AFP, Kabul :NATO said Wednesday its special forces have reached Kunduz to support Afghan troops after the Taliban seized the northern city, repelled a counter-attack and advanced on the airport to shore up their biggest victory in 14 years.Heavy fighting was underway near the outlying airport as the insurgents closed in on it, highlighting the potent challenge they represent after their lightning capture of Kunduz.The Taliban’s occupation of Kunduz now in its third day raises troubling questions about the capabilities of Afghan forces as they battle militants largely on their own after NATO’s combat mission ended last December.The Afghan army was supposed to be bolstered by its own reinforcements for the campaign to retake Kunduz, but attacks on convoys making their way to the city meant that back-up troops were only trickling in.”The Taliban have laid landmines and booby traps around Kunduz, slowing the movement of convoys of Afghan army reinforcements driving to the city,” an Afghan security official told AFP.NATO said the foreign special forces have reached Kunduz and US forces have conducted three air strikes around the city since Tuesday to support the Afghan troops.The forces are comprised of US, British and German troops, a Western military source told AFP on condition of anonymity, without specifying the number.The Afghan spy agency said the overnight strikes killed Mawlawi Salam, the Taliban’s “shadow governor” for the province, along with his deputy and 15 other fighters.But the fall of the provincial capital, which sent panicked residents fleeing, has dealt a major blow to the Afghan military and highlighted the insurgency’s potential to expand beyond its rural strongholds.The Afghan security official said the militants had slowly infiltrated Kunduz during the recent Eid festival, launching a Trojan horse attack that enabled them to capture the city within hours.Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the fall of the city on Monday achieved by a militant force significantly smaller than the army contingent was “obviously” a setback but that the US believed Afghan authorities would be able to regain control.Cook added he was “not sure it reflects any new assessment of the Taliban at this point”, but many analysts view the events as a game-changer for a group which many had believed was fraying.Washington report adds: In a potential major shift in policy, U.S. military commanders want to keep at least a few thousand American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016, citing a fragile security situation highlighted by the Taliban’s capture of the northern city of Kunduz this week as well as recent militant inroads in the south.Keeping any substantial number of troops in Afghanistan beyond next year would mark a sharp departure from President Barack Obama’s existing plan, which would leave only an embassy-based security cooperation presence of about 1,000 military personnel by the end of next year. Obama has made it a centerpiece of his second-term foreign policy message that he would end the U.S. war in Afghanistan and get American troops out by the time he left office in January 2017.
