RASC News Agency: The Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF) has claimed responsibility for a night-time rocket assault on a Taliban stronghold in the northern province of Takhar, reporting that at least two members of the militant group were killed.
In a statement published across its social media platforms, the AFF said its fighters targeted a Taliban garrison in Laleh-Gozar village, located in Khwaja Bahauddin district. The compound under attack, once the home of Malik Tatar, the former police chief of Yangi Qala under the previous republic, has since been confiscated and converted into a Taliban military installation.
Local residents and independent sources confirmed the strike, reporting that at least three rockets slammed into the Taliban-held compound. Witnesses described heavy blasts that shook the surrounding area and left the militants scrambling in disarray.
As is often the case, Taliban officials in Takhar have so far refused to issue any formal statement on casualties or damage sustained in the attack. Observers say the regime’s silence reflects a deliberate policy of denial, designed to conceal its growing vulnerability in the north and to project an illusion of control that is increasingly eroded by insurgent strikes.
This latest assault marks the second high-profile operation by the Freedom Front in Khwaja Bahauddin within a single week. Just days earlier, on Sunday evening, the group launched rockets at a Taliban intelligence office in the same district, claiming to have wounded two members of the group’s notorious intelligence wing.
Khwaja Bahauddin is more than just another northern district. It carries deep symbolic weight in Afghanistan’s modern history of resistance. During the Taliban’s first reign of terror in the late 1990s, the district was among the key bastions of Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the legendary leader of the anti-Taliban resistance and the country’s officially recognized national hero.
It was here that al-Qaeda operatives of Arab origin infiltrated Massoud’s base and assassinated him an event that not only deprived Afghanistan of one of its most strategic military leaders but also paved the way for the September 11 attacks in the United States.
The renewed operations of the Afghanistan Freedom Front in Khwaja Bahauddin highlight how tenuous the Taliban’s grip has become in parts of northern Afghanistan. While the group rules through intimidation, censorship, and public punishments, its inability to secure districts with such historic significance underscores the regime’s fragility.
By choosing targets embedded with symbolic meaning such as compounds seized from former republic-era commanders or intelligence offices used for repression the AFF is steadily eroding the Taliban’s image of invincibility. The Taliban’s silence in the face of mounting losses, analysts argue, not only weakens its credibility but also emboldens growing networks of resistance.
The Taliban’s return to power in 2021 was marked by promises of stability, yet nearly four years later, attacks such as this one demonstrate the opposite: a regime increasingly isolated, haunted by its past, and incapable of extinguishing the embers of defiance that continue to flare across the north.
