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By Danish Siddiqui
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Afghan special forces soldiers stopped for a short prayer Sunday evening on a deserted stretch of highway in southern Kandahar province. They do this whenever they prepare to face Taliban militants in combat.
The highly trained troops had been called in to flush out insurgents who had attacked the regular forces and local police hours earlier, only to find that the Taliban had disappeared into the darkness, leaving behind a few wounded civilians and soldiers.
“We received a report that the enemy had infiltrated here and wanted to overthrow the district,” Major Mohammad din Tasir, a member of the special forces unit deployed in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, after the operation.
The report suggested that as many as 300 Taliban fighters were present in the area, he said.
“Unfortunately, what we heard in the report and what we saw on the spot did not match.”
Tasir said the absence of Taliban fighters showed the group’s claims that they now controlled up to 85% of the country’s territory were exaggerated.
He also highlighted the difficulty of facing an enemy who mixes open assaults on checkpoints, villages, towns and cities with hit-and-run tactics that tend to avoid heavy casualties.
The Taliban’s recent territorial gains come as foreign troops led by the US military withdraw from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, leaving local forces with the task of pulling the country out of a spiraling security crisis.
On Monday, the American general at the head of the war in Afghanistan, Austin Miller, will relinquish his command, thus symbolically putting an end to the longest American conflict.
ADVANCES OF THE TALIBAN
Kandahar is one of many provinces to have seen a recent upsurge in offensives by the Taliban, who say they want to participate in the peaceful management of the country although they have always opposed the presence of foreign forces.
Last week, the group advanced in the west of the country near the border with Iran and surrounded the central city of Ghazni.
The special forces unit was called in after insurgents tried to take control of Khan Baba village in Kandahar’s Dand district, unleashing RPG and heavy machine gun fire at Afghan security forces and police local.
The soldiers traveled there under cover of darkness, using night vision equipment and moving in Humvee vehicles marked by bullet holes from previous missions, some with American allies.
When they arrived, they found the village largely abandoned. Airstrikes by the Afghan Air Force had helped repel Taliban fighters.
Special forces personnel moved quickly and silently from house to house, entering through doors and leaping over walls to locate Taliban remnants that may still be lurking in the area.
They found only a few residents, mostly elderly people, who said other residents fled when the fighting started. The troops also attended to soldiers injured in previous clashes before evacuating them to the nearest military base.
In the distance, sporadic gunshots rang out.
An Afghan defense official said on Twitter Monday that 26 insurgents had been killed in operations and airstrikes the day before in two districts of Kandahar, including Dand.
Reuters could not independently verify this.
Once the operation was over, the special forces took a short rest, before preparing to receive orders for their next mission.
(Written by Gibran Peshimam, edited by Mike Collett-White)
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