Alwaght- 15 years after US invasion of Afghanistan to allegedly remove extremism in the war-torn country, news are circulated that Afghan soldiers desert Afghan Army to join Taliban.
Graduated from monthslong west-funded training programs and equipped with made-in-west arms, afghan soldiers take their skills and arms to Taliban to show how ineffective has been the US and its allies' strategy in Afghanistan.
Once determined to fight for bringing peace and stability back to their beloved motherland, afghan forces leave foreign-backed afghan army to join Taliban whose destruction was among most principal public aims of the US in 2001. These soldiers deserted army since they were disappointed with witnessing war and destruction during last15 years, were angry as death figures document increase in afghan civilian casualties every year, were understandably nervous as Taliban militant group was extremely close to them.
The stories of those who have fled to Lashkar Gah provide a snapshot of what Afghans endure daily, often out of the global spotlight.
"I did 18 months of army training and took an oath to serve this country," CNN cited one of deserter as saying.
"But the situation changed. The army let us down, so we had to come to the Taliban, who treat us like guests."
"I decided to leave the army when my dead and injured comrades lay in our base, and nobody took them to hospital," he added.
My army training is very useful now, as I am training Taliban fighters with the same knowledge."
Another deserter afghan soldier said told CNN "My worst memory was how a wedding party was hit by a mortar, killing a large number of women and children".
"The police left after the fighting intensified and told me to move to a vacant corner of the village. But the bullets and rockets followed, killing ten people. So I fled here."
An Afghan from an area the Taliban now control to buy goods described a relative calm in the town of Musa Qala now the Taliban were in control.
"The bazaar is now full of people when it used to be empty. That was because security was bad and some people avoided the government forces in it."
