Violence flares in north Afghanistan as forces ready for deadly winter

At least seven Afghan soldiers were killed when the Taliban attacked their base Tuesday, the latest brazen assault in Afghanistan's north, where local and international forces are bracing for violent months ahead.

Winter once marked a slowdown in the so-called "fighting season", with Taliban fighters returning to their villages because snow and ice made attacks more difficult to pull off.

But in recent years any seasonal distinction in violence has all but disappeared, with insurgents continuing to mount offensives on vulnerable bases and checkpoints year-round.

In Tuesday's incident, a joint military base in the Dawlat Abad district of Balkh province near the Uzbekistan border was attacked, the Afghan defence ministry said. The base was shared by the army and the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's secretive intelligence agency. Seven soldiers were killed and three more wounded, along with three NDS staff, the ministry said.

According to German intelligence officials at Camp Marmal, a German-run base outside Mazar-i-sharif in Balkh near to where Tuesday's attack took place, last January saw one of the highest-ever numbers of attacks in the north.

"If there is no game changer on the strategic level (this year), it will be a 'hot' winter," one official told AFP during a recent visit.

"We are talking about two dozens of security incidents average per day" across NATO's northern command this winter, he added.

Unlike in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, which are largely Pashtun, the Taliban in the north are made up mainly of Uzbek and Tajik fighters. Sometimes they join up just to get paid, and in other instances families will have one member join the Taliban while another signs up with the Afghan security forces, a German military official said.

"Often families have ties to both organisations," the officer said. If you "orient yourself in more directions... you have more options."