Taliban Assault on Ghazni Flouts Afghan and U.S. Hopes for Truce, Peace Talks by Pamela Constable – Washington Post
KABUL - In recent days, two wars have raged over the Afghan city of Ghazni.
One is a shooting war, in which hundreds of Taliban insurgents overran the eastern city of 270,000, burned buildings, left at least 120 security forces and civilians dead, and sent families fleeing across fields to safety. Afghan security forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes, struggled to flush insurgent fighters out of urban hiding places.
The other is a propaganda war, in which the Taliban claimed to have shut down the nearby highway, killed hundreds of government troops and seized strategic official facilities, even as Afghan and U.S. officials repeatedly asserted that the city was under government control and the insurgents were being systematically cleared out.
By late Tuesday, the Taliban appeared to have lost the first war, with the smoldering city relatively calm and most insurgent fighters in retreat. A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, said that “no enemy activity” was reported in the city all day. In an email, he posted aerial images of the Ghazni prison and other intact buildings that the Taliban claimed to have captured or destroyed. He also said the attack served no purpose other than to generate sensational headlines, adding that the Taliban remains incapable of holding territory defended by Afghan forces.
But some analysts said the insurgents may have won the second war, scoring a psychological blow that forcefully contradicts revived hopes for truces and peace talks…