Posted on 08/19/2018 2:05:38 AM PDT by robowombat
A Taliban spokesman said the group targeted a military base and two check posts in Baghlan and seized armoured vehicles and ammunition
Kabul: A Taliban attack on a military outpost in Afghanistan’s northern province of Baghlan on Wednesday killed up to 44 Afghan police and soldiers, provincial officials said, as the insurgents kept up pressure on government forces.
The attack, which came as the central city of Ghazni struggles to recover from five days of intense fighting, underlined how hard the insurgents have been pressuring badly stretched local security forces.
The defence ministry confirmed the incident early on Wednesday, but gave no details. Officials in the area said nine police and 35 soldiers were killed in the latest attack of a series that has killed dozens of security forces nationwide.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the group targeted a military base and two check posts in Baghlan, killing 70 Afghan security forces, and seizing armoured vehicles and ammunition. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan called for the fighting to stop, saying up to 150 civilians are estimated to have been killed in Ghazni, where the public hospital was overwhelmed and water and electricity supplies cut.
“The extreme human suffering caused by the fighting in Ghazni highlights the urgent need for the war in Afghanistan to end,” the top UN official in Afghanistan, Tadamichi Yamamoto, said in a statement. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was providing dressing packages and oral and intravenous medicine to treat the wounded, along with electricity generators and fresh water for about 18,000 people.
The Taliban, who launched their Ghazni assault early on Friday and battled Afghan forces backed by US air strikes in the middle of the city for days, said their fighters were pulled out to prevent further destruction. “They were facing severe shortages of food and drinking water as the power supply was also suspended two days ago,” a Taliban commander, who declined to be identified, said by telephone. The Ghazni attack, one of the Taliban’s most devastating in years, has left questions over hopes for peace talks aroused by an unprecedented ceasefire during the Eid celebration in June and a meeting last month between Taliban officials and a senior US diplomat.
Two senior Taliban leaders told journalists this week the group was considering announcing a ceasefire for the feast of Eid Al Adha, which begins next week, but the future of any peace process remained uncertain.
In the southern province of Zabul, Taliban insurgents clashed with soldiers on Tuesday, forcing the government to send reinforcements from neighbouring provinces to retain control of two check posts. The clashes killed 11 soldiers and one policeman, with three soldiers wounded, said Haji Atta Jan Haqbayan, a Zabul provincial council member.
Separately, six girls younger than 10 were killed when an unexploded mortar they picked up to play with suddenly went off on Wednesday, officials in the eastern province of Laghman said.
The Taliban have trained about 2000 ,””Sara Kheta”, “special forces” or “red force” jihadis who are highly effective.
https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-taliban-special-forces-emerge-deadly-attacks/28896629.html
Meanwhile USFOR watches as the Afghan Army regulars repeatedly get their arses killed. They simply desert their posts in the face of Taliban fire.
The USA must beat the Taliban for good in both Afghanistan and Pakistan or simply exit the country.
“The USA must beat the Taliban for good in both Afghanistan and Pakistan or simply exit the country.”
If the Afghans don’t feel up to the task then it shouldn’t be up to other countries to do the heavy lifting for them. We have trained and fielded their forces and yet they don’t have the heart for it... but they obviously must the want to lose everything to the Taliban.
As callous as it seems, perhaps it would better to withdraw, quarentine the region, deport and wash our hands and shake the dust off of our feet. Allowing no one from the region inside our borders. It’s a tough call, but we did it in Vietnam. Afghanistan is a quagmire, worse off from centuries of tyrannical theocracy that has left its people mentally incapable of determination (inbreeding?) to cast off the chains which constrain them. Until they start to strike back at the oppression it will remain the dominating factor for generations. The juice of revolution has not fermented enough yet.
Taliban are not that bad per lew rockwell. They did away with the poppy growth.
Afghanistan is a land of tribes. Attempts to make it into a Western-style country are doomed to failure. The city-state of Kabul might work if a wall is put around it and access controlled. Technology might also be used effectively as even illiterate Afghans gave smart phones. The high birth rate means any improvements will soon go away. President Ghani wrote “Fixing Failed States”, which unfortunately is looking more like a reference to heroin addiction .
Afghanistan is a land of tribes. Attempts to make it into a Western-style country are doomed to failure. The city-state of Kabul might work if a wall is put around it and access controlled. Technology might also be used effectively as even illiterate Afghans gave smart phones. The high birth rate means any improvements will soon go away. President Ghani wrote “Fixing Failed States”, which unfortunately is looking more like a reference to heroin addiction .
Captain Cook in Hawaii: These people would have been better off without us.
Probably attacked them a few hours after the Taliban sold them a larger supply of Drugs
There is no defeating the Taliban they are an indigenous group. If you kill 500 of them they just recruit 500 new Afghanis. In Afghanistan there are only two ways to make money. Growing poppies or the military which apparently includes the Taliban.
Anybody know what the objective is now? Originally it was get Bin Laden. Well we got him. Bush and his neocon pals thought they could turn this backward dump into a western style democracy, but that is obviously not going to happen. So why are we still there? The threat to the US is Islam in America, not what happens in Afghanistan.
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