Taliban Captures City of Sangin

Yesterday the Daily Mail reported on the capturing of the city of Sangin by the Taliban in which 114 British soldiers lost their lives since 2001. They say:

 

Taliban fighters captured the strategic southern district of Sangin on Thursday in another setback for Afghan forces in Helmand province. 

The capture of Sangin, where US and British forces suffered heavy casualties until it was handed over to Afghan personnel, marks the culmination of the Taliban's year-long offensive to seize the opium-rich district and underscores their growing strength.

Most of Helmand is already estimated to be under Taliban control, with the capital Lashkar Gah - one of the last government-held enclaves - also at the risk of falling to the Taliban's repeated ferocious assaults ahead of the annual spring offensive. 

Since 2001, 456 British troops were killed in Afghanistan. 

Of those, around 114 died in the city of Sangin. 

Helmand governor's spokesman Omar Zwak said: 'Our forces have retreated from government offices, including the police headquarters and the governor's office in Sangin, but we are preparing to take it back.'

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid also said that insurgents had overrun the district centre.

Senior Labour MP Paul Flynn said the loss of Sangin underlined the need for an inquiry into the ill-fated Afghan war.

He told MailOnline: ‘Up to the point we decided to go into Helmand, we had lost a dozen of our soldiers in combat.

‘After we went into Helmand, the total went up to 450. We were there in the hope not a shot would be fired.

‘We have yet to engage with the fact that going in there was the worst mistake since the charge of the light brigade – it was a mistake of historic proportions.

‘We lost 450 of our troops there. The result is the situation is very much the same.

‘Quite rightly, the loved ones can ask why did we do it?’ 

For years Helmand was the centrepiece of the Western military intervention in Afghanistan, only for it to slip deeper into instability.

The Taliban effectively control or contest 10 of the 14 districts in Helmand, the deadliest province for British and US troops over the past decade and blighted by a huge opium harvest that helps fund the insurgency.

The Pentagon has said it would deploy some 300 US Marines this spring to Helmand, where American forces engaged in heated combat until they pulled out in 2014.

The Marines will head to the poppy-growing province this spring to assist a NATO-led mission to train Afghan forces, in the latest sign that foreign forces are increasingly being drawn back into the worsening conflict.

Separately on Thursday, a policeman linked to the Taliban killed nine of his colleagues as they were sleeping in the northern Kunduz province, local police chief Aziz Kamawal said.

So-called insider attacks - when Afghan soldiers and police turn their guns on their colleagues or on international troops - have been a major problem during the more than 15-year-long war.

Last week, three US soldiers were wounded when an Afghan soldier opened fire in Helmand, in the first known insider attack on international forces this year.

Comments

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I know I've said a lot on this subject but here it is anyway. You were right. So they were wrong not to listen. That is to say you were right out the gate (wise before the fact), and anticipated the problem. The seeds they sow and reap, you warned them and spent years supplicating common sense.

My point is that things roll on and we must see to it that you take this authority you have earned and regenerate that which these (always) faulty leaders have wrought. Thats not to say you haven't accomplished much already.

So I would suggest future peace would be the logical goal. How? Valiantly proclaiming, cutting their arguments apart, using their own failures as weapons against them. ie. not allowing them to posture or accepting their 'front'. To not accept bollocks reasoning and argument no matter how well they lay the ground for it. Battles have been fought already. The next one? Well we should have an unbeatable army ready to take them on, and drown them out through reason, history and threat.

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I wonder how far May and the Tory government will go in order to ingratiate themselves with the White House? Is that what allies do? Vassals?

They followed the USA into wars, yet must prostrate themselves immediately. That doesn't bode well. We've done that already and it led to a huge amount of unnecessary bloodshed. And for no real benefit for the class who fought and died. Suspending the fight they should be fighting. You have only one lifetime to do it. There is a chance to right wrongs, to find and show a better cause. Ultimately for many, to redeem themselves and the institutions they have besmirched. To do that, which is what should be done, guilt must be acknowledged.

The opposite being what the current leadership looks likely to pursue. Which could lead us backwards. To dutifully following whichever shallow demagogue into more bloodshed and futility. A crossroads really. It requires those with voices of reason to not hold back, you being a prime example of that, Paul, others should take it up too. Good nature, honesty and sincerity is what we need rather than superficiality, opportunism and short-sighted selfishness.

To see a reversal in the prominence of those currently serving themselves, being 'full' of themselves, and brought down a peg or two by those they arrogantly ignore and treat with contempt. I'd lack to see the good natured (which we really do look to) not to have the agenda dragged around to suit the narrow interests of lazy/cowardly actors.

Look what they have done and ask yourself, can we not do better? I believe we can. We must be able to. I don't believe that George Osborne has the credentials to be a newspaper editor, even if his duties are superficial, yet he is still given it. The same goes for his time as chancellor. An immoral man who takes a generous MP's salary whilst cashing in by taking on an unfeasible amount of 'jobs' and supposedly still giving his all to the office he was elected to. Is THAT who we should look to? They deserve it less than you or I. They are not better. What they have is an unfair advantage, which they shouldn't have.