Afghanistan facing deadly Taleban offensive

Afghanistan is seeing the deadliest insurgency since the ouster of the Taleban in 2001, raising fears that the country could lapse back into anarchy and chaos.

More than 200 people are reported killed over the past week in a spate of clashes between insurgents and coalition troops in the south. Around 60 Taleban fighters and dozens of civilians have died in a US air strike in southern Kandahar province over the past 24 hours.

The upsurge in violence comes as NATO is preparing to take over control from the US-led coalition by the end of July.

The string of assaults started last Wednesday in southern Helmand Province, where 3,300 additional British troops are being deployed. The British troops were reported not to have been involved in the fighting.

The Taleban appear to be more powerful than at any time since their downfall in 2001. The ferocity and sophistication of their spring offensive has taken the Afghan government and its international allies by surprise.

Much of the unrest is blamed on Pakistan. “Pakistani intelligence gives military training to people and then sends them to Afghanistan with logistics," Afghan President Hamed Karzai told a crowd in eastern Konar Province last week.

Colonel Chris Vernon, chief of staff for southern Afghanistan, endorsed Karzai’s remarks, describing the Pakistani city of Quetta as the “major headquarters” for the resurgent Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters.

Earlier Henry Crumpton, coordinator for counterterrorism at the US Department of State, had also expressed concern that Taleban and al-Qaeda leaders were using parts of Pakistan as a haven for their terrorist activities. "Has Pakistan done enough? I think the answer is no," Crumpton said at the US Embassy in Kabul. Pakistani officials, however, have repeatedly denied all the accusations.

Recent reports indicate that insurgents in Afghanistan import tactics from Iraq, what is termed by some western analysts as “Iraqisation” of Afghanistan. Suicide attacks, once unknown to Afghans, have reached epic proportions, as three happened just over the past week. One occurred last week in the generally peaceful province of Herat in the west, alarming that violence, once restricted to the south, is spiralling all over the country.

In addition to hundreds of Afghan troops, 31 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, most of them Americans. The rise in foreign casualties raises the concern that certain NATO member countries would refuse to extend their mission in Afghanistan. The killing of the first Canadian servicewoman last week occurred right after the country’s parliament narrowly voted for extension of their military mission in Afghanistan until 2009.

The deteriorating security also hampers reconstruction efforts as the Taleban have repeatedly targeted aid workers. They beheaded an Indian engineer last month.

Analysts predict a shortage of foreign aid in the near future. This is at a time when Afghanistan, according to UN estimates, produces only eight per cent of its annual expenditure through domestic revenues and illicit drugs trade constitutes 54 per cent of its GDP.

Last Saturday, NATO’s top military commander warned that Afghanistan was on the brink of becoming a narco-state. “It is not the resurgence of the Taliban but the linkage of the economy to drug production, crime, corruption and black market activities which poses the greatest danger for Afghanistan,” General James Jones pointed out.

Forced eradication of opium poppy crops without providing the farming communities with alternative livelihood assistance is thought to have fuelled insurgency. According to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), more than two million Afghan rural population feed on the illicit drugs cultivation. The Taliban recently offered protection for their opium fields provided that they cooperated with them. The incentives are feared to drive the farmers closer to the insurgents.

The rise in the number of civilian casualties in the coalition operations is allegedly another factor setting the local communities against the government and foreign troops. A US air strike yesterday killed at least 16 non-combatants in the district of Azizi in southern Kandahar.

Analysts have repeatedly warned that the Taleban could use civilian deaths as a recruiting tool. The insurgents have already launched a propaganda campaign to amass local support. A Taleban commander last month warned the local people of British occupation and described Britons as “an old enemy of Afghanistan”.

Increasing local support with the Taleban and al-Qaeda terrorists is extremely worrying. Leader of Hezb-e Eslami Golbuddin Hekmatyar, the most influential leader of Jihad era in the 1980s, recently declared support with the Taleban and al-Qaeda. “We hope to participate with them [Taleban and al-Qaeda] in a battle that they lead. They hold the banner and we stand alongside them as supporters," Hekmatyar said in a tape shown on Al-Jazeera.

The insurgents have stepped up attacks amid intense public dissatisfaction with current reconstruction efforts. Much of the 12bn foreign aid over the past four years have been wasted on short-term, ineffective projects, or squandered by government and nongovernmental organisations. More than seven million people, according to UN estimates, suffer grinding poverty and 53 per cent live on almost half a dollar a day. The growing public anger at the slow pace of reconstruction and acute poverty are described as the winning card for the Taleban.

The United States toppled the Taleban in 2001, after the regime refused to hand over al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, blamed by Washington for having masterminded the 9/11 attacks. It has however failed to bring peace and stability in the country shattered by three decades perpetual wars and anarchy.