Are the Talibans making a comeback?
A well-planned jailbreak and quick takeover of dozens of villages show Taliban fighters are again gaining strength. Nearly three weeks from now on June 17, Taliban insurgents streamed through Arangdab district just 10 miles south-east of Kandahar City of Afghanistan. The residents started fleeing fearing retaliation by NATO troops. Arangbad shady groves, raisin-drying barns and deep irrigation canals provide ideal cover for fighters. This latest Taliban storming in the Argandab district is the result of several weeks of increased fighting in the country's southern districts bordering Pakistan, followed by a daring raid on a Kandahar prison, in which some 400 Taliban fighters were freed, according to officials. District Chief Ghulam Farouq, said,"My men have seen a few of the escaped Taliban prisoners among the fighters in Argandab," says district chief Ghulam Farouq. The militant raids raised worries among the residents of Kandahar, as they could use the city as base for an attack in a take-on to regain their former power base. The former police chief Khan Mohammad says, Argandab is a strategic district, which the Taliban can use to threaten Kandahar," The Taliban had taken every village in the area except for the main town of Argandab, Mohammad says, and there are 40 to 50 Taliban fighters in each village. He worries the prison raid was a forerunner to an attack on Argandab itself. "The Taliban have gained a lot of power with those who have been freed from the prison," he says. Officials of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO's military arm in Afghanistan, are sceptical about reports of such high numbers of Taliban forces fighting together, but they say they are ready to respond to any threat. "In the wake of the jailbreak, we obviously have a different and more difficult security situation in Kandahar," says ISAF spokesman Mark Laity. "We are aware of the potential threat, and to that end we have already moved several hundred Afghan national army forces to Kandahar. We have also repositioned our international forces in the area." A massing of Taliban fighters in Argandab is a departure from the militant tactics that have evolved over the past two years. In 2006 NATO forces defeated a Taliban force in nearby Panjwai and declared the movement dead. Suicide bombings and using improvised explosives to attack coalition forces since then has been interpreted as nothing but signs of weakness and desperation. Now it looks like a bounce back strategy. Arangdab raid and the well-planned jail break on 16 June is evidence of the growing strength of the Taliban, whose fundamentalist Islamic regime was pushed from power when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001. The operation lasted just under 30 minutes and involved two suicide bombers, plus militants mounted on motorcycles that systematically broke down every cell door in the jail. To counter the mounting threat of the Afghan insurgency, both U.S. and NATO leaders have asked for more troops. The war in Iraq has taken heavy toll of American resources, as well as other Western nations, who are reluctant to invest more troops. "Afghanistan is half again bigger than Iraq, and it has a population estimated to be 3 to 5 million more than Iraq," says General Dan McNeil, the former commander of ISAF. General McNeil points out there are only 65,000 international forces in Afghanistan, compared to nearly double that in Iraq. The effort "needs more flying machines, more maneuver units and more intelligence," he says. But more troops will be of little use if Afghan insurgents use the porous border which is an ideal sanctuary for hit-and-run. General McNeil, who spent 16 months in Afghanistan and left on June 3, blamed April's 50% increase in attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan's east and south on insurgents crossing the border from Pakistan. Despite "tactical success on the battlefield last year, we still have a lot of work to do," he told journalists just before departing the country. "As long as there are these sanctuaries that remain out of the reach of security forces here, long-term security and stability will be difficult to fully achieve." Pakistan, which once supported the Taliban government in Afghanistan, is now suffering an insurgency of its own. Militants aligned with al-Qaeda have attacked security forces in the ungoverned tribal areas and have sent suicide bombers to major urban areas such as Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. The Pakistani army has been unable to contain the militants. It has already lost around 1,000 soldiers trying. To end attacks by Militants aligned with al-Qaeda, the military engaged on peace negotiations with militant groups last December, which the newly elected government in Islamabad is backing. Militants have agreed to stop attacking government institutions in exchange of military pull back from the tribal areas. But just a few weeks after news of the negotiations broke, Baitullah Mehsud, head of an umbrella group of insurgents called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, declared at a press conference that he would continue his jihad against foreign forces fighting in Afghanistan. Baitullah Mehsud's statement in the press conference signals the Talibans are in a mood to come back and come back strongly. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan, instead of falling in the traps of US and other western alliance, should find out an amicable solution to avoid abrasive relation and find mutual strategy to tackle militant attacks.
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