Out of Harm's Way

"[There was] heightened concern [over the fighting but Russia has no plans to send troops to assist Tajikistan]."

"We have repeatedly said many times that after the withdrawal of the Americans and their allies from Afghanistan, the development of the situation in this country is a matter of our heightened concern." "We’re monitoring it very closely and are noting that destabilization [of the situation] is taking place, unfortunately."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov

Fleeing Afghan soldiers pause on a road at the front line of fighting between Taliban and security forces, near the city of Badakhshan, northern Afghanistan on Sunday.  Credit:AP

The U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan to free the country from its Islamist Taliban chokehold spent two decades attempting to do just that, and failed. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated his regret that the foreign forces in his country failed in their objective, while adding that their presence and aid to the country had helped it enormously. Now, with their departure, all the advances in human rights, in improvements to living conditions, will go into reverse. Many foreign missions have closed in the capital Kabul, others are still operating on stiffly reduced staff levels. It is clear that foreign emissaries are loathe to leave the country, but they will.

One can only guess the conversations in t he Kremlin. Russia knows how defeat in Afghanistan feels, although from their own inimitable angle. Their decade in Afghanistan was even more disastrous and deadly to Soviet troops in direct confrontation with Afghan tribal fighters than what the U.S. and NATO troops encountered. Throughout its history Afghanistan has been occupied but no invasion has quelled the resistance of Afghans to foreign invasions, including that of Alexander the Great. Britain and Russia in the 19th century competed for 'control' of Afghanistan as a gateway for trade prospects and they too were repelled.

The irony is that while Soviet troops were mired down in Afghanistan in constant brutal combat, U.S. intelligence was training and supplying funds and weapons to fighters from the Muslim world that converged on Pakistan in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, to help mount a resistance to Russian occupation. The 'fighters' that bedevilled the Russian troops became the seed of the Taliban and of al Qaeda. The very monstrous Islamist terrorists now threatening to retake Afghanistan in record time. They no longer even need the assistance of the Pakistan secret service to achieve their goal.

The Afghan forces, trained by NATO special forces in best fighting practices distinguished themselves in the opinion of Western forces by their propensity to simply go AWOL when the mood struck. And nor were they particularly assiduous pupils in modern warfare since what they faced was assymetric warfare and guerrilla tactics by an adversary far more motivated and in the passion of religious fervour. Afghan security forces were  unable to match the passion and the strength and reputation of the Taliban, and were not as well armed both with weaponry and with courage.

Just as Iraqi troops melted away in panic leaving their arms, armoured vehicles, rocket launchers and populations undefended at the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant when it was on a roll, marching in to Syria and Iraq, capturing territory, expanding their 'caliphate', their fearsome reputations preceding them, sending panic into the hearts and souls of regular military, so too has the Afghan security forces reacted similarly. And who can blame them? As heedless of human rights and as wedded to mass murder and atrocity-commission under the banner of religion, as ISIL, the Taliban is facing little resistance now that foreign military troops are being withdrawn.  

Everything left behind in the U.S. departure; personal vehicles, armoured military vehicles, in the custody of the government of Afghanistan will now fall to the possession of the Taliban, a situation with a familiar ring; to the victor goes the spoils; as with the Islamic State, so too with the Taliban; cut of the same barbaric cloth, representing the very same ideal of  fundamentalist Islamist entitlements in vanquishing an enemy and inheriting the spoils of victory.

Afghans carry the body of civilians killed during fighting between the Taliban and security forces, during their funeral in Badakhshan province on Sunday.   Credit:AP

So, an estimated one thousand Afghan troops fled the confrontation they faced with the Taliban, leaving their country rather than defending it from the hugely successful Taliban. Crossing the border into Tajikistan, the Tajik government accepted their presence for asylum, providing them with food and the assurance of safety from the Taliban, for the time being. Tajikistan's president ordered 20,000 of the country's military reservists to be mobilized at the border following the ingress of the Afghan troops in the face of Taliban advances.

International distress calls went out from Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon with allies. Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite Russia's large military presence in Tajikistan, a former satellite of the USSR, withheld offers of military assistance against the Taliban, assuring his Tajik counterpart that Moscow would give its support to the former Soviet republic in establishing its border if required, through a regional security bloc.

The Taliban have wasted no time. Even before the hasty departure of the U.S. troops and their allies, urged on by the Taliban, with promises that they would never again permit any attacks on America to be launched from the soil they once again inherit, while deeply engaged in peace talks with the government of Afghanistan in a blunt show of Islamist pretense, bloody lethal attacks were continually taking place with the Taliban terrorizing Afghan troops, national police and civilians alike, the death toll ever growing to ensure the message was received and well understood; resistance would be futile.

Two days following the vacating of the American main Bagram Air Base on the start of withdrawing all troops by the iconic date of September 11, six key districts in the northern province of Badakhshan bordering Tajikistan and China fell to the Taliban. Once again, Afghanistan is set to become their 'caliphate'. "The Taliban cut off all the roads and these people [1,037 Afghan servicemen] had nowhere to go but to cross the border", said a senior Afghan official.

This group of Afghan soldiers fled to Tajikistan in June  Tajik border troops