KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — At an Afghan army base on the outskirts of this besieged city, a father was anxiously pacing as he waited to reclaim the body of his son, who was killed this week while battling the Taliban.
Other civilians were there, too — residents who had escaped the Taliban’s brutal advance into Kunduz on Monday. Afghan army generals, as well as U.S. and German troops, moved around the base as they tried to figure out how to drive the militant group from this northeastern city for good.
Despite 14 years of war and tens of billions of dollars in international aid, for much of the day it seemed that nothing had changed on this base on the front line of the Afghan military’s struggle to keep a frightened nation safe.
On Thursday morning, three days after the Taliban overran Afghanistan’s sixth-largest city, government leaders announced that they had largely ejected the militants from the center of Kunduz. But new fighting later erupted throughout the city, signaling to Afghan leaders and residents alike that the war that has devastated the country will not end any time soon, and could worsen in the coming years.
“No one can predict the duration of war,” said Gen. Murad Ali Murad, deputy chief of staff of the Afghan army, who is commanding the Kunduz operation.
At an evening news conference in Kabul, President Ashraf Ghani also tried to prepare the public for more hardship after the Taliban’s advances this week. Although Ghani stressed that Afghan special forces made serious gains in Kunduz on Thursday, he noted that conflict continued in 10 to 13 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
“The war is still going on,” said Ghani, who had hoped to persuade Taliban leaders to take part in peace talks.
Amid growing public alarm, he urged residents to remain optimistic. “Panicking and fear, and becoming perplexed … and apprehensive during wartime is helping the enemy,” Ghani said.
But here in Kunduz, the grim reality of what is at stake was increasingly apparent.
Amnesty International said that as part of its Kunduz campaign, the Taliban has carried out mass murder, gang rapes and house-to-house searches for civilians suspected of working for government agencies or international aid organizations.
Female relatives and children of Afghan soldiers and police officers who fled Kunduz when the Taliban stormed in have been raped and, in some cases, killed, local activists told Amnesty International.
The group said the Taliban killed a woman who worked as a midwife in a maternity ward because she had provided reproductive services.
Meanwhile, in eastern Afghanistan, at least 11 people, including six U.S. service members, died overnight when a cargo plane crashed while taking off from an airfield, the U.S. military said Thursday.
The Air Force C-130J, a large turboprop plane used for cargo and transport flights, crashed as it left the airfield in Jalalabad.
Five civilian contractors working with the U.S. and allied military mission in Afghanistan were among the dead.
