Southern Afghanistan in ‘State of War’: Security Think-Tank
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, LONDON
A state of war is gripping southern Afghanistan as Taliban fighters win public support and it will spread unless newly deployed British troops regain control, a security think-tank warned June 6.
Entire districts in the restive province of Helmand have already been lost to insurgents who have learnt new bomb-making skills from the bloody campaign in Iraq, said Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Senlis Council.
In a new report on southern Afghanistan, the council said: “Helmand is in a state of war, once again. The nature of instability in Helmand has shifted from random insurgency to a state of prolonged and organized violence that threatens the very foundations of the new Afghanistan.”
Hardline military tactics used by U.S. troops, who were in charge of security in the south following the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, have left the local population fearful and wary of foreign soldiers, it said.
The report by the think-tank, which has offices in London, Paris, Brussels and Kabul, found that 80 percent of the people in Helmand support insurgent groups.
”The British troops will need to regain control ... otherwise the whole of southern Afghanistan will be lost to the Taliban insurgents,” Reinert told a London news conference to launch the report, “Helmand at war — the changing nature of insurgency in southern Afghanistan and its effect on the future of the country”.
”For this they will need to take a dramatically new approach this summer, one which is close to the people and which listens and responds to their needs and takes into account the real and desperate poverty of the provinces.”
Poverty in Afghanistan had worsened over the past four years and people were growing increasingly tired of the international community making promises and then breaking them, the Senlis Council’s executive director said.
A crackdown on illegal opium harvesting had robbed many farmers of their livelihood and substitution crop programs championed by the new Afghan government had failed to meet their economic needs, fuelling resentment.
In addition there was a perception among the public of corruption within their local administration.
”So much was promised when the Taliban fell and so little has been delivered,” Reinert said.
”The Taliban — seen as oppressors four years ago — are now seen as protectors and sometimes freedom fighters, while the foreign troops, which were seen as liberators from those very oppressors four years ago, are more and more seen as invaders if not crusaders,” he said.
The report, Reinert said, concluded that: “Helmand is an early warning of what the whole of Afghanistan could become if a different approach is not taken in the next months.”
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