Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Afghan troops fight to retake southern towns

Meanwhile, ongoing drought may drive Afghans to join the Taliban.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
posted July 18, 2006 at 12:00 p.m.

Afghan troops were preparing Tuesday to retake a town in the country's dangerous Helmand province that one official said had been "technically and temporarily" left to Taliban insurgents and Pakistani militants.

The Associated Press reports that between 300 and 400 Afghan soldiers [ http://www.forbes.com/business/energy/feeds/ap/2006/07/18/ap2885610.html ] were heading to the southern town of Garmser. "Our soldiers are going to Garmser with the support of the coalition to take it back from the Taliban," said Amir Mohammed Akhunzada, the deputy governor of Helmand province.

In Kabul, AP reports that government officials accused the outlawed Pakistan-based militant Islamic group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and the pro-Taliban political party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam of taking over Garmser. Afghan police battled with the insurgents for 16 days before the police were forced to withdraw.

[Deputy Interior Minister Abdul Malik Sidiqi] said a second Helmand town that had been overrun by militants - Naway-i-Barakzayi - was reclaimed by government forces late Monday. "They burned the Afghan flag and raised the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam flag in the district."

While Taliban militants have long operated freely in former southern stronghold provinces, their capture of a town highlights the weakness of Afghanistan's police forces in remote areas and the challenge ahead of US-coalition troops to restore order in the country.

Across the border in Pakistan, police arrested former Taliban commander Mullah Hamdullah and 140 illegal Afghan migrants over the past 48 hours. The Press Trust of India reports that the migrants will be sent back to Afghanistan [ http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7598_1746833,000500020000.htm ].

"We will arrest Afghans entering illegally into Pakistan and the Afghan refugees would be confined to their camps, as investigators have found involvement of Afghans in three bomb blasts in the city," he said.

He did not say whether the detained Afghans were directly suspected of militant activity.

Reuters reports that 40 other people, including men who held official positions [ http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP230692.htm ] when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, were also arrested in Pakistan Monday.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that the country is now facing another problem [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5189052.stm ] - massive drought. And the drought is worse in the areas where the Taliban have the most "influence," reports show.

Much of the country's wheat crop has failed this year because of lower than expected snowfall during the winter and poor spring rains. Families are already reported to be going hungry in provinces as far Badakshan in the north-east and Josjan in the west.

Thousands of people in Zabul province have left their villages to search for food, but the World Food Programme says it does not have the resources to help them.

Reuters reports that poverty has been one of the main reasons for the resurgence of the Taliban in the south [ http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL213826.htm ].

"There are many villages where, because development agencies can't operate normally in conditions of insurgency, people don't have enough to eat," a diplomat said.

"If the Taliban arrive with a little cash, that can be enough to induce people to join."

Bloomberg reports that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in a letter addressed to the Afghan people that the country has made substantial progress [ http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=atzzkkkT__8o&refer=us ] since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001.

"It is sometimes easier to see the progress made from a distance," Rumsfeld said in the letter posted today on the Web site of the Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan. "It is clear to most outside observers that Afghanistan has come far since its liberation in 2001."

Rumsfeld, who visited Afghanistan last week, said the US remains committed to the country's success. His letter was sent to Afghan newspaper editors, the military command said.

But syndicated columnist Bonnie Erbe, writing in US News & World Report said there are two groups that have seen their situations grow worse, not better, since the resurgence of the Taliban - women and girls [ http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/erbeblog/archive/060717/taliban_resurging_in_afghanist.htm ].

Experts can quibble over how much of a stronghold Taliban fighters have established in the main city, Kabul. But there's little disagreement about the amount of damage the Taliban has done to Afghan girls since trying to regain power. The Taliban banned girls' education when it controlled the country. Girls poured back into Afghanistan's single-sex schools after the successful US invasion. But now, IRIN, a United Nations news agency, confirms, "Over the past months, girls' schools in Kandahar, Sar-e Pol, Zabol, Lowgar, and Vardak provinces have been attacked. Most followed written threats posted overnight in towns and villages in these regions, ordering residents not to send their girls to school."

Ms. Erbe adds that a Human Rights Watch report on education in Afghanistan [ http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/afghanistan0706/index.htm ] found "some areas where the majority of primary-school-age girls do not attend school at all and only 5 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys attend secondary schools."

Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. (emphasis added)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0718/dailyUpdate.html