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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Leaders of some of Afghanistan's most troubled provinces met local and international officials at the offices of Kandahar's new governor Saturday to discuss strategy as violence across the country increases.
Rahmatullah Raufi, who last week replaced a Kandahar governor accused of torture and corruption, emerged from the meeting to tell reporters that security was the top item on the agenda.
“Today in this meeting we talked about security, about the Afghan National Army, about the Afghan National Police and about the NDS [Afghanistan's intelligence service] and how we can solve problems at these organizations,” Mr. Raufi said.
Also at the meeting were the governors of Helmand, Urozgan and Zabul provinces as well as Afghanistan's education and rural development ministers, Elissa Goldberg, the representative of Canada in Kandahar, and Kai Eide, the United Nations Secretary General's Special Envoy to Afghanistan.
Newly appointed governor of Afghanistan's Kandahar province Rahmatullah Raufi, third from right, is greeted by an unidentified official in Kandahar on August 16, 2008. The controversial governor of Afghanistan's troubled southern province of Kandahar, a stronghold of Taliban militants, was replaced by a former army general. President Hamid Karzai appointed Rahmatullah Raufi because of his experience in security and knowledge of the complex tribal system in the area, a presidential spokesman said. (HAMED ZALMY/AFP/Getty Images)
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Mr. Raufi said he hopes that the event was just the first of many similar gatherings.
It will have an effect, he said, “because it was a big meeting and many important people were here and it was the first meeting of its type.”
In the hours before it convened, 10 civilians were killed in the Shah Wali Kot district of northern Kandahar province when a landmine exploded, a judge was gunned down outside his home in Kandahar city, and a child in Kandahar died when he played with the wires of a buried mine.
Earlier this week, the coalition forces lost three Canadian soldiers, 10 French soldiers and three Polish soldiers.
Both local and international officials acknowledge that security is growing worse, not better. And although Brigadier-General Denis Thompson, the Canadian commander of Joint Task Force Afghanistan, said this week there are no Taliban enclaves in Kandahar, there are plenty of local people who disagree with him.
One of the reasons the Taliban is gaining so-called “hearts and minds” is the anger of the Afghan people at coalition bombardments that have claimed the lives of innocent civilians. The Afghan government accused American bombers on Friday of killing 76 civilians in the western part of the country, most of them children. The Americans denied the allegations.
There has also been disgust expressed by ordinary Afghanis at government corruption.
Mr. Raufi said one of the topics discussed Saturday was the importance of putting qualified people in positions of power.
Mr. Eide, the UN representative, said people are asking what can they do differently and everyone wants to see things moving in the right direction. Mr. Raufi has only been in his office for six days and deserves some time to show how he is going to move things forward in Kandahar, he said “I think it's important that we do not despair now,” said Mr. Eide. “Yes, we are going through a difficult security situation but we know what the recipe is in order to get out of this so I would say what for me is important now is stubbornness and steadfastness.”
