THE US military build-up in Kandahar is likely to further strengthen the hold of the Taliban over the vital southern Afghanistan city, a highly respected security organisation said yesterday in a bleak report warning of record Taliban violence and rising civilian deaths across the country.
The report by the Afghanistan NGO security office, which monitors trends in violence on behalf of aid organisations, said Nato’s counter-insurgency strategy was not showing any signs of succeeding amid rising violence, the unchecked establishment of local militias and a huge increase in attacks on private development workers across the country.
It revealed that June marked a record for Taliban attacks – up 51 per cent on the previous year to 1,319 operations.
At the same time the number of civilians killed by both sides of the conflict rose by 23 per cent, despite the efforts of Nato forces to avoid killing innocent bystanders. The organisation also said attacks on private development organisations working on projects designed to win the support of ordinary Afghans had shot up, with more than 30 workers killed in the first three months of the year.
“We do not support the [counter-insurgency] perspective that this constitutes ‘things getting worse before they get better’, but rather see it as being consistent with the five-year trend of things just getting worse,” the report said.
The report was published days before the world’s foreign ministers gather in Kabul to discuss the international community’s future role in Afghanistan.
Yesterday, a suicide bomber managed to evade Kabul’s new “ring of steel” – a series of police checkpoints designed to protect the city – and killed three civilians in a busy market. Local police said he was on foot and it was not clear what his intended target was.
Nato said it had intercepted a letter from Taliban leader Mullah Omar which ordered fighters to kill any Afghans working for foreign forces.
A huge number of local nationals are employed as interpreters and logistics workers.
In southern Afghanistan, insurgents staged a jailbreak by smuggling a bomb inside a prison, allowing 11 inmates to escape in the province of Farah.
In Kandahar a roadside bomb exploded near the city’s hospital, killing two police officers and a civilian. Nato also said that one of its soldiers was killed by a roadside bomb.
With such bombings a near-daily occurrence in the south, the Anso report also reflected the grave doubts held by most Afghan experts that Nato’s concentration of force in southern Afghanistan can possibly work.
It said the effort to dislodge the Taliban from Marjah, a former Taliban stronghold in Helmand, had failed to deliver security to local people, allow refugees to return to their homes or given credibility to the local government. – ( Guardianservice)