LONDON/KABUL, 20 September 2006 — Britain warned yesterday that the credibility of NATO was at stake in Afghanistan after it was surprised by the strength of resistance from the Taleban, the country’s hard-line former rulers. Taleban opposition to NATO forces in Afghanistan is far tougher than was expected when alliance troops were initially deployed, Defense Secretary Des Browne said.
“The Taleban’s tenacity in the face of massive losses has been a surprise, absorbing more of our effort than we predicted it would and consequently slowing progress on reconstruction,” he told the Royal United Services Institute think tank.
Browne underlined the need for London’s allies to share the burden of fighting in the volatile south of the war-scarred country. Britain remains confident of ultimate victory despite a recent surge in deadly violence, he said. Britain took over command of NATO forces in the volatile south of Afghanistan in May, and have faced fiercer-than-anticipated resistance from Taleban insurgents. A total of 33 British troops have died since then, compared to a total of 40 since NATO moved into Afghanistan in 2001 in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.
NATO’s top commander Gen. James Jones has called for an extra 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and Poland vowed last week to boost its contingent there from 120 troops to about 1,000 by next February. Browne welcomed the Polish offer, but reiterated yesterday the need for all 26 NATO members to commit themselves the task of bringing peace and stability to the war-ravaged country, despite the heavy losses.
Meanwhile, Taleban guerrillas said yesterday they had killed a Turk kidnapped last month after the Turkish construction company he worked for ignored an ultimatum to leave Afghanistan. The Taleban, fighting an intensified insurgency across the Afghan south and east, regard companies involved in reconstruction as supporting the US-led military involvement in the country.
A Taleban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said the Taleban had shot dead the Turk in the southern province of Helmand. His body had been dumped, he said. The Turk, who worked for a security firm, was abducted on Aug. 28 in an ambush in Helmand. A Turkish engineer with the Ankara-based Kolin Insaat construction company was killed in the ambush, Turkish officials said.
In another development, Afghan police have arrested four Al-Qaeda-linked militants and seized more than a dozen bombs that were to have been used against the government and foreign forces in Kabul. All four of the suspects were Afghan, senior police official Ali Shah Paktiawal told Reuters. Three of them, two Muslim preachers and a Kabul University student, were arrested in a raid on a Kabul mosque on Monday. A fourth suspect was seized yesterday.
Afghan and international forces forged ahead yesterday with anti-Taleban offensives in the west and east of Afghanistan after a fresh wave of suicide attacks that killed 21 people including four Canadian soldiers. Three powerful blasts Monday near the southern city of Kandahar, in Kabul and in Herat in the west were blamed on the extremist Taleban movement, which has stepped up its insurgency as foreign forces push into rebel strongholds.
