23/08/08 "The
Times" -- - The lorry drivers who bring the Pepsi and petrol for Nato
troops in Kabul have their own way of calculating the
Taleban's progress towards the Afghan capital: they simply
count the lorries destroyed on the main roads.
By that measure, and many others, this looks increasingly
like a city under siege as the Taleban start to disrupt
supply routes, mimicking tactics used against the British in
1841 and the Soviets two decades ago.
Abdul Hamid, 35, was ferrying Nato supplies from the
Pakistani border last month when Taleban fighters appeared
on the rocks above and aimed their rocket-launchers at him,
40miles (65km) east of Kabul. “They just missed me but hit
the two trucks behind,” he said. “This road used to be safe,
but in the last month they've been attacking more and more.”
The road from Kabul to Kandahar is even more treacherous,
according to other drivers. “If the Afghan Army isn't there,
a fly cannot pass,” said Bashir, a lorry owner, pointing to
the scorched shells of three vehicles he retrieved from a
Taleban raid on the Kandahar road last week. Of 60 lorries,
13 were destroyed, he said. “Why can't the Americans stop
this?”
Seven years after a US-led invasion toppled the Taleban,
that is the question now troubling President Karzai and Nato
forces in Afghanistan.
Despite the presence of 70,000 foreign troops, the
Taleban have advanced on Kabul this year and hold territory
just outside Maydan Shar, the capital of Wardak province, 20
miles southwest of the capital.
Militants in Wardak mount almost daily raids on the
Kandahar road, which also links the main US bases in
Afghanistan. In the past month, they have stepped up attacks
on the road from Kabul to Pakistan via Jalalabad - the main
supply route for food, fuel and water.
This week they killed ten French soldiers in Sarobi, 30
miles along the Jalalabad road from Kabul. Simultaneously,
they attacked the biggest US base in eastern Afghanistan.
Such is the fear of a Taleban “spectacular” in Kabul, that
when Gordon Brown visited on Thursday he was taken around by
helicopter rather than being driven through the streets.
“We're seeing history repeat itself,” said Haroun Mir,
co-founder of the Afghanistan Centre for Research and Policy
Studies and a former aide to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the
assassinated Mujahidin commander. “The Taleban's trying to
cut the main roads to Kabul to target supplies for foreign
forces, just like the Mujahidin did with the Soviets. If the
highways are cut even for two days, it could also create
riots in the city.”
Kabul is vulnerable to blockades because it is surrounded
by mountains and has to ship in supplies on three roads
leading north, east and southwest. The British learnt this
the hard way during the siege of Kabul in 1841, documented
by Lady Florentia Sale in A Journal of the Disasters in
Afghanistan. “Khojeh Meer says that he has no more grain,”
she wrote on December 3, 1841. “He also says that the
moolahs have been to all the villages and laid the people
under ban not to assist the English and that consequently
the Mussulman population are as one man against us.” A month
later, the British began their retreat from Kabul.
In the 1980s it was Soviet forces encircled in Kabul by
the Mujahidin. They withrew in 1989. In 1996 the Taleban
took Kabul after capturing Wardak and Jalalabad and
blockading the capital. Isaf, the International Security
Assistance Force, says that circumstances are different
today: it has superior air support and logistics to the
Soviets and the Taleban. The militants, though, have
experience on their side, thanks to former Mujahidin
commanders who have blockaded Kabul before.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taleban spokesman, said that their
new strategy was announced by the brother and deputy of
Mullah Omar, the Taleban leader, in late 2007. “The Taleban
will surround Kabul politically and militarily to make it
hard for Nato forces to receive logistic convoys,” he told
The Times. “That will mean less Nato movement and
will show we can make trouble in the capital.”
Local officials say that the Taleban, which derive most
of their support from ethnic Pashtuns, are enlisting
villages around Kabul and feeding off frustration with the
lack of development since 2001. They fear that the next
target will be the northern routes to the borders of
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
The Afghan Government insists that it controls the
country's main roads and Des Browne, the British Defence
Secretary, this week dismissed recent Taleban raids near
Kabul as
indiscriminate. “In no sense have they created, or can
they make, a strategic threat to the Government of
Afghanistan,” he said. Brigadier-General Richard Blanchette,
an Isaf spokesman, said: “We're fine for fuel and food. With
the air power we have, and the quality of troops on the
ground, there is no way they can win.”
But monthly foreign troop casualties are on the rise,
surpassing those in Iraq, and set to make this year
Afghanistan's bloodiest since 2001.
The Taleban's strategy is also impeding aid agencies,
especially since militants shot dead three women aid workers
last week. Ebadullah Ebadi, of the World Food Programme,
said that 20 of its convoys had been attacked so far this
year, compared with 30 in all of 2007, many in parts of
southeastern Afghanistan previously considered safe.
The lorry drivers know the risks, but say there is no
other work. “They used to warn us not to supply the
infidel,” said Mr Hamid. “If they catch me now, they'll
throw me in my own container, cover me in petrol and burn me
alive.”
The Afghan Interior Ministry said that 76 civilians,
including 50 children and 19 women, were killed yesterday by
US-led coalition forces in the western province of Herat.
Western forces confirmed the operation, but said only 30
Taleban had been killed.
History of war in Afghanistan
1839 British invade Afghanistan to install compliant king
1842 British retreat from Kabul; 16,500 troops and civilians
killed; one survivor
1878-80 Second Anglo-Afghan War
1979 Soviet forces invade to prop up Communist Government
1988-89 Soviets retreat
1989-92 Civil war among warlords
1996 Taleban take over
2001 US-led invasion topples Taleban Government
