On Monday, the Taliban proved their strength, with the Afghan province Helmand on the brink of falling to the Taliban. One of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, Helmand is the largest province by size and is located in the south of the country. According to reports, the province received little to no help from the central government. A day earlier, the Helmand deputy governor had to use Facebook to plead with the Afghan president to send help – or risk losing the province to the Taliban. Reports indicate that a new ground assault by the Taliban killed over 90 soldiers in the last two days. It was only after major parts of the province fell that Afghan chief executive Abdullah Abdullah promised to take action to combat the Taliban assault. Frankly, it is already too late. The Afghan government may be able to push back and take control of the whole province, but the Taliban’s victory is symbolic as is the desperate plea for support by the Helmand deputy governor. All this does is paint the picture of a weak Afghan government that is neither able to keep the Taliban insurgency under check nor able to issue reassurances to its own leadership in provinces further away from Kabul.
Only two weeks ago, a major attack on the Kandahar airport left over 60 dead. Earlier this year, the city of Kunduz fell to the Taliban during September, in what was its most significant military victory in the last decade and a half of war. The fall of Helmand might be even more significant. The transition from a Nato-led war in Afghanistan to a Afghan-led war is not going smoothly. The Taliban’s promise of peace talks has not been met; and the militia has accelerated attacks under its new leadership. The Helmand assault will pile more pressure on the Afghan government, already under pressure after the country’s spy chief resigned this month over his opposition to President Ashraf Ghani’s diplomatic outreach to Pakistan. This leads to questions over what will become of the bold agreement at the Heart of Asia talks in Islamabad where the resumption of the process of dialogue between the Taliban and the Afghan government was agreed upon. Afghanistan being embroiled in a leadership crisis of its own making, the Taliban sees the opportunity to continue fighting, instead of turning to the negotiating table. Taking back Helmand at the earliest will be the priority for the Afghan government, but surely it must acknowledge that it is acting too late. Blaming foreign entities will not help with problems that are inherently local.