[ At a ceremony outside a military hospital in Kabul on Saturday morning, a Muslim cleric blessed the velvet-draped coffins of Azimi and two other commandos, released by the Taliban after negotiations with the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were lifted onto artillery trucks, followed by goose-stepping soldiers and a marching band, then loaded into ambulances.]
Col. Sohrab Azimi, a field
commander in Afghan special forces that often rescue troops and retake outposts
from Taliban attacks, symbolized the country's best hope to fend off an
insurgent takeover as U.S. troops began to withdraw from the fight.
Azimi, 31, and his squad of
22 men were massacred Wednesday by Taliban forces while defending a base
in northern Faryab province and waiting for reinforcements.
The loss unleashed a flood of
emotions across social media — grief, anger and fear that even the nation’s
most skilled defenders would be undercut by poor military leadership and the
departure of Afghanistan’s major foreign military ally.
At a ceremony outside a military
hospital in Kabul on Saturday morning, a Muslim cleric blessed the
velvet-draped coffins of Azimi and two other commandos, released by the Taliban
after negotiations with the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were
lifted onto artillery trucks, followed by goose-stepping soldiers and a
marching band, then loaded into ambulances.
“This is the price we pay for
defending our country’s independence, freedom and dignity,” Rangin Dadfar
Spanta, a former foreign minister, told the silent, mostly uniformed crowd that
included Azimi’s father, a retired army general. The two men, classmates from
another era, embraced and wept.
[U.S.
diplomats in Kabul under lockdown amid coronavirus outbreak]
“No one will be allowed to occupy
our land or take our freedom away,” Spanta vowed.
But in Faryab, one of numerous
provinces where the Taliban has launched repeated assaults in recent months,
the mass killing added to a deepening sense of despair and defeat. After weeks
of attacks that wore down local security forces and led many to surrender, the
highly trained commandos sent to save the day had been surrounded, isolated and
mowed down en masse.
He said the insurgents control
eight districts in Faryab and continue to overrun military and
police bases, seizing military vehicles and weapons from surrendering local
forces.
“There is a strong possibility that
Faryab will fall,” he said.
Officials say the pace and
aggression of Taliban attacks have increased since the Biden administration
announced in April that all remaining troops would be withdrawn by
Sept. 11. In some areas, local forces have surrendered after negotiations
between community elders and the Taliban. In others, departing U.S. troops have
destroyed bases or stripped them of everything usable to keep them from falling
into Taliban hands.
Despite the drumbeat of attacks,
military officials play down the significance of local Taliban advances and
note that many are quickly reversed. After the commando slayings in Faryab’s
Dawlat Abad district, the district was recaptured by Afghan forces by Thursday,
with insurgents suffering heavy casualties, authorities said.
[U.S.
senator: ‘I worry that the Taliban had been playing the long game’]
“The situation that has happened
does not mean the victory and power of the Taliban,” Fawad Ahmad, a spokesman
for the Ministry of Defense, said Friday in response to written
questions. He said the Afghan security forces have sufficient “combat and
professional capabilities” to defend Afghanistan.
“A Taliban victory through military
means is impossible,” he said.
Many Afghans say the curtailing of
U.S. airstrikes has been a critical loss for ground forces, and some suggest
that such strikes could have saved Azimi and his men. Another widespread
complaint is ongoing discord and poor coordination by senior Afghan military
officials. Some field commanders, desperate for supplies and food, have
resorted to appealing for help on social media.
The volatility in Afghanistan could
affect how the U.S. military departs in coming days.
On Saturday, two U.S. defense
officials said that discussions are underway that would delay the U.S.
military’s expected withdrawal from its largest airfield in Afghanistan, Bagram
air base, by early July.
One official, speaking on the
condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that some
service members at Bagram already have been told to expect their departure to
be postponed. The second official acknowledged that discussions to delay are
underway, without describing the plan as definitive.
The air base has been used for
years to launch both manned strike aircraft and drones. Without it, the United
States is expected to rely on long-range flights from bases in the Middle East
to provide air support in Afghanistan.
Officials at the top U.S. military
headquarters in Kabul referred questions about the delay to counterparts in the
United States, who declined to comment on any delay.
“While we cannot provide any
timeline for closure of any specific facility in Afghanistan, we are still
firmly on track to safely and deliberately withdraw all combat forces from
Afghanistan by September in accordance with the direction of the president,”
Navy Capt. Bill Urban said.
Davood Moradian, director of the
Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies and a distant relative of Azimi, said
the Faryab fiasco exposed a “huge failure of the system” as the country
confronts several problems at once.
“People love the army and admire
the commandos, but the government and the military are poorly led, U.S. troops
are leaving, and the Taliban are feeling bolder. It is a tragic triangle,” he
said.
For the Taliban, Azimi’s killing
was a potential propaganda coup.
The group released a video showing
him with bullet holes in his chest, lying amid the corpses of men he had led in
battle. But Azimi’s father, Zahir, a former Defense Ministry spokesman, wrote
on Facebook that he felt pride when he saw the bullets had struck his son from
the front.
“You fought face to face with your
enemy until the last moment,” he wrote.
In an interview at his home Friday,
the elder Azimi also noted that his son — who studied in the United States and
Turkey, held several academic degrees and married an American citizen — could
have easily chosen a prestigious desk job or foreign posting.
“He had many opportunities, but he
wanted to go into operations. Regular Afghan families related to him, those who
lost husbands and sons,” he said.
[He
spent years at war in Afghanistan. Now he’s in charge of the withdrawal.]
The elder Azimi, 67, who fought
Taliban extremists before they took power in 1996, said he was disturbed by the
lack of planning that had preceded the dangerous mission in Faryab, leaving the
commandos with no backup.
He said that with up to 50 of 370
Afghan districts under Taliban control or attack, it would be better to
temporarily withdraw from some vulnerable areas and prevent bloodshed.
The ex-general said he respected
Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces but that the president was wrong to
rush into the pullout just months after U.S. officials signed a deal with
Taliban leaders.
“[The Taliban] came to believe they
were winning, and they began to attract thousands of volunteer fighters and
support from abroad,” he said. “They have a lot more capacity now.”
Among the hundreds of visitors who
called on the Azimi family in recent days, former classmates of the slain
commando leader were far more critical. Some bitterly accused the United States
of abandoning them for selfish interests at the worst possible time.
“They left the fight and left the
field to the Taliban,” said one former classmate. He identified himself only as
Sulieman to express a critical opinion. “They preached values like democracy,
but now they are going, and we are losing our best men, the real warriors and
patriots like Sohrab who fought for those values.”
The slain commando leader was
promoted posthumously to brigadier general. His body was flown Saturday to Herat,
his ancestral base in far western Afghanistan, and buried before sunset.
Sharif Hassan in Kabul and
Dan Lamothe in Columbus, Ga., contributed to this report.