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Afghans To Hit Taliban's Strongholds In Winter As War Rages On
Ministry of Defense (MoD) on Tuesday said Afghan security forces have plans to gear up their anti-terror campaign in winter against militants' traditional strongholds in certain regions across the nation aimed at clearing areas under Taliban' control.

"We are working on the ongoing Shafaq Operation to clear all areas under the control of insurgents during [upcoming] winter," the Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said.

It is said that Taliban's recent military shifts and government's failure of tackling the group drawn strong criticism from the Afghan political elites and the public with many blasting the Afghan security institutions for what they call poor leadership and a weak management of the ongoing turmoil that has rattled the peaceful life of Afghans in multiple fronts.

"Taliban militants takeover districts, but government still has no plan to retake the areas from them," said head of parliament's defense committee Hashim Alokozai.

"Whenever you keep the forces on standby, they leave implications on their moral, they lose their moral and become weak," former deputy minister of interio Mirza Mohammad Yarmand said.

It is said that the Taliban outfits have sustained their firm control over Baghlan's Dahnae-e-Ghori, Gul Tapa, Aqtash and Kalbad districts and some areas of Chahardara district while the group also controls Kunduz's Dasht-e-Archi and Qala-e-Zal districts.

Reports indicate that in south and north also there is a similar situation in the wake of Taliban's control over Nawa district in Ghazni, Khak-e-Afghan district in Zabul, Kohistanat district in Sar-e-Pul province, Yamgan and Wardooj districts in Badakhshan – including their grip on some key districts of Helmand such as Baghran, Khanshin, Nawah and Nawmesh.

"We are planning to carry out operations to retake certain parts of Baghlan including Dand-e-Ghori, Dahana-e-Ghori and Baghlan-e-Markazi," said Baghlan police chief Noor Habib Gulbahari.

The statements come at a time that the Taliban continue to waging an unusually aggressive campaign of violence in Afghanistan, unleashing deadly bombings in major city across Afghanistan.
Posted by: badanov 2016-10-19
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=470643