Afghan National Army commandos in a convoy during visits to checkpoints on the Kunduz front lines with The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 27.
A battle in Kunduz suggests a looming choice: escalate American involvement or risk letting the Taliban capture several Afghan provincesBy Jessica Donati and Habib Khan Totakhil | Photography by Andrew Quilty for The Wall Street Journal
On the night of Nov. 3, U.S. and Afghan Special Forces in helicopters landed in a village on the outskirts of Kunduz, Afghanistan, hoping to kill or capture local Taliban leaders planning another major attack on the city, the capital of Kunduz province in the country’s north. Instead, the militants led them into a trap.
An hourslong battle erupted. By the time it was over, two U.S. and three Afghan soldiers had been killed, nine had been wounded, and some 30 civilians lay dead in the rubble.
U.S.-trained Afghan commandos and U.S. Special Forces are bearing the brunt of efforts to prevent the Taliban from seizing major cities such as Kunduz. They face an increasingly dangerous foe that is threatening to overrun a substantial part of the country.
Under Fire
As many as six of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces are in danger of falling to the Taliban, according to Afghan and coalition officials.
As many as six of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces are in danger of falling to the militants, according to Afghan and coalition officials. At least three provinces—Kunduz, Helmand and Farah—would probably have been lost already had it not been for the deployment of U.S. Special Forces to their capitals to support Afghan commandos with additional firepower and airstrikes, coalition officials say.
As a result, the U.S. is expected to face an unappealing choice: either escalate its involvement in the Afghan conflict—by sending in more troops or increasing the tempo of airstrikes and Special Forces operations—or risk allowing the Taliban to capture several Afghan provinces next year.
The coalition raid in early November came just one month after the Taliban had mounted a lightning strike on Kunduz, which prompted a battle that ended 10 days later when Afghan and U.S. forces managed to drive the insurgents out.
The Taliban assault on the northern city was part of a campaign also involving other provinces. The offensive has opened several new fronts in the war, exposed weaknesses in the Afghan government’s security operations and highlighted the growing dependence of Afghan forces on the support of their U.S. counterparts.
In early October, two U.S. Special Forces teams were dispatched in rotating shifts to the governor’s compound, the symbolic headquarters of Kunduz province, to help Afghan commandos regain control of the city. When they arrived, no one was there—not even the Taliban. Provincial staff had left a message for them in English on a whiteboard, according to a U.S. soldier. It said: The Taliban are at the gates, we had to go.
After Kunduz began to collapse, the Taliban broke through front lines north of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in Afghanistan’s south. U.S. troops stationed at a makeshift base in the city center called for airstrikes to hold the militants back.
Afghan National Army commandos visit a home in the northern city of Kunduz that has been occupied by Afghan soldiers, Oct. 27.
As U.S. and Afghan forces were regaining control of Kunduz, the Taliban struck in the provincial capital of Farah province in the west. U.S. Special Forces were rapidly deployed to the remote western city, where they helped to coordinate at least 21 devastating airstrikes against columns of Taliban fighters.
The U.S. military insists that Afghan forces are battling the Taliban to a stalemate and says that its recent operations in Afghanistan fall within the scope of the military’s mission to train and advise Afghan forces, not to fight their battles.
“In the conduct of our noncombat missions, there are times where U.S. forces are in combat situations,” said Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, a spokesman for the coalition.
The Taliban’s gains signal a crumbling of state control across Afghanistan—one that the U.S. military has been hard-pressed to reverse since it withdrew most of its forces and left the Afghan government in charge of the war, alongside local forces that are often reluctant to fight.
Afghan security forces have suffered some 15,000 casualties in the first eight months of the year, including more than 5,500 deaths, according to government figures. U.S. and Afghan officials say that Taliban deaths are even higher.
An Afghan National Army checkpoint overlooking Chardara, a district in Kunduz province that has become a Taliban hotbed, Oct. 26.
Afghan commandos during some downtime spent inside the Afghan army’s 10th Brigade headquarters in Kunduz, Afghanistan, Oct. 27.
A wrecked plane sits beside a new airport terminal alongside the Kunduz airstrip, Afghanistan, Oct. 29. The airstrip was a focus of the Taliban’s Sept. 2015 offensive against the city of Kunduz.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani expressed dismay at the disarray of his forces at a recent security conference in Kabul. He added that casualty rates among the country’s special forces, which are being used to prop up the army and police, were shocking. “I want discipline. I want these complaints to be addressed,” he told Afghan and coalition officials.
A spokesman for Mr. Ghani acknowledged that the Taliban had raised the pressure on major Afghan cities but said that the government’s efforts, supported by coalition forces, had prevented the insurgents from achieving their military objectives this year.
Afghan authorities have struggled to inspire regular police and soldiers to fight the Taliban.
When the militants attacked Kunduz in the early hours of Oct. 3, they encountered scant resistance—even though many had arrived on sandaled feet, armed only with Kalashnikov rifles, city residents said. Afghan soldiers abandoned checkpoints and police stations emptied without a fight, the residents said. By afternoon, the insurgents were in Kunduz’s main square, snapping photos of one another in the deserted city streets.
American firepower proved crucial to driving them out. U.S. Special Forces soldiers fired on Taliban militants who had holed up around the local governor’s compound as Afghan commandos cheered in the background, according to a video shot by one of the Afghan soldiers. As Afghan commandos battled in the streets outside, U.S. drones and attack helicopters chased Taliban fighters, killing the majority of the estimated 200 Taliban militants who took part in the attack on Kunduz.
An Afghan soldier recites the Quran at a checkpoint in the village of Se Darak, to the west of Kunduz, Afghanistan, Oct. 27.
Since the Taliban attack on Kunduz, there is little evidence of a coordinated effort to protect the city from another offensive. Bedraggled Afghan soldiers have been positioned in makeshift bases among civilian homes. On the city’s outskirts, white Taliban flags flap over homes not far beyond soldiers rebuilding their stations flattened in the fighting.
The Afghan government spokesman denied that Kabul lacked a strategy, adding that Kunduz would have fallen to the militants by now had there not been a program to secure it. He declined to elaborate.
The Nov. 3 raid by U.S. and Afghan soldiers was a daring bid to pre-empt an attack. Instead, they were overpowered. Even with a coalition AC-130 gunship circling overhead, and the subsequent arrival of Apache helicopters, it took the troops some three hours to fight their way to safety in open ground, Afghan soldiers said.
By the time a backup team of U.S. Special Forces was in position to extract their colleagues, the sun had risen over the rubble. A frustrated Afghan commando later wondered what the point of the raid had been if they lacked a broader plan to defeat the Taliban insurgency. “There’s no aim,” he said. “We are dying for nothing. It hurts.”
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