Taliban Offensive Threatens Important Afghan Town

Image (click for full resolution): Lashkar Gah (31.58 N, 64.36 E), capital of Helmand Province, is one of the larger towns of southern Afghanistan, with a population of around 50 000. The image clearly shows a more spacious central portion built by American builders in the 1950s surrounded by more recently built neighborhoods. The town was constructed as part of a major irrigation project which included the canals in the irrigated area on the left. Notably, this is a flat desert area with no terrain advantages for guerrillas.

Various reports (including the New York Times) indicate that there is a major Taliban offensive aimed at the town of Lashkar Gah. The town lies in the southern desert of Afghanistan in what is claimed to be the world's greatest opium-producing region, Helmand Province, with over a thousand square kilometers of fields producing over a quarter of the world supply.

The reports indicate that twice in the last week, there were two attacks on the city, each involving several hundred fighters and lasting for several hours. Major urban assaults like this are rare in unconventional warfare because they are vulnerable to air strikes.

The centrality of the area to Afghan opium production suggests that this activity, which is by far the largest source of hard currency earnings in Afghanistan, is the target of the assualt. It is alleged that the industry is mostly controlled by close associates of President Hamid Karzai:

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Karzai versus the UKPNS
09/12/2008
By Musa Khan Jalalzai
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President Hamid Karzai has recently blamed forces of the UK deployed in Helmand province of Afghanistan for the day to day growing Taliban insurgency of the country. Karzai has already indulged in a blame game with Pakistan. His relation with the warlords of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, in terms of business and family ties, has created trouble in the region. These warlords have links with the insurgent groups in the south.

The Times reported that Prime Minister Brown threatened Karzai to withdraw the British troops from southern Helmand province if Karzai took the steps of reappointing two provincial governors sacked for alleged dealings in the heroin trade. The former governor of Helmand, Shir Muhammad Akhundzada, is Karzai’s close friend who had accompanied him into Afghanistan on a motorbike in 2001. He has been deeply involved in drug trafficking while in 2003 several Western NGOs left the province fearing Shir Muhammad Akhundzada and his Taliban friends. In a recent interview, Karzai said Akhundzada’s alleged links to drugs could be overlooked. Karzai had repudiated Britain’s opposition to the return of Akhundzada.

Some Western observers believe that Akhundzada encourages Taliban against British forces. Talking to journalists in Kabul, Shir Muhammad Akhundzada claimed that while he was governor of Helmand for four years, Nato did not drop a single bomb on the province, no civilians were killed, and no districts fell to the Taliban. “If I were still there, I am sure things would be the same as before.”

Since the Akhundzada appointment Helmand became the major conduit for heroin trade from other provinces. Karzai and his government shared the blame for failing to tackle warlords. All major Western embassies have the evidence that Karzai was supporting drug trafficker and war criminals. There was a strong pressure on Karzai to remove Shir Muhammad Akhundzada from his post but Karzai refused.

In 2005, before the British forces were due to be deployed in Helmand, British Prime Minister warned the President that Britain would not deploy troops as long as Mullah Akhundzada remained as governor of the province. Karzai removed Akhundzada and appointed his younger brother there. Sher Mohammad’s ‘punishment’ was that he was brought to the senate, while his younger brother, Amir Mohammad Akhundzada, was left in Helmand as deputy governor. Mullah Sher Mohammad Akhundzada was always a cause of tribal disputes. During his time, his men abused their government positions and did a lot of damage. They lit a fire that nobody can put out now.”

Another warlord Noorzai, whose sister was married to Ahmad Wali Karzai is a big narco dealer and a close friend of the President as well. In Kabul, Western observer accused Noorzai of close links to drug traffickers. The New York Times, in one of its reports, revealed about Karzai’s allies’ involvement in drug trafficking, including Shir Muhammad Akhundzada, Wali Karzai, and Noorzai. Reports about President’s brother Ahmad Wali Karzai intensified in 2006 while US television network quoted US forces files describing how his brother receive money from drug traffickers.

Afghan intellectuals are of the opinion that Britain has rightly accused Karzai of being unsuccessful over the past six years. Karzai sees himself in a perilous position, so he is beginning to attack Britain. Evidence of higher quality Afghan heroin indicates that those running the labs are also getting assistance from outside ‘foreign consultants’ of sorts. Former senior US State Department counter-narcotics official, Schweich wrote in an article in The New York Times website that “narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government”.

The official alleged Karzai was reluctant to move against big drug lords in his political power base in the country’s south, where most opium is produced. Heroin experts from Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan are immigrating to Afghanistan, where there are jobs for highly-educated scientists willing to oversee heroin production. According to the Financial Times, “Christina Orguz, Afghanistan country director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said Afghanistan’s drug lords were behaving like businessmen and recruiting the best talent available. Afghanistan now supplies more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin”.

In Helmand, southern Afghanistan, reported a man was not in a position to pay his debt so he married off his daughter to an opium dealer who already had a wife and four children. What is worse was yet to come. Unable to withstand the callousness of life in her husband’s home, she grabbed the AK-47 from the policeman guarding the council meeting in the Grishk district of southern Helmand province and killed herself.

Hillary Mann Leverett, a former US National Security Council official for Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera that the US knew that government ministers in Afghanistan, including the minister of defence in 2002, were involved in drug trafficking. Drug lords in Afghanistan are more powerful. Those who oppose them are badly punished. The head of Afghanistan’s anti-drug court was shot and fatally wounded on his way to work in the capital, Kabul. Alim Hanif, the director and chief judge of the Central Narcotics Tribunal appeals court, had been leading a campaign to bring influential drug traffickers to court and punish them for their crimes.

Reuter reported on July 28, 2008 that corruption in Afghanistan is hobbling efforts to combat the booming opium trade with powerful drug lords evading justice by simply making a telephone call to friends in high places. A glance at the intensified ongoing Taliban-led militancy in both Afghanistan and Pakistan; and rising poppy cultivation in Afghanistan demonstrates the unpromising attribute of its adverse consequences in this region.

The nexus of terrorism and drug trafficking in Afghanistan is a firebrand in the way of the political, economic, and social transformation in the country. As the region’s core state, how Afghanistan builds a strong political and security framework by eliminating safe havens for terrorists and narco-traffickers is critical for regional stability for not only that country but also for its neighbours. Taliban taxes on opium harvests, heroin production, and drug shipments in Afghanistan helped finance their military operations against Nato and the Afghan forces. These taxes, however, also bestowed legitimacy on Afghan drug traffickers. The illegal business of opium and drugs has been turned to strengthening warlords, corrupting local officials, Taliban insurgency, and fomenting terror and instability throughout the country.

Insurgent attacks in Afghanistan have increased in 2008. Aid agencies were increasingly becoming targets. Karzai sometimes blame the UK for the day to day increasing Taliban insurgency and sometimes Pakistan and Iran for their involvement in Afghanistan.

The writer is Executive Editor of Daily Outlook Afghanistan and author of 156 books on terrorism, extremism, and human trafficking, Afghanistan, drug trafficking and foreign policy studies and is based in London, UK.