Afghan forces struggle to retake Kunduz from Taliban
Amy Kazmin in New Delhi and Sam Jones in London
Afghanistan’s armed forces, supported by air strikes from US military fighters, were struggling on Tuesday to retake the strategically significant northern provincial capital of Kunduz, a day after it fell to Taliban insurgents in a major reversal for the Kabul government.
The capture of Kunduz by Taliban fighters — who took control of provincial hospitals and reportedly torched government buildings as Afghan forces retreated to a nearby airport — marks the first time the group has captured an Afghan city since the US-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime in 2001.
The fall of the city is a major setback for the country’s armed forces — and to President Barack Obama’s hopes of withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan next year — and will reinforce growing doubts about the capacity of the Nato-trained Afghan armed forces to retain control over the country in the face of a determined Taliban offensive.
In a televised press conference, President Ashraf Ghani vowed that Afghan forces would retake Kunduz, and said reinforcements, including commandos and special forces, were already on their way to assist in the counter-attack.
While Mr Ghani said the government forces had inflicted “heavy casualties” on the insurgents and recaptured official buildings, he also accused the insurgents of using the city’s residents as “human shields” amid reports of civilian casualties as a result of the air strikes.
“The enemy uses people as a shield,” the president said on his official Twitter account. “We have instructed our security forces to pay particular attention to protecting people’s lives.”
But Ben Barry, former British army brigadier and now senior fellow for land warfare at the think-tank IISS, said the capture of Kunduz was a major propaganda boost for the Taliban, which is likely to feed the growing public perception that the group will eventually predominate in the struggle against the Kabul government for control of the country.
“The Taliban have built a far better position in the north than many people anticipated,” Mr Barry said. “They have been building rural support in Kunduz province for the past two years but this is a new step. The real significance is in the symbolism — the battle for the narrative. The longer they can hold the city, the longer that propaganda about their resurgence is reinforced.”
Even the battle to retake Kunduz will be fraught for the Afghan security forces, he added, and a major headache for the Kabul government. “On paper, the Afghan forces have the combat power to push the Taliban back out of Kunduz, but the key question is can they do it quickly, and can they do it without flattening the city and alienating the local population,” Mr Barry said.
The victory is symbolic, said Samina Ahmed, south Asia director at ICG, as the city will change hands many times. Still “the cost for the government in terms of its credibility will be very, very high”, she said. The capture of Kunduz threatens severe disruption to cargo and supplies coming over the Friendship bridge from Tajikistan, a major entry point for cargo into the country, according to a briefing from IHS Country risk.
Afghanistan’s security situation has deteriorated rapidly since July, when a meeting between three Taliban militants and six Afghan government representatives in the Pakistani hill station, Murree, raised tentative hopes for a de-escalation of hostilities.
Deadly Taliban attacks on Afghan and international forces in August killed at least 50 people and injured another 300, while this month militants stormed a prison in the eastern province of Ghazni and freed more than 350 inmates, many of whom were believed to be Taliban fighters.
Security analysts point to parallels between the rapidly deteriorating security situation in northern Afghanistan and that of Iraq three years ago, drawing comparisons between the US troop drawdown and the subsequent rise of the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis).
There was already a debate in Washington about whether to go ahead with the withdrawal of US troops from the country next year. “The fall of Kunduz to the Taliban is not unlike the fall of Iraqi provinces to Isis,” said Mac Thornberry, the Republican who chairs the House armed services committee. “It is a reaffirmation that precipitous withdrawal leaves key allies and territory vulnerable to the very terrorists we’ve fought so long to defeat.”
One senior Nato military official noted that the Taliban’s capture of Kunduz had come amid a renewed push by al-Qaeda to reassert itself after Isis seized the mantle of being the world’s foremost violent Salafist movement. “The Quetta Shura Taliban are clearly keen to show they are still around,” he said. “It was only last month that Zawahiri [al-Qaeda’s chief] was pledging allegiance to the Taliban’s new leader. They’re flexing muscle.”
Additional reporting by Geoff Dyer in Washington and Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad