http://www1.iraqwar.ru/iraq-read_article.php?articleId=1212&sesid=2
U.S. war heating up in Afghanistan
31.03.2003 [16:18]

As the U.S.-led coalition faces resupply snags and stiff local resistance in Iraq, America's other war also seems to be heating up.

Attacks against U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan, the former stronghold of the deposed Taliban regime, have spiked in recent weeks, culminating Saturday with the ambush of a U.S. Special Forces unit in Helmand province that left two U.S. soldiers dead, and a harmless rocket attack yesterday on the headquarters of the international peacekeeping force in Kabul.

The two deaths were the first U.S. casualties in the Afghan conflict since December. Their four-vehicle convoy was on reconnaissance patrol near Geresk, 80 miles west of Kandahar, when four assailants on two motorcycles opened fire and then escaped, according to Dad Mohammed Khan, the Helmand province intelligence chief.

The incident in Helmand came two days after gunmen staged a similar attack along an isolated road in south central Uruzgan province, killing Ricardo Munguia, a Swiss-El Salvadorian water engineer with the International Committee of the Red Cross. After executing Munguia with a shot to the head, his attackers warned Red Cross workers traveling with him not to assist foreigners. He was the first foreign-aid worker killed since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

U.S. and Afghan officials say it is unclear whether the recent violence was born out of anger over the war in Iraq or hope that the U.S. military would be less able to respond to continued hostility in Afghanistan while a fresh war raged in the Gulf.

U.S. military officials, however, downplayed the recent attacks, saying levels of resistance remain roughly normal.

"We have had ambushes before and will probably have them again," said Col. Roger King, the U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan. "I would be reluctant to characterize this as a surge."

He did, however, say of the attacks: "This helps paint the picture for future operations."

The attack raised to 28 the number of combat deaths among the coalition forces in Afghanistan, King said. An additional 34 have died in accidents or from other causes.

Still, the government of President Hamid Karzai is taking the threats seriously, say officials in Kabul, and will shortly make public information revealed by enemy fighters captured in recent weeks.

"We are investigating where are they coming from, how they are financed, and what their motivations are," says Omar Samad, Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman. "We are going directly to the source."

Afghan forces yesterday engaged in fierce fighting with Taliban forces reportedly connected to Munguia's death in the nearby town of Khakrez, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.

The latest incidents follow a spate of recent attacks in the southern provinces of Kandahar, Paktika, and Nangahar. Both Afghan and coalition soldiers came under attack, resulting in the deaths of about half a dozen Afghan soldiers, authorities say. Those attacked helped prompt the March 20 launch of a massive operation, code named Valiant Strike in Kandahar, which is the largest U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan since Operation Anaconda a year earlier.

The southeastern town of Jalalabad, meanwhile, has been rocked by a string of bomb attacks and the delivery of "night letters," pro-Taliban pamphlets distributed under the cover of darkness that urge locals to rise up against the U.S.-backed Afghan government and to kill U.S. soldiers.

Senior Taliban commander Mulla Dadullah, interviewed by telephone last week by the BBC's Pashtu language service, said Taliban forces were regrouping under Mullah Mohammed Omar to drive "Jews and Christians, all foreign crusaders" from Afghanistan. Attacks would increase in the near future, Dadullah said.

Concerns grew in neighboring Pakistan as well, with officials saying they were receiving fresh intelligence that terrorist groups are planning attacks.

Observers say the U.S. government needs to recognize that a confluence of issues could lead to further violence and possibly destabilize both Pakistan and Afghanistan in the coming weeks or months. Not least is the issue that people here generally oppose the invasion of Iraq and think the United States is targeting fellow Muslims.

Pakistani officials also fear that the United States again will desert the region ― as it did following the Afghan war in the 1980s to oust Soviet invaders ― once al-Qaida leaders such as Osama bin Laden are captured or if the campaign in Iraq drags on.

Afghan officials, meanwhile, worry that the slow pace of reconstruction in their shattered country is stirring resentment among the poor.

"In this context," says analyst Khalid Mehmood of Pakistan's Institute of Regional Studies, "the Taliban and the people who share their world view are more likely to increase their resistance, and this is exactly what is happening."

Источник: Gretchen Peters/The Christian Science Monitor