Roadside bomb kills 2 Afghan border police, 1 civilian in country’s south

Roadside bomb kills 3 in southern Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A roadside bomb killed two Afghan border police and a civilian riding in their vehicle Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, police said, as Britain’s defense secretary urged patience in the push to secure the volatile region.

The attack occurred in the southeastern corner of Kandahar province near the Pakistan border, said Gen. Abdul Raziq, the border police commander for the region. He said the police were headed with their passenger toward the town of Spin Boldak, but did not have further information.

In neighboring Helmand province — the site of this month’s massive offensive to clear militants from their haven in the town of Marjah — British Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth urged both residents and troop-supplying nations to recognize that the military victory was the easy part.

“Now we’ve got to deliver some enduring improvement, improved governance,” Ainsworth told reporters in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.

The area around Marjah was secured by U.S., Afghan and NATO troops in about three weeks, but Ainsworth said progress from now on will be slow.

“We’ve got to balance people’s expectations with what we can actually deliver,” he said, noting that first they have to persuade residents to trust the government and then get services and projects up and running.

“It’s going to take months, I think, for us to deliver permanent improvement,” Ainsworth said.

The Marjah campaign was considered a small-scale rehearsal for a larger assault on Kandahar, a stronghold of the Taliban. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, said the Kandahar operation will not begin until after a larger U.S. and NATO troop buildup, which is expected to be in place in a few months.

In Brussels, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the new troops would be needed to control areas surrounding the provincial capital, also called Kandahar.

“Afghan and NATO forces have been doing a good job in the city itself, but until now we have not had the forces to thicken our presence in surrounding area,” Appathurai said. “Kandahar has not been lost to anyone, but it’s a constant struggle because the surrounding areas have a continuous (Taliban) presence.”

In the capital, meanwhile, officials ordered a ban on vehicles with dark tinted windows — a move to increase security following a spate of terrorist attacks in Kabul.

The ban will take effect Thursday and drivers who do not comply will their vehicles impounded, said Interior ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary.

The restriction will make it easier for authorities to quickly see what is inside vehicles, and Bashary says it’s necessary to keep Taliban and other militants from attacking Kabul, which has been hit by a string of car bombs and suicide attacks. The latest assault on Feb. 26 left 17 people dead.

There will be no exceptions for diplomatic or official vehicles. Bashary said his boss, Interior Minister Hanif Atmar, had his own car’s window tinting removed Tuesday morning.

Associated Press writer Slobodan Lekic contributed to this story from Brussels.