Status: 07/16/2021 5:37 p.m.
The government reports initial successes in an offensive by the Afghan army to recapture a border town with Pakistan. NATO has apparently ended its operation in the country quietly.
Afghan government troops have launched an offensive to retake the border town of Spin Boldak from the Taliban. A spokesman for the Kabul interior ministry said on Twitter that the troops had regained control of the city in Kandahar province. It had been captured by Taliban fighters earlier this week, as had dozens of other districts in Afghanistan since the beginning of the final phase of the withdrawal of NATO troops from the country.
A photographer from the Reuters news agency was killed in the fighting over Spin Boldak. The man was killed in the Taliban’s crossfire together with an Afghan officer, the agency said in a statement.
NATO has ended its mission in Afghanistan
Meanwhile, NATO quietly ended its military operation in Afghanistan today after almost two decades. As the dpa news agency has been confirmed by several diplomats and the military, the soldiers currently stationed in the country from countries such as the USA and Turkey are now completely under the leadership of the national chains of command. The alliance’s bloodiest military operation to date is de facto history, it said.
According to information from the dpa, the fact that the end of the military operation has not yet been officially communicated has to do with the fact that the operation plan has not yet been formally overridden – especially for administrative reasons. Another reason is that the US national mission is still ongoing. US President Joe Biden had last announced a termination by the end of August.
The US armed forces alone lost more than 2,300 soldiers in the Hindu Kush. The Bundeswehr complained about 59 victims. The NATO operation in the Hindu Kush began after the attacks of September 11, 2001 at the request of the USA in order to put an end to the terrorism emanating from Afghanistan.
Russia blames the US and NATO for the escalation
At a conference in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the United States and NATO of having “hastily withdrawn” and “causing the situation in Afghanistan to deteriorate rapidly in recent days”.
“The crisis in Afghanistan has increased the terrorist threat and the problem of illegal drug smuggling has reached unprecedented levels,” Lavrov said. “There are real dangers of instability spilling over into neighboring countries.” Delegations from Russia, the USA, China and neighbors of Afghanistan took part in the conference in Tashkent.