Kandahar City: Another view

Further to this post,

Hot time in Kandahar City? And CF?

from the Toronto Star, in the streets with our Provincial Reconstruction Team (links added):

Canadian soldiers have hope for Kandahar

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN—Is this the world’s most dangerous city, or a much brutalized backwater about to finally see its long-awaited dawn to a better future?

Kandahar is seething, without a doubt. And now the summer fighting season, the Taliban announced over the weekend, begins Monday morning.

Yet to the Canadians here at Camp Nathan Smith, the heavily fortified compound from which a new NATO strategy is rising with an unprecedented number of boots on the ground, civilian and military alike, nothing could be further from the truth.

“Kandahar City is not burning. Not at all,” said Maj. Chris Lunney, commanding officer of Canadian Forces patrolling the town. “All we hear is, ‘Oh my God, Kandahar City, Kandahar City.’ But the fact is there is nowhere I can go in the city where I don’t feel safe.”

To emphasize the point, Lunney’s crew took the Toronto Star on an extended tour Sunday. And the heart of the city, true enough, proved a hive of commerce, jingle trucks and tuk-tuk taxis jostling for space as the armoured Canadian patrol moved gingerly through the core. Hundreds of pedestrians watched in silence as the three-vehicle convoy motored all the way out to the somewhat dodgier District 7 in the outskirts to the southwest.

There the Canadians dismounted — and were surrounded instantly by children as they made their way to a meeting with village elders who badly want a new well for their parched neighbourhood. The requisite cups of tea were poured as soldiers nearing the end of a hard-fought tour threw down a ring of security...

The hour-long encounter passed without incident. Afghan greybeards satisfied with the pledge of water to come, the Canadians departing satisfied to have shown a truer picture of a city that has learned to keep on living, despite the dread so many feel...

...despite enormous inflow of American resources, Canadians remain central to the equation, according to Ben Rowswell, Ottawa’s senior political representative on the ground.

In a dynamic that has few, if any, precedents, Rowswell describes an extraordinary integration of American and Canadian diplomats and aid officials with their hands jointly on the steering wheel in support of their Afghan counterparts. And NATO commanders taking their cues accordingly.

“I’m sitting in on meetings with senior U.S. leadership where it is astonishing that any non-American is there,” Rowswell told the Star. “And not only am I in the room, but they are turning to me for answers on what (we) are doing to advance the effort.”

The tacit acknowledgment is obvious: there is no military solution in Afghanistan. Which leaves only reconciliation — a political marriage of convenience between Karzai’s government and opponents, if one can be consummated.

The framework of possible talks with the Taliban is expected to be central to Karzai’s meetings with Obama. But the elephant in the room will be Karzai’s younger half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, whose hold on Kandahar is synonymous with the corruption Kandaharis have come to despise...

Of course the fact that the Taliban aren't attacking a patrol in civilian-filled streets does not say much, one way or the other, about the extent of their presence in the city. Or their capabilities if/when they choose to act. Meanwhile, from the Guardian (links added):

Kandahar braces itself for a bloody summer offensive
The Taliban's more brutal treatment of civilians and Nato's response have raised the temperature – and the fear factor – as the fighting season approaches

The coming of spring always brings an influx of Taliban fighters to the district of Zhari, where the young leaves on the grapevines and fruit orchards provide cover so thick that Nato's hi-tech thermal imaging cameras struggle to see the insurgents hiding within.

But this year things are different. The Taliban are back once again, but the locals who live in the area on the western doorstep of the city of Kandahar say they have arrived in far higher numbers than in previous years...

The young fighters, fresh from over the border in Pakistan, appear to be mustering in exactly the places where Nato expects to do some of its heaviest fighting this summer...

In what has been called the "cornerstone of the surge effort", June and July will see about 23,000 US, Canadian and Afghan troops attempt to clear Kandahar's rural hinterlands, focusing particularly on areas such as Zhari and the neighbouring district of Panjwai.

The hope is that by controlling these areas they will take the pressure off the beleaguered city of Kandahar and its estimated 500,000 citizens.

Nato talks of creating "rings of security" around the provincial capital. But inside the city a Taliban campaign of violence has succeeded in creating an atmosphere of panic and terror.

Sources throughout the vital southern province report similar stories of a higher than usual influx of fighters, including insurgents, passing through the district of Shah Wali Kot to the north and the area of Dand to the south. The Indian consulate in Kandahar also said it had received reports from locals from Maruf, a district on the border with Pakistan, that Taliban activity has "increased many-fold" compared with last year [that from the Indians will really make the Paks happy]...

The US has already stepped up its secret war against the Taliban: special forces teams have been killing and capturing mid-level commanders and apparently squeezing the insurgents' supply chains [see end of this post].

But in recent weeks the Taliban have responded with an aggressive assassination campaign, bringing an unprecedented level of fear to the city.

Rumours are circulating that Taliban leaders in Pakistan have issued a "kill list" of officials who have been targeted – most of whom do not have any security to speak of.

Last month the city's deputy mayor was shot dead as he prayed in a mosque. A week earlier, a young Afghan woman employed by Development Alternatives, a company that works on US government construction projects, was gunned down as she travelled to work.

These developments have created a clear sense of fear, particularly among anyone connected with the government, Nato or any foreign organisation.

At a time when the US military is trying to bolster the provincial government's capacity to get things done, key staff members are trying to quit. One aide in the governor's office, who cannot be named, has handed in his resignation although it has not yet been accepted...

Several Kandaharis I interviewed saw the Taliban insurgency in terms of rivalry between members of the largely excluded Gilzai tribe, which has always been heavily represented within the Taliban, and the traditional elite Durrani tribe to which Hamid Karzai belongs.

The claim is backed up by figures from the US military, showing that Durranis hold two-thirds of positions within the provincial government and 26 out of 34 district and police chiefs.

"Things will never get better unless the Ghilzai are more fairly represented," said Faiz Mohammad the shopkeeper from Zhari. "You cannot just ignore the needs of a major tribe like that."