A suicide assault team stormed the governor’s office and other government buildings today, killing 19 people and wounding 37 more in an attack in the capital of the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
The heavily-armed suicide assault team, estimated at six men strong, attacked the Governor’s House, the police headquarters and the police highway battalion, and the Radio and Television Department in the provincial capital of Tarin Kot, according to Pajhwok Afghan News.
Three members of the suicide team detonated their explosives, and three more were killed while fighting Afghan forces in the city. The first suicide bomber, who was driving a car packed with explosives, penetrated the outer security cordon and slammed into the wall of the governor’s compound, which is next door to a hospital, according to The New York Times. The blast caused a wing of the hospital that treated women and children to collapse. Ten children and two women were reported killed in the attack, Xinhua reported.
Two other members of the Taliban assault team then occupied the deputy governor’s office and battled Afghan forces. Khodai Rahim, the deputy governor, is an important power broker in Uruzgan. He was not hurt in the attack.
A bombing also took place at the home of Matiullah Khan, a controversial power broker in the province, whose uncle, Jan Mohammed Khan, was killed in a suicide assault in Kabul on July 17 [see LWJ report, Key adviser to Karzai, member of parliament assassinated in suicide assault in Kabul].
In a statement released on their website, Voice of Jihad, the Taliban claimed credit for today’s attack and said that “a team of 6 martyrdom-seeking Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate” executed the operation. The Taliban claimed that 50 policemen, six US troops, and “9 high ranking puppet officials” were killed. In their press releases, the Taliban routinely exaggerate the results of their operations.
Also, the Taliban claimed that they assassinated Tor Mullah, Uruzgan’s Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs. “Mujahideen of [the] Islamic Emirate gunned him down in Tarin Kot” as he traveled to his home, the Taliban claimed at Voice of Jihad. Tor’s death has not been reported in the Afghan press. A US official told The Long War Journal that Tor was wounded in the attack but survived.
Today’s suicide assault was likely carried out by the Mullah Dadullah Mahaz, or the Mullah Dadullah Front, a radical Taliban subgroup based in the south that is closely linked to al Qaeda. The Mullah Dadullah Front has adopted al Qaeda’s tactics and ideology, a US intelligence official told The Long War Journal in December 2010. The Taliban faction is led by Mullah Adbul Qayoum Zakir, the former Guantanamo Bay detainee who has since been promoted as the Taliban’s top military commander and co-leader of the Taliban’s Quetta Shura.
The suicide assault in Uruzgan is the latest in a string of Taliban attacks that are targeting the top levels of the Afghan government and security forces. The Taliban have displayed the ability to penetrate sensitive installations and compounds to attack senior government officials. Just yesterday, a suicide bomber killed the mayor of Kandahar City in an attack in his compound.
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It’s becoming increasingly clear that any U.S. troop withdrawal/drawdown from Afghanistan is not militarily indicated. A Politically motivated withdrawal/drawdown is a different story, of course, but any responsible U.S. politician advocating withdrawal/drawdown in the face of what’s been going on in Afghanistan has to consider if a full or partial pullout is simply going to result in the Taliban regaining control over Afghanistan and inviting AQ back in. Personally, for protection of the U.S. Homeland, I’d rather be committed to an indefinite stay in strength in Afghanistan than to an outcome that places us back to where we were on September 10th, 2001.
JRP, I full-heartedly agree with you.
What impressed me the most about the troop surge in Iraq was the fact that not only did it turn the tide but also the number of US casualties also were greatly reduced.
That fact alone IMHO made it well worth it and it should be repeated in Afghanistan.
Still, not much happens in Afghanistan if not planned in Pakistan or through the northern “Stans”.
Also Afghans grieve and it is strange that they don’t take the fight straight up to the Pak border and some miles further.
All of Central Asia is very mountainous and difficult terrain to navigate, especially for the ANA, ANP, or local militias.
They have done an honourable thing in defending their country. But even as NATO knows, there is only so much you can do when you have an enemy that is out of your reach. Then it becomes a game of Whack-A-Mole.
Instead of mopping the floor when the excrement from Pakistan spills over, someone should fix the overflowing toilet – Pakistan – instead.
God bless all the NATO, Afghan and special forces soldiers for what they have done.
This is horrible. 6 guys in an assault team can do this much damage? Why can’t our trained ANA do this? Also, if the ANA knows the ISI are involved, will the next battle be in Pakistan? Would a few hundred ANA walking across the Khyber Pass into Pakistan proper be enough of a show of strength that killing MAYORS is not going to win favors or friends. Or would those same ANA be shot at by the PAK army? In some way the narrative is that ANA and PAK army are against the same enemy, wrath, which can employ either force for it’s purpose.
This is an illustration to the Afghans of the fight they have ahead of them in the future. they either have to step up and embrace the raiding strategy that the ISAF was using or be brought down by a thousand tiny cuts from the fanatics. It’s their choice and their battle.
Actually, as the hard-core jihadists tactics get more brutal and barbaric, hopefully there will be a “Sunni Awakening” moment among the Afghans and among the potentially ‘good’ Taliban (from our perspective).
This is what happened in al Anbar province in Iraq. Hopefully, something at least similar will occur in Afghanistan among especially a potentially good Taliban (that is of true local and Afghan descent).
Contrary to what many in the current regime (in DC) may wish, this battle is far from over.
The problem is that the military plan was meant to be followed by a civil plan, that never happened you remember the cable from Kabul warning us not to go ahead with the military plan due to the governance problems.
The situation is different to Iraq in which an inclusive political process is in place. And it works that is even with Iranian interference and months without a government the country did not enter civil war.
So the question with Afghanistan is what happens when we leave not having a inclusive political process and governance in place would always erode security gains and lead to civil war.
The last Presidential and national election were rigged, with Karzai and Karzai puppets and others that entered via fraud being elected with others being shunned from the political process.
Having one tribe ruling over all of the south is going to lead to trouble, while some say Wali kept security in Kandahar it can also be said that by excluding other tribes that it also fuels the insurgency in the south and thus into greater Afghanistan.
Now we are building an ANSF for the people of Afghanistan, Karzai thinks that we are building an ANSF to protect his interests and that of one tribe. That the ANSF is his personal militia.
Gates said Karzai will not seek another term, in response he says there are talks with the Taliban between the US. Karzai was warned numerous times that changing the constitution, seeking another term, at a time when ISAF are pulling out and going to a much smaller foot print in an over-watch role is going to lead to civil war.
He knows that with the state of the ANSF after the last rigged election without ISAF and the US brokering with various factions Afghanistan would have entered civil war.
Any such conversation inevitably travels up the road to Islamabad.
The Pakistani military are a brutal lot. But not half as brave as they are brutal. If and when they are finally confronted, they will be crushed by whatever coalition is responsible at that time. For one thing we clearly know now, from where we are in this 21st century, and with the benefit of hindsight:
The prominence that the Pakistani Army has achieved (including, but not only because of, its nuclear arsenal) gradually in these last 6 decades is a menace, both internally within pakistan and externally, gigantically disproportionate to the essential size of the State of Pakistan. As such, it is simply untenable to sustain this trend over the next decade, leave alone the next 4.
Peace in the whole region of South Asia, encompassing Afghanistan, India, eventually even Bangladesh will depend upon the dismantling of this clever and brutal military machine of the Pakistani Army. Probably ditto for much of Central Asia, at least within the context of the broader effects of such a drastic destruction.
So eventually peace in an area inhabited by well over a billion and a half humans will depend on such a vital defeat. This is why it is past time for the world players to be decisive about this.
Has the US, since May 2, finally factored this in its calculus in beginning to withhold military aid to Pakistan, thereby feeding the monster?
At any rate, if i am wrong about all this, humanity will enter the 22nd century with a massive crater in the area we today call Pakistan, and possibly others in the area.
2014 is a joke. Its just a manipulative number. Its not an answer to Afghanistan’s problems, nor to the the US’s problems, leave aside the worlds problems.
A couple of interesting clippings:
Pak Army in Balochistan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/28/pakistan-military-campaign-balochistan-hrw
Why My Father Hated Indiahttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304911104576445862242908294.html