Following the fall of Kunduz the Taliban have turned their attention to another strategic capital, Ghazni, and cut-off the main Kabul-Kandahar highway.
Despite the government claims of fending off the Taliban advance on Ghazni and reopening of the main highway, however the locals dispute this claim and state that the highway remains closed and the residents of city are in s state of deep worry.
The talk about fall of provincial capitals after repeated takeover of districts is swirling as the storm of internal disputes and mistrust has the coalition government head over heels.
Both syndicates of the government view each other with extreme suspicion and distrust and continually heap blame on one another.
The Taliban have taken this opportunity of internal strife between the two partners by escalating attacks throughout the country and are daily wresting control of districts or important strategic areas from the government forces.
Instead of formulating plans and putting into motion preventative measures against these threats, they are exerting efforts on ineffective countermeasures which are only multiplying administrative problems.
In this nightmarish environment the promotion of officials outside of government formations or setting up of powerless investigative commissions are steps which can in no way save the government from the security threats it is facing nor can it patch up the wounds of the war-torn Afghan population.
Experts of Afghan political environment are of the belief that the coalition government has lost all capacity of governing over Afghanistan because a government which is deteriorating from the inside due to internal strife while being under extreme military pressure from outside by opposition forces will naturally lose its chances of survival.
But since this absolutely powerless government drowning in the abyss of corruption was instated with the direct interference of John Kerry therefore the Americans will continue resuscitating it in hopes of accomplishing their interests in Afghanistan.
That is due to the fact that the slight possibility remaining for America to achieve her objectives in Afghanistan can only and only be realized through the existence of such a corrupt and out of control government.
End
Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights/WOT and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad. She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.
Carol Anne Grayson (Radical Sister) blog 
It’s like we’re back in 1989…
The majority of foreign forces have left. I know Bamo announced that he’s gonna keep 9000 troops, but when 190,000 troops failed, 9000 aren’t really gonna be able to do much.
The Soviet-installed government also lasted a couple of years, but wasn’t really viable beyond that. The Afghan Army troops frequently desert to the other side, and the government’s control only extends to urban centers and even that’s tenuous(as recently shown in Kunduz).
I just hope that Afghanistan doesn’t go into the sort of terrible in-fighting we saw in the early 90’s, with the six Mujahideen groups(which the US had assisted against the Soviets) all starting to fight each other and brutalizing the society.
There’s also a well-funded International campaign to help ISIS gain a foothold in the “Af-Pak” region. Attempts in Pakistan only went as far as wall-chalkings in Karachi and Peshawar, and even the guys doing that were arrested. In Afghanistan there seems to be more success, with the rag-tag coalation that the Afghan Taliban comprise of being susceptible to switching sides and the lure of power.
I once heard someone say of the Afghan nation, that they can “make a brave stand in-front of enemy tanks, but not in front of enemy dollars”. And ISIS is nothing if not extremely well-funded. My recurring suspicion is that ISIS is another CIA-funded terror group. It took the US a couple of decades to admit to creating and funding Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden(in the 1980s, to fight the Soviets in Afg) – I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out in a decade that the CIA was funding ISIS as well.
Already we have senior people from the US military, like retd. General Wesley Clarke(who was the “Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe” at the end of the cold-war, say on record that ISIS was “created by America’s closest allies”, to destabilize Israel’s neighbors. So far that’s exactly what ISIS has done.
Long story short, the Afghans seem to be in for interesting times, and I hope and pray things turn for the better.
Thanks for your detailed response. Regarding IS (Wilyat Khorasan) were evident on Twitter yesterday reminding me of their presence in Karachi and recent alleged attack on members of Ahmadi community. I wrote on their emergence over a year ago but at the time people were in denial. I wrote about their audio discussing Safoora attack and attack on Sabeen Mehmood. I note that persons accused of Safoora incident are to be tried within a prison setting which I have not heard of before so great is the fear of attack in Pakistan. There were also recent attacks on military but this doesn’t seem to be reported much. Regarding Taliban yes they have suffered splits and disputes but seem to be coming back stronger now in Afghanistan many of their gains are not reported except by specialist media like Long War Journal that cover insurgency. Also there is a great deal of propaganda going on at present in Afghanistan, war on another front with accusations, denials, counter accusations especially around Kunduz…this was happening before the bombing of MSF hospital which is highly suspicious… “dirty wars” indeed!
I’m not sure if this is right, but I feel that ISIS’ attempts to gain a solid foothold in Pakistan are less likely than in Afghanistan. In Afg, it’s a three-way fight between the Afghan govt(with US backing), the Taliban, and now ISIS(which is probably much weaker than Taliban and the Afg govt, but still capable of snowballing into a bigger problem).
I don’t quite *understand* ISIS, or it’s appeal. In the 80’s when many people from the Muslim world travelled to Afghanistan, the appeal seemed to be this grand fight against an undefeated Red Army trampling on a weak Muslim nation. The odds were slim, the Soviets extremely brutal, classic David vs. Golliath stuff. But the six Afghan groups that participated, were not considered terrorists, they were even invited to the White House where Reagan appreciated their struggle to free their homeland from “foreign invaders” and compared them to America’s founding fathers. The Afghan Mujahideen(they weren’t called Taliban then), had people of all races, sects, even had many Irish converts(which Zaid Zaman Hamid who participated in that war for six years wrote about, in Indus to Oxus), and seemed to not be an intolerant bunch.
In contrast, with ISIS we have sectarian killings, “sex slaves”, brutal slaughter of innocent people(especially ones from other sects, i.e. Yazidis), and things that Afghan Mujahideen and pretty-much every other Islamic resistance group considered un-Islamic.
What do you think about the origins of ISIS, why is it that when the US fought Saddam Hussein in 2003 they had 700+ sorties per-day, but against ISIS they didn’t even have 7 – though it’s disheartening to see foreign armies line up to bombard Syria and blow up it’s neighborhoods and streets, Russia really does seem to be throwing everything they’ve got at ISIS, and atleast to my mind, exposed the hypocracy of American claims that they were actually fighting ISIS. What’s up with that…
Yes I remember Reagan dedicating Space Shuttle to Taliban who seem to have faired rather better than Colombia. IS and Taliban have different approaches and the video where IS blew off heads of those they saw as traitors was a wake -up call to many Afghans as to their presence especially concentrating on Nangahar a key border area where they have made attacks on army posts though there has been limited reporting from media. Origins of IS, well they appear to have grown of brutal prison regimes, Iraq, Syria where torture was commonplace other than that I would not care to speculate.