While the operations against the Taliban prisons in Nahr-i-Sarraj and Now Zad highlight potential capabilities of Afghanistan’s Special Security Forces, they also emphasize the worsening security situation in Helmand province.
The Islamic State’s so-called Khorasan “province” has set up a radio station to broadcast propaganda in Afghanistan. Officials have tried to jam its signal, but the station is also disseminating its content online via multiple platforms.
“Six Resolute Support service members died as a result of a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack in Bagram, Afghanistan,” the international coalition confirmed. Bagram is a high priority target for the Taliban.
Sangin district is the latest to fall under the Taliban’s control. The Taliban now controls five of Helmand’s 13 districts, and contests another seven.
Afghan security forces claimed it ejected the Taliban from the Khanashin district center in southern Helmand province, while the Taliban claimed it seized control of Marawara in Kunar.
The failure to mention al Qaeda’s renewed oath to the Taliban in the military’s latest report on Afghanistan is no accidental omission.
The Pentagon’s latest report on Afghanistan pushes for reconciliation with the Taliban, but makes no mention of Mullah Mansour accepting an oath of allegiance from al Qaeda’s Ayman al Zawahiri.
The US military continues to claim that al Qaeda is “primarily concentrated in the east and northeast” of Afghanistan, despite a major operation two months ago that targeted the jihadist group at two established training facilities in Kandahar province in the southeast.
A US military spokesman touted the strikes that killed the three Islamic State leaders as “an example of how we’re able to decimate networks.”
Khanashin district in Helmand province was a Taliban haven long before the district center fell earlier today. The Taliban now controls 37 districts in Afghanistan and contests another 39.
A Taliban suicide assault team killed more than 30 people in an attack on Kandahar International Airport in southern Afghanistan that lasted for more than a day before Afghan forces backed by the US military could regain control.
Fighters loyal to Mullah Mansour battled followers from Mullah Rasul’s splinter Taliban faction in Shindand in Herat province. Shindand is a stronghold of Rasul.
In a new audio message, Taliban emir Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour denies that he was killed in a shootout in Pakistan. Afghan officials and other sources recently said that the Taliban leader was slain by a rival commander. But Mansour dismisses these reports as mere “propaganda.”
The Taliban released two statements denying that Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour was injured or killed in a firefight. But the Taliban also hid Mullah Omar’s death, so its denial cannot be accepted at face value.
The Taliban claimed that 338 security personnel and government officials defected to the jihadist group in the district of Waygal, which is in the embattled northeastern province of Nuristan.
The Taliban issued a statement denying that it uses children in its paramilitary and suicide operations. The denial is contradicted by the group’s own propaganda, including a recent video that showed a young boy standing next to a commander as he addressed his suicide attack unit. The boy was dressed in military fatigues and armed with an assault rifle.
The Muaskar ul Fida is likely loyal to the Haqqani Network, an al Qaeda-linked Taliban group that is backed by Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment.
While western officials still seek to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban, the group continues to support attacks in Western countries. The Taliban said France’s “colonial policy” justified the murders in Paris.
The “Sheikh Jalaluddin training camp” is named after the Khorasan Province’s former mufti, or senior religious and legal scholar, who was killed by the US in an airstrike in Nangarhar in October. The Islamic State has advertised three training facilities in Afghanistan in the past two months.
Sixty-five Afghan soldiers and several of their officers laid down their weapons and surrendered to the Taliban in the embattled district of Sangin in the southern province of Helmand.
Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, the deputy leader of the so-called “High Council of Afghanistan Islamic Emirate,” was accused by Human Rights Watch of inciting and supporting the murder of thousands of Afghans, mostly from the minority Shiite Hazara sect, after the Taliban seized Mazar-i-Sharif in August 1998. He also sheltered Khairullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, one of five dangerous al Qaeda-linked Taliban leaders who were exchanged for US soldier Bowe Bergdahl.
At least 80 fighters from both sides are reported to have been killed during clashes between fighters loyal to Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour and those from Mullah Mohammad Rasul’s dissident Taliban faction in Zabul province.
“People such as these you do not hear a sound from them, they work in silence and leave in silence,” a prominent jihadist said of Sufyan al Maghribi, al Qaeda’s former military emir for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Maghribi was also a frequent contributor to Vanguards of Khorasan, al Qaeda’s magazine, under the nom de guerre Abu Isam al Andalusi.
The US is thought to have killed Bilal al Tayibin, an Arab al Qaeda “key leader,” in an airstrike on the evening of Oct. 29 in Darin in Kunar’s Ghaziabad district. Two of Tayibin’s Afghan bodyguards are also said to have been killed in the attack.
In an interview with the Washington Post, General John Campbell described an al Qaeda camp in southern Afghanistan as “probably the largest training camp-type facility that we have seen in 14 years of war.” The camp is one of two raided by joint US-Afghan forces in Kandahar earlier this month.
“Hizb-i-Islami neither has relations with the Islamic State, or any commitment to the group, nor has it announced any support of that group,” Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said in mid-October.
The jihadist group overran the district center of Darqad in Takhar province, but lost control of Dasht-i-Archi in Kunduz and Ghormach in Faryab.
According to multiple reports, al Qaeda and its newest regional branch, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, are operating in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. Terrorists are being trained in Helmand to carry out operations throughout Southeast Asia. And As Sahab, al Qaeda’s propaganda arm, has operatives in the province as well.
The Taliban continues to press its offensive in southern Afghanistan and is reported to have advanced within miles of the city of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand.
An opinion piece originally published at The New York Times. As the Taliban expands its influence in Afghanistan, al Qaeda has re-emerged as a force in the country. More US forces, and not less, are required to turn the tide.