ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan, 1 November 2007 — Civilians piled belongings onto farm trucks yesterday and fled from two villages infiltrated by hundreds of Taleban militants near Afghanistan’s second-largest city. US and Canadian troops had killed 50 of the militants in three days of fighting, said Kandahar provincial Police Chief Sayed Agha Saqib, who estimated that the forces had about 250 other insurgents surrounded.
“The people are fleeing because the Taleban are taking over civilian homes,” Saqib said. “There have been no airstrikes. We are trying our best to attack those areas where there are no civilians, only Taleban.” Saqib said 16 suspected Taleban have been arrested during the operation 20 kilometers northwest of Kandahar.
The fighters moved into Kandahar province’s Arghandab district several days ago, about two weeks after the death of powerful tribal leader Mullah Naqib, who had kept Taleban fighters out of his region.
President Hamid Karzai, who also comes from a southern Afghanistan tribe, traveled to Kandahar to attend Naqib’s funeral. Naqib “has a good influence on his tribe. He was supporting the government,” Saqib said. “After he died, the Taleban were thinking they would go to Arghandab and cause trouble for Kandahar city. But now they’re surrounded and they’re in big trouble.”
The gathering of fighters on the doorstep of Kandahar — the Taleban’s former power base — is reminiscent of last year’s battle in neighboring Panjwayi district, one of the biggest fights in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion.
NATO officials have said hundreds of Taleban tried late last year to overrun Kandahar — which would have been a military victory with a resounding symbolic effect. But Saqib said he did not believe the militants, now occupying the villages of Chaharqulba and Sayedan in Arghandab district, would attempt a run on Afghanistan’s main southern city. “We are capturing and killing them, and I don’t think it will cause any problem for Kandahar,” he said.
US Humvees and Canadian jeeps crossed Arghandab’s countryside on patrols yesterday alongside hundreds of Afghan villagers fleeing the area in the middle of harvest season, leaving their pomegranate crop at prime picking time. Karimullah Khan piled his three children into the front seat of a pickup truck and put three female relatives in the back beside household goods and clothes. He said he was driving to Kandahar city to stay with relatives.
