TIRIN KOT: Building on a winter campaign of suicide bombings and assassinations as well as the knowledge that U.S. troops will be leaving, the Taliban appear to be moving their insurgency into a new phase, flooding the rural areas of southern Afghanistan with men and weapons.
Each spring with the arrival of warmer weather, the fighting season starts up in Afghanistan, but the scale of the militants’ presence and their sheer brazenness have alarmed Afghans and foreign officials far more than in previous years.
"The Taliban and Al-Qaida are everywhere," a shopkeeper, Haji Saifullah, told the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, as he strolled through Tirin Kot’s bazaar to talk to people. "It is all right in the city, but if you go outside the city, they are everywhere and the people have to support them. They have no choice."
The fact that U.S. troops are pulling out of southern Afghanistan in the coming months and handing matters over to NATO peacekeepers -- who have repeatedly said that they are not going to fight terrorists -- has given a boost to the insurgents and increased the fears of Afghans.
Eikenberry appealed for patience and support. "There has not been enough attention paid to Uruzgan," he said in a speech to the elders of Uruzgan Province gathered at the governor’s house in Tirin Kot, the provincial capital. "I think the leaders, the Afghan government and the international community recognize this. There is reform coming, and this year you will see it."
The arrival of large numbers of Taliban in the villages, flush with money and weapons, has dealt a blow to the public’s confidence in the Afghan government, already undermined by the lack of tangible progress and frustration with corrupt and ineffective leaders.
Insurgents resume command.
Tirin Kot is a one-street town in the Taliban heartland, and the message from the townspeople was bleak.
Uruzgan, the province where President Hamid Karzai first rallied support against the Taliban in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is now in the thrall of the Islamic militants once more, and the provincial capital is close to falling, local and U.S. officials acknowledge.
The new governor, Maulavi Abdul Hakim Munib, 35, who took up his position about a month ago, controls only a "bubble" around Tirin Kot, a U.S. military officer said. The rest of the province is thick with insurgents. Their presence in all of the districts is marked in amber or red on maps at the nearby U.S. military base.
Uruzgan has always been troublesome, yet the map marks a deterioration since last year, when at least one central district had been colored green, the officer said.
"The security situation is not good," Munib told Eikenberry and a group of Cabinet ministers at a meeting with tribal elders. "The number of Taliban and enemy is several times more than that of the police and Afghan National Army in this province," he said.
Spoiling for a fight.
Uruzgan is not the only province teetering out of control. Helmand and Kandahar to the south have been increasingly overrun by militants this year, with large groups of Taliban reportedly moving through the countryside, intimidating villagers, ambushing vehicles and spoiling for a fight with coalition or Afghan forces. Insurgents also have the run of parts of Zabul, Ghazni and Paktika provinces to the southeast and have increased ambushes on the main Kabul-Kandahar highway.
The Bush administration is alarmed, according to a Western intelligence official close to the administration. He said that while senior members of the administration consider the situation in Iraq to be not as bad as portrayed in the news media, the situation in Afghanistan is worse than generally portrayed.
Asked about the surge in Taliban activity in southern Afghanistan, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said: "We have seen Taliban activity fluctuate from time to time."
The British-led NATO force taking over from the U.S. troops in the south "has well-equipped, well-led and fully prepared forces to operate in this challenging environment and deal with any threats," he added.
He noted that the United States would continue to be the largest troop contributor in Afghanistan and will continue to have primary responsibility for counterterrorism operations and for training Afghan Army units, even with NATO taking over in the south.
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