Nato forces lose ground to Taliban in Khost

KHOST NEWS

If the residents of Khost come to Haji Feroz Khan wondering what to do about the bloodshed in their midst, he will tell them there is only one side worth fighting for.“I know lots of people who have sold their land and their property to join the Taliban,” he said. “It is the right way and I support that.”Mr Khan is an imam and former United Nations employee in this volatile south-eastern province bordering Pakistan. Like everyone else here, he now finds himself caught up in a struggle for survival that is pushing more men into the ranks of the insurgency.
Hardly a day goes by without another violent incident driving a wedge between the US-backed government and fiercely independent local communities who have become used to the rule of the gun.“Starting with the governor and finishing with [Hamid] Karzai, they are all corrupt. No one is here to think about this country, everyone is thinking how to fill up his or her pockets in any way possible,” said Mr Khan, 40.
“Since the foreigners have come the security has gotten worse. They are not here to bring peace, they are here to bring conflict.”Last spring, the man who would go on to become Barack Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan dubbed Khost “an American success story”. Writing in The Washington Post, Richard Holbrooke said, “the Taliban is being pushed out, and a government presence is extending into previously hostile territory”.
Almost a year later, all the evidence suggests that nothing could be further from the truth. For people interviewed by The National, any claims of progress are hollow at best.Even in the weeks before Mr Holbrooke’s comments, the warning signs were clear when a lorry loaded with explosives rammed into a government compound. Footage of the huge blast soon made its way on to Taliban propaganda DVDs distributed across the country.
The situation has continued to deteriorate, with attacks on foreign and local forces regularly making the headlines. In the past few days a senior district official has been murdered and, in a separate incident, three border police were killed.Mr Khan said it should be known that “the Taliban are the truth and they are honest fighters against these infidels”. He accused US soldiers of failing to respect Afghan and Islamic culture during house raids and claimed local police were involved in drug dealing. This has inevitably led to growing support for the insurgency.
“The Taliban are all local people from those areas that have been affected, even if they get some support from neighbouring countries,” he said.“The Taliban [government] was very good in terms of everything, but especially justice, crime, security and the Sharia.”Another Khost resident, Abdullah Zazai, 40, fled from his village home to the provincial capital because he feared that foreign soldiers would either bomb or raid his house. However, he said he felt most secure in those rural areas that were under the rebel’s control.
“I thought it was the insurgents who are meant to go around hiding, but it’s not the Taliban who are hiding, it’s the government’s people. They can’t go out of the district offices alone,” he said.“It is not safe here in the city too. Every day we expect suicide attacks and explosions, plus there are too many armed people who carry guns like it is a local custom or fashion. The government has tried to stop this many times, but it has always failed.”
Khost’s border with Pakistan is undoubtedly a key factor in the dire security situation. While residents often express their admiration for the insurgency, they also admit that rebels do move freely back and forth across the frontier.“Most of the Taliban are coming from that side of the border. They are mainly foreigners but a small number are locals because they know this area and they know the targets, but of course they have got prior training on that side of the border,” Mr Zazai said.
One of the main rebel groups in Khost is run by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the resistance campaign against Soviet occupation who took responsibility for last spring’s lorry bombing. Along with his son Sirajuddin, his network is frequently the target of US forces in the region. In the early 1990s, he led the capture of Khost’s capital from the communist government and it is often claimed he now lives just across the frontier in north Waziristan.
Sher Ahmad Kochi, commander of the border police in Khost, Paktia and Paktika provinces, said: “The criminals are coming in from Pakistan for many purposes, including suicide attacks which happen in every part of Afghanistan – especially Kabul. They are also coming to help organise and fund little [rebel] groups in different parts of the country.“The people hidden on that side of the border are upset with their government, their community and even their families. They are people who can’t bear their country to have some kind of democracy.”