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Thursday, July 19, 2012

Afghanistan insurgency threatens previously peaceful Bamiyan province

Concerns growing over violence in central highland province after two bombs killed nine police officers earlier this month

Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 July 2012 08.25 EDT

Afghan police officers train at a firing range in the central province of Bamiyan. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/REUTERS

The central highland province of Bamiyan has long been an island of security in the rising tide of Afghanistan's insurgency, largely insulated from the blasts and gunfire that have become commonplace across the rest of the country by its geography and a fierce strain of anti-Talibansentiment.

But concerns are growing over the government's ability to hold off insurgents in the region after two massive roadside bombs, just five days apart, killed nine police officers earlier this month.

It was an unprecedented toll for the area, and raised fears that violence will escalate as foreign troops withdraw.

The officers who died in two attacks on 3 and 8 July were the first Afghan casualties in Bamiyan since 2008, when a bomb killed a single policeman, according to Mohammad Ali Lakzi, the head of operations and archives for the provincial police force. A New Zealand soldier was also shot dead in 2010.

The area has remained so secure that it was chosen last summer to launch a gradual nationwide handover from Nato troops to Afghan forces, even though the nearest soldiers are in the next province. Armed police are the only security forces and they rarely have to make use of their guns.

But the people of Bamiyan have bitter memories of massacres in their valleys by Taliban troops, shortly before the hardline Islamists were ousted in late 2001, and the destruction of two giant Buddha statues that had gazed serenely out of a cliff for over a millennium.

And so the July bombs that detonated under two police vehicles have sent a chill through the province. The first set of buried explosives killed four officers and injured two, the second killed five.

"In the past few years we never faced such an incident," said the provincial police chief, Juma Guldi Yaardam, who has more than 1,000 officers at his command but says he needs army support in tackling the insurgent threat spilling over from less peaceful neighbouring areas – particularly Baghlan, Parwan and Wardak provinces.

"These provinces are unsafe and we have big concerns about the future. We think we need more troops to ensure good security for the borders."

The north-eastern district where the deadly bombs were buried has long been the riskiest part of Bamiyan, but the attacks were unusually bold.

"They were unprecedented in terms of the death toll and getting their targets," said a Foreign Official familiar with the province. The deaths rekindled concerns sparked by the kidnapping and murder of the head of the provincial council on the road from Kabul last year.

"Most of the province, in an Afghan context, is safe, but the north-east has this problem … Who knows whether this is the start of a pattern or not," the official added. "People are maybe getting a bit more nervous."

The provincial governor, the only woman in Afghanistan to run one of the 34 regional administrations, says the police are ill-prepared to handle battle-hardened insurgents.

"The number of guns that our police have is not really sufficient," Habiba Sarabi said in a telephone interview, in which she also stressed most of her province was still safe.

"Our military needs some more supplies, some more support for training and equipment."

Insurgents have attacked civilian supplies, including tankers of fuel, on the critical road through the northeast, and there are insurgents active along a southern route too. The violence pushes up prices in Bamiyan and limits travel out of the isolated province, she said.

"When they want to travel to Kabul … it's really bad for them to take either road," Sarabi said. "Sometimes even their gasoline trucks or some other supplies are stopped by these insurgents and also some of them have been burned, so this ensures the people of Bamiyan are suffering and not happy."

Most of the unrest is from small, mobile groups of less than 20 insurgents that cross into Bamiyan for brief attacks or to bury an IED before disappearing back into lawless areas where the government has little or no reach.

There are more checkpoints on the roads now as a stop-gap solution, but Sarabi said more co-ordination with officials in the troubled provinces, and help from the Afghan army, is critical to tackling the violence long-term.

The negotiations leading up to the security handover from New Zealand forces last July included a request for soldiers, but so far they have not been provided. A spokesman for the Afghanistan ministry of defence declined to comment on whether that might change.

"As a strategy of the ministry of defence, we check if there are threats and send forces where they are needed," said spokesman General Zahir Azimi.

Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri

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