Over the past few weeks, Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) operatives have arrested over a dozen Taliban and Pakistani militants and confiscated over 10 tons of homemade explosive precursors and hundreds of anti-personnel landmines, effectively thwarting multiple plots by the Afghan Taliban to carry out its much flaunted “Al Farooq” spring offensive.
NDS spokesman Lutfullah Mashal explained to reporters on May 22 that Afghan intelligence operations thwarted a Taliban plot to attack the United States Agency for International Aid (USAID) office in Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, according to Pajhwok News and NDS interrogation footage made available to journalists. Afghan officials held four suspected militants in connection with the plot, and confiscated a variety of small arms, suicide-bomb vests, hand grenades, and female clothing intended to disguise the militants during the planned attack. According to Mashal, the detainees confessed to receiving training from Pakistani and Uzbek militant commanders near Jalalabad, and said Taliban commanders Jafar and Qari Bilal had directed the attack from Pakistan.
Additionally, Mashal noted that two other suspected Taliban fighters were arrested in Nangarhar who were sent by Taliban commander Qari Abdul Wali to attack the Marko Bazaar, located in the Ghanikhel district. Another four suspected Taliban attackers were detained in Logar province for allegedly plotting to poison and kill Afghan soldiers based in the Dadukhel area, approximately 10 kilometers from Logar’s provincial capital. Lastly, two other Taliban suspects plotting to attack the Marco Rayon 3 section of Kabul City were also arrested by NDS operatives in Logar. The pair was allegedly affiliated with Taliban fighters in the Mohamad Aga district.
Three days ago, NDS officials arrested two suspected Taliban suicide bombers in Kandahar province. Acting on a tip, Afghan intelligence officers interdicted two Taliban fighters sent from Pakistan into Kandahar’s Spin Boldak district, and arrested two other individuals believed to maintain strong ties with Taliban leadership.
On May 15, members of the elite NDS commando unit Bost 170 intercepted nine tons of homemade explosive precursors — ammonium nitrate and quantities of T.N.T. — in Helmand province. [Click here for Helmand Governor Media Center photographs of the raid.] Afghan officials indicated that Taliban leader Mullah Agha Wali had smuggled the explosives from Pakistan’s Gerdi Jangle area to the Gereshk and Lashkar Gah districts in Helmand.
Earlier this month, NDS officials in Kabul and Nangarhar broke up multiple Taliban plots to launch complex assaults; officials arrested numerous suspects and confiscated 250 landmines and over a ton of explosives hidden in a dump truck in route to Kabul. Around the same time, NDS operatives arrested four suspects and broke up an insurgent plot to attack US military bases and the South Korean Provincial Reconstruction Team base located in Parwan province.
For previous coverage of NDS operations, see the following Long War Journal and Threat Matrix reports:
- NDS smashes Haqqani Network plots in Kabul, July 31, 2011
- Elite Afghan force destroys insurgent explosives cache, Aug. 22, 2011
- NDS dismantles Kabul Attack Network cell, Aug. 28, 2011
- Afghan NDS continues crackdown on counterfeit uniforms, Sept. 5, 2011
- Afghan intelligence operations take on significant role, Sept. 21, 2011
8 Comments
Progress at its finest.
Afghanistan should stop all the thing, it is time to stop investing valuable time and money into all this and start think something to improve people life. They should fouce on economic reform not on war.
Excellent news!
This shows the determination needed for Afghanistan to take over its own security. I certainly hope these arrests lead to many roll ups of other murderers.
I wonder how long before the NDS just says the ‘hell with it’ & sabotage’s the fertilizer plants in Pakistan
Quite impressive.
Afghanistan IS worth fighting for.
Anybody that says Afghanistan is a lost cause is so full of baloney as to be pathetic.
Bill, it may take a “Hail Mary” play to save the day over there.
If our intel people and the NDS could somehow lure ol’ one-eyed cyclops (mullah omar) back into Afghanistan, then surround him and use him as bait to eliminate (or ‘reconcile’ or whatever they’d like to call it) as many of these thugs as possible; it may just turn the tables on this whole thing.
They don’t know how to fight on real battlefields. Our guys and the legit Afghans do. If they were REAL soldiers, they’d wear THEIR own uniforms to show it.
Instead, they hunt for a bunch of miserable foreign-based suckers willing to dress up like women (wearing burqas) to commit suicide attacks and slaughter innocent civilians.
Well the NDS is doing a pretty good job these days. The CIA trained them well. Keep up the hard work boys.
James…I couldn’t agree more. The 69% of Americans who think we need to just pick up and leave are clueless as to the nature of warfare and particualrly the stakes in Afghanistan. We MUST at LEAST keep 20,000 or more Spec Ops forces behind after 2014 to hammer the Taliban, Al Qaida and the Haqqanis, and keep them from regaining a foothold in that country so as to not launch another 9/11. Sadly Obama is (for purly political reasons) abandoning the COIN counter-insurgency strategy and pulling most of our troops out. Dumb idea and all the Americans who support it (Democrat or Republican) Have thier heads in the clouds and have either not served there or don’t understand the situation on the ground and just how serious another 9/11 would be to this country!
@ Chitrangana,
A country is like a human body with multiple systems that work in a harmony. We just can not shut down all other departments in Afghanistan to work in just one particular field. This is why more than 40 countries have joined hands today and each are working in one particular area to rebuild Afghanistan as a whole body.
I know things not always work the first time, but it would eventually work as we continue trying. For example, up to 60 percent of Afghan National Police (ANP) members were deserting at the start, but as we continued working on all other fields of development, ANP members started seeing positive changes in many aspects of their individual and social lives and their job desertion rate started to decline.
Did you know that every Afghan government employee was receiving his/her salary through direct deposit (to fight corruption)? Is this advance service available in any/every neighboring country of Afghanistan who have peace? A full list of advancement and all changes that Afghans have seen for the first time in their lives in Afghanistan during last ten years would make a thick booklet.
Aren’t all of these reforms? Were they possible through your one aspect at-a-time suggestion?