Insecurity and dread of the coming ‘Fighting Season’

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This could have sounded quaint if it were not so serious and sad. The Afghans are now talking of a coming “fighting season” that is expected to be the bloodiest ever.  The season to fight, in mountainous Afghanistan, is when it gets warmer, springtime, which is about now. The reason it is expected to be so bad is because of the influx of foreign militants.

According to the Washington Post hundreds of foreign militants are fleeing a months-long Pakistani military offensive and seeking sanctuary in Afghanistan. The foreign fighters generally join the Taliban, but now , with their growing numbers they seem to be taking over. What this means on the ground is that they are more vicious than the home-grown Taliban tends to be.

For example, last weekend in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, a few hundred Taliban fighters overran Afghan army posts, killing 18 soldiers and wounding 10. This in itself would not have been so different than other, similar confrontations. Except that this time eight of the soldiers were beheaded —a first by the Taliban in this region — before the insurgents left into the mountains with seized weapons.

Last year was the deadliest on record for Afghan soldiers and civilians.  According to Reuters at least 3,188 Afghan civilians were killed in clashes with the Taliban during 2014. This year already shows signs of becoming bloodier: in the first quarter, the number of civilian casualties from ground battles was 8 percent higher than during the same period in 2014. Last Saturday an unidentified man detonated explosives inside a crowded bank in Jalalabad, killing 33 and injuring over 100 with the number of the dead expected to rise. As was noted by Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani, it was Daesh (ISIS) that claimed responsibility for the terror attack, not the Taliban.

To the locals it seems that with the foreign fighters’ presence, the Taliban’s penchant for creating a sense of insecurity, is on the rise.