Afghans remove security barriers from Kabul roads
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-08 17:18

Afghan police began dismantling security barriers on Sunday erected by Western embassies, foreign military forces and security firms as part of a popular move to ease traffic congestion in Kabul.

Despite a spate of suicide attacks by Taliban insurgents, President Hamid Karzai served notice over a week ago that the barriers would be removed unless they were voluntarily dismantled by Saturday.

With the passing of the deadline, bulldozers began by pushing aside barriers outside the Asian Development Bank building in the city's 10th precinct under the eye of armed police.

U.S. and NATO-led forces are headquartered in the same precinct, which is also home to several aid groups, U.N. offices and embassies.

"There should be no opposition to the plan," Jamil Kohestani, a senior city police official, said when asked what the police would do if anyone tried to stop them carrying out orders.

The U.S. military, along with some aid groups, voiced concern last week over the plan to remove barriers.

Security barriers and concrete anti-blast blocks have sprouted outside many foreign compounds in Kabul after repeated attacks in the four years since U.S.-led forces overthrew a hardline Islamist Taliban government in late 2001.

In the latest attack on Saturday, a suicide attacker hurled himself against a police bus in the eastern city of Jalalabad, wounding two policemen.

Ten civilians were killed in another suicide attack on Thursday in the central province of Uruzgan, in an attack that coincided with U.S. ambassador Ronald E. Neumann's visit to the area.

Kohestani said there will be no exception and the government was also keen to clear barriers at a roundabout close to the heavily fortified presidential palace, U.S. military headquarters and a former hotel once frequented by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden but subsequently occupied by the Central Intelligence Agency.

In parts of Kabul, notably around the fortress-like U.S. embassy and the headquarters of NATO-led peacekeepers, entire roads are blocked to regular traffic.

Many roads are shut during visits by foreign dignitaries or when Karzai himself travels across the city.

Local media reports of women giving birth in cars on clogged roads or dying in traffic jams on their way to hospital have fed growing public impatience with the security measures taken by foreigners in their capital.

Residents and displaced street vendors staged an angry protest last month against a security barrier set up outside a newly built five-star hotel. The barrier was subsequently removed.