Displaced people from Jaghori district arrive in Ghazni city, Afghanistan, on Nov. 14, 2018. Taliban militants in a surprise move stormed security checkpoints in the peaceful Jaghori district last Wednesday. Sayed Mominzadah/Press Association. All rights reserved.
The current war in Afghanistan has just entered its nineteenth year. Almost two decades after the United States-led invasion overthrew the Taliban regime in Kabul and dispersed Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network from mountainous Tora Bora in the country's south-east, a reconfigured Taliban is once more driving the conflict.
In the first week of November alone, Taliban paramilitaries seized four Afghan government facilities. One such assault was launched against a well equipped military base in the western Farah province built to ensure the security of main roads and of the area around the border with Iran. Yet of the fifty-three police on the base, twenty were killed and thirty captured, while three managed to escape. Such operations continue, with the interior ministry in Kabul conceding on 15 November the deaths of at least thirty more police in a separate attack in Farah.
