Afghan Forces Lose Ground as Taliban Adapt

By DAVID ROHDE

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 26 — Over the past six weeks, the Taliban have driven government forces out of roughly half of a strategic area in southern Afghanistan that American and NATO officials declared a success story last fall in their campaign to clear out insurgents and make way for development programs, Afghan officials say.

A year after Canadian and American forces drove hundreds of Taliban fighters from the area, the Panjwai and Zhare districts southwest of Kandahar, the rebels are back and have adopted new tactics. Carrying out guerrilla attacks after NATO troops partly withdrew in July, they overran isolated police posts and are now operating in areas where they can mount attacks on Kandahar, the south’s largest city.

The setback is part of a bloody stalemate that has occurred between NATO troops and Taliban fighters across southern Afghanistan this summer. NATO and Afghan Army soldiers can push the Taliban out of rural areas, but the Afghan police are too weak to hold the territory after they withdraw. At the same time, the Taliban are unable to take large towns and have generally mounted fewer suicide bomb attacks in southern cities than they did last summer.

The Panjwai and Zhare districts, in particular, highlight the changing nature of the fight in the south. The military operation there in September 2006 was the largest conventional battle in the country since 2002. But this year, the Taliban are avoiding set battles with NATO and instead are attacking the police and stepping up their use of roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices or I.E.D.’s.

“It’s very seldom that we have direct engagement with the Taliban,” said Brig. Gen. Guy Laroche, the commander of Canadian forces leading the NATO effort in Kandahar. “What they’re going to use is I.E.D.’s.”

The Taliban also wage intimidation campaigns against the population. Local officials report that one of the things that the insurgents do when they enter an area is to hang several local farmers, declaring them spies.

“The first thing they do is show people how brutal they are,” said Hajji Agha Lalai, the leader of the Panjwai district council. “They were hanged from the trees. For several days, they hung there.”

NATO and American military officials have declined to release exact Taliban attack statistics, and collecting accurate information is difficult, particularly in rural Afghanistan. According to an internal United Nations tally, insurgents set off 516 improvised explosive devices in 2007. Another 402 improvised explosive devices were discovered before detonation.

Reported security incidents, a broad category that includes bombings, firefights and intimidation, are up from roughly 500 a month last year to 600 a month this year, a 20 percent increase, according to the United Nations.

The rising attacks are taking a heavy toll. At least 2,500 to 3,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence so far this year, a quarter of them civilians, according to the United Nations tally, a 20 percent increase over 2006.

NATO and American casualty rates are up by about 20 percent this year, to 161, according to Iraq Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Afghan police continue to be devastated by Taliban bombings and guerrilla strikes, with 379 killed so far this year, compared with 257 for all of last year.

Yet the Taliban have been unable to take large towns this year and have carried out 102 suicide bombings, roughly the same number as last year, according to the United Nations. A conventional Taliban spring offensive was predicted by many but never materialized, and Western officials say that raids by NATO and American Special Operations forces have killed dozens of senior and midlevel Taliban commanders this year.

Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, said the Taliban’s leadership was in “disarray” and had not been able to carry out the attacks it had hoped this year and would be even weaker next year.

“This has been a shaping year,” he said. “I think next year will be a decisive year.”

Afghan Army units have performed well, according to Western officials. The trouble has come when the army and foreign troops withdraw, leaving lightly armed Afghan police forces struggling to hold rural areas. Corruption is rampant among the police, and some units have exaggerated casualty rates or abandoned checkpoints.

Recent visits to three southern provinces revealed territorial divisions that largely resembled those of last year. In Kandahar and Helmand, the government has a strong presence in about half of each province, the local police said. And in Oruzgan Province, where Dutch NATO forces focus more on development programs than on combat, the government controls the provincial capital, several district centers and little of the countryside.

The seesaw nature of the conflict is evident here in Kandahar, where the local governor cites a slight drop in suicide bombings in the provincial capital as a sign of progress. But police officials and villagers bitterly complain that Canadian forces abandoned Panjwai and Zhare.

Syed Aqa Saqib, Kandahar’s provincial police chief, said Canadian and Afghan Army forces began withdrawing from four checkpoints and two small bases in Panjwai in early July. The withdrawals coincided with the rotation of Canadian military units serving in Kandahar in August, he said.

The pullback left two Afghan police posts in Panjwai largely unprotected, he said. On Aug. 7, the Taliban attacked the posts simultaneously. For several hours, the police held them off and called for help from Canadian forces, he said, but none arrived. Sixteen policemen were killed.

“The Canadians didn’t support them,” Mr. Saqib said. “Then, we went to collect our dead.”

General Laroche, the Canadian commander, said an Afghan Army unit was immediately sent to aid the police but it returned and asked for Canadian assistance, citing fears of roadside bombs. Canadian troops then arrived as quickly as they could.

Canadian forces are now establishing joint checkpoints in Panjwai and Zhare where Canadian troops, Afghan Army soldiers and police officers will all be present, he said. And Canadian forces recently retook a checkpoint in Zhare.

General Laroche and General Champoux said it was vital to train Afghan police forces who could secure areas after NATO and Afghan soldiers cleared them, and to find strong, honest local leaders to administer them.

“The most important part is holding it,” General Champoux said. “We’re most effective when we’re holding it with Afghans.”

The Panjwai police chief, Bismillah Jan, said Taliban attacks on the local police began intensifying four months ago. Deploying far more roadside bombs than last year, the Taliban have destroyed 11 police vehicles and killed several dozen policemen.

Today, Mr. Jan has 64 policemen — each with one month of training — and five functional vehicles to defend the district from several hundred Taliban fighters. He said that his men could make forays into Taliban areas but that they could not hold terrain.

“We can go there, but we cannot control it,” he said.

In separate interviews, half a dozen tribal elders from Panjwai described the Taliban attacks on police posts and other new tactics. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from the insurgents.

After moving though the area in large groups last summer, the Taliban now operate in bands of no more than 20. Instead of sleeping in freshly dug bunkers and trenches, they sleep in mosques and houses, apparently to avoid NATO airstrikes, or, in the event of an attack, to increase the likelihood of civilian casualties, villagers said.

“Last year, they had their own trenches and their own places,” one elder said. “Now, they are very close to the houses and families. Their tactics changed.”

Another elder said: “They are very rude. First, they ask you for food. Then, they search you 20 times.”

Officials in Helmand and Oruzgan Provinces described dynamics similar to those in Kandahar. Security improved somewhat in provincial capitals this summer, they said, but rural areas remain no man’s lands dominated by criminal gangs and the Taliban.

In Helmand, where 7,000 British troops are based, residents credited the new police chief, Muhammad Hussain Andiwall, with improving security somewhat in the provincial capital. But opium cultivation and lawlessness are flourishing in the countryside.

Last month, the mayor of Gereshk, Helmand’s second-largest town, was kidnapped as he drove through a stretch of desert separating the town from the provincial capital. When Mr. Andiwall drove to the scene to try to find him, a roadside bomb exploded as his vehicle passed, killing four civilians.

After the mayor’s family paid a ransom to local criminals they freed him.

In Oruzgan, Dost Muhammad Dostiyar, the counternarcotics chief, said people were waiting to see if the government and Dutch forces could reassert themselves.

“One of the big reasons the people have distanced themselves from the government is that the government only has control of the capital,” he said. “The rural areas are totally under the control of the militants.”

Afghan officials in all three southern provinces said the Taliban had evolved as a movement as well. Taking advantage of popular frustration with government corruption, the Taliban have broadened from a close-knit, ideologically driven movement to an amalgam of loosely affiliated groups fighting the government.

Across the south, the term “Taliban” now encompasses a shifting array of tribes, groups, criminals, opportunists and people discontented with the government. In private, some Western officials say a political approach to more moderate insurgents is needed. Elders from Panjwai blamed the United States and President Hamid Karzai for not including more southern tribes in the government formed after the fall of the Taliban.

“When the Americans came, they didn’t contact the right people,” one elder said. “They empowered two or three tribes and they pushed away others.”

Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan, said there was disorientation among insurgent groups. The Taliban have lost much of their senior leadership, he said, and other insurgent groups are not gaining popular support. At the same time, Pakistan is showing signs of cracking down on Taliban leaders there. All of these factors, present an opportunity for the Afghan government and NATO forces, he said.

“The Taliban are vulnerable in many ways,” he said. “Enormous achievements haven’t yet been made, but there has been progress.”