The bloody incident of Balkh and the government’s policy of peace and war
The Taliban carried out a deadly attack on 209th Shaheen Corps last week. Based on the recent investigations of the Afghan Ministry of Defense, in this assault 140 soldiers are dead, and more than 60 are wounded. Shaheen Corps is one of the major army bases in the Northern Afghanistan. 30 thousand US troops were also present in the base while the attack occurred.
The attack happens at a time that the US’s policy towards Afghanistan is not announced yet, but it seems as if the US will, once again, stress on its military role in this country. That is why, before the Balkh incident, the US dropped the “mother of all bombs” in Achin district of Nangarhar province and then the US National Security Advisor General McMaster, on an unexpected trip, visited Afghanistan and later the US Secretary of Defense General Jim Mattis visited Afghanistan in an unannounced voyage to Kabul. During the US Secretary of Defense’s visit to Kabul, the Commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan General John Nicolson said in a press conference that Russia supports the Taliban, particularly by providing weaponry to them.
Why did the attack on Shaheen Corps occur? What were the impacts of this assault? What were the responses to this attack? And how was the Afghan government’s policy of peace and war in the past four years? These are questions that analyzed here.
The assault on 209th Shaheen Corps and some questions that it raised
On 21 April 2017, around one o’clock the Taliban, dressed in military uniforms and riding dusty police vehicles, attacked on Shaheen Corps in Dehdadi district of Balkh province. The attackers had injected serums to some of the Taliban members in the car and had manipulated the security forces that they had come from a war zone of Faryab for treatment.
In the first two security gates only their identity cards were checked, and when in the third gate they were asked to submit their weapons, the fight began. It was the bloodiest fight for the Afghan security forces ever in the past 16 years.
The spokesperson of the Taliban Zabiullah Mujahid, on his Twitter page, claimed responsibility for the attack and published the names and photographs of the attackers. The spokesman of the Taliban called the assault vengeance for the killing of Taliban governors in Kunduz and Baghlan provinces and said that it was the beginning of their spring operations.
But there exist three questions here:
First; why the number of insider attacks has increased since the past several years? If one evaluates the attacks carried out against the Afghan forces only in the past several months, one will find out that in these attacks there existed inside help for the attackers for instance in installing bombs inside the furniture in the guesthouse in Kandahar, the attack on a hospital in Kabul, and the assault on 209th Shaheen Corps in Mazar-e-Sharif. According to the Taliban, four people from inside had coordinated with them in Balkh’s attack.
Second; the attack on Shaheen Corps shows irresponsibility of the security staff and also indicates the poor functionality of the system. For instance, the cars were not checked in the first two security gates, the unidentified vehicles were allowed inside (without transferring the patients to any ambulance of the corps), etc. Furthermore, according to some reports by the media, there were some intelligence reports that the base would come under attack at around noon time. Despite all these intelligence reports why have they failed to prevent this attack?
Third; after the “mother of all bombs” was dropped in Achin District, some former officials of the government had anticipated a bloody assault, and then the attack on Shaheen Corps occurred. But after the Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault, there remains only one question whether was the way paved for the attack by national or foreign forces?
Assault on Shaheen Corps; reactions and impacts
This attack affected the political and security sectors in the country. On the one hand the former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who had a soft stance against the Taliban and would call them “brothers”, decided that he would no longer call them brothers. On the other hand, the heads of corps in the army were replaced, and Minister of Defense and Chief of Army Staff resigned.
In addition, the attack influenced the morale of the Afghan forces and strengthened their incentive to fight against the armed groups, which is something that, in no ways, would help for the long term peace.
The NUG’s policy of peace and war
Since the formation of the NUG, the Afghan government has made efforts to bring peace through foreign policy. The Afghan government wanted to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table by China and Pakistan. In this regard, the Afghanistan-Pakistan-China-Taliban talks, Murree talks, and Quadrilateral Talks were held. In the first process, the Taliban denied their participation, in the second they could not deny, and in the third they refused to participate.
Hence, after two and a half years, this approach of the NUG to bring peace is assumed a failure. During the quadrilateral talks, when Taliban’s participation seemed unlikely, the NUG started negotiations with Hezb-e-Islami. The peace talks with Hezb-e-Islami succeeded, and the outcome was a peace deal with this party.
After the peace deal with Hezb-e-Islami, the media released reports about secret meetings between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Qatar. However, after that, it became several months, and the Afghan government has not undertaken any step regarding the peace process nor has it changed its policy. In this regard the Afghan government is confused.
On the other hand, since the past several months, instead of peace policy, the Afghan government has undertaken the policy of war against its armed oppositions. For instance, the government conducted large-scale operations against the Taliban (which also killed the Taliban’s shadow governors of Kunduz and Baghlan) and used hostile rhetoric against them. In this regard, last month the Afghan National Security Advisor Hanif Atmar said in Jalalabad that, “We will fight against the Taliban as much as we can and we will force them to peace.”
Despite the aggressive morale of the NUG, the Afghan government does not have any achievements in the battlefield and quite on the contrary attacks on the Afghan forces have increased, the assault on 209th Shaheen Corps is a major reason for the failure of the war policy.
Besides that, after the assassination of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the Taliban do not have a clear policy about peace either. It seems that, in this regard, the Taliban are fragmented among themselves, and they do not have a certain strategy regarding peace.
Given the peace and war strategy of the Afghan government, one can say that the Afghan government has also lost its way and is pursuing a policy that would bring neither peace nor security to the country. If both the Afghan government and the Taliban wants to enter the peace talks by force or from a strong position, this process of peace would never start, as was the case in the past several years.
The end