[NYTr] Afghan Police Are Set Back as Taliban Adapt

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The New York Times - Sep 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/world/asia/02taliban.html

Afghan Police Are Set Back as Taliban Adapt

By DAVID ROHDE

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 26 — Over the past six weeks, the Taliban
have driven government forces out of roughly half of a strategic area
in southern Afghanistan that American and NATO officials declared a
success story last fall in their campaign to clear out insurgents and
make way for development programs, Afghan officials say.

A year after Canadian and American forces drove hundreds of Taliban
fighters from the area, the Panjwai and Zhare districts southwest of
Kandahar, the rebels are back and have adopted new tactics. Carrying
out guerrilla attacks after NATO troops partly withdrew in July, they
overran isolated police posts and are now operating in areas where they
can mount attacks on Kandahar, the south’s largest city.

The setback is part of a bloody stalemate that has occurred between
NATO troops and Taliban fighters across southern Afghanistan this
summer. NATO and Afghan Army soldiers can push the Taliban out of rural
areas, but the Afghan police are too weak to hold the territory after
they withdraw. At the same time, the Taliban are unable to take large
towns and have generally mounted fewer suicide bomb attacks in southern
cities than they did last summer.

The Panjwai and Zhare districts, in particular, highlight the changing
nature of the fight in the south. The military operation there in
September 2006 was the largest conventional battle in the country since
2002. But this year, the Taliban are avoiding set battles with NATO and
instead are attacking the police and stepping up their use of roadside
bombs, known as improvised explosive devices or I.E.D.’s.

“It’s very seldom that we have direct engagement with the Taliban,”
said Brig. Gen. Guy Laroche, the commander of Canadian forces leading
the NATO effort in Kandahar. “What they’re going to use is I.E.D.’s.”

The Taliban also wage intimidation campaigns against the population.
Local officials report that one of the things that the insurgents do
when they enter an area is to hang several local farmers, declaring
them spies.

“The first thing they do is show people how brutal they are,” said
Hajji Agha Lalai, the leader of the Panjwai district council. “They
were hanged from the trees. For several days, they hung there.”

NATO and American military officials have declined to release exact
Taliban attack statistics, and collecting accurate information is
difficult, particularly in rural Afghanistan. According to an internal
United Nations tally, insurgents set off 516 improvised explosive
devices in 2007. Another 402 improvised explosive devices were
discovered before detonation.

Reported security incidents, a broad category that includes bombings,
firefights and intimidation, are up from roughly 500 a month last year
to 600 a month this year, a 20 percent increase, according to the
United Nations.

The rising attacks are taking a heavy toll. At least 2,500 to 3,000
people have died in insurgency-related violence so far this year, a
quarter of them civilians, according to the United Nations tally, a 20
percent increase over 2006.

NATO and American fatality rates are up by about 20 percent this year,
to 161, according to Iraq Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks deaths
in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Afghan police continue to be devastated by
Taliban bombings and guerrilla strikes, with 379 killed so far this
year, compared with 257 for all of last year.

Yet the Taliban have been unable to take large towns this year and have
carried out 102 suicide bombings, roughly the same number as last year,
according to the United Nations. A conventional Taliban spring
offensive was predicted by many but never materialized, and Western
officials say that raids by NATO and American Special Operations forces
have killed dozens of senior and midlevel Taliban commanders this year.

Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security for the
NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, said the Taliban’s
leadership was in “disarray” and had not been able to carry out the
attacks it had hoped this year and would be even weaker next year.

“This has been a shaping year,” he said. “I think next year will be a
decisive year.”

Afghan Army units have performed well, according to Western officials.
The trouble has come when the army and foreign troops withdraw, leaving
lightly armed Afghan police forces struggling to hold rural areas.
Corruption is rampant among the police, and some units have exaggerated
casualty rates or abandoned checkpoints.

Recent visits to three southern provinces revealed territorial
divisions that largely resembled those of last year. In Kandahar and
Helmand, the government has a strong presence in about half of each
province, the local police said. And in Oruzgan Province, where Dutch
NATO forces focus more on development programs than on combat, the
government controls the provincial capital, several district centers
and little of the countryside.

The seesaw nature of the conflict is evident here in Kandahar, where
the local governor cites a slight drop in suicide bombings in the
provincial capital as a sign of progress. But police officials and
villagers bitterly complain that Canadian forces abandoned Panjwai and
Zhare.

Syed Aqa Saqib, Kandahar’s provincial police chief, said Canadian and
Afghan Army forces began withdrawing from four checkpoints and two
small bases in Panjwai in early July. The withdrawals coincided with
the rotation of Canadian military units serving in Kandahar in August,
he said.

The pullback left two Afghan police posts in Panjwai largely
unprotected, he said. On Aug. 7, the Taliban attacked the posts
simultaneously. For several hours, the police held them off and called
for help from Canadian forces, he said, but none arrived. Sixteen
policemen were killed.

“The Canadians didn’t support them,” Mr. Saqib said. “Then, we went to
collect our dead.”

General Laroche, the Canadian commander, said an Afghan Army unit was
immediately sent to aid the police but it returned and asked for
Canadian assistance, citing fears of roadside bombs. Canadian troops
then arrived as quickly as they could.

Canadian forces are now establishing joint checkpoints in Panjwai and
Zhare where Canadian troops, Afghan Army soldiers and police officers
will all be present, he said. And Canadian forces recently retook a
checkpoint in Zhare.

General Laroche and General Champoux said it was vital to train Afghan
police forces who could secure areas after NATO and Afghan soldiers
cleared them, and to find strong, honest local leaders to administer
them.

“The most important part is holding it,” General Champoux said. “We’re
most effective when we’re holding it with Afghans.”

The Panjwai police chief, Bismillah Jan, said Taliban attacks on the
local police began intensifying four months ago. Deploying far more
roadside bombs than last year, the Taliban have destroyed 11 police
vehicles and killed several dozen policemen.

Today, Mr. Jan has 64 policemen — each with one month of training — and
five functional vehicles to defend the district from several hundred
Taliban fighters. He said that his men could make forays into Taliban
areas but that they could not hold terrain.

“We can go there, but we cannot control it,” he said.

In separate interviews, half a dozen tribal elders from Panjwai
described the Taliban attacks on police posts and other new tactics.
All spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation
from the insurgents.

After moving though the area in large groups last summer, the Taliban
now operate in bands of no more than 20. Instead of sleeping in freshly
dug bunkers and trenches, they sleep in mosques and houses, apparently
to avoid NATO airstrikes, or, in the event of an attack, to increase
the likelihood of civilian casualties, villagers said.

“Last year, they had their own trenches and their own places,” one
elder said. “Now, they are very close to the houses and families. Their
tactics changed.”

Another elder said: “They are very rude. First, they ask you for food.
Then, they search you 20 times.”

Officials in Helmand and Oruzgan Provinces described dynamics similar
to those in Kandahar. Security improved somewhat in provincial capitals
this summer, they said, but rural areas remain no man’s lands dominated
by criminal gangs and the Taliban.

In Helmand, where 7,000 British troops are based, residents credited
the new police chief, Muhammad Hussain Andiwall, with improving
security somewhat in the provincial capital. But opium cultivation and
lawlessness are flourishing in the countryside.

Last month, the mayor of Gereshk, Helmand’s second-largest town, was
kidnapped as he drove through a stretch of desert separating the town
from the provincial capital. When Mr. Andiwall drove to the scene to
try to find him, a roadside bomb exploded as his vehicle passed,
killing four civilians.

After the mayor’s family paid a ransom to local criminals they freed
him.

In Oruzgan, Dost Muhammad Dostiyar, the counternarcotics chief, said
people were waiting to see if the government and Dutch forces could
reassert themselves.

“One of the big reasons the people have distanced themselves from the
government is that the government only has control of the capital,” he
said. “The rural areas are totally under the control of the militants.”

Afghan officials in all three southern provinces said the Taliban had
evolved as a movement as well. Taking advantage of popular frustration
with government corruption, the Taliban have broadened from a
close-knit, ideologically driven movement to an amalgam of loosely
affiliated groups fighting the government.

Across the south, the term “Taliban” now encompasses a shifting array
of tribes, groups, criminals, opportunists and people discontented with
the government. In private, some Western officials say a political
approach to more moderate insurgents is needed. Elders from Panjwai
blamed the United States and President Hamid Karzai for not including
more southern tribes in the government formed after the fall of the
Taliban.

“When the Americans came, they didn’t contact the right people,” one
elder said. “They empowered two or three tribes and they pushed away
others.”

Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United
Nations in Afghanistan, said there was disorientation among insurgent
groups. The Taliban have lost much of their senior leadership, he said,
and other insurgent groups are not gaining popular support. At the same
time, Pakistan is showing signs of cracking down on Taliban leaders
there. All of these factors, present an opportunity for the Afghan
government and NATO forces, he said.

“The Taliban are vulnerable in many ways,” he said. “Enormous
achievements haven’t yet been made, but there has been progress.”