Taliban seizes 150 Afghan soldiers
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan — The Taliban carried out the biggest known capture of Afghan soldiers of the war, taking 150 prisoners after they chased units into neighboring Turkmenistan and that country forced them back, Afghan officials said Sunday.
The operation took place in the northwestern Afghan province of Badghis, and brought to 190 the number of soldiers captured by insurgents in the hotly contested district of Murghab — with 16 more soldiers killed — in less than a week.
Last Monday, an entire Afghan army company was killed or captured there. By Saturday, its defenders said the district had fallen mostly into Taliban control, though Afghan forces were still holding the district’s government center.
The latest capture was perhaps the biggest setback for the Afghan security forces since a Taliban offensive in August in the southeastern city of Ghazni killed as many as 200 soldiers and police officers, but few prisoners were taken then. The biggest recent capture of soldiers by the Taliban was about 50 who surrendered after a siege of their base, known as Chinese Camp, in Faryab province, also in August.
Mirza Mohammad Yarmand, a military analyst and retired general, expressed alarm at the losses. “I have not seen or heard of such a big loss in the Afghan army in recent years,” Yarmand said. “If these numbers are true, then it’s the biggest capture by the Taliban at one time and in the same area. This is a very sad incident.”
The episode consisted of two days of attacks by the Taliban in the Morichaq area of the city of Bala Murghab against two units of the Afghan Border Forces. Early Saturday, 50 soldiers from the force surrendered, and an additional 100 fled Taliban pursuit and crossed the nearby border into Turkmenistan, according to Saleh Mohammad Mubarez, commander of the Afghan police in the district. By the end of the day, he said Sunday, Turkmenistan had forced them back into Taliban hands.
Habibullah, a deputy company commander in Badghis who uses only one name, also confirmed the surrenders. “Turkmenistan told the Taliban, ‘We will give the border force soldiers’ weapons to the Afghanistan government and give you the border force soldiers, but the Taliban said that you should give the troops to the Afghan government and give us their weapons,’ ” he said.
On Saturday, some Afghan officials played down the capture, saying the soldiers who had crossed into Turkmenistan would be returned to the government side. A spokesman for the Badghis provincial governor, said the escape toward Turkmenistan by the 100 soldiers had been part of a security plan. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense said that those who had surrendered were not regular soldiers. But numerous local officials said they were indeed regular soldiers.