A Taliban spokesperson later said: “Sangin district has completely collapsed to the Taliban”.
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Mohammad Jan Rasolyaar, deputy governor of Helmand province, took an unusual step last weekend by posting an open letter to Ghani on Facebook asking for help.
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The UK Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday that British troops had been deployed to the province to support local forces after the Afghan Defence Minister called for a desperate global support and air cover.
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In recent days, the Taliban assault has threatened to overrun Sangin, a major poppy-growing area in Helmand, raising alarm that Afghan forces were too overstretched to fend off the insurgency. “Parts of Sangin are under the Taliban control but not the police and military installations”, he said. “Because if the people we were trying to free Afghanistan from are now able to just take it back within two years, that shows that something went badly wrong at the operational and strategic level”. Gen. William Shoffner, head of public affairs at NATO’s Resolute Support base in the Afghan capital Kabul, said in a statement.
Afghan planes also struck Taliban strongholds in Sangin, killing 25 insurgents and wounding another 12, said the Afghan army spokesman in Helmand, Guam Rasoul Zazai. “There is intelligence failure, lack of coordination, huge corruption in terms of selling fuel, ghost troops and much else”, he said.
In Washington, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the nation’s thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families and their loved ones, and that the US will continue to work jointly with Afghans to promote peace and stability in their country. They have a mandate to “train, assist and advise” their Afghan counterparts, who are now effectively fighting a battle-hardened Taliban alone.
It is a picture familiar from the disaster in the northern city of Kunduz where last September Taliban fighters drove off demoralized and disorganized security forces and seized the town before pulling out two weeks later. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
On Monday, a Taliban suicide-bomber on a motorcycle managed to kill six American soldiers who were patrolling the perimeter of Bagram air base near Kabul.
Helmand is where most of the world’s lucrative opium crop is cultivated.
December marks one year since North Atlantic Treaty Organisation handed over security operations to the Afghans.
The crisis in Sangin has demonstrated the weakness of the Afghan central government.
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US President Barack Obama announced in October that thousands of US troops would remain in Afghanistan past 2016, keeping the current force of 9,800 troops, amid a surge in Taliban attacks.
