Afghan fighting kills 21 with warnings of further bloodshed

Fighting erupted across Afghanistan ahead of a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today, with 10 suspected rebels, six police and five medical workers killed and rockets hitting the capital Kabul, officials said.

President Hamid Karzai warned that the militants were receiving support from drug traffickers and that his nation could fall back into the hands of terrorists if its booming heroin trade, which supplies nearly 90% of the world’s supply, isn’t stamped out.

Karzai’s comments at a press conference with Rice came as his US-backed government is struggling to strengthen a fragile democracy while dealing with a rebellion that has left about 1,400 dead in the past half-year.

“We will have terrorism attacking (us) … for quite some time,” Karzai warned, before adding that there was “co-operation between the drug trade and terrorism.”

“The question of drugs … is one that will determine Afghanistan’s future. … If we fail (to fight drugs), we will fail as a state eventually and we will fall back in the hands of terrorism.”

The US and other countries have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into counter-narcotics programmes, but it’s had little impact, sparking warnings this nation is becoming a “narco-state” four years after a US-led invasion ended its role as a haven for al Qaida.

Karzai’s comments were the first time he has directly linked the drugs trade with the rebellion.

Washington earlier this year criticised the president for not being tough enough on drugs and US officials have said they suspect the insurgency is being partially funded by drug money.

In the latest violence, US warplanes killed 10 suspected Taliban rebels in an attack on their mountain hideout in Uruzgan province, which has long been a hotbed of militant activity, local Governor Jan Mohammed Khan said.

US military spokeswoman Sgt. Marina Evans confirmed Monday’s attack and said “several of the enemy had been killed.”

Yesterday, insurgents in the same area ambushed a police convoy and killed at least six officers, Khan said. Reinforcements were rushed to the area “to hunt down the Taliban,” he said.

The killing of the five medical workers occurred today near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar city, said doctor Abdul Qadir, director of UN and US-sponsored Afghan Help Development Services, a local aid group that employed the five.

Gunmen opened fire on their vehicle as they drove through the desert after treating refugees in a camp. Two of the five were doctors. All of them were Afghans. Three other medical workers in the vehicle were wounded, Qadir said.

Four rockets exploded in Kabul just hours before Rice arrived. One hit a large compound housing the government’s intelligence service, but there were no casualties. The other detonated outside the Canadian Ambassador’s residence, wounding two guards, one seriously, police said. The other two hit the outskirts of the city.

Fighting also erupted in northern Afghanistan between two rival militia factions, wounding 10 people, officials said.

Rice said the 21,000-strong US-led coalition was doing its best to quash the insurgency.

“We are doing everything we can to defeat the terrorists. We cannot simply defend ourselves, we have to be on the offensive,” she said.

There had been hopes that the US military would be able to reduce its troops here next year as a separate Nato-led peacekeeping force takes responsibility for security in volatile regions.

But Rice said US forces will remain “for as long as they are needed in whatever numbers they are needed to make certain that they defeat the terrorists and Afghanistan becomes a place of stability and progress.”