Taliban claim Panjshir has fallen, resistance battles on
KABUL/WASHINGTON: Taliban fighters broke out into prayers as their banner fluttered from a flagpole in Panjshir on Monday, after the hardline group announced the capture of the last pocket of resistance to their rule in Afghanistan. After their blitz through Afghanistan last month, the Taliban said that they have seized the last province not in their control, and overrun the forces opposing their takeover.
But the resistance leaders -including the son of the iconic anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud -- denied giving up the fight, and called on Afghan people for an uprising.
Thousands of Taliban fighters charged into eight districts of Panjshir province overnight, according to witnesses from the area who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared for their safety. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that the province, which is north of the capital, was now “captured” by their fighters.
“With this victory, our country is completely taken out of the quagmire of war,” Mujahid told a news conference in Kabul later on Monday. “We tried our best to solve the problem through negotiations, and they rejected talks and then we had to send our forces to fight.”
The National Resistance Front (NRF) admitted to suffering heavy losses. Among them was spokesperson Fahim Dashty — a well-known Afghan journalist — and top commander General Abdul Wudod Zara.
But Massoud’s message on Monday was one of fighting bravado. “We are in Panjshir and our Resistance will continue,” he said on Twitter.
In another audio message after the Taliban’s declarations, he called for Afghans to “rise up”.
“For those who want to take up arms, we are with you. For those who will resort to protest, we will stand next to you,” Massoud, who leads a force drawn from the remnants of the regular Afghan army as well as local militia fighters, said.
His exact whereabouts
remain unclear, and there has been no statement from former vice-president Amrullah Saleh.
Taliban spokesman Mujahid said he had been told that Massoud and Saleh had escaped to neighbouring Tajikistan. The group also warned that anyone who “tries to start an insurgency” against them “will be hit hard”.
Still, like others in the resistance, Ali Maisam Nazary, head of foreign relations at NRF, said the Taliban’s claim of victory was false. “The NRF forces are present in all strategic positions across the valley to continue the fight,” he said on his Facebook page.
Experts have long doubted that the holdout efforts, despite Panjshir’s geographic advantage, could have succeeded long-term against the Taliban, whose rapid advance through Afghanistan met little resistance in the final days of America’s 20-year war in the country.
Panjshir, mainly inhabited by ethnic Tajik people, has immense symbolic value in Afghanistan as the area that has resisted occupation by invaders in the past.
Nestled in the towering Hindu Kush mountains, the valley has a single narrow entrance. Local fighters held off the Soviets there in the 1980s and also, for a brief time, the Taliban a decade later under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massoud.