Afghan-Led Security Forces Roll Up Several Insurgent Leaders in Afghanistan this Week

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan and coali­tion secu­ri­ty forces cap­tured sev­er­al Haqqani Net­work lead­ers and numer­ous Tal­ban lead­ers in Afghanistan this week includ­ing a mem­ber of the Kab­ul Attack Net­work, and many who were involved in impro­vised explo­sive device (IED) attacks against Afghan civil­ians, Afghan and coali­tion forces.

Clear rules of engage­ment and extreme mea­sures tak­en to avoid civil­ian casu­al­ties allowed for 88.1 per­cent of the 42 oper­a­tions to be con­duct­ed with­out shots fired. The Afghan-led oper­a­tions result­ed in no civil­ian casu­al­ties and more than 75 sus­pect­ed insur­gents detained. 

Afghan and coali­tion secu­ri­ty forces struck at the Tal­iban lead­er­ship again in Kan­da­har Fri­day cap­tur­ing a senior Tal­iban com­man­der and mem­ber of the dis­trict Mil­i­tary Com­mis­sion in Nad ‘Ali, Hel­mand province who also man­aged the move­ment of fight­ers and equip­ment through the Nad ‘Ali district. 

The fol­low­ing day, a Haqqani Net­work sub-com­man­der linked to attacks against coali­tion forces and respon­si­ble for facil­i­tat­ing the move­ment of weapons and ammu­ni­tion into the Ter­ayzai dis­trict was cap­tured along with a Haqqani facil­i­ta­tor in the east­ern Khost province. Coali­tion forces then took advan­tage of a brief tar­get of oppor­tu­ni­ty by con­duct­ing sev­er­al pre­ci­sion strikes on a bunker com­plex in Pak­tiya province Mon­day, where the senior Haqqani Net­work com­man­der for Khost-Gardez pass respon­si­ble for the over­all com­mand and con­trol of all Haqqani and for­eign fight­er camps in the area was believed to be hid­ing. Afghan and coali­tion forces are still gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion to con­firm the commander’s death. 

That evening Afghan and coali­tion forces cap­tured a Tal­iban sub-com­man­der known to con­duct IED attacks against coali­tion force con­voys and facil­i­tate explo­sives for his net­work. The secu­ri­ty force sur­round­ed the tar­get­ed com­pound east of Sha­ran and Afghan forces used a loud­speak­er to call for all occu­pants to peace­ful­ly exit the build­ings. Three men attempt­ed to dis­guise them­selves by dress­ing in female attire before exit­ing the com­pound; how­ev­er they were imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fied and detained for fur­ther ques­tion­ing. In total, the sub-com­man­der and sev­er­al sus­pect­ed insur­gents were captured. 

“We con­tin­ue to aggres­sive­ly pur­sue known ene­mies of the Afghan peo­ple,” said Col. Rafael Tor­res, ISAF Joint Com­mand Com­bined Joint Oper­a­tions Cen­ter direc­tor. “The effec­tive oper­a­tions, which are care­ful­ly planned and exe­cut­ed to mit­i­gate civil­ian casu­al­ties, will con­tin­ue to cre­ate the time and space nec­es­sary for endur­ing gov­er­nance and devel­op­ment ini­tia­tives to take root.” 

Press release
Com­piled from Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force Joint Com­mand News Releases 

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