Helicopter crash highlights instability near Kabul

When the Taliban shot down a US helicopter killing 38 troops in an Afghan valley, it underlined their grip on territory which lies just an hour's drive from the capital.

Wardak province, where the crash happened on August 5, is just southwest of Kabul, far from the eastern border with Pakistan and the Taliban's southern heartlands seen as the frontline of the 10-year war.

But local officials and residents say insurgents have heavily infiltrated Wardak and neighbouring Logar province, with large numbers of Chechen and Pakistani insurgents contributing to serious instability.

American forces left the Tangi Valley, where the American Chinook came down, four months ago as part of a strategy to focus the efforts of foreign troops -- there are only about 1,600 in the two provinces -- on more populated areas.

A Nato team went to the area to clear the helicopter wreckage and recover bodies, but pulled out once the grim operation was completed.

In the Tangi Valley the Afghan police and army, due to take control of security across the whole country when foreign combat troops leave in 2014, struggle to counter the Taliban, local officials and people said.

It was against this backdrop that 30 US troops including 25 elite special forces plus seven Afghan commandos and an interpreter were killed in the biggest single American loss of life of the war.

"This area is under full Taliban control," Mohammad Rahim, a resident of the rugged and remote Tangi Valley, told AFP.

"They have patrols day and night here without any fear. They have walkie-talkies, cars, motorcycles. They have erected checkpoints on the Logar to Wardak road that crosses this valley."

The governor of Baraki Barak, the next district across in Logar, told how the Taliban systematically threatens to murder those who work for the government.

"The Taliban dominate almost all the villages. Most of the insurgents here are foreigners, mainly Pakistanis and Chechens," Mohammad Rahim Amin said.

"The number of security forces is insufficient. The Taliban have threatened people not to work in government offices or they will be killed."

In the latest such incident, five policemen and three Afghan intelligence agents were found dead Friday after being abducted in Wardak while travelling on a main road.

A spokesman for the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings, said troops had left the Tangi Valley camp but were providing "overwatch" to help Afghan forces.

Asked about the extent of the Taliban's reach, he acknowledged that the area "has a history of being known as a hotbed of the Taliban".

Experts say that security in central Afghanistan has declined sharply.

"The insurgency in Afghanistan has expanded far beyond its stronghold in the south east," a report by the International Crisis Group said in June.

"The Taliban is bolstering its influence in the central-eastern provinces installing shadow governments and tapping into the vulnerabilities of a central government crippled by corruption".

The Wardak governor's office took the highly unusual step Saturday of issuing a statement condemning Afghan army "negligence" in failing to tackle the rising insurgency in the province.

Roshanak Wardak, a doctor who was a Wardak lawmaker before losing her seat in fraud-hit elections last year, blamed an impotent police force.

"The situation in Wardak has been deteriorating in the last three years," she said.

"Why don't the people cooperate with the government? Because there's no security for the people. People hate the police, they never inform the police because they know they will never respond."

Wardak's police chief was not available to comment.

Wardak and Logar are strategically important to the Taliban because the main road from border areas with Pakistan passes through these provinces up to Kabul and northern Afghanistan, local officials say.

Insurgents are known to have hideouts in Pakistan's lawless border regions which they use as rear bases to launch strikes in Afghanistan.

Five days after the helicopter crash, General John Allen, commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan, claimed that the Taliban responsible for downing it had been killed in an air strike. The Taliban denied this.

But after the crash site was cleared and foreign forces again left the Tangi Valley on Wednesday, the Taliban quickly returned, Wardak provincial spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said.

"The foreign forces and our forces have left the Tangi area where the American chopper had crashed," he said. "We can say that Taliban are now back in control of that area."

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