To cheers and applause, hundreds of troops from Afghanistan’s fledgling national army took up positions on Thursday in the capital of a remote province overrun by a renegade commander a week ago. The green-bereted soldiers, sent to the central province of Ghor from neighbouring Herat to reassert central government authority, positioned themselves at Chaghcharan’s airstrip and key governmental buildings taken over by Commander Salaam Khan. There was no sign of resistance. Ghor governor Ibrahim Malikzada said Khan’s soldiers had left the town on Wednesday ahead of the arrival of the Western-trained national army troops. Khan’s men forced Ghor’s police chief, General Zaman, and military commander General Ahmad from the town last week after resisting central government attempts to disarm them and demanding their leader share in local power. Combatants said 18 people had been killed or wounded in the fighting.
Residents lined the dirt roads of the impoverished mountain town to applaud the arrival of the government troops. "Our job is to bring security here," Lieutenant-General Aminullah Paktiyanai, commander of the Afghan National Army battalion, told reporters. His troops were initially deployed in March to Herat to bring that city under control after heavy clashes in which the cabinet minister son of the city’s powerful governor was killed amid another dispute over disarmament of regional militia forces. Paktiyanai said the army had enough resources to prevent any further fighting in Chaghcharan.
A member of the central government delegation sent to probe the fighting said that Khan, Zaman and Ahmad had all now shown willingness to disarm their forces as part of a faltering nationwide drive intended to improve conditions for elections due in September. Delegation head Taj Mohammad Wardak said neither Zaman nor Ahmad now threatened to try to retake the town by force. Malikzada, who said after the fighting he was willing to work with Khan, called on President Hamid Karzai to replace both men and also called for more troops to provide election security. |