Friday, December 25, 2015: Singin district of Afghan province Helmund starts to crumble and fall to the insurgents as a contingent of the security forces are still besieged inside. Although the forces have retaken the control of the district center, the ways in and out are still controlled by Taliban.
Since the NATO left Afghanistan the local security forces are forced to confront their own demons. They are weakly organized at best and the motivation and moral are at the all-time low. However, these are only some of the large array of problems that government is facing in the country.
With only 10,000 foreign soldiers, US and its allies, who are only working in the capacity of tactical assistance and some special missions, the Afghan forces, already under-skilled are almost left alone to defend the country against an older, experienced way larger enemy of the state, Taliban.
What makes the things even worse is the fact that some groups among the insurgents have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, another insurgent group working out Syria and Iraq. ISIS has also reciprocated the pledge and is supporting the Taliban.
The radical Islamists have besieged SIngin for weeks now with a contingent of Afghan police and army still inside, unable to fight their way out of the city or scram Taliban away. This series of attacks and incidents undertaken by Taliban have been conducted strategically to fizzle out the weaker points of th security forces. The next step would be to attack with full force at these weaker points and give President Ashraf Ghani a run for his money.
The corruption in the army, police and the government is another big problem. The appointments for the office of Army Chief and Chief of Afghan Police are not done on merit while the experiment of National Unity Government is crumbling at its feet.
“The police chief for example has been appointed by one powerful figure, the governor by another figure and the army chief by someone else,” said Shekiba Hashemi, a member of parliament from Kandahar who sits on the parliamentary security committee. “There is no proper coordination and management or hierarchy in the ranks. You don’t know who is in charge and when things go wrong, they start blaming each other.”
The fact that Afghan Army has ghost troops reveals the height of corruption in the military. “In one battalion, the official strength is 400 but the actual number is around 150,” said Ataullah Afghan, a member of provincial council in Helmand. “There is intelligence failure, lack of coordination, huge corruption in terms of selling fuel, ghost troops and much else,” he said.
Moreover, both the Army and Police are underequipped, which is followed closely by mismanagement. “Coordination among forces here have improved but intel gathering still remains a challenge,” said Mohammad Rasoul Zazai, a spokesman for the 215 Corps based in Helmand.
He said that the British Forces, when they had taken Singin, had 60 spy balloons in the district to keep an eye on the enemy and now Afghan forces only have one for the whole province.
Be the first to comment on "Singin retaken by Afghan forces, siege still continues"