Feature: Gun-toting criminal gangs rising problem for war-torn Afghanistan

More than two dozens dead or injured bodies lay scattered around a muddy house in an isolated village of Dehsalah district in Afghanistan's northern Baghlan province last Monday, where the crying relatives were calling for justice. "He is my cousin Ismael who attended a wedding party in the village to show respect for the groom's family and villagers but was killed in indiscriminate firing by armed lawless men," Rahmatullah told Xinhua while pointing a finger at a lifeless body on the ground.

Rahmatullah, in floods of tears, murmured that Ismael was the father of three children and asked who will take care of his kids from now on.

In a barbaric act late Sunday night, an armed man opened fire on another man also carrying a weapon at the wedding party, triggering a gun battle between two rival groups which left 20 people, all civilians, dead and injured 10 others. "No doubt, the reason for this carnage is the presence of armed criminal groups in the countryside who illegally carry weapons and create law and order problems," Rahmatullah said.

Hundreds of thousands of such lawless groups and individuals are said to exist in the strife-torn Afghanistan.

There might be some 200 armed criminals in Dehsalah district and adjoining areas alone, Mohammad Azim Mohseni, a lawmaker from Baghlan province, told local media recently, warning that the illegal armed men could eventually pose security threats if the government overlooks the problem.

Meantime, some local officials put the number of gun-toting men roaming in Dehsalah and neighboring Banu and Pulhisar districts as high as 1,000.

However, Baghlan's Police Inspector General Abdul Jabar Purduli, in talks with local media, recently expressed concerns over the presence of gun carrying elements in parts of the province, saying ensuring lasting security requires big and well-coordinated operations to wipe out both the anti-government militants and illegally armed groups.

Not only in Baghlan, but in other parts of the conflict-ridden country,the existence of such groups has occasionally created security problems.

Nearly a dozen people were killed and injured as a result of fighting between two armed groups in Khanabad district of the northern Kunduz province two weeks ago which prompted many locals to show leniency towards Taliban militants, enabling them to overrun at least 30 villages in the troubled district, district governor Hayatullah Amiri said.

Armed groups, which are said to have been involved in criminal activities to earn money through black businesses such as extorting farmers and smuggling drugs, have been recruited into the ranks of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), a community police force in the countryside created to defend their communities against the Taliban onslaught.

However, in some cases, commanders of the ALP have reportedly defected to the Taliban, with a recent case, according to local officials, being in Tirgaran valley of Badakhshan and Kohistanat district of Saripul provinces, which enabled the Taliban to gain ground. "The Taliban are not behind the brutal murder of civilians at the wedding party in Dehsalah district... the armed individuals roaming in nearby villages have committed the massacre," Aman who lost one of his family members in the bloody incident said.

More than a dozen innocent civilians have been killed elsewhere in Baghlan province, six of them in Dehsalah's neighboring Banu district early this month by armed groups, a Baghlan resident Jan Agha lamented. Endi