Kunduz Still Held by Taliban, Locals Say, Despite Afghan Government Claims
Afghan soldiers preparing on Wednesday for a counteroffensive to try to retake the city of Kunduz from the Taliban.Credit Najim Rahim/European Pressphoto Agency
KABUL, Afghanistan — Kunduz residents and provincial officials said the city remained in Taliban hands on Thursday, despite claims from the Afghan government that it had retaken the city.
Kareema Sediqi, a member of the Kunduz provincial council, said that “the city is still in Taliban control,” but that Afghan security forces had advanced as far as a roundabout near the city’s entrance. Interviews with several residents suggested that the situation was fluid, with fighting continuing.
Ms. Sediqi, who spoke from Kabul but was in contact with family members trapped in Kunduz, said, “The Afghan security forces are struggling against strong Taliban resistance from Taliban who are wearing A.N.A. uniforms,” referring to the Afghan National Army.
It is a common Taliban tactic to obtain uniforms of the government security forces and use them to confuse their enemies.
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But before residents had gone far from their homes, the Taliban counterattacked, wearing the uniforms of Afghan security forces, with some riding motorcycles and others driving captured Humvees and sports utility vehicles. They pushed back the Afghan forces, who remained on the city’s outskirts, according to Ms. Sediqi and some residents.
[...]
Saad Mukhtar, the director of public health for Kunduz, said that since the city fell, his office had recorded 49 dead and 332 wounded in local hospitals, including civilians and members of the Afghan security forces.
Hundreds of civilians and members of the government forces have been holed up in the airport south of Kunduz, and reinforcements sent from other provinces have been delayed or halted by Taliban resistance in outlying areas.
Residents reached in parts of Kunduz Province beyond the city said that the Taliban remained in control in the district of Chardara. That district is one of the most strategically important in the province because a road to the largest city in Afghanistan’s north, Mazar-i-Sharif, runs through it.
Pentagon Pushing to Increase Post-2016 Troop Levels in Afghanistan
New Plans Aim to Give Military 'Leeway' on When to Carry Out Drawdown
by Jason Ditz, September 30, 2015
Every planned drawdown of US military forces from Afghanistan seems to turn up later than announced and smaller than planned, and despite officials still sticking to the NATO narrative that the Afghan War “ended,” some 10,000 US troops remain there. Officially, the plan is for a major drawdown by the end of next year that will finally catch up with what was supposed to be a 2014 pullout.
Unsurprisingly, the Pentagon is once again fighting against following through on the plans, with officials saying the “plans” they are advancing both intend to withhold the troop level reductions deeper into 2017, and to give the Pentagon more “leeway” in when and how many troops get removed from the country after 2017.
Already 14 years into the occupation of Afghanistan, the continuing struggles of the Afghan military continues to drag US ground troops into combat, and many officials seem to favor just maintaining the occupation essentially forever instead of ending the war and watching the government continue to lose territory to the same insurgency they’ve been fighting throughout that war.
With less and less media coverage of the Afghan War, there seems to be less political interest in seeing the troops brought home, which likely will ensure that the Pentagon proposals to keep troops there get through without too much debate.
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