Afghanistan rushed military reinforcements to Helmand Wednesday after the Taliban captured large swathes of a strategic opium-producing district, prompting the first British troop deployment to the troubled province in 14 months.
The Islamists broke through the frontlines of Sangin district on Sunday after days of pitched clashes with besieged Afghan forces, tightening their grip on the southern province.
Fleeing residents reported Taliban executions of captured soldiers as the insurgents advanced on the district centre, compounding fears that the entire province was on the brink of a security collapse.
Government reinforcements were rushed to relieve dozens of police and army units holed up in the district centre, deputy Helmand governor Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar told AFP on Wednesday.
“I am confident that we will not lose Sangin,” said Rasoolyar, just days after he warned that the entire province was at grave risk of falling to the Taliban.
Abdul Wahab, a local police commander in Sangin, reported dire conditions inside the main military base surrounded for days by the Taliban.
“Our men are hungry and thirsty,” Wahab said.
“Stepping out to get bread means inviting death,” he said, adding that dozens of his comrades had been killed and wounded.
The war in Helmand, seen as the epicentre of the expanding insurgency, underscores worsening security in Afghanistan a year after NATO formally ended its combat operations.
All but two of Helmand’s 14 districts are effectively controlled or heavily contested by Taliban insurgents.
The group also recently overran Babaji, a suburb of Lashkar Gah, sparking concerns that the provincial capital could fall.
Britain on Tuesday said a small contingent of its troops had arrived in Camp Shorabak, the largest British base in Afghanistan before it was handed over to Afghan forces last year.
The deployment, in addition to a recent arrival of US special forces in the region, is the first since British troops ended their combat mission in Helmand in October 2014.
The contingent, which an Afghan official said includes around 90 people, is on an “advisory” mission with London insisting they will not engage in combat.
– Expanding war –
The Taliban slammed the British deployment after last year’s pullout as “a sign of stupidity” and threatened to target the “newly arrived invaders”.
The intervention has fuelled the perception that foreign forces are increasingly being drawn back into the conflict as NATO-trained Afghan forces struggle to rein in the insurgency.
The unrest in Helmand, blighted by a huge opium harvest that helps fund the insurgency, comes after the Taliban briefly captured Kunduz city in September — their biggest victory in 14 years of war.
“As we’ve seen in Kunduz, the Afghan forces are incapable of tackling the insurgency on their own,” said Omar Hamid, an analyst at the security consulting firm IHS.
“And Sangin only reinforces that image.”
President Barack Obama in October announced that thousands of US troops would remain in Afghanistan past 2016, backpedalling on previous plans to reduce the force and acknowledging that Afghan forces are not ready to stand alone.
The latest unrest in Helmand comes after President Ashraf Ghani made a diplomatic outreach to Pakistan — the Taliban’s historic backers — aimed at restarting peace talks with the insurgents.
Pakistan hosted a first round of negotiations in July but the talks stalled when the Taliban belatedly confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar.
A security official in Islamabad told AFP Tuesday that Pakistan army chief Raheel Sharif would travel to Kabul in the coming days, in what appears to be a renewed push to jumpstart talks.
Afghanistan’s spy agency chief resigned this month after a scathing Facebook post that vented frustration over Ghani’s diplomatic outreach to Pakistan.
Rahmatullah Nabil’s resignation raised uncomfortable questions about a brewing leadership crisis in Afghanistan as the insurgency gains new momentum.