Afghan warlords rejoin the fight to defeat the Taliban

The thunder of rocket-propelled grenades ricocheted down the streets of Herat. Gunfire ripped through the air as Afghan troops and local fighters screamed at residents to get inside.

A wrecked government Humvee, billowing smoke, marked one of several front lines inside Afghanistan’s third-largest city, which has faced a ferocious Taliban assault over the past ten days. Stationed near the ruined vehicle, 20-year-old Mohammadullah watched the street, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder.

“The Taliban are not able to take the city — we are united with government forces and we are armed,” he said.

Dressed in the traditional salwar khameez, a patterned scarf around his head, the young man is part of a militia loyal to the local warlord Ismail Khan that has joined Afghan troops in a last-ditch defence of Herat. Close to the western border with Iran, the ancient Silk Road city of some 570,000 people had been unthreatened by the Taliban for 20 years, until the insurgents launched a offensive across the country in recent weeks in the wake of the final US withdrawal.

Scores of districts throughout Afghanistan have been overrun by the Islamists as government forces buckle. More than a dozen cities are under siege, with bitter fighting on the outskirts of provincial capitals to the north, south and west. One of them, Zarranj, fell yesterday.

In an attempt to stave off total collapse, President Ghani has turned to the warlords and their militias. Local fighters who register with the government are paid a salary and supplied with weapons to defend their homes against the Taliban.

The move has drawn some infamous characters back to the fray, with ominous echoes of the Afghan civil war of the 1990s that spawned the Taliban. Many of the warlords who emerged after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 also have brutal reputations and their return has raised fears that Afghanistan could once again implode as local powerbrokers vie for dominance.

In return for lending their military support to undermanned and demoralised government forces, some warlords are already dictating terms with the beleaguered Ghani. The pact between Kabul and the warlords risks splintering Afghanistan into local fiefdoms and fuelling another civil war.

Khan was a former comrade of many Taliban commanders in the mujahideen that fought the Soviet Union during the 1980s. He gained notoriety for supporting US forces as the Taliban were routed in 2001. Now aged 75, he has made a point of appearing on the battlefield with his men as the battle for Herat has raged from street to street.

Speaking to The Times on the front line, Khan vowed that Herat would “never fall”. Hundreds of Afghan commandos were airlifted into the city last week, but it is Khan’s militia that has spearheaded the defence.

“We are here to support the Afghan security forces. I have more than 3,000 men fighting the Taliban,” Khan said, claiming his militia had only suffered a handful of casualties.

He criticised the deal struck between Washington and the Taliban in the Gulf state of Qatar last year, which paved the way for the US withdrawal. “War with the Taliban is different now compared to the 1990s. The US has legitimised the Taliban through the Doha agreement and many other countries are now supporting the group,” Khan said.

Another notorious warlord from the civil war era, Abdul Rashid Dostum, also announced his return to Afghanistan to join the battle against the Taliban this week.

While the politicians manoeuvre, however, many on the front lines in Afghanistan’s war-torn cities are fighting for survival. Word of Taliban atrocities has spread throughout the country as tens of thousands flee the Islamist advance.

“I’m not doing this to make money, or to take advantage. The Taliban have foreign support and are fighting against our government,” said Sultan Mohammad a young militiaman in southern Helmand province.

“I accepted everything, dead or alive and I will fight until my last breath. We are ready to pay any price to stop this war.”