Afghan Journal
Lifting the veil on conflict, culture and politics
The Taliban in Afghanistan’s once impregnable Panjshir Valley
Last month driving up Afghanistan’s magnificent Panjshir valley, you couldn’t help thinking if the resurgent Taliban would ever be able to break its defences, both natural and from the Tajik-dominated populace. With its jagged cliffs and plunging valleys, Panjshir has been largely out of bounds for the Taliban, whether during the civil war or in the past 10 years when it has expanded a deadly insurgency against western and Afghan forces across the country. But on Saturday, the insurgents struck, carrying out a suicide bombing at a provincial reconstruction team base housing U.S. and Afghan troops and officials.
They were halted outside the base, but according to the provincial deputy governor they succeeded in killing two civilians and wounding two guards when they detonated their explosives. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the first suicide bombing in a decade was a message to Western forces that they were not secure anywhere in the country. They said the bombers came from within Panjshir, which if true would worry people even more because that would suggest the penetration was deeper and there could be more attacks.
The Long War Journal’s Bill Roggio wrote that the bombing was a propaganda coup for the Taliban. Panjshir is the home of the legendary Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud who was assassinated by two days before the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. Under Massoud’s leadership the Panjshir Valley held out against not only against the Taliban, but famously the Soviet before them.
All along the drive by the side of the rushing Panjshir river on way to Massoud’s hilltop mausoleum, the relics of the war against the Russians have been preserved : rusted tanks on roadsides and an overturned armoured personnel carrier in the river. There were giant Massoud posters everywhere and because it was the anniversary of his assassination at the hands of a pair of men who pretended to be journalists, the ceremonial gates to the valley were draped in black.
And yet there were concerns even then . Security was tight at each of the gates on the narrow and winding highway through the tall mountains, and the Afghan police who stood guard said if Panjshir had been spared the kind of attacks the Taliban had mounted in the rest of Afghanistan, it wasn’t for lack of trying . They had already carried out attacks in neighbouring Nuristan province and according to a local Afghan police commander responsible for security at one of the checkpoints, American helicopters had been spotted in the area a few days before the anniversary, firing rockets over a hilltop. It wasn’t clear who they were targeting, the commander said.
Even the proud Panjshiris were worrying about the expanding Taliban influence, especially concerned at the time about government attempts to seek reconciliation with them. One Afghan elder who lost his son in the war against Russians said his village was fully armed to fight the Taliban. There was no way they were going to accept the Taliban in the Panjshir, he told me.
Is the tide turning in southern Afghanistan ?
The American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War has a new report out that says rather unequivocally that the United States is starting to turn the war around in southern Afghanistan following the surge. Since the deployment of U.S. Marines to Helmand in 2009 and the launch of an offensive there followed by operations in Kandahar, the Taliban has effectively lost all its main safe havens in the region, authors Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan argue.
The Taliban assassination squad in Kandahar has ben dismantled, the insurgents’ ability to acquire, transport and use IED materials and other weapons has been disrupted, and narcotics facilitators and financiers who link the drug market to the insurgency have been aggressively targeted. Above all, NATO and Afghan forces continue to hold all the areas they have cleared in the two provinces, arguably the heart of the insurgency, which is a significant departure from the past.
The war is far from over, large parts of the country remain under insurgent control, and there is limited, if not negligent political progress in the areas re-taken from the Taliban. But the momentum of the insurgency in the south has unquestionably been arrested and probably reversed, the authors say.
Is the ground really shifting, and if so, what’s behind this breakthrough ? Part of the reason is the arrival of 30,000 U.S. troops under the surge which military commanders said was necessary to make a dent in an insurgency at its deadliest since 2001. Another 1,400 Marines have just been ordered , all part of efforts to crush the Taliban so America can make an honourable ext from its longest war yet. But it is not just more troops that General David Petraeus has thrown at the resilient Taliban.
By all accounts, the war has turned ultra-violent as Danger Room blog called it a few months ago, with Petraeus bringing in the full weight of the U.S.. military to bear on the insurgents. U.S. Special Forces stepped up raids, taking out hundreds of militants, surface-to surface missiles were fired to clear the Taliban in Kandahar, and tanks deployed in Helmand to crush them.
Air strikes, the weapon of last choice under previous General Stanley McChrystal’s winning the hearts and minds strategy, rose to their highest level since the invasion in 2011, with 1,000 attacks in one month alone. U.S. generals are again talking of ”shock and awe” to destroy the Taliban, a far cry from the population -centric-strategy pursued earlier with its stress on avoiding civilian casualties. The level of civil casualties in the past few months, though, doesn’t seem to have risen in proportion to the intensity of the war effort, which means operations are much more accurate probably because of better intelligence, more involvement of the ANA, and perhaps foreign forces have just gotten better over a period of time.
@ WFraser1
America is a paper tiger are not my words but those of Chirman Mao. I did write that. Chairman’s Mao`’s country is China, where your Professor Gates in his recent visit was welcomed by the Chinese Stealth Bomber maiden flight. Just a coincidence?
As a texan, should’nt you be reading your ancestors engagement stories with the Apaches such as Geronimo and Coaches, instead of taliban and Haqqanis or paying a visit across the border who love the sight of Gringos.
Your marines are the weakest opponents, the Pashtoons ever came across in their thousand years of history. Go back to the school now that you are handicapped!
rex Minor
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Afghan Journal Expert
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Let us not overestimate the stregnth of non pashtoons ot underestimate the stregnth of Pashtoons. People who have taken the side of foreigners have never had a respecrable place in the Afghan society. Pashtoons travels more distance on foot and attacks its target and fears no human. Pashtoons are treacherous and never negotiate but simply express their demands.
Foreign troops must leave Afghanistan, has been their call for centuries and it should not surprise any one if to day they are in Panjsher or tomorrow in Tajikstan proper if nedd be to protect their territory!
Rex Minor