The Taliban is conducting an offensive in Afghanistan that included the recent attack on the country’s
… parliament building, an assault that prompted the evacuation of lawmakers …
The attack was eventually repelled and a:
… spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior, said that Afghan police had killed seven attackers. Kabir Amiri, a Kabul public-health official, said 31 civilians were wounded in the attack, including three children and five women.
Meanwhile, as Sudarsan Raghavan of the Washington Post reports:
Taliban forces were less than four miles from this strategic northern city Monday [Kunduz] after seizing control of two key districts over the weekend, triggering fears that they could capture their first Afghan city since U.S.-backed forces toppled the hard-line Islamist regime in late 2001.
The government in Kabul has dispatched reinforcements, including Afghan special forces and their U.S. advisers and trainers, to try to repel the insurgents and rescue about 75 soldiers and police officers trapped inside their district base. But as of Monday evening, the Taliban remained in control of the districts, including one separated from Kunduz city only by a wide, brown river.
The government in Kabul has dispatched reinforcements, including Afghan special forces and their U.S. advisers and trainers, to try to repel the insurgents and rescue about 75 soldiers and police officers trapped inside their district base. But as of Monday evening, the Taliban remained in control of the districts, including one separated from Kunduz city only by a wide, brown river.
The attack on parliament was sensational and produced some high value propaganda. But this other offensive is more strategically threatening as:
Whoever controls Kunduz, a vast, rich agricultural region that was a former Taliban bastion, controls the roads to northeastern Afghanistan as well as smuggling and trade routes into neighboring Tajikistan and the rest of Central Asia.
