BRIEF

The North East Tower

By Monday morning the battle lines at Qala-i Jangi were firmly drawn. Taliban fighters controlled the southern courtyard—roughly half the fortress—while the Northern Alliance, at this time being referred to as the United Front, indicating the growing warlord and militia alliance against the Taliban, had reinforced its positions at the main gate, along the northern walls, and outside the perimeter of the fortress itself. A T-55 main battle tank remained on the northeast tower from the day before, while a second tank in the north courtyard below maintained a position near the interior wall, its barrel pointing through the narrow passage to the southern courtyard, occasionally firing its 100 mm main gun through the breach. The tanks, as decisive as they might have been at Qala-i Jangi, were short of ammunition for their main armament, which precluded them from playing a more significant role other than suppressive fire into the southern half of the fortress.

Taliban fire from the southern courtyard was significant but inconsistant, as they had acquired rockets and mortar systems, in addition to other small arms from armories along the north wall of the southern courtyard, and in conex containers along the west wall of the southern courtyard. In addition, weapons and ammunition retrieved from dead United Front soldiers killed on Sunday were now in Taliban hands. United Front soldiers claimed that as many as seventy of their fellow soldiers had been killed in the initial fighting the day before, significantly adding to the stockpile of available weapons available to the enemy.

However, it was the area just outside the fortress, over the north wall, that was the kill-zone, taking the brunt of Taliban fire. Attempts to fire at United Front positions from the south courtyard sent rocket and rifle fire arcing over the north wall and impacting beyond the fortress. Standing at the road north of the fortress, one could hear the constant whizzing of rounds overhead. (Later in the day on Monday a British news crew walking towards the fortress from the north was hit by mortar fire, injuring at least one reporter who took shrapnel to the leg.)

It wasn’t clear Monday if there was going to be an immediate United Front solution to the uprising. United Front soldiers at the fortress said that there would be no negotiation. That the foreigners had given up their chance to surrender and now the uprising would be “finished to the end.” Still, as reinforcements trickled to the fortress, a stalemate ensued, both sides unwilling or unable to advance into the portion of the fortress controlled by the other. Commanders Dostum and Atta, and the two US Special Forces ODAs attached to them, were still involved with the Taliban surrender at Kunduz, and were therefore unable to coordinate the United Front response to the uprising. Furthermore, any plans to end the uprising swiftly, if there were such plans, were complicated by the fact that there was an American CIA agent unaccounted for, but presumed dead, somewhere in the southern courtyard.

Additional Afghanistan Material by CFR:

For an inside look at reporting the uprising at Qala Jangi see CFR’s feature length documentary Fog and Friction. CFR Director Dodge Billingsley and TIME Magazine’s Alex Perry were there as the battle unfolded, trying to make sense of this watershed event in the war for Afghanistan.

Qala-i Jangi Satellite Imagery

Spann Interrogates John Walker at Qala-i Jangi Transcript

Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan