Taliban sweep across Afghanistan’s south, take 4 more cities

Details

Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 14 August 2021

Hits: 1100

By TAMEEM AKHGAR, RAHIM FAIEZ and JOSEPH KRAUSS

KABUL - The Taliban completed their sweep of Afghanistan’s south on Friday, taking four more provincial capitals in a lightning offensive that brought them closer to Kabul just weeks before the U.S. is set to officially end its two-decade war.

In the last 24 hours, the country’s second- and third-largest cities — Herat in the west and Kandahar in the south — have fallen to the insurgents, as has the capital of the southern province of Helmand, where American, British and NATO forces fought some of the bloodiest battles of the conflict.

The blitz through the Taliban’s southern heartland means the insurgents now hold half of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals and control more than two-thirds of the country. The Western-backed government in the capital, Kabul, still holds a smattering of provinces in the center and east, as well as the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

While Kabul is not directly under threat yet, the resurgent Taliban were battling government forces in Logar province, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the capital. The U.S. military has estimated that Kabul could come under insurgent pressure within 30 days and that the Taliban could overrun the rest of the country within a few months. They have already taken over much of the north and west of the country.

In the south, insurgents swept through three provincial capitals on Friday.

The Taliban captured Lashkar Gah following weeks of heavy fighting and raised their white flag over governmental buildings, said Attaullah Afghan, the head of the provincial council in Helmand. He said that three army bases outside of the city remain under government control.

In Tirin Kot, the capital of the southern Uruzgan province, Taliban fighters paraded through a main square, driving a Humvee and a pickup seized from Afghan forces. Local officials confirmed that the Taliban also captured the capitals of Zabul province in the south and Ghor in the west.

With security rapidly deteriorating, the United States planned to send in 3,000 troops to help evacuate some personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Britain and Canada are also sending forces to aid their evacuations. Denmark said it will temporarily close its embassy, while Germany is reducing its embassy staff to the “absolute minimum.”

The United Nations chief urged the Taliban to immediately halt the offensive and negotiate “in good faith” to avert a prolonged civil war. In his strongest appeal to the Islamic militant group, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply disturbed” by indications that the Taliban were “imposing severe restrictions in the areas under their control, particularly targeting women and journalists.”

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have fled their homes amid fears the Taliban will return the country to the sort of brutal, repressive rule it imposed when it was last in power at the turn of the millennium. At that time, the group all but eliminated women’s rights and conducted public executions as it imposed an unsparing version of Islamic law. An early sign of such tactics came in Herat, where insurgents paraded two alleged looters through the streets on Friday with black makeup smeared on their faces.

There are also concerns that the fighting could plunge the country into civil war, which is what happened after the Soviets withdrew in 1989.

“We are worried. There is fighting everywhere in Afghanistan. The provinces are falling day by day,” said Ahmad Sakhi, a resident of Kabul. “The government should do something. The people are facing lots of problems.”

The U.N. refugee agency said nearly 250,000 Afghans have been forced to flee their homes since the end of May, and 80% of those displaced are women and children. In all, the agency said, some 400,000 civilians have been displaced since the beginning of the year, joining millions who have fled previous rounds of fighting in recent decades.

Peace talks in Qatar between the Taliban and the government remain stalled, though diplomats are still meeting, as the U.S., European and Asian nations warned that battlefield gains would not lead to political recognition.

“We demand an immediate end to attacks against cities, urge a political settlement, and warn that a government imposed by force will be a pariah state,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy to the talks.

But the Taliban advance continued.

Fighting was still underway inside Puli-e Alim, with government forces holding the police headquarters and other security facilities, said Hasibullah Stanikzai, the head of the Logar provincial council. He spoke by phone from his office, and gunfire could be heard in the background. The Taliban, however, said they had captured the police headquarters and a nearby prison.

The onslaught represents a stunning collapse of Afghan forces after the United States spent nearly two decades and $830 billion trying to establish a functioning state. U.S. forces toppled the Taliban in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which al-Qaida planned and executed while being sheltered by the Taliban government.

With only weeks remaining before the U.S. plans to withdraw its last troops, the fighters now advancing across the country ride on American-made Humvees and carry M-16s pilfered from Afghan forces.

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the Afghan army has rotted from within due to corruption and mismanagement, leaving troops in the field poorly equipped and with little motivation to fight. The Taliban, meanwhile, have spent a decade taking control of large swaths of the countryside.

That allowed them to rapidly seize key infrastructure and urban areas once President Joe Biden announced the timeline for the U.S. withdrawal, saying he was determined to end America’s longest war.

“Whatever forces are left or remaining that are in the Kabul area and the provinces around them, they’re going to be used for the defense of Kabul,” Roggio said. “Unless something dramatically changes, and I don’t see how that’s possible, these provinces (that have fallen) will remain under Taliban control.”

A day earlier, in Herat, Taliban fighters rushed past the Great Mosque in the historic city — a structure that dates to 500 BC and was once a spoil of Alexander the Great — and seized government buildings. Herat had been under militant attack for two weeks.

In Kandahar, insurgents seized the governor’s office and other buildings, and officials fled, witnesses said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the defeat has yet to be acknowledged by the government, which has not commented on the latest advances.

Civilians were likely wounded and killed in airstrikes, Nasima Niazi, a lawmaker from Helmand, said Thursday. U.S. Central Command has acknowledged carrying out several strikes in recent days, without providing details.

Meanwhile in neighboring Pakistan, the country’s national security adviser urged Afghan leaders to seek a negotiated settlement with the Taliban to avoid further violence. Moeed Yusuf made the appeal Friday while speaking to reporters in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

Afghanistan: Record number of women and children killed

Details

Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 29 July 2021

Hits: 1133

NEW YORK - More women and children were killed and wounded in Afghanistan in the first half of 2021 than in the first six months of any year since records began in 2009, a United Nations report revealed on Monday.

A particularly sharp rise in casualties occurred in May when international military forces began withdrawing from the country and fighting intensified following the Taliban offensive to take territory from Government forces.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported in its Afghanistan Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict midyear update, that there were 1,659 civilians killed and 3,254 wounded; a 47 per cent increase compared with the same period last year.

Spike in May

UNAMA said it was particularly concerned about the acute rise in the number of civilian casualties in the period from 1 May, with almost as many recorded in the May-June period as in the entire preceding four months.

Women and children made up close to half of all these civilian casualties at 46 per cent, according to the report. 32 per cent were children, with 468 killed and 1,214 wounded. Fourteen per cent of civilian casualties were women, with 219 killed and 508 wounded.

“I implore the Taliban and Afghan leaders to take heed of the conflict’s grim and chilling trajectory and its devastating impact on civilians,” said Deborah Lyons, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan.

“The report provides a clear warning that unprecedented numbers of Afghan civilians will perish and be maimed this year if the increasing violence is not stemmed,” Ms. Lyons added in a statement accompanying the report.

Escalation

Much of the fighting during the months of May and June took place outside cities, in areas with comparatively low population levels. UNAMA warned that without a significant de-escalation in violence, Afghanistan will likely witness the highest ever number of documented civilian casualties in a single year since it began keeping records in 2009.

The US-NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan is more than 95 per cent complete and is due to finish by 31 August. Ms. Lyons called on Taliban and Afghan leaders to intensify their efforts at the negotiating table: “Stop the Afghan against Afghan fighting. Protect the Afghan people and give them hope for a better future,” she said.

‘Afghan fighting Afghan’

The UNAMA report noted that this is the first time that it has not attributed a single civilian casualty to international military forces. It stated that the conflict has now apparently become an exclusively civilian fight.

“Anti-government elements” were responsible for 64 per cent of the total casualties, of which 39 per cent were attributed to the Taliban, nearly nine per cent to Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIL-KP), and 16 per cent to undetermined non-state actors.

Pro-Government Forces (PGFs) were responsible for 25 per cent of civilian casualties: 23 per cent by Afghan national security forces, and two per cent by pro-Government armed groups or undetermined PGFs.

Eleven per cent of all civilian casualties were attributed to “crossfire” during ground engagements where the exact party responsible could not be determined, and other incident types, including unattributable unexploded ordnance/explosive remnants of war.

Civilian casualties attributed to anti-Government elements increased by 63 per cent compared with the same period in 2020, while civilian casualties attributed to PGFs increased by 30 per cent.

IED use increases

The leading causes of civilian casualties in the first half of 2021 were the extensive use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by opposition forces, ground engagements between parties, targeted killings by non-state groups and airstrikes by the Afghan Air Force.

UNAMA said it was deeply concerned about these attacks which deliberately target civilians, including government workers, human rights defenders, media workers, religious elders, and humanitarian workers, and sectarian-motivated attacks.

Schoolgirls attacked

Children, it stated, were deliberately targeted on at least one occasion. The most shocking incident was the 8 May attack outside the Sayed ul-Shuhuda school in Kabul, which resulted in more than 300 civilian casualties, mostly schoolgirls, including 85 killed, for which no group has claimed responsibility.

UNAMA also recorded a resurgence of deliberate sectarian-motivated attacks against the Shi’a Muslim religious minority, most of whom also belong to the Hazara ethnic group, nearly all claimed by the Islamist extremist group ISIL-KP.

The UN mission said it was also concerned about the increasing number of reports of killing, ill-treatment, persecution and discrimination in communities affected by the fighting and its aftermath. It warned that all parties to respect the human rights and dignity of people and prevent such abuses and violations.

China boosts ties with Taliban

Details

Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 29 July 2021

Hits: 1120

BEIJING - China has pledged its support for the Taliban during Afghanistan's reconstruction, a major boon for the insurgents.

China’s foreign minister met Wednesday with a delegation of high-level Taliban officials as ties between them warm ahead of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.

A photo posted on the ministry’s website showed Wang Yi posing with senior Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and his delegation in the city of Tianjin, then sitting down to talks. The highly conspicuous show of friendliness had the appearance of a diplomatic mission at a time when the Taliban are craving legitimacy.

Wang said China respects Afghan sovereign independence and territorial integrity and always adheres to non-interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.

He said the hasty withdrawal of the U.S. and NATO “reveals the failure of America’s policies and offers the Afghan people an important opportunity to stabilize and develop their own country.”

While no agenda was announced for the meeting, China has an interest in pushing the Taliban to deliver on peace talks or at least reduce the level of violence as they gobble up territory from Afghan government forces.

China and Afghanistan share a narrow border high in the remote Wakhan Valley, and China has long been concerned about a possible spillover of Islamic militancy into its formerly volatile Xinjiang region. China has also signed deals for oil, gas and copper mining in Afghanistan, although those have long been dormant.

“The Taliban are a pivotal military and political force in Afghanistan and are expected to play an important role in the in process of peace, reconciliation and reconstruction," Wang said.

China, Wang said, hopes the Taliban will put the nation's and the people's interests first and focus on peace talks, set peace goals, establish a “positive image" and work for unity among all factions and ethnic groups.

Wang also said China hopes the Taliban will “deal resolutely" with the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, a group China claims is leading a push for independence in Xinjiang, but which many experts doubt even exists in any operational form.

The heads of the Taliban Religious Council and the Propaganda Committee were also on the trip.

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan by Aug. 31 is seen as a boon to China, Washington's chief strategic competitor, which has long resented the presence of U.S. troops in what it considers its own backyard.

If the Taliban do topple the U.S.-backed central government, China could gain a strategic corridor allowing it and long-time ally Pakistan to bring further pressure against common rival India.

Baradar's visit comes shortly after Pakistan’s foreign minister and intelligence chief made their trips to China.

Pakistan is seen as key to peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership is headquartered in Pakistan and Islamabad has used its leverage, which it says is now waning, to press the Taliban to talk peace.

While the Tianjin meeting could be seen as a snub at the U.S., Washington has been meeting with China and Russia to produce statements calling on the Taliban to enter into a peace deal.

Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington’s point person in talks aimed at ending decades of war in Afghanistan, also made a brief visit to Pakistan earlier this month as relations between Islamabad and Kabul reached a new low.

That has fed perceptions that the U.S. is engaged in stepped-up efforts to obtain a peace deal ahead of the Aug. 31 deadline that also includes China.

After U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman met Wang in Tianjin on Monday, she and the State Department included Afghanistan on the list of “areas of global interest" that the U.S. and China could cooperate on.