The governor of Afghanistan`s strategic Paktia Province bordering Pakistan vowed yesterday to bring to justice a disgruntled warlord who killed 30 civilians in a rocket barrage that posed a major challenge to the authority of the country`s new leadership.
Governor Taj Mohammad Wardak said hospitals in the provincial capital of Gardez were filled with wounded after about 500 rockets rained down on the town on Saturday.
He blamed the attack, which coincided with a visit to Afghanistan by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on former governor Padshah Khan Zadran, ousted from his post last February and replaced by Wardak who was appointed by interim leader Hamid Karzai to restore calm to the city.
The US military said it was disturbed by the fighting in a town that was a staging base for US and Afghan forces involved in last month`s Battle of Shah-i-Kot, the biggest US-led ground attack of the war that ousted the fundamentalist Taliban from power.
"Obviously the fighting isn`t helpful," Major Bryan Hilferty told reporters at Bagram, near Kabul, the main US-led coalition base for pursuit of Taliban leaders and followers of Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the September 11 suicide attacks on the United States.
Wardak told Reuters Padshah Khan, who has thousands of fighters under his control, had withdrawn his forces from the outskirts of Gardez and there were no new attacks yesterday.
"The fighting has come to an end now," Wardak said in a telephone call from Gardez, 150 kilometres south of Kabul.
"People are treating more than 100 wounded and there has been much damage. We are going to bring him to justice. We will not allow people like him to rain rockets on innocent people."
Wardak said he had not asked for help from Kabul in putting down the uprising because his own forces could handle the issue. But he warned an example must be made of Padshah Khan to send a signal to the country that warlordism no longer ruled.
"Unless we finish off Padshah Khan people will say the Karzai administration is a failure," Wardak said.
In the two-week-long Battle of Shah-i-Kot, the US military said hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda rebels were killed. However some Afghans say many rebels escaped to adjacent areas of Pakistan.
Hilferty said international forces still in the Shah-i-Kot area had not been threatened by the fighting.
Padshah Khan has already been accused of calling in U.S strikes on his rivals in neighbouring Khost province, by claiming they were al Qaeda or Taliban. More than 50 people were killed in the Khost bombing at the end of last year.
Wardak said Padshah Khan`s brother, himself a minister in the interim government, had tried the same tactic to explain the latest Gardez fighting.
Amanullah Zadran, Minister for Frontiers and Tribal Affairs, told Reuters his brother had been fighting against Taliban and al Qaeda forces seeking to take over his positions around Gardez.
"There were no Taliban or al Qaeda," Wardak said. "We are going to wipe him out."
In late January, about 50 fighters were killed in fighting between Padshah Khan and rival commander Haji Saifullah Khan who heads Gardez`s tribal council.
The rivalry between Padshah Khan and Saifullah became so intense that Karzai appointed Wardak as governor in February to calm the situation. On Wardak`s appointment, Padshah Khan retreated to the outskirts of Gardez but has repeatedly vowed to take back the city.
Tension is also high in the town of Khost, capital of the province. Residents said a tense standoff was in effect after fighting between Padshah Khan and a rival warlord earlier in the week killed four people and wounded several others.
The US military has a special forces camp on the outskirts of Khost which has been the target of at least two rocket attacks in recent weeks linked to the warlord fighting.