263
OTTAWA — Canada will spend $4-million beefing up security at Kandahar's Sarpoza prison, half of it on rebuilding the walls, gates and towers that were blown up in this month's explosions that freed at least 400 insurgents.
Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson made the announcement on Thursday, saying the money will come from the previously announced peace and security fund for Afghanistan.
The June 13 prison break was quickly followed by an insurgent attack in the Arghandab district north of Kandahar that Afghan and Canadian forces defeated in a bloody confrontation.
Three senior Afghan officials – including police chief Syed Aqa Saqib – have been fired since the prison break, Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of the provincial council and brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, told The Canadian Press on Thursday in Kandahar.
A bombed-out vehicle is seen outside a temporary wall at Sarposa prison Thursday after a deadly prison assault two weeks ago. (Alexander Panetta/Canadian Press)
Related Articles
Internet Links
“All three of them will be under investigation,” Mr. Karzai said.
Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan, Arif Lalani, told reporters by teleconference that anxiety in Kandahar over the prison break is dissipating. People who had been holed up in their homes for fear of the Taliban's return are back in the streets, shopping at Kandahar city's markets.
“It's pretty clear to us that life is returning back to normal in Kandahar city,” he said. “It's clear that a prison break of this size is obviously a major development and a negative development, but people are returning back to normal lives in Kandahar.”
Mr. Lalani repeated the assertion of other Canadian officials that the incident in Arghandab was relatively minor in spite of local Afghans' claims that more than 100 insurgents were killed.
“The so-called infiltration was largely an information operation campaign, propaganda, pure and simple,” Mr. Lalani said. “And ultimately it was a failure for the insurgents and a success for the Afghan forces, which took the lead in the operation.”
Also, a report from the Senlis Council released Thursday warned that success or failure in Afghanistan will centre on what is done about the large demographic of young men in the country who the council found harbour a great deal of anger.
The Senlis Council is an international think tank that has operated for several years in Afghanistan, paying particular attention to the illegal narcotics trade.
Thursday's report noted that three arenas of the Western war on terrorism – Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia – have large “youth bulges,” or high proportions of the population between the ages of 15 and 29. In Afghanistan, 47.9 per cent of adult males fall within this range, it states, providing both an opportunity and a point of concern.
The report warns that, in a country with a 40-per-cent unemployment rate, Afghan youth become angry and therefore easily recruited by anti-NATO forces.
Almas Bawar Zakhilwal, a director of the council, said a larger focus on education would keep many youth in school and engaged. Finding productive avenues for youth who are beyond school age is harder, he said, because there is no obvious industry in which they could be trained to work.
As for the ambassador's comments, Mr. Zakhilwal says hundreds of former prisoners are still at large and it is only a matter of time before they start causing problems.
“Over-optimism in talking about ‘everything is good' – and not ‘be prepared for the worst' – is not good,” he said. “The Kandahar prison break was one of the worst incidents that happened in Afghanistan. ... Unless we try to break this supply line for insurgency, which is these young men, and try and bring them to our side, we can fight this war for the coming 20 or 30 years.”
