Half a dozen police officers were clustered around a radio in the headquarters at Pol-e-Khomri, capital of Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban insults came through loud and clear. The insurgents were only a few miles away. And they had good radios, Motorolas they had stolen from the police.
The radios had been taken last year in an incident the police didn't like to talk about but which was, nevertheless, revealing. Several policemen were captured by the Taliban. The insurgents seized their weapons and equipment. The policemen were beaten, and certainly humiliated, but they were not killed. That was only sensible on the part of the Taliban: War in Afghanistan has always been marked by changing alliances. Today's enemy may be tomorrow's friend. "This is not Iraq, where thousands of bodies were turning up in Baghdad with holes drilled in their kneecaps," one NATO officer with experience of both places told me.
The killing here may be restrained by pragmatism, but the exchange over the radio was bitter enough. "Murderers," the police officers shot back. "You servants of the Pakistanis. You brought Punjabis, ISI officers [Pakistani spies], Arabs, and Chechens here. You robbed millions of girls of an education. You destroyed this country to please your foreign masters."
The Taliban retorted: "You will pay. If you are men, why don't you fight us? Why do you hide like women? Why do you hide like foxes? Come out, sons of Jews."
The Taliban were about to get their wish. The police in Pol-e-Khomri were preparing an attack. An offensive was already under way across three other northern provinces. In Baghlan, the main thrust would be against one district, Borka, which was firmly in Taliban hands.
The man in charge of the offensive was a soft-spoken and charismatic general named Mohammed Daoud Daoud. He had once been secretary to martyred Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, whose picture is still displayed everywhere in this part of the country. Daoud now commanded all Interior Ministry forces in the north, including his own elite force of police commandos, Pamir 303. The government in Kabul was shortly to announce which parts of the country would begin transitioning to Afghan security control, and Daoud had invited my BBC crew -- me, my cameraman, a security guy, and an interpreter -- he said, so that we could see how Afghan forces were already conducting their own operations with very little help from NATO. He wanted to show us that Afghans were ready to lead the fight against the Taliban...
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Paul Wood @'FP'
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