KABUL, 27 February 2005 — The US military is bracing for a fresh surge in militant violence in Afghanistan, a spokesman said yesterday, two days after more than 22 rebels and Afghan troops died in a fresh attacks. Taleban officials have rebuffed a US-backed amnesty program and vowed to go on the offensive as the weather improves after a particularly harsh winter. Ten militants were killed and a US soldier injured in clashes on Thursday in southern Afghanistan.
“We can look at history and see that historically, attacks have increased as winter subsides,” Maj. Steve Wollman, a spokesman for the US military, told a press briefing. “I think we can expect more attacks ... coalition forces remain vigilant and prepared to deal with these threats.”
About 1,100 people, including militants, civilians, aid workers, foreign and Afghan troops, have died over the past 18 months largely in south and southeastern Afghanistan, mostly in Taleban-linked violence. But rebel activity has eased over the winter, and US-led forces operating in the south and southeast have kept up the pressure on Afghanistan’s vanquished rulers following their failure to disrupt an historic presidential election in October. Taleban officials early this week said winter had limited their activity and said once the cold weather ended and snow in their mountains hideouts melted, they would step up their attacks.
Local officials had also reported nine Afghan troops killed in a separate clash, but the Interior Ministry yesterday disputed that account, saying in a press release that the nine dead were armed men with no connection to any Afghan security forces. The ministry speculated the clash in Helmand province might have been a feud between drug gangs, and said an investigation is under way.
After reports of the deaths, purported Taleban spokesman Mulla Latif Hakimi claimed responsibility for the attack. About half a dozen people claim to speak for the rebel group, but it is often impossible to independently verify their accounts. “I think we can expect more attacks,” Wollman said. “Historically, attacks have increased as the winter subsides. We’re prepared for those attacks.”
At least 580 people, many of them children, have died during Afghanistan’s harshest winter in a decade, but more are feared dead in remote districts which have been cut off by snowfalls as officials offer conflicting death tolls. Up to 460 people are thought to have died in the past month and a half in three districts of the worst affected western Afghanistan’s Ghor province, according to officials and relief agencies.
Three hundred people have died in Ghor’s Saghar district alone, a local official told AFP after the snowbound area was reached for the first time in weeks by US military Black Hawk helicopters. “Around 300 people died in the last month and a half,” district chief Ali Khan said after American forces dropped supplies from a C-130 Hercules cargo planes.
