Daily Times

KABUL: The Afghan defence minister and his army chief resigned Monday, days after what is believed to be one of the deadliest-ever Taliban attacks on a military base triggered calls for officials to step down.

“President Ashraf Ghani has accepted the resignation of the defence minister and army chief of staff,” a one-line statement from the presidential palace said.

Angry Afghans had called for the resignations of Defence Minister Abdullah Habibi and army chief Qadam Shah Shaheem, among other officials, after the assault outside the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday.

Ten gunmen dressed in soldiers’ uniforms and armed with suicide vests entered the base in army trucks and opened fire on unarmed troops at close range in the mosque and dining hall.

The exact toll from the assault remains unclear. Afghan officials have so far ignored calls to break down the toll it has given of more than 100 soldiers killed or wounded, but have been known to minimise casualties in such attacks in the past.

The US has said that at least 50 soldiers were killed, and some local officials have put the number of dead alone as high as 130.

The raid underscores the Taliban’s growing strength more than 15 years since they were ousted from power, and as they gear up ahead of the spring fighting season.

Many Afghans slammed the government for its inability to counter the attack, the latest in a series of brazen Taliban assaults, including one on the country’s largest military hospital in Kabul in March that left dozens dead. As many as 12 army officers, including two generals, were sacked for negligence over that attack.

Officials put the death toll in that attack at 50, but security sources and survivors said more than 100 were killed in the brazen assault.

Military analysts have slammed the “total intelligence failure” over such assaults, and called for new strategies to counter them.

Afghan security forces, beset by killings and desertions, have been struggling to beat back insurgents since US-led NATO troops ended their combat mission in December 2014.

According to US watchdog SIGAR, casualties among Afghan security forces soared by 35 percent in 2016, with 6,800 soldiers and police killed.

More than a third of Afghanistan is outside government control and many regions are fiercely contested by various insurgent groups, as Kabul’s repeated bids to launch peace negotiations with the Taliban have failed.

Meanwhile, United States Defence Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit Monday, hours after resignation of his Afghan counterpart over the deadly Taliban attack.

Mattis branded the Taliban “barbaric”, and vowed solidarity at a press conference in Kabul, but said only that the US was engaged in “defining the way ahead in Afghanistan with several nations”, adding that no one country would be responsible.

Up to ten army personnel are being questioned as suspects, a military spokesman attached to the base said, amid fears it could have been an insider attack. At least four of them had valid passes to the base and had previously trained there, a security source told AFP.

Head of US forces in Afghanistan General John Nicholson also spoke alongside Mattis at the press conference at NATO Headquarters in Kabul, vowing there was “no space” for the Islamic State group in Afghanistan.

The US decision to drop its largest non-nuclear weapon on IS hideouts in eastern Afghanistan less than two weeks ago was a “very clear message” to the group, he said: “If they come to Afghanistan they will be destroyed”.

The use of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, dubbed the “Mother of All Bombs”, triggered global shockwaves, with some condemning the move against a militant group that is not considered as big a threat to Afghanistan as the Taliban. Shortly after Mattis landed for the visit, his first to Afghanistan as Pentagon chief, militants carried out a suicide attack aimed at Camp Chapman, a joint US-Afghan military base in the southeastern province of Khost.

At least four Afghan security personnel were killed, officials said, the latest blow to morale after Friday’s attack.

The Pentagon chief has said he is compiling an assessment for President Donald Trump on the brutal and seemingly intractable conflict.