September 29 2015
Stunned by a dawn attack from three sides, Afghan troops are engaged in a desperate counter offensive to regain control of the city of Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan.
KABUL — Afghan forces struck back Tuesday in the besieged northern city of Kunduz, opening potentially risky street-by-street battles seeking to drive back Taliban fighters and reverse a humiliating blow to Afghanistan’s Western-backed government.
But the counteroffensive met stiff resistance from Taliban units near the airport on the city’s outskirts, touching off intense clashes that blocked Afghan troops from making a push toward the heart of Kunduz.
The showdowns took shape before dawn — less than 24 hours after Taliban militiamen stormed into Kunduz — as Afghan reinforcements poured into the area after a U.S. airstrike helped clear the way.
The fight to reclaim Kunduz — Afghanistan’s sixth-largest city and a strategic gateway to Central Asia — serves as one of the Afghan military’s biggest tests in the 14-year-long war against the Taliban insurgency and raised questions about the withdrawal timetable for U.S. and other coalition troops.
It also unfolds in a new and challenging backdrop: an urban setting where hundreds of thousands of civilians are holed up in their homes. The Taliban’s white flag was hoisted over major government buildings.
A spokesman for the international military coalition in Afghanistan said the U.S. air attack sought to “eliminate a threat to the force.” Coalition officials did not specify the target or whether the airstrikes will be followed up by others.
Safiullah Ahmadi, a Kunduz official who is helping to oversee the government response, said in an interview that Afghan forces have retaken the Kunduz police station, which the Taliban seized along Monday.
Kunduz police reported that they regained control of the city prison, where more than 600 prisoners escaped during the Taliban blitz.
But Ahmadi said that Taliban fighters still control large swaths of the city and that “a big operation” was needed to dislodge them. He said warplanes were in the area, but “we would like not to rely on air power in order to avoid civilian casualties.”
Mirza Laghmani, a Kunduz resident, said “intense fighting” raged near the Kunduz airport, and government forces were facing ambush-style attacks by the Taliban on roads leading into the city center.
Meanwhile, casualties mounted. The aid group Doctors Without Borders said its trauma hospital in Kunduz has been “inundated” with more than 170 injured patients, including many suffering from gunshot wounds.
The U.S. military still has 9,800 troops in Afghanistan, but it was unclear whether any American personnel were stationed near Kunduz, about 150 miles north of Kabul.
Defense officials predicted that Afghan forces, including commandos and special forces, would quickly expel the estimated 500 Taliban fighters.
But many analysts said the Taliban advance demonstrates that Afghanistan still lacks basic command-and-control procedures for managing its 352,000-member military and police forces.
Afghan police officers stationed in Kunduz, for example, are thought to have simply abandoned their posts. Questions were also mounting over why more army personnel had not been stationed in Kunduz, which the Taliban had attacked twice this summer.
Taliban fighters looted banks and office buildings on Tuesday, according to a local police official. Pictures were circulating on social media showing Taliban fighters riding around in Red Cross vehicles.
Other images showed Taliban fighters gathered around an old Russian-made tank, probably left over from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. One militant ripped off a round of celebratory gunfire. Another barked at him to stop.
“Do not waste the bullets and create fear,” he said.
Billboards depicting slain and current anti-Taliban commanders were torn apart.
The Taliban’s success in seizing the city was a crushing setback for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who is struggling to manage the biggest crisis of his year-old presidency.
“This incident will embolden the Taliban,” said Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, an Afghan senator from Helmand province, where the Taliban controls large swaths of territory. “This government should resign. . . . We had warnings about the fall of Kunduz. No one listened.”
At a news conference in Kabul, Ghani defended the military response to the crisis, saying the Taliban had infiltrated the city disguised as civilians. They hid in houses and suddenly burst out early Monday, quickly overwhelming security officials, who struggled to differentiate between militants and residents, Ghani said.
“The problem here is that a traitor enemy had turned the local population into a shield,” he said. “The government of Afghanistan is a responsible government and can’t and won’t bomb its people, its countrymen, inside a city.”
In a sign of the strain facing the government, the country’s second-ranking leader, chief executive Abdullah Abdullah, announced that he was leaving the U.N. General Assembly in New York earlier than planned and heading home.
“Afghanistan is suffering, and its people demand solutions that are practical, verifiable and durable,” Abdullah said in his U.N. address on Tuesday, appealing specifically to neighboring Pakistan to crack down on the Taliban and other militant factions.
In Washington, the fall of Kunduz is raising new questions about President Obama’s pledge that he will withdraw all remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan over the next 16 months.
Pentagon leaders have indicated that they may ask Obama to slow the planned drawdown.
“The fall of Kunduz to the Taliban is not unlike the fall of Iraqi provinces to ISIL,” said a statement from Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, using one of the acronyms for the Islamic State militant group.
“It is a reaffirmation that precipitous withdrawal leaves key allies and territory vulnerable to the very terrorists we’ve fought so long to defeat,” he added.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a frequent critic of Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan, issued a statement comparing the fall of Kunduz to rise of Islamic State militants in Iraq.
“It is time that President Obama abandon this dangerous and arbitrary course and adopt a plan for U.S. troop presence based on conditions on the ground,” said McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Kunduz was just one of several flash points on Tuesday.
In Nangahar province in eastern Afghanistan, local officials reported that hundreds of Islamic State militants attacked several outposts but were repelled. Meanwhile, Taliban fighters appeared to threaten numerous small cities in Baghlan province, which borders Kunduz province. Kunduz city is the provincial capital.
Haroun Mir, founder of Afghanistan’s Center for Research and Policy Studies, predicted that Afghan forces would quickly recapture Kunduz.
Despite its rapid advance on Monday, Mir said, the Taliban is still not a fighting force that is equipped to defend ground for extended periods. The Taliban already appears to be ferrying looted ammunition, military vehicles and computers out of the city, local officials said.
“They are loading up trucks with stolen goods to carry them to their stronghold, because they know they can’t stay in Kunduz city much longer,” said Sultan Arab, a local police commander.
Still, Mir said, “the damage is already done.”
“Who is responsible for this — the governor, the police chief, military leaders — is still not clear,” he said. “But it’s clear what happened in Kunduz can happen anywhere. It can even happen in a city such as Kabul.”
Murphy reported from Washington. Mohammad Sharif and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Daniela Deane in London contributed to this report.
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