[The Taliban have positioned
themselves around several major population centers, including the capital of
Kandahar Province, as the Biden administration weighs whether to withdraw or to
stay.]
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Taimoor
Shah
Around the northern city of Kunduz,
despite the winter’s fierce cold, the Taliban have taken outposts and military
bases, using small armed drones to terrorize Afghan troops. In neighboring
Pul-i-Khumri, they have seized important highways in a stranglehold of the
city, threatening main lifelines to Kabul, the country’s capital.
And in the city of Kandahar, a
bedrock of historic and political importance and an economic hub for the
country’s south, Taliban fighters have pummeled the surrounding districts, and
moved closer to taking the provincial capital than they have in more than a
decade.
The Taliban’s brazen offensive has
put the Biden administration into a dangerous political bind. Under the deal
struck by President Donald J. Trump with the Taliban last year, all foreign
troops — including the remaining 2,500 American service members who support
Afghanistan’s beleaguered army and security forces — are scheduled to withdraw
by May 1, leaving the country in an especially precarious state.
If the Biden administration honors
the withdrawal date, officials and analysts fear the Taliban could overwhelm
what’s left of the Afghan security forces and take control of major cities like
Kandahar in a push for a complete military victory or a broad surrender by the
Afghan government in the ongoing peace negotiations.
But if the United States delays its
withdrawal deadline, as
a congressionally appointed panel recommended on Feb. 3, the Taliban would
most likely consider the 2020 deal with the United States void, which
could lead to renewed attacks on American and NATO troops, and potentially
drawing the United States deeper into the war to defend Afghan forces, whom the
Taliban could still retaliate vigorously against.
“The threat of Taliban military
victories, especially in an area as symbolic and strategic as Kandahar, makes
it difficult for the Biden administration to swallow the risks of finalizing a
troop withdrawal,” said Andrew Watkins, a senior analyst on Afghanistan for the
International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based conflict resolution organization.
“Pulling out might be politically impossible if Kandahar was on the nightly
news.”
In Panjwai, a district that
neighbors Kandahar city, the low thud of artillery punctuated a recent warm
winter afternoon, signaling the Taliban’s proximity to its populated center.
At the edge of the district, a lone
police outpost sandbagged into the rock overlooked what was now Taliban
territory. One officer’s head was bandaged from a roadside bomb blast, another
wore a gauze sling under his uniform, propping up a shoulder wounded from a
sniper’s bullet.
“They are still working here; we
can’t replace them, because we don’t have enough forces,” said Safiullah Khan,
the police officer in charge. “Our commanders steal from our fuel, food and our
supply.”
During an offensive in the fall,
the Taliban took swaths of territory and then mostly held their ground despite
attempts by the Afghan security forces and U.S. airstrikes to dislodge them.
Taliban commanders told tribal
officials in the district that the insurgent group deliberately stopped short
of taking Panjwai, said Haji Mahmood Noor, the district’s mayor, because they
were told to wait and see how the next phase of peace negotiations played out.
“When the trees turn green the
situation will get worse,” Mr. Noor said, referring to the spring, when the
Taliban can move more at ease under the cover of blooming foliage.
Panjwai’s near collapse and the
growing threat to Kandahar city are partially the
consequence of the death in 2018 of Gen. Abdul Raziq, who had been the
province’s police chief since 2011. Known for settling disputes with threats
and bloody retribution, and accused of many human-rights abuses, General Raziq
also used his close relationship with the U.S. military, to keep Kandahar
Province mostly secure for years.
After General Raziq’s death at the
hands of a Taliban infiltrator, his brother, Gen. Tadeen Khan, was made a
general overnight and took over as police chief, but his lack of military
experience meant he was largely disconnected and absent from his duties. As his
officers taxed and abused their residents with little oversight, the Taliban
forged alliances with local tribal leadership and paid low-level police
officers to abandon their posts before their fall offensive, local and
provincial officials said.
When the Taliban pushed into the
districts around Kandahar, the police put up very little fight. Many outposts
were already barely staffed, Mr. Noor and other local officials said. Some
Afghan government officials disputed that accusation, saying they retreated in
fear. Others said they didn’t know why they retreated at all.
General Tadeen rejected any
accusations of corruption and abuse and denied that his police forces were
withering around Kandahar.
“The Taliban do not have more
power,” he said, from his well-guarded compound in Kandahar city. “The Afghan
forces can defend themselves.”
The deteriorating situation in
Kandahar is a broader reflection of security around the country. The Taliban
have spent the past months capturing military bases and police outposts and
installing highway checkpoints near capital cities in provinces such as Helmand
and Uruzgan in the south, and Kunduz and Baghlan in the north.
Though Taliban tactics vary from
region to region, the outcomes are usually the same: increased taxation on
highways, plummeting morale among the Afghan security forces with dwindling U.S.
support and growing fear among those living in once-secure areas.
The Taliban’s aim is to force the
Afghan government into complying with their terms of peace. In Qatar, Taliban
leaders have demanded the release of around 7,000 more prisoners and the establishment
of an interim government, two requests that Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s
president, has so far refused.
“The Taliban seem to believe that
applying this pressure, staging their fighters to potentially strike Kandahar
and other urban centers, will pressure the U.S. to withdraw, or else,” Mr.
Watkins said. “The strategic logic might have the opposite effect.”
To prepare for a possible
multipronged attack should the United States stay beyond the May 1 deadline,
the Pentagon has requested additional military options — including an increase
of U.S. troops or a commitment of more air support from U.S. Central Command,
which oversees operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, according to two
U.S. officials. Whether these requests will be granted depends on the Biden
administration’s next move, which is expected to be announced in coming weeks
upon completing a review of the current agreement in place with the Taliban.
The unrest has already delayed the
handover of Kandahar Airfield, a sprawling American base east of the capital,
to Afghan forces in recent months. For now, a small detachment of U.S. and NATO
troops remain to support the struggling Afghan forces, according to a U.S.
military official.
With the police force mostly in
ruin, the Afghan army and commandos have moved into Kandahar, beginning
operations in November to retake territory that was then retaken by the
Taliban. Commando officers said their forces had been exhausted by frequent
orders to fill in for their police counterparts.
In nearby Arghandab District, the
site of the Taliban’s northern offensive on Kandahar city, army leaders and
police officers say they’re severely understaffed and their pleas for support
have gone unheeded by officials in Kabul.
One outpost was using two armored
vehicles likely left over from the 1980s Soviet invasion to defend against
Taliban positions on the river banks below.
In December, nearly 200 checkpoints
in Kandahar were abandoned by the Afghan army, according to a U.S. government
watchdog report released Feb. 1. The collapse of some military
bases in the fall afforded the Taliban troves of military equipment and
ammunition, including several pieces of heavy artillery.
Afghan security forces are also
contending with portions of a populace that have more faith in the Taliban than
in the government. In capturing new territory, the Taliban installed their own
administrative services, explained Lal Mohammad, 23, a wheat and grape farmer
who now lives behind the Taliban’s front line in Panjwai.
Insurgent fighters have smashed
smartphones and banned music, imposed a curfew, dug defensive tunnels between
people’s homes and used empty rooms in them as fighting positions. Roadside
bombs are everywhere, he said. But land disputes and petty crime are well
managed, compared to the Afghan government’s corrupt bureaucracy, said Mr.
Mohammad.
“People like it,” Mr. Mohammad
said, adding that he just wants someone to take over Kandahar so people can get
back to their lives.
These sentiments are common in more
rural areas of Afghanistan. But the Afghan government’s incompetence and
widespread corruption have brought that attitude to the doorstep of one of the
country’s most populated cities.
“The government,” Mr. Mohammad
said, “has failed.”
Fahim Abed contributed
reporting from Panjwai and Najim Rahim from Kabul, Afghanistan. Eric
Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.