Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Taliban’s Turban Tactic

Taliban has been successfully changing its fighting tactics. If the Nato and Afghan forces plan and take action to counter their face-to-face attacks, they switch to intensified suicide and roadside bombing or commando style raids as have been seen recently. The clothing used by insurgents is completely identical to that of local people making their identification quite difficult. This greatly helps them in hiding safely and launching attacks successfully. Taliban leaves no stone unturned to harm their enemies.

Taliban fighters are going smart. They easily travel in the strictest security by disguising themselves as women by wearing burqa and their attacks in the uniforms of Afghan police and army have been quite successful. Now the time has come for using the Afghan turban – widely worn in Afghanistan especially in southern provinces – in launching deadly attacks for targeted killing.

On Wednesday, Ghulam Haider Hamid, the mayor of Kandahar, got killed by a turban bomb in his own office. About two weeks ago, in the same kind of attack the head of Kandahar Cleric Council was targeted. The insurgents in both the cases were successful to reach their targets because of concealing explosive material in their turbans. Turbans are normally worn by elderly people and such people are seen with great respect in Afghan society.

Taliban's misuse of burqas and turban is conceived the most cowardly action by the people of Afghanistan as it is against Afghani culture and tradition. But common sense says, if Taliban can, without any hesitation, slaughter innocent people and hang children, it would misuse every value of Afghan society, even religion, to reach their evil objectives.

Taliban have varying control and influence in almost all provinces of Afghanistan. Recently their attacks in province like Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan, Zabul and many other provinces including Kabul have greatly intensified. This happens at a time, when the drawdown of international troops and hand over of security responsibilities to Afghan forces have already kicked off; causing the overall concern over the present and future security of the people of Afghanistan to multiply.