Focus on concerns over growing insecurity

The UN special envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, is scheduled to brief the UN security council on Wednesday in New York following a recent upsurge in violence in the country and amid calls for an expansion of the multinational peacekeeping force. Ever since he fled Kabul in 1995 home for Ibrahim Zal, his wife and two children has been a squalid refugee camp in the northern Pakistani town of Peshawar. A graduate of social sciences from Kabul University the 30-year-old Zal runs his fingers through his neatly trimmed beard as he speaks. "Life in Peshawar is miserable, I have lost honour and dignity," Zal told IRIN. So when the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan brought the forces of the opposition Northern Alliance into Kabul and put the ruling Taliban to flight, Zal began planning to return home. "I was very excited about resettling in my homeland." But just two weeks later Zal is back in the refugee camp, back in Pakistan and back to life as a refugee. The reason - growing insecurity in the country, as rival groups jostle for position in a post-Taliban Afghanistan. "There was security during daytime in Kabul because the foreign troops were patrolling," said Zal. "But once night fell there was no more security." Now, following more than two decades of war, security has emerged as the key issue for Karzai's interim government. Without the support of his own militia, Karzai is dependent on the will of the international community and the troops that they are prepared to send in support of the new government. The commander of the British-led international peacekeeping force, General John McColl, acknowledged in Kabul on Monday that although major security concerns remained, growing commercial vitality in the city was a welcome sign of increasing stability. He said that any plans to increase the 3,200 strong peacekeeping force and begin patrolling population centres outside the capital where they currently operate, would be a question for Karzai to work out with the international community. The interim interior minister Younis Qanooni said that a 70,000-strong Afghan police force would be trained later on in the year to make Afghanistan "self-sufficient" in security. Brahimi's meeting with the UN security council scheduled for Wednesday follows fierce fighting between rival tribal warlords in the eastern Afghan town of Gardez which left scores of people dead. In a test of his fledgling administration’s authority Hamid Karzai dispatched a team of mediators to the town which succeeded in establishing a temporary truce. Ibrahim Zal and other Afghans returning to Pakistan told IRIN that the security situation in the eastern provinces of Nagarhar and Laghman was mostly calm but some commanders were continuing to levy taxes at Sarobi on the road between Kabul and Jalalabad. A UN security source told IRIN on Monday that the southern Afghan city of Kandahar remained relatively calm but cautioned that the highway to Ghazni in the northeast was still insecure because of tribal militia activity. The road between Kanadahar and Herat in the West was also insecure amid tensions between Kandahar governor Gul Agha and Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat. UN sources told IRIN that Khan is paying his troops from the revenues he is earning at the Islam Qila border crossing with Turkmenistan. Meanwhile, several lives were lost in fighting which broke out last week close to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif between rival factions loyal to the interim government's deputy defence minister General Abdul Rashid Dostum and those of Ustad Muhammad Atta, himself loyal to the Jamiat-i-Islami faction headed by the former President Burhanuddin Rabbani. UN representatives who travelled to Maraz-e Sharif on Friday in an attempt to calm the situation successfully established a ceasefire. A UN security official added that the situation in the northeastern Badakhshan province was stable apart from landmines and other unexploded ordnance, which continue to be a serious danger all over Afghanistan. "Even moving a foot away from the main road can be extremely dangerous," he said. The situation in the central Hazarajat region was also reported to be calm. The UN has resumed flights to the city of Bamiyan there. Swedish avalanche experts were trying to clear the snow from the road connecting Herat to Chagcharan, capital of the central Ghor province. Afrasiab Khattak, a Pakistani regional analyst who recently concluded a visit to Kabul, told IRIN that the international security force should be immediately expanded beyond the current mandate in Kabul to include Mazar-e Sharif, Jalababad, Herat and Kandahar. Khattak said that in addition to providing improved security on the ground, expanding the size of the international peacekeeping force would demonstrate the international community's commitment to stability in Afghanistan. He maintained that parallel to the international security force, the construction of an internal security mechanism was essential. "An inclusive political and state system is the real panacea which implies weakening the power of the warlords and extending the central government's authority."