Unheeded Warnings (2): Ghazni city as vulnerable to Taleban as before Author : Fazal Muzhary Published: 30 December 2018 Downloaded: 22 December 2018 Download URL: https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/wp-admin/post.php The Taleban may have been pushed back out of Ghazni city after their five-day siege in August, but they have continued to expand into new territory around the city. They now have full control of eight districts in Ghazni province. They control the Ghazni-Paktika highway and continue to put pressure on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. In this, the second of a two-part series, AAN’s Fazal Muzhary, who visited Ghazni before the August attack and several times since (and with input from Ali Yawar Adili), finds the city still vulnerable to another Taleban attack. An upsurge in night raids and airstrikes has limited Taleban movement, but also caused civilian casualties and impelled some people to leave their villages. As yet, these have had no impact on the Taleban’s control of territory in this strategic province. The first part in this mini-series, "Unheeded Warnings (1): Looking back at the Taleban attack on Ghazni" can be read here. Increasing Taleban control of the districts Levels of anxiety among the inhabitants of Ghazni city that the Taleban will attack again has not diminished in the four months since the insurgents’ onslaught in August. People from various neighbourhoods, such as Bazazi, the Kandahar bus stand, Gudali, Pashtunabad, Qala-ye Jawz, Rauza and the Ali Lala Saheb all described to AAN how they had lost confidence in their 1 / 10 government’s ability to protect them. They have seen that the government has redeployed Afghan National Police (ANP) to only some of the security posts on the outskirts of the city that were taken over or destroyed by the Taleban in August 2018. Meanwhile, they have also watched with dread as the Taleban have expanded their control over several more districts in the province, including ones close to the city. Residents’ views are shared by elected representatives and officials from the province. MP Abdul Qayum Sajjadi, for example, warned of a possible second fall of Ghazni in a statement that he shared on Facebook on 15 October 2018. He urged President Ashraf Ghani to order an anti-Taleban clearing operation in the province (see his remarks here in Dari). Speaking at the ceremony to introduce a new provincial police chief on 23 October, governor Wahidullah Kalimzai raised his concerns that the war “was still intensifying, the security forces stepping back and the Taleban are tightening their siege of Ghazni city” (more about this below). According to provincial council member Abdul Bari Shelgarai (quoted here), in September the Taleban had full control of six of Ghazni’s 19 districts – Deh Yak, Khwaja Omari, Ajristan, Jaghatu, Jaghatu and Khogyani– as well as the central district, with the exception of Ghazni city itself (see Ghazni’s profile here here), The governor’s spokesman, Aref Nuri (quoted in the same news report), played down the situation and claimed the Taleban controlled only three districts, namely Khwaja Omari, Ajristan and Nawa. However, Nuri admitted to AAN that the government considered districts to be under government control if government security forces were present somewhere in the district, even if their presence was limited to only a few security posts. He insisted the government had the ability to retake these three districts, but there were “not enough forces” to protect territory once they were recaptured. On 20 September, the Taleban claimed they had captured another district in the province, Abband, on the main Kabul-Kandahar highway about 76 kilometres south of Ghazni city. Shelgarai told AAN the district had not fallen to the Taleban and that the police were able to hold the attackers back. He added, however, that the Taleban remained in control of most areas of the district. By early November, the number of districts definitely in Taleban hands, ie with the insurgents controlling the district centre and no government officials present, had increased further – to eight. The Taleban took complete control of Andar (apart from two military bases) on 15 October and Khugyani on 5 November (see this Pajhwok report, and other reports here and here). On the day Andar fell, the Afghan National Police (ANP) unit stationed in the district compound abandoned their position and moved to a nearby military base in the Chahrdiwal area. The ANA also has control over another military base in Senai village of the district. The ANA are currently holding a purely defensive position in both. Even so, in a phone interview with AAN, Nuri insisted the government still controlled Andar, even though, as the author has witnessed, 2 / 10 Taleban fighters are now in the district compound, which had been controlled by government forces in late October 2018. (More detail on the situation in Andar can be found below.) Elsewhere in Ghazni province, the insurgents attacked the district centres of Jaghori and Malestan in late October 2018 and came close to capturing both on 7 and 10 November. The attacks set off mass displacement and fears that the Taleban might even push further north into the Hazara-inhabited districts of Maidan-Wardak province (more detail in these AAN analyses, here and here). The Taleban have since been repelled from both districts, but they continue to control major transport routes through Qarabagh, Nawur and Gilan districts. Although most schools in the two districts, which had closed following the Taleban attack, have now reopened for this year’s final exams, some remain closed, especially in areas of Jaghori bordering Gilan and Muqur in Ghazni and Khak-e Afghan in Zabul provinces. IDPs have been reluctant to return to these places after the Taleban blocked roads leading to the two border districts on 9 December (here). On 18 November, the Ministry of Interior announced it [sic] would establish two territorial army companies (tolai) and mobilise 600 locals within the framework of public uprising forces in the Jaghori and Malestan, to maintain security in their areas. The Territorial Army is a new local defence force under the command of the Ministry of Defence, while uprising forces are supposedly spontaneous rebellions organised by locals against the insurgency, generally funded and often organised by the National Directorate of Security (NDS). Neither fall under the Ministry of Interior’s remit. Local sources, including a district security official who asked not to be named, told AAN that the Taleban had ordered local people in Jaghori to ask the new government security forces dispatched to the area after the attack to leave the district. They had also ordered the people not to allow the formation of uprising forces or territorial army units in their district. The situation in Ghazni city As for the provincial capital, the Taleban are maintaining a considerable presence in many areas along the outskirts of the city. AAN spoke to several local residents including a driver, Esmatullah, who said he and other locals had seen Taleban in the Qala-ye Mirai area, no more than three kilometres south of Ghazni’s police headquarters. Other residents, such as drivers and labourers living in this area, confirmed the presence of Taleban fighters there. A businessman in the city, Naqeb, told the author the Taleban had free movement in the Gudali area, about three kilometres to the northwest of the police headquarters. When President Ghani made a second trip to Ghazni city on 27 September, the Taleban used those positions, notably in the Jangalbagh area, a little further out, about five kilometres to the northwest of the city, to fire rockets into Ghazni to disrupt his visit. On 21 November, the author witnessed the Taleban rocketing the city again, when General Scott Miller, commander of NATO and United States forces, visited (media report here). One of the rockets hit a private health clinic about 300 metres from the author’s own residence, in the centre of the city. Luckily, there were no casualties. 3 / 10 The Taleban’s ban on telephone companies operating between seven and ten o’ clock in the morning, already in place between 4 and 20 September, further stoked public concerns. Although the Taleban have not actually lifted this ban, phone companies currently only operate intermittently. Government officials mostly communicate with the help of the state-run Salaam network. Other networks only cover the city and limited areas along its outskirts; sometimes conversations are cut off. More detail on Andar district, now under full Taleban control Andar is one of the districts on the fringes of Ghazni city’s suburbs. Its centre, Mirai, is merely a 30-minute drive away. For Andar’s population, the district’s takeover by the Taleban on 15 October actually normalised public services. Full control by one side has proved a better situation for civilians than their district being contested. A week after Afghan security forces abandoned the district centre, the town reopened. Shops that had previously had to shut because of the fighting, as the Taleban tightened their grip on the district compound, the ANP forces’ last bastion, in May 2018 (see AAN’s previous dispatch here),are again open; it is ‘business as normal’. The Taleban gave permission for the Sultan Shahabuddin High School to move back into its old building in the district centre on 25 October; it had to leave its premises there in 2006 when Taleban attacks intensified that year. Education officials had relocated the school to Narmi, a Taleban-controlled village where it continued to operate in a primary school building. The school was managed by the Taleban, but funded by the government.