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Report: Afghanistan's unrest surges fourfold

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 13, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan - Insurgent activity in Afghanistan has risen fourfold this year, and militants now launch more than 600 attacks a month, a wave of violence that has resulted in 3,700 deaths in 2006, a bleak report released Sunday found.

The report said insurgents were launching more than 600 attacks a month as of the end of September, up from 300 a month at the end of March.

Afghanistan had about 130 insurgent attacks a month last year, said the report by the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board, a body of Afghan and international officials charged with overseeing the implementation of the Afghanistan Compact, a five-year reconstruction and development blueprint signed in February.

The violence "threatens to reverse some of the gains made in the recent past, with development activities being especially hard-hit in several areas, resulting in partial or total withdrawal of international agencies in a number of the worst-affected provinces," the report said.

The rising drug trade in Afghanistan is fueling the insurgency in four volatile southern provinces, the report said, and the slow pace of development is contributing to popular disaffection and ineffective implementation of the drug fight.

Afghanistan's poppy crop, which is used to make heroin, increased by 59 percent in Afghanistan over the past year.

Insurgents have launched a record number of roadside bombs and suicide attacks, and there have been clashes all year between insurgents and Afghan and NATO security forces, particularly in provinces near the border with Pakistan.

Officials said Sunday that more than 20 Taliban militants - and possibly as many as 60 - were killed during several days of clashes in the volatile border area.

[Last modified November 13, 2006, 01:24:42]