[The Taliban figures killed by Afghan Special Forces recently include shadow governors in Helmand and Ghazni provinces, a deputy shadow governor in Farah province, and a Taliban judge, also in Ghazni, the statistics show. Nearly two dozen Taliban leaders have also been killed in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan
By Tim Craig
 |
An Afghan soldier stands guard at a military checkpoint on
the outskirts of Tarin Kot,
the capital of Uruzgan province. (Rateb Noori/
|
After 15 years of war and
several failed attempts to reach a negotiated peace deal, the dynamics of the
conflict changed in the spring, when President Obama for the first time ordered
a U.S. Pakistan
The operations are part of a
broader effort by Afghan forces, backed by increasing U.S airstrikes, to treat
the Taliban more as a foreign enemy than as a domestic insurgent group worthy
of some military restraint, according to Afghan officials and analysts. As a
result, they say, there are signs the Taliban is under strain this summer while
Afghan security forces, at least the elite ones, are finally becoming a battle-ready
force.
“Last year, we did not have the
same achievements, and we did not do this,” said Sediq Sediqqi, chief spokesman
for the Afghan Interior Ministry, referring to Afghan commandos and Special
Operations forces in action against Taliban targets. “This year, they had a
mission, they had intelligence, they were trained, and [Taliban leaders] were
targeted.”
“It’s not that they were killed
by accident,” Sediqqi added. “They were targets.”
The raids were carried out by
both Afghan police and army Special Forces units relying on a target list
developed by the country’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of
Security (NDS), Sediqqi said.
Brig. Gen. Besmellah Waziri, commander
of the Afghan Army’s Special Operations Division, referred to the operations as
an “outright change in strategy” aimed at “ringleaders” regardless of where
they are located.
“We usually pick our targets
based on their peculiarities,” Waziri said, adding that Taliban commanders and
those who oversee weapons depots or explosives factories are more “important
this year compared to last.”
The Afghan military’s more
muscular approach was first flagged by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in late
April after a Taliban truck bomb killed more than 60 people in Kabul
Ghani’s comments marked a
significant departure from the policy of his predecessor, Hamid Karzai. During
his final years in office, Karzai halted night raids on Taliban targets and
frequently accused the United States
But Ghani is once again leaning
heavily on the U.S.-led coalition for support, and he received another boost
last week when Obama abandoned his plan to withdraw most of the remaining 9,800
American troops stationed in Afghanistan
Troop levels, however, tell
just a small part of the unfolding story here about continued U.S.
In early June, Obama also
expanded the circumstances in which commanders can order airstrikes against
Taliban militants.
Previously, those strikes were
supposed to be confined to instances where the Taliban posed a direct threat to
coalition or Afghan forces or when Afghan forces faced “a strategic defeat” on
the battlefield, Nicholson said. Now, however, the U.S.
Even before that policy went
into effect, U.S. Afghanistan
According to the U.S. Air
Force’s Central Command Air and Space Operations Center Afghanistan
Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland,
chief spokesman for the NATO coalition, expects the pace of strikes to increase
in the coming days now that the Islamic holy month of Ramadan has ended.
“We will gear up more and more
as we move through July,” said Cleveland
The Taliban figures killed by
Afghan Special Forces recently include shadow governors in Helmand and Ghazni provinces, a deputy
shadow governor in Farah province, and a Taliban judge, also in Ghazni, the
statistics show. Nearly two dozen Taliban leaders have also been killed in
Kunduz in northern Afghanistan
For much of the winter, after
that humiliating setback for the Afghan military, many analysts predicted
widespread Taliban gains on the battlefield this year. Some suggested the
Taliban could gain control of entire provinces.
But so far, the killing in
Pakistan of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, together with
ongoing Afghan security operations, have kept Taliban gains far short of
expectations, according to interviews with more than a dozen provincial and
military officials.
Though the Taliban launched a
major assault in Uruzgan province in late May, U.S. Helmand province, a full-scale Taliban assault on Lashkargah that had
been predicted for months has yet to materialize, and attacks overall in the
province are down 15 percent compared with last year.
In Kunar province in eastern
Afghanistan, an estimated 7,000 fighters affiliated with 11 different militant
groups remain, but faced with airstrikes no longer control even one of the
province’s 15 major roads, said Habib Sayedkhaili, the police chief.
“The unprecedented show of
coordination has proved to be very effective in crushing the Taliban’s momentum,”
said Jailani Farahi, deputy police chief of Zabul province in southern Afghanistan
Sediqqi said the Taliban
remains a serious threat to about 40 Afghan districts, compared with 70 at this
time last year.
Still, he and other security
officials caution, there remains considerable concern that the Taliban will
still mount a major offensive in the coming weeks or months.
If the Taliban continues to be
squeezed by airstrikes in rural areas of the country, Sediqqi said, the group
might turn to soft targets in Kabul
But at least for now, there has
been “a killing of the Taliban’s momentum,” said Haroun Mir, a Kabul-based
political analyst.
Sayed Salahuddin and Mohammad
Sharif in Kabul Islamabad
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