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German troops face pitched battles in Afghanistan as insurgency spreads
German troops are fighting the first pitched battles witnessed by the Bundeswehr since 1945 in the face of a growing Taleban insurgency in the north of Afghanistan.Security has deteriorated in areas such as Badghis province in the northwest, Kunduz, Baghlan and some parts of Takhar and Badakhshan provinces. In April there was heavy fighting in Kunduz province during Operation Towheed, in which seven German soldiers were killed. Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German Defence Minister, gave a warning last week of new and greater risks' that German forces must bear. Recent opinion polls have put German public opposition to the country's 5,000-strong Afghan deployment at 62 per cent. A spokesman for the German forces in Kunduz told The Times this weekend: It was intensive fighting in April. The situation is not stable and not secure. It has been deteriorating for more than a year.' Since the Bundeswehr entered Afghanistan in 2002, 39 soldiers have been killed. The contingent is the third-biggest after the US and British forces. In a speech last month the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, tried to drum up support for the military mission in Afghanistan in an uphill battle against growing public resistance. She told the Bundestag that German troops will try to start handing over some responsibility to Afghan authorities in 2011 but added that the country's soldiers will stay as long as necessary. When German troops first deployed in Afghanistan in 2002 the north was seen as the safest part of the country and Berlin has resisted Nato's requests to send its soldiers to more volatile regions. What is alarming for Western commanders and the Afghan Government are signs that the northern insurgency is gaining a hold outside the Pashtun ethnic community. Pashtuns are a minority in the Tajik-dominated north. General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander, is to send 5,000 extra US troops under German command to the north by September and announced last week that 56 helicopters would be sent to the area. Speaking in Germany, General McChrystal warned ten days ago: The situation in the north will become dangerous, in parts very dangerous.' Kunduz has become a key battleground since Nato said that it would open a resupply route running from Latvia via Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the northern border. At the end of 2009, with government authority in Kunduz on the verge of collapse, the Afghan Government armed local militias who have, in some areas, pushed back the Taleban. On a tree-lined road in Khanabad, bordering the Taleban-held Chardara district, The Times found a group of armed local men. Their commander said that his force had cleared their area but after five months had yet to be paid. The provincial governor is a liar,' he said. He sits in his chair and says he controls the province.' Nizamuddin Nashir, the district governor of Khanabad, warned that the militias were beginning to turn to crime, extracting a 10 per cent tithe on local goods and patting down road users for bribes. If it continues like this, people will hate the militias,' he said. Many of the militias are the same ones that were disarmed at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars by the UN disarmament scheme after 2001. The insurgency in Kunduz followed the classic model for a Taleban takeover. Pro-Taleban preachers arrived in the province in 2008. Unarmed commanders followed to reconnect dormant networks of fighters. In June 2008 assassinations of pro-government figures began and videos of the killings were circulated. In the face of government weakness and corruption Taleban groups quickly achieved local dominance in several districts before any concerted response was mounted. Local officials report that the insurgents have made some inroads with non-Pashtun groups Uzbeks, Turkomans, Afghan Arabs and even Tajiks. Several officials claimed that Uzbek fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) were working among the Uzbek and Turkoman communities. Several hundred IMU fighters took refuge in Pakistan after the collapse of the Taleban in 2001, and have moved back. They are sending Pashtun Taleban to the Pashtun districts,' Engineer Mohammad Omar, the provincial governor, said. Al-Qaeda has sent Uzbeks to the districts with Uzbeks and Turkomans.' However, in Kunduz the Taleban have suffered setbacks. In a succession of US special forces night raids, local officials and even the Taleban admit that about nine middle and senior-level Taleban commanders have been killed, including the new Kunduz shadow governor', Mullah Khan Mohammad. Posted by: 2010-05-03 |
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