Taliban fighters broke into the Ghazni jail and freed hundreds of inmates, including key Taliban commanders, in the early morning of 14 September 2015. It was the ninth spectacular jailbreak since 2001, but the Ghazni jailbreak was different than most of them: better planned and with more fighters.
By Fazal Muzhary
Taliban fighters
broke into the Ghazni jail and freed hundreds of inmates, including key Taliban
commanders, in the early morning of 14 September 2015. It was the ninth
spectacular jailbreak since 2001, but the Ghazni jailbreak was different than
most of them: better planned and with more fighters.
The government forces, on
the other hand, lacked coordination between the jail protection unit and other
security forces, and there may have been someone on the inside helping the Taliban.
AAN’s Fazal Muzhary talked to government officials, local witnesses and people
close to the Taliban, to find out whether it was the weakness of the Afghan
government or the better planning of the Taliban fighters that led to the
successful jailbreak.
The Ghazni Jailbreak; How it Happened
On 14 September
2015, at 1:50, the attack started. Taliban fighters first shot a rocket at the
main entrance of the jail to open the way for a suicide attacker who drove his
Toyota Corolla to the gate and blew it up. The blast was so big that it
shattered the windows of several houses nearby and caused the entrance post to
catch fire. The first suicide attacker was said to have had nine comrades, who
were ready to blow themselves up if the jail protection guards showed strong
resistance. Three of them were killed during the initial, short resistance by
the jail guards. After the blast and the short fight, a group of 40 attackers,
who had been waiting in an adjacent canal, entered the jail to free the
prisoners.
An eyewitness
who lives about 120 meters from the Ghazni prison and who was asleep at home
when the attack happened, described how the blast shattered the windows of his
house and woke him. He first heard the shouting of "Allahu Akbar" and then
gunfire. The shooting lasted for a few minutes. The explosion had set the
police post at the entrance on fire, so what was happening at the prison’s
gates was clearly illuminated. “I could see a large number of people coming out
of the jail,” he told AAN. The jail guards, he said, had resisted only briefly
and at nearby police check-posts there was only “shooting in the air.” An hour
later, he said, "at 2:50 am when the [other] government security forces arrived,
they started shooting in all directions until sunrise."
A source close
to the Taliban said the group of Taliban fighters that freed the prisoners had
been told beforehand that there would be ten persons, who also were inmates,
inside the jail who would be wearing white clothes and would be waiting for
them. These ten persons had broken the doors of several cells immediately after
the blast. When the fighters got in, they did not face any problem freeing the
prisoners. The group apparently went from cell to cell fearlessly freeing
prisoners. The interior ministry later said a total of 355 prisoners had been
released. As a result of the attack, four attackers and seven guards were
killed, both by the blast and in the firefight.
At 2:50 when the
government security forces from Ghazni city finally arrived at the jail,
witnesses said they started shooting in every direction, but by this time,
everything had already ended. The freed prisoners were on their way to Andar
and other areas out of the government’s reach; some had probably already
arrived to safety. The freed prisoners were from Ghazni, Paktika, Paktia and
Zabul provinces. They were first moved to Kalakhel, Alizai, Khadokhil and
several other villages in Andar district, about 17 kilometers to the south, and
were then sent to neighboring Giro, Qarabagh and other districts of the
province.
In a statement
later that day, on 14 September 2015, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed said
that hundreds of fighters from several districts had participated in multiple
attacks in the city. Indeed, the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) had
been caught in a complex situation, as Taliban fighters launched attacks, not
just on the prison, but on several other security check posts and key
government institutions at the same time, including the main police
headquarters. This made it difficult for the security forces to identify the
main target of the attacks and probably led to confusion and great difficulty
with coordination.
What is clear,
however, is that the Afghan National Army (ANA), the prison guards and the
police who were in the vicinity of the jail did not put up much of a fight.
Although the guards at the gate fought for a short time, the guards in the
central and other towers did not support them and the few guards who resisted
were ultimately killed. Moreover the jail guards did not contact the police
headquarters to ask for help, until much later. Ghazni police chief Muhammad
Hakim Angar, who has since then been replaced, told AAN that when they were
finally contacted, supporting forces arrived at the jail within ten minutes,
but by that time everything was already over.
The Ministry of
Interior, on the same day of the attack, sent a delegation to Ghazni to
officially investigate the incident. On 19 September, five days later, interior
ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told Hasht-e Subh daily that the investigation
was completed and the findings had been sent to the president’s office. He said
they would share the findings with the media, but months later still nothing
has been shared. AAN has tried several times to reach the spokesman, but his
phone has either been off or he did not respond.
The media and
other commentators, in the meantime, were swift to come up with their own
verdict. A day after the attack, local media vehemently criticized what they
saw as the security officials’ incompetence and lack of coordination. Hasht-e
Subh daily in an editorial wrote: “After the first Kandahar jailbreak,
officials said they had learned and were now prepared to prevent similar
attacks in the future, however the Ghazni jailbreak proved that the officials
did not learn anything.” According to Sarkhat daily, jail superintendent
Muhammad Latif Hassanyar and security director Omarakhan had not been at their
duty stations when the attack happened.
Taliban Preparation
The multiple
attacks in Ghazni on 14 September 2015 was a complex operation, targeting a
large number of check posts and involving a large number of Taliban fighters.
Most of them had apparently not been told what the main target was (except 50
of them, among them, the ten suicide attackers). Interestingly, several
separate groups of Taliban fighters participated in these attacks and every
group was given a different task without knowing the tasks of the other groups.
A source close to the Taliban said that one group of fighters had simply been
instructed to follow their commander and only around midnight, when they realized they were close to the main Ghazni-Paktika highway and near the jail,
were the fighters told they were attacking the central jail of Ghazni. This
group, which he said consisted of 180 men, did not attack the security check
posts around the jail; instead, some of them entered the jail after the blast
and freed the inmates. Others were told to target the government reinforcements
if they showed up, and otherwise to just accompany the freed prisoners to the
villages – which they did.
Moreover, the Taliban
simultaneously attacked several security posts around the jail and in other
parts of the city, as well as in the districts. Targets included the base of
the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) and the check-post in the former base of the US
Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Ghazni city, two posts in Qala-e Qazi
and Zargar immediately outside the city, and posts in Suleimanzai (in Deh Yak
district), and Mullah Noh Baba (in the south west of Andar district). This
seems to have successfully confused the Afghan security forces, a trick that
the militants did not try in other jailbreaks. Not letting their own fighters
know the full plan also appears to be a tactic not used in other, similar
attacks, particularly on jails.
Later on the day
of the attack on 14 September 2015, the Ministry of Interior said that three –
of the 355 – escaped prisoners had been re-arrested, although local sources a
week later could confirm only one (a prisoner who had originally been sentenced
for theft and who was re-arrested in the Zarghar area near Ghazni city). Former
police chief Angar later told AAN that, since then, 28 prisoners had been
recovered; he said most of them had returned voluntarily and a small number
were re-arrested. This figure has not been confirmed by other sources aware of
the incident.
Although NDS
director Ali Ahmad Mubariz on 3 October 2015 said that an operation had been
immediately launched to track down the freed prisoners, no one in the
surrounding areas appears to have seen a single police or government force. If
the government had indeed conducted such an operation, local people said they
would probably have encountered the Taliban fighters who were waiting for them
in Mangor area, not more than ten kilometres to the south of the city.
After the Ghazni Jailbreak; Flowers and Executions
AAN has followed
what happened to the prisoners who were freed and found that they were first
moved by the Taliban to several villages in Andar district (which neighbours
the district centre to the south-west) and then sent to Giro and other
districts of the province. Locals in Alizai, Kamalkhel and Hayatwal villages
told AAN that a large number of people came to Andar to greet their freed
relatives with flowers. Habib Rahman, a Taliban commander from Hayatwal village
who is also known as Mansur, and his brother, were welcomed in this way; both
received flowers after they arrived in Andar.
Taliban
jailbreaks do not only involve the release of their own comrades, but often
also general criminal prisoners. After the prisoners’ arrival in Andar, the Taliban
divided the prisoners in groups, selecting those whom they believed should be
punished and those who should be released. The first group included former
members of the Afghan Local Police (ALP) and major criminals. Two prisoners
were executed by the Taliban. All others, AAN was told, were freed a week after
the jailbreak. Some of the freed prisoners who had previously worked in the
ANSF were asked for a guarantee that they would not rejoin the government’s
forces.
The two
prisoners the Taliban executed were Enayatullah Taqat, also known as Natak,
from Andar district, and Alawadin from Qarabagh district. Natak ran in the
provincial council election in 2014, while Alawadin was with the police in
Qarabagh district. The reason for the executions, according to a local source,
was that they had committed serious crimes. Natak, who was also the stepbrother
of former Andar district chief Lahur, had apparently been involved in
kidnappings as well as murders. According to a local teacher who spoke to AAN,
Natak had, in the autumn of 2014, killed a man called Sharaf from Laghar
village and married his wife a month later. He said Natak had also kidnapped a
person from Ghazni city in spring 2015 and had only freed him after receiving a
ransom.
Alawadin was
executed in the neighbouring district of Qarabagh. He had been involved in
killings and robbery. A local resident told AAN that Alawadin had killed his
brother, who was working as a doctor in Kandahar, on 1 March 2015. The brother
had been driving from Kandahar to his hometown Moqur, when Alawadin, who had
recently been deployed to Moqur district as a policeman, asked the victim to
drop him off at Moqur bazaar, together with a friend who was a member of the
ALP. On the way, between Janda and Moqur, Alawadin and his friend stabbed the
doctor, threw his body into a nearby well and stole his car. When the family of
the victim learned about this, they informed the district officials, who
arrested Alawadin. The other man fled.
How the Jail Break Could Have Happened
Talking to AAN,
deputy governor Ahmadi gave several reasons why the Ghazni jailbreak may have
been so successful. He said that, first of all, also according to the
investigation team from Kabul, there had been a lack of coordination between
the security forces. The jail guards did not inform the nearby security posts;
and the police and the army stationed nearby did not show any reaction, even
though they must have seen and heard the fighting. There is a security post of
ANA soldiers about a kilometre to the southeast of the jail on Kohibad hill,
from where soldiers only fired a couple of warning shots in the air, but
according to former Ghazni Governor Faizanullah Faizan, they did not contact
the jail guards to ask what was happening or if they needed help; nor did the
jail guards inform them.
There are, all
in all, ten police check-posts in the neighbourhood, but none came to help or
rescue the jail guards or to stop the attack. There may be valid reasons for
inaction by some of the posts: they could have been confused because they were
also attacked, or they did not receive information from the jail security
guards. Others may not have come out of their posts for fear of being ambushed
by the Taliban fighters outside the posts. However, according to Ahmadi, if
they had reacted and with coordination, the attack could have been fought off,
or at least they could have prevented such a large number of prisoners from
fleeing.
Secondly,
according to Ahmadi there was weak management and coordination within the jail
protection unit, who did not act as they were supposed to: they barely fought
the attackers and did not prevent them from getting into the jail. He said the
jail guards did not resist because they were not "serious and faithful people." Some of the guards were sleeping, he said, while some others had intentionally
failed to resist. Last but not least, he said there was the possibility that
the Taliban had a secret agreement with some of the jail officials. Ahmadi
particularly mentioned superintendent Muhammad Latif Hassanyar and his deputy
Agha Jan, who were arrested on 14 September 2015, together with three security
guards, on suspicion of negligence and collusion with the Taliban.
Faizanullah
Faizan, a former Ghazni Governor who closely followed the jailbreak, also said
the jail guards did not honestly resist the attack. He confirmed that the
guards near the entrance did show a reaction but received no support from their
colleagues, and that this was why only these seven guards were killed. He
moreover said that, if the jail guards had immediately informed the nearby
soldiers and the police, they could have at least stopped the prisoners from
escaping the jail. Faizan, who was a mujahedin fighter in the 1990s, had at the
time himself participated in an attempted jailbreak. Comparing this jailbreak
with his own experience, he told AAN: "We failed to break into Ghazni jail in
the 1990s because the police forces reacted honestly and were
well-coordinated."
One source close
to the Taliban said that after the prisoners were freed, a Taliban commander
looked around the entire jail, but could not find a single security guard. "It
means all the guards of the jail either hid somewhere or escaped during the
attack," he said. This, despite the fact that, based on the attendance sheet,
110 of the total of 173 guards were supposed to have been present on the day of
the attack (although according to deputy governor Ahmadi only 60 guards were
actually there). Moreover, according to Ghazni police chief Angar: "We found that
only four pika machine gun bullets, seven kalashnikov bullets and five pistol
bullets were fired by the jail’s security guards and not a single bullet hole
could be seen in the exterior walls of the towers." This is another indicator
that the jail guards in the central towers did not resist; if they had done so,
they would have been shot at by the Taliban fighters.
Angar also
pointed to what he considered interference in the hiring of jail staff. He said
that parliamentarians in Kabul and provincial council members in Ghazni had
interfered in the appointment of the staff (including the superintendent and
security guards) which meant that they were more loyal to the MPs than the
government, lacked professional skills and had not been trained in security tactics.
He thought they had either lacked the ability to inform the other security
forces and/or had not seriously tried to resist the attackers.
Earlier Jailbreaks; Differences and Similarities
Since 2001,
Afghanistan has experienced eight Taliban-planned jailbreaks in which a total
of 1,954 prisoners were freed and 17 jail guards killed. In the first jailbreak
in 2003 in Kandahar’s Sarpoza prison, the Taliban tunnelled their way out of
Sarposa and forty-one prisoners escaped. After a weeklong search, only a
handful was recaptured). In a second jailbreak in Kandahar in 2008, Taliban
fighters carried out a massive attack, which killed 15 security guards, and
freed at least 1,200 prisoners including important Taliban members. Before the
attack, the Taliban had apparently warned locals living in the vicinity of the
prison that they should evacuate their houses. (1) In the third break into
Sarpoza prison in 2011, 500 prisoners were freed through a one kilometre long
underground tunnel that had been dug by the Taliban. In the north, in Sar-e Pul
province, Taliban fighters were able to free 170 inmates in 2012. The jailbreak
followed a powerful bomb blast inside the building and a well-coordinated
attack from three directions.
Smaller
jailbreaks include from Farah prison when inmates broke out by digging a tunnel
from their cell to the outside, on 28 November 2009. Officials captured a
thirteenth prisoner as he tried to escape. Eight months later, on 18 July 2010
after a bomb went off at the main gate of the same prison, nineteen inmates
escaped. Officials said that only one guard was killed. They also had said that
eight escapees were re-arrested. In Zabul, eight prisoners overpowered a jail
guard, who had taken them out for the Fajr dawn prayer, and fled on 15 July
2009. Lastly, four foreign prisoners escaped from the heavily fortified and
well-guarded then US-controlled Bagram jail in 2005. Military officials
familiar with the episode said the suspects are believed to have picked the
lock on their cell, changed out of their bright orange uniforms and made their
way through the heavily guarded military base under cover of night. They then
crawled over a faulty wall where a getaway vehicle was waiting for them.
Interestingly,
none of these jailbreaks caused many casualties on the side of the Taliban.
Only during the Sar-e Pul jailbreak were three insurgents reportedly killed,
and one suicide attacker in Kandahar in 2008. This suggests these operations
were all well-planned, but also points to the likelihood of repeated inside
assistance.
Since the Ghazni
jailbreak, two more have ensued. When Kunduz city fell to the Taliban on 28
September 2015, about 700 prisoners were freed, (see a video here), while in
another jailbreak, in Ghorian district in the western Herat province on 21
October 2015, six Taliban prisoners were released.
Conclusion
It seems that
the Taliban fighters were smart enough and well-prepared enough to carry out
their operation exactly as they wanted. They distracted the Afghan government
forces by attacking several security check posts at the same time. They also
kept their own fighters largely unaware of the plan. Though officials said
there was inside cooperation with the Taliban at the government’s side, it also
seems that, if this had indeed been the case, there would have been no need for
such a big, complicated operation or such a high level of secrecy. Even bearing
in mind the multiple attacks that night, the Afghan government displayed great
confusion in response to the attack. They were uncoordinated and failed to even
try to foil the attack and the escape of the prisoners. If the jail protection
guards had immediately informed all the surrounding check posts, the Taliban
fighters could have faced a much stronger resistance. It is less likely they
could have freed all the prisoners and taken them to local areas while losing
so few fighters.
Although, the
jailbreak in Ghazni is over, it is clear that similar attacks can happen again,
unless the Afghan government manages to improve the protection of its jails and
other key institutions.
About The Author:
Fazal Muzhary, Researcher at Afghan Analysts Network. He has earlier worked as a Reporter for The New York Times at Kabul, Afghanistan . Read more by the author at AAN's website.
References:
(1) For a
detailed account of 2008 Sarpoza jailbreak see Graeme Smith’s book "The Dogs
are Eating them Now: Our War in Afghanistan" Alfred A. Knopf, Canada, 2013
(pp. 215-233).
