TALIBAN CITY UNDER SIEGE

KANDAHAR: The Taliban have massed on the outskirts of Kandahar in preparation for an all-out assault to recapture a city that was once the Islamist movement’s capital.

The militants have infiltrated the suburbs of Afghanistan’s second city, with heavy fighting reported in southern and western neighbourhoods.

“Fighting has intensified, the Taliban are so close and the situation is so bad,” Abduljalil Amin, head of the local peace and development committee, said. “The Taliban front line is strong. Last night (Thursday local time) there were seven air strikes to push them back. There is no Eid celebration here. People are fleeing to other provinces, but many are trapped in their homes and lack access to food and water.”

Local reports suggest the militants have already sent a wave of more than 20 suicide bombers into Kandahar that was repelled by Afghan forces.

With reinforcements said to be arriving on the outskirts, a renewed assault is expected within days.

The US said it had launched several air strikes in support of Afghan government troops, including in the province of Kandahar, in the first known operations since General Scott Miller relinquished his command of US forces and left the country last week.

Afghan commandos have also arrived to shore up Kandahar’s defences. Crucially, the government still holds the airport, allowing it to target Taliban fighters on the ground. Once dug into builtup areas, however, the insurgents will be tougher to dislodge without house-tohouse fighting.

The encircling of Kandahar comes amid a lightning advance by the Taliban that has enabled them to lay siege to at least 10 cities across Afghanistan over the past month as the US completes its withdrawal from the country.

As the birthplace of the Islamist movement, Kandahar is prized above all except Kabul itself, and defeat there would deal a hammer blow to the Afghan government.

The insurgents seized the border crossing into Pakistan at Spin Boldak, south-east of Kandahar, last week, cutting off a vital supply line to the city. Many of Kandahar’s 600,000 residents have already fled, with services breaking down as the fighting edges closer.

Senior Afghan officials acknowledged that Kandahar would represent a serious loss for the government.

The insurgents are yet to capture and hold a big city. The northern city of Kunduz was overrun in 2015 and again the following year, but it was retaken both times by Afghan troops, backed by US and British special forces.

“We’d see that as significant,” a senior source said of the potential loss of Kandahar.

“It would give the Taliban not just geography in a territory but some legitimacy inside Afghanistan.”

Beyond its strategic importance, Kandahar holds deep symbolic significance for the Taliban. Kandahar province was the birthplace of the Islamist movement as it emerged from the Afghan civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

Led by the one-eyed cleric Mullah Muhammad Omar, the group seized Kandahar in 1994, imposing its brand of brutal Islamic justice.

Underscoring his power, Omar was presented with Kandahar’s most celebrated religious relic, a cloak believed to have been worn by the Prophet Muhammad.

He wore it at a gathering of clerics in the city in 1996, and was declared leader of the faithful, a title claimed by only the most powerful figures in Islamic history.

Within months, the Taliban had swept north and seized Kabul. The same year, Omar offered Osama bin Laden shelter in Kandahar, and the province remained a stronghold for al-Qaeda until the US invasion in 2001.

Kandahar and the neighbouring province of Helmand proved to be a hotbed of the Taliban insurgency in the 20-year conflict that followed.

When NATO forces ended combat operations in late 2014 the insurgents swept back from these southern strongholds, capturing swaths of the countryside.

With the US now dashing for the exit in Afghanistan, the Taliban advance has accelerated as government forces buckle and retreat to the cities.

The speed and scale of the Afghan military’s collapse has prompted a recalibration on the battlefield: instead of trying to defend remote districts, it is focusing its efforts on securing strategic locations.

Commanders believe the Taliban are also planning an assault on the eastern city of Ghazni, which is also a place of Islamic significance.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/7647/qK1OdI.jpg

You have a career as a bridge guard, Matty.  It is what all trolls were meant to do.  Don't throw it away on failed social discourse.  Tsk, tsk.