Afghan officials reach truce with taliban

Afghan officials from the Badghis province have reached a truce with the taliban from that area. The taliban have agreed not to attack any election candidates. Globe & Mail

Under the agreement reached in northwestern Badghis province – the first local truce with Taliban insurgents ahead of the August presidential election – the Taliban agreed not to attack election candidates in the province and to allow them to set up campaign offices.

But the arrangement, which applies to an already relatively peaceful province, is something Kabul will have a hard time replicating in the volatile southern provinces, where fighting still rages. Indeed, Canadian forces already expect a spike in violence leading up to the Aug. 20 election. And while some Taliban officials say they will avoid attacking polling booths, there is no telling just how many members of the highly decentralized Afghan insurgency will actually follow through on that promise.

“The great likelihood is that the insurgency will try to disrupt the election,” Brigadier-General Jonathan Vance, commander of Task Force Kandahar, said in a recent interview with The Globe and Mail. “They might try to discredit the election with attacks on polling centres, suicide attacks or lacing the ground with IEDs, so the potential is there for more attempts at violence, for sure.”