carrying voter registration cards.
The Taliban and members of Hizb-i-Islami, or Islamic Party, the movement Hekmatyar once headed, continue to get support and shelter in Pakistan, Afghan and US officials say.
Recent offensives by the Pakistani army in the tribal areas that border Afghanistan to the southeast did not send a flurry of targets
fleeing into Afghanistan. But they did cause a decline in cross-border incursions, Mansager said.
''There's no doubt that the [Pakistani] operation has had an effect," Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Kabul, told reporters
recently. ''It has dealt with part of the problem, but it hasn't done more than that."
Afghan officials say they have credible intelligence to indicate top Taliban officials are passing in and out of Pakistan. Pakistan has
yet to hand over any members of a wanted list that Afghanistan provided more a year ago, they say.
The list includes such leaders as Mullah Dadullah, a one-legged commander who, Afghan officials say, runs the Taliban's southern
operations; Mullah Obaidullah, the former Taliban defense minister; and Mullah Brader, a senior commander who is reported to work
alongside Obaidullah in the south.
Afghan officials interviewed in northern Kunduz Province, including General Daud, who commands Ministry of Defense forces there and in three other provinces, and Kunduz Governor Mohammad Omar, said last week they had drawn a connection between gunmen who killed 11 Chinese road workers in Kunduz last month and an explosion near a military base in the provincial capital
that killed four.
The attacks, for which authorities have detained at least 15 suspects, were organized by Hizb-i-Islami commanders, they said. The money for the bombing was traced via Kabul's unofficial exchange market back to Hizb-i-Islami supporters in Pakistan.
Pakistani officials have stressed their resolve to root out militants, including remnants of the Taliban. Pakistan supported and recognized the regime until September 2001, when President Pervez Musharraf reversed the policy under US pressure.
An army official, Major General Shaukat Sultan, said the operations had ''made a real difference."
Afghan and US officials concede that Pakistan is not the Taliban's only refuge. Many of the areas where Afghan and coalition forces
encounter resistance are far from the Pakistani border.
''We think many of those forces have been inside Afghanistan," Mansager said, referring to fighters who battled coalition forces in
Dai Chopan in June. The coalition said it had killed 80 of them.
Central government presence is scarce in the provinces, and where the government leaves a vacuum, the Taliban have stepped in. In an interview last week, the senior Afghan official expressed frustration at not knowing the whereabouts of Taliban leaders.
For example, Afghan officials had intelligence indicating that Akhtar Mohammed Usmani, a former Taliban commander of Kandahar, and Rais Abdul Wahid, who is believed to have sheltered the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, from coalition forces after the Taliban were forced from Kabul, are living in northern Helmand Province and financing their operations through opium, he said.
''What do we have at our disposal to cover all these regions? What is the pay scale of our police? What is the pace of
reconstruction?" he asked. The government of President Hamid Karzai still relies almost entirely on foreign funding for its budget, and struggles to pay civil servants and security forces, whose lower ranks earn about $30 per month.
Many Afghans, especially in isolated areas, say they lack basic services such as water, clinics, and schools. ''Where we are not
present, the Taliban can operate," the security official said.
In the meantime, authorities continue to try to woo nonmilitant Taliban supporters in the hope of isolating about 1,100 to 1,300 who
the coalition says are militants.
''Who is the Taliban?" Nick Downie, a former British soldier and head of Anso, a security organization that offers advice to the aid community, asked rhetorically.
''Who could be the Taliban? Whoever decides to pick up a gun because they don't see a viable alternative."
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Citation:
Victoria Burnett. "As a Vote Nears, Taliban Fight On," Boston Globe, 11 July 2004. Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/07/11/as_a_vote_nears_taliban_fight_on/