| Afghan militants getting sophisticated arms Reuters
02/03/2006
By Sayed Salahuddin
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KABUL - Al Qaeda and Taliban militants are coordinating attacks on Afghan government troops and foreign forces and using increasingly sophisticated, and deadly, weapons, Afghanistan's defense minister said on Friday. The militants, who have launched a string of attacks, including 14 suicide bombings in recent months, were getting their equipment from abroad but Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak declined to speculate on where it was coming from. "It is quite obvious that all the infiltrations to Afghanistan and all the equipment, some of it really technically sophisticated equipment, are supplied from outside Afghanistan," Wardak told Reuters in an interview. The equipment included high explosive used in roadside bombs and remote-control mechanisms to set off blasts, he said. "We don't have this equipment readily available in Afghanistan," Wardak said. About 1,500 people, most of them militants but including Afghan forces, aid workers, civilians and nearly 70 foreign troops, have been killed in the insurgency over the past year. Wardak said he did not know the level of cooperation between al Qaeda and the Taliban, but said Afghan militants were able to help their foreign comrades. "It is a combination ... al Qaeda by itself will not be able to do much," he said. "There are Taliban, there are Haqqani's group, there are Gulbuddin's groups and there are other foreign militant organizations," he said. Jalaluddin Haqqani is a pro-Taliban commander whose forces are active in southeastern Afghanistan. Militants loyal to former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar operate in the east, near the border with Pakistan. PAKISTAN TALKS Wardak said he could not confirm speculation that al Qaeda militants from Iraq might be slipping into Afghanistan from Iran. The militants had lost the ability to confront Afghan and foreign forces, he said, and had changed their tactics to suicide attacks, virtually unknown in Afghanistan until recently. In the latest violence, about 200 Taliban fighters launched attacks in Helmand province in the south on Friday and more than 20 people, most of them militants, were killed, an official said. Several thousand British troops are due to move into the province, one of several in the south and east where insurgents are active, as part of a NATO peacekeeping force. Wardak welcomed Thursday's decision by the Dutch parliament to send 1,400 troops to Uruzgan, another restive province bordering Helmand. Security there was not as bad as some Dutch politicians thought and a NATO rapid reaction force would be on hand if the Dutch troops got into trouble, Wardak said. "There should be no worry," he said. The United States leads a separate force of about 21,000 troops battling Taliban and al Qaeda militants and hunting for their leaders. While Wardak declined to speculate on where militants were getting their weapons from, President Hamid Karzai said he would raise the violence in talks during a visit to Pakistan this month. "Bombs go off ... the children of Afghanistan suffer," Karzai told a news conference. "This is an issue we will speak about. Both of us should find a solution." Pakistan, which is battling militants in its border areas, rejects accusations from Afghan and some U.S. officials that militants are getting help on Pakistani territory. The past year has been the bloodiest since U.S. and Afghan opposition troops overthrew the Taliban in 2001 after they refused to hand over al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
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