There is a popular proverb saying, “Prevention is better than treatment or cure.” It is so because prevention is cheaper than treatment and at the same time protects the body from any harm that may be caused by intake of medication prescribed to treat the disease. It denotes that it is always better to try to keep a bad thing from happening than to fix it once it has happened. The same formula is applicable to security. Security forces should try their best to keep conflict away from civilians and residential areas. If they fail to do so, the job becomes harder for them in the next phase. They are forced to engage with militants in densely populated and residential areas. The same happened in Ghazni. Although there were reports about Taliban planning to attack Ghazni city since a couple of months, the security apparatus failed to prevent the Taliban’s infiltration into the city due to negligence or a deal, leading to the fall of many parts of the city into the hands of rebels. To spread panic among the residents, the insurgents either destroyed or torched government and public properties because they know they cannot hold the city for so long and it was also not their goal; they just wanted to show they are strong. They achieved their goal, but Afghan security forces that had the experience of the fall of Kunduz and Farah failed to prevent another tragedy.
The neglect of Afghan forces prior to the attack made things difficult for them because it was way too easy for them to crush the Taliban in the city’s outer security parameters than in the city’s streets now. If local security officials had discharged their duty responsibly, the tragedy of Ghazni was preventable. Also unacceptable are the pretexts for the fall of many parts of the city to the Taliban that reinforcements deployed by the central government could not arrive on time, because much of the city had collapsed on the first night of the Taliban offensive.
The Ghazni tragedy has two possible scenarios: it is being surrendered to the Taliban based on a deal, or the local security forces have committed an unforgivable, willful dereliction of duty. The government has to be responsive in both cases. Additionally, its foreign allies, who still have thousands of troops in the country and signed security agreements with Afghanistan, also need to have an answer for what their role is.
The tragedy of Ghazni; the repeat of a “repeated mistake”
