.Ambush Raises Unsettling Questions in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan — It was one of the most humiliating attacks the Afghan security forces had ever suffered. On Nov. 27, Taliban insurgents ambushed a supply convoy in the northwest province of Badghis, killing nine Afghan soldiers and five police officers, wounding 27 men, capturing 20 others, destroying at least 19 vehicles and stealing five, Afghan officials said.
The Afghan authorities quickly learned that the man suspected of having orchestrated the attack, Maulavi Ghulam Dastagir, had only weeks before been in police custody on charges of aiding the Taliban.
Mr. Dastagir had been personally released by President Hamid Karzai after assurances from a delegation of tribal elders that he would live a peaceful life, officials said this month.
The ambush, and the presidential pardon that allowed the insurgent to go free, have become the subject of a governmental inquest and the source of profound embarrassment for the Afghan government.
The case has also underscored the vulnerabilities of the Afghan security forces as the Taliban have multiplied their presence around the country and, in only the past few years, have gained strength in regions that were once relatively peaceful, like the northwest. Developing the Afghan security forces is a cornerstone of the American-led effort to defeat the insurgents.
“This is an important subject for everybody because we haven’t had these sorts of casualties before,” said Gen. Zaher Azimi, the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense.
Mr. Karzai has publicly said little, if anything, about the case. His spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, acknowledged in an interview last week that the president had released Mr. Dastagir from detention in September after a meeting with a delegation of tribal elders and politicians from Badghis who appealed for his freedom.
From time to time, Mr. Karzai issues pardons for detainees, though these orders often happen without publicity. In traditional Afghan society, problems are often resolved through quiet discussions among tribal elders and other community leaders.
“They thought he was a good person and not an enemy of the state,” Mr. Hamidzada said. “Based on their advice, he decided to release him.”
“Many people are taken into custody illegally and are lumped with the Taliban and others,” he added. “They’re not all Taliban, they’re not all terrorists.”
The spokesman said it was not yet certain whether Mr. Dastagir had led the ambush, though General Azimi, the Defense Ministry spokesman, said the evidence indicated that he “played the main role.”
Reached by telephone late Saturday, Mr. Dastagir laughed when asked whether he had been involved in the ambush. “Definitely!” he exclaimed, and laughed again. “I am a jihadist, I will continue my jihad,” he declared. “My morale is very high.”
The Taliban insurgency, which is based in Afghanistan’s southern and southeastern provinces, along the border with Pakistan, has steadily expanded to other parts of the country, particularly in the west and northwest.
In the past three years, the size of the Taliban presence in Badghis, a mountainous and sparsely populated province on the border with Turkmenistan, has multiplied from almost nothing to a force that numbers in the high hundreds, if not more, and that has cowed local officials and has come to dominate large areas of territory, provincial officials said.
This growth, residents and local officials say, has been relatively unchecked by Afghan and international security forces.
The insurgency has also become increasingly tenacious in the neighboring provinces of Herat and Faryab. In the telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Dastagir, who said he was speaking from Badghis, vowed to solidify the Taliban’s foothold in those provinces and press the insurgency’s campaign farther. “We will infiltrate the other provinces in the north,” he said.
Several officials said Mr. Karzai’s release of Mr. Dastagir was a major setback in the struggle to roll back the Taliban presence in Badghis.
“The Afghan and foreign security forces don’t have a strategy for security in Badghis,” said Qari Dawlat Khan, the leader of the provincial council.
The autopsy of the ambush also revealed flaws in military planning and intelligence gathering, including fundamental problems in the command of the unit that been attacked, the Afghan National Army’s 207th Corps, Afghan officials said.
Before the Badghis ambush, the unit had suffered significant losses in several insurgent attacks in the past two years in Badghis and the western provinces of Farah and Herat, and the performance of the unit’s commander was under review, officials said.
The convoy’s mission was to carry supplies for the police from Qala-i-Nau, the provincial capital, to Balamorghab, a Taliban stronghold about 70 miles away along poor roads, officials said.
On Nov. 26, about 200 Afghan soldiers and police officers set out from Qala-i-Nau, spent the night in the village of Mangan, near the border, then resumed driving early the next morning.
As the road passed through a gorge near Balamorghab, insurgents hiding on the bluffs above opened fire with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, officials said. The initial volleys blew up an oil tank-truck that was positioned toward the head of the convoy, blocking the road and dividing the forward vehicles in the convoy from the others.
The ensuing battle lasted several hours, ending only after four helicopters, two from the Afghan Army and two from the international forces, arrived with Afghan commandos to help repel the insurgents.
General Azimi, the Defense Ministry spokesman, said the attack was “totally unexpected,” in part because the commanders had taken the tribal elders at their word and believed that the local Taliban fighters would not initiate any attacks after the release of Mr. Dastagir.
Since the attack, the government’s top security officials have been called to testify before Parliament twice. Muhammad Eqbal Safi, a member of Parliament and the chairman of the lower house’s defense committee, said the officials’ explanations about the security forces’ lack of readiness “did not convince us.”
A high-level official in the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, informed Parliament last week that intelligence officials had warned military and police officials of a possible Taliban ambush in late-November, Mr. Safi said.
Mohammad Yaqub, a lawmaker from Badghis, who was not in the delegation that visited Mr. Karzai, said it was commonly believed that there were several hundred, and possibly thousands, of Taliban fighters in the province. The convoy, he said, “was like handing food to the enemy.”
Rangeen Mushkwani, a senator from Badghis who attended the elders’ meeting with Mr. Karzai, said the Taliban ordered the delegation to plead for Mr. Dastagir’s release. “These people did not come by their own choice,” Mr. Mushkwani said. “They were forced to come.”
Mr. Mushkwani said that he attended the meeting only to protect his relatives in Badghis. “Because my relatives, my cousins, my family members are living under the authority of the Taliban, I couldn’t say that I wasn’t going,” he said.
According to Mr. Hamidzada, Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, the president has requested the names of the delegation’s members. If the investigation determines that Mr. Dastagir was responsible for the ambush, he said, the government would hold the elders responsible.
“Karzai took a political gamble and released him,” Mr. Yaqub, the lawmaker from Badghis, said of Mr. Dastagir. The president, he added, was “deceived.”
NYT
The Afghan authorities quickly learned that the man suspected of having orchestrated the attack, Maulavi Ghulam Dastagir, had only weeks before been in police custody on charges of aiding the Taliban.
Mr. Dastagir had been personally released by President Hamid Karzai after assurances from a delegation of tribal elders that he would live a peaceful life, officials said this month.
The ambush, and the presidential pardon that allowed the insurgent to go free, have become the subject of a governmental inquest and the source of profound embarrassment for the Afghan government.
The case has also underscored the vulnerabilities of the Afghan security forces as the Taliban have multiplied their presence around the country and, in only the past few years, have gained strength in regions that were once relatively peaceful, like the northwest. Developing the Afghan security forces is a cornerstone of the American-led effort to defeat the insurgents.
“This is an important subject for everybody because we haven’t had these sorts of casualties before,” said Gen. Zaher Azimi, the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense.
Mr. Karzai has publicly said little, if anything, about the case. His spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, acknowledged in an interview last week that the president had released Mr. Dastagir from detention in September after a meeting with a delegation of tribal elders and politicians from Badghis who appealed for his freedom.
From time to time, Mr. Karzai issues pardons for detainees, though these orders often happen without publicity. In traditional Afghan society, problems are often resolved through quiet discussions among tribal elders and other community leaders.
“They thought he was a good person and not an enemy of the state,” Mr. Hamidzada said. “Based on their advice, he decided to release him.”
“Many people are taken into custody illegally and are lumped with the Taliban and others,” he added. “They’re not all Taliban, they’re not all terrorists.”
The spokesman said it was not yet certain whether Mr. Dastagir had led the ambush, though General Azimi, the Defense Ministry spokesman, said the evidence indicated that he “played the main role.”
Reached by telephone late Saturday, Mr. Dastagir laughed when asked whether he had been involved in the ambush. “Definitely!” he exclaimed, and laughed again. “I am a jihadist, I will continue my jihad,” he declared. “My morale is very high.”
The Taliban insurgency, which is based in Afghanistan’s southern and southeastern provinces, along the border with Pakistan, has steadily expanded to other parts of the country, particularly in the west and northwest.
In the past three years, the size of the Taliban presence in Badghis, a mountainous and sparsely populated province on the border with Turkmenistan, has multiplied from almost nothing to a force that numbers in the high hundreds, if not more, and that has cowed local officials and has come to dominate large areas of territory, provincial officials said.
This growth, residents and local officials say, has been relatively unchecked by Afghan and international security forces.
The insurgency has also become increasingly tenacious in the neighboring provinces of Herat and Faryab. In the telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Dastagir, who said he was speaking from Badghis, vowed to solidify the Taliban’s foothold in those provinces and press the insurgency’s campaign farther. “We will infiltrate the other provinces in the north,” he said.
Several officials said Mr. Karzai’s release of Mr. Dastagir was a major setback in the struggle to roll back the Taliban presence in Badghis.
“The Afghan and foreign security forces don’t have a strategy for security in Badghis,” said Qari Dawlat Khan, the leader of the provincial council.
The autopsy of the ambush also revealed flaws in military planning and intelligence gathering, including fundamental problems in the command of the unit that been attacked, the Afghan National Army’s 207th Corps, Afghan officials said.
Before the Badghis ambush, the unit had suffered significant losses in several insurgent attacks in the past two years in Badghis and the western provinces of Farah and Herat, and the performance of the unit’s commander was under review, officials said.
The convoy’s mission was to carry supplies for the police from Qala-i-Nau, the provincial capital, to Balamorghab, a Taliban stronghold about 70 miles away along poor roads, officials said.
On Nov. 26, about 200 Afghan soldiers and police officers set out from Qala-i-Nau, spent the night in the village of Mangan, near the border, then resumed driving early the next morning.
As the road passed through a gorge near Balamorghab, insurgents hiding on the bluffs above opened fire with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, officials said. The initial volleys blew up an oil tank-truck that was positioned toward the head of the convoy, blocking the road and dividing the forward vehicles in the convoy from the others.
The ensuing battle lasted several hours, ending only after four helicopters, two from the Afghan Army and two from the international forces, arrived with Afghan commandos to help repel the insurgents.
General Azimi, the Defense Ministry spokesman, said the attack was “totally unexpected,” in part because the commanders had taken the tribal elders at their word and believed that the local Taliban fighters would not initiate any attacks after the release of Mr. Dastagir.
Since the attack, the government’s top security officials have been called to testify before Parliament twice. Muhammad Eqbal Safi, a member of Parliament and the chairman of the lower house’s defense committee, said the officials’ explanations about the security forces’ lack of readiness “did not convince us.”
A high-level official in the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, informed Parliament last week that intelligence officials had warned military and police officials of a possible Taliban ambush in late-November, Mr. Safi said.
Mohammad Yaqub, a lawmaker from Badghis, who was not in the delegation that visited Mr. Karzai, said it was commonly believed that there were several hundred, and possibly thousands, of Taliban fighters in the province. The convoy, he said, “was like handing food to the enemy.”
Rangeen Mushkwani, a senator from Badghis who attended the elders’ meeting with Mr. Karzai, said the Taliban ordered the delegation to plead for Mr. Dastagir’s release. “These people did not come by their own choice,” Mr. Mushkwani said. “They were forced to come.”
Mr. Mushkwani said that he attended the meeting only to protect his relatives in Badghis. “Because my relatives, my cousins, my family members are living under the authority of the Taliban, I couldn’t say that I wasn’t going,” he said.
According to Mr. Hamidzada, Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, the president has requested the names of the delegation’s members. If the investigation determines that Mr. Dastagir was responsible for the ambush, he said, the government would hold the elders responsible.
“Karzai took a political gamble and released him,” Mr. Yaqub, the lawmaker from Badghis, said of Mr. Dastagir. The president, he added, was “deceived.”
NYT
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