Taliban, Nato hit the road to Kabul

BUSY SUMMER: Controlling access to the city is vital to militants and US-led forces, writes Patrick Quinn

FOR Taliban militants and United States strategists alike, all roads in this impoverished country of mountain passes, arid deserts and nearly impassable goat tracks lead to its ancient capital of three million people nestled in a high and narrow valley.

The Taliban made their intentions clear over the weekend, mounting spectacular coordinated attacks in Kabul that spawned an 18-hour battle with Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces. And now, the US is gearing up for what may be the last major American-run offensive of the war: a bid to secure the approaches to the city.

While bombings and shootings elsewhere in Afghanistan receive relatively little attention, attacks in the capital alarm the population, undermine the government's reputation and frighten foreigners into fleeing the country. That's why insurgents on Sunday struck locations that were so fortified they could cause little or no damage, including the diplomatic quarter, the Parliament and a Nato base.

"These are isolated attacks that are done for symbolic purposes, and they have not regained any territory," US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said on Monday.

The US-led spring offensive, expected to begin in the coming weeks, may be Nato's last chance to shore up Kabul's defences before a significant withdrawal of combat troops limits its options.

The focus will be on regions that control the main access routes, roads and highways into Kabul from the desert south and the mountainous east. These routes are used not only by militants but by traders carrying goods from Pakistan and Iran.

The strategy in eastern Afghanistan involves clearing militants from provinces such as Ghazni, just south of the capital. The pivotal region links Kabul with the Taliban homeland in the south and provinces bordering Pakistan to the east.

Nato, under US command, will also conduct more operations in eastern provinces, such as Paktika and Paktia, that are considered major infiltration routes to the capital from insurgent safe havens in Pakistan.

Afghan and US officials blamed the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, which is part of the Taliban and has close links with al-Qaeda, for the weekend attacks that left 36 insurgents, eight policemen and three civilians dead in Kabul and three eastern provinces. But Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said officials had not concluded whether the attacks emanated out of Pakistan.

Declining numbers of international troops in the coming months are also forcing coalition forces to focus less on remote and thinly populated places, such as eastern Nuristan. They hope to move responsibility for those areas to the Afghan security forces.

Coalition forces last summer made gains in traditional Taliban strongholds, such as Kandahar and Helmand provinces in the south, areas they must now hold with fewer troops.

By September, as many as 10,000 US Marines are scheduled to leave Helmand and hand over the lead for security to Afghan forces in the former Taliban stronghold.

"It's going to be a very busy summer," Gen John Allen, the top US and Nato commander, said recently. "The campaign will balance the drawdown of the forces with the consolidation of our holdings in the south" and an effort to push Afghan security forces into the lead.

The US this month finished moving the 1st brigade of the 82nd Airborne into Ghazni to help clear out a Taliban stronghold in Andar district.

It could be one of the largest remaining American clearing operations of the war.

It is not known when that operation will take place, but Ghazni is located at a key chokepoint with the country's main highway from the south to Kabul running through it. The highway runs just past Andar district.

"If you secure Andar, you have secured Ghazni, and you have secured Afghanistan," the governor of Ghazni, Musa Khan, told US forces last week at a handover ceremony with departing Polish troops.

Eliminating the Ghazni problem is an important part of the plan to transition security responsibility from foreign forces to the nascent Afghan National Security Forces.

After September, the US-led coalition may not have enough troops on the ground for such large-scale operations and will increasingly have to depend on the Afghans to take the lead.

The US-led coalition is keen to show that the 330,000-strong Afghan forces are capable of filling in a vacuum left by the withdrawal of 33,000 US forces by the end of September.

It also wants to use them more and more in operations against insurgent forces in key battlegrounds such as the east.

Afghan forces are to peak at 352,000 by the end of the year and are expected to take over much of the fighting as the US draws down an additional 23,000 troops to 68,000 by the end of September. US troop levels reached a high of about 100,000 last year.

Estimates of the Taliban fighting force hover around 25,000.

The Afghan army and police are now in charge of security for areas home to half the nation's population, with coalition forces in a support role. The coalition hopes to keep handing over control until Afghan forces are fully in charge by the end of 2013, with all combat troops scheduled to withdraw from the country by the end of 2014.

The US may retain a small number of forces past that date to help train and mentor the Afghan army and help with counter-terrorism efforts. AP

A scene of a Taliban suicide attack in Kabul on Monday. Afghanistan says its forces have regained control of the capital, killing Taliban militants, some disguised as women in burqas, who launched one of the biggest attacks on the capital in a decade of war. AFP pic

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