pakistani342
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A great detailed article that talks about how the Taliban managed to pull of the assault. Article on The New York Times here, excerpts below:
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban’s largest strategic victory of its long insurgency seemed to unfold in a matter of hours: At dawn a few hundred insurgent fighters entered the northern provincial capital of Kunduz from three sides, and by afternoon they ruled it.
But even though it was a shocking victory, it hardly happened overnight. Signs of a determined and innovative Taliban campaignin the north, and Kunduz in particular, could be seen some two years ago.
Timed to the American withdrawal, a steady influx of insurgent fighters, a series of probing and patient territory grabs, and a hearts-and-minds campaign that took advantage of resentment of the government eventually delivered the Taliban’s biggest prize of the war.
...
The encirclement of Kunduz began in earnest two years ago, as the American military began pulling out of the province in the summer and fall of 2013.
...
But as the Special Forces soldiers drove out of the province, they received radio reports that the district governor had been assassinated, and that the police had abandoned their bases.
“It worked so long as you had a Special Forces team there, and the minute they left it collapsed and reverted to form,” Ted Callahan, then a civilian adviser to the Special Forces and now a security adviser in the north.
...
In those places, not just in Kunduz, but across the north and east, the Taliban took a calculated and new approach to governance, one that involved some flexibility and local input. Some Taliban permitted girls’ education, even distributing class supplies — seemingly a big change from a group that became known for destroying schools.
A 27-year old Taliban judge interviewed in June, Obaidullah, who ran a court in Badakhshan Province, east of Kunduz, described a more lenient Taliban that no longer relied on corporal punishment for being clean-shaven or listening to music. “Our mentality has changed,” Obaidullah said in an interview in jail after his capture. “We realized that having a strict stance will not lead to success, so we changed.”
...
“I am Hazara myself,” one Taliban commander involved in the capture of Kunduz, Mohammadullah Sadat, said by telephone, identifying himself as a member of a group that has traditionally known terrible persecution at the hands of Pashtuns. “We are all fighting side by side under one banner, which is Islam. We are struggling for Islam not for any particular ethnic group.”
Even the Turkmens, one of Afghanistan’s smallest and most isolated ethnic groups, began joining the Taliban in substantial numbers this year in four provinces across the north. It was a decision made largely because they were dissatisfied with their marginal representation in government, said Allah Nazar Turkmen, a member of Parliament.
...
Over time, as villages threw their lot in with the Taliban, the insurgents’ cordon around Kunduz grew tighter. By last year the city felt so under siege that police officers were resistant to driving in a marked government vehicle for fear a Taliban fighter on a motorbike would slap a magnetic bomb on it
Sometimes, the Taliban didn’t have to kill the police to make headway. In February this year, the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, or N.D.S., said it was investigating dozens of police officers in Kunduz for cooperating with the Taliban, sometimes even selling their ammunition
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban’s largest strategic victory of its long insurgency seemed to unfold in a matter of hours: At dawn a few hundred insurgent fighters entered the northern provincial capital of Kunduz from three sides, and by afternoon they ruled it.
But even though it was a shocking victory, it hardly happened overnight. Signs of a determined and innovative Taliban campaignin the north, and Kunduz in particular, could be seen some two years ago.
Timed to the American withdrawal, a steady influx of insurgent fighters, a series of probing and patient territory grabs, and a hearts-and-minds campaign that took advantage of resentment of the government eventually delivered the Taliban’s biggest prize of the war.
...
The encirclement of Kunduz began in earnest two years ago, as the American military began pulling out of the province in the summer and fall of 2013.
...
But as the Special Forces soldiers drove out of the province, they received radio reports that the district governor had been assassinated, and that the police had abandoned their bases.
“It worked so long as you had a Special Forces team there, and the minute they left it collapsed and reverted to form,” Ted Callahan, then a civilian adviser to the Special Forces and now a security adviser in the north.
...
In those places, not just in Kunduz, but across the north and east, the Taliban took a calculated and new approach to governance, one that involved some flexibility and local input. Some Taliban permitted girls’ education, even distributing class supplies — seemingly a big change from a group that became known for destroying schools.
A 27-year old Taliban judge interviewed in June, Obaidullah, who ran a court in Badakhshan Province, east of Kunduz, described a more lenient Taliban that no longer relied on corporal punishment for being clean-shaven or listening to music. “Our mentality has changed,” Obaidullah said in an interview in jail after his capture. “We realized that having a strict stance will not lead to success, so we changed.”
...
“I am Hazara myself,” one Taliban commander involved in the capture of Kunduz, Mohammadullah Sadat, said by telephone, identifying himself as a member of a group that has traditionally known terrible persecution at the hands of Pashtuns. “We are all fighting side by side under one banner, which is Islam. We are struggling for Islam not for any particular ethnic group.”
Even the Turkmens, one of Afghanistan’s smallest and most isolated ethnic groups, began joining the Taliban in substantial numbers this year in four provinces across the north. It was a decision made largely because they were dissatisfied with their marginal representation in government, said Allah Nazar Turkmen, a member of Parliament.
...
Over time, as villages threw their lot in with the Taliban, the insurgents’ cordon around Kunduz grew tighter. By last year the city felt so under siege that police officers were resistant to driving in a marked government vehicle for fear a Taliban fighter on a motorbike would slap a magnetic bomb on it
Sometimes, the Taliban didn’t have to kill the police to make headway. In February this year, the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, or N.D.S., said it was investigating dozens of police officers in Kunduz for cooperating with the Taliban, sometimes even selling their ammunition
