Provincial Afghan government still reeling from Taliban’s prison break

The Kandahar provincial governor’s office said that Afghan and international forces were working together to find the men – nearly all Taliban militants – who got out through a tunnel.

Even if many are recaptured, the already weak provincial government is expected to struggle to recover from the blow.

The prison break came less than two weeks after the Kandahar police chief was killed by a suicide bomber inside his heavily defended office compound.

“How can we trust or rely on a government that can’t protect the police chief inside the police headquarters and can’t keep prisoners in the prison?” asked trader Islamullah Agha Bashir.

“Last night while we were eating dinner I told my two sons not to go out as much because I am afraid that now when the morale of the Taliban is high, they will attack more.”

In Kabul, officials started to piece through the details of the escape and place blame. Justice Minister Abibullah Ghalab sent a formal letter to President Hamid Karzai acknowledging that prison officials or guards probably acted as accomplices but also saying that Afghan and international security forces should have detected the plot.

The Taliban said the escape took five months to plan, with diggers starting the tunnel from under a nearby house while they arranged for inmates to get cell keys.

“The escape of all the prisoners from one tunnel ... shows that collaborators inside the prison somehow provided an opportunity,” Mr Ghalab said in the letter.

However, he also noted that Afghan police searched the compound from which the tunnel originated about two and a half months before the prison break and he said that Canadian and American forces have been responsible for security improvements to the prison. A full investigation was under way.

Kandahar city has been a major focus of the international troop surge over the past year, with Nato saying that establishing security there will be key to securing the region.