KABUL, 5 March 2004 — Suspected Taleban guerrillas killed seven Afghan soldiers in a raid near the Pakistan border, a senior military commander said yesterday.
Guerrillas attacked the border post late Wednesday near the Maruf district in Kandahar, said Khan Muhammad, the provincial military commander.
Khan blamed Taleban guerrillas for the attack, which left another soldier listed as missing.
“They came over on foot from Pakistan,” Khan told reporters. “There were eight soldiers at the post, and maybe the other one got away.”
He said Afghan soldiers had been dispatched to the area to investigate but had no information on any arrests.
Meanwhile, US-led forces stationed a civilian-military team in Ghazni yesterday, taking to 12 the number of missions designed to bolster reconstruction and squash Taleban-inspired insurgency.
The US military that contributes most of the 13,500 troops in Afghanistan hunting guerrillas wants to establish a more permanent presence in outlying, volatile regions.
“Wherever Provincial Reconstruction Teams go, security follows,” said Lt. Gen. David Barno, commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan.
The formal opening of the Ghazni Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) coincides with a shift in US operations in Afghanistan away from large deployments in search of guerrillas toward smaller teams spending longer in remote areas in a bid to improve intelligence.
“We have adjusted our military strategy to achieve closer cooperation between the coalition and local communities,” said US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad during a ceremony in Ghazni.
The change follows recognition that large-scale operations had failed to net important Al-Qaeda and Taleban leaders, while searches of towns and villages infuriated locals who complained of arbitrary arrests and physical abuse.
There has also been no letup in guerrilla attacks which have made much of the country, particularly the south and east, no-go zones to aid groups carrying out vital assistance work in the war-shattered country.
PRTs are seen as a way of bringing aid to risky areas, winning “hearts and minds” and extending President Hamid Karzai’s influence outside the capital Kabul.
Khalilzad said Pakistan had been urged to stop guerrillas from launching operations inside Afghanistan. Over 550 people have died in the violence since August, including aid workers, foreign troops and Afghan soldiers.
“There are terrorist-extremist forces that oppose efforts to build a new Afghanistan,” he said. “They want to take this country back to violence, backwardness, poverty and repression.”
