Taliban completes conquest of Afghanistan after seizing Panjshir

[Valin]

FDD's Long War Journal

Bill Roggio & Andrew Tobin

September 6, 2021

The Taliban completed its military conquest of Afghanistan and took control of the mountainous province of Panjshir after seven days of heavy fighting. The fall of Panjshir puts the Taliban in full control of the country and eliminates the final vestige of organized resistance to its rule.

The Taliban began its assault on Panjshir on Aug. 30, the day the U.S. military withdrew its last forces from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. The Taliban seized control of the Afghan capital of Kabul and 32 of the country’s 34 provinces on Aug. 16 after a three and a half month long offensive that began on May 1.

After the fall of Kabul, the National Resistance Front, led by former Vice President and National Directorate of Security chief Amrullah Saleh, and Panjshiri warlord Ahmad Massoud, organized inside Panjshir and several neighboring districts in Parwan and Baghlan province. Saleh and Massoud announced their opposition to the Taliban. Saleh organized thousands of members of the now-defunct Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, including Commandos, Special Forces and other units, and attempted to expand control beyond the Panjshir Valley. However, Saleh’s forays outside of Panjshir may have overextended his forces that would have been better used to defend the province and establish a secure base.

The Taliban attacked Panjshir, a mountainous fortress with few entrances and narrow passes, from multiple directions, and was initially repelled by the resistance forces. But the Taliban pressed its assault and was able to punch through the resistance’s defenses at the main pass in the south near the town of Gulbahar, and the pass at Khawak in the east.

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[Valin]

Another view

Afghanistan: House Of Cards

September 7, 2021:

The Taliban discovered that declaring they now control Afghanistan is easier said than done. The resistance in the north is still there and difficult to hide in an age of cellphone videos and the World Wide Web. Despite a growing number of inaccurate claims of victory against the resistance, the opposition is often public, with daily cell phone videos of anti-Taliban and anti-Pakistan demonstrations still taking place in major cities. The Taliban is trying seize weapons held my many civilians while also imposing the hated lifestyle rules on men and women. Another category of inaccurate reporting is the continuing delays forming a Taliban government. The five-year old and under-reported Taliban civil war continues and is preventing the formation of a new government to officially take over.

This disorder and growing popular resistance is a major embarrassment for Pakistan which thought 2021 would be a repeat of 1995. Back then Pakistan created a militia of fanatical Afghan religious students by recruiting from refugee camps in Pakistan. Led by Afghan adults, often teachers at those schools, the armed students (Taliban in Pushtun), were sent to Afghanistan to defeat the other factions in the civil war there. That conflict was stalemated after years of fighting that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and ended all economic and military aid to the pro-Russian government left behind when the last Russian troops left in 1989. After 1991 the northern border was not with Russia but the new states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The Taliban had a powerful and generous foreign backer in Pakistan, which sent hundreds of Pakistani officers and troops, dressed as Afghans, to assist the Taliban and maintain contact with Pakistan and arrange for supplies and evacuation of Taliban wounded.

The original 1990s Taliban, many of them born in southern Afghanistan (Kandahar and Helmand provinces), felt obliged to Pakistan while the post-1990s generation did not. What triggered the recent civil war was Pakistan hiding the death of Taliban founder, Mullah Omar, who visited a Pakistani hospital in 2013 for treatment and was never seen again. In 2015 the younger Taliban leaders were told that there was a new Taliban supreme leader, who was selected without revealing the fact that Mullah Omar had been dead for two years.

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