Red Cross Treats 4,000 Afghans Wounded by War in August

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Ayaz Gul
VOA News
August 10, 2021

ISLAMABAD – The International Committee of the Red Cross said Tuesday its health facilities in Afghanistan have treated more than 4,000 patients wounded by weapons over the past week, an indication of the intensity of the recent Afghan conflict

The violence comes as the United States along with regional and international stakeholders have gathered in Doha, Qatar, to press the Afghan parties to the conflict to urgently seek a negotiated settlement to the South Asian country’s long war.

An ICRC statement called on both Afghan government forces and Taliban insurgents for immediate restraint, stressing that civilians and vital infrastructure such as hospitals must be protected from fighting.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are at risk as fighting intensifies in and around Kunduz, Lashkar Gah, Kandahar, and other Afghan contested cities, it added.

“Street-to-street clashes in Kunduz, Lashkar Gah and other cities over the last few days have injured hundreds of civilians even as medical services are heavily strained due to damage to health facilities and a lack of staff,” the ICRC said.

Several cities have no electricity, and water supply systems are barely operational in some places.

“We are seeing homes destroyed, medical staff and patients put at tremendous risk, and hospitals, electricity and water infrastructure damage,” said Eloi Fillion, ICRC’s head of delegation in Afghanistan.

Fillion said the use of explosive weapons, such as grenades, rockets, mortars and bombs, in cities is having an indiscriminate impact on the population.

“Many families have no option but to flee in search of a safer place,” he said. “This must stop.”

In July alone, the ICRC said it had helped nearly 13,000 patients suffering from “weapon-related injuries” across Afghanistan.

The international aid agency noted the number appears likely to rise in August as fighting increases in highly populated areas.

The violence comes as regional and international stakeholders Tuesday gathered in Qatar to collectively press representatives of the Afghan parties to the conflict to resume peace talks and urgently reach a political settlement to bring an end to the bloodshed.

Washington said Monday that U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, in several planned rounds of meetings this week starting Tuesday in the Qatari capital, Doha, will “help formulate a joint international response to the rapidly deteriorating” situation in Afghanistan.

The U.S. State Department said Khalilzad “will press the Taliban to stop their military offensive and to negotiate a political settlement, which is the only path to stability and development in Afghanistan.”

The Taliban have captured several cities in the last week and threaten many more, raising the prospects for the Islamist group to regain power in Afghanistan.

Washington and representatives of other countries attending the Afghan peace-related meetings in Doha will renew their pledge not to recognize a government in Kabul imposed by force, according to the U.S. statement.

The United Nations warned last month that the Afghan war, in the first six months of this year, showed an almost 50% rise in civilian casualties compared with 2020.

India shuts last consulate in Afghanistan and evacuates citizens

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Ariana: India sent a military plane to northern Afghanistan on Tuesday to pull out its citizens, officials said, as fighting raged between Afghan security forces and the advancing Taliban. The Indian government shut its consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, the biggest city in the north, and urged its diplomats and Indian citizens to take the special flight home, Reuters reported. Click here to read more (external link).

Afghanistan: 278 New Cases of COVID-19, 17 Deaths Reported

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Tolo News: The Ministry of Public Health on Tuesday reported 278 new positive cases of COVID-19 out of 3,367 samples tested in the last 24 hours. The ministry also reported 17 deaths and 357 recoveries from COVID-19 in the same period. The Ministry of Public Health stated that the number of COVID-19 cases is descending, saying over 1.8 million people have been vaccinated against the virus. Click here to read more (external link).

Afghan City in Panic After News of Taliban Advance

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Mazar-e Sharif

Ayesha Tanzeem
VOA News
August 10, 2021

KABUL – With seven family members to feed, Abdul Khaliq needed the money. But Monday morning, his small fruit cart in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan remained devoid of customers.

“There is no business. There is fighting. … I am here since the morning, but I can’t make any money. People have nothing,” he told VOA.

Business in the capital of Balkh province came to a standstill, and shops started shutting down after news spread that the Taliban were advancing. The militants had already captured five provincial capitals in the north or northeast of the country since Friday. Monday morning, pro-Taliban social media accounts began saying the militants had attacked Mazar from four sides.

The claim was false — the only fighting reported was some 20 kilometers from the city near an army base in Dihdadi District — but the rumor traveled fast. For the population of Mazar, which had heard about the collapse of five nearby provincial capitals within two days, 20 kilometers was not far enough.

“We hear the Taliban are coming into Mazar city. … People are escaping. Fifty percent of the shops are closed, although the Taliban are still on the outskirts. But people are scared,” Mazar resident Hamid Askar said.

Worsening the panic were scenes from a day ago that went viral on social media. Kunduz, another city in the north only a few hours’ drive from Mazar, saw heavy fighting and was largely taken over by the Taliban.

Videos showed people running as plumes of black smoke rose in the air behind them. Tall orange and red flames were consuming parts of the city.

Mazar residents did not want to take a chance. Central Mazar’s busy streets became deserted. People lined up in banks and at ATM machines to withdraw money.

It did not help that another northern capital, Aibak of Samangan province, was overrun by the Taliban the same day — the sixth provincial capital to collapse since Friday. The militants now control most of the north.

In a country that has been at war for four decades, Mazar was one of the cities left relatively intact. It did not see heavy street-to-street fighting. This time, the residents seemed to be planning for a different outcome.

“The Taliban are coming. The city is collapsing. Anyone with money has escaped. The poor are left behind,” said shopkeeper Najibullah, who has only one name.

Witnesses said that during the panic in Mazar, they saw few security forces. Anyone who could afford it tried to escape. Travel agents had double the business they have on a normal day. Even airlines doubled their flights.

“Usually, we have two to three flights daily from Mazar to Kabul, but it has increased to five to six,” travel agent Sameer said. “Previously, the ticket was $85 one way, but now it has increased to $113.”

He said his office has seen a rush of people trying to get to safe locations ever since the security situation deteriorated in the neighborhood.

In the afternoon, the Afghan military released a video on social media saying it had repulsed the Taliban attack on Dihdadi District.

“Now, the presence of commandos in Kod-Barq area of Dehdadi district, #Balkh province. The terrorists attack on district repulsed; dozens #terrorists were killed and wounded in reciprocal operation of #commandos and Public Resistance Forces,” tweeted Defense Ministry spokesman Fawad Aman.

He later wrote that the Taliban had also been pushed back in northern Baghlan province.

The Taliban have made swift territorial gains in Afghanistan since May when the foreign forces started their withdrawal. President Joe Biden had received stiff criticism from political opponents and independent analysts for his decision to withdraw all forces before the Taliban made a political settlement with the Afghan government.

Negotiations between the two sides officially began in September 2020 but have so far remained fruitless.

The violence has exacerbated the already existing humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan. The country has had a severe drought for several years, and according to the United Nations, more than 18 million people, which make up half the country’s population, are now in need of humanitarian assistance.

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Battle Between Taliban, Afghan Government Now Seeing Return of Warlords

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Jamie Dettmer
VOA News
August 9, 2021

The beleaguered Afghan government is having to turn to veteran warlords to try to fend off the Taliban as international forces withdraw from the country.

The warlords return to playing a major military role is a key part of President Ashraf Ghani’s national mobilization plan to halt the Taliban’s nationwide offensive but is raising fears that at best it will lead to Afghanistan splintering once again into dueling local fiefdoms, setting the stage for a prolonged and messy civil war, mirroring what unfolded in the 1990s after the Soviet withdrawal.

A former top British army commander General Richard Barrons, told the BBC Monday he fears the country will be plunged into a decades-long civil war and dubbed the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan a “strategic mistake.” “I don’t believe it’s in our own interest,” he said.

Abdul Rashid Dostum is among the old warlords returning to the fray as the Taliban gains more territory. More than a dozen cities are now under siege by the Taliban, including several provincial capitals.

The lightning offensive by the Taliban has rocked the Afghan government and unfolded in the wake of the decision by the Biden administration to withdraw U.S. troops from the country. Almost all NATO troops will be gone by September.

In Herat, the scene of heavy fighting, the defense of the city is being overseen by another veteran warlord, 70-year-old Mohammed Ismail Khan, a former mujahedeen leader against the Russians and the Taliban. His forces are estimated to comprise of 6,000 volunteers, some veterans from the civil war in the 1990s, according to Western military officials.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who long vowed to clean out warlords, met with Dostum last week on his return to Afghanistan from Turkey, where the former army paratrooper and onetime U.S. ally was reported to be undergoing medical treatment.

Dostum is a former Afghan vice-president but currently holds no official government position. He was a key figure in the fight against the Taliban in the 1990s and has long been seen as one of Afghanistan’s most powerful but notorious warlords. His militia was accused by rights groups in the 1990s of rapes and massacres of prisoners.

Some Afghan experts are doubtful that the support of veteran warlords and their newly formed and revived militias will be sufficient to fend off the Taliban, unless the demoralized Afghan army pulls its weight more.

Among the doubters is Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Initiative on Non-state Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. She noted in a tweet Sunday that the Taliban has been notching up successes in areas where there are strong anti-Taliban militias which have been embraced by the Afghan government.

With Afghan soldiers and weapons in short supply, though, Western diplomats and analysts say the Afghan president has little option but to call for help from the veteran warlords he’s tried to keep at arm’s length in the past.  They add that political factions, regional bosses and powerbrokers will start growing their militias even without the encouragement of the central government.

“As Taliban victories on the battlefield grow, all other factions will ramp up their efforts to build militias and create an opposing force to defeat them,” predict Annie Pforzheimer, a former acting deputy assistant Secretary of State for Afghanistan, and Nilofar Sakhi, who has been involved in the Afghan peace process since 2010.

In a commentary for the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, they said: “Expect regional powers to arm and supply money to their preferred factions and for the militias to keep switching sides and loyalties for gains that will further weaken the Afghan central government.”

Romain Malejacq, author of the book “Warlord Survival: The Delusion of State Building in Afghanistan,” foresees a similar outcome. “Whether the central government manages to hold its own and resist the Taliban or not, post-NATO Afghanistan is likely to feature a patchwork of overlapping, competing, political orders between the state, the Taliban, the warlords and other non-state armed actors — something resembling Afghanistan of the 1990s,” he wrote in paper for the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch international affairs think tank.

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Afghan Radio Station Manager Killed, Journalist Kidnapped

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RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
August 9, 2021

Suspected Taliban gunmen shot and killed an Afghan radio station manager in Kabul and kidnapped a journalist in southern Helmand Province, officials said, the latest in a long line of attacks targeting media workers.

Gunmen shot Toofan Omar, the Paktia Ghag radio manager who was also an officer for NAI, a support group for independent media in Afghanistan, in a targeted assassination in the capital on August 8.

“Omari was killed by unidentified gunmen…he was a liberal man…we are being targeted for working independently,” said Mujeeb Khelwatgar, the head of NAI.

Khelwatgar also said it wasn’t immediately clear whether Omar’s assassination was linked to his activities at the radio station or at the NAI.

No group claimed responsibility for the killing, but officials in Kabul suspected Taliban fighters had carried out the attack.

Last month the NAI said at least 30 Afghan journalists and media workers have been killed, wounded, or abducted by militant groups this year.

In Helmand Province, officials said Taliban fighters had seized a local journalist, Nematullah Hemat, from his home in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, on August 8.

“There is just absolutely no clue where the Taliban have taken Hemat…we are really in a state of panic, said Razwan Miakhel, head of private TV channel, Gharghasht TV where Hemat was employed.

A coalition of Afghan news organizations has written to U.S. President Joe Biden and leaders in the House of Representatives, urging them to grant special immigration visas to Afghan journalists and support staff.

With reporting by Reuters

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

‘Sanction Pakistan’ hashtag campaign gathers momentum as Afghans speak out

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Ariana: Calls to impose sanctions on Pakistan for their alleged assistance to the Taliban have been mounting in the past week and by Monday, #SanctionPakistan was trending on Twitter. As Afghan Twitter users rallied behind the sanctions hashtag, #EndProxyWar also started to gather momentum. Click here to read more (external link).

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235 New Cases of COVID-19, 25 Deaths Reported in Afghanistan

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Tolo News: The Ministry of Public Health on Monday reported 235 new positive cases of COVID-19 out of 1,505 samples tested in the last 24 hours.  The ministry also reported 25 deaths and 557 recoveries from COVID-19 in the same period.  The figures are almost similar to the daily report on Sunday, which was 320 cases and 28 fatalities, but it is lower than the daily cases reported during the last week of July.  Click here to read more (external link).

Heavy Fighting Reportedly Under Way in Northern Afghan Provinces Of Balkh, Takhar

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By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
August 9, 2021

Afghan security forces battled Taliban fighters in the northern provinces of Balkh and Takhar on August 9, a day after militants overran three provincial capitals, including most of the strategic northeastern city of Kunduz, officials said.

In Balkh, heavy clashes have been under way close to the provincial capital of Mazar-e-Sharif since late on August 8, sources told Tolo News, adding that the government’s defense lines risk breaking unless reinforcement are sent to the region.

On August 8, the Taliban overran most of the strategic northeastern city of Kunduz, while the provincial capital of Sar-e Pol and Taloqan, the capital of northeastern Takhar Province, also fell to the militants, sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal told RFE/RL.

Fighting in Afghanistan has intensified since May 1, when the United States and other countries officially began withdrawing their forces in a pullout that is expected to be completed by the end of this month.

The three centers that fell on August 8 brought to five the number of provincial capitals under complete or near-total Taliban control after militants on August 6 took Zaranj, the capital of the southwestern Nimroz Province, and the northern Jawzjan Province’s capital, Sheberghan.

Kunduz, a city of some 375,000 inhabitants, would be the most significant to fall since the Taliban launched an all-out offensive in May as U.S.-led forces began the final stages of their withdrawal.

Government forces in Kunduz appeared to be only in control of the airport and their own base, with all key government buildings in the city in the militants’ hands.

The main prison in Kunduz was also reportedly under Taliban control.

However, the Afghan Defense Ministry denied that Kunduz had fallen, saying in a statement on August 8 that commandos launched a clearance operation in the city, adding that the main roundabout in the city center has been recaptured and the national TV building cleared of Taliban fighters.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the group had largely captured the government buildings, including the National Directorate of Security, and were close to the airport.

In comments to Al-Jazeera TV, a spokesman for the extremist group’s political office said there was no agreement for a cease-fire with Kabul’s forces.

Many civilians were caught in the cross fire, with health officials in Kunduz saying that 14 bodies, including those of women and children, and more than 30 injured people had been taken to hospital.

The Taliban was also in control of Sar-e Pol, driving officials out of the main city to a nearby military base, said Mohammad Noor Rahmani, a provincial council member of Sar-e Pol Province.

“Sar-e-Pol fell today at 3:45 a.m. The Taliban has occupied the capital of Sar-e-Pol Province,” Abdul Haq Shafaq, the provincial governor, told Radio Azadi on August 8.

Nabila Habibi, head of the provincial women’s affairs department in Sar-e Pol, told RFE/RL that she feared for her life and those of the other women who worked in the field.

“Today I received a message from the national security office, who themselves may have fled around the city, that I should leave the city because the opposition (the Taliban) has issued my death order,” Habibi said from Sar-e Pol.

She said it was clear that the Taliban “never want women to be present or active in society, especially in politics” and have never accepted women’s rights activists. She said she had been threatened many times by the Taliban and in the past three days had been warned over the phone.

The Taliban has also taken most of Lashkar Gah, the capital of southern Helmand Province, where militants took nine of the 10 police districts in the city last week. Heavy fighting there continues, as do U.S. and Afghan government air strikes, one of which damaged a health clinic and a high school.

The U.S. Central Command has said the troops withdrawal is more than 95 percent complete and will be finished by August 31, ahead of the September 11 anniversary of two decades since the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States that prompted the invasion of Afghanistan.

This story includes reporting by Radio Azadi correspondents on the ground in Afghanistan. Their names are being withheld for their protection.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and Tolo News

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.