Afghan forces abandoned a remote district in the west of the country, leaving the area to Taliban insurgents. The government had failed to re-supply dozens of troops stationed there, provincial officials said on Wednesday. The Shebkoh district of Farah province, bordering Iran, has been under Taliban siege for months. Mosa Nazari, deputy governor of Farah, said Afghanistan’s military leadership faced difficulty reinforcing the troops and it had been decided to withdraw in order to avoid casualties. “The plan to leave the district was there for months and it was finally decided,” Nazari told Reuters. The forces withdrew all ammunition and vehicles to the provincial capital of Farah, he said. The Taliban said in a statement the government abandoned the district after a heavy firefight overnight, and the group seized an amount of ammunition. </s> HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan forces abandoned a remote district in the west of the country, leaving the area to Taliban insurgents after the government failed to resupply dozens of troops stationed there, provincial officials said on Wednesday.

Local officials said the Shebkoh district of Farah province, bordering Iran, has been under Taliban siege for months, making it difficult for the government to send reinforcements.

Mosa Nazari, deputy governor of Farah, said Afghanistan’s military leadership faced difficulty supplying and reinforcing the troops in Shebkoh district and it had been decided to withdraw in order to avoid casualties.

“The plan to leave the district was there for months and it was finally decided,” Nazari told Reuters, adding that the forces withdrew all ammunition and vehicles to the provincial capital of Farah.

U.S. military advisers have regularly pressed Afghan commanders to concentrate their forces and avoid exposed outposts that are difficult to defend and supply.

The Taliban, fighting to drive out foreign forces and re-impose its version of strict Islamic Law, said in a statement the Afghan government abandoned the district after a heavy firefight overnight, and the group seized an amount of ammunition.

A sparsely populated province, Farah has been the scene of intense fighting since the beginning of the year. Afghan forces have suffered heavy losses, including the killings of dozens of well-armed elite special forces there.

Shebkoh is a route for narcotics being smuggled from Helmand, the main source of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, to Farah and Iran.

Afghan officials have accused Tehran, which the United States says is trying to extend its influence in western Afghanistan, of providing the insurgents with money, modern weapons and explosives. Iran denies the accusation.

Areas of western Afghanistan have seen heavy fighting in recent days. Last week, at least 14 Afghan soldiers were killed and 20 captured when Taliban fighters attacked an outpost in Shindand district in Herat, the province neighboring Farah.

Afghan and foreign forces have recently increased air strikes, targeting and killing senior Taliban commanders, including the powerful shadowy governor of Helmand province last week.

U.S. diplomatic efforts to begin peace talks with the Taliban have picked up with appointment by Washington of Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Kabul, as a special peace envoy. </s> KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghan forces have retaken a key southern district from the Taliban while in a western province, insurgents on Monday snatched three officers from their car, including a woman, and killed them, officials said.

The country's security forces drove the Taliban out of Naway district in southern Helmand province from where they had been threatening the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, said Defense Ministry spokesman, Daulat Waziri.

The battle to recapture the district had been fierce, with more than 50 Taliban fighters killed and five security forces wounded, he said. Naway is located just 16 kilometers (10 miles) from Lashkar Gah, and had been a staging arena for militant attacks on the city.

Government troops also captured a large cache of ammunitions and guns. The Taliban did not immediately comment on reports of the district's fall. U.S. and NATO troops are in Helmand to assist Afghan security forces when needed.

Separately, in western Herat province on the border with Iran, three border police officers were snatched from their vehicle and killed by the Taliban, said Jelani Farhad, the provincial governor's spokesman. A female officer was among the dead.

The officers were driving to their office in the district of Kushk in Herat province when they were ambushed by Taliban, dragged from their vehicle and shot, said Farhad. </s> KABUL, March 23 (Reuters) - Taliban fighters have captured the strategic district of Sangin in the southern Afghan province of Helmand after security forces pulled out, leaving the district centre to the insurgents, officials said on Thursday.

Helmand, which accounts for the bulk of Afghanistan's billion dollar opium crop, is already largely in the hands of the Taliban but the capture of Sangin, where U.S. and British forces once suffered heavy casualties, underlines their growing strength in the south.

With warmer spring weather beginning, increased fighting is expected across Afghanistan and security officials warn that 2017 may be even tougher than last year, when both Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand, and the northern city of Kunduz came close to falling.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said Taliban fighters had captured police headquarters and a military base overnight, as well as quantities of military equipment after they were abandoned by retreating government forces.

He said the area had been bombarded by foreign forces following the withdrawal of Afghan troops and police, causing heavy damage to buildings and infrastructure.

Omar Zwak, the provincial governor's spokesman, said security forces had conducted a tactical withdrawal some 3 km from the district centre to avoid civilian casualties.

Abdul Majid Akhondzada, deputy provincial council chief of Helmand, confirmed that after the retreat, air strikes hit the district to destroy military equipment left behind.

With U.S. President Donald Trump yet to announce a new Afghanistan strategy, the loss of Sangin underlines the scale of the challenge facing the western-backed government and its international partners, which left Afghan forces fighting largely alone after withdrawing most combat troops in 2014.

The top U.S. commander in the country, Gen. John Nicholson, said last month that Afghanistan was in a "stalemate" and thousands more international troops would be needed to boost the existing NATO-led training and advisory mission.

According to U.S. estimates, government forces control less than 60 percent of Afghanistan, with almost half the country either contested or under the control of the insurgents, who are seeking to reimpose Islamic law after their 2001 ouster.

However, while the Taliban control large areas of the countryside, they have so far failed to capture and hold any provincial capital for more than brief periods.

In Kunduz, which briefly fell to the Taliban in 2015, the insurgents control areas around the city and government rule is precarious. On Thursday, in the latest insider attack, a rogue local policeman killed nine of his colleagues at a security outpost, officials said.

Heavy fighting has also been reported near Tarin Kot, the provincial capital of Uruzgan in south-central Afghanistan, which almost fell to Taliban fighters last year. (Reporting by Mohammad Stanekzai and Hamid Shalizi; Writing by James Mackenzie and Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Nick Macfie and Janet Lawrence) </s> Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) Afghan forces in the strategic town of Sangin in Helmand province have withdrawn from its center, effectively ceding territory to the Taliban and delivering a blow to the Afghan government and its coalition partners.

The NATO-led Resolute Support mission said Wednesday the forces had moved two kilometers south (1.2 miles) of the administrative center in a planned strategic maneuver, while a provincial spokesman said the withdrawal was to prevent civilian casualties.

It is unclear how much of Sangin district is in Taliban hands, with conflicting reports of how much, and why, territory had been ceded.

The Taliban released a statement celebrating control of the whole district while the country's Ministry of Defense denied the government had ceded any territory.

The move comes after months of attacks by the Taliban on the district, which was held by British and then US troops before being returned to Afghan military control after the end of formal combat operations in 2014.

Shamsullah Sahrahi, a resident of the district, said that the problems that Sangin's population face have been present since the exit of US troops.

"Most of the (district's) residents are living in poverty," he told CNN. "People cannot feed their families properly, the price of commodities has increased and the number of causalities from the recent fights are too high. People have lost their homes.

"The central government does not operate properly in our district, they do not have a proper strategy to recapture the areas which have fallen to the Taliban."

He said that the number of Taliban based in Sangin was not too high, but they relied on support from militants from other districts.

The town is in the heartland of Taliban territory and a key opium poppy-producing region, and a major route for the Taliban opium trade. As spring begins, poppy production in the province is once again rising.

It was defended by coalition troops at great human cost -- during coalition military control of the country scores were killed holding it, including around 100 British soldiers prior to the US assuming control of its defense. Hundreds of Afghan soldiers have died in recent fighting there.

CNN security analyst Rick Francona says the retreat -- or redeployment -- from the key town is an indication that the war in Afghanistan is getting worse.

"The Afghan army is in terrible shape. Anyone looking at this impartially is saying this is not working," he said. "The Taliban have popular support, the government in Kabul don't. The further away from Kabul you get the worse it becomes."

The Resolute Support statement called the move a strategic maneuver that had been planned for "some time." It added that the existing security forces HQ buildings had been extensively damaged through engagements with the Taliban, prompting the move.

The statement said US forces assisted with the move and helped to destroy buildings and vehicles at the former headquarters.

"The (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) defended the district center for two months and left on their terms," it says. "The only thing they left to the Taliban is rubble and dirt."

A Helmand provincial spokesman, Omar Zwak, told CNN that the move was made to prevent civilian casualties.

He said Friday that Afghan security forces have taken the necessary preparations to recapture the area from the Taliban and that operation would begin Friday.

The Taliban claimed it had assumed control over the entire district.

"After a month of battle, (the Taliban) captured the entire district including Sangin district center, police headquarter and other key outposts," Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousof Ahmadi, said in a statement.

The Afghan Ministry of Defense denied that any territory had been lost, calling the Taliban claims "baseless" and the "propaganda of enemies."

"The district is not facing any security problem our routine operations are going on in the district to eliminate the enemies," a statement said.

The US believes the Taliban have stepped up fighting across Helmand as the poppy harvest season approaches -- the trade in heroin is a major currency earner for the group.

The current estimate by the US is there are 30,000 Taliban in Afghanistan, although not all are active fighters.

A fertile region that is a key location in Afghanistan's poppy trade, Sangin lies in the south of the country in an area that has traditionally been a Taliban heartland.

US Central Command has announced that approximately 300 Marines will deploy to Helmand this spring, returning to the scene of some of the fiercest battles in America's 15-year-long engagement there.

However, Francona thinks the government, with or without US help, will never eradicate the drug trade in the sparsely populated region.

"There's so much money there (from drug producing and smuggling) and it's naive to think that we're going to affect that," he says.

"We're going to have to come to some accommodation (with the opium trade)." </s> Afghan forces in the strategic town of Sangin in Helmand province have withdrawn from its center, effectively ceding territory to the Taliban and delivering a blow to the Afghan government and its coalition partners.

The NATO-led Resolute Support mission said Wednesday the forces had moved two kilometers south (1.2 miles) of the administrative center in a planned strategic maneuver, while a provincial spokesman said the withdrawal was to prevent civilian casualties.

It is unclear how much of Sangin district is in Taliban hands, with conflicting reports of how much, and why, territory had been ceded.

The Taliban released a statement celebrating control of the whole district while the country’s Ministry of Defense denied the government had ceded any territory.

The move comes after months of attacks by the Taliban on the district, which was held by British and then US troops before being returned to Afghan military control after the end of formal combat operations in 2014.

The town is in the heartland of Taliban territory and a key opium poppy-producing region, and a major route for the Taliban opium trade. As spring begins, poppy production in the province is once again rising.

It was defended by coalition troops at great human cost — during coalition military control of the country scores were killed holding it, including around 100 British soldiers prior to the US assuming control of its defense. Hundreds of Afghan soldiers have died in recent fighting there.

CNN security analyst Rick Francona says the retreat — or redeployment — from the key town is an indication that the war in Afghanistan is getting worse.

“The Afghan army is in terrible shape. Anyone looking at this impartially is saying this is not working,” he said. “The Taliban have popular support, the government in Kabul don’t. The further away from Kabul you get the worse it becomes.”

The Resolute Support statement called the move a strategic maneuver that had been planned for “some time.” It added that the existing security forces HQ buildings had been extensively damaged through engagements with the Taliban, prompting the move.

The statement said US forces assisted with the move and helped to destroy buildings and vehicles at the former headquarters.

“The (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) defended the district center for two months and left on their terms,” it says. “The only thing they left to the Taliban is rubble and dirt.”

A Helmand provincial spokesman, Omar Zwak, told CNN that the move was made to prevent civilian casualties.

He said Friday that Afghan security forces have taken the necessary preparations to recapture the area from the Taliban and that operation would begin Friday.

The Taliban claimed it had assumed control over the entire district.

“After a month of battle, (the Taliban) captured the entire district including Sangin district center, police headquarter and other key outposts,” Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousof Ahmadi, said in a statement.

The Afghan Ministry of Defense denied that any territory had been lost, calling the Taliban claims “baseless” and the “propaganda of enemies.”

“The district is not facing any security problem our routine operations are going on in the district to eliminate the enemies,” a statement said.

The US believes the Taliban have stepped up fighting across Helmand as the poppy harvest season approaches — the trade in heroin is a major currency earner for the group.

The current estimate by the US is there are 30,000 Taliban in Afghanistan, although not all are active fighters.

A fertile region that is a key location in Afghanistan’s poppy trade, Sangin lies in the south of the country in an area that has traditionally been a Taliban heartland.

Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, told reporters in December last year that the Taliban “receive much of their funding from the narcotics trafficking that occurs out of Helmand,” adding that “there’s a nexus here between the insurgency and criminal networks that’s occurring in Helmand that makes Helmand such a difficult fight.”

US Central Command has announced that approximately 300 Marines will deploy to Helmand this spring, returning to the scene of some of the fiercest battles in America’s 15-year-long engagement there.

However, Francona thinks the government, with or without US help, will never eradicate the drug trade in the sparsely populated region.

“There’s so much money there (from drug producing and smuggling) and it’s naive to think that we’re going to affect that,” he says.

“We’re going to have to come to some accommodation (with the opium trade).” </s> KABUL, Afghanistan – The Taliban captured a key district center in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province on Thursday while in the country’s north, an officer turned his rifle on sleeping colleagues, killing nine policemen, officials said.

The fall of Sangin district, once considered the deadliest battlefield for British and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, comes amid the insurgents’ year-long push to expand their footprint in the Taliban heartland of Helmand.

The British who took over southern Helmand in 2006 were headquartered at Camp Sebastian, which at its peak was the center for 137 bases in Helmand. Most of Britain’s more than 400 military deaths occurred in Helmand province — in Sangin alone, Britain lost 104 soldiers.

Since the withdrawal of foreign NATO combat troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2014, and with only a smaller, U.S.-led advise and training mission left behind, Sangin has been seen as a major tests of whether Afghan security forces can hold off advancing Taliban fighters.

The district’s police chief, Mohammad Rasoul, said the Taliban overran Sangin center early on Thursday morning.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, also issued a statement claiming the Taliban capture of Sangin.

Speaking to The Associated Press over the phone from several kilometers (miles) away from the district center, Rasoul said the district headquarters had been poorly protected and that at the time of the Taliban siege, only eight policemen and 30 Afghan soldiers were on duty.

Afghan security forces were now amassing nearby for a full-scale counter-attack in a bid to retake Sangin, Rasoul added, though he did not say when the assault would occur and how many forces would be involved.

“We are preparing our reinforcements to recapture the district,” Rasoul said.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the Afghan military would seek the help of international coalition forces in the area.

NATO spokesman William Salvin said in a statement that Afghan troops remained in Sangin district but had relocated several kilometers (miles) outside the district center. He said the relocation was necessitated because of the extensive damage to the district center by the Taliban.

In Kabul, a lawmaker from Sangin, Mohammad Hashim Alokzai, urged the military to move quickly to retake the district, saying its fall could have devastating consequences for Helmand, where the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah has in the past months also come under constant and heavy attack by the Taliban.

“The seizure of Sangin is a major tactical triumph for the Taliban,” Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South Asia at the U.S.-based Wilson Center, said Thursday. The insurgent group “has taken over a major urban space in one of its major stronghold provinces, amplifying the major threat that the group poses to Afghanistan nearly 16 years after it was removed from power.”

Sangin is also one of the biggest opium markets in Afghanistan, which saw over 4,800 metric tons produced countrywide in 2016 — more than all other opium-producing countries combined, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes. Efforts at poppy eradication in Afghanistan have been severely restricted because of the insecurity in the southern and eastern regions of the country, where the bulk of the crop is grown.

Opium, which is used to make heroin, is a major source of income for the insurgents and the Taliban levy taxes on opium that moves through its territory.

“It’s hard to overestimate the significance of Helmand — it’s strategically located near Pakistan, it’s a bastion of the opium trade,” said Kugelman. “Perhaps the biggest reason why the British focused so much on Sangin is that they had invested so much over the years in trying to stabilize the place — and had suffered many combat deaths in the process.”

In northern Kunduz province, police spokesman Mafuz Akbari said the insider attack on Thursday that claimed the lives on nine policemen took place at a security post and that the assailant escaped under the cover of darkness.

Afghanistan has seen a spike in so-called insider attacks. In such incidents, attackers who turn their rifles and kill colleagues usually end up stealing their weapons and fleeing the scene to join insurgents.

Akbari said the assailant had gone over to the Taliban. He also claimed that the attacker and the Taliban gathered the bodies of the dead policemen and set them on fire.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed claimed responsibility for the attack, but denied that a policeman had been involved or that the Taliban had burned the bodies of the policemen.

The conflicting accounts could not be immediately reconciled. The region is remote and not accessible to reporters.

Afghan forces have come under intensified pressure by insurgents in both Helmand and Kunduz. </s> KABUL, Afghanistan — Heavy fighting was ongoing in western Farah province near the Iranian border Tuesday morning after Taliban fighters launched a predawn assault on Farah city, killing and wounding several Afghan troops.

The battle was underway in several areas of the city, Abdul Shakoor, a resident of the Bagh-e-Pul area, told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday morning. The Taliban had captured a police district on the city’s edge, he said.

“We are stuck at our homes, we cannot go out, and everyone is in great fear,” he said. “I can see the Taliban from my house. They are roaming in the intersections.”

Located along one of the country’s most lucrative drug routes, between Helmand province in the south and Iran to the west, the province has been embattled for months. Officials have warned of a deteriorating security situation as insurgents have entered the capital several times.

A resurgent Taliban, largely dependent on narcotics revenues, has expanded its territorial control over parts of Afghanistan since the withdrawal of most international combat forces at the end of 2014. They briefly captured and held the capital of northern Kunduz province in late 2015.

The attack on Farah is the first siege of a provincial capital this year. The insurgents failed to capture a single capital last year — a fact frequently touted by U.S. and NATO officials. In recent months, the U.S. has deployed additional advisers and carried out thousands of airstrikes in a bid to bolster the security situation in a strategy of renewed aggression.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement that “serious measures” had been taken to defend Farah after the militants launched their offensive from the city’s north side.

Security forces were sent to the city and deployed in various areas, the ministry said. At least eight insurgents had been killed and three wounded, it said.

“We assure the people of Farah that all the operations implemented, air force, commandos and all other units stationed in the western part of the country are taking action,” the Defense Ministry said.

The Taliban was asking the city’s residents to stay in their homes and promising they wouldn’t be harmed. Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, has said that their fighters started the attacks on the capital city about 2 a.m. and had captured an intelligence office, a police station and other checkpoints.

He said their targets are only the military facilities.

The Taliban have frequently claimed they try to avoid civilian casualties, but human rights organizations have counted thousands of civilian deaths caused by insurgent violence in recent years — many the result of Taliban attacks in populated urban areas.

The United States’ renewed campaign against the Taliban has so far failed to curb the group’s advance, which has occurred largely in rural areas, and the militants maintain strongholds throughout the south. Despite the pressure of greatly stepped-up U.S. and Afghan airstrikes, the Taliban have shown little interest in the Afghan government’s offer of a comprehensive peace agreement.

In January, NATO’s Resolute Support Mission, tasked with building up the Afghan government’s security forces, assessed that nearly 15 percent of the country’s 407 districts — more than 20 percent of the landmass — was under insurgent control or influence, according to a watchdog report released this month. It was the most since the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction began tracking district control data in late 2015, the report said.

Since the launch of the Taliban’s spring offensive last month, the group has carried out several attacks in the capital, Kabul, and battled security forces in several provinces, taking additional districts in recent weeks. An attack in Farah province late last week reportedly left more than two dozen security forces dead.

Early Tuesday, Ahmad Zaki, a doctor at the city’s central hospital, said that so far two dead police officers and 16 wounded security forces members had been brought to the medical facility since the start of the latest assault. Five wounded civilians were also being treated. </s> Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) Afghan forces in the strategic town of Sangin in Helmand province have withdrawn from its center, effectively ceding territory to the Taliban and delivering a blow to the Afghan government and its coalition partners.

The NATO-led Resolute Support mission said Wednesday the forces had moved two kilometers south (1.2 miles) of the administrative center in a planned strategic maneuver, while a provincial spokesman said the withdrawal was to prevent civilian casualties.

It is unclear how much of Sangin district is in Taliban hands, with conflicting reports of how much, and why, territory had been ceded.

The Taliban released a statement celebrating control of the whole district while the country's Ministry of Defense denied the government had ceded any territory.

The move comes after months of attacks by the Taliban on the district, which was held by British and then US troops before being returned to Afghan military control after the end of formal combat operations in 2014.

The town is in the heartland of Taliban territory and a key opium poppy-producing region, and a major route for the Taliban opium trade. As spring begins, poppy production in the province is once again rising.

It was defended by coalition troops at great human cost -- during coalition military control of the country scores were killed holding it, including around 100 British soldiers prior to the US assuming control of its defense. Hundreds of Afghan soldiers have died in recent fighting there.

CNN security analyst Rick Francona says the retreat -- or redeployment -- from the key town is an indication that the war in Afghanistan is getting worse.

"The Afghan army is in terrible shape. Anyone looking at this impartially is saying this is not working," he said. "The Taliban have popular support, the government in Kabul don't. The further away from Kabul you get the worse it becomes."

The Resolute Support statement called the move a strategic maneuver that had been planned for "some time." It added that the existing security forces HQ buildings had been extensively damaged through engagements with the Taliban, prompting the move.

The statement said US forces assisted with the move and helped to destroy buildings and vehicles at the former headquarters.

"The (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) defended the district center for two months and left on their terms," it says. "The only thing they left to the Taliban is rubble and dirt."

A Helmand provincial spokesman, Omar Zwak, told CNN that the move was made to prevent civilian casualties.

He said Friday that Afghan security forces have taken the necessary preparations to recapture the area from the Taliban and that operation would begin Friday.

The Taliban claimed it had assumed control over the entire district.

"After a month of battle, (the Taliban) captured the entire district including Sangin district center, police headquarter and other key outposts," Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousof Ahmadi, said in a statement.

The Afghan Ministry of Defense denied that any territory had been lost, calling the Taliban claims "baseless" and the "propaganda of enemies."

"The district is not facing any security problem our routine operations are going on in the district to eliminate the enemies," a statement said.

The US believes the Taliban have stepped up fighting across Helmand as the poppy harvest season approaches -- the trade in heroin is a major currency earner for the group.

The current estimate by the US is there are 30,000 Taliban in Afghanistan, although not all are active fighters.

A fertile region that is a key location in Afghanistan's poppy trade, Sangin lies in the south of the country in an area that has traditionally been a Taliban heartland.

US Central Command has announced that approximately 300 Marines will deploy to Helmand this spring, returning to the scene of some of the fiercest battles in America's 15-year-long engagement there.

However, Francona thinks the government, with or without US help, will never eradicate the drug trade in the sparsely populated region.

"There's so much money there (from drug producing and smuggling) and it's naive to think that we're going to affect that," he says.

"We're going to have to come to some accommodation (with the opium trade)."
The Afghan National Army abandons the western Shib Koh District after the government failed to resupply troops stationed there. The district, which borders Iran, is now effectively under Taliban control.