KABUL, 11 April 2004 — Suspected Taleban guerrillas have kidnapped a high-ranking local government officer in south-central Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province, an official said yesterday.
“Our intelligence chief, Haji Ahmadullah and two of his bodyguards have been kidnapped by Taleban while driving to the provincial capital Tarin Kowt from a mission in neighboring districts,” a security official who asked not to be named told AFP.
The official said that the three men were kidnapped Thursday and are believed to have been taken to remote Shah Wali Kot district, a southern mountainous area believed to be the main hideout for Taleban remnants in Uruzgan.
Speaking by satellite phone from Tarin Kowt, the official said the kidnappers had not made any contact with government authorities but added: “We expect them to contact us at any moment.”
Uruzgan, where US-led coalition soldiers have recently come under attack from militants, is an area where Taleban and other insurgents are believed to be active and have a strong local following.
The official said that Taleban operatives, including Mulla Abdul Razaq, were believed to be behind the kidnappings. Abdul Razaq, formerly a high-ranking Taleban official during the 1996-2001 fundamentalist regime, has been blamed for much of the unrest in Uruzgan, some 360 kilometers southwest of capital Kabul.
Meanwhile, the Afghan government yesterday branded thousands of militiamen who have overrun a northern provincial capital as “rebellious forces” threatening the country’s peace and stability.
“The legitimate government institutions were attacked — by these rebellious forces,” Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi said.
Forces of a renegade adviser to President Hamid Karzai have withdrawn from the center of remote provincial capital they had overrun, leaving it in control of the National Army, Azimi said.
“The Afghan National Army has secured the city and they are moving forward to secure the area around Maimana,” Azimi told a news briefing.
Troops loyal to feared Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum, who dominates northern Afghanistan, overran the remote province of Faryab on Thursday. “Dostum’s forces have left Maimana city and they are about to leave the suburbs as well.”
The government sent hundreds of troops to Maimana to restore order on Thursday and hundreds of officers from the new national police force are also to be deployed. The governor’s house was stoned by an angry crowd and British soldiers assisted in his evacuation. “The legitimate government cannot tolerate this,” Azimi said.
US aircraft were continuing reconnaissance missions in the northern provinces which remained calm yesterday, US military spokesman Lt. Col. Matt Beevers said. “The coalition assessment of the situation in Faryab province, in (the capital) Maimana specifically, is that it is relatively calm today,” he told a press conference in Kabul.
Beevers said a team of coalition observers from the British-run provincial reconstruction team in northern Mazar-e-Sharif city had gone to investigate what he called “civil disturbances” in Maimana and surrounding areas.
“We see the situation in Faryab province as ... bands of kind of hooligans out there doing bad things,” he said. “Typically the coalition doesn’t get directly involved in that kind of activity, we look at that as more of an internal Afghan matter.”
One of Dostum’s soldiers, Commander Lal Muhammad, told AFP in Mazar-e-Sharif there had been two demonstrations in Maimana yesterday, one for Dostum and one against him in support of the central government. Some people were injured in scuffles when the two groups met but Lal said he had no figures on the number hurt, although it was not expected to be high.
