Taliban ‘push further’ into Sangin town in Helmand

“Soldiers out there don’t know who their enemies are, and that’s not just the Taliban, but corrupt police and local authorities too”.

Afghan officials say a district in the southern province of Helmand besieged by the Taliban for more than a week remains under government control as fighting continues. American special forces were also reported to be in the area.

“U.S. forces conducted two strikes in Sangin district, Helmand Province, December 23, against threats to the force”, U.S. Army Colonel Michael Lawhorn said.

Afghanistan’s embattled security forces needed worldwide military help, especially air support, which would help reduce casualties, Stanekzai told reporters.

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. With insurgents on the outskirts of Helmand’s capital Lashkar Gah, and districts across the province either in Taliban hands or threatened with takeover, “it’s time for the president to recognize that he is not an academic anymore, he is a war president and he has to tell the people what he can do”. “These factors complicate the battle for Sangin”. The Afghan government on Wednesday dismissed reports on the fall of Sangin district to Taliban militants as groundless, but admitted that clash has been continuing there.

The insurgents are prone to exaggerating its battlefield successes, and Kabul officials denied that Sangin had fallen.

Taliban militants seized the city of Kunduz for several days in September in a show of strength that came amid reports that its forces were being squeezed by the rival Islamic State group.

But an Afghan army soldier, Yaseen Zamarai, inside the besieged base in Sangin told the Associated Press that the Taliban were outside the building.

There were many wounded at the barracks needing urgent evacuation, he said. It’s not that we are afraid of death, but we didn’t think that our brothers would leave us like this’.

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 saw the heaviest British losses as more than 100 troops were killed in the decade-long battle to secure the Helmand province district. The county’s stability has been deteriorating at an alarming rate as national armed forces struggle to counter the Taliban following Nato’s withdrawal a year ago. Approximately 9,800 U.S. troops remain in the country and are involved in training or advisory roles. This district lies in the south of the country, an area that was traditionally the center or the heartland of the Taliban.

Sangin residents have been fleeing as the fighting worsened.

Government forces have complained bitterly about being left without adequate supplies and reinforcements as well as with none of the air power that backed up North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces when they fought in the region.