The fighting is a Taliban affair: government forces against Juma Khan Fateh, a dissident commander and former Taliban deputy governor of Zabul, in the gold country of Afghan Badakhshan, over what Afghan outlets describe as a blocked weapons transfer inside a longer struggle for the mines. By Friday it was in its fourth day, with a helicopter lost either to Fateh’s fire or to a landing accident, depending on who tells it.
Then it crossed the river. Gunfire from the Afghan side killed a 21-year-old woman in Dashtak village, in Tajikistan’s Darvaz district, and damaged homes on the Tajik bank. Dushanbe’s foreign ministry sent Kabul a protest note citing the death, the damage and a violation of its airspace, its first official word on the fighting at its border. Kabul answered on Saturday with condolences to the family and the people of Tajikistan, blamed destructive and opportunistic individuals for the disorder, and promised that Afghan soil would not be used to undermine its neighbours’ security.
A protest note is addressed to a government that may not control the bank the fire came from.
The war it was apologising for kept going. Hasht-e Subh reported the bodies of 10 Taliban fighters moved south to Helmand and Uruzgan, clashes resuming on Sunday, and nearly 5,000 mine workers trapped in the province. The army chief of staff, Fasihuddin Fitrat, invited Fateh to negotiate; Fateh refused the meeting while professing loyalty to the movement he is fighting: even if they hang me, he said, I was, am and will remain with this Emirate. A claimed second front in Zebak, announced on Monday by the Afghanistan Freedom Front, remains that group’s claim alone.
For Dushanbe the calculus is specific: the danger this month comes from Taliban disorder, and a protest note is addressed to a government that may not control the bank the fire came from.