Violence Flares in Afghanistan Among Various Groups By Rod Nordland and Jawad Sukhanyar in The Boston Globe, May 21, 2016

KABUL — Afghanistan’s conflict is beginning to look more like a messy civil war than a straightforward struggle between the government and its Taliban enemies, judging from an outbreak of violence in recent days.
In northern Faryab province, what began Friday night as an attack by the Taliban on groups of progovernment militiamen ended Saturday with 10 people dead after fighting broke out between two of the progovernment factions.
In Parwan province in the north, an insurgency commander named Hashmatullah was killed along with five followers, provincial officials said. The officials said he had been killed in an airstrike by the US-led coalition working with Afghan forces, but US officials denied that.
“There were no airstrikes conducted by US Forces-Afghanistan, coalition or AAF,” said Captain Andrea M. Dykes, a public affairs officer for the coalition, using an abbreviation for the Afghan Air Force.
Hashmatullah, who like many Afghans used only one name, was a militia leader who had once supported progovernment forces. Afghan officials said he had been meeting with the Taliban to coordinate attacks. Other officials had denounced Hashmatullah as the leader of a criminal gang.
In southern Oruzgan province on Saturday morning, six police officers were killed when three other officers turned their weapons on them at a checkpoint, stole their guns and ammunition, and fled to join the Taliban, according to Haji Abdul Rahman, the governor of Charchino District.
“The district is completely surrounded by the Taliban, and the police are surrendering to them almost every day,” he said.
It was the third insider attack involving police in the past week in southern Afghanistan.
In the Faryab fighting on Friday, Taliban insurgents tried to overrun Almar District, but were repulsed by militiamen who are followers of Ghulam Farooq Qati, a commander associated with the Jamiat-i-Islami party, a group that supports the government but has rivalries with other northern militia groups.
After the Taliban were beaten back, according to a statement issued by the party’s executive council, fighting broke out between the Jamiat militiamen and militiamen from the Junbish party, an Uzbek group led by Afghanistan’s first vice president, the ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum.
Fighting continued into Saturday. Of the 10 people killed, eight were from Junbish and two from Jamiat, said Sayed Anwar Sadat, the governor of Faryab.
“We have sent Afghan army forces to stop the fighting between both groups,” Sadat said. “Now the situation is normal and under the control of Afghan government forces in the area.”
Nadir Saeedi, a provincial council member, said the Afghan army had to warn both sides not to cross a border line between their positions, or the army would attack them.
“This is not the first time we had clashes between both sides,” Saeedi said. “If the situation gets worse, no one, even from the central government, may be able to control it.”
Also on Saturday, a suicide bomber tried to drive a car laden with explosives into a US military convoy, but US officials said no one had been killed. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/05/21/violence-flares-afghanistan-among-various-groups/bJXCxVmQ78jO19U1uONhMM/story.html