The Afghan Army is set to begin pulling back from its most isolated strongholds in an effort to consolidate its forces and minimize losses amid a growing Taliban resurgence.
On Friday, Taliban militants in northwestern Afghanistan overran a group of Afghan Army outposts, killing over a dozen soldiers, the New York Times reported. It's just the latest attack in a surge by the militant group, with which the Afghan Army's far-flung outposts are unable to cope.
Afghan security forces have lost more than 40,000 troops since 2014, a rate of attrition US officials have long warned is unsustainable.
That's why the Afghan Defense Ministry is starting to pull its troops back into larger bases along key routes that can better defend against Taliban attacks. Under this new plan, outposts that might have as few as four soldiers manning them will be abandoned and their troops consolidated into forts with at least 40 soldiers, Stars and Stripes reported.
“If there is Taliban territory and people are against the government, we will not want to make checkpoints there, because it may be risky,” Afghan Army Brig. Gen. Abdul Raziq Safi told Stars and Stripes.
“Many of these checkpoints are tactically unsound and present opportunities for the enemy,” an Afghan Defense Ministry report from December 2018 noted. “The overwhelming majority of successful Taliban attacks against [security forces] continue to occur at poorly manned checkpoints.”
However, it's difficult…
