Afghans start to remove Kabul roadblocks

Afghan policemen stand guard at the site of a suicide attack in Kabul, August 10, 2010.

KABUL (Reuters) - Authorities in Afghanistan, which holds elections next month, have started removing road blockades set up in Kabul to guard against attacks by the Taliban and other insurgents.

With parliamentary polls on September 18, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been anxious to assert his independence from Western backers and has set an ambitious timetable for Afghans to take complete security responsibility by 2014.

Karzai's plan to rid the capital of concrete barriers, which many residents think turn the capital into a military fort, has been tried before but was never enforced, many residents still jittery about security amid a growing insurgency.

The concrete barriers and security checkpoints have become a fact of life in Kabul, similar in design if not scale to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

One leading city official said government buildings and official residences would be among the first to be made to comply with the new order. It could gradually include roads blocked by foreign embassies and international aid groups, he said.

"We will try to remove any barrier from the streets and pavements based on the decree of the president," Abdul Raziq, Kabul's deputy mayor, told Reuters.

Afghan authorities would discuss the plan with foreign missions to clear the barriers and roadblocks, including one outside the heavily fortified U.S. embassy and the headquarters of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, he said.

A suicide car bomb attack on the road outside the NATO compound, which leads to Karzai's palace, killed seven Afghans and wounded scores last year.

A similar strike outside the Indian embassy in 2008 killed 58 people, including three Indian diplomats.

The Taliban have made a comeback in recent years after they were removed by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, launching a series of high-profile attacks against Afghan and foreign targets across the country.

Violence has hit record levels despite the presence of more than 140,000 foreign troops. Accordingly, many foreigners in Afghanistan prefer tighter security measures, including road closures and concrete barriers.

Police say the barricades create long traffic delays in a city with a population of some 5 million that was originally built for about 200,000.

"As a solution, we would suggest to them (expatriates) to move the concrete barriers closer to their compounds or inside their buildings," Raziq said.

(Editing by Paul Tait and Charles Dick)