Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

The northern Afghan city of Kunduz is under assault again, a year after it was briefly captured by the Taliban. Tens of thousands of civilians have been forced to flee as the Afghan military and Taliban militants fight it out on the streets.

In late September 2015, when the Afghan military retook the city, the Taliban did not flee very far away, making the current battle to a large extent predictable.

What happened in the year between the Taliban attacks on Kunduz? Did the Afghan government take any measures to prevent a repeat of the September 2015 fiasco? And how is it that the Taliban could attack the same city?

RFE/RL gathered a majlis, a panel, to look into those questions.

Moderating the discussion was RFE/RL Media Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir. From Afghanistan, Kamal Safi, a parliamentarian representing Kunduz Province, joined the talk. Also from Afghanistan, the former governor of Kunduz Province, Omar Safi (no relation), took part. From Washington D.C., Barmak Pazhwak, the senior Afghanistan program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace, participated. And as usual, I was in Prague and had a bit to say also.

The Taliban's brief capture of Kunduz city in September 2015 was a shock to most. The Taliban had been active in the northeastern provinces of Badakhshan, Kunduz, and Takhar but had never seized a provincial capital since it had been driven from power in Afghanistan by the U.S.-led invasion 14 years previously.

The militants were driven out of Kunduz in just a few days, but villagers near Kunduz, and members of the government in Kabul, said many times that the Taliban had only retreated to areas outside the city -- in some cases only a few kilometers away.

Kamal Safi described the current situation, as of October 5. "Apart from a few buildings like the governor's house, the police chief's office, and [a few others], the rest of the city is still [under] the Taliban and they are resisting the offensive of the security forces," he said.

The parliamentarian said civilians were faced with "no electricity, no water. There is no food, all the food shops are closed ... and if any bread is available in some parts of the city, the cost is four or five times higher [than usual]."

Former Kunduz Governor Omar Safi said the problem now was the same as last year. "There is no coordination and there is no interest from the government security forces' side to fight against the enemy." He pointed out that when this latest battle started there were "only one or two dead of the government forces," a sign, Safi said, that government troops had retreated almost as soon as the attack started. (Editors' note: Government forces have since launched a counter-offensive.)

Corruption Hampering Government Efforts

The former governor said that when the Taliban staged the September 2015 attack on Kunduz "we had only one regiment in Kunduz." The Afghan government did reinforce troops in Kunduz. "There are three battalions," Safi said, "So there are around almost 18,000 troops in Kunduz Province."

Pazhwak said: "The Afghan government hasn't been able to establish a control and command structure for this war in Kunduz that is unified and well-coordinated among the different security forces of the country."

But as has happened in so many other places in Afghanistan, corruption is playing a large part in the failures of government forces. [Omar] Safi said, "President [Ashraf] Ghani approved 550 million Afghani to Kunduz city, just to make a security belt for Kunduz." But unfortunately, "this money was all lost, misused" and he added none of the planned 17 security bases that were to have surrounded Kunduz city were ever built.

There are other reasons why government forces were struggling to pacify Kunduz Province. Pazhwak noted: "Kunduz, unfortunately, is practically a divided province. It is divided among a few power brokers, warlords, and a patronage system that could be traced all the way to Kabul."

Parliamentarian Safi added: "Kunduz is known as a small Afghanistan in the sense that all tribes who live in Afghanistan live in Kunduz as well, from all the small tribes [and] big tribes."

'Russian Buffer Zone'

But former Kunduz Governor Safi offered another interesting reason the Taliban were so difficult to suppress in Kunduz Province. "Most important is their [Taliban] recent ties with the Russians to keep this as a buffer zone for Russia to prevent [Islamic State] infiltration to a former Russian state like Tajikistan."

Tajikistan's Asia-Plus independent news agency reported on December 29, 2015, that Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov confirmed that Taliban representatives from northern Afghanistan met with Russian officials at an air base Russia's military used in Tajikistan. The Asia-Plus report named one of the Taliban officials as being "Qori Dinmuhammad Hanif, a commander of the Taliban from northern Afghanistan," and the report said Russian officials had met not once, but several times with Taliban officials at the base in Tajikistan, seemingly without the Tajik government's knowledge.

The report continued that government forces were unable to dislodge Hanif's forces from a district in Badakhshan Province, east of Kunduz Province, because "it [the district] is guarded with Russian weapons."

Former Governor Safi said local militiamen, called Arbaky, often simply paramilitary groups loyal to local warlords, had "seen some huge ammunition ships coming from the Tajik side to the Taliban side to distribute."

Outside of Ambassador Kabulov's comments, Russian officials have not spoken publicly about meetings or contacts with Taliban representatives.

Parliamentarian Safi would say only that "Kunduz has a long border with Central Asia and ... regional interests have changed." He added: "We also cannot deny that some of the local commanders, apart from the Taliban, have [made] frequent visits [to] the Central Asian states."

Our guests discussed these topics in greater detail, especially providing information about the complicated situation in Kunduz that seems to indicate there is no possibility for any resolution, anytime soon.

An audio recording of the Majlis can be heard here:

Embed share

Majlis Podcast: What Is Happening In Kunduz, And Why Again?

by RFE/RL

Embed share

The code has been copied to your clipboard.

The URL has been copied to your clipboard

---

No media source currently available

0:00 0:38:56 0:00

Direct link

• 64 kbps | MP3

Pop-out player

Listen to or download the Majlis podcast above or subscribe to Majlis on iTunes.

The views expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL.

Qishloq Ovozi just looked at the situation in Turkmenistan, where wage arrears and shortages of basic food are becoming the norm for many.

In a superficial way -- and Turkmenistan’s government is nothing if not superficial -- it appears the problem with delayed salaries has eased in some areas of the country.

Some workers in the northern Dashoguz Province were finally paid their overdue salaries -- except the money was reportedly put directly into their bank accounts, accessible only through use of plastic banking cards. Not many stores in Dashoguz Province are set up to take bank cards in exchange for merchandise. There are ATMs, a few, for 1.2 million people; they run out of cash quickly and are not restocked regularly.

Many of these workers in Dashoguz, and others like them around the country who are finally starting to receive at least some of their back pay, might have a problem accessing their money. But the state has had no problem at all.

In yet another sign of Turkmenistan’s economic plunge, the state is said to be removing money from the paychecks of at least some employees of state institutions. RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, heard from workers at state institutions that up to half of their salaries are being withheld as “contributions” to fund construction of facilities for the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games that Ashgabat is hosting next year.

Several teachers who have been subjected to this deduction told Azatlyk they were made to sign a form stating that they were “voluntarily” donating the money.

The games (which I’ll confess I had never heard of before Turkmenistan was named host country for 2017) are one of the Turkmen government’s many prestige projects. The government likes showing off to the world, even when Turkmen authorities don’t really want foreign visitors.

Billions of dollars have been spent on the nearly empty Awaza resort area on Turkmenistan’s Caspian coast, billions more on the white-marble capital, Ashgabat, where residents seem to be discouraged from roaming the broad avenues, themselves nearly devoid of automobiles. Once again, the new Ashgabat airport -- $2.3 billion, practically empty.

The cost of building the “Olympic Village” for next year’s games is estimated at $5 billion.

All these projects were started when the price of natural gas was hitting record highs on world markets. Turkmenistan’s government likes to boast the country has the world’s fourth-largest gas reserves. Just how meaningless that is in a region where all Turkmenistan’s neighbors also have gas is becoming apparent.

Turkmenistan’s big hope is for long pipelines, like the three, soon to be four, pipelines running from Turkmenistan to China -- which is also Turkmenistan’s biggest creditor and only paying customer. (Exports to Iran are repaid in barter; on October 3, Iran’s Oil Ministry said Turkmen gas imports were “not a necessity.")

It is unlikely there will be any more multinational pipelines connecting Turkmenistan to major markets of the world anytime soon, so it is equally unlikely Turkmenistan’s economic fortunes will take a turn for the better anytime soon.

That means in September 2017, when martial arts champions from around Asia come to Ashgabat for the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, Turkmenistan can honestly say nearly everyone in the country pitched in to prepare for the big event.

Azatlyk’s Farruh Yusupov and Toymyrat Bugaev contributed to this report; The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect he views of RFE/RL.