Fighting intensifies between Taliban and resistance forces in Panjshir

Heavy clashes erupted, Thursday night, around Afghanistan’s northern Panjshir Valley between Taliban fighters and an anti-Taliban group, the National Resistance Front (NRF), according to a source within the group.

Sporadic fighting between the Taliban and the NRF has continued for two weeks now. The Taliban have been massing forces in and around Panjshir province in recent weeks and said on Monday they had captured three districts in the valley.

Earlier on Thursday, Fahim Dashti and Ali Nazary, an NRF spokesman, said that the Taliban lost 40 of their forces in their ongoing attempts to enter Panjshir and they had also lost a number of heavy equipment and weaponry that had been destroyed.

Panjshir Valley, an inaccessible mountainous region north of Kabul, is the last major holdout against Taliban rule and has a long history of resisting the insurgent group.

After the USSR, which controlled Kabul and large swaths of Afghanistan in the 1980s, withdrew from the country in 1989, various factions of Jihadists split into groups, fighting for control of the country.

The Northern Alliance, now a main component of the NRF, was soon formed. Led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the group managed to keep the Panjshir Valley free of Taliban influence.

Al Qaeda assassinated Ahmad Massoud on September 9, 2011, two days before the 9/11 attacks.

Massoud’s son, Ahmad Massoud, led now the coalition, which includes local resistance forces as well as remnants of the former Afghan army, to continue the fight against the Taliban in the wake of their near takeover of Afghanistan.

People fleeing the Taliban, including the former Afghan Vice President, Amrullah Saleh, have also sought refuge in the Valley.

“The Taliban have not changed, and they still are after dominance throughout the country,” Massoud told the press in an interview on Wednesday. “We are resisting dominance, intolerance, and oppression brought by one political force over the majority of the population that do not support them.”

He added that the NRF are still trying to negotiate with the Taliban, but so far, that dialogue “hasn’t resulted in anything tangible.” Talks have been taking place in Charika, the capital of the neighboring Parwan province.

The Taliban is expected to announce a new government, today, after Friday afternoon prayers, two Taliban sources told a news agency, as the group shift gears to governing the country while also trying to deflect an armed challenge from NRF in the Panjshir Valley region.