Situation fluid, Kabul following policy of defending cities

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, August 11

Despite bleak US assessments about the holding power of Ashraf Ghani government in Afghanistan, some Indians have stayed behind in Mazar-i-Sharif city as former warlords and the Afghan Special Forces provide stiff resistance to the Taliban.

A Taliban leader said from Doha that India will have to show “impartiality’’ in order to mend fences with his outfit. Repeating what a Taliban spokesman had earlier observed, he wanted New Delhi to stop supporting Kabul with weapons and equipment.

Speaking shortly after the Taliban took into control a Mi-35 helicopter gunship gifted by India to Afghanistan after the capture of Kunduz airport, sources here said the Kabul government is adapting the policy of wearing down the Taliban by withdrawing its forces to defend the cities rather than spreading itself thin in the entire country.

The airport in Mazar was reported open and civilian flights were operating normally so far, they said.

Sources dismissed an unnamed US intelligence official as saying that Kabul will fall in 90 days as a personal projection. The situation is very fluid and nothing can be predicted, they said.

Ghani has now turned to men like Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammed Noor who had rolled back the Taliban in 2001 though the difference is that the last time it was with the help of US air cover and other assistance from India, Russia and Iran.

The Taliban though captured Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, which meant that the whole of north-east has come under Taliban control which should facilitate the influx of more fighters from Pakistan, they said.

That the Kabul government is largely on its own was made clear by US President Joe Biden asking Afghan leaders to fight for their homeland with the help of significant American air support, food, equipment and salaries to Afghan forces.

The Taliban have so far taken or have claimed to have occupied 11 provincial capitals out of nearly three dozen.

Meanwhile, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said reports of violations that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity were emerging from Afghanistan. These included “deeply disturbing reports” of the summary execution of surrendering government troops.

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