The Washington Post
12/08/2003
By Pamela Constable

KABUL - A flurry of terrorist attacks over the past several days, as well as the deaths of nine children Saturday in a U.S. air assault on a village where a lone Taliban fighter was said to be hiding, have cast a jittery pall over preparations for a historic constitutional assembly scheduled to begin Wednesday.

The U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, reacted with unusual sharpness to the Saturday air raid, saying it "follows similar incidents" and "adds to a sense of insecurity and fear in the country." Afghan officials were more restrained in their response.

Security is already tight for the constitutional assembly, with soldiers stationed at many city intersections. Officials have vowed not to let the U.N.-mandated meeting be sabotaged by violence, but they said Sunday that it may now be delayed by several days.

The recent attacks also threatened to overshadow two milestones in the country's reconstruction and pacification: the imminent completion of the 310-mile highway from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar, a U.S.-funded project, and the launching Sunday of a program to disarm and demobilize thousands of militia fighters in Kabul province.

Since Thursday, a bomb planted on a bicycle in downtown Kandahar wounded about 20 people; two Indian highway workers were kidnapped by reported Taliban fighters while buying chickens in a village in Zabol province; and a crew of census takers was ambushed by gunmen in remote Farah province, leaving one dead.

At the same time, U.S. military officials said an American air raid over the village of Atala in southern Ghazni province Saturday inadvertently killed nine children as well as a suspected Taliban fighter whom U.S. forces had targeted. Officials said the man was responsible for a recent ground attack on a U.S. military helicopter. Provincial officials and villagers, however, disputed reports of the man's death.

On Sunday, children's hats and shoes were scattered over a bloody field cratered by the U.S. airstrike on the mountain village, the Associated Press reported.

The U.S. raid immediately evoked comparisons to a U.S. gunship attack in July 2002 that killed 42 villagers in Uruzgan province, as well as an air raid last month that killed several members of a religious leader's family during a U.S.-led anti-terrorist operation in Nurestan province.

Brahimi, the U.N. special representative, urged that lessons "be learned from this episode so it will not be repeated."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai was quoted on BBC Afghan-language radio Sunday night as saying he was "shocked and upset" by the deaths, but both he and other Afghan officials refrained from serious criticism of the U.S. military operation.

American military officials here said that the raid was based on "very complete" information that a Taliban fighter known as Mullah Wazir was hiding in the village, and that they had no idea children were in the immediate area. They said U.S. military personnel are in the area to assist the families of the victims.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said he was "deeply saddened" by the "tragic loss of innocent life." He told Afghan journalists that he had personally reviewed U.S. military aerial films of the area, and that they showed no children. He also said Wazir had boasted of killing civilians.

Ali Ahmad Jalali, the Afghan interior minister, said the children were killed "mistakenly," but he said the government had "asked for an explanation" from U.S. military authorities -- who pledged to investigate -- and had sent a team to probe the site. Jalali, who was terse and subdued at a brief news conference, described the targeted Wazir as a "notorious" Taliban terrorist leader.

Haji Assadullah, the governor of Ghazni province, said: "It has not been ascertained if Mullah Wazir was killed or not," but the house targeted in the air attack belonged to him, the Reuters news agency reported.

A resident of the village, Hamidullah, said his 8-year-old son, Habibullah, was among the dead. He said that the man killed along with the children was a cousin of Wazir's, while another villager said Wazir had left the village two weeks ago, according to the Associated Press.

Jalali, the interior minister, also described in some detail the kidnapping Saturday of two Indian highway workers, who he said had left their guarded camp and visited several village markets in Zabol province when their car was stopped by armed men. He said that the Indians were taken away and that several Afghans with them were freed.

"It looks like this was not a planned attack. . . . We are investigating it, and we hope to get to the bottom of it soon," said Jalali, adding that the incident might have links to the same local Taliban commander who kidnapped a Turkish highway engineer in October. The Turk was released unharmed last week after a month in captivity and weeks of negotiations with Afghan officials.

Revived Taliban forces have staged a series of increasingly daring and frequent attacks across southeastern Afghanistan in recent months, apparently attempting to sabotage the government's efforts at political and economic reconstruction and to undermine its relations with other nations. Numerous foreign aid projects have been suspended as a result of the violence.

The bicycle bomb in Kandahar and the kidnapping of the Indian workers followed a series of other attacks and threats by Islamic extremists, including the Nov. 16 slaying of a French woman working for the U.N. refugee agency. Also last week, a rocket landed in a field near the U.S. Embassy here, and authorities discovered a large cache of weapons and ammunition in the Kandahar prison from which 41 Taliban detainees escaped in October.

The U.N. spokesman here, Manoel de Almeida e Silva, said U.N. officials were "deeply shocked" by the Kandahar bombing and other extremist attacks. But he added that "Afghanistan is on the path of reconstruction, and Afghans, their government and their international partners will not be deterred by these despicable acts."

Over the past week, the United Nations has held relatively smooth elections across the country for candidates to the constitutional assembly, known as a loya jirga, with over 19,000 delegates participating. Officials said there have been a few incidents of militia commanders or other ineligible candidates being elected, but that they will be disqualified from attending the assembly.

One purported spokesman for the Taliban Islamic extremist movement told news agencies that anyone attending the assembly "deserves to die."

Officials said Sunday that the loya jirga will now likely be postponed by several days because of logistical issues. The constitutional assembly, a crucial step in Afghanistan's political progress toward national elections next year, had already been postponed once from its original October date.

Meanwhile, 200 soldiers and militiamen in Kabul province turned in their weapons to U.N. officials at a national guard base, beginning a process aimed at eventually demobilizing tens of thousands of fighters in the area. The disarmament of the Kabul area is considered crucial to pacifying and stabilizing the country.