Monday, May 30, 2011

The killing of General Mohammad Daud Daud, the police commander for northern Afghanistan, on Saturday by a suicide bomber who infiltrated security wearing a police uniform, highlights a recent change in Taliban tactics, says the BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.
Attacks by rogue soldiers or police and Taliban infiltrators have increased in frequency and ambition in recent months, say Afghan officials, and have sparked panic among President Hamid Karzai and his government.
A week before his death, Gen Daud said that militants had tried to infiltrate his security. He had had warnings about a threat to his life.
"The Haqqanis [Pakistan-based militant network] and Taliban groups tried to offer money to some of my police, some of my guards," Gen Daud told me in his heavily armoured convoy as he travelled to a meeting with visiting US Senator John Kerry in Mazar-e-Sharif.
"I am very vigilant. I have made a lot of changes in my movements, and keep a close eye on who guards the front and rear of my headquarters, but I have to travel all over northern Afghanistan, to different provinces. It is becoming tiresome."
He said the success of Nato's International Security Assistance Force and their Afghan partners was playing a role in the shift of Taliban tactics.
"They are not able to achieve any big victory in clashes with the security forces, so they have turned to rogue soldiers. Such attacks create mistrust within security agencies and demoralise them."

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