In the six weeks since the May 1 deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban has seized control of 32 additional districts, their reach spanning half of the country’s 34 provinces.
The disbursed locations of the Taliban attacks will force the already strained Afghan military to divide its forces if it wants to retake the districts.
The United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team reports that as of April 2021, the Taliban contests or controls “an estimated 50 to 70 per cent of Afghan territory” and exerts “direct control over 57 per cent of district administrative centres.” LWJ’s analysis of the security situation is very similar.
The Afghan military targeted Al Qaeda’s network in four different districts in Helmand province over the past month. Al Qaeda was operating a “training center” and fighting alongside the Taliban.
Taliban will continue to wage its war against a weakened Afghan government to resurrect its Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. A look at how the Taliban may attempt to achieve this goal now that U.S. forces, which were unable to prevent the Taliban from seizing key rural districts, will soon be gone.
With the fall of Dawlat Shah, the Taliban now control one of Laghman’s five districts, and contest the other four. The Taliban is laying the groundwork for a potential siege of Kabul, which likely would take place if the Taliban could first secure the south and east.
The number of Afghan districts controlled and contested by the Taliban has nearly doubled since early 2018. With the withdrawal of U.S. airpower and special operations forces, the Taliban is poised to take over large regions of the country.
The security situation in Wardak province and neighboring Logar is dire. A potential battle for control of Kabul will likely begin in Wardak and Logar.
The move presages a coming Taliban offensive, which the goal is to reestablish its Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan by force.
The Taliban demanded that all U.S. forces leave by May 1. It has threatened to resume attacks on U.S. forces if they do not leave by the date agreed upon in the Doha Accords.
The Taliban denied that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. and questioned whether he was killed by U.S. soldiers in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011.
Based on reports from Al Qaeda, the United Nations, and press reports, the terror group and its allies are operating in 21 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
The Taliban continues to promote its training camps that pump out jihadist fighters who indiscriminately attack Afghan civilians, soldiers and police.
Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security killed an Al Qaeda commander and a Taliban leader during a recent operation in the eastern province of Paktika. The two supported Al Qaeda’s operations in the east and planned and supported high profile attacks.
After President Biden said it would be difficult for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, the Taliban threatened to “continue its Jihad and armed struggle against foreign forces.”
The Taliban’s celebration of Mullah Saif ur Rahman Mansoor and the battle of Shahi Kot is a reminder of the Taliban’s enduring relationship with Al Qaeda.
The plan called for the current Afghan constitution to serve as the framework for a future constitution, elections, and power sharing, all of which have been flatly rejected by the Taliban in the past.
Nearly forty percent of the police checkpoints across Afghanistan have been shut down. The Afghan Army abandoned a military base in Badghis, giving the Taliban full control of a district.
The Taliban called for the return of its Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as it denounced the Afghan government as a “corrupt and illegitimate regime.”
The Taliban cannot be trusted to live up to any agreement when it won’t admit that Al Qaeda remains in Afghanistan, under its protection
Falih al-Fayyadh, the Chairman of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces and the former National Security Advisor to the Iraq’s Prime Minister, was identified as a member of an “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Force Qods Force supported crisis cell” that supported attacks on protesters in 2019.
Afghan security forces continue to target Al Qaeda as the Taliban promises that it won’t allow allow foreign fighters to attack the West, even though the Taliban claims Al Qaeda doesn’t exist inside Afghanistan.
Despite the repeated targeting, killing, and capturing of Al Qaeda leaders and operatives, the Taliban maintains that the terror group does not operate in Afghanistan.
Mohammad Hanif was involved in the 2002 assassination attempt on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and the suicide attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi that same year. He was killed in Farah province. But the Taliban somehow continues to maintain that Al Qaeda isn’t in Afghanistan.
The Taliban continues to press its offensive nationwide. Over the past 48 hours, the Taliban has launched strikes in 24 of the country’s 36 provinces.
Takhar province’s deputy chief of police is among 47 security personnel killed overnight in the restive northern province. Taliban attacks persist throughout the country.
U.S. officials continue to maintain that the Taliban committed to a “reduction in violence” as part of the withdrawal agreement. The deal says no such thing, and the Taliban continues to mount attacks.
In Logar province, a large Taliban convoy that carried the Taliban’s shadow governor paraded through a town unopposed by Afghan and Coalition forces.
The U.S. government, military, and intelligence services have provided inaccurate assessments of Al Qaeda’s strength in Afghanistan for more than a decade. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued that tradition by recent regurgitating that Al Qaeda has fewer than 200 fighters in the country. This estimate, like previous ones, should not be trusted.
American politicians, military leaders, and reporters have been claiming that the Taliban is “tired,” “desperate,” “war weary” and other such statements for the past decade and a half. Yet the Taliban keeps fighting.