Afghanistan: Rockets land in Kandahar Airport

Three overnight rockets struck Afghanistan’s Kandahar Airport overnight on Saturday. The runway has been damaged and all flights will resume later today.

No casualties have been reported.

The Taliban have taken responsibility for the attack, as reported by Reuters and their aim being to stop the military operations running from the airport. The Kandahar Airport also has an Afghan Airforce base which provides vital logistics and conducts air operations against the Taliban in an attempt to curb their gain of the city.

The Taliban have waited long before conducting this attack, their strategy being to take control of the rural areas first and surround all major cities that the Afghan Government has control over. There was a relative calm before the attacks on major cities and the Taliban were busy capturing districts of the outer regions while the Ghani Government was making tours round the World in a bid to stop the US and NATO troop withdrawal. After promising calm during Eid the Taliban conducted rocket attacks on the Presidential Palace during the Eid prayers and also announced their interest for a three-month ceasefire in exchange of their 8000 fighters kept in Afghan jails.

Having clear advantage on ground and watching the Afghan army flee to neighboring countries, the Taliban have enforced strict Sharia laws which many experts predicted would never return after analyzing the Taliban’s interest to keep good relations with the outside World after they come into power. They first promised to accept those who drop arms and surrender but videos then emerged of them brutally killing unarmed Afghan troops who had surrendered.

The Afghan civilians sees no end to the fighting and do not expect the Taliban to have mercy on them, nor do they expect the Government to stop bombing their cities housing the militants.

Time has shown that the Afghan Government does not have any clear strategy to tackle the Taliban, they have been overrun by the advances made by the Taliban and have been left exposed. Instead of launching counter offensives in the rural areas they are busy being surrounded in their major cities which will eventually fall the minute the Taliban play their cards. Years of military training, billions given and billions spent on them. The result being them losing 80% of Afghanistan in a few months and their soldiers fleeing to neighboring countries, letting the Taliban have all the equipment and ammunition. Not even the capital’s highly guarded Green Zone is safe from the Taliban attacks and the Ghani Government is hoping to crack a deal with the group (or maybe Afghanistan now) which would obviously tilt towards the demands made by the Taliban who have the advantage on the ground.

The attacks on major cities are mounting as the Taliban are moving towards the final phase of their Afghan recapture. After the fall of Kabul we will see the beginning of another civil war, with the Taliban groups splitting up and then fighting each other on territorial and ethnic grounds. They will commit more atrocities than ever before on the basis of ethnicity, territory, religion, tribe and revenge. The outside World has been trying to avoid this outcome by trying to pursue the Taliban and the Ghani Administration to crack a deal and drop arms but so far to no avail, and with the Taliban making rapid gains, hopes for an understanding are diminished.