Starting Points: insurgency

Showing posts with label insurgency. Show all posts

Apr 6, 2010

Rebel Ambush Kills at Least 73 Indian Officers - NYTimes.com

By JIM YARDLEY

NEW DELHI — India’s campaign against the country’s Maoist insurgency suffered a major setback on Tuesday when rebel fighters ambushed a paramilitary unit on patrol in an isolated forest region, killing at least 73 officers.

The authorities described a carefully executed surprise attack in which the Maoists opened fire as the patrol entered an area seeded with booby-trap bombs. When officers fell to the ground to take cover from gunfire, they detonated the explosives.

“Something has gone very wrong,” said Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, according to the news agency Press Trust of India. “I am deeply shocked.”

He said the attack by the Maoist fighters showed the “brutality and the savagery they are capable of.”

The attack comes as the government is mobilizing security forces against the Maoists in a multistate campaign known as Operation Green Hunt. The Maoists, also known as Naxalites, have existed in India for four decades and claim to represent the interests of the rural dispossessed who have not shared in India’s economic progress. Once lightly regarded by the government, the Maoists have expanded across a large rural corridor and now exercise outright control over some isolated, mountain regions. Maoist propaganda calls for overthrowing the Indian state.

The goal of the government operation is to push the Maoists out of more populated rural areas and isolate them in certain remote mountain regions. Maoist sympathizers have accused the government of brutalizing and killing innocent villagers as security forces sweep through rural areas to root out rebel fighters.

Officials say the Maoists are the ones who brutalize, having disrupted schools and hospitals and destroyed roads in many areas; the security campaign calls for clearing areas of rebels so that government services can be restored.

Image by Shreyans Bhansali via Flickr

By some unofficial estimates, roughly 200 security officers have been killed by Maoists during the past 12 months. The operation involves multiple federal and state security agencies, and some analysts have questioned whether poor coordination and training is exposing officers to danger. On Sunday, Maoists detonated a land mine in the state of Orissa, killing 10 officers and wounding 16 others. Last month, the Maoists blew up a railroad track, forcing the minor derailment of a passenger train. And in February, about 100 Maoists on motorcycles stormed a police outpost in the state of West Bengal, killing 24 security officers.

The attack on Tuesday occurred in the Dantewada region in the state of Chhattisgarh, in an area known as Chintalnar, considered a major Maoist stronghold. The officers were members of the Central Reserve Police Force, a paramilitary unit, who entered the forest on Sunday night for a two-day mission related to the government operation.

T. J. Longkumar, the Chhattisgarh police inspector general for the larger region, said the officers were returning to camp after an early morning patrol when the Maoists struck around 6:30 a.m. Officer Longkumar said he did not know how many fighters had attacked, but Indian news outlets reported that as many as 1,000 Maoists were involved.

“They were blasted,” Officer Longkumar said. “Most of the casualties were from the explosives.”

He said the attack was probably a response to security forces pressing deeper into isolated areas once completely controlled by the Maoists. “They have regrouped,” he said. “They feel we are entering their core area.”

Saimah Khwaja contributed research.

Jan 13, 2010

Study Finds 3,000 Pakistanis Killed in Militant Attacks

Image by Brave New Films via Flickr

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The number of Pakistani civilians killed in militant attacks rose by a third in 2009, compared with the previous year, according to a new research report, a toll that was driven higher by a surge of suicide bombings against civilian targets.

The report, released this week by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an independent research group based in Islamabad that tracks security issues, found that 3,021 Pakistanis were killed in insurgent attacks, 33 percent more than in 2008.

Pakistan’s Interior Ministry said the number of deaths totaled 1,674, lower than the institute’s count, but its director, Muhammad Amir Rana, argued that its data is more comprehensive, drawing on local media reports, which its employees double check, as well as official sources. The reports provide one of the few comprehensive analyses of civilian casualties in Pakistan, a growing concern as the insurgency here grinds into another year.

Militants carried out 87 suicide attacks in 2009, up from 63 the previous year, according to the institute, with civilian centers increasingly a target, including mosques, a university, and public markets. The bombings, which tend to inflict harm over a wide area, helped account for the 60 percent rise in injuries to 7,334.

The institute began issuing the reports in 2006, Mr. Rana said, an effort to give a clearer picture of militancy in Pakistan. Since then, the number of Pakistanis killed in militant attacks has more than tripled.

Image by Ammar Abd Rabbo via Flickr

While Pakistan has long had problems with violence, including sectarian fighting throughout the 1990’s, it was not until after 9/11 that major terrorist attacks began to intensify. In 2005, attacks increased dramatically, and have risen every year since, with their numbers doubling between 2005 and 2007, Mr. Rana said.

The overwhelming majority of the suicide bombings last year were in the Northwest Frontier Province, a populous area in the western of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas, where the militants are strong.

In a counter trend, the tribal areas, where the military has opened operation against the militants, saw a drop in bombings from militants — seven, compared to 16 the previous year.

Punjab, the most populous province and the military and political heart of the country, suffered 15 suicide attacks, the second-highest number in the country, up from eight in 2008, but far below the 52 that militants conducted in the Norh West Frontier Province.

Punjab, ethnically distict from the border regions in the mountainous west, had been relatively untouched by violence until recently. The surge in bombings last year shocked Pakistanis and helped turn public opinion and media coverage against the Taliban, though anger at the government and the United States also spiked.

Image by doodledubz collective via Flickr

The number of sectarian attacks jumped by 86 percent compared with 2008, according to the report, with the highest concentration in Dera Ismail Khan, a city in the Northwest Frontier Province whose Shiite minority has been targeted by militants.

In all, researchers counted 12,632 deaths from violence in 2009, of which about half were deaths associated with the Pakistani military’s campaigns against Taliban militants throughout 2009. The military keeps specific tallies of its own dead, though militant casualties are more difficult to track and are often based on estimates and not body counts in the field. Battlefields are rarely accessible to journalists.

Also included in the tally were 667 people — mostly civilians — killed in American drone strikes, the report said. Another 2,000 were killed in non-militant violence, including political violence and tribal fighting.

Though the civilian toll, which includes police officers and other civilian law enforcement agencies, seems high, it is still far lower than the 3,000 civilians killed per month in Iraq — a country with a population a fraction of Pakistan’s — in 2006.

Sep 5, 2009

Southern Thailand’s Turmoil Grows - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By THOMAS FULLER

PAKA LUE SONG, Thailand — The soldiers patrolling this hamlet racked by insurgent violence measure their progress modestly: two years ago, when villagers saw them coming, they closed their shutters. Now, they say, most residents peer out of their wood-frame houses and offer strained smiles.

“The local people have started to open their hearts,” said Capt. Niran Chaisalih, the leader of a government paramilitary force garrisoned at the village school.

Paka Lue Song, only a 15-minute drive from the provincial capital, Pattani, is a starting point for Thailand’s influx of troops into the country’s troubled southern provinces, where ethnic Malay Muslims are battling for autonomy from Thailand’s Buddhist majority.

The number of people in security forces, including the army, the police and militias, in the region has doubled over the past two years to about 60,000, said Srisompob Jitpiromsri, a leading expert on the insurgency and the associate dean at Prince of Songkla University in Pattani.

The huge increase in security forces initially helped reduce the violence as well as the death toll, which fell by 40 percent last year. But the number of killings has risen in recent months. More than 330 people have been killed so far this year, compared with 285 in the same period last year. Among the dead are civilians — including many Malays — soldiers and insurgents.

There have been so many killings in the three southern provinces — about 3,500 since 2004 — that the government began distributing a glossy brochure last year guiding victims’ families through the process of applying for government compensation.

Although the insurgency has been active for decades in the south, the current phase is considered particularly dangerous because the militants appear to have more of an Islamist agenda and because apparently sectarian attacks have strained the mutual tolerance between Buddhists and Muslims. It also comes at a time of deep political turmoil and social unease in Thailand that has hobbled several governments in the last three years and last year drove away many of the tourists who help sustain the country’s economy.

The surge in troops is palpable across the three southern provinces, only a few hours’ drive from Thailand’s main tourist beaches. There is now the equivalent of one soldier or police officer for every seven households. Soldiers in Humvees patrol the main roads, and police and military checkpoints screen motorists every few miles.

Sa-nguan Indrarak, the president of a federation of schoolteachers in the south, questions whether the army’s presence has been worth the $3.2 billion that the government has spent in the south over the past five years. (Teachers, obvious symbols of the Thai state, have been prime targets in the insurgency, with 95 killed since 2004.) Troops should leave and the government should train local security forces, who have a better understanding of the terrain, Mr. Sa-nguan argues.

Soldiers are resented in part because they behave inappropriately around both mosques and Buddhist temples, drinking, dancing and flirting, he said. But there have also been reports of human rights abuses; in January, Amnesty International published a report saying security forces “systemically engage in torture” — including using electric shocks — in their attempts to gather information and to force communities into withholding or withdrawing support for the rebels.

The insurgency has been distinct from other rebel movements in the region because the perpetrators remain shadowy, ill-defined groups that do not claim responsibility for the violence. Experts say they believe that the aims of the groups, among them the Pattani Islamic Mujahedeen Movement and the National Revolution Front-Coordinate, are to drive Buddhists from the area, discredit the government and put into place strict Islamic laws.

Although they say they believe that some financing for the groups comes from abroad, several counterterrorism experts in Thailand and elsewhere discount significant connections with other militant movements, like Al Qaeda and the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiyah. The movement here, they say, appears to involve a localized struggle over territory and control overlaid with historical resentment over the domination of the Thai state.

Malay Muslims make up about 80 percent of the 1.7 million people living in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala Provinces.

The ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a military coup in 2006 raised hopes that the generals who took over, including several senior Muslim officials, would be more conciliatory than Mr. Thaksin, who had blamed bandits for the violence and oversaw a hard-line policy toward the area. But despite an unprecedented apology for Mr. Thaksin’s iron-fisted policies by a military-installed prime minister, the insurgency has ground on.

In Paka Lue Song, a village considered dangerous enough that local journalists refuse to enter it, army medics are trying to win over villagers by giving them free medical treatment. As soldiers prepared to walk through the village on a recent day, one raised the antenna of a radio to hear a dispatcher issue a bulletin: a police officer had been ambushed in Yala Province.

The soldiers proceeded on their mission, handing out vitamin C to children.

Second Lt. Pongpayap Petwisai, a 27-year-old army doctor, walked through the village prescribing medication for eye infections, dispensing balms for aching muscles and monitoring blood pressure.

“What we are trying to do is get people on our side,” said Dr. Pongpayap, who was partly inspired to become a doctor by the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan.”

More recently, the government has also stepped up its program of providing weapons to local militias and “village guards,” especially in Buddhist enclaves. These volunteers now number about 71,000, according to Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, who monitors the insurgency for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that aims to prevent deadly conflicts.

She said she feared that the program could backfire, leading to vigilante killings if the weapons fell into the wrong hands.

Those who cooperate with the military are already at risk of being attacked by insurgents.

In Paka Lue Song, Dr. Pongpayap examined the injured hand of Gade Yusoh, a 57-year-old rubber tapper who soldiers said had been helpful to them.

Gunmen suspected of being insurgents fired into Mr. Gade’s house one evening three months ago while he was watching television. “I’m not afraid,” he said. His nervous laugh suggested otherwise.

It remains unclear if the programs aimed at winning the hearts and minds of villagers — a standard counterinsurgency practice — are working. When this reporter toured a neighboring village without the army medical team, local officials heaped scorn on the government initiative.

“They just want a photo opportunity,” said one local government official, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution by the army. Other criticism has been more public. Outside a village Dr. Pongpayap visited, graffiti appeared the day after.

“Don’t come back here,” it said. “If you shoot one of us, we will shoot two of you.”

Nice Pojanamesbaanstit contributed reporting.

Aug 14, 2009

Gang Kills Seven in Russian Sauna

Russian police are hunting gunmen who killed seven women at a sauna and four policemen at a checkpoint in the troubled southern region of Dagestan.

The attack happened on Thursday in the town of Buynaksk, 41km (25 miles) from the regional capital Makhachkala.

Police say they know the identities of some of the gunmen, who fled into a forest after the attack.

Separately, four policemen and two militants were killed in a clash near Grozny, in neighbouring Chechnya.

Moscow has been keen to portray Chechnya and the region as an area returning to normal after years of unrest.

But these latest attacks form part of a wider pattern: a growing anti-Kremlin, Islamist insurgency that appears to be spreading across the North Caucasus, the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse reports.

On Friday police shot and killed three militants near a village in Dagestan's Derbent district, officials say.

In Thursday's attack in Dagestan, at least 15 gunmen opened fire on a traffic police checkpoint on the edge of Buynaksk, Russian media quoted local police as saying.

The gunmen are reported to have hijacked a minibus, which they later abandoned.

They went on to attack a sauna at a nearby health complex, killing seven women workers there.

Dagestan has been plagued by violence in recent years, much of it linked to the conflict between security forces and separatist rebels in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim Russian republic.

Russian forces have fought two wars against Islamist rebels in Chechnya since 1994. The conflicts claimed more than 100,000 lives and left it in ruins.

Clashes with militants are also common in Ingushetia, which borders on Chechnya to the west.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8201054.stm

Published: 2009/08/14

Aug 11, 2009

One of Yemen’s 3 Insurgencies Flares Up

By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — An intermittent rebellion in northwestern Yemen has flared up again in the past 10 days, leaving dozens dead and wounded and adding a new element of instability to a country that is already facing a violent separatist movement in the south and an increasingly bold insurgency by Al Qaeda.

After a series of armed clashes with the military, Shiite rebels led by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi appeared to be in control of several areas of Saada Province, the remote, mountainous area in the north where an insurgency has raged on and off since 2004, witnesses and local officials said. Efforts toward a cease-fire were under way on Sunday and Monday, with no clear result.

Yemen, a poor, arid country in the southern corner of the Arabian peninsula, has gained new attention in recent months from American military officials, who are concerned about Al Qaeda’s efforts to set up a regional base there. Late last month, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top United States commander in the Middle East, visited Yemen and pledged to support its counterterrorism efforts.

The New York Times

The military has clashed with rebels in Saada Province.

Al Qaeda’s growing presence in Yemen — where it took credit for a deadly attack on the American Embassy last year — is especially troubling because the country’s fractious tribes and rugged geography make it notoriously difficult to control.

In recent months, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has expertly played Yemen’s various tribes and factions against one another for decades, has faced more serious threats to his authority.

In the south, a simmering protest movement has burst into open rebellion, with armed rebels raising the flag of the formerly independent South Yemen. In late July, at least 20 people were killed after demonstrators in southern Abyan Province threatened to break open a local prison where detainees were being held. A series of ambushes by rebel forces has left a number of police officers dead; details are difficult to ascertain because the government has clamped down on news coverage.

As important as the violence has been the defection of some leading political figures. In April, Tareq al-Fadhli, an important ally of Mr. Saleh, joined the southern secessionist movement. Mr. Fadhli is an influential tribal figure who fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and helped organize former jihadists to fight against a southern secession movement on Mr. Saleh’s behalf in 1994.

North and south Yemen were unified in 1990 after years of turmoil, but many southerners, including former military officers, say they are treated as second-class citizens. Rising unemployment has fueled the discontent.

Last week, in an interview on Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network, a member of one of Yemen’s most powerful families surprised the country’s political establishment by calling for Mr. Saleh to step down. The man, Hamid al-Ahmar, whose father was one of Mr. Saleh’s most important allies, brazenly said he could speak out against the president — something scarcely anyone dares to do — because his tribal confederation would protect him.

Yemen has long been a haven for jihadists, and the turmoil of recent years — along with a severe crackdown on terrorism in neighboring Saudi Arabia — has led some Qaeda figures to resettle there. Several former Guantánamo detainees fled this year to Yemen from Saudi Arabia and pledged to mount attacks on Saudi Arabia and other countries from their Yemeni redoubt. The Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda has an active propaganda arm and appears to have built relationships with tribes in the Marib region that have helped protect it, analysts say.

Despite the Yemeni government’s periodic claims that all three insurgencies — in the south, the north and by Al Qaeda — are united against it, there is no evidence that they are working together. Still, the convergence is troubling.

“All of these problems are coalescing and exacerbating each other in ways that are not completely knowable at this time,” said Gregory D. Johnsen, a Yemen expert who is currently in the country. “The three crises have combined, along with the economy, to make things look bleaker here than they have in a long time.”

Although Yemen has had some notable successes in fighting jihadists and has built a crack counterterrorism strike force, the government has been hampered by a lack of money and by widespread corruption. The country’s small oil supplies are rapidly disappearing, a water crisis is growing worse and the population of 22 million is swelling.

Yemen has also long suffered from violent tribal feuds, banditry and kidnapping, much of it beyond the control of the central government. In June, nine foreigners were kidnapped while on a picnic in Saada Province, and three soon turned up dead. Six remain unaccounted for: three toddlers and their parents, who are German, and a British engineer.

In that context, the renewed violence in the north — where a truce last summer seemed to have ended the war — bodes ill for Yemen’s stability. The conflict has already left thousands dead in the past five years and produced tens of thousands of refugees. It also has troubling sectarian overtones: the rebels are Zaydis, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and the government has sometimes used hard-line Sunni tribesmen as proxy warriors.

The media office for Mr. Houthi, the Shiite rebel leader, issued a statement on Friday saying government helicopters were dropping leaflets calling on the people to take up arms against his supporters. The statement called on the government to stop its attacks and to release Houthi supporters being held in prison.

The rebels and the Yemeni military appear to be building up their forces in the area, and some military officials have predicted that if another round of conflict breaks out in Saada, it will be bloodier than any of those in the past.

Aug 10, 2009

Eritrea Rebuffs 'Smear Campaign'

Eritrea has strongly denied allegations that it supports Islamist insurgents in neighbouring Somalia.

Salih Omar Abdu, its ambassador to Kenya, says the accusations, repeatedly made by the US and the African Union, are a "smear campaign".

He says Eritrea is in favour of a united Somalia whose government represents all of its people.

Somalia is nominally ruled by a UN-backed government but insurgents control large parts of the country.

Last week US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on a visit to Africa, warned that the US would "take action" against Eritrea if it continued to support the militants.

She said Eritrea was destabilising Somalia and its actions were "unacceptable".

Moral obligation

But in an interview with the BBC's Network Africa programme, Mr Abdu dismissed the claims.

"This is a smear campaign against Eritrea under the pretext that Eritrea supplies arms, ammunitions and finances [to insurgents]," he said.

"But unfortunately this is not the case and Eritrea does not tolerate being an instrument to any country or any government."

He said his country had a "moral and legal obligation to support the Somalis", but had no right to "bring or establish a government for the Somalis".

"We believe in a united Somalia. Not like our neighbours who want to sub-divide it into cantons. Let the Somalis solve their problems themselves."

Analysts say several militant groups operated from Eritrea after being ousted from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, when Ethiopian troops entered Somalia in 2006.

The main insurgent group is al-Shabab, which is extending its influence in the south of the country.

About 250,000 Somalis have fled their homes in fighting between militants and government forces over the past three months.

There are growing fears that Somalia - which has been without an effective central government since 1991 - risks becoming a haven for terrorists.

Aug 4, 2009

Fears of Fraud Cast Pall Over Afghan Election

By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — Little more than three weeks before the presidential election, problems that include insecurity and fears of fraud are raising concerns about the credibility of the race, which President Obama has called the most important event in Afghanistan this year.

With Taliban insurgents active in half the country, many Afghans remain doubtful that the Aug. 20 election will take place at all. The Taliban issued a statement last week calling for a boycott, a threat that could deter voters in much of the south, where the insurgency is strongest.

Election officials insist that the election will go ahead. But they concede that the insecurity will prevent as many as 600 polling centers, or roughly 10 percent, from opening. Western officials acknowledge that the election will be imperfect, but say they are aiming for enough credibility to satisfy both Afghans and international monitors.

Even that goal will be hard to meet. Though increasingly unpopular here and abroad, President Hamid Karzai is still the front-runner in a field of about 40 candidates, and only one, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister for Mr. Karzai, has emerged as a serious challenger. Many Afghans are convinced that foreign powers will choose the winner and fix the result.

But no matter who prevails, the multitude of problems and what is expected to be a low turnout in conflict areas are likely to reduce the next president’s mandate.

Western officials and Afghans alike worry that the election could be so flawed that many Afghans might reject the balloting and its results, with potentially dangerous consequences.

If they cannot vote because of insecurity in the south, Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group and the one most closely associated with the Taliban, could become even more alienated from the government and the foreign forces backing it, political analysts say.

They also warn of Iranian-style protests and instability if the population in the north, which largely supports a change of government, feels its vote has been manipulated.

“We are worried about voter registration fraud, and we are worried about voters who will be unable to reach polling places because of insecurity,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the American special envoy, said during a visit last week. “And we are worried about the accuracy of the vote count, and we are worried about the ability of women to vote.”

Philippe Morillon, the outspoken retired French general who leads the European Union election observer mission to Afghanistan, said his top priority was to prevent fraud. “It is you who will choose your president, and we are there simply to guarantee that your choice is not betrayed,” Mr. Morillon told Afghan journalists at a news briefing in Kabul.

In an effort to speed the results and reduce the opportunity for rigging, ballots will be counted at individual polling stations. Afghan officials have said there will be a preliminary result within 48 hours, followed by a two-week period for complaints and confirmation procedures.

But Western officials say it could take longer to declare a winner, anticipating challenges from around the country’s 34 provinces, where votes will also be cast for provincial councils.

“It could be like 34 Minnesota Senate races,” one Western official said, referring to the disputed race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, which took nearly eight months to resolve in Mr. Franken’s favor.

Other officials warn that public frustration with the war, corruption and lagging reconstruction and development is so high that many people may shun the polls.

In the south, election officials said they were expecting a turnout below 30 percent, said Abdul Qader Nurzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission office in Kandahar.

“The people are not that interested in the elections,” said Abdul Hadi, the election commissioner in the adjoining province of Helmand, where thousands of Marines have been deployed to regain towns from the Taliban in time for the elections.

“They voted before, and they did not see any result from that,” Mr. Hadi said. “And they don’t want to put their lives in jeopardy for one vote.” An estimated 70 percent of Afghan voters turned out for the country’s first presidential election, in October 2004.

In Helmand, in southern Afghanistan, the election will take place only in safe zones in the main towns, Mr. Hadi said. One third of districts are under Taliban control and will not be able to take part, he said. In some districts, like Kajaki, the Taliban have besieged administrative centers and will not allow civilians in to vote, he said.

In the eastern Paktika Province, which borders Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, more than 20 percent of the voting centers will have to be moved or abandoned because of security, officials said.

Afghan election officials in the capital, Kabul, insist that voters will turn out. About 4.5 million people registered for new voting cards this year, far exceeding expectations, said Azizullah Ludin, the election commission chief.

Yet irregularities are widespread. As many as 3 million duplicate voter registration cards may be circulating among the 17 million issued, according to one election observer, who asked not to be named because of the delicacy of the subject.

Twenty percent of the new cards went to under-age boys and another 20 percent were duplicates, an Afghan election observer organization, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, found in the centers it was able to monitor.

For security and cultural reasons, women’s registration has been low. Yet the number of registered women exceeded the number of registered men in some areas, indicating more irregularities. Male family members were able to obtain voting cards for women simply by providing a list of women’s names, the Afghan election monitors reported in May.

This election is unlike Afghanistan’s first presidential contest five years ago in that most balloting and monitoring is being run by Afghans, with only a small number of international advisers and observers, most prominently the 120-member mission from the European Union.

So far, the Taliban have generally refrained from specific attacks on the election process or on voters, and have even agreed to allow voting to take place in some areas.

Yet violence has increased, and in some places the Taliban are ordering communities not to take part. In a rambling statement issued Thursday through a spokesman, the Taliban leadership urged people to boycott and fighters to sabotage the process.

“We are requesting all mujahedeen to do their best to sabotage the malicious election process anywhere in Afghanistan,” it said. “They should carry out operations on enemy bases, and ban people from going to vote one day before the election.”

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan.