‘Shortage of coffins’ after Taliban slaughters unarmed soldiers
KABUL, Afghanistan — They looked like Afghan army soldiers returning from the front lines, carrying the bodies of wounded comrades as part of the ruse.
Dressed in military uniforms, a squad of 10 Taliban militants drove in two army Ford Ranger trucks past seven checkpoints. They arrived inside northern Afghanistan’s largest military installation just as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed soldiers were emerging from Friday Prayers and preparing for lunch.
For the next five hours, the militants went on a rampage, killing at least 140 soldiers and officers in what is emerging as the single deadliest known attack on an Afghan military base in the 16-year war. Some assailants blew themselves up among the soldiers fleeing for their lives, according to survivors, witnesses and officials.
“Today, there was even a shortage of coffins,” said Ibrahim Khairandish, a member of the provincial council in Balkh province, where the attack took place. Other officials feared that the death toll could exceed 200.
The attack punctuated the dismal outlook for Afghanistan, where much of the population of 34 million has known only war.
Over the past two years, Taliban fighters have gained more territory in the countryside and now threaten several cities. Afghanistan’s forces, suffering enormous casualties and a leadership marred by indecision and corruption, have struggled to put up a defense.
More than 6,700 members of the Afghan security forces lost their lives in 2016, a record high that is nearly three times the total U.S. casualties for the war.
In a new sign of how badly the Afghan military is faltering, the commander of the NATO coalition forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson, has requested a few thousand additional U.S. soldiers to assist in training Afghan recruits.
“The enemy has the strength — they have more people in their units now — and the speed of action,” said Rahmatullah Nabil, former head of the Afghan intelligence service. “Unfortunately, we have slowed down our decision-making.”
He said mistrust between the soldiers and their commanders had made many more vulnerable to Taliban infiltration and recruitment.
Especially remarkable about the Friday attack was its location: the assailants struck on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif, long one of the safer cities in Afghanistan. Now it has been infected by fears of more mayhem as Taliban strength grows in surrounding provinces.
How such a small number of assailants could inflict such staggering carnage — and in such a highly secure area — only compounded the trauma and anxiety over what could come.
“In a time when, in a lot of
places, we are caught in war of attrition, this will certainly have an impact on the morale and the will of the soldiers to fight,” Nabil said.
Even the most guarded places in Afghanistan are not safe. In January, explosives placed in couches inside the Kandahar governor’s office, past five layers of security, almost decimated the province’s leadership and a visiting Arab delegation. In March, militants entered the Afghan army’s main hospital in Kabul, the capital, and killed more than 50 people in a siege that lasted nearly seven hours and was claimed by the Islamic State.
Both those attacks, like the one Friday, were made possible by insider help, security officials say.
While the Islamic State has been getting attention in recent days because of the U.S. military’s use of its largest conventional bomb against a cave complex used by the group in eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban remains the biggest security threat to the country.