The latest example occurred yesterday when about a dozen gunmen stormed a police checkpoint at the entrance to the city of Kunduz, about 150 miles north of the Afghan capital, Kabul. Eight policemen were killed, said provincial police chief Abdul Raziq Yaqoubi.
Also yesterday, a candidate in next month’s parliamentary elections said 10 of her campaign workers were kidnapped while traveling in the northwestern province of Herat, 450 miles west of the capital.
The candidate, Fawzya Galani, said villagers told her armed men had stopped the group Wednesday and drove them off in their two vehicles.
Those incidents followed Wednesday’s fatal shooting of three Spaniards — two police trainers and an interpreter — at a training base in Badghis province about 230 miles northwest of Kabul.
The shooter, who was also killed, was a police driver who local officials said was a brother-in-law of a local Taliban commander.
Earlier this month, 10 members of a Christian medical team — six Americans, two Afghans, one German, and a Briton — were gunned down in Badakhshan, a northern province that had seen little insurgent activity. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
In an interview aired Monday by the British Broadcasting Corp., General David Petraeus, the top US and NATO commander, said NATO forces had reversed the momentum which the Taliban gained in recent years in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar and in the Kabul area. He said coalition forces would regain momentum in other areas later although tough fighting lies ahead.
Taliban influence in the north and west is not as pervasive as in the south. The insurgency has been slowly expanding its presence in areas such as Kunduz, Faryab, and Baghlan since 2007, mostly among Pashtuns who are a minority in the north.
A member of Parliament from Herat said security in the province could be worse but it is not ideal, especially in remote villages far from the provincial capital.
