Bad news from Badghis

Monica Bernabe, a Spanish journalist writing on the Afghanistan Analysts Network, says Badghis province is basically a mess.

'Everybody has left because of the fighting', the American Major Richard Wade said in June 2009 to justify why very few civilians could be seen in the Bala Murghab bazaar. 'The Taleban have check points outside the town and force the people to pay if they want to enter', he added. ANA captain Abbasi Ghazanfar described the brutality of the insurgents: 'When they capture an Afghan soldier, they take out their eyes first and afterward behead him. Only those soldiers who are Pashtuns have a chance to save their lives.'

The deteriorating security in Badghis could have implications for other provinces in the north, like Faryab. And the minimal Afghan police/army presence in the province isn't large enough to confront an influx of Taliban (on the contrary: a police official was arrested last month for feeding information to the Taliban).

This is a fairly recent problem. Badghis was relatively quiet until about 2008, when the Taliban started moving into the province, and local residents (particularly non-Pashtuns) started to flee to Herat. The Afghan government signed a truce with the Taliban in Badghis in July 2009, which lasted approximately one afternoon before it collapsed.

I'm not sure how much blame should fall on the Spanish troops and PRT based in Badghis. The small garrison of Spanish soldiers -- 211 of them, based in the provincial capital of Qala-i-Naw, and running occasional patrols in the outlying districts -- certainly didn't practice anything like counterinsurgency.

On the other hand, Badghis is a remote and sparsely-populated province, with a population of maybe a half-million people. Qala-i-Naw is smaller than Marja. And, again, the province was pretty quiet until 2008. So you could argue that NATO was simply matching limited resources to needs.

Why have things fallen apart so quickly? Because of repeated military operations in Helmand and Kandahar:

That year [2008], military operations of British and American forces in the south of Afghanistan pushed the Taleban up north, and a lot of them found a perfect shelter in Bala Murghab: a valley with mainly Pashtun population, with no presence of international troops and near to the border of Turkmenistan, where the Taleban, according to the American troops, get supplies from.

That pattern, unfortunately, could repeat itself again this spring; U.S. officials say hundreds of Taliban fighters fled Marja ahead of Operation Moshtarak, and they have to go somewhere. Lightly-guarded provinces in the north and east are attractive destinations.

One last thing: Bernabe's central argument -- that it might be too late for a strengthened NATO force in Badghis to regain the locals' trust -- is an important one, and it's applicable to other provinces in Afghanistan. It's the central reason why locals in Marja seem so skeptical about NATO's promises of a sustained commitment in the district.

No Comments