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| Afghanistan |
| Insecurity and the Role of Prisoner Releases |
| 2014-08-21 |
[ToloNews] Insurgent activities have taken on a more aggressive tone this fighting season, with broad-based offensives challenging Afghan forces around the country in a way that the more traditional hit-and-run guerrilla attacks have not. According to many security officials and analysts, this shift is in no small measure a result of policies pursued by President Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... that they consider weak and conciliatory. Critics of Karzai acknowledge that increased support for Talibs by the Pak military as well as the drawdown of NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... 's presence ahead of its December pullout have played a role in the recent security challenges. However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... military and politicians, as well as analysts and commentators, have also attributed rising violence around the country to a push by President Karzai to release suspected Lions of Islam from prison. According to officials, more than 3,000 suspected Taliban bully boyz have been released from prisons around Afghanistan over the past three years, since the U.S. and its allies began turning over control of major detention centers to the Afghan government. "The releasing of 3,000 inmates has further energized the ranks of Death Eater groups this year," a senior Afghan military officer told TOLOnews on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject. "The inmates released from jails are those who are coordinating the war against the people and the government, most of the released prisoners rejoin the fighting," he continued. High-ranking government officials have been among those who have openly criticized President Karzai for advocating for prisoner releases and ordering them by decree himself. The Minister of Defense, the First Vice President and many in Parliament have been especially vocal on the subject. "The release of Taliban prisoners without completing the legal process motivates them to return to the battlefield with confidence, because they know if incarcerated Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages! , there is a chance they will be released," military analyst Mir Ahmad Joyenda said on Monday. According to political analyst Jawed Kohistan ...a backwoods district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa distinguished by being even more rustic than is the norm among the local Pashtuns.... i, the confidence-boost the releases provide the insurgency has fueled the growing intensity of their activities that has been witnessed this year. "When you see that the number of casualties on the warfront with the Taliban reaches 50 percent, then we can say that the guerrilla war has changed to an offensive one," he said. "The Taliban effectively control some regions of the country." In response to the growing violence and what they see as a deficiency of support from the central government, a number of police commanders in provinces around the country have given their personnel shoot-to-kill orders in their engagements with the Taliban. They have said they don't trust the judicial system to exact justice on the bad boys, given the frequency with which combatants are released. President Karzai has justified his push to release suspected Lions of Islam over the past couple years by saying he is defending individual rights and due process. He has argued many of those released were unjustly imprisoned by foreign forces and were being held without charge or evidence against them. Moreover, the Presidential Palace has maintained that there is no evidence that individuals released from jail on order of the president have joined the fight against the Afghan government. "All these assertions are claims," Karzai's front man Aimal Faizi told TOLOnews. "If it is proven that any of the Taliban inmates who are released from jails on order of the president rejoined the fighting, or that they are terrorists, we would be responsive in this respect." Separately, though not un-relatedly, military experts have said that the president's decision to halt all nighttime military operations emboldened the Taliban this year and made pursuing effective counter-strategies difficult for the Afghan forces. Some have speculated Karzai's decisions to free prisoners and end nighttime raids stem from his personal animosity toward the foreign governments and forces that have supported his government since the invasion in 2001. This month, President Karzai met with the families of Afghan civilians who were killed by an air raid conducted by foreign forces in Shindand district of Herat ...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... province. He received some criticism for this as many security officials and experts believe more air support from the U.S. and other NATO countries is critical for the success of the Afghan forces. Some politicians have also pointed out that Karzai has yet to meet with the families of victims from the Taliban's gruesome massacre in Ghor province last month. All together, at the tail end of his time in office, political analyst Jawed Kohistani believes President Karzai's lightening of policies toward the insurgency has the distinct possiblity of overshadowing the rest of the work he did as head of state. "President Karzai is now at the end of his term as a failed president; the people of Afghanistan also hate him," Kohistani told TOLOnews. "He sees himself as being in a sensitive mental condition that creates the image of a defeated and bitter man, because of this, he has become more careless about the interests of Afghanistan." |
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