Special report on insecurity in the south

Surrounded by armed bodyguards - all on alert status, with fingers on triggers - Maulavi Pir Mohammad seemed embarrassed. Just hours earlier, a deadly terrorist attack killed six Afghan soldiers, as well as a local staff member of an aid agency, in the Dishu District of Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan. "They [the attackers] opened fire on the district security post from three vehicles during the morning prayers, killing six army soldiers and a driver of the Mercy Corps aid agency before fleeing to neighbouring Pakistan," the provincial deputy governor told IRIN in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand. According to Helmand provincial officials, the incident - which occurred on 7 August - came just two weeks after another six government soldiers had been killed as they patrolled the province's desert region of Gereshk, following reports of theft and robbery there. Earlier in July, five police officers and their commander were killed in a similar incident in the southeastern province of Kandahar. And then on Wednesday [13 August], a bomb ripped through a bus in the southern province of Helmand killing 15 people, including six children and a woman. Over the past few months, the southern part of Afghanistan has witnessed a spate of such attacks, with government officials in Kandahar warning that the current security situation was threatening rehabilitation and humanitarian efforts on the ground, not to mention the lives of local civilians. SITUATION NOW OF MAJOR CONCERN "Unfortunately, the security situation is becoming a major concern both for the government and aid community in the southern provinces," Khalid Pashtun, a provincial government spokesman, told IRIN in Kandahar. Pashtun blamed the problem on foreign interference, and on a lack of attention being paid to the region by the central government and the international community. "It is known by the international community and by local Afghans that the Taliban have no place to stay inside Afghanistan. They come from Pakistan, and after their terrorist activities they flee to Chaman, the neighbouring Pakistani city," Pashtun said, claiming that the US-led coalition forces had taken no steps to apprehend the Taliban and their allies beyond the borders of Afghanistan. He said people in the south were disappointed, had lost hope and felt deeply frustrated.

An Afghan child views a coalition convoy

"We are under continuous pressure by the people. They want the international community and central government to implement serious measures to ensure the security in their areas, as well as to stop and curb the cross-border terrorists, by patrolling Afghanistan's borders until a national border police is in place," he said, noting that as a result of insecurity, many aid agencies had reduced aid deliveries to certain areas, mainly in the border districts, a move which had aroused public anger. INSECURITY CREATING POVERTY The southern region's mounting security problems have spawned dire consequences for its already vulnerable and poor people. The US-based agency Mercy Corps, which has a vast presence in the southern provinces, says security is becoming worse than it was last year. "Certainly the humanitarian community feels badly about this. We have no hesitation to work in the entire southwestern provinces, but at the end of the day security for our staff is very important," Rod Volway, the NGO's area coordinator, told IRIN in Kandahar, noting that the agency had formerly operated throughout Helmand Province. Mercy Corps said areas where six months ago an expatriate could travel, were now inaccessible - even to local Afghan staff. "There are areas that everyone can go to, there are areas that are not safe for foreigners to go to, but Afghans can, and then there are also areas that no one can go," Volway said. While the United Nations has also suspended all its movements to border districts of Helmand and Kandahar, UN security sources in Kabul told IRIN that Oruzgan, Zabol and most of northern Helmand province had been declared high-risk areas, adding that routine missions were suspended until security stabilized. "Insecurity is out there and it is affecting aid operations to the detriment of the Afghan people," David Singh, a media relations officer for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told IRIN in Kabul, stressing that the UN did not have an immediate answer to the problem. The UN believes that the ultimate solution to the insecurity in the southwest is the 70,000-strong Afghan army now in the process of being trained. "But this is three or four years away," Singh conceded, adding that the UN was seeking to have some sort of security mechanism in place that could help to keep the situation calm until the army was ready to fulfill its role. Continued