Taliban tunnel breakout tracks Afghan captors - The Guardian

Kandahar prison: the tunnel circumvented the control points and goes directly to the wing housing held "political". Photo: AFP/Str/Getty Images

NATO and Afghan forces launched a huge operation to try to resume 475 prisoners, almost all Taliban insurgents, who organized an extraordinary discussion mass prison by using a tunnel.

Officials have said that the detainees had escaped through the tunnel dug from a House wing of the prison where political prisoners are detained in Kandahar.

In an e-mail, Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said the tunnel was 1,050 m long (320 meters) and took five months to build, "bypassing enemy check posts and the main road from Kandahar-Kabul leading directly to the prison policy".

He said only three insurgents inside the prison had known the plot. They helped to ferry the prisoners from the prison in an operation for a period of four years and a half hours.

He said that by 3: 30 a.m. on Monday morning, the whole political wing of the prison was emptied of inmates. These had been conveyed "secure destinations" by a fleet of cars that had organized Taliban.

The message, written in almost perfect English, sings on the failures of the security forces: "the most amazing thing throughout the operation, as reported by respondents Mujahedeen, was that all the enemy forces inside the prison"which includes foreign invaders, have not noticed the results of the operation even four hours later and therefore has not released statements.

"Mujahideen had also placed a martyrdom research group near the prison, including the need did not arise because of inaction by the enemy."

Amir Mohammad Jamshad, the head of prisons in Kandahar, told the Guardian that the tunnel is a major undertaking by the insurgents, who have been unable to use any heavy machinery, because it might have drawn attention to their work.

Tooryalai Wesa, the Governor of Kandahar, said that prison security forces had "breached their duty", but the strenuous efforts were already underway to recapture prisoners.

"Some of the escaped prisoners were taken over by the forces of security during search operations and important operations were launched inside and on the outskirts of the city of Kandahar for the rest of them," said.

He also appealed to residents of Kandahar to call the tipoffs on a special hotline set up by the authorities escaped prisoners.

Despite his insistence that work resume as many prisoners would be done more easily by the biometric detailed records held on all men, including fingerprints and iris scans, discussion is a terrible for the efforts of the Afghan Government and international blow in key province.

A member of the Kandahar provincial Council, Hajji Hematullah, said that, although some prisoners may still be in the city, many others would have a direct line to the security of the Pakistani border.

Many hardened insurgents release comes just before the "season of combat" in the summer and could potentially reverse some of the gains of NATO during the winter in intensified operations to kill and capture insurgents as much as possible.

It is also the second time a considerable number of prisoners have managed to escape prison in three years only. In June 2008, the Taliban stormed the prison, with a suicide attack to break a hole in a prison wall. The operation allowed 870 inmates, including 390 insurgents, to escape.

The discussion was followed days of intense fighting in the outskirts of the city after that the insurgents fled to areas where they were immediately able to take up arms against the NATO forces.

The ruins of the prison was largely reformed and improved in an effort to prevent such an outbreak ever again.

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Fears of Taliban Fan of Infiltration into Afghan Forces - New York Times

The Taliban rushed to take responsibility for the attack, stating that the shooter was a sleeper agent planted to kill NATO soldiers. Afghan police and the army scrambled to find ways to eradicate the insurgents in their ranks. Screening of new recruits and soldiers escalated.

But when a joint investigation was completed some time later, Afghan and American investigators concluded that the gunman, a man named Ezzatullah in a small village in the Province of Nangarhar, where the attack occurred, was not a sleeper agent at all, but a good soldier overcome by personal stress, including the insistence of his father that he accepts a contract of marriage with a young girl.

Fears about infiltration of the Taliban in the forces of Afghan national security arose again this week after the insurgents in Afghan military uniforms attacked three locations in highly secure Government. The latest attack came Monday the Ministry of defence headquarters in downtown Kabul and killed two Afghan soldiers.

The attacks have fuelled concerns among Afghan officials, who are uncomfortable about their own safety and the fate of a country whose military and they worry the police forces could be impregnated with enemy insurgents. Some in the Senate on Wednesday called the resignation of the Minister of defence, Abdul Rahim Wardak, calling it unable to defend his own Department, much less the country.

But preliminary investigations show that the authors of at least two of the attacks were not used members of the Afghan army or the police, according to two senior intelligence officers NATO and an advisor to NATO informed on investigations. They are also suspicious that the person in the attack remaining was a member, while the investigation continues.

In fact, responsible intelligence not gathered any evidence suggesting that the infiltration is very widespread, as Taliban claims according to the officers, who spoke the condition of anonymity because of the nature of their positions advising Afghan forces. Nevertheless, officials know that the Taliban claims of infiltration breed distrust and are difficult to refute.

"Their goal is to separate the coalition of the Afghan national army, and is an excellent tool for them, whether they have or not," one police officer said.

Infiltration or not, the recent attacks were exposed other security issues, including the severity of the controls for the identification and research to points of control and input and the easy availability of official-looking uniforms and military equipment in stores and bazaars throughout Kabul and the provinces of the body. Investigators were also examining if any guards took bribes to let the insurgents across.

"At least two of them are very clearly the guys who had already obtained a uniform and had been helped," said NATO's Security Advisor. "This is really what we are concerned about - is the enemy capable of penetrating through this filtering system, or that they are actually able to co-opt or use uniforms and equipment that they could collect out on street weaknesses and exploit them in the physical security of these sites."

Concerns about the sleeper agents still run high among afghans and NATO officials. After the attack of November in Nangarhar, forces Coalition intensified abruptly training Afghan intelligence agents. It is their work to identify possible insurgents between Afghan forces and look for signs of military personnel who, acting either financial or personal stress or threats to their families, might fall under the influence of the Taliban. About 200 officers are now in the field, and this number is expected to more than double by the end of the year.

Since September 2009, when the NATO forces began to intensify the efforts to strengthen the national security forces, all recruits are required to go through a process of screening of eight steps. In it, recruits must undergo a criminal history and testing audit and must submit two letters of the elders of the village to the respondents for their character.

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