Foreign fighters influence Afghan situation: general
KABUL, Dec 1: The security threat in Afghanistan has changed, notably with an increase in suicide attacks encouraged by the presence of foreign fighters, the head of the French army said during a visit to Kabul this week. “The threat has changed. Today there are no longer the groups of organized terrorists that move around in gangs as was the case only one year ago,” General Henri Bentegeat said on Wednesday.
“Instead, what has appeared and poses today a general problem of security is the individual attacks, suicide attacks or attacks with homemade bombs or mines,” he said.
These attacks have multiplied in the past months, killing several soldiers from the US-led coalition and a Nato-led peacekeeping force based in the country, as well as scores of Afghans.
Some analysts say the apparent shift in tactics points to an ‘Iraqisation’ of the insurgency, although on a lesser scale, brought about by the increased presence of the Al Qaeda terror network.
Saudi television on Wednesday aired confessions by purported former Al Qaeda members talking about their recruitment, training and fighting experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.
One former Al Qaeda fighter told of daily drills about the ‘Christian and Jewish conspiracy against Muslims’ at a training camp called Al Sideeq in Afghanistan.
The influence of foreign fighters in attacks in Afghanistan is seen ‘now and again, but not all the time’, Bentegeat said, adding that ‘suicide attacks are not at all an Afghan practice’.
Asked about the existence of ties between rebels in Iraq and in Afghanistan, he said that ‘globalization makes it inevitable that there will be a certain sharing of practices between groups of terrorists’.
“But at the same time the situation in Afghanistan is not at all like the one in Iraq,” he said.
France has about 600 soldiers with Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which is charged mainly with helping to ensure the security of the capital and its surrounds.
There are also about 200 special forces with the US-led coalition of about 20,000 soldiers hunting down remnants of the Taliban government that was removed from power in November 2001 and other anti-government insurgents.
Since its arrival in Afghanistan at the end of 2001, France has lost only one soldier. He was killed on September 17, on the eve of historic parliamentary elections, in a blast in the country’s volatile south.
