Fifty Taliban Fighters Killed as Afghan Forces Reclaim Key Buildings

Sangin district, where 50,000 residents have been trapped by heavy fighting in recent days, is a hotbed of opium production, a key source of revenue for the insurgents. News storiesdisplayed here appear in our category for global and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.comand The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization. The Taliban this week pronounced they had seized control of the district, but the claim was widely refuted by Afghan officials.

When asked by CNN of the reason, there was no response from Afghan officials even with repeated calls.

Helmand – a transit point for militants, narcotics and weapons between Pakistan and Iran – has been by far the deadliest province for US and British forces in Afghanistan over the past decade.

He said Pakistan had in the past played a role of a facilitator in the direct negotiations between Afghanistan and Taliban and that Islamabad is ready to play that role again.

Gaining control of the town is important to the Taliban as it sits on crucial smuggling routes for drugs and arms which helps fund it.

Britain lost 456 personnel over 13 years in Afghanistan. They “had to fight alongside the bodies of their friends and the wounded soldiers”, said Ali Shah Khan, a tribal elder from Sangin.

The Afghan military has rushed reinforcements to a southern district threatened for days with takeover by the Taliban, the country’s defense minister said Wednesday as he appealed for stepped-up North Atlantic Treaty Organisation assistance and military support.

“We are still learning all of the details, but two other service members and a USA contractor were also injured”, Carter said in a statement released yesterday by the Defense Department. Roads around the district center had been mined by the insurgents, he said, adding that “at no time did Sangin fall, Sangin is not going to fall”.

Although much attention has been focused on Sangin, fierce fighting has been underway across much of Helmand, a traditional stronghold of the Taliban and a major center for opium that U.S. and British troops fought for years to control. The fight for Sangin has been particularly ferocious, with officials saying that only the army base was still in government hands until Tuesday. But their advance is said to have been slowed by roadside bombs and sniper fire.

The Taliban issued a statement Thursday laying out conditions for a peace dialogue to end the war, now in its 14th year.

Britain has sent a small contingent of soldiers to Helmand as advisers under the new North Atlantic Treaty Organisation mandate to train the Afghan forces.

“It is an organization that lacks a political leader and a political agenda, but because of the support and mentorship they received from the outside, they have increased military capability”, said Davood Muradian, founding director of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies, a Kabul think tank.

It was probably a mistake to invade Afghanistan in the first place.