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Taliban 'have presence in 72% of Afghanistan'

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-09 07:46

The Taliban hold a permanent presence in 72 percent of Afghanistan, a think-tank said yesterday, but NATO and the Afghan government rejected the report, saying its figures were not credible.

The findings by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) come in the wake of a series of critical reports on Western-led military and development efforts to put an end to the seven-year Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

The US government is conducting a wide-ranging review of strategy aimed at countering the Taliban guerrilla and bombing campaign which analysts agree has grown in both scale and scope in the last year.

But while the trends in the ICOS report reflected prevailing sentiment on Afghanistan, many of its findings appeared flawed and contained some glaring errors, security analysts said.

"The Taliban now has a permanent presence in 72 percent of the country," ICOS, formerly known as the Senlis Council, said in the report, adding that the figure had risen from 54 percent last year.

ICOS is an independent think-tank and research organization based in Brazil that has researchers in the region.

The report defines a permanent presence as an average of one or more insurgent attacks per week over the entire year.

According to ICOS, a "permanent presence" then would include many areas of the country where the Taliban traditionally launch a large number of attacks in the spring and summer "fighting season", before melting away during the harsh winter months.

"We don't see the figures in this report as being credible at all," said NATO spokesman James Appathurai. "The Taliban are only present in the south and east which is already less than 50 percent of the country."

The Afghan government also rejected the report and said "in addition to the questionable methodology of the report and its conceptual confusion, the report has misinterpreted the sporadic, terrorising and media-oriented activities of the Taliban".

Closing on Kabul?

At least 4,000 people have been killed in fighting in Afghanistan this year, around a third of them civilians, according to United Nations figures.

In the traditional Taliban heartlands of the mainly ethnic Pashtun south and east, NATO and US led forces are engaged in daily clashes with militants fighting to overthrow the Afghan government and drive out foreign troops.

But the insurgents generally shy away from massed attacks against Afghan and international troops, preferring "shoot and scoot" ambushes, backed by roadside and suicide bomb attacks.

The Taliban, said Appathurai, "don't control any areas where Afghan and international forces are present. Whenever Afghan or international forces patrol into an area they simply run away".

ICOS said the Taliban are "closing a noose" around the Afghan capital, Kabul, "establishing bases close to the city from which to launch attacks ... Using these bases, the Taliban and insurgent attacks in Kabul have increased dramatically."

Omar says more fighting

The Taliban's fugitive leader, Mullah Omar, promised more violence over the next year even as the US plans to deploy thousands more troops in hopes of turning around the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

Omar, who is believed to be sheltered by fiercely conservative tribesman on the Afghan-Pakistan border, said the increase in troops means that battles would "flare up" everywhere.

"The current armed clashes, which now number into tens, will spiral up to hundred of armed clashes. Your current casualties of hundreds will jack up to thousand casualties of dead and injured," said a statement, which was written in broken English and posted on a website on Sunday that has previously carried militant messages.

Violence in Afghanistan has spiked in the last two years, and 2008 has been the deadliest year for US troops since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban for hosting Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.

There are more than 60,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, including 32,000 US forces. Though US troop levels are already at their highest since the start of the conflict in 2001, American commanders have requested 20,000 more troops to stem the increase in violence that has engulfed parts of the country.

The rising violence in Afghanistan appears to be coordinated closely with the spike in militant attacks in neighboring Pakistan, and officials increasingly view both countries as part of the same battlefront.