Afghan, NATO forces struggle to take control of Sangin district

Military reinforcements have arrived in the Afghan district of Sangin to support police and soldiers besieged by Taliban militants.

A district in Helmand province threatened by the Taliban remains in the control of Afghan forces.

Afghan forces had been trying to recapture the area, while the Taliban claimed control of.

A newly formed “steering committee” comprising officials from the four countries is expected to meet in the first week of January either in Kabul or Islamabad to discuss possible venue and terms for direct talks between Afghan government and Taliban officials.

Afghan government forces are holding out against a sustained Taliban onslaught in Sangin with the help of national and worldwide reinforcements. The town is an important poppy-growing area and sits on lucrative transport routes for drugs and weapons.

“We need help, we can’t hold them for much longer”, he said.

He served in the Newburgh, New York-based 105th Airlift Wing with Staff Sergeant Louis Bonacasa, 31, who also died in the attack, the Air National Guard said.

President Barack Obama in October announced that thousands of USA troops would remain in Afghanistan past 2016, backpedalling on previous plans to reduce the force and acknowledging that Afghan forces are not ready to stand alone. “These factors complicate the battle for Sangin”.

Just before midnight, U.S. warplanes conducted two strikes in the vicinity of Sangin, the spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation mission in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Col. Mike Lawhorn, said.

It was only on Monday, that the Afghan CEO Abdullah Abdullah answered that the government had worked out on strategies to assist the forces and fend off the Taliban.

Helmand borders Pakistan’s violence-hit southwestern Baluchistan province and the war zone is located around 90 miles west of the provincial capital, Quetta, the Pakistani city from where Afghan officials allege the Taliban’s leadership council named “Quetta Shura” directs the insurgency.

Supply lines were cut, preventing ammunition and food from reaching government forces, and roads around the district center mined, officials have said. “It is both the government and the Taliban who are doing the killing”, Hamdard said.

Stanekzai pleaded for patience, saying Afghan forces were fighting without the extensive array of tactical “enablers” from close air support and helicopters to surveillance assets that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation troops had used when they were involved.

Residents of the district of 50,000 people said Taliban insurgents had seized the district center and main bazaar this week. Those weapons would probably be used against the Taliban. These troops are supposedly not to be deployed outside the camp, the ministry said. “It’s only information exchange”, she said.

Having invaded the country, it was a mistake not to hand it over to a tough regime made up of warlords from the major ethnic groups and get out before the presence of so many foreign troops gave the Taliban a second wind.

Information for this article was contributed by Humayoon Babur, Mirwais Khan and Amir Shah of The Associated Press and by Andrew Roth of The Washington Post.