Growing Sense of Insecurity

Officials in Washington and Kabul claim that a measure of peace and security has finally taken root in Afghanistan - but try telling that to Abdul Hadi, a resident of the southeastern city of Kandahar.



Hadi had just recently witnessed a recent suicide bombing that left one dead and three injured, in addition to the bomber himself. Although the bomber may have been aiming to hit a passing convoy of United States-led Coalition troops, his victims were all Afghan civilians.



“In Kandahar, we are afraid of the trees, of the air, of the ground we walk on,” said Hadi as he gestured helplessly at his surroundings. “This is no life.”



Abdul Halim, 29, a Kandahar policeman, was on duty when the bomb went off on December 11.



“I saw the head of the bomber,” he said. “It was lying in the road, but the Americans picked it up and put it on the pavement.” Halim said he could not tell whether the bomber was Afghan or not, but he was sure he was a member of the Taleban.



Halim has seen attacks of this type proliferate over the past few months.



“As a policeman, I go on duty in the morning never knowing whether I will live to go home in the evening,” he said.



Saifal Maluk, 70, was nearby when the bomb went off. “American soldiers were passing by. I heard a loud noise and saw smoke. I ran to where the noise was, and saw my friends,” he said.



Maluk blames the government in Kabul for failing to get control of the security situation.



“[President Hamed] Karzai has no idea what we are going through,” he said in disgust. “He does not bring light – just more darkness every day.”



Kandahar has certainly had more than its share of attacks in recent weeks. In early December, a suicide bomber blew himself and a motorcyclist up when he tried to detonate his explosives in the middle of a passing military convoy.



Reports deemed credible by local security agencies warn that 10 Arab and Afghan insurgents have infiltrated the city and four Toyota Corollas packed with explosives have been roaming the city. A cleric was shot and killed on December 14, and the following day a Coalition soldier was killed in yet another attack.



Every day brings new reports and new terror in the streets of Kandahar. The population is on edge.



“There isn’t a corner left that has not had some incident,” said taxi driver Alauddin, 18.



Local police officials said they had no time to discuss the issue with reporters, and the governor’s office brushed aside concerns about the security situation.



“These kinds of attacks happen everywhere – in Kabul, in other provinces and in other countries,” said Ghulam Faruq Farahmand, chief of staff in governor’s office. “It’s not a big problem.”



Farahmand is right about one thing: the attacks are, indeed multiplying. Since the start of the year, more than 125 Coalition soldiers have been killed, and more than 1,500 Afghan civilians, making 2005 the bloodiest year since the fall of the Taleban in 2001.



The US administration touts Afghanistan as an overwhelming success story, pointing out that the country now has a constitution, a president and a parliament. Few would argue with the fact that the country has already gone a long way toward emerging from the isolation it found itself in under the Taleban.



Afghanistan is being hailed as a model for post-conflict Iraq. “We will succeed in Iraq, just like we did in Afghanistan,” US vice-president Dick Cheney said in June.



But there are also signs of a reverse effect, where the tactics used by insurgents in Iraq are adopted by forces opposed to the Kabul government.



Habibullah Rafi, a member of the Afghan Academy of Sciences and a political analyst, sees a clear link between the types of attacks now occurring in Afghanistan and the resistance tactics employed in Iraq.



“Suicide tactics worked in Iraq - they caused US forces a lot of trouble,” Rafi told IWPR. “So now we see suicide attacks in Afghanistan.”



Rafi is convinced that foreign-trained or foreign-backed insurgents are carrying out these attacks. “This has never been the Afghan way. Afghans have always fought face-to-face,” he said.



Suicide attacks have multiplied over the past six months, ever since a bomber detonated an explosive device in a Kandahar mosque in June, killing himself and 20 others, including the Kabul police chief Mohammad Akram Khakrizwal.



Even heavily guarded and relatively peaceful Kabul has become increasingly vulnerable.



In mid-November, two cars packed with explosives drove into the middle of a convoy belonging to the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, killing eight people including a German soldier and injuring 14 civilians. On December 16, another suicide bomber blew himself up trying to attack an ISAF convoy in Kabul, injuring three Afghan civilians.



The situation in the northern provinces, where Taleban activity had previously been rare, has also become more perilous recently. In late November, a bomb attack against an ISAF convoy in Mazar-e-Sharif killed a Swedish soldier and seriously injured another. The attack came one month after a British soldier was killed in the city.



Spokesmen for the international forces are reluctant to acknowledge that the situation is getting worse. Instead, they seek to put a positive spin on developments.



“We do not consider that the overall security situation in the country has deteriorated on a permanent basis,” said ISAF spokesman Major Andrew Elmes. “We are concerned, obviously, about the most recent attacks, but we do not consider this a permanent trend. And this year there has been a significant campaign by the American-led Coalition to contest the insurgents where they are.”



Elmes insists that things are getting better.



“We should be focusing on the creation of robust, capable and effective national security forces, like the Afghan National Army and the police, and this is happening day by day and week by week. We are seeing an increase in successful operations,” he said.



The Afghan authorities agree. “We have control over the security situation in the entire country, and our forces are now able to stabilise security all over Afghanistan,” said General Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the defence ministry. “The opposition is no longer able to fight face to face – this is why they carry out suicide attacks.”



Azimi rejects claims that insurgents are learning from Iraq, or borrowing tactics and even personnel from the Iraq conflict. “That is propaganda by the enemies of Afghanistan,” he said.



Interior Ministry spokesman Yusuf Stanikzai, while admitting that there are still some security problems in the country, said that the overall situation was good and getting better.



“We do still have some difficulties because our police and army are still being trained,” he said. “But the present situation is better than it has been. The enemies of peace and stability always try to disrupt security, but they have failed,” he said.



But according to Rafi, domestic forces are part of the problem. “There are a lot of former combatants who are now in the police and the army,” he said. “They have fought each other many times.”



In the past few months alone, there have been several clashes between the army and the police. In Herat, an argument between members of the army and police erupted into violence in mid-October, leaving one soldier and one policeman dead.



“The police and army are themselves a threat to security,” said Rafi.



Wahidullah Amani is an IWPR reporter in Kabul.