A policeman patrols at the site of the Buddhas of Bamiyan statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001
The Taliban capture of Almar may have finally come with a rapid government collapse, but it had been a long time in the making.
Weeks of siege had left the abandoned garrison low on food and ammunition with little hope of relief. The Afghan government soldiers’ situation was so desperate in their final days that their relatives protested in the nearby provincial capital, pleading with the army to mount a rescue.
Those calls went unanswered and then the local police chief defected to the militants. On March 11, the remaining 60-or-so troops holed up in the governor and police chief’s offices decided to try to make a break for it. In that last, desperate scramble, some soldiers were killed, others surrendered and the rest escaped to a base two miles away. That is also now surrounded, residents said.
Almar, a rural district close to the border with Turkmenistan, is currently under Taliban authority, but largely deserted, townsfolk told the Telegraph by phone last week. The bazaar is burnt and the local clinic was destroyed in an air strike in the final stages of fighting. Many are fearful of an Afghan army counter attack and have fled.
"The situation is not good. No one can be spotted on the streets, you can only see devastation and debris and blood on the streets,” said one local official who declined to give his name. “The Taliban are in control now.”
Afghanistan territories vs troops
Almar’s plight illustrates Joe Biden’s fiendish dilemma as he wrestles with how to end America’s longest war. Pulling out US troops by May 1 in accord with Donald Trump’s withdrawal deal with the Taliban risks abandoning Afghan forces to more defeats without US air power and support.
Talks have failed to bring a fall in violence and the Taliban are still close to al-Qaeda. Yet keeping troops in the country longer to support the Afghan government in the hope stalled talks can be revived risks blowing up Mr Trump’s deal and provoking a renewed Taliban offensive.
Long before the final assault on Almar, the government had been disliked in this restive corner of Faryab province. Residents made familiar complaints about the endemic corruption which has driven a deep wedge between the people and the government.
The Taliban had meanwhile been present in the district for years, winning support with a shadow system of courts offering a measure of order and respite from government predation.
“Of course they are better than the government. Government offices are corrupt,” explained one resident. “You can’t pursue your business without paying bribes. There are so many robbers in government areas, but in areas the Taliban control, people won’t dare look at your property."
Afghan Security Forces inspect the scene of an attack a day after a car bomb went off in Herat, in March
Residents were divided on their future prospects if the militant movement kept control.
“The Taliban are not acting in a bad way with the people, especially in recent months,” said one shopkeeper called Qais who had fled to nearby Maimana. “They don’t harm people, you can go out during nights and days. They won’t harm anyone until people do something wrong. They wont ask you who you are and where you are going.”
A group of young men who had also fled Almar to the nearby city of Herat saw little future under the Taliban’s fundamentalism, however. Changing what little money they had for Iranian rials, they said they would instead try their chances across the border in Iran.
“The Taliban will even have problems with us being clean shaven,” said one. “Also there will not be any job for us to do now.”
The loss of districts such as Almar has been repeated again and again across rural Afghanistan as beleaguered outposts have been abandoned or overrun in the face of a Taliban onslaught. After the militants swept to the outskirts of Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah, in October, two months later nearly 200 checkpoints in neighbouring Kandahar were abandoned by the army’s 205th Corps. Meanwhile as the insurgents encroach on more of the road network, many of the remaining bases can only be resupplied by air.
Afghan security officials inspect the scene of a roadside bomb blast hits Afghan government employees transportation in March
Despite being the recipients of billions in foreign aid, and on paper at least greatly outnumbering their opponents, morale in the Afghan forces has plummeted. They struggle to supply remote outposts and the ever present corruption undermines their logistics. Officials have stopped reporting casualty rates, but admitted that an average of nearly 70 were killed or wounded each day last spring and summer.
As the Taliban take ground, their envoys claim they have changed since their austere 1990s emirate banned women from education or working outside the house.
Aid workers told the Telegraph that in reality, the militants were still insisting that women were accompanied by male chaperones in the areas they control, while development projects trying to give women more financial independence are halted.
Fears that the fragile gains in women’s rights of the past two decades may be rolled back were highlighted again this week when Russia invited the foes to talks in Moscow. Only one woman delegate was invited, to a summit of powerbrokers who often had a history of abuses against women.
“Why I should be the only woman in the room?" asked Habiba Sorabi. "51 per cent of people should not be ignored."
Female police officers attend an event ahead of International Women's Day
American commanders have become sombre about their Afghan allies’ prospects after years of bullishness. “If we withdraw and no deal was made with the Taliban, I think the government of Afghanistan is going to be in for a very stiff fight to retain possession” of towns and cities, Gen Kenneth McKenzie, the top US commander in the Middle East, said last week.
Antony Blinken, secretary of state, has warned the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, that even if Washington kept paying for his forces, without US troops he was concerned "the security situation will worsen and that the Taliban could make rapid territorial gains”.
US forces have fallen from around 13,000 a year ago, to around 3,500 now. As bases have closed, American air power, intelligence and surveillance that the Afghans have relied on has dwindled. Afghan generals are forced to rely ever more heavily on their overstretched special forces.
The Pentagon has long stopped releasing its estimates of who controls what in Afghanistan, but one reckoning by the Long War Journal blog says the Taliban now control nearly a fifth of the country’s 400-odd districts. Only a third are fully under government control.
The Taliban’s power rests in the countryside, where government sway has often been tenuous. The strengthening insurgency has been overlaid on local disputes and rivalries, making a patchwork of control. But as the insurgents have grown in strength, they have pushed up against the cities, which have been the main beneficiaries of the past two decades since the Taliban were toppled.
Kabul was in ruins two decades ago, but is now bustling, swollen by money and also by those escaping the war in the countryside. The fashionable cafes and shops of West Kabul are a long way from both Taliban rule and Faryab village life. Yet here too the violence intrudes. A campaign of assassinations killing civil servants, journalists and members of civil society has spread terror among educated city dwellers.
Kabul was in ruins two decades ago, but is now bustling
Credit: SHAH MARAI /AFP
Few attacks are claimed. The government and diplomats believe many are down to the Taliban, though there are suspicions that personal disputes and even factions wanting to discredit a peace process could be behind others. The militants have posted letters in city mosques boasting of their influence and offering patrols to tackle criminals.
It is against this dismal backdrop that Mr Biden must decide if he wants to pull out in six weeks. He admitted last week a full withdrawal was still on the table, but said it would be tough to hit the deadline. Any extension will not be “a lot longer”, he insisted, as many in Washington are lobbying him to give it another six months.
His deliberations have been accompanied by a blitz of diplomatic activity as Washington has tried to energise moribund negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government. Frustrated by the foes’ refusal to suggest a way forward, Washington has come up with its own proposal to install an interim government including the Taliban, with the support of Afghanistan’s neighbours.
None is more important than Pakistan. The country was long accused of supporting the Taliban and much of its leadership still lives there. A succession of diplomatic visitors, including the UK’s defence chief, Gen Sir Nick Carter, have arrived in Islamabad asking Pakistan to bring its influence to bear on the insurgents. Pakistan insists it genuinely wants a peaceful Afghanistan to galvanise trade in the region and is doing everything it can, but says its influence is limited.
“If anybody thinks that Pakistan can bring, or not bring, peace, I think that’s unfair,” a senior Pakistani government official said.
In the meantime the people of Almar are caught between the two sides and fear more fighting.
“The shops along the main street are either burned or looted,” said one man called Amanullah “but now, no one is here. You feel that everybody is dead.”
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