PRT/TARIN KOWT - TALIBAN REMAIN POTENT THREAT IN SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 KABUL 001103

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR SCA/FO, SCA/A, INL, EUR/UBI, EUR/RPM, S/CT
NSC FOR HARRIMAN/AMEND
CENTCOM FOR POLAD, CG CFC-A, CG CJTF
REL NATO/ISAF/AUS/NZ

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/13/2016
TAGS: PTER MARR SNAR PGOV SOCI AF
SUBJECT: PRT/TARIN KOWT - TALIBAN REMAIN POTENT THREAT IN
SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN

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Classified By: POLITICAL COUNSELOR ANGUS SIMMONS, FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) A
ND (D)


1. (S) SUMMARY. The security environment in the
province of Uruzgan in southern Afghanistan remains
grave. The Taliban threat has not diminished over
time and may increase in the near term. The
provincial government - only marginally effective on
the best of days - shows signs of surrendering its
reach into the province's outer districts, leaving a
vacuum of security and governance that is, in turn,
filled by insurgents. These assessments are borne
out by a review of reports of insurgent activities;
by conversations with provincial officials and
citizens; and by on-the-ground perspectives from
coalition forces in the province. By all measures,
Afghan authorities are a long way from establishing
in Uruzgan the secure environment necessary to take
on the next set of challenges such as good
governance, education, and rule of law. The single
greatest deficit hampering progress here is the lack
of competent provincial leadership, and while we are
hopeful that the arrival of a new governor will mark
a turning point, locals are less sanguine. END
SUMMARY.

BACKGROUND ON URUZGAN
--------------


2. (SBU) Isolated by dusty and mountainous terrain,
the 200,000 inhabitants of Uruzgan province are
traditional, religious, and deeply conservative.
The provincial capital of Tarin Kowt has one rugged
road to the outside, linking it to Kandahar. The
people are overwhelmingly Pashtun with Hazara
communities along the northern border: violent
tribal conflict is a fact of life here. The
Maryland-size province comprises five districts:
Dae-Rawod and Charchina (Shahidi-Has) in the west,
Khas-Uruzgan and Chora in the east, and Tarin Kowt
district in the center, where the village of Tarin
Kowt (pop. 6,000) serves as provincial capital.
Economic activity is entirely agricultural, apart
from those employed by the government or the
Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). The town of
Tarin Kowt has about 200 tiny shops in its bazaar,
selling clothing, produce, and small household
items. There are no medium or large scale economic
activities in the province. Poppy cultivation is
significant and the UN ODCCP predicts this year's
crop, concentrated in the Helmand River valley, will
be substantially larger than 2005's, when Uruzgan's
crop dropped sharply to 4,600 hectares (seventh
among Afghan provinces). The drug trade has deeply
penetrated the countryside and corrupted government
officials.


3. (C) Taliban leader Mullah Omar was born in
Uruzgan in 1959, and conditions have changed little
since then. Abject poverty, tribalism, illiteracy,
tribal codes in lieu of modern law, isolation from
Kabul, and radicalizing influences from Pakistan
create fertile recruiting ground for anti-coalition
militia (ACM). Provincial officials believe that
most insurgents are local men, recruited by ACM
leaders who slip into the province from Pakistan.
One district chief told us he can only stand by and
watch as local boys disappear for months and then
return from Pakistan radicalized.

WEAK PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT
--------------

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4. (C) Jan Mohammed Khan, an old ally of President
Karzai and a former Mujahadeen fighter, has been
Uruzgan's appointed governor since 2002. Last week,
Karzai fired Jan Mohammed and replaced him with an
outsider, Hakim Monib, but Monib has not arrived and
Jan Mohammed remains in place. Jan Mohammed's local
power base is his Pashtun-Populzai tribe, the
strongest in the province. His cousin heads the AHP
highway police. Jan Mohammed is corrupt,
autocratic, divisive, administratively incompetent,
and embedded in tribal rivalries - yet no decisions
are made without his endorsement. In a typical
exchange at a recent meeting, Jan Mohammed
apologized to PRT officials for arriving late,
saying he had to resolve a tribal feud that dated
back to a murder twenty years ago, and a recent
revenge murder in response. The governor's solution
was not to arrest the revenge killer but rather to
order him to marry the victim's sister. Jan
Mohammed then expressed his condolences on the death
of a U.S. soldier killed the day before in a nearby
IED strike, and the ex-guerilla fighter then offered
his solution to the province's escalating violence:
government security forces alongside coalition units
should hide in the hills at night and ambush Taliban
insurgents. PRT officials' suggestions that it
would be useful to develop a more comprehensive
security plan made no visible impact on the
governor. (We are now undertaking such planning
with the chiefs of provincial security forces.) Jan
Mohammed will not be missed.

A PALPABLE FEAR AMONG CITIZENS
--------------


5. (C) The provincial government does not exercise
equal authority in all five districts, and it is
increasingly unable to reach large areas outside of
Tarin Kowt, comprising more than half the province's
area. Lack of security and infrastructure make
overland transportation dangerous and contribute to
the cycle of isolation and radicalism. Government
activities outside Tarin Kowt generally require
escorts by police or military units, and government
officials readily admit they are afraid to work in
the outer districts. For example, a USG-sponsored
Alternative Livelihood program was designed to
provide much-needed supplies of wheat seed and
fertilizer to farmers, yet months later the stocks
destined for Charchina district remain in Tarin Kowt
warehouses because local officials are
unable/unwilling to move them out to the field.
These fears were only compounded on March 2 when
insurgents in Chora district burned two trucks
bearing 29 tons of World Food Program assistance.
These fears are heard repeatedly in conversations
with officials and citizens here who recount the
often-grisly details of recent Taliban murders in
the villages. Provincial officials told us that
village elders in the Mirabad valley of Chora
district reported being warned by the Taliban not to
speak with government officials. People here
believe the security environment is growing worse,
they believe the Taliban are becoming stronger, they
have little confidence in government security
forces, and they are petrified to act or speak out
for fear of being targeted.

SEVERE TALIBAN THREAT
--------------


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6. (S) The Taliban and the poppy economy have filled
the vacuum left behind by the government's shrinking
bubble of authority. The situation is particularly
acute on the western bank of the Helmand River in
Charchina and Dae-Rawod districts and is growing
increasingly severe in Chora and Khas-Uruzgan as
well. Our assessment is that the majority of the
population, given a free choice, would opt for
normalcy and cooperate with government and coalition
activities, and we are generally well-received in
these areas. However, many are not given a free
choice and there is significant and persistent
support for the insurgents. One coalition military
officer with extensive field experience here states
that in Charchina district, one in three adult males
is a Taliban supporter. The rest, he believes, are
neutral or too frightened to speak out. He
estimates there are several hundred active Taliban
in Uruzgan, with no signs of weakening despite
significant successes against the insurgents in

2005. Local officials told us recently that the
Taliban believe they have Charchina "under control"
- with the help of "thirty Arab fighters" now in
that district - and will seek to expand their
control to other areas during the transition to the
new governor. The current Taliban leader in Uruzgan
is Mullah Mohammed Yunis from northern Kandahar
province, according to local officials.


7. (S) The Taliban typically operate in small units
and have become adept in the use of IEDs, and
recently IEDs followed by an ambush. They also use
small arms and RPGs against security forces,
slipping away before coalition air support arrives.
Against civilians, they employ terror tactics,
notably night notes followed by murder/mutilation of
those suspected of supporting the government or
coalition. The insurgents hail from these villages
and are intimately familiar with the terrain,
personalities, and tribal traditions. The struggle
here is not only about anti-coalition or anti-GOA
activities, but also about the complicated map of
tribal politics.


8. (S) A review of Combined Joint Special Operations
Task Force (CJSOTF) activity reports over the past
year illustrates the persistence of the insurgency
here. High-profile incidents, such as the IED
strikes on February 13 and 28 that resulted in the
deaths of five US soldiers, focus attention but fail
to illustrate the ongoing, daily nature of the
security crisis here. CJSOTF reports on only that
fraction of overall incidents that involve or come
to the attention of coalition forces such as an
attack on a firebase, the discovery of a weapons
cache, or the clearing of an IED. Thus, the
majority of Taliban activities in the villages will
not be reported. Since March 2005, an average of 18
incidents per month were recorded, including 28 in
February 2006. The western districts of Charchina
and Dae-Rawod account for 35% and 33% of reports,
respectively. Chora district, with the treacherous
Mirabad valley, accounts for the fewest reports, but
that is likely because it is the only district
without a permanent coalition presence to engage
insurgents and report on incidents. The February 28
IED strike on US troops was in Chora, as was the
March 2 burning of the WFP trucks. The majority of
the 28 incidents that occurred in February took
place after the commencement of CJSOTF offensive
operations centered on the Khod River valley,
following the February 13 IED attack that killed

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four U.S. soldiers.

THE COALITION RESPONSE
--------------


9. (S) There was no significant Coalition presence
in Uruzgan before mid-2004. Now, Coalition forces,
working jointly with the Afghan National Army (ANA)
conduct frequent anti-insurgency operations
throughout the province. CFC-A identifies the
increased Coalition activity as a main cause of
increased Taliban, insurgent and criminal activity
in the province, since Coalition operations threaten
their interests. However, at present there is only
limited Coalition coverage of the northern Helmand
area bordering Uruzgan, and there is no Coalition
presence in the neighboring province of Day Kundi.
The ANA presence in Uruzgan consists of two
undermanned battalions deployed at Forward Operating
Bases in four of the five districts. The ANA are
improving but are not ready to take on a lead
security role. Most responsibility for local
security falls to the Afghan Highway Police (AHP)
and Afghan National Police (ANP) --the semi-
reintegrated militias of Uruzgan's two rival
warlords Governor Jan Mohammad and Police Chief Rozi
Khan. While they are capable of anti-Taliban
operations, neither the AHP nor ANP is yet up to the
role of standard civilian police activities. Thus,
coalition forces are key to strengthening the local
forces and to engaging the insurgents in a strategic
way. The PRT engages with and strengthens
provincial authorities in many other ways, including
police training, reconstruction of infrastructure,
circulating medical clinics, and coordination
meetings designed to improve the capability of
overmatched local officials.

COMMENT - LEADERSHIP IS JOB ONE
--------------


10. (S) Uruzgan province is at baseline zero by
almost any measurable standard. There is enormous
work to be done concurrently in multiple sectors.
But - given the autocratic governing style that is
the norm here - the sine qua non for security,
infrastructure, and social programs to be effective
is the installation and empowerment of a capable
governor. The new governor must move to strengthen
local institutions, including a competent local
bureaucracy that can plan projects, disburse
resources, and administer law and governance, so
that provincial authorities can reestablish control
over the entire province. All eyes in Uruzgan are
focused this week on the governor's compound in
Tarin Kowt, wondering what changes the new governor
will bring. Friends and foes of Jan Mohammed, men
who have survived remarkable changes of circumstance
and leadership over the past three decades, are
patiently awaiting the new man before they decide
their next move. Nobody is revealing his thoughts
or expressing any expectations. Our modest hopes
rest on the fact that the new governor appears
ambitious, has some governing experience, and as an
outsider he owes no loyalty to the existing tribal
structures here, nor to anyone but President Karzai.
If the new governor is looking for problems to
solve, he will find Uruzgan a target-rich
environment.

NEUMANN