Afghanistan Heats Up

By Tim McGirk

While attention is diverted to the war in Iraq, hostilities in Afghanistan are on the rise. In the past three weeks, two special-forces men were killed in an ambush, three Afghan soldiers had their throats slit at a lonely checkpoint, and a close ally of Afghan President Hamid Karzai was gunned down in southern Afghanistan. A former top Taliban chief, Mullah Dadullah, told the BBC in a phone interview that the warrior clerics were coming out of hiding to renew their war against Karzai and the U.S.-led coalition backing him. Dadullah claimed they are taking orders directly from Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader who has been in hiding since his regime fell in December 2001.

U.S. forces have struck back hard. Following a tip from a rebel captured near Kandahar, U.S. forces and their Afghan allies killed at least 20 suspected Taliban fighters at a base in the Haba mountains, according to Gul Agha Sherzai, the Kandahar governor. When a special-forces patrol came under fire in the Torghar mountains, air support was called in, and an estimated 40 Taliban fighters were pounded with 35,000 lbs. of explosives, according to a U.S. military spokesman. Afghan officials say many of these rebels are sneaking in from the Pakistani borderlands, which are off limits to U.S. troops. In early March, American soldiers chased suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters across the border and met resistance from the Pakistani Frontier Corps. After one Pakistani militiaman was shot dead, the U.S. troops were ordered back to Afghanistan, according to an Islamabad antiterrorist official. --By Tim McGirk