Taliban 11 km from Kabul, capture Mazar-e-Sharif
Won’t allow imposed war to wipe out gains of 20 yrs: Ghani
Kabul, Aug. 14: Mazar-eSharif, the fourth-largest city in Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban on Saturday after a multi-pronged assault launched by insurgents, according to a lawmaker.
The Taliban seized Mazar-e-Sharif and three more provinces Saturday, including Logar province, just south of the capital, Kabul, and detained local officials, said Hoda Ahmadi, a lawmaker from the province. She said the Taliban have reached the Char Asyab district, just 11 kilometers south of Kabul.
Balkh lawmaker Abas Ebrahimzada said the Mazar-e-Sharif’s national army corps surrendered first, which prompted the pro-government militias and other forces to lose morale and give up in the face of the onslaught.
According to the lawmaker, all of the provincial installations, including the governor’s office, are in Taliban hands.
The insurgents have captured much of northern, western and southern Afghanistan in a breakneck offensive less than three weeks before the United States is set to withdraw its last troops, raising fears of a full militant takeover or another Afghan civil war.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani delivered a televised speech Saturday, his first public appearance since the recent Taliban gains. He vowed not to give up the “achievements” of the 20 years since the US toppled the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.
The US has continued holding peace talks between the government and the Taliban in Qatar this week, and the international community has warned that a Taliban government brought about by force would be shunned. But the insurgents appear to have little interest in making concessions as they rack up victories on the battlefield.
The withdrawal of foreign troops and the swift collapse of Afghanistan’s own forces has raised fears the Taliban could return to power or the country could be shattered by factional fighting.
It has also prompted many American and Afghan veterans of the conflict to question whether two decades of blood and treasure was worth it.
Kabul, Aug. 14: The United States spent billions supplying the Afghan military with the tools to defeat the Taliban, but the rapid capitulation of the armed forces means that weaponry is now fuelling the insurgents’ astonishing battlefield successes.
“We provided our Afghan partners with all the tools — let me emphasise: All the tools,” United States President Joe Biden said when defending his decision to withdraw American forces and leave the fight to the locals.
But Afghan defence forces have shown little appetite for that fight and, in their tens of thousands, have been laying down their arms — only for the Taliban to immediately pick them up.
The Taliban’s social media is awash with videos of Taliban fighters seizing weapons caches — the majority supplied by Western powers.
Footage of Afghan soldiers surrendering in the northern city of Kunduz shows army vehicles loaded with heavy weapons and mounted with artillery guns safely in the hands of the insurgent rank and file.
In the western city of Farah, fighters patrolled in a car marked with an eagle swooping on a snake — the official insignia of the country’s intelligence service.
While US forces took the “sophisticated” equipment with them when they withdrew, the Taliban blitz has handed the group “vehicles, humvees, small arms and light weapons, as well as ammunition”, Justine Fleischner of weapons-tracking group Conflict Armament Research, said.
Experts say such hauls —on top of unacknowledged support from regional allies such as Pakistan — has given the Taliban a massive boost.
The weapons will not only help the Taliban’s march on Kabul but “strengthen its authority” in the cities it has captured, said Raffaello Pantucci, senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.