UNITED NATIONS, Feb 1: A UN envoy told the United Nations Security Council on Friday that support for the Taliban militia may be growing in select areas of Afghanistan.

“We continue to hear worrying reports that support for the remnants of the Taliban may be growing in some areas of Afghanistan,” said Lakhdar Brahimi, Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special representative in Afghanistan.

Brahimi added that “the peace process in Afghanistan will need to progress much further before we can safely say that it is irreversible.”

The United States launched a military operation in Afghanistan in October 2001 to flush out the fundamentalist Taliban regime and the Al Qaeda operatives it was harbouring.

Sixteen months later, some 10,000 US soldiers are still stationed in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon.

“Attacks against US-led coalition forces have continued over the reporting period including in Kabul,” Brahimi said.

“Over the last month, the security situation in Afghanistan has been relatively calm in the sense that there has been no outbreak of major, sustained fighting.

“However, security incidents continue to occur, as a result of inter-factional tension and sporadic terrorist activity,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the high rate of criminal activities by armed groups in and around Mazar-i-Sharif continued unabated.

The 600-strong local police force, which is chronically under-resourced and internally divided, has been unable to deal with the upsurge in crime.”

He also said that investigations by the UN human rights mission for Afghanistan showed that rival groups had not abandoned tribal violence.

“Ongoing investigations by (the UN) human rights office have confirmed an increase in the incidence of ethnic conflicts related to land disputes.—AFP