[Islamabad] The Afghan Taliban’s gains continue on a fast track as the radical Sunni movement captured a sixth provincial capital on Monday.
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Insurgents entered Samangan on Monday morning without a fight after community elders pleaded with officials to spare the city from more violence following weeks of clashes on the outskirts, said Sefatullah Samangani, deputy governor of Samangan province.“The governor accepted and withdrew all the forces from the city,” Samangani added, saying the Taliban were now in “full control.”
A Taliban spokesman confirmed the city had been taken.
On Sunday evening, after expelling government forces, the Taliban entered Taloqan, the capital of Takhar province, and hoisted its flag over the main square of the country’s seventh-largest city.
In the last three days, the Taliban has also taken control of provincial capitals Zaranj, Sheberghan, Kunduz and Sar-e Pol. Afghanistan has 34 provinces.
In a massive blow to the Kabul administration, the Taliban earlier on Sunday morning captured Kunduz, a strategic city considered a gateway to the northern provinces.
The capture of Kunduz, the country’s sixth-largest city, is the biggest gain so far for the Taliban.
Kunduz is connected by highways to Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif (the country’s fourth-largest city) and Badakhshan province, and to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.
Meanwhile, multiple rockets were fired at Kandahar International Airport on Saturday and Sunday.
According to local media, “the attack [on Sunday] caused no casualties, but a passenger airplane that was landing at the airport was redirected to Kabul.”
It is the fifth time in three weeks that the airport has come under rocket fire. Fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security forces continues in Kandahar, Herat and Lashkar Gah.
As the Taliban attacks swell, the security forces have responded with strikes assisted by the US Air Force.
Fawad Aman, spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said on Saturday that “US B-52 bombers have launched airstrikes on the Taliban in the Jawzjan area and inflicted heavy damages on them.”
The fierce fighting and aerial bombardments have raised growing concerns about civilian casualties.
Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesperson, told The Media Line that “after the shameless defeat, the warplanes are deliberately bombing civilians and causing heavy collateral damage. The Kabul administration is committing war crimes.
“Kabul puppet regime forces are fleeing and leaving masses of weapons, ammunition and military vehicles behind them,” Mujahid said.
Obaidullah Tooro, a member of the Sar-e Pol provincial council, told The Media Line the “Taliban has expelled all the officials and taken control of police headquarters and other departments.
“Chaos has spread throughout [Sar-e Pol] city and no official or control of the Kabul administration is seen in any direction. Meanwhile, Taliban special forces are patrolling in the city,” Tooro said.
On Saturday, the Taliban captured the strategic city of Sheberghan, the capital of Jowzjan province, and on Friday, the Islamists took control of Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz province.
On Friday, the British Foreign Office said, “All British nationals in Afghanistan are advised to leave now by commercial means.”
On Saturday, the American Embassy in Kabul issued a security alert urging US citizens to leave Afghanistan immediately using available commercial flight options, and not plan to rely on US government flights.
On Sunday, the US Embassy said in a tweet that “President Biden feels that the Afghan government & the security forces have the training, equipment & numbers to prevail, & now is the moment for the ‘leadership & the will’ to face the Taliban’s aggression.”
Michael Kugelman, deputy director and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center in Washington and a leading expert on Afghanistan, told The Media Line, “Biden made his withdrawal decision based on an assessment of the terror threats to the US, not on the Taliban’s strength.
“There are two options: No. 1 is that the Biden administration would be consistent with current Afghan policy, but I wouldn’t rule out option No. 2, which is about the best use of US resources in humanitarian-refugee aid, which is now much needed in the war-torn country,” Kugelman added.
“Afghans are being displaced on an alarming scale, and bordering states vow to turn them away. Many will be forced to flee further afield. This is a global humanitarian crisis, not just a regional one,” he said.
“If the US ceases anti-Taliban operations on August 31, that would send confusing messages and could have a demoralizing impact on the Afghan security forces, but if it continues, the US is continuing its war, even post-withdrawal,” he noted.
“The US Air Force’s renewed airstrikes in recent days can bring much-needed assistance to the Afghan security forces, but this also increases the risk of more civilian casualties,” Kugelman continued. “Additionally, this presents a policy conundrum with the US withdrawal officially scheduled to conclude in less than a month.”
Adeeb Z. Safvi, a Karachi-based defense analyst and a retired Pakistan Navy captain, told The Media Line, “The US signed the Doha peace accord with the Afghan Taliban [in February 2020]. Since then the US decision-makers continue to address them as insurgents. Does that mean the world’s superpower signed an agreement with a terrorist outfit? Does it not de facto recognize their stance of calling themselves ‘the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan?’”
When the Taliban began its governance of Afghanistan in September 1996, after the fall of Kabul, it established what the movement called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which at its peak controlled approximately 90% of the country.
Safvi continued that “in fact, looking at the contents of the agreement, it is acceptance of the Taliban’s existence as a legal entity and owners of their homeland.”
“Taliban forces are now in control of 85% of Afghanistan’s landmass. Despite the deadliest of clashes in the country, we do not see a mass exodus of people into neighboring countries,” he said.
“The US in violation of the Doha accord is continuing with airstrikes against the Taliban. Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports say that the [President Ashraf] Ghani-led Kabul regime is considering the imposition of martial law,” Safvi said.
Anis Ur Rehman, a Kabul-based political analyst, told The Media Line, “The main reason for the current devastating situation in Afghanistan is the rapid withdrawal of US forces.
“The Afghan government was not at all prepared to tackle such a situation,” he noted.
“Unexpectedly, foreign forces evacuated their strongholds, including Bagram Air Base, in a scramble, which left a negative impact and sent [Afghan security forces’] morale down to some extent,” Rehman continued. As a consequence, “Afghan President Ashraf Ghani recently held Washington responsible for the current deteriorating situation in the country.
“Although the Taliban has spread the war across the country, they cannot maintain control over these areas for long,” he claimed.
“The Taliban enters the cities, seizes weapons, vehicles, and leaves the area in pursuit of another win. We have observed such a situation in recent days,” Rehman said.
In contrast, Kamal Alam, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center in Washington, told The Media Line from somewhere in northern Afghanistan that “the current deteriorating situation in Afghanistan has as much to do with the failure of the Ashraf Ghani-led regime as it does with an overall failure of US policy.
“Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, wrote his Ph.D., on the failure of senior US generals to report the truth about the war in Vietnam,” Alam said. “In a strange irony, he was part of the clique of generals who were guilty of the same [regarding the war in Afghanistan].
“Year after year, each US general [in turn] distorted the truth, [saying] that America could win the war. Barring Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, very few senior US officers told the truth whilst in uniform,” he said.
“What was the truth? That the US forces were there to save the lives and the corruption of an incompetent Afghan government,” he carried on. “Today each Afghan leader has millions stashed in Dubai, London or Istanbul along with foreign passports whilst the ordinary Afghan suffers.”
“The collapse of the Afghan army is also testimony to the lies of ‘We trained a great army,’” Alam said. “The real failure is the lies and deceit of the Afghan leadership currently in charge along with the 20 years of deluded visions of US generals.
“However, the resistance against both the Taliban and the corruption of the current political elite has started, so there is some light at the end of the tunnel. However the Taliban and Ghani thrive off each other whilst the silent majority of Afghans die and suffer,” Alam said.
Azeem Khalid Qureshi, an Islamabad-based international relations expert, told The Media Line that “the US’s irresponsible withdrawal, without creating a strategically stable domestic environment, from Afghanistan, has created a vacuum and the power imbalance in the country paved a way for ongoing civil war.
“Critics of the withdrawal had warned that the Taliban could take over the entire country,” Qureshi added.
“Different factions of the Taliban are filling the power void left by the NATO/ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] forces, and the fragile Afghan authorities are unable to control the war-torn country’s vast territories,” he said.
“If, God forbid, the ongoing conflict drags out, the country could be plunged into another decade of civil war, unless political discussions can resume,” Qureshi said.