FIGHTING BRAVADO
Panjshir fighters - and their media-savvy leaders - are full of fighting bravado.
"We are ready to defeat them, if they dare to invade," one Panjshir fighter said.
But despite their confidence, the odds seem increasingly stacked against them.
Geography at least is on the side of the Panjshir's fighters, said Motwani, and while the Taliban claim to have blocked roads into the valley, that is "very different" from controlling all sides.
The 115km-long valley surrounded by jagged snow-capped peaks offers a natural military advantage, since defending units can use high positions to ambush attacking forces below.
But the conflict appears to be escalating, Martine van Bijlert, of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, warned.
"Taliban forces have been massing around the entrance to the valley but have been hit in ambushes and have sustained casualties," Van Bijlert wrote in a recent analysis.
"Whereas both sides mainly seemed to be trying to hurt each other in order to strengthen their hand in negotiations, without starting an all-out battle, according to the latest reports, the Taliban are now summoning forces from other provinces."
The Panjshir - mainly inhabited by ethnic Tajik people - has immense symbolic value in Afghanistan as the area that has resisted occupation by invaders in the past.
For Afghans opposed to the Taliban, the holdout province stands as a symbol to show that the hardline Islamists are not the welcome rulers of all of Afghanistan, Motwani said.
"It gives hope to those Afghans who have lost almost everything in a blink of an eye," he said. "It is somewhere where people can go outside Taliban rule."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiW2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNoYW5uZWxuZXdzYXNpYS5jb20vYXNpYS90YWxpYmFuLWJhdHRsZS1maW5hbC1ob2xkb3V0LXByb3ZpbmNlLXBhbmpzaGlyLTIxNTUwNTHSAQA?oc=5
2021-09-03 11:54:14Z
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