OCT. 12, 2016
The Afghan Special Forces, who bear the brunt of the fighting, are overused and exhausted, increasingly deployed for long periods. CreditNoor Mohammad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
KABUL, Afghanistan — Outgunned and surrounded by Taliban fighters in a chronic combat zone of southern Afghanistan, the police officers and soldiers thought they had negotiated passage to safety. They had walked into a trap.
In what appears to be one of the worst massacres of Afghan forces in a protracted and forgotten war, at least 100 were killed when the Taliban fighters opened fire on them from all directions as they tried to flee through the agreed-upon retreat route, Afghan officials said Wednesday.
Accounts of the massacre, which happened Tuesday near the southern city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province, punctuated a growing crisis in Afghanistan’s armed forces that goes to the heart of their sustainability: They are sustaining enormous casualties from a revitalized Taliban insurgency and are facing increased problems recruiting. Many vacancies go unfilled.
The Taliban insurgents have opened simultaneous fronts across the country in recent months, overrunning districts and besieging major urban centers. The insurgents managed to easily capture parts of Kunduz for a second time on Oct. 3, and hold them until finally forced to retreat on Wednesday after a week of devastating urban battles that displaced tens of thousands of people.
From March to August, about 4,500 Afghan soldiers and police were killed and more than 8,000 wounded, according to information provided by a senior Afghan official who had seen the tallies, but like others spoke on condition of anonymity to share sensitive information. In August, the police and the army sustained about 2,800 casualties, more than a third of themfatal.
Beyond that, the inability to replace the fallen has raised particular alarm among the top ranks of the Afghan government as well as its Western backers, including the United States.
For months now, the police and the army have failed to achieve recruitment goals. While the army still maintains a marginal positive balance of recruitment over losses, the police seem in trouble.
The police force’s average casualty figure has been two to four times more than the average recruitment — a deficit that could translate into a reduction of 10,000 officers a year.
In August, the police recruited 650 new officers, in the face of more than 1,300 lost to casualties, arrests or desertion.
Haroon Chakhansuri, a spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani, said “recruitment remains steady despite the losses.” Western military officials say that recruitment numbers fluctuate according to the so-called fighting season — falling in colder months and rising in the spring and summer.
In reality, there is no longer a conventional fighting season in Afghanistan, with the war raging all year without giving Afghan forces time to regroup. That was on full display in Helmand last year: badly routed units of the army’s 215th corps that were pulled out for retraining last winter had to be rushed back into battle.
Christopher Kolenda, a former commander in Afghanistan who is writing a lessons-learned report for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an auditor known as SIGAR that was created by Congress, attributed much of the problem to poor leadership and corruption, which are corroding readiness and damaging the morale of the force.
“I don’t buy the argument that casualty rates in and of themselves are unsustainable — I have fought alongside Afghan forces. When soldiers are well-led and fighting for a government that they believe in, they are willing to endure enormous sacrifices,” Mr. Kolenda said.Photo
Taliban suicide bombers in the border area of Zabul province, Afghanistan, in August. The Talivan have overrun districts and besieged major urban centers in recent months. CreditMirwais Khan/Associated Press
“The real concern becomes when people no longer believe in putting their lives on the line for their leaders or government. Certainly the reports of low morale and on the deficit in recruitment are disconcerting.”
While Mr. Ghani’s government has tried to introduce reforms among the security forces, much of its work has been overshadowed by bitter political disputes between Mr. Ghani and his coalition partner, the government’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah. From the outset of their administration, the two men have disagreed, sometimes publicly, over issues ranging from mayoral appointments to electoral reform, creating a feeling of stagnation and loss of direction.
The victims of the Tuesday massacre almost certainly were not the only Afghan casualties on that day, with defense officials describing operations in at least 14 of the country’s 34 provinces.
Mr. Chakhansuri attributed the recent intensity of the war to insurgents receiving what he described as unprecedented support from Pakistan, long accused of harboring the Taliban as a proxy.
“We can see there is a lot of truth and evidence — in the examples of fighting in Uruzgan and Kunduz — that terrorist groups and their operations are led by foreigners and generals, and they are receiving military and financial support from outside Afghanistan,” he said. “The way this war is managed, it shows that this is done by experts. This is very clear.”
The 17,000-strong Afghan Special Forces, who bear the brunt of the fighting, have provided a glimpse of hope for the government. They have carried out night raids to disrupt Taliban momentum, and then stepped in to hold the line when conventional forces have buckled.
Officials, however, warn that the Special Forces are overused and exhausted, increasingly deployed for long periods.
On an August visit by The New York Times to Chah-e-Anjir, the area near Lashkar Gah where the police officers and soldiers were massacred on Tuesday, the Special Forces were then holding the line.
In recent weeks, as fighting intensified in other areas around Lashkar Gah with insurgents pushing further in, those elite forces were moved to provide support elsewhere.
The police and the army units left behind, about 300 men, struggled, and were then besieged as their request for air power went unheard, said Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, a powerful senator from Helmand who lost relatives and followers among the police officers killed.
“I can say with certainty that at least 100 were martyred, mostly national police and border police,” Mr. Akhundzada said. As districts have fallen, the government has brought its forces, including those meant to protect the borders they no longer control, to create a security belt around the city.
Although multiple senior officials in private also confirmed the 100 figure, with some putting the number of dead as high as 200, the spokesmen for the Afghan ministries of interior and defense strongly rejected them as exaggerated.
Allah Daad, the commander of a 30-police-officer unit near the site of the massacre, said the Taliban had besieged them for days and mined the roads, making resupply difficult.
They had finally talked to the Taliban to give them a safe passage of retreat to Lashkar Gah city.
“Around 2:30 a.m., the forces started retreating,” Mr. Daad said. “But the Taliban did not fulfill their promise.”
Zahra Nader and Najim Rahim contributed reporting.
No comments:
Post a Comment