Stay out of province, Afghans tell elite GIs

A security official stands guard at the scene of a suicide car-bomb attack that killed and injured several people at the National Directorate of Security in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on Sunday.
A security official stands guard at the scene of a suicide car-bomb attack that killed and injured several people at the National Directorate of Security in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on Sunday.

— The Afghan government on Sunday banned elite U.S. forces from operating in a strategic province adjoining Kabul, citing complaints that Afghans working for U.S. special operations forces have killed and abused villagers in the area.

“There are some groups of American special forces - and Afghans considered to be part of the American special forces - who are conducting raids, searching houses, harassing and torturing people, and even murdering our innocent people,” President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said at a news conference. “We have received many complaints on this issue.”

The ban calls for an immediate halt to special forces activity in Wardak province west of Kabul, which has long been seen as a key link in the defense of the capital against the Taliban, and ordered all U.S. special operations forces to leave the province in two weeks. It will effectively remove the U.S. military’s main source of offensive firepower from the area, which is used by the Taliban as a staging ground for attacks on the capital.

photo

AP

Security forces for the Afghan intelligence department stand guard inside a building under construction not far from where an insurgent was shot to death near an Afghan intelligence office in Kabul on Sunday.

The order takes on greater potential significance with the scheduled withdrawal of regular U.S. combat forces in the province. By late spring, U.S. officials have said, it is expected that almost all the conventional troops in eastern Afghanistan will be focused on advising Afghan forces, leaving special operations units as the only offensive troops in the region.

Coalition officials said they were alerted to the Afghan government’s decision in the afternoon, shortly after it was made. But they were still seeking on Sunday night to clarify what it actually entailed and the accusations that had prompted it, the officials said, declining to comment further.

Afghan officials described the ban as a measure of last resort. Faizi said Afghanistan’s National Security Council, in a meeting led by Karzai, decided to impose the ban on special operations forces in Wardak after weeks of trying - and failing - to get answers from the coalition about accusations that people in the province were being killed or abused or had disappeared.

The attacks were believed to have been attributed to either Afghans or Afghan-Americans working with U.S. special operation forces, Faizi said, adding that Afghan defense officials have provided pictures and videos of the men to the coalition.

U.S. special operations forces are partnered in some parts of the country with the Afghan Local Police, but it was not immediately clear which Afghan units were accused.

After first seeing the evidence a few weeks ago, coalition officers seemed ready to cooperate, Faizi said, citing a briefing that Afghan defense officials had given to the Afghan National Security Council.

But soon after, the coalition’s position shifted, according to Faizi. It said the men in question had disappeared or had never worked with U.S. forces. Some coalition officers also questioned whether there had been any killings or abuse, and whether anyone tied to the Americans was responsible.

Faizi, though, expressed little doubt that someone or some group was killing and abusing innocents in Wardak. “People from the province, elders from villages, have come to Kabul so many times and they have brought photographs and videos of their family members who have been tortured,” he said.

But Sardar Mohammad Zazai, the police chief for Wardak province, said in an interview that although a team of police investigators had been assigned to look into the allegations, “I don’t have any evidence in hand in regard to this issue.”

Faizi said the Afghan government simply wanted to investigate the allegations. It was certainly possible that people not connected to the coalition could be responsible, he said.

That, though, would raise another question: “Let’s imagine that the U.S. special forces are not involved,” Faizi said. “Then how come they have not once heard about this? How come they do not know who is doing this?” As for concerns that banning the special operations forces from the province could alleviate pressure on the Taliban, he said the Afghan army and the police would “certainly be able to handle this work.”

He then pointed out that the security situation had not improved in Wardak for years, even after the special operations forces stepped up their activity, most of which focuses on Taliban field commanders and other high value targets. Nevertheless, Faizi said, the operations have failed to decrease the level of violence in the province.

Instead, Faizi said, violence had only worsened. And now “local people are blaming the U.S. special forces for every incident that is taking place there,” he said. “It is better to make the special forces withdraw from the province and let the local people understand that they are facing only Afghan forces. That will bring clarity to the situation.”

Much of the work of special operation forces in Wardak, or any other part of Afghanistan, is highly classified. It was not immediately clear, for instance, if any of the elite forces were based in Wardak or if they traveled in for operations.

Also Sunday, a series of attacks in eastern Afghanistan showed insurgents remain on the offensive even as U.S. and other international forces prepare to end their combat mission by the end of 2014.

Suicide bombers targeted Afghanistan’s intelligence agency and other security forces in coordinated attacks in the heart of Kabul and outlying areas, officials said. The assaults, which occurred within a three-hour time span, were the latest to strike Afghan forces, who have suffered higher casualties this year as U.S. and other foreign troops gradually take a back seat and shift responsibility for security to the government.

The deadliest attack occurred just after sunrise - a suicide car bombing at the gate of the National Directorate of Security compound in Jalalabad, 78 miles east of Kabul.

Guards shot and killed the driver but he managed to detonate the explosives-packed vehicle, killing two intelligence agents and wounding three others, according to a statement by the intelligence agency. Provincial government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai confirmed the casualty toll and said the building was damaged in the attack.

A guard also shot and killed a man in an sport utility vehicle filled with dynamite that was targeting a National Directorate of Security building on a busy street in Kabul, not far from NATO headquarters. The explosives in the back of the vehicle were defused.

Shortly before the Jalalabad attack, a suicide attacker detonated a minivan full of explosives at a police checkpoint in Pul-i-Alam on the main highway between Kabul and Logar province. One policeman was killed and two others were wounded, along with a bystander, according to the National Directorate of Security.

Also in Logar province, south of Kabul, a man wearing a suicide vest was stopped by police as he tried to force his way into the police headquarters for Baraki Barak district, said Din Mohammad Darwesh, the provincial government spokesman. The attacker detonated his vest while being searched, wounding one policeman, according to Darwesh and the security officials.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the Jalalabad attack and two others in the eastern province of Logar in an e-mail to reporters. He did not address the attempted assault in Kabul.

Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Rosenberg, Habib Zahori and Sangar Rahimi of The New York Times; by Patrick Quinn, Heidi Vogt, Rahim Faiez and Kim Gamel of The Associated Press; by Shashank Bengali and Hashmat Baktash of the Los Angeles Times; by Eltaf Najafi zada of Bloomberg News; and by Richard Leiby and Sayed Salahuddin of The Washington Post.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/25/2013

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