More sensational headlines this week continued as the Taliban terrorists conduct raids into more populated areas, many of them being key cities. According to “breaking reports” the Taliban are “overrunning, capturing, taking, or seizing capitals,” in other reports the cities have “fallen” or are now “owned and conquered.”
Terms Matter
What no one seems to be defining is what those terms mean. To Afghans stuck inside those cities and towns, it means torture, rape, forced marriage, robbery, and murder. To international audiences, those unclear terms mean that the ANDSF and government must be on the verge of collapse. To the ANDSF, those terms mean more long days killing Taliban fighters and longer nights explaining to the Afghan people to remain calm and carry on in support of the ANDSF. To the Taliban, those headlines mean they are getting their planned results from the modern media, and that fuels them to conduct more war crimes. To Pakistan, those headlines mean that they are still getting away with an invasion of Afghanistan via the Taliban and no one is calling them on it.
Afghan Parliamentarian Member Mariam Solaimankhil, that is better defining journalist Habib Khan’s #SanctionPakistan trend, reads those headlines the same way Pakistan does. She knows that as long as the world reports this as an “advancing Taliban,” they are not reporting it like the press reported the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Her #sanctionPakistan petition to the UN clearly spells out what is actually happening that the press is not reporting. Bottom line: Taliban and Pakistan feel the international community is not a threat to them.
What is also never usually followed-up-on in a “breaking news” style is the systematic and professional clearing of these same areas by the ANDSF. Somehow when the Taliban attempts to take ground and fails—when the Taliban loses fighters by the hundreds, it isn’t a big story. Just like the promotion of two of the ANA’s best fighting generals to command the Army and ANASOC didn’t seem to break through the daily noise. That is a big deal to the ANDSF and the U.S. SOF members that fought beside them.
This is going to take time
Rushing to judgement about how the governance of any city eventually turns out only helps the Taliban – not the Afghans. The ANDSF is in the same spot the U.S./NATO coalition forces were in for decades, dealing with raiding parties of Taliban hordes as they attempted to take over and hold land. Just like the previous international forces, the ANDSF is trying to carefully regain terrain while avoiding civilian casualties.
Last week the alarmists aided the Taliban propagandists by saying Lashkar Gah was in danger of falling, on the brink of being taken, and under siege. Today the Afghan Corps commander running the campaign to stop the Taliban raids on Lashkar announced the city was under control again and that it has cost the Taliban hundreds of lives to lose in Lashkar. The commandos that flew in to help him finish off the Taliban just flew off to kill hundreds of Taliban in another area.
Herat was also written off by early reports of the success of the Taliban hordes as they approached the city. In a matter of days, the situation was reversed and the Taliban were again lying dead by the hundreds. That defense inspired the entire nation to unite and take up arms beside the ANDSF.
We have to see how the city does in ridding itself of the Taliban terrorists before assessing the actual status. As I have said many times, the measure of security capability should not be how many places the Taliban raids, but how quickly the ANDSF retakes those areas. Cities are the people, not the place; let’s see how the people respond after the initial shockwaves before passing judgment.
Frankly, the ANDSF cannot be everywhere in a nation the size of Texas. Just like our police in the U.S. cannot be everywhere inside our large cities. As a reminder, in Chicago 73 citizens were shot and 11 died from their wounds, just this weekend alone. Would we say that Chicago (population 2.6 million) has collapsed, or is under siege, or has fallen to the gangs? This has been happening every weekend for years now. Is it a city under gang control? Meanwhile in Kabul (over 4.5 million people) murder is actually rare, although more assassinations have taken place recently, police estimate there are fewer than five murders per day. If Kabul is safer than Chicago, and Chicago is not in a war-torn country—are reporters and pundits getting this story straight?
#SanctionPakistan will make a difference
The one thing everyone should admit, is that no one can predict how the Pakistani proxy-war against Afghans will end. I suspect the Taliban will keep trading hundreds of lives for short-term stays in Afghan cities. It is worth it to Pakistan to get that instant propaganda statement from the Western Press.
I also suspect that the ANDSF will continue to move from hot-spot to spot stamping out the Taliban wherever they pop up. That is a slow grinding warfare that will give the Taliban time to kill thousands of civilians this year. Watch closely to see what General Hibatullah Alizai, the new Afghan Army Chief, does with the war strategy, and what General @SayedSamiSadat will do at ANA Special Operations Command. ANDSF SOF is some of the best in the region; hopefully, they don’t run out of airlift and ammo.
As the ANDSF faces the same Pakistan strategy as the NATO team did, with an even more energized Taliban proxy, what can change the status quo? The answer is likely to be found in the #sanctionPakistan movement that is growing around the globe. By Wednesday, this hashtag was trending worldwide and had reached over 2,500 tweets per hour at one point, with almost 750,000 thousand total tweets. If you type “#sanction” into Google there is only one top hit and that is Pakistan. Even former senior officials from U.S./NATO nations are starting to speak out more loudly about Pakistan’s role in the deaths of innocent Afghans via their proxy force.
While the U.S. and other nations were inexplicably fainthearted towards Pakistan while their forces were in Afghanistan, maybe today they can find the will to take even the most minimal of diplomatic actions needed to stop the Taliban forces surging into Afghanistan from Pakistan.
