Map of Afghanistan with Badakhshan highlighted. Wikipedia
FOX News: One small battle could lead to massive strategic loss in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan – About an hour after the sun rose on Friday, some 200 Afghan soldiers – two companies belonging to the 5th Battalion, 7th Brigade of the Afghan Border Police – holding court in Zibak District of Badakhshan Province in the far northeastern corner of Afghanistan were barraged from all four sides by an estimated 1,500 terrorists.
"They suddenly just surrounded us," commanding officer Colonel Mohammad Nader told Fox News on Tuesday, adding that his 5th Battalion generally operates out of Kunduz, but a few months ago deployed to Badakhshan to offer support as insurgency there swelled.
Such surprise assaults are hardly unusual, but this one seemingly small battle in a long war could prove to be a major strategic loss for U.S-backed Afghanistan.
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WNU Editor: I do not know if these two companies of Afghan soldiers were facing a combined force of 1500 .... in a sparsely populated part of the country you would think that 1500 anti-government fighters would stick out. But in the end these Afghan soldiers had to flee, and in turn they left the enemy with a lot of ammo/equipment and a loss of a strategic part of Afghanistan. But what I find very ominous in this report is the admission that this part of Afghanistan was peaceful for years .... but now it is embroiled in an all-out insurgency. Bottom line .... the government is losing control, and the trend lines for the Afghan government surviving this war do not look promising if they continue to lose battles like this.
1 comment:
The Afghan military personnel we worked with were notorious for over-estimating enemy numbers. Generally it would be at least an order of magnitude, but there were times, and I know because we ended up following through on the sightings etc, where they would claim to have been attacked by as many as 1000 enemy fighters. We would laugh, they would insist; we'd check it out, there would be maybe 5 guys routing 40 ANA.
I read the article, and every word of it might be true, but from the experience of many NATO states the Afghan forces had/have problems with running away, leaving stuff behind, and then claiming the enemy force was so massive that they 'can't possibly' be blamed for retreating.
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