Taliban successes in the North

[SWJED]

29 May NY Times - Rise in Violence in North Shows Afghanistan’s Fragility by Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gall.

Angry supporters of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the ethnic Uzbek strongman, clashed with the police in the northern town of Shiberghan on Monday, leaving at least seven people dead and 34 wounded, officials said. The government sent army units to the area, anticipating further unrest.

Also in the north, a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of foreign security contractors, killing himself and two Afghan civilians. It was the fourth such attack in the north in the past two weeks.

The bombings in the relatively peaceful north indicated a rise in insurgent activity, and the violence in Shiberghan was a reminder of how tenuous Afghanistan’s internal stability remains, with former militia leaders like General Dostum still capable of rallying armed supporters to settle local power struggles..

[Steve Blair]

Another good reminder that we need to watch Afghanistan and stay engaged there.

[Merv Benson]

It is surprising that the police are not Dotsram's people. That seems to be the hiring model used in Anbar where the Sheik or in Dostram's case the war lords provides the bodies for the police recruits and the central government pays for their training and service.

[tequila]

Good rundown in Afghanistanica and Asia Times. Uzbeks, led by Dostum, are basically protesting the policies of a a northern Pashtun warlord appointed by Hamid Karzai to run Jowzjan province, which is predominantly Uzbek. The deaths look to have occurred during attempted storming/protest of the governor's residence --- undoubtedly he has his own forces there (in police unis, of course) to protect him.

Note that the Iraqi tribes in Anbar (the Uzbeks are not tribal, but the center-province clash is similar) are also feuding with the Baghdad-appointed governor of Anbar.

[jcustis]

Another good reminder that we need to watch Afghanistan and stay engaged there.

And to think, Steve could see it coming six years ago.

[JMA]

Someone fallen asleep at the wheel?

Taliban takes hold in once-peaceful northern Afghanistan

In squads of roaring dirt bikes and armed to the teeth, Taliban fighters are spreading like a brush fire into remote and defenseless villages across northern Afghanistan. The fighters swarm into town, assemble the villagers and announce Taliban control, often at night and without any resistance.

Maybe its time to again ask the very inconvenient question as to what the ANA/ANP are doing and are actually capable of?

[davidbfpo]

JMA,

No, I doubt it. The development of a Taliban presence has been well documented in open sources and several posts have referred to it. What is puzzling and worrying IMHO is that we have associated these areas with the former, now demobilised Northern Alliance and assumed the locals would neither welcome the Taliban or tolerate them.

[Fuchs]

The trouble in the RC North sector is afaik concentrated on Pashtu minority regions.

You can have all the hearts and minds of most settlements, but meanwhile there are a few Pashtu settlements in between whose inhabitants feel suppressed by a corrupt non-Pashtu governor. The Taliban arrived and slowly gained footholds over the years.
Meanwhile, ANA and ANP units that prove to be useful in the North are sent as auxiliary troops to hot spots in the South. This guarantees that no matter what the Western foreigners do in the North and no matter how ready the mayor of Kabul and his clique are to take over security responsibilities in the north - the assistance mission cannot end before the hot spot fires elsewhere are extinguished.

The North could be more quiet, but no matter whether it's quiet or not, it's simply not decisive. It's a sideshow.

[Cole]

The trouble in the RC North sector is afaik concentrated on Pashtu minority regions.

You can have all the hearts and minds of most settlements, but meanwhile there are a few Pashtu settlements in between whose inhabitants feel suppressed by a corrupt non-Pashtu governor. The Taliban arrived and slowly gained footholds over the years.

Agreed, and this article makes it sound like Taliban there are a recent problem while Wikipedia cites problems with Pashtuns there dating back to 2007...even all the way back to our invasion of 2001 when Northern alliance troops took back control from the Taliban Pashtun. There are mostly non-Pashtuns in these northern provinces and land swaps could be arranged if the government desired to consolidate into two largely autonomous states and keep Pashtuns together in their own area.

It is interesting to note that Gormach district is mentioned in this new article, and Wikipedia says it is 97% Pashtun. Wikipedia of "Gormach district" also said it was part of Badghis province which is 62% Tajik and only 28% Pashtun as a whole. But wait, another Wikipedia says Gormach is NOW (as of Dec 2008) part of adjacent Faryab province...which is 53.5% Uzbek, 27% Tajik, and just 13% Pashtun. See the problem? A small Pashtun district that the Taliban is "invading" is surrounded by non-Pashtuns.

The result? This is one of the few areas where the Ring Road around Afghanistan is not fully finished. Check out this article about the contractor who was repeatedly kidnapped and threatened for trying to finish that section of road:

http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ...672735403.html

[FieldMarshal]

Well, I agree on that someone has been sleeping at the wheel. Ignoring the reports from the ground outlining what is happening in the NW for years. (Just run through the wikileaks-files)

Some points:
1. Allthough granted the Pashtun areas are the places where the TB is gaining the most ground in the North, they have been picking up speed outside the Pashtun areas. Probably driven by non-pashtun affiliated organizations/movements. The article is about Qeysar, and Uzbek dominated district and a previous Junbesh stronghold. That the TB is able to push through this district without much local opposition is a very bad sign.

2. I disagree on that the North is not decisive. It may not be where we win this war, but can clearly be where we lose it. As fighting an insurgency is about perceptions, the sense of TB gains into "the safe north" may be quite significant for the Afghans sitting on the fence in the East, West and Kabul. (The south is allready gone, so there it hardly will matter)

Instead of turning the TB expansion that has been ongoing in the NW since 2007, we have instead chosen to reinforce failure. Currently 30k coalition troops and everything that can be scraped together of ANSF are trying to hold Helmand together, with a total population of 800.000 people, while one US field artillery bn, 1800 untrained ANP and one and a half ANA bn is trying to stem a TB expansion into Faryab, with a population of 1,2 million where about 300.000 of them are Pashtuns.

In the North, wishful thinking has replaced common sense for several years, now the door is hitting us in the face...

[FieldMarshal]

It is interesting to note that Gormach district is mentioned in this new article, and Wikipedia says it is 97% Pashtun. Wikipedia of "Gormach district" also said it was part of Badghis province which is 62% Tajik and only 28% Pashtun as a whole. But wait, another Wikipedia says Gormach is NOW (as of Dec 2008) part of adjacent Faryab province...which is 53.5% Uzbek, 27% Tajik, and just 13% Pashtun. See the problem? A small Pashtun district that the Taliban is "invading" is surrounded by non-Pashtuns.

First of all. Afghan population data is notouriosly unreliable. That said, the article is about Qeysar, not Gormach. The TB allready controls Gormach, this story is about how they are effectively advancing into Uzbek dominated Qeysar and taking control over Uzbek villages unchecked.