But Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid claimed that the insurgents were in control of the whole district, pinning down Afghan forces in an army base where trapped soldiers reported dire conditions.
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“The Taliban must increase the number of their attacks on the Afghan government in big cities, provinces and big military bases to make the central government weaker”, the commander explained.
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“As the fighting continues here we are not able to do farming”.
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Reinforcements have been rushed to a besieged southern district threatened for days with takeover by Taliban fighters, Afghanistan’s acting defense minister said on Wednesday. He said the entire province was in danger of falling to the Taliban.
While not confirming that they had lost control of the police headquarters, a Taliban spokesman told Al Jazeera acknowledged that the special forces troops had won some ground in Sangin. It’s the fact that Rasulyar had to resort to posting his plea on Facebook to get the government’s attention.
The troops, the British Ministry of Defence said in a statement, were “part of the UK’s ongoing contribution to NATO’s Resolute Support Mission”, the training, advisory, assistance and counterterror mission in Afghanistan.
One diplomatic cable revealed that, with an attrition rate of 23 per cent, the Afghan army is now 36,000 troops short and is losing 500 a week.
But why is Sangin, a town of just 14,000 people, so important?
Morever, Ghani believes that a decisive military victory over the Taliban is impossible.
And as far as I’ve been told from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, they are not in Sangin at the moment. And peace talks are now a pretty distant prospect.
Fighting spiked this week, but, today, the provincial governor rejected Taliban claims that they’d routed the defenders.
“They [Taliban] put a lot of fighters a lot of weapons in Helmand province that is right in the border with Pakistan and most of the fighters and weapons come across the border, there is nothing that stops them”.
We are seeing the usual short-term responses in the West. President Obama has halted the withdrawal of most of the remaining 9,800 U.S. troops in the country (which was scheduled for the end of this year), and Britain has ordered ten of the 450 troops it still has in Afghanistan back to Sangin.
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SUNE ENGEL RASMUSSEN: Fighting has gone back and forth, and on Wednesday night local time, the Taliban managed to seize control of the government compound for four to five hours. “But it’s when they’re left to their own devices that they seem to struggle”.
