AFGHANISTAN OFFERS AMNESTY TO TALIBAN

by B.Younus, Ilyas Wahdat, Naeem Kohistani-Pajhwok

(IPS) KABUL -- Almost daily armed attacks on government officials by the Taliban may have prompted President Hamid Karzai to renew his amnesty offer to supporters of the ousted Afghan regime.

Karzai recently urged the Taliban to give up the violence and join in the efforts to reconstruct the country. Almost four decades of war and civil strife have reduced Afghanistan to rubble.

The Afghan president, whose tone was conciliatory, called the Taliban "victims of outsiders" -- but he did not identify these.

He said a Muslim does not kill innocent people, including teachers, engineers and religious scholars. Neither was burning of schools the act of a true Muslim, he added. "I ask the Taliban, in which Islamic country are schools torched?" he asked rhetorically.

The public speech at Kabul's Chaman-i-Hazoori park was on the 14th anniversary of Mujahideen Victory Day, when the Taliban fighters emerged from seminaries in Pakistan to overthrow the pro-communist government on April 28, 1992.

But this victory was followed by another bout of bloodletting as the different mujahideen factions started fighting amongst themselves to grab power. The infighting resulted in 65,000 deaths in just the capital city, Kabul.

Civilian rule was restored in 2002 by the U.S.-led coalition that has stayed on to prop up the Karzai regime. But remnants of the Taliban continue to fight the coalition forces, government troops and the police, particularly in the southern and eastern provinces.

This week, a rocket landed close to the Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan, but caused no loss of life or property. The airport is under the control of Canadian troops, who have recently taken charge of security in the province from U.S. forces as part of NATO's southward expansion plans.

Maj. Quentin Innis, spokesman for the coalition forces, confirmed that it was the fifth rocket attack on the airport since the 2,000-strong Canadian force took over.

Four policemen and 11 Taliban fighters were killed in the Panjwayee district of Kandahar on May 13, provincial Gov. Muhammad Daud Ahmadi told Pajhwok Afghan News. According to witnesses in Moshaam village, the Taliban had warned them of the imminent attack by government forces. Violence has escalated in Kandahar in recent months.

A senior official of the Women's Affairs Department escaped unhurt in an assassination attempt May 8 that killed her driver in southern Helmand. It was the first attack on a woman official in the lawless province, where the Taliban have targeted teachers and schools, which have opened to admit girls. The Taliban regime had banned girls from attending school or joining the workforce.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the fatal attack on an intelligence officer in the Tor Tank district of Helmand, but denied involvement in the attack on a schoolteacher in the provincial capital. Both incidents took place on the night of May 13. The schoolteacher was injured but survived.

Two months back, a teacher named Arif Laghmani was gunned down inside a school in the Nad Ali district of the same province. In another attack in the Musa Kala district in early April, an intelligence officer was killed along with his brother.

Four policemen were killed in a clash with the Taliban in Baghran district in Helmand April 29, the provincial governor told Pajhwok Afghan News. The Taliban spokesman Ahmadi confirmed the report on the ambush of the police patrol.

A day earlier Taliban fighters had fired rockets at a security post in southeastern Paktia province.

Afghan Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Moqbil confirmed at an official meeting last Saturday that security was a serious concern in Ghazni province. The Taliban's writ runs large in many districts including Andar, where it had imposed a ban on entry of vehicles. Since May 1 there have been 20 attacks on police patrols. On May 11, the deputy governor's vehicle was attacked.

The government has not been able to confine the violence.

The Taliban claimed it had captured Baraki Barak district in central Logar province, which was counted among the most peaceful in Afghanistan. While the Interior Ministry's spokesman Yousaf Stanizai said the government forces had repulsed the night attack, the Taliban claimed they had taken over the district, burned government offices and killed or injured several policemen.

A high school was set ablaze in the central Kapisa province on April 22. More than 1,200 boys and girls were studying in the newly built school. The arson attack was the first such incident in the province, which is north of Kabul.

Karzai publicly decried these attacks in his public speech on April 28. "In our brotherly neighbor country Pakistan, girls become pilots, and the ulema (religious scholars) support that, but in Afghanistan, girls are not allowed to attend schools and their schools are burnt and destroyed by bombs," he said.