Insurgency Gaining Ground in Northern Afghanistan

Northern provinces in danger of slipping into chaos as British and American forces focus on the south.

By Abdul Latif Sahak in Mazar-e-Sharif, July 10, 2009

While British and American forces concentrate their efforts in southern Afghanistan, the once-peaceful north is fast spiralling out of control with the Taleban making a number of important gains.

They include the town of Chahrdara in Kunduz province, where a recent visitor reports that the Taleban have set up their own administration to rival that loyal to the central government, complete with tax collection and a court system.

The northern provinces - Balkh, Kunduz, Jowzjan, Faryab, Sar-e-Pul and Baghlan - have seen a surge in violence over the past few months, with suicide attacks, armed assaults and roadside bombs, and the insurgency appears to be gaining ground.

At the same time, the attention of the Afghan and international military remains firmly focused on the south. Last week, the Americans unleashed a major offensive, Operation Khanjar (Dagger Thrust), in the Helmand River valley, the poppy-rich area that supplies more than half the world’s opium.

Also in Helmand, the British are fighting a bitter battle around the capital, Lashkar Gah. Operation Panchai Palang (Panther’s Claw) has claimed the lives of several soldiers, including a high-ranking commander, in the past few days.

But while the war in the south consumes valuable time and resources, the north could spiral out of control, warn international experts.

Gilles Dorronsoro, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has recently released a study of the Afghan insurgency warning of the dangers of ignoring the normally peaceful northern provinces.

“The strength of the insurgency makes the current coalition strategy of focusing its reinforcements in the south (Helmand and Kandahar) risky to say the least. The Taleban will move the insurgency to the north,” he argues in his new study, called The Taleban’s Winning Strategy in Afghanistan.

Over the past several years, the north has experienced many of the same problems that have fuelled the insurgency in the southern part of the country.

Promised assistance has been slow to materialise; unemployment is high and the central government is weak and cannot rein in commanders or warlords who terrorise the populations under their control.

All of these factors, say local officials, are contributing to the rise of the Taleban and other anti-government rebellions in the north.

While most agree that the problems are increasing, there is little consensus on the reasons.

“We have many indicators that the insurgents have increased their operations in the north,” said Engineer Mohammad Omar, governor of Kunduz. “The Taleban are able to recruit those who have lost their jobs and need money.”

General Mohammad Khalil Aminzada, provincial chief of police for Jowzjan, told IWPR that fear was driving people into the arms of the insurgency. Local strongmen have joined the Taleban, he said, out of opposition to the central government. Ordinary people therefore have nowhere to turn since the government cannot protect them.

“People support the Taleban because they have to,” said Aminzada. “There are not enough police, and we cannot ensure their security. They are afraid.”

Some experts say the police training programme has been one of the major failures of the post-Taleban years.

Richard Holbrooke, United States special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has publicly called the Afghan police “the weak link in the security chain” and “an inadequate organisation, riddled with corruption”. Now, as the insurgents spread out through the country, the deficiencies of Afghanistan’s own security forces are being felt very keenly.

General Ghulam Mujtaba Patang, chief of police in the north, dismisses reports that the Taleban are actually gaining ground.

“The people do not support the Taleban,” he told IWPR. “The insurgents conduct small, scattered operations in cooperation with some armed individuals. They can never fight the government face to face.”

Atta Mohammad Noor, the governor of Balkh province, puts the rise in violence down to the behaviour of international troops based in the country.

“[The foreign forces] do not respect the laws of Afghanistan, or the people’s customs and traditions,” he said. “They arrest people without any evidence, and it creates a distance between the government and the people, and this can motivate people to join the opposition.”

Atta demanded, not for the first time, that non-Afghan troops leave the northern provinces, saying that their presence was not making the area more secure.

Sweden now heads the NATO installation in the north, the provincial reconstruction team, PRT, in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh.

Swedish officials, not surprisingly, take exception to Atta’s characterisations.

“Whether or not we work in the north is a decision for the central government,” said Henrik Klingberg, public relations officer for the PRT. “If the central government requests that we leave, we will; otherwise we will continue our work ensuring security.”

Colonel Olof Granander, newly appointed commander of the PRT, told IWPR that the only way to reduce popular support for the Taleban is to convince the local population that they are better off with the government and the international military contingent.

“We have to make people understand that conflict makes development and reconstruction impossible,” he said.

Tribal elders in the north agree that the situation is deteriorating, but they have their own interpretation of the reasons.

Ethnic tensions play a large role, according to Malek Khan Sherzai, head of the National Unity of the Tribes of Afghanistan. Pashtuns feel discriminated against in the north, he said, driving many of them to seek out the protection of the Taleban, who are largely of Pashtun ethnicity.

“Over the past few months, 15 elders of three Pashtun tribes in the Dasht-e-Leili (a desert in Jowzjan province) have been arrested by the local government,” he said.

Much of the north is dominated politically by traditional enemies of the Taleban – the Jamiat-e-Islami faction headed by former president Burhanuddin Rabbani. Pashtuns think that they are targeted because they are considered to be Taleban sympathisers, whether or not this is the case.

”There are other groups in Dasht-e-Leili – Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara – but no one bothers them,” said Sherzai.

But Mawlawi Jaan Mohammad, a member of the council of religious scholars in Samangan province, blames foreign forces, much as the Balkh governor does.

“This is an Islamic country,” he said. “People here can tolerate many things - poverty, unemployment, even martyrdom for Islam, but they will never tolerate actions which are against their religion.”

Mohammad insisted that his group had proof that international troops have been proselytising in Samangan.

“Religious scholars have evidence that foreign forces have distributed material on Christianity and Judaism in Takht-e-Rustam,” he said, referring to an area of Samangan that contains an ancient archaeological site. “This is something that helps the enemies. The Muslim people of Afghanistan will definitely support the Taleban if they see such actions.”

All troops in Afghanistan are specifically prohibited from proselytising. The reports may be little more than rumours circulated by the Taleban or other opposition groups to discredit the foreign troops but this is an extremely sensitive issue in a country where it is a capital crime to convert to another religion.

A recent report on Al Jazeera added fuel to the fire: a group of evangelical Christian soldiers was filmed allegedly discussing the possible distribution of Bibles printed in Dari and Pashto.

“You cannot proselytise, but you can give gifts,” one of the soldiers is heard to say.

Hajji Gul Alam, from Chahrbolak district in Balkh, blames the growing unrest on political parties that try to eliminate their opponents by reporting them to the foreign or Afghan security forces as possible insurgents.

“In Pashtun areas people are detained by foreign or local forces on charges of cooperating with the Taleban or other insurgent groups,” he said. “People turn to the opposition for protection.”

He gave the example of a teacher in Chahrbolak who was arrested by local forces while he was in class.

“This is nonsense,” he insisted. “Those behind the insurgency are not teaching in schools. This kind of action causes anger and hatred among the people and just reinforces the Taleban propaganda.”

Abdul Latif Sahak is an IWPR-trained journalist in Mazar-e-Sharif.