Afghan soldiers desert as Taliban threatens key Helmand capital
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN)Sometimes you know a war's going badly when your enemy is right in front of you.
About
three miles outside the southern city of Lashkar Gah, Afghan soldiers
can see a white flag. It's not one of surrender -- quite the opposite.
The flag belongs to the Taliban, and shows exactly how close the militant group is to the capital of Helmand Province.
Despite
Afghan government assurances that the army can hold and retake ground,
the strategic province that hundreds of NATO troops -- who have been in the country for the last 15 years -- died fighting for is closer than ever to falling to the Taliban.
Taliban resurgent
Those inside Lashkar Gah are understandably nervous.
A
Helmand police official, who did not want to be named for his own
safety, told CNN on Sunday that the army had not made any recent
advances, and at least five full districts in the province were already
under full Taliban control.
The
official said this included the towns of Musa Qala and Nawzad, and that
an army offensive to retake the town of Khanisheen was recently repelled
by the Taliban.
Lashkar Gah is currently under threat from two directions by the militant group, the official said.
The
official confirmed what many analysts had long feared: that the highly
valuable opium crop, now being harvested in Helmand, is a key reason for
the Taliban's focus on the southern province.
Even
a temporary lull in the fighting in Helmand in the past week can be
attributed to the Taliban's focus on getting the poppy harvest in, the
official said.
'It will not fall'
Government
representatives strongly reject any suggestion that Helmand is under
threat of Taliban control, or that Lashkar Gah would be overrun.
"It
will not fall. If it falls, there is no doubt I will resign, but it
will not fall," acting Defense Minister Masoom Stanikzai told CNN.
"It
is not a rosy picture in Helmand. It's a difficult fight and there are
many fighters coming from across the (Pakistan) border, there is no
doubt about that."
He blamed the Taliban's recent advances on Pakistani assistance, an oft-repeated charge by Afghan officials.
"Why
are we ignoring this fact? Go to Quetta, go to Peshawar. What the hell
are those (militant) bases doing there? How are they moving there? How
are they communicating there?"
'A bad year'
The Afghan army has struggled in Helmand, where U.S. officials were strongly critical of its former leadership in the province.
"2015
was a bad year, but I attribute most of those (failings) to failures of
leadership," Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, the U.S. forces' Deputy
Chief of Staff for Operations, told CNN.
He
said recently appointed Afghan army leaders were "phenomenal" and that
"they still have a very tough set of operations ahead of them, but I
disagree completely that Lashkar Gah is on the verge of falling."
As
Afghanistan moves into summer, and the warmer months known as the
fighting season, existing challenges will be bolstered by extreme losses
government forces endured nationwide in 2015.
U.S.
officials estimate that 5,500 Afghan security force members died that
year alone, far more than the 3,500 NATO lost in its entire decade-long
campaign.
Deserting to the Taliban
The Afghan army is losing troops to more than death: desertion is rife within the ranks.
CNN
met two deserters in Helmand whose stories show the breadth of the
problem, who have taken their skills -- months of U.S. taxpayer-funded
training -- to the Taliban.
"I did 18 months of army training and took an oath to serve this country," one deserter said.
"But the situation changed. The army let us down, so we had to come to the Taliban, who treat us like guests."
The two men still had their old uniforms, army IDs, and even the bank cards they used to withdraw their official wages.
"I decided to leave the army when my dead and injured comrades lay in our base, and nobody took them to hospital.
My army training is very useful now, as I am training Taliban fighters with the same knowledge."
Record casualties
More than 3,500 Afghan civilians died last year alone, and another 7,500 were injured -- record figures.
The
stories of those who have fled to Lashkar Gah provide a snapshot of
what Afghans endure daily, often out of the global spotlight.
"My worst memory was how a wedding party was hit by a mortar, killing a large number of women and children," one man said.
"The
police left after the fighting intensified and told me to move to a
vacant corner of the village. But the bullets and rockets followed,
killing ten people. So I fled here."
Another
man came from an area the Taliban now control to buy goods in Lashkar
Gah, and described a relative calm in the town of Musa Qala now the
Taliban were in control.
"The
bazaar is now full of people when it used to be empty. That was because
security was bad and some people avoided the government forces in it."
Still government officials insist they will turn the fight around in Helmand in coming months.
Acting
Defense Minister Stanikzai said much of the battle against the
insurgency was about reinforcing public perception that the government
was winning.
"It is not about the
battlefield but the confidence of people in the political future. We
have to create it. We have to work on it," he said.
"We have to defend the country."
Comments
Post a Comment