HERAT, Afghanistan, 16 August 2004 — Afghanistan began wrapping up voter registration yesterday as government troops flew to the western city of Herat to quell factional fighting which left more than 22 dead at the weekend.
In another development six Taleban were killed and 11 captured in an air and ground assault by US and Afghan government forces yesterday in the southern province of Kandahar, a provincial government spokesman said. Earlier yesterday, the Taleban confirmed a police report that their fighters had killed six Afghan National Army troops in a pre-dawn raid on a military post in Maiwand district, 50 kilometers west of the provincial capital.
With the country’s first presidential election just eight weeks away, a battle broke out between forces loyal to two rival warlords on Saturday for control of the western provinces, highlighting Afghanistan’s fragile security.
“Two battalions of the National Army and two of the National Police will be sent to Herat,” Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Zahir Azimi told a press conference. The Ministry of Interior also intends to deploy national police forces to Shindand, south of Herat, for the strengthening of public security, President Hamid Karzai’s office said in a statement.
“Extensive measures are under way to safeguard the security of the lives, property and dignity of people in the area and any military action from any group will not be tolerated,” it added.
Fighting broke out as ethnic Pashtun commander Amanullah Khan’s forces clashed with militia loyal to warlord Ismael Khan and took control of Shindand airport.
By afternoon yesterday it was unclear exactly who was in control of Shindand district, with the government claiming Afghan National Army troops had retaken the airport.
However, a local intelligence source told AFP Amanullah’s troops still had control of the area and said “far more than 30” had been killed in the ongoing clashes. The US-led military and NATO-led peacekeepers were “assisting the Afghan National Army by providing air support for troop movements,” the US military said in a statement.
Herat remained tense yesterday, with schools, government offices, and most shops closed. About 500 people took to the streets and marched to the United Nations mission to denounce the fighting.
The protesters, who included students, government officials and civilians, were carrying banners saying “We support Ismael Khan” and “We ask the central government to bring to justice the culprits who fight.”
Armed plainclothes militia loyal to Ismael Khan were patrolling the streets yesterday, stopping and searching vehicles as trucks full of gunmen drove out of the city toward Shindand. US-trained troops from the fledgling Afghan National Army were guarding the UN compound and other foreign agency offices yesterday to prevent further clashes.
In southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province six government soldiers were shot dead in a Taleban attack on a military post while they were sleeping.
The Taleban have vowed to disrupt the presidential elections due in October, while parliamentary elections have been pushed back to April next year mainly due to security problems.
Despite deteriorating security, as of Aug. 14, 9.9 million Afghans had registered to vote in the Oct. 9 elections, about 41.8 percent of them women according to UN figures released yesterday.
“People want to participate in these elections because they want to leave behind years of violence,” UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said yesterday.
Six Taleban guerrillas were killed and 11 captured in an air and ground assault by US and Afghan government forces yesterday in the southern province of Kandahar, a provincial government spokesman said. Earlier yesterday, the Taleban confirmed a police report that their fighters had killed six Afghan National Army troops in a pre-dawn raid on the military post in Maiwand district, 50 kilometers west of the provincial capital.
According to Khalid Pashtun, a spokesman for Kandahar’s governor, US-led forces unleashed air power on a pocket of Taleban, and ground troops mopped up in an operation close to the border with Pakistan in the remote Marouf district, 160 kilometers east of Kandahar city. “The deaths occurred as a result of air bombardment ... We also managed to arrest 11 Taleban fighters in the operation,” Pashtun said.
In the country’s troubled south and southeast, the electoral commission extended the voter registration by five days, the UN said yesterday.
