Taliban continue to pose threat in Kunduz

Afghanistan Diary

Despite cases of drowning, Afghans continue to head for Europe;
electricity breakdown in Baghlan

PESHAWAR: Afghan officials in Kunduz have admitted that Taliban are in control of about 300 schools out of 497 in the province.

They said these schools were located in areas under Taliban influence and the teaching, teachers’ duties, employment and transfers and other issues were decided there by Taliban commanders.

Acting Kunduz Governor, Hamdullah Danishi even said Taliban were actively operating just one kilometer outside Kunduz city, which was briefly captured by the Taliban in September last year. He and other officials in Kunduz have been requesting the government to undertake search and strike operations in Kunduz province to defeat the Taliban to reduce the threat to Kunduz city and some of the district headquarters.

Senior Afghan military commanders have paid visits to Kunduz and held meetings to assess the security situation and to promise that a major operation would be started to push the Taliban fighters and reduce their threat to the important towns.

Ministers says 800 migrating Afghans drownedMeanwhile, Afghanistan’s minister for refugees’ repatriation Islamuddin Jurat has claimed that 800 Afghan nationals had drowned to death in the sea while trying to illegally reach Europe.

He told the media in Kabul that about a million people, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq had already reached Europe, but 4,000 drowned in the sea and among them were 800 Afghans. The minister pointed out that most of the Afghans leaving Afghanistan were youth and were abandoning their homeland due to poverty and joblessness. He felt the ‘improper propaganda’ about the lifestyle in Europe was also a reason that young men were being lured to reach the European countries. 

Saying the Afghan government was taking steps to discourage Afghans from leaving the country and risking their lives on the way to Europe, the minister said an MoU had been signed with Austria, Germany and Greece under which these three countries would not expel those Afghans who have obtained nationality of a European country and also families without caretaker and those with women as caretakers, underage children and the disabled.

The minister said the Afghan government was facing a challenge to rehabilitate the one million internally displaced Afghans and the six million Afghan refugees who have returned home from other countries. He said six million Afghans want to migrate to some other country due to a host of factors.

Insecurity and electricity breakdown

Meanwhile, the government faced a challenge to provide security to the national electricity supply company to repair the power lines in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan that were destroyed by the Taliban fighters. The security forces couldn’t start an operation for days to clear the militants from the Pule Khumri and Dand-i-Ghori areas in Baghlam.

The national power utility company, Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat, had cited insecurity, fog and inclement weather as the reasons for the delay in undertaking repair work on the destroyed power lines. The Taliban have adopted this tactic of destroying power lines and cutting off electricity supply apparently to make the government appear helpless.

The government’s troubles were compounded by the daily loss of soldiers, cops and pro-government elders in Taliban attacks all over the country.  Among others, the Afghan Army’s General Ata Mir was killed in a recent Taliban attack in Helmand province, the secretary to the governor of Kunduz province was gunned down, and the police and district chiefs of Sarkano district in Kunar province were blown to pieces in a bomb explosion. The spike in violence is also casting doubts on the proposed peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban under the auspices of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group that includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US.