Taliban Prepare To Battle For ‘Spiritual Capital’

Recent moves indicate the militants are preparing to battle for Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan. Taliban Prepare To Battle For ‘Spiritual Capital’By Cliff Montgomery – June 18th, 2008Pro-Taliban fighters demolished bridges and planted land mines in numerous villages now under their control outside the largest city in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday.The moves indicate the militants are preparing to battle for Kandahar city, agree officials and residents.Around 4,000 people have fled the Kandahar city suburb of Arghandab to avoid the oncoming violence, said Sardar Mohammad, a policeman working at an Arghandab checkpoint, to The Associated Press (AP). Police on Tuesday appeared to search every individual using the road between Arghandab and Kandahar city.Hundreds of Taliban currently govern about nine or 10 nearby villages, Mohammad told AP.”Last night the people were afraid, and families on tractors, trucks and taxis fled the area,”  Mohammad told the wire service.”Small bridges inside the villages have been destroyed,” he added.Afghanistan’s army reacted fairly quickly to this turn of events, flying four troop units to Kandahar on Tuesday. The soldiers were sent from the Afghan capital, Kabul, which is situated in the northeastern portion of the country.Canadian forces also have shifted into the area.”When we get permission from commanders, we will attack the Taliban,” Mohammad told AP.The Taliban push, which began Monday with militants flooding into villages outside Kandahar city, was the latest show of growing confidence and power by the extremists.The militant drive into Arghandab and its environs came just days after a successful Taliban raid on Kandahar’s prison, which freed hundreds of pro-movement fighters.The prison break left dead 15 guards and freed about 1,200 inmates.”Among the escapees were about 350 Taliban members–including commanders, would-be suicide bombers and assassins,” according to a June 14th article from The New York Times. The Times received its information from a good source–Ahmed Wali Karzai, Kandahar provincial council leader and brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.Kandahar was the Taliban’s former power center before U.S. and other forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001, as a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th that year. While those attacks were performed by Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group al-Qaeda, the Taliban-led government openly provided a safe haven for al-Qaeda, and maintained close ties to bin Laden.Control of Kandahar “is seen as critical to the government’s hold on the entire country,” and is “the spiritual capital of the Taliban,” stated the New York Times article.Mullah Ahmedullah, a Taliban leader, phoned an AP reporter on Tuesday and proclaimed that a number of the extremists freed in Friday’s prison assault had joined the push on Kandahar.Ahmedullah added that about 400 Taliban had moved into Arghandab on Monday.Missle-firing helicopters provided extra muscle to a strike by hundreds of Afghan and NATO forces on Taliban  militants Wednesday, which is said to have killed dozens of the extremists.But matters should never have gotten this far out of hand in the first place.By early 2002, the Taliban was all but broken in Afghanistan. However, George W. Bush soon decided to spend the majority of America’s military and economic might in the fruitless nation-building of Iraq, and essentially left the real war in Afghanistan lapse into ‘the forgotten war’.Now Afghanistan may soon have to pay the price for such foolishness.Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) of thee-newsletter for only $15? A major article covering an story not being told in the Corporate Press will be delivered to your email every Monday morning for a full year, for less than 30 cents an issue. Order Now!