Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Anarchia afghana

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/12/AR2006041201
823_pf.html
New Attacks Foment Fear in Afghanistan
Weak Governance Beyond Capital Is Blamed
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
KABUL, Afghanistan, April 12 -- A spate of terrorist attacks, from the
murders of five medical workers in Badghis province in the north to bombings
in the opium poppy region of Helmand in the south, is expanding a climate of
insecurity across Afghanistan as NATO forces prepare to take over most
military duties from the U.S.-led coalition.
Afghan officials vaguely blame the attacks on "enemies of Afghanistan" and
denounce neighboring Pakistan for harboring Islamic insurgents bent on
destroying this fragile new democracy. The reinvigorated Taliban militia,
for its part, has vowed to wage a bloody spring and summer offensive against
the Afghan state.
But a variety of foreign analysts and military officials here offer a
different explanation: a vast canvas of weakly governed and unprotected
territory in which drug traffickers, feuding tribesmen and opportunistic
criminals -- as well as Taliban gunmen on motorbikes and mysterious suicide
bombers -- operate with increasing ease, despite the presence of tens of
thousands of foreign troops in the country.
"There are feudal fights, factional rivalries, people settling old scores,
people opposed to anti-drug operations," said Cmdr. Susan Eagles,
spokeswoman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force here.
"There is no coordinated strategy between incidents," she added. "When there
are areas of ungoverned space, where the rule of law is not in operation, it
becomes a breeding ground for insurgent action."
In addition to the growing number of suicide bombings, a tactic once unknown
in Afghanistan, Western officials cite persistent reports of a burgeoning
collusion in Helmand and Kandahar provinces between drug traffickers and
forces loyal to the Taliban, which banned opium poppies as un-Islamic when
it ruled most of the country five years ago.
In recent weeks, violence has been concentrated there, including a bold
armed assault March 29 on a U.S. and Canadian military base, coinciding with
the start of an international program to forcibly eradicate opium poppy
fields.
Over the next several months, more than 6,000 troops from Britain and other
NATO countries are slated to take over security in the southern region, and
analysts are predicting a bloody debut.
"Transitions are a time of testing, and both sides will have something to
prove -- the NATO forces to show they are tough, their opponents to show
they won't run," said Joanna Nathan, who heads the Kabul office of the
Brussels-based International Crisis Group, a nonprofit advocacy and research
group. "There will be more troops and more targets. It will be a pretty
messy summer."
Canada, Britain, Italy and the Netherlands have made strong commitments to a
new, more muscular Afghan mission under the NATO umbrella. Their decisions
followed heated domestic debates that were influenced by such incidents as
the near-fatal ax bludgeoning of a Canadian soldier by a teenage boy during
a village meeting in Kandahar.
In an interview Tuesday, Eagles said NATO forces were eager to shift from
their current mission of policing cities and mostly quiet rural areas in the
north to combating well-armed fanatics and drug runners in the south. The
transition from U.S. leadership to NATO military control is on track to
occur by July.
"We are extremely well prepared," she said, describing plans to flood the
sparsely patrolled poppy and Taliban region with up to 17,000 troops, in
coordination with Afghan government plans to bring in stronger local and
regional officials. "We are not going to be deterred or lose heart. We are
going to close down those ungoverned spaces so the Afghans can bring in
governance, development and the rule of law."
There are signs the renewed Taliban insurgency could be particularly
difficult to dislodge. U.S. military officials here, who often describe
Taliban terrorist attacks as acts of desperation, acknowledged concern this
week over the growing use of Iraq-style suicide bombings, which have killed
several dozen people this year.
"They are doing it because it is successful; they have shifted their tactics
to something successful," Col. James Yonts, the U.S. military spokesman
here, said Monday. He described the recent suicide bombings -- one of which
nearly killed the leader of Afghanistan's national assembly as he drove
through the capital last month -- as "very hard to combat."
On Saturday a suicide bomber struck outside a U.S. military compound in
Herat province in the west, which by Afghan standards has been largely
secure.
None of the bombers has been identified. Speculation as to their identities
include al-Qaeda foreigners, Pakistani agents and Afghan Taliban fanatics
who have seized on a new tactic.
Conventional attacks continue unabated as well. Last Sunday, unidentified
gunmen fired on a clinic in Badghis province, killing five Health Ministry
workers, and then set the facility alight. On Tuesday, seven children were
killed by a rocket that struck a crowded schoolyard in the town of Asadabad
near the border with Pakistan.
The revived Taliban insurgency does not appear to have established a
political foothold in Afghan society. But it has burned more than 200
schools and forced numerous foreign aid groups to retreat from much of the
south and southeast. In the tribal areas just across the Pakistan border,
moreover, Taliban adherents have begun carving out pockets of parallel rule,
settling local disputes and beheading suspected informants.
Until the Afghan government begins to establish a solid official presence
across the country, including in security, justice and social services,
several analysts here said, no number of foreign troops will be able to
quash the terrorist and criminal violence.

 
C.D.O.
-Stefano