Sarwar Jan is the commander of a police battalion that has been heavily engaged in Sangin and Marjah, another district mostly in Taliban hands, and he is scathing about Afghan army units he says left his isolated, under-equipped men to fight alone. It’s where some of the fiercest fighting took place during the coalition campaign in Afghanistan.
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Our correspondent said that about 100 Afghan special forces soldiers are believed to have dropped into the Sangin some time on Thursday and that they were now waiting for reinforcements and supplies to be trucked in.
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The Taliban statement listed barriers to peace negotiations, including United Nations sanctions on individual Taliban figures which were extended this week, and the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, with specific mention of the British troops that arrived in Helmand on Wednesday to provide support for Afghan forces battling in Sangin.
The crisis in Sangin has demonstrated the weakness of the Afghan central government.
At least 75 per cent of Helmand had been captured by the Taliban, said reporter Mohammad Shafi Aziz: “Only the district centre building is under the control of the government in a few districts of Helmand”.
MASOOM STANEKZAI, Acting Defense Minister, Afghanistan: When the USA and the British forces were there, how many enablers they had, how many jets they had, how many helicopters they had, and how many we have today? And peace talks are now a pretty distant prospect. And Pakistan doesn’t really control the Taliban, although it gives them a safe haven and can manipulate them to a limited extent.
The fate of Sangin still hangs in the balance, with Taliban reinforcements flooding in.
Helmand is where most of the world’s lucrative opium crop is cultivated.
But that won’t make much difference, and there is no chance whatever that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries will build their troop strength in Afghanistan back up to the level – around 140,000 – where it was five years ago.
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President Ashraf Ghani’s awkward National Unity Government, formed after last year’s inconclusive election, has left key positions unfilled or allowed local politicians to dictate security appointments. The Afghans are on their own now, and they will be lucky if they end up back under the rule of the Taliban rather than in the clutches of Islamic State.
