[The Taliban’s advance occurred amid a retreat by local militias that are allied with the government, said local officials and militia commanders. On Tuesday, militia commanders and their fighters were blaming the government for providing them with little in the way of support or ammunition. “During the fighting, I ran out of mortar rounds — to buy one mortar round would cost me 2,000 afghanis,” or about $33, said a local militia commander, Mohammad Omar Pakhsa Paran. “Where would I get the money to buy rounds?”]
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban have
seized territory across three provinces in northern Afghanistan in
recent days, as the government in Kabul has struggled to reinforce isolated
outposts amid the insurgent offensive.
More than 100 police
officers in the north have surrendered to the Talibanin
this latest campaign, and more than a thousand men — including some soldiers,
but mostly fighters with pro-government militias — have retreated. The
Taliban’s momentum has even reached Afghanistan’s
extreme northeast, which was once the mountain redoubt of the anti-Taliban
resistance in the 1990s, when the group governed the country.
On Monday, the insurgents
overran a large district in Sar-i-Pul Province, in the northwest, when a local
police unit surrendered after a 10-day battle, provincial officials said.
Several of the district’s civil officials, along with the garrison of 200 soldiers,
then retreated to a city in a neighboring province, Salahudin Cherik Zada, a
member of Sar-i-Pul’s provincial council, said in a telephone interview.
The spokesman for the
Afghan Ministry of Defense, Dawlat Waziri, told the
Afghan television channel Tolo News: “The collapse of a district is not
something to panic about. We have programs for recapturing these areas which have
fallen, and a number of troops will be deployed to the north.”
A renewed Taliban push
has also imperiled Kunduz, the second most important city in the north, which
sits near the border with Tajikistan. On Monday, the Taliban seized towns on
the outskirts of the city and took control of scores of villages in a district
to its southeast, a leading pro-government militia commander in Kunduz
Province, Mir Alam, said by telephone.
The Taliban’s advance
occurred amid a retreat by local militias that are allied with the government,
said local officials and militia commanders. On Tuesday, militia commanders and
their fighters were blaming the government for providing them with little in
the way of support or ammunition. “During the fighting, I ran out of mortar rounds
— to buy one mortar round would cost me 2,000 afghanis,” or about $33, said a
local militia commander, Mohammad Omar Pakhsa Paran. “Where would I get the
money to buy rounds?”
Mr. Pakhsa Paran said
that he commanded 700 men and that, until Monday, he had managed to hold off
the Taliban for two years from the area he controlled in Khanabad, a district
to the south and east of the city of Kunduz. “When I called the police chief
and the commander of the second army brigade to ask for the support needed to
defeat the Taliban, they did not answer,” he said, adding that two of his men
had been killed, 16 wounded and seven captured before a number of militias, his
included, retreated. He said that, all told, about 2,000 armed pro-government
fighters had retreated.
The city has been under
threat since April, with the Taliban forces in the area bolstered by militants
from Central Asia.
Government security
officials believe the Taliban see Kunduz as a major prize: If it falls, it will
be the first city they have managed to seize since their government was toppled
in late 2001. In recent months, the insurgents have pushed into the city’s
outskirts and seized control of neighboring districts, only to disperse before
government forces managed to counterattack. Whether insurgent forces will make
an all-out push for the city this time remains to be seen.
But already, there is
mounting anger at the government’s inability to keep the Taliban at bay, as
civilians fear being killed as the front lines have shifted.
“Is Kunduz a part of the
government or does it have no importance?” Amruddin Wali, the deputy head of
the Kunduz provincial council, asked in an interview. “The government came here
once and made a show of pushing back the Taliban, but they are drowning in
their own negligence, and they have let the Taliban come back.”
The Taliban’s latest
territorial gains were preceded by a demoralizing
blowto the nation’s security forces on Saturday, when nearly 110
policemen surrendered to the Taliban after their base in the northeast came
under attack. The episode, which is being described as the largest surrender by
Afghan forces in years, illustrates a weakness in the government’s war
strategy.
In trying to hold all the
territory the American-led coalition turned over to Afghan forces in recent
years, the military has spread itself thin across an isolated patchwork of
bases that are often beyond the reach of reinforcements. Without the benefit of
American air power, the military now finds that its units are often cut off and
are being overrun by Taliban forces, which can total over 100 men at a time.
The police base that was
attacked last week, in a lawless region of Badakhshan Province, was reportedly
well-supplied and heavily staffed. In an interview, Badakhshan’s deputy
governor, Gul Mohammad Baidar, said it had supplies for 200 men “that could
last for at least three months.”
But when the police on
the base found themselves surrounded by a larger Taliban force, the battle
lasted for just over two days before the police retreated to a nearby mountain.
There, they negotiated a surrender.
“They claimed that lack
of on-time reinforcements and air support left them no other choice,” Mr.
Baidar said. Most of the police officers came from the surrounding areas and
were allowed to return home once they handed over their weapons and swore not
to rejoin the government, officials said. An additional 50 or 60 men from
elsewhere in Badakhshan are believed to have fled while the surrender was being
negotiated.
Reporting was contributed
by Ahmad Shakib, Fazal Muzhary and Jawad Sukhanyar from Kabul, and Najim Rahim
from Kunduz, Afghanistan.
