KABUL (Reuters) - Three months ago, Britain's then defense minister said
NATO-led troops were determined to reconstruct and leave southern
Afghanistan without firing a shot.
Since then hundreds of people have been killed in attacks, hit-and-run raids and suicide bombings by Taliban guerrillas and their Islamic allies in what has been the most intense period of insurgency since the Taliban were removed from power in 2001.
Lieutenant-General David Richards, the British NATO commander set to take over responsibility for the south on July 31, conceded last week that NATO probably didn't know what it was getting into when it agreed to the mission two years ago.
Any notion that the Taliban would be less motivated to fight NATO forces than U.S.-led forces was misplaced, analysts say.
"Nothing will change at all," Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, a former prime minister, told Reuters. "The Taliban are willing to fight any foreign troops. No one has convinced the people the foreign troops are in the country's favor.
The Taliban are helped by villagers resentful of foreigners and thinly spread, poorly paid Afghan forces.
"We are seeing larger formations of enemy fighters," said coalition spokesman Colonel Tom Collins, noting the enemy had become better equipped and better organized.
"In some cases the resistance is surprising."
The sympathy the Taliban counts on from villagers is still harder to counter.
"The villagers think they (the Taliban) are guarding their way of life, their honor," says Hamidullah Tarzi, a former government minister.
"Now the coalition bursts into their homes day and night. There is dishonor for their women when they are searched. This backfires on the coalition."
The insurgents have infiltrated villages close to Kandahar, the main city in the south, and the situation is no different elsewhere in the region.
While cities and towns are held by Afghan security forces, backed by foreign troops, the guerrillas hold sway in the countryside.
CLASSIC INSURGENCY
It is a classic insurgency. Guerrillas sneak into a village at night, kill a few police, others run away, or even strip off their uniforms and switch sides. Government or coalition troops arrive and re-take the village, often without a fight.
Afghan security forces are too thinly spread and ill-equipped to provide continuous protection.
A Western security source told Reuters the Taliban, armed with AK-47s, walk around villages fearlessly.
"They have handshake-deals with the police. It's progressively getting worse," he said, asking not to be named.
In some places, irregular militias have been used, controversially, to protect the areas the government cannot.
Even if they are pushed back, the Taliban have shown that they can regroup in Pakistan and mount guerrilla-style raids on villages for years to come, said Wadir Safi, a law professor and ex-cabinet minister.
Apart from the Taliban, drug gangs also pose a serious challenge to NATO in the south, the main poppy-producing region of Afghanistan. The country is the world's leading producer of opium, from which heroin is derived.
Drug money not only fuels the insurgency, it also provides livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of Afghans.
Disillusionment in the towns presents another danger.
Urban unemployment and poverty are fertile conditions for insurgents, and people have seen little material improvement in their lives since the Taliban were vanquished five years ago.
"The local population don't politically support the Taliban, but they will keep on welcoming them until their life gets better," said Safi.
When NATO takes over responsibility for security in the south from the coalition troops, it will mark the start of the biggest ground mission in the alliance's history.
The plan was for coalition troops to sweep out the Taliban, allowing NATO to focus on stabilizing the south.
But the death of scores of militants, civilians and foreign troops in an offensive launched by coalition troops last month mocks former British Defense Secretary John Reid's hope that foreign troops would be happy to leave in three years "without firing one shot."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/...IyBHNlYwMxNjk2
Seems like to me Afghanistan is turning into Iraq
