The Times
Jerome Starkey in Kabul

Eight Nato soldiers and seven Afghan civilians were killed in a spate of explosions across southern Afghanistan, as new Nato figures showed violence actually increased there last year — undermining earlier claims to have reversed the insurgents’ momentum.

In southern Afghanistan, the main Taleban heartland which absorbed most of Barack Obama’s surge, violence jumped 5 per cent between January and November, compared with the same period in the previous year, Nato said.

Commanders had hoped to obliterate the Taleban in southern Afghanistan so they could refocus their resources in the east, where attacks soared by 20 per cent in the same period.

However, the latest figures, which coincided with the start of the American withdrawal, suggest the Taleban has weathered the surge in one of the most heavily contested parts of the country.

In the most recent attacks, six children and an adult man were killed in Oruzgan province, Afghan officials said, when they accidentally triggered a bomb hidden in a rubbish heap.

Four American soldiers were killed in a separate explosion in southern Afghanistan, while three more died in a blast late Thursday. An eighth Nato soldier was also killed in a separate incident yesterday, also in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said in a statement.

Nato’s statistics have been consistently at odds with the United Nations, which claimed violence was up 21 per cent, countrywide in the first 11 months of last year, compared with 2010. Nato said “enemy-initiated attacks” dropped 8 per cent across the country in the same period last year.

The southwest, which includes Helmand province, witnessed the most dramatic drop in attacks. Nato said incidents last year were 29 per cent fewer than the year before.

Yet the insurgents’ resilience is likely to raise fresh concerns over whether the Afghan Security Forces will be strong enough to stay in control when foreign forces stop fighting, no later than 2014.

“Overall enemy-initiated attacks are still down,” said a Nato official. “But when you break it down to the regional commands the picture is much less clear.”

Three months ago Nato used a similar set of figures, which showed a 12 per cent decrease in attacks in the south, to suggest its strategy was working.

“Regional Command South is showing emerging success and some improvement in security,” Brigadier Carsten Jacobson, the spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force, said at the time.

“Enemy-initiated attacks reported during the period June through August 2011 were 12 per cent lower than the same period in 2010.”

A senior Western official said the latest figures were “concerning” but he said they showed the insurgents had been forced to withdraw from places such as Helmand to maintain the pressure in neighbouring Kandahar.

“We knew attacks were up in the east, that’s always been a problem, but the south was a surprise,” he said. “Attacks were considerably down in Helmand, slightly up in Kandahar. Those facts may well be linked.”

The Times
Tom Coghlan, Jerome Starkey in Kabul and Deborah Haynes

Nato commanders are to change their tactics in the battle for Kandahar, putting Afghan forces at the forefront of the operation to drive the Taleban from their spiritual heartland.

Operation Omid — the Pashto word for hope — is the next stage of a year-long campaign to retake southern Afghanistan. It will target the southern city and surrounding areas with a “gradual squeeze” different from Operation Moshtarak, the airborne assault on the Marjah district of Helmand province last month.

A key aspect will be putting large numbers of new Afghan troops into chains of “firebases” — offering artillery support to infantry — to be built on the approaches to the city, according to Western and Afghan officials. A political drive will parallel the military operation to try to heal tribal fissures that the Taleban have exploited.

The Kandahar mission will be followed by operations to stabilise the provinces of Zabul and Ghazni. Khalid Pashtun, an MP for Kandahar, said that 24 firebases will be built in the district of Zarai. They will be used to control the movement of insurgents and weapons as part of Nato commander General Stanley McChrystal’s plan to secure the population from Taleban influence. (Read more…)