[A visit by New York Times journalists to Badakhshan, a far-northern spit of Afghanistan sandwiched by Tajikistan, China and Pakistan, showed the desperate nature of a fight in a place cut off from the rest of the country for months every year by winter storms and rugged terrain.]
By
David Zucchino and Najim Rahim
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Burying fighters killed
in a Taliban attack the night before, including Commander
Najmullah, at a cemetery in Wardoj
District on Sept. 18.CreditCreditJim
Huylebroek for The New York Times
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CHAKARAN,
Afghanistan — In one of the
most remote places in Afghanistan, government forces this month managed to
achieve something vanishingly rare these days: They clawed back not one but
three districts from the Taliban’s grip.
But the cost was high, and the victory was
tenuous. Even as the Afghan forces turned their attention toward defending
their gains against fierce Taliban counterattacks in Badakhshan Province,
paramilitary fighters were swamped by grief: One of their most revered
commanders, Najmullah, was among the dead.
His men washed and wrapped his body carefully
in white cloth, then loaded it onto a police pickup. They followed behind with
heads bowed, weapons strapped across their backs and the morning sun glinting
off their ammunition bandoleers.
A visit by New York Times journalists to
Badakhshan, a far-northern spit of Afghanistan sandwiched by Tajikistan, China
and Pakistan, showed the desperate nature of a fight in a place cut off from
the rest of the country for months every year by winter storms and rugged
terrain.
Even the insurgency looks different here: Al
Qaeda and Islamic State loyalists are mashed together with the Taliban in
fighting the Afghan government, officials say, in a tenacious insurgent force
bolstered by a few hundred foreign fighters from Pakistan, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, China and Turkmenistan.
Badakhshan’s natural resources and strategic
location fuels and finances much of the fighting. Its hillsides are carved by
lapis lazuli and gold mines, and its road networks are vital drug trafficking
routes that link the trade in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan.
The government operation to regain the three
districts here, with the heaviest fighting falling on Sept. 7, cleared sections
of an important roadway leading to Tajikistan and drove insurgents into a
retreat to the mountains.
The offensive cobbled together every resource
the besieged military could muster — the local police, the national police, the
Afghan Army, the national intelligence service and most importantly, United
States warplanes. Airstrikes destroyed Taliban heavy weapon emplacements dug
into the mountains, local commanders said, turning the tide of battle.
“Our men fought hard, but without air support
from the Americans we could not have taken this district,” said Habibullah
Rahman Sharifi, a local commander.
The government intelligence commander in
Badakhshan, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hanif Nuristani, said the government hoped to
push forward and take more districts. When asked whether that would be possible
without more American airstrikes, the general pursed his lips and shook his
head no — a particularly sobering assessment given that the Afghan security forces
all know of American efforts to negotiate a final troop withdrawal.
A few days after the government’s initial
victory, the Taliban counterattacked from three surrounding mountains, sending
mortar rounds and rockets crashing down on the government fighters holding the
center of Wardoj District, in an eight-hour battle.
Commander Najmullah went down, and four
paramilitary police officers also were killed. They, too, were later taken to a
cemetery in police trucks, shrouded in green cloth as martyrs of war.
Several soldiers and police officers in
Wardoj said the Taliban nearly succeeded in retaking the district. The
insurgents had maneuvered so close to government positions that airstrikes were
too risky — the military term is “danger close.”
The morning after the battle, an Afghan Army
unit was dug in along the rutted dirt roadway just east of the village.
Soldiers said at least 50 rocket-propelled grenades had slammed into their
positions the night before, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
This was the front line. The morning silence
was shattered by the whump-whump of Taliban heavy machine gun fire from the
mountains above.
The deputy commander, Lt. Col. Khizer Mohammad
Darwazi, leisurely sought cover behind a Humvee. He pointed to the rocky gray
mountains surrounding his men’s positions.
“The enemy is right there — they’re watching
us,” he said. “They are bringing every weapon they have against us because this
area is strategic for them.”
First Lt. Zia Ahmad said the Taliban had
strong support from local residents. On the other hand, he said, his troops
have rising morale and momentum — and the security of American airstrikes.
“The Taliban run when they hear the
aircraft,” the lieutenant said.
But the district center in Chakaran is held
by just 250 to 300 local and national police officers, commanders said. They
said they do not have enough men to drive the Taliban off the mountains and
then hold those positions.
The district governor, Mohammad Emran Payam,
stood in the shade of an apple orchard at the district center as the funeral
possession passed by. He complained that the central government had not
provided enough men and matériel to hold the district, much less push forward
to take other districts.
The government had not even provided him with
a vehicle, he said. He paid for a rented car.
“We need more help,” Mr. Payam said. “The
Taliban are willing to die to take this district back — it’s crucial for their
strategy.”
The Taliban seized the district from the
government four years ago, driving out security forces and their families.
“This is the first time I’ve seen my house in four years,” said one police
officer, Zahidullah, who goes by one name.
Displaced residents are still afraid to
return, wary that the Taliban will crush the police contingent. At least 2,400
families had been displaced, living the past four years in camps and rented
homes, said Abdullah Najdi, head of a council of displaced people who was
displaced himself.
Mr. Najdi said foreign fighters looted homes
and stole crops and livestock. In the village of Bashund in Wardoj District,
120 foreign fighters still lived in houses they had commandeered four years
ago.
“Everyone is still afraid to come back,” Mr.
Najdi said. “The future of this district is not clear to us at all.”
After the battle, Mir Ahmad, 38, cautiously
reopened his tiny restaurant in Chakaran, inside a dusty shanty on the dirt
roadway that bisects the village. For four years, foreign fighters who did not
speak the local Persian language dined there.
“And they paid me — I had no problem with
them,” Mr. Ahmad said.
Nor did he have a problem with the government
troops he hoped would now patronize his little establishment. But he said he
had no idea how long they might be able to hold the village and district.
Abdullah Naji Nazari, a member of the
provincial council, said the fight to retake the province was personal for him.
The village of his birth was still under Taliban control.
Mr. Nazari said he worried that Badakhshan
could become an international terrorism stronghold with the presence of Al
Qaeda and the Islamic State. He said the Taliban had clashed with the foreign
jihadists, but had since aligned with them to fight a government they consider
an American puppet.
“This isn’t just an Afghan problem,” Mr.
Nazari said. “It’s an international problem.”
General Nuristani, the intelligence commander
in Badakhshan, said that at least 400 foreign fighters had joined the Taliban,
Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the province. He said his men captured four
black Islamic State flags during the fighting in Wardoj District.
Mr. Nazari said the government had retaken
areas containing a massive lapis lazuli mine that the Taliban had taxed. But he
said local warlords and power brokers were now fighting over the mine, with no
government plan to control and tax the prized blue gemstone.
“Everybody wants a piece of the mines,” he
said of the 30 lapis lazuli, gold and other mines in the province.
Even with the collapse this month of a
proposed peace deal between the United States and the Taliban for a phased
American troop withdrawal, Mr. Nazari said he was concerned that President
Trump might precipitously pull the troops out anyway.
“This whole operation would not have been
possible without American airpower,” he said. “We couldn’t succeed without it.”
In Chakaran, a man with a pickax tore at the
hard clay earth of the local cemetery to carve out a narrow grave for their
fallen commander, Najmullah. Among the many mourners were police officers,
still bearing their weapons. They braced for another possible Taliban
counterattack.
The mourners held out their hands, palms up,
and prayed. The body was lowered gently into the earth, with four more to
follow.
