Afghan army pinned down in Helmand

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Thomson ReutersANA soldier speaks on a radio in Helmand provinceLASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) – U.S. aircraft carried out two attacks in Sangin, the district in southern Afghanistan overrun by Taliban insurgents this week, officials said on Thursday, as the battle for the strategic province of Helmand continued.

In addition, army units were spread too thinly and were too inclined to wait at their checkpoints instead of taking the fight to the Taliban, leaving the initiative entirely up to the insurgents, it said. And Pakistan doesn’t really control the Taliban, although it gives them a safe haven and can manipulate them to a limited extent. Taliban statements regularly exaggerate battlefield gains, though government casualty figures are also impossible to verify.

A Taliban spokesperson later said: “Sangin district has completely collapsed to the Taliban”. It sits on crucial smuggling routes for drugs, arms and other contraband which fund the insurgency.

While NATO officials readily praise the courage and endurance of Afghan soldiers, a Pentagon report to Congress last week highlighted the overall shortcomings of the forces, which it said had serious problems with leadership.

While not confirming that they had lost control of the police headquarters, a Taliban spokesman told Al Jazeera acknowledged that the special forces troops had won some ground in Sangin.

Although the combat mission ended past year, around 9,800 USA troops and nearly 4,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces remain in Afghanistan.

The crisis in Helmand has piled pressure on the government of President Ashraf Ghani, which was rocked by the fall of the northern city of Kunduz, seized by Taliban fighters in late September and held for several days. They have a mandate to “train, assist and advise” their Afghan counterparts, who are now effectively fighting a battle-hardened Taliban alone.

Ghazni is about 200 kilometers away from the country’s capital, Kabul. The commander killed within the offensive is taken in to account to be an in depth confidant of the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, officers stated.

This was denied by the Afghan defense ministry, who said fighting was continuing and that reinforcements had been sent.

David Sedney, a foreign policy analyst at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C, said that the Afghan army is showing its weakness.