FOREIGN TALEBAN RILE HELMAND RESIDENTS

FOREIGN TALEBAN ( al Qaeda? ) RILE HELMAND RESIDENTS

Afghans in the troubled province say many of the insurgents
are not
Pashtuns but incomers from other countries who behave in a
high-handed and
aggressive way towards local civilians.

By IWPR trainees in Helmand

Abdujalil is still angry at the rough treatment the Taleban
meted out
to him while he was on way home to the Khaneshin district
from the
provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

“I went to the city on business, said Abdujalil (not his real
name).
“I was stopped by the Taleban on the way back. They searched
me,
accused me of spying, and then took me to their base.
They asked me a lot
of questions and said I was a spy for the government.
They warned me
that they’d kill me if I ever came to Lashkar Gah again.”

The young man insists his captors were foreigners rather
than Afghans,
as were most of the insurgent fighters at the Taleban base
where they
took him.

“Many of them were [Pakistani] Punjabis,” he said. “The rest
were
from somewhere else. I wouldn’t be so angry if they had
been Afghan,
but now foreigners are playing with us.”

Once at the insurgents’ base, he said, he was lucky enough
to run
into a local member of the Taleban who knew him and helped
secure his
release.

The presence of foreign fighters is an explosive issue in
war-ravaged
Helmand, where fierce battles between the insurgents and the
international forces take place almost continuously, and
suicide attacks occur on
a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Most residents agree that
security is
their biggest problem.

People in Helmand claim much of the trouble stems not from
Afghan
Taleban, but from insurgents trained in Pakistan who flow
in through the
porous border. Religious schools and training centres in
Pakistani cities
such as Quetta and Peshawar turn out suicide bombers and
jihadi
fighters who then come to Afghanistan to cause mischief.

MOre:
IWPR RESOURCES:

MOre:
IWPR RESOURCES:


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IWPR RESOURCES