On July 17, Afghan media reported that 55 prisoners had been freed from a Taliban-run prison facility in Helmand province. Officials of the Maiwand Corps, the Afghan military unit deployed in the province, told news sources that the prisoners were freed after a commando unit raided the prison on the night of July 16 in Musa Qala district.
“Four soldiers, 15 police officers, two doctors and 33 civilians were the prisoners who freed by security forces and four Taliban who were warden were arrested,” read the Corps’ press release.
The Taliban did not immediately comment on the raid.
A Province in Lockdown
While the majority of Afghanistan is currently under Taliban control or contested, the situation throughout Helmand has been particularly bad for a number of years. The government and coalition control deteriorated rapidly following the pullout of the bulk of US forces in 2014.
The Taliban currently has complete control over seven of Helmand’s 13 districts (Baghran, Dishu, Kajaki, Musa Qala, Naw Zad, Reg or Khanshin, and Sangin). The other six districts (Nad Ali, Lashkar Gah, Nahri Sarraj, Nawa-I-Barak Zayi, Washer, and Garmser) are still being fought over to this day. Due to the freedom the Taliban has to maneuver in Helmand, many Taliban bases have operated there over the past several years.
But it’s not just military bases the Islamist group runs in Helmand.
The Taliban runs several prisons throughout the province, as well as other locations throughout the country where it exerts control. In addition to petty criminals, these facilities hold any undesirables on the Taliban’s blacklist, including Afghan prisoners of war. While the Afghan army has not been able to wrest back control of large swaths of territory taken by the Taliban in many areas, one remaining tactic to resist the militants has been targeting jails they operate.
According to TOLO News, On July 17, 2018, “Troops free 58 prisoners from Taliban Jail in Helmand.” (Credit: Facebook/TOLO News)
Raids of Resistance
Raids on Taliban prisons have been taking place for nearly three years. Over this period, hundreds of prisoners have been freed. All involved special operators of the Afghanistan armed forces. One of the first operations (that is, of the ones we know about) took place in December 2015. US forces in Afghanistan reported at the time that a combined Afghan and US force freed more than 40 prisoners comprised of Afghan Police, Afghan National Army and Afghan Border Police members from a jail in the district of Now Zad. Less than a month later in early January of 2016, Afghanistan soldiers belonging to the 1st Ktah Khas (KKA), Afghanistan’s national-level counterterrorism unit, freed 59 prisoners from another Taliban prison in the district of Nahr-i-Sarraj. This operation was an important milestone, as it was taken on by the Afghanistan defense apparatus independent of US or coalition assistance. The raid was an Afghan-led and executed operation, according to US Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A). “US forces provided only limited intelligence and planning support to this operation […] no US forces were on the ground during the operation.” Another similar operation took place in February, when commandos freed 35 people, including women and children, from a jail in an area between Nad Ali and Marjah districts.
“Afghan National Army soldiers with the 215th Corps carry a fallen Afghan soldier onto a C-130 at Camp Shorabak, Afghanistan, May 28, 2017, in the holy month of Ramadan. U.S. Marines with Task Force Southwest stood by their Afghan counterparts to offer condolences to those who gave their life in the fight against insurgency.” (Credit: Facebook/Task Force Southwest)
Won Battles and Lost Wars
The accomplishments of special operations units in Afghanistan have been bittersweet victories.
On the one hand, they demonstrate that Afghanistan as a country contains the competence necessary to plan complex operations and execute them with efficiency. They can win against the Taliban. Indeed, special ops have been one of the big investments the US has made in bringing Afghanistan to some semblance of self-sufficiency. Special forces received early one-to-one instruction by American trainers, both on the ground and in operational settings. This was a different league of training than that received by the standard army, where advisers would mostly guide training programs and have little face-to-face interaction with individual soldiers. The investment has largely paid off. Defense Secretary James Mattis explained during a press hearing earlier this year that “the Afghan Special Forces that have had mentors basically always win.” The persistent success of the commandos promoted their gradual build-up within the country’s defense infrastructure. In August 2017, President Ghani activated the Afghan National Army Special Operations Corps. The application of special forces has been a reliable tool in keeping Taliban expansion in check.
While the persistent success of Afghan commandos is impressive, there’s another side of the story as well.
The very fact that commando and other special ops units have had to be applied so frequently by the Afghan leadership in a way highlights the failure of the military as a whole. This is what Mattis meant when he said in that very same interview several months ago that Afghan special forces are “overused” from a broader strategic perspective. An army is not built on special forces. These units are the razor blades. The standard army is the broadsword. Units that have needed to face the Taliban in the more important large-scale battles for territory have been the regular battalions of the Afghanistan Army. And these units have been failing. Because most of Afghanistan’s army can’t do its job, the only recourse has been to apply spec ops to complete minor tactical wins.
Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers. (Credit: Pixabay alejandra326)
To be fair to the American and Afghan leadership behind the war effort, there is an attempt to apply the lessons from Afghan special forces to the rest of the military. This was the basis for the program implemented in the context of Trump’s troop surge last year to ensure that regular units will receive the one-to-one training that, until now, only a fraction of Afghan personnel have received.
But revamping the basic units of the Afghan military—which means equipping and training its troops to professional standards capable of taking on the highly experienced and highly motivated Taliban—will be a long-haul job.
