MARJAH, Helmand Province, Afghanistan – People displaced from the Taliban-controlled town of Marjah, Nad Ali in Helmand province, welcomed a massive military operation launched February 13 aimed at flushing out the insurgents to pave the way for reconstruction and restoration of government authority.

The operation was launched early February 13 after weeks of extensive publicity that included press conferences and dropping leaflets in the area to avoid civilian casualties and give insurgents a chance to lay down their arms.

Around 6,000 troops — a majority of them Afghan soldiers — attacked the town of Marjah, which had been under control of extremists for nearly three years.

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The Taliban insurgents have claimed that the attack which killed 8 CIA agents on Wednesday in the eastern Afghan province Khost was carried out by an Afghan army officer they have identified as Samiullah.

According to a news claim posted by the movement’s purported spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, on their website’s Pashto page, www.alemarah.info, the CIA officers were present in a fitness center in civilian clothes when the army officer, wearing a suicide vest, entered the club and blew himself up.

Mujahid in his claim put the number of the killed CIA agents as 20 and added that 25 more were injured. However, the international media, quoting reliable sources, has confirmed the killing of at least 8 CIA agents. Initially the reports said that 8 civilian Americans were killed in the attack.

The fatal attack, described as the single deadliest attack on the American intelligence, took place in Forward Operating Base Champan in Khost, near Pak-Afghan border, where the CIA officers mostly plan attacks on the Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants across the border where they have safe havens and allegedly receive support from Pakistani intelligence.

The officials in the US did not release further information about the attack and how the bomber entered the heavily fortified base. And the claim made by the Taliban is confirmed by neither the Afghan and American officials nor the independent sources, which of course is impossible because the independent sources often don’t have access to these areas. However, if there is ample evidence that the attack was carried out by an Afghan army officer, then this is a signal of an increasingly dangerous situation for the international forces working with the Afghan officials as this is not the first time that an attack of this kind takes place. Just two days ago, an Afghan soldier killed one American soldier and wounded two Italians in the western Afghan province, Badghis. Similarly, an Afghan soldier, named Gulbuddin, killed 5 British soldiers in southern Helmand province on November 4, 2009. Before that, similar attacks have been occurred in many other provinces.

Elsewhere, in the southern Kandahar province, a bomb explosion on Wednesday killed 5 Canadian soldiers and one journalist accompanying them. The year 2009 is going to end with horrible stories of attacks on the forces in Afghanistan.

The Taliban militants, leading the world’s bloodiest insurgency in recent history, have vowed to oust the international forces from Afghanistan in 2010, claiming that the year 2009 was very successful for them in terms of political and military achievements ‘against an arrogant western and American power.’

This was stated in a fresh statement posted on the movement’s website, www.alemarah.info (Pashto page). The statement, written in Pashto, and titled as ‘The year 2009: the Mujahedeen’s success and the invaders’ confusion,’ further says that everyone now is talking about reconciliation and peace talks with the Taliban which means a defeat to the Afghan government and its international supporters.

The statement refers to the heavy casualties inflicted on the international forces in 2009 and the low turnout in the August 2009 Afghan presidential and parliamentarian elections and hails them as their military and political successes. ‘This has put our enemy in a confusing and troubling situation and is now confronting internal conflicts and public opposition; has no solid and firm policy; on one side they talk about sending additional troops, but on the other side expresses the unreasonable opinion of their hurried withdrawal and on the same time demand for a political solution to the issue,’ the statement adds.

The statement also mentions the new Obama strategy, announced on Dec. 1, 2009, in which the US President promised to send additional 30,000 troops to change the momentum. ‘In response to this, the Leadership Council of the Islamic Emirate, in a letter, ordered the Mujahedeen across Afghanistan to launch new operations called ‘Nusrat’ (victory) from Saur (April),’ the statement continued.

The statement also gives figures of the casualties of 2009 which greatly differ from the figures given by the Afghan government and the NATO-led ISAF forces and independent sources. The Taliban statement puts the total number of the international forces’ deaths as 5587, but www.icasualties.org, a website that tracks military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, reported the total number of international forces’ deaths in 2009 as 506, of them 310 deaths were Americans, double than the deaths occurred in 2008. The Taliban statement says that 7254 Afghan soldiers were killed in 2009 and puts the Taliban fighters’ casualties only as 540. There is no independent source that could give the accurate numbers of the casualties of the Afghan soldiers and police, as well as the Taliban fighters. However, these figures greatly differ than those given by the Afghan officials in press releases.

At the end of the statement, the Taliban have repeated their determination to step up the attacks further in 2010, which, according to their claim, will eventually force the international troops out of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan in 2010: challenges and expectations.

Saifullah Ahmadzai, Senior Research Analyst, Abdul Halim Achakzai, Senior Research Analyst, Shoaib Harris, Research Fellow and Abdulhadi Hairan, Research Analyst at the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies (CAPS) participated in the Regional Network of Strategic Studies Center (RNSSC) conference from 18^th to 22^nd November, 2009. The conference was hosted by the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis (IDSA) in New Delhi, India.

The conference had been planned to provide a platform for Network participants in order to discuss ongoing research, plan future collaborations, draft publications, and welcome new centers into the network.  To this end, four working groups had gathered to discuss counter terrorism, non-traditional security, democracy & governance, border security and weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, relatively smaller and focused plenary sessions followed to discuss issues concerning water Security in the Near East and South Asia Region, New Challenges and Opportunities in Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, Exploring the Region’s Stake in Afghanistan.

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The suicide car bomb on Tuesday that killed at least 8 and wounded another 40 people in Kabul’s heavily fortified area of Wazir Akbar Khan district took place after a series of important events that affected or likely to affect Afghan politics. This was the first major attack in Kabul after President Obama announced his widely debated new Afghan strategy on Dec. 1, 2009. This coincided with the formation of a new cabinet that is internationally expected to curb corruption in the Afghan government. President Karzai has been under heavy pressure in picking up his new ministers. To work out both these crucial issues, the United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently visited Kabul followed by an unannounced visit by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

The main focus of the new Obama strategy was on sending the additional 30,000 troops to be arrived soon and deployed in different parts of Afghanistan. The Taliban had vowed to step up attacks and turn the new policy into a failure. The new wave of attacks – the killing of 16 policemen in Baghlan and Helmand in two separate attacks and the killing of 5 government officials in Paktia province – along with today’s deadly Kabul attack could be quoted as an example.

As usual, the Taliban spokesman, calling from an undisclosed place, took the responsibility of the attack and claimed that the target was a guest house, favorite of the European visitors and international workers, owned by the son of a former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani. There are rumors that the owner of the guest house is going to be included in the new Afghan government formation. But nearby to the place where the attack took place is the house of the former first vice president, Ahmad Zia Massoud, brother of the legendary Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. The Massouds were reported to have claimed that the former first vice president was the target but he survived.

In any case, the attack was a ‘new message’ for the new Afghan government as well as the new international commitment with Afghanistan as how the Taliban have still the capability to responding to the new strategies. This emphasizes on the need of multi-faceted mechanisms on the part of the international community to combat terrorism. For the Afghan government, President Karzai has to realize the enormity of the challenges his next government will have to face.

Karzai

For the last three or four days, I have been asked a question nearly a hundred times: ‘what are the election results?’ From my neighbors next door to the taxi drivers, colleagues and local and foreign journalists, everyone is impatient to know the outcome of the much-discussed, controversial Afghan elections that were held on August 20, but two months passed and no one has a clue about the real situation. One day it seems that a runoff will be the result but the next day there is a strong possibility that President Hamid Karzai is going to be declared as the winner. On the third day it appears there is a possibility for ‘negotiations’ and a ‘coalition government.’

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The two-day World Pashto Conference (Oct. 08-09, 2009) in Kabul concluded on Friday with a special focus on education for the Pashtun people in Afghanistan and Pakistan and appealed the militants active in both countries to stop torching schools and other educational institutions.

The conference was arranged by two cultural and literary groups working for the promotion of the Pashto language in Kabul; it was the first World Pashto Conference in Afghanistan and the eighth of overall World Pashto Conferences; all of the previous World Pashto Conferences were held in Pakistan. The first World Pashto Conference was held in Peshawar in 1988.

Delegations and representatives of Pashto literary organizations from India, Pakistan, European countries, Gulf countries, Canada and the United States participated in the Conference. Several government officials, governors, members of Parliament, and tribal elders were also present.

There were four workshops in the Conference to discuss the problems the Pashtuns and their language – Pashto – has been facing in the world today. They discussed the overall situation of the Pashtuns, the lack of educational institutions for Pashtun children, the faults in the jirga system, and the apathy the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan have towards the Pashto language.

There was a poetry reciting gathering on the first day and a music and dance session on the second day. Nearly all of the poems were about the current war-like situation in the tribal areas and Afghanistan and Pakistan. They said the war had destroyed not only their land and people, but also the history, culture, and the future.

At the concluding session, the participants unanimously passed a resolution which:

• appealed the anti-government elements on both sides of the border to stop torching schools;

• asked the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan to support the Pashto language and work for its promotion;

• asked the relevant government institutions, literary and cultural organizations, and the civil society to cooperate with each other and find implementable mechanisms for the solutions of the problems the Pashtuns have been facing and for the promotion of the Pashto language; and

• asked the international community and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan to provide more and modern educational opportunities to the Pashtuns for their progress and prosperity.

Interesting notes:

• The Chairman of the first World Pashto Conference – a well-known progressive Pashtun writer, Salim Raaz – was not invited to the Conference. He told a news conference in Peshawar that the Kabul Conference was not part of the World Pashto Conferences and he didn’t know who had arranged it.

• All of the participants from Pakistan said they felt at home in Afghanistan because the country was their mother land.

• A speaker from Pakistan continuously used the term ‘Occupied Afghanistan’ for the tribal areas and the settled Pashtun-dominated districts of Pakistan (reminding the people that these areas are a part of Afghanistan but occupied by Pakistan).

• Most of the speeches and the poems focused on the current situation in the tribal areas and the worst conditions the Pashtuns live in.

• A Working Committee established the World Pashto Network and there was a demand for a World Pashto Conference every year.

• Several of the participants complained about bad arrangements of the conference.

The Taliban militants in Afghanistan questioned the Media Club of Afghanistan’s (MCA) decision for asking the national and international media to boycott all news reports and claims provided by the insurgents for three days over the death of an Afghan journalist, Sultan Munadi, who was killed in a rescue operation on September 09. The MCA had also asked the Taliban to apologize for the abduction.

Sultan Munadi, a 34 year-old Afghan journalist working with the New York Times, along with the NY Times’ reporter, Stephen Farrell, was abducted by the militants in the Chahar Dara district of northern Kanduz province four days prior to his death. They were visiting the site of a NATO airstrike on two captured oil tankers which had left nearly 100 people dead, several among whom were reported as civilians.

The official spokesman of the Taliban insurgents, Zabiullah Mujahdi, denied the abduction immediately after the news was out. However, a Taliban commander in the area called local journalists and took responsibility of the abduction. Mr. Farrell’s account of the four days’ abduction also clearly indicates that they were taken as hostages by the Taliban who have a strong presence in many districts of the province. On September 09, the British commandos conducted a rescue operation which saved Mr. Farrell’s life but left a British soldier, Mr. Munadi, and two Afghans dead. The rescue operation was widely criticized locally and internationally.

Though it is hard to confirm who killed Munadi, several groups of the journalists working in Afghanistan condemned his death as ‘brutal and inhumane.’ They condemned the attitude of both the Taliban militants and the international forces towards the kidnapped Afghan journalists who often get killed while their foreigner colleagues get freed, exchanged or rescued. According to Mr. Farrell’s account, Mr. Munadi had told him that their kidnappers had warned Munadi that he would be killed and the British reporter would be exchanged for prisoners.

On September 10, a newly constituted body of newsmen, the Media Club of Afghanistan (MCA) condemned the death and asked the national and international media outlets to boycott the news reports and claims provided by the Taliban for three days.

On Monday, the purported spokesman of the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, in an email sent to www.abdulhadihairan.com, questioned this decision and said they had proofs that Munadi was killed by the British commandos ‘to motivate newsmen and reporters against the Mujahedeen.’

In a detailed email written in Pashto, the spokesman said he thought these media organizations were not independent and worked for the ‘invaders.’ He claimed that the decision was symbolic and can’t affect their media campaign.

Mullah Abdul Salam, a dangerous Taliban commander involved in several attacks on German soldiers and Afghan forces in the northern Kanduz province has been killed in an operation during the holy month of Ramadan, claimed governor Engineer Muhammad Omar. Salam himself was appointed as Kanduz governor by the shadowy Taliban administration.

 After increasing their attacks in the southern and eastern provinces to a very troubling extent for the international forces, the Taliban now increasingly show their dangerous presence in the previously relatively northern provinces, particularly Baghlan and Kanduz.

 They attacked the Qila-e-Zaal district center in Kanduz last night and killed 2 policemen, according to the local officials. The militants have been roaming in all the villages of this district and impose their orders on local people, said a resident of the district. This resident, who did not want to be named because he feared reaction from both the government and the Taliban, said the insurgents were able to prevent people from voting in the recent Presidential and Provincial Council elections on August 20.

 ‘He has been killed by the security forces along with another commander and 14 militants. We are sure about it,’ said the governor during a press conference. His brother, district governor of Chahar Dara, another troubled district of the province, was killed by the insurgents few days back.

 The Taliban have yet to confirm the death of one of their strongest commanders in the north. They are not as fast in accepting their casualties as in claiming responsibility of their opponents – the government and the international forces.