Baghlan On The Brink: ANSF Weaknesses And Taleban Resilience
AAN, 31 May 2013
Part 2 of 2
Currently many Baghlani villagers are particularly outraged that the former Baghlan-e Jadid police commander, Mohammad Kamin, and former district governor, Amir Gul, have thus far escaped justice although they have been accused of playing the main role in violent incidents in their district last year. This started when four Afghan Special Forces, who were patrolling in the main bazaar of Baghlan-e Jadid, tried to disarm an armed and uniformed bodyguard of Ridi Gul, a former jihadi commander loyal to Amir Gul. Ridi Gul then placed a phone call which led to Kamin’s police stopping the Afghan Special Forces, who had continued their patrol. After a discussion, the police opened fire and three of the four special forces soldiers were killed (see media coverage here, here and here).
Many Baghlanis hold Kamin responsible and are enraged that, even though Kamin and Gul were officially sacked following the incident, they were able to reclaim their positions. About a month after the incident, Kamin and Amir Gul were finally replaced by a police force dispatched from Pul-e Khumri. The mission turned into a battle. In the fight between the police and Kamin and Amir Gul’s men, two of their fighters were killed. Today, according to Rostaqi, the current district police chief, the two men are still in Baghlan-e Jadid, despite several warrants having been issued for the former district police chief, Kamin. He says Kamin never showed up in court and that ‘when someone approaches his house, he is threatened at gun point.’ Amir Gul is also charged with helping Kamin in the fight against the ANP in the second incident.
It is not the first time that Amir Gul, who like Mohseni belongs to the Jamiat faction, was suspected of criminal activities but (so far) escaped punishment. In the summer of 2006 the former jihadi commander, who was denied parliamentary candidature in 2005 because of links with illegal armed groups, was arrested after a ‘large arsenal of incriminating bomb-making material, weapons and ammunition was found in his compound’, according to the US embassy in Kabul, who suspected him of involvement in attacks against ISAF. Amir Gul, however, was released six months later by the Afghan intelligence service.
According to several Baghlani villagers who spoke to AAN, both Kamin and Amir Gul still have their own militias. An elder from one village in his area recounts how Amir Gul’s men harassed his son for money, ‘That’s why the people supported the Taleban.’ He said. ‘When we saw the Taleban we didn’t call the police. We knew they were not as criminal as Amir Gul and Kamin are.’ Now, with a new Baghlan-e Jadid police chief, an official from Takhar, the elder said he had more trust in the government again, ‘But the government will not do anything about Kamin and Amir Gul. How can we then be expected to stand up against them Taleban? So the people still do as Kamin and Amir Gul say.’
Baghlanis also complain that the Afghan security forces do not properly protect them. They especially dislike parts of the Afghan Local Police and how they are recruited and deployed in an ethnically sensitive area (a pattern occurs here, for cases illustrating the relation between ALP and insurgency in other provinces, see AAN’s recent blog on the situation in Faryab here and a media report from Jawzjan here). An elder from Baghlan-e Jadid district, the Taleban stronghold in the province, told AAN in a phone interview that the provincial police commander – a Helmandi – had only recruited Pashtuns who had relocated from Kandahar to Baghlan a few decades ago. The villagers, also Pashtuns but who had lived in Baghlan for many generations, protested, saying they did not trust these men. Another elder suspected that the ALP in his area was sympathetic to the Taleban. The brother of the commander in question is currently detained in Bagram, accused of anti-government activities.
To make things even more difficult in terms of provincial security, the Afghan National Security Forces seem to be spread thin in Baghlan’s districts. A Baghlan resident told AAN that already in 2010 the government usually only came in for a short while to fight and then went away again – and ‘afterwards the Taleban come back to our area.’ This still seems to be the case although, meanwhile, ALP have been deployed in the most notorious areas. On 4 May, Afghan National Army and the ANP’s ‘Provincial Response Company’ (PRC) trained and accompanied by German Special Forces carried out a ‘clearing operation’ in Baghlan-e Jadid after a police convoy was ambushed by insurgents. According to local authorities, 300 ALP men are currently based in Baghlan-e Jadid. Nevertheless, when the German soldiers and the Afghan police went into the area, a forest near the village of Zamankhel, to assess the results of the operation, they ran into an ambush. Three Afghans and one German were killed.
The area remained quiet for only a short while. Less than three weeks later, according to the district governor of Baghlan-e Jadid, on the same day provincial council chairman Mohseni was killed, two policemen were ambushed and killed near Zamankhel.
In whatever way the security situation develops in Baghlan, the German troops, who are leading the operations of ISAF’s Regional Command North, will be out of the province by end of June. The handover by ISAF to Afghan security forces began last May, when, according to ISAF, the ANA took over security responsibilities in the first six crucial districts, nearly with particularly high insurgency activity: Baghlan-e Jadid, Dahan-e Ghori, Pul-e Khumri, Dushi and Burka, where one of the two main infiltration routes can be found, the one leading south from Kunduz. Last year in April, around 1,300 ISAF soldiers were still based in Baghlan. Today, according to spokesperson Marco Schmidl, around 450 German soldiers are left. Another 150 American soldiers remain at a base in Kelagai – where the German Special Forces for the PRC trainers are currently based. The Hungarian camp Pannonia in Pul-e Khumri closed by the end of March. In the near future, ISAF will mostly operate from bases in Mazar-e Sharif and Kunduz. This means that ISAF bases, camps and outposts in other northern provinces are being dismantled or handed over to the ANSF.
Meanwhile, the main goals for the Taleban insurgency in Baghlan are to recapture Dand-e Ghori,(4) an area in the west of the province and south of the stronghold Baghlan-e Jadid, and continue significant influence in Baghlan-e Jadid itself, according to the member of the Taleban’s military commission interviewed by AAN. Controlling these districts would provide the insurgency with easy access to the provincial centre in Pul-e Khumri and to the Baghlan-Mazar-e Sharif highway – the backbone of traffic and trade between Hairatan Port in Balkh and the rest of the country.
How will the current shifts in the provincial power structures will affect the security situation?
The coming months will deliver answers to some important questions: how will the new and solidified Taleban establishment use its influence after most international troops are out of the way in July? Will the influential Jamiati supporters of the late Mohammad Rasul Mohseni react to his killing – and who will take his place? A new head of the provincial council has not yet been elected and Jamiat-e-Islami will probably try to impose its own candidate. Alam Jan, an important Pashtun powerbroker affiliated with Hezb-e Islami, might represent an alternative option. Also, will the ALP deployed to the two key districts of Baghlan-e Jadid and Dahan-e Ghori manage to keep the insurgents at bay with increasingly limited international support?
Baghlan is not a traditional Taleban stronghold. However, the insurgents have proved to be resilient and their re-organisation after the capture-or-kill operations of the past years seems to have progressed far. A source from their military commission also said that weapons were easily available in the province, saying, ‘Local [non-Taleban] commanders have been stashing away arms for a long time. There are many weapons caches in Baghlan.’
If the government in Kabul is serious about keeping Baghlan out of the hands of the Taleban, it needs to address the various factors facilitating the insurgency’s recent gains: local spoilers such as Mohammad Kamin and Amir Gul, the population’s discontent with the ALP and the weaknesses of the ANSF and local government.
http://aan-afghanistan.com/index.asp?id=3427