Escalating violence has roots beyond Taliban ( Hamida Gafour )
Globe and Mail January 17, 2006
Almost immediately after Sunday’s suicide attack, a man identifying himself as a Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the carnage that killed a Canadian diplomat and wounded three soldiers.
But the explanation of who is fuelling the troubling escalation of violence in the southern region extends far beyond just the Taliban.
The Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team that was the target of the lethal attack is operating in a region where a combination of Islamist terrorists, organized criminals and drug traffickers have created an environment which makes it increasingly difficult to carry out combat operations or humanitarian work.
The extent to which these groups work together is not clear, but it is in their collective interest to keep Kandahar, and the entire southern Pashtun belt, unstable. A security vacuum allows them to shift around money for al-Qaeda as well as arms, drugs and insurgents without fear.
There are strong indications the insurgency, which has operated at a low-level intensity, is growing bolder.
Last year, 30 aid workers were killed and in the four years since the American coalition toppled the Taliban, more than 3,000 civilians have been killed.
But in the past four months alone, there have been 20 suicide attacks. Last Saturday, an ex-member of the Taliban, Mullah Khaskar, was shot dead in Kandahar for renouncing the former regime. Last summer, a suicide bomb during the funeral of another moderate mullah who spoke out against the Taliban in Kandahar was little noticed outside the country, but noted by the international community in Kabul as a worrying new development.
If high-ranking former members of the Taliban are not immune to paying the price for defecting, ordinary Afghans may be hesitant to show their support for the international community’s nation-building efforts. That support from a local population — which can provide intelligence about the activities of terrorists — is critical in Kandahar if the Canadian PRT and soldiers are to successfully bring stability and build infrastructure.
The drug trade is contributing to Hizb-e-Islami and al-Qaeda’s coffers, American diplomats and counternarcotics experts in Kabul agree. The drug industry makes up 40 to 50 per cent of the national GDP and there are few signs that poor farmers are willing to stop growing opium poppies, which produce the main ingredient in heroin, despite a government eradication program. Neighbouring Helmand province is the centre of the drug trade.
The Afghan police are supposed to patrol the highways and local roads to provide a reassuring presence to Afghans. But corruption is widespread. Poor pay and lack of equipment often mean officers easily fall prey to lucrative offers from drug traffickers to turn a blind eye.
NATO will take over from the American coalition forces over the course of the next year. The Canadian mission, which will grow to 2,000 soldiers next month, will not be able to bring the drug trade to heel, eradicate the Taliban and build roads and schools alone. And other members of the NATO mission may be of limited help.
The American military will not allow its soldiers to become involved in battling in the drug trade. The British, who will join the Canadian soldiers in the south later this summer, are also reluctant. The French, Spanish and Germans have refused to even take part in combat operations against the Taliban.
“We have turned a failed state into a fragile state,” one Canadian diplomat said. “But there is still no shared road map.”
Hamida Ghafour is a London-based correspondent for The Globe and Mail. She previously reported from Afghanistan and is currently writing a book, The Sleeping Buddha: In Search of Afghanistan.