The Afghan Taliban is continuing to promote its training camps on social media. Over the weekend, the group publicized its “Military Training Camp Umar Khattab” in a series of photographs that show its fighters training in the snow. The camp is thought to be located in Kunduz province.
The Taliban previously publicized this training facility in a video that was released in July of 2016, however the naming convention was slightly different. Mullah Abdul Salam, who was the Taliban’s shadow governor for Kunduz before he was killed in a US airstrike in Feb. 2017, was featured in that video. [See Taliban shows ‘Omar ibn Khattab’ training camp in Kunduz]
The Afghan military has attempted to wrest the rural areas of Kunduz from the Taliban’s control, but have had uneven results. Its latest offensive in Iman Sahib district temporarily cleared the Taliban from the area, but its fighters quickly returned after Afghan forces withdrew.
The camp is named after Omar ibn Khattab, the second Muslim caliph who was a companion to the Prophet Muhammad. Under Umar’s rule in the seventh century, the caliphate took control of Persia and large areas of the Byzantine Empire.
The Omar ibn Khattab camp is the second promoted by the Taliban in the past week. On Jan. 31, the Taliban issued a video highlighting the activities at the Abu Bakr Siddique training camp. Since 2014, the Taliban has disclosed the existence of 17 training camps.
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6 Comments
So, if we know of the existence of these camps, why are they still there?
Considering how often they openly show off their camps, I wonder why the US does bit try to analyze the videos to attempt to find it’s location and then strike it. The Taliban is out in the open from what it seems in their videos.
One day we should see news that 30-50 of these guys were thumped in one go. We will know what happened.
Did the US provide the cold weather gear? How about the weapons?
By this rate i wn’t be surprised if uthman or ali camps promoted in coming days….
GIRoA..