KANDAHAR, July 26: US and Afghan forces killed up to 50 Taliban fighters in central Afghanistan, a provincial governor said on Tuesday after the latest burst of violence in the run-up to September elections. A major Taliban ammunition depot was destroyed and 25 guerillas captured in the fighting late on Monday in Deh Rawud district of Uruzgan province, Governor Jan Mohammad Khan said.
“We have suffered some losses too, but I do not know how many,” he told Reuters. “Between 40 and 50 Taliban men died in the fighting and bombing.”
US and government forces have been responding to a surge in militant violence ahead of Sept 18 parliamentary elections, the next big step in the country’s difficult path to stability.
Monday’s fighting followed a clash in a village in the same district earlier that day in which six Afghan troops and one American soldier were killed, Mr Khan said.
Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi confirmed the loss of a major ammunition dump. But he put guerilla losses at four and said more than 20 Afghan and US troops died.
US military spokesman Lt-Col Jerry O’Hara described Monday’s fighting as a “successful” operation, but would neither confirm nor deny Khan’s figures on Taliban losses. He said the operation was continuing. O’Hara said on Monday that 11 insurgents were killed to the west of Deh Rawud town, along with one American and one Afghan soldier. Another US soldier was killed in an attack in the southern province of Helmand on Sunday.
REORGANISATION: Separately, Taliban guerillas killed a district police chief in neighbouring Zabul province overnight, a local official said, while the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press quoted police as saying that an election candidate was killed when his vehicle hit a landmine in the southeastern province of Paktika.
The latest violence has followed a call by the Taliban’s fugitive leader, Mulla Mohammad Omar, urging unity in the fight against the Afghan government and foreign forces.
Taliban spokesman Hakimi said Omar had divided Afghanistan into two war zones — eastern and southern — to make guerrilla efforts more effective, and commissions comprising 14 commanders had been established for each of the two zones.
They would report to a leadership council expanded from 10 to 18 members, which would be supervised by two senior commanders, Mulla’s brother and Mullah Obaidullah, who would report to Omar.
Omar’s whereabouts have remained unknown.
KYRGYZ BASE: In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan govt assured the United States on Tuesday that it could keep its base in the former Soviet Central Asian state to support American military operations in Afghanistan.
But remarks by the Kyrgyz leadership, under pressure on the issue from old ally Russia, fell short of providing the US with an open-ended right to stay on as long as it wished.
“I wouldn’t pack your bags,” US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told US troops at the Manas base, 30km east of the capital Bishkek after talks with Kyrgyz leaders.
The US Ganci airbase accommodates 1,000 US troops along with nine refuelling and cargo planes supplying Afghanistan operations.
“I have every reason to believe the relationship will continue in an orderly way,” said Rumsfeld, who later flew to Tajikistan for talks with its leadership.
But acting Kyrgyz Defence Minister Ismail Isakov told a news conference with Rumsfeld: “The presence of the (U.S.) base fully depends on the situation in Afghanistan.”
He said once Afghanistan became stable, there would be no further need for American use of the base. “Today the minister (Rumsfeld) rightly noted that the situation in Afghanistan has not finally got back to normal,” Isakov added.
Rumsfeld’s visit to former Soviet Central Asia highlights the rivalry with Russia in the region, some of whose members have huge energy resources and which is seen as a geo-strategic battleground in the “war on terrorism” and drug smuggling.
In Dushanbe, Foreign Minister Talbak Nazarov reaffirmed Tajikistan’s commitment to its more limited arrangement with the United States.
Tajikistan, the region’s poorest nation, gives US planes “gas-and-go” refuelling and emergency landing rights in conjunction with Afghanistan missions.
With Russia’s tacit acceptance, the United States established a military presence in the region in 2001 allowing it to use it as a springboard for operations in Afghanistan, which US-led forces invaded to topple the Taliban rulers.
Russia is now becoming concerned the US military presence could undermine its influence and promote revolutions like those that installed pro-Western governments in former Soviet Ukraine and Georgia.
MOSCOW PRESSURE: Under pressure from Moscow, a group bringing together Russia, China and four Central Asian countries demanded a US deadline for closing the bases in Kyrgyzstan and neighbouring Uzbekistan, until recently another vital regional US ally.
Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who drew US criticism after a bloody crackdown on demonstrators in the eastern town of Andizhan, has now restricted flights from the American base in his country.
Rumsfeld said recent developments were not a threat to the presence of the US bases, saying: “We have good arrangements with a number of countries in this part of the world that have been fashioned over time, and they have proved to be mutually beneficial.”
Russia has established its own military base in Kyrgyzstan as a counter-weight to the US air base at Manas.—Reuters
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