Updates on fighting in Kandahar and Farah

Coalition forces continue to fight on two fronts this week against Taliban offensives in both Arghandab (Kandahar Province) and Gulistan (Farah Province).

Kandahar:  The Taliban have been driven from Arghandab for now, with the loss of fifty men (“They have received heavy casualties, faced humiliation, and they are gone,” assured Assadullah Khalid, governor of Kandahar Province.)

But will they be gone for long? The big question mark is the longer term implications of the loss of Mullah Naqib, the  Alokozai leader who died of a heart attack two weeks ago. Abdul Rahim Jan, a tribal elder from Panjwai, was quoted by the Globe and Mail saying “Mullah Naqib protected Kandahar...This is a big loss. It’s like a thousand people died.” In the same story, Sarah Chayes noted that “Arghandab was the finger in the dike. Now you have a wall of water bearing down on the city.”

Chayes argues, in a comment on Registan.net, that Mullah Naqib was "the recognized and universally respected 'elder' of one of the most important tribes in the Afghan south. His moral authority was accorded him by his tribesmen, based on his human and leadership qualities." She notes that "Over the next few weeks, Mullah Naqib’s tribe will put forth a new leader, and he is someone whom, along with government officials, it would make sense for international officials to have contact with, since he will be the democratically selected representative of a large and crucial segment of the population of this region." It is a promising sign that the local population rejected the Taliban when they sought to move into the power vacuum.

Farah: The other front making news this week is in westerly Farah province, where a Taliban force (estimated by one official at 700 men) raided a police outpost and held some terrain. Fighting has gone on for five days now.

In Farah, skirmishes have been commonplace since February between rebels and the British troops. The province is arid and sparsely populated with marginal strategic value outside of its proximity to Iran.  Are the recent attacks receiving attention because of their significance or their timing? In any case, the local authorities featured in this Reuters story were alarmed by the scale of Taliban attacks, and have called for coalition airstrikes.

"Gulistan district is still controlled by the Taliban," Ikramuddin Yawar, the police chief for western Afghanistan, told Reuters. "We want assistance from NATO to support us from the air."...in the west, the chief of a district near Gulistan and Bakwa warned his area would also fall to the rebels unless foreign air power was brought into play

Comments

[Sarah Chayes]

As it happened, unfortunately, the normal tribal procedures for settling on a 'successor' to Mullah Naqib were tampered with by Afghan government officials.