The Kunduz Wakeup Call

The outnumbered Taliban’s triumph over the Afghan security forces has demonstrated that the Afghan forces are not properly equipped and battle-ready enough to protect their country from the Taliban.

The timing of Taliban’s Kunduz offensive is important. Over the last few weeks, Afghan President Abdul Ghani has resigned to the fact that Pakistan can’t be engaged in rational dialogue. He has now fully understood that most of the Afghani Taliban factions are puppets in the hands of Pakistani establishments. Pakistan’s idea of viewing Afghanistan in terms of ‘strategic depth’ is not new. Ashraf Ghani is more a scholar than a politician who genuinely wished to engage with Pakistan and Taliban to give peace a chance.

He proceeded with his peace initiatives despite stiff opposition from country’s chief executive Abdullah Abdullah, the former President Hamid Karzai and strong voices like Amrullah Saleh. Once he realized how the Pakistani establishment had mischievously concealed the death of Taliban supreme commander Mullah Omar, the tone and tenor of his discourse changed completely. The first peace initiative held in Islamabad on 7th July did not cut any ice and President Ghani was taken aback by the bullish Pakistani attitude.

After the recent attacks in Kabul last August, he came out openly against Pakistan:

“The last few days have shown that suicide bomber training camps and bomb-producing factories which are killing our people are as active as before in Pakistan. We hoped for peace but we are receiving messages of war from Pakistan”.

Ghani has been subject to a lot of criticism in the Pakistani media due to his change in stance. The usual charges of being an Indian agent, etc. were leveled against President Ghani. There have been talks of teaching Afghani establishments ‘a lesson’ for this change in stance.

The developments within Taliban ranks are even more interesting. Once the death of Mullah Omar was revealed; a fact that was concealed by the Pak establishment for over two years with the help of the second in command of Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour; there was much internal rebellion in Taliban ranks. Once Mullah Mansour was hastily declared as new supreme commander of Taliban, various factions displayed open opposition, blaming Mansour for concealing news of Omar’s death and describing his appointment as irregular.

Last month when Mullah Mansour gave his “Eid” message to unite the ranks of Taliban, it was countered by other factions by separate messages calling for a new leadership vote. The messages from anti-Mansour faction were very hostile calling militant activities under his leadership as anti-jihad. Mullah Omar’s son Maulavi Mohammad Yaqoob and his brother Mullah Abdul Manan were first opposed to Mullah Mansour, but now have declared their allegiances to him through a peace brokered by Pakistan.

Even the dreaded Haqqani network, a Pak proxy group, has expressed their support for Mullah Mansour. But even this seems too late. The Afghan Taliban has always been a staunch critique of ISIS but so much has been the friction that a faction of Taliban, Fidayee Mahaz, has been in touch with Abu Bakar Baghdadi and is said to be seeking possible alliances.

In a nutshell, incidents of the last few months have pushed Taliban and their Pakistani masters into a state of despondency, and they have been desperate for some kind of a morale booster. The Kunduz offensive provides exactly that.

The warning signs were there for everyone to see, especially in the wake of the daring fidayeen attack in Ghazni on 14th September, freeing hundreds of Taliban fighters from jail. Even Kunduz was attacked several times in July and August causing heavy casualties. This time, Taliban fighters went inside the city urban areas in small groups for days. They mingled with the city population and launched a coordinated attack on 28th September.

Within hours, they had captured all important government buildings, and Afghan forces retreated to the outlying airport without offering much resistance. The shocking truth is that 500 odd Taliban fighters’ 4 hours blitzkrieg was enough to beat 7,000 odd Afghan security forces into retreat. The Taliban garnered widespread international attention through the on-camera display of their bravado. Even after a massive counter-offensive with American and NATO support, both ground and aerial, there are still pockets of stiff resistances. The next few days will determine how this battle shapes up and how long the Taliban can hold.

There is no doubt that this incident has demonstrated that the Afghan forces are not properly equipped and battle-ready enough to protect their country from Taliban. Indeed, they seem nowhere close to it.