Taliban launches new offensive

The launch on Tuesday of a new offensive by Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban could worsen the already tenuous humanitarian situation in the country, analysts told IRIN. The fresh push against opposition forces in the north of the country came as conflicting reports about the fate of the Taliban’s main guerrilla enemy circulated for a second day.

Ahmad Shah Mas’ud, 48, leader of the opposition northern alliance, was the target of two Arab suicide bombers posing as journalists in his office in northern Afghanistan. Members of his alliance both inside and outside the country say he was wounded in the blast, but insist he is recovering. Other reports suggest that he died in the blast. The Taliban drove Mas’ud and his supporters out of the capital Kabul in 1996 and now control 95 percent of the country.

“This new offensive can only spell trouble for the delivery of aid in Afghanistan,” Farhan Bokari, an expert on Afghan affairs in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, told IRIN. The relationship between the hardline Taliban and aid agencies has been strained since the arrest last month of eight foreign aid workers. They have been charged with attempting to convert Afghans to Christianity - a serious crime under Taliban rule.

Reuters reported that the sound of fighting could be heard north of Kabul as Taliban forces attempted to dislodge troops loyal to Mas’ud from their positions around the capital.
The offensive came a day before the European Commissioner responsible for development and aid, Poul Nielson, was due to begin a fact-finding tour of Afghanistan.

Apart from identifying impediments to the free flow of aid to an estimated five million dependent Afghans, Nielson is also scheduled to meet Taliban and opposition northern alliance representatives. The European Union is the second largest donor of aid to Afghanistan after the United States.

Reacting to reports of the assassination of Mas’ud, representatives of an Afghan women’s organisation based in Islamabad said the guerilla leader, if dead, would not be missed. “Taliban and Mas’ud are the same for us. They are both against women and their education, and they are fundamentalists. They do not accept women,” Sahar Saba, a representative of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, told IRIN.