Booby-trap threat to British peacekeepers
Suspected al Qaida and Taliban fighters planned to kill British and other peacekeepers by setting off car bombs in Afghanistan’s capital, authorities have said.
Six cars were rigged with booby traps to be detonated near peacekeeper security patrols in Kabul, according to Flight Lt Tony Marshall, a spokesman for the security force.
The vehicles were placed under surveillance, but no arrests had been made, he said. However, the international security force chose to make the plot public after a French captain revealed details of it to French journalists, peacekeeper officials said.
‘‘We were aware of these vehicles ... where these vehicles were being kept and what the intentions were of these groups,’’ Marshall said. ‘‘If there had been any move to actually use these vehicles in any way, in the matter that I’ve just described,’’ peacekeepers would have acted, he added.
Although Kabul has been relatively quiet for months, Western and Afghan authorities have been concerned over the possibility that al Qaida and Taliban holdouts would try to infiltrate the city and stage attacks against the 4,500-member peacekeeping force.
Concern over peacekeeper safety is running high in countries such as Britain and Germany that provide the bulk of the 18-nation force. The International Security Assistance Force operates only in Kabul and is separate from the US-led troops fighting al Qaida and the Taliban elsewhere in Afghanistan.
Marshall said intelligence information also indicated that peacekeepers and other foreigners might be kidnapped by extremists ‘‘to either promote their particular cause or achieve some end goal, be it the release of prisoners’’ held by the United States and anti-Taliban Afghan forces.
‘‘Whether they’re in or outside of the capital, whether they’re al Qaida or Taliban, that is something perhaps that is not clear,’’ Marshall said. ‘‘However the threat is credible.’’
The peacekeeping force had already advised journalists and Western aid workers that they were at risk of being kidnapped in Kabul and elsewhere. The warning was issued during the recently concluded Operation Anaconda, which targeted al Qaida and Taliban units in eastern Afghanistan.
Marshall called both warnings credible and significant.
The reports of fresh threats come just days after Afghanistan’s former king delayed his scheduled return home for the first time since being sent into exile in 1973, citing security concerns.
Mohammad Zaher Shah was due to come home today to Kabul, but the Italian government, which has maintained responsibility for his security during his three decades in exile in Rome, said over the weekend that the timing was not appropriate.
The presence of the peacekeeping force in the capital has not been enthusiastically welcomed by all members of interim prime minister Hamid Karzai’s administration.
The defence minister, Gen Mohammed Fahim, has long resisted any expansion of the force outside of Kabul and would like the peacekeepers to leave as soon as possible. Most of the opposition has come from the ‘‘Panjshiri’’ clique - ethnic Tajiks such as Fahim who fought against the Taliban in the northern alliance and are from the Panjshir Valley of the Hindu Kush Mountains.
However, other officials of the new government, including Karzai, have praised the peacekeeping force and its efforts to enforce security in the capital. Karzai has been pressing for an expanded role for the peacekeepers outside the capital. He also wants more international troops sent to Afghanistan.
So far, peacekeepers have been involved in three major shooting incidents since deploying in late December. No peacekeepers have been hurt in the firing incidents, but in one case a man was shot dead taking his pregnant sister-in-law to the hospital to deliver a baby.
