Special on insecurity in the south - Continued

MORE GOVERNMENT SUPPORT NEEDED But for the people of Zabol province, it may already be too late. "The people are vulnerable and count on government and humanitarian agencies. The government should bring in rehabilitation and humanitarian activities," Mullah Din Mohammad, a resident of Shahr-e Safa, told IRIN in the provincial capital, Qalat. The 50-year-old cleric said people had been optimistic last year as the security situation had been better than now. "If we have all the world's countries with us, why should we still continue to suffer?" he asked, calling on the government to invite in aid agencies as the people themselves would defend their staff. Maulavi Mohammad Omar, Zabol's deputy governor, told IRIN the inhabitants of the province needed more support from the central government to strengthen their security. "We support our armed men ourselves, we don’t have a helicopter or other essential means with which we could patrol the mountains and border areas," Maulavi Mohammad said, noting that Zabol had not received any official military force supported by the central government. He said there had been an increase in the number of attacks by Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies in the southern provinces, particularly Zabol. "The Taliban do not have any control at any administrative area of the province. They come in from beyond the border of Afghanistan and hide themselves in the mountains of Kandahar, Oruzgan and Zabol provinces," he added. TALIBAN ATTACKS IN KANDAHAR In Kandahar and neighbouring areas, once described as the former heartland of the Taliban, their remnants have regularly attacked US-led coalition forces and government targets since their downfall at the end of 2001.

ISAF forces in Kabul

But according to Jan Mohammad Khan, governor of the central Oruzgan Province, it is banditry along the region's roads and highways that constitutes the real threat. "In the last two weeks alone, 30 passenger buses and vehicles have been robbed along the Kandahar-Oruzgan road," he told IRIN, asserting that the Kandahar security forces had failed to bring areas under their responsibility under control. "All the theft cases or terrorist attacks have so far happened along the 85 kilometres of the Kandahar road before you enter Oruzgan," Jan Mohammad said, adding that he had already sent a letter of protest to the Kandahar governor, calling on him to deploy more forces along the road. THE UNEMPLOYMENT FACTOR He said the insecurity throughout the region sprang mainly from unemployment among the youth and the poverty increasingly affecting the population in general. "Whereas people have been stopped from cultivating poppy, no alternative livelihoods have been provided, while aid activities have also been reduced in this province," he said, warning that enemies could easily exploit the current situation and pointing out that there were hundreds of jobless youths in the province, many of whom might be persuaded to take up terrorist activities. "So far, most of the terrorist Taliban captured said they had engaged in destructive anti-government activities for the sake of money not jihad [holy war]," he said, noting that two Oruzgan residents who had been found to have been paid to murder him had been arrested. WARLORDS FUEL INSECURITY Not only is much of Kandahar and surrounding provinces plagued by the Taliban, but other armed men - warlords and jihadi commanders - dominate the region. Abdul Quddus Ghaus, the editor of the government weekly Tulu-e Afghan, told IRIN in Kandahar that every governor, security and police chief, or military corps commander had his own army - loyal to him, not to a central core of command. "Al-Qaeda is not the only problem; the local warlords and drug lords who are being strengthened and supported are themselves behind the insecurity - mainly thievery, kidnapping, as well as serious human rights violations," Ghaus said, attributing the problem to a lack of coordination among security sectors. Meanwhile, according to local reports, renegade Taliban groups have issued leaflets, mostly in the border districts, urging Afghans, the army and the police to join them in a struggle against the government and US-led forces, and to refrain from working with the central government led by Hamid Karzai, on pain of death. Continued