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Paktika Ambush from 2016 Spread as Panjshir Fighting in 2021
Published 3 years ago
An ambush from 2016 against members of the Afghan National Army is being spread on social media as current fighting in the Panjshir region.
The footage above is currently being spread on social media as current fighting in the Panjshir region. The title currently being spread with this video states "New video of the Panjshir war and the retreat of the Taliban with their tanks." Unfortunately, this is not the case.
While we would love to see footage of the Taliban being turned in Panjshir, this video was recorded in 2016. It was recorded by the Taliban and members of Al Qaeda in the Paktika Province of Afghanistan. It shows members of those two organizations hammering the Afghan National Army with machine gun and recoilless rifle fire as the Afghan National Army retreats.
We know this to be the case, because when this video was initially released by the Taliban, we covered down on the topic at length.
Currently, the fighting in Panjshir appears to be one-sided in favor of the Taliban, much the same way as it was before the United States inserted ODA teams into the Mazar-i-Sharif region to assist the Northern Alliance at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. Fortunately, the new Northern Alliance has a lot of experience fighting a guerilla war against the Taliban, and we expect to see them doing the same thing again here.
For now, if you see footage coming out of Panjshir that claims one thing or the other, please do your due diligence before spreading the information any further. There is a near constant barrage of misinformation coming out of the region as both sides are fighting a simultaneous information battle against each other while they fight each other down in the valleys and up on the mountains of Panjshir. Hopefully, we see some more reliable information coming out of the region in the near future, but for now, just be wary of what you see on highly accessible social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
