Afghan families continued to flee the district of Argandab in southern Afghanistan as Taliban fighters and NATO and Afghan forces prepared to battle over the strategic region Tuesday.
The Taliban have taken control of 18 villages west of the Argandab River and started digging trenches and mines, a tribal elder from the region said. NATO and Afghan forces moved troops in to the region and dropped leaflets from the air warning civilians to stay inside their homes if fighting erupted in their area.
The sudden flurry of activity from all sides, coming days after some 400 Taliban prisoners escaped Friday during a jailbreak in Kandahar, indicates the seriousness of the threat.
Yet Afghan government officials and the United States military played down suggestions that the Taliban was poised to mount an attack on the district center or even on the city of Kandahar, the capital of the south which is situated just a few miles from Argandab.
“Still the Taliban are not in Argandab,” said the provincial governor, Asadullah Khaled. “They are in some places. It does not mean they took it all,” he said in English in telephone call from Kandahar.
“They will have some fighting, but they are not that strong,” he said of the Taliban. Although the governor has in the past raised the alarm when Taliban forces have appeared close to the city, and though he has often called for tougher action from NATO forces in his region, this time he said the threat was not great. “I am not worried.”
The United States military said a patrol of Afghan police and American and allied forces conducted a five-hour patrol from daybreak on the west side of the Argandab River valley, where there have been reports of Taliban fighters. The patrol encountered no resistance, said Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, a United States military spokeswoman at Bagram air base north of Kabul.
“Nothing but normal patterns of life were observed,” Colonel Rumi said. She could not confirm reports that the Taliban was destroying bridges.
NATO forces dropped leaflets from the air urging villagers to stay indoors when fighting occurred near their homes, said Mark Laity, the civilian spokesperson for NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The leaflets were double-sided and explained that Afghan national security forces, supported by NATO, were coming to the region, he said. On the other side they warned, “Keep your family safe when there is fighting near your home, stay inside, and the Afghan security forces will defeat the enemies of Afghanistan.”
NATO forces have been deployed in the areas where there is a threat, he added.
Still, local farmers and villagers have been concerned enough to evacuate their families from a group of villages in the northwest part of the district.
A tribal elder, who did not wish to be identified by name for fear of jeopardizing the safety of family members still in the Argandab area, said he had left his village a week ago, before the prison break, because he sensed the Taliban was preparing something.
On Monday 40 to 50 Taliban fighters surrounded the village and seized control of it and ordered no one to leave, he said. The elder had managed to get his family out early, but two members of the family had stayed back, were on their way out but still had not arrived, he said.
He said the Taliban came from Khakrez, a neighboring mountainous district that they have used as a base for a long time. There were Pakistani fighters among the Taliban, he said.
The elder said he felt that the surge of Taliban into the area was almost certainly connected to the prison break and that some of the escapees had probably taken refuge in Argandab.