KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) — The Taliban are quickly changing and are using intelligence resources in carrying out attacks against the Afghan government and military, according to some political analysts in Afghanistan.
On April 21, 10 Taliban militants disguised in army uniforms snuck into the 209th Corps army base in northern Balkh province, shooting scores of unarmed soldiers and officers. Local media reported that the death toll of the assault has surpassed 250.
The heavily armed militants sitting in two military Ranger jeeps passed several security gates under the pretext of carrying wounded persons to the base hospital.
The assailants, holding fake documents, also detonated two suicide bomb blasts inside the base, located on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Mazar-i-Sharif. One assailant with a suicide jacket was captured after a four-hour firefight.
“Four persons of these attackers, before they were there, maybe for one or two years they worked there, they were in the military service. They know all these schedules. They arrived there, and after, they showed their documents to the first checkpoint,” Waheed Mujda, an Afghan political analyst, said.
“The second checkpoint was the same thing. And the last checkpoint, they should submit their documents and they gave their weapons there, and after, they can go further. But at this time, they started their attacks,” Mujda said.
Taliban militants have carried out various attacks targeting governmental and military agencies in recent years, and Enayat Nasir, an Afghan political analyst, said that the Taliban possibly have intelligence personnel inside of the attacked agencies.
“If you see it from the Taliban side, they are rapidly working on their tactics, they are changing their tactics. In some incidents, it is really hard to identify what tactic they use. Some tactics are very new that cannot be analyzed by the Afghan military. This is from Taliban side, they have good intelligence information, they have good technical resources.” said Nasir.
The Taliban insurgency has been on a rampage since the beginning of 2015 when the Afghan security forces assumed full responsibility of security from the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops.