Taliban say they control 85% of Afghanistan

Humanitarian concerns mount after U.S. exit

KABUL/ MOSCOW •Taliban officials said on Friday the Sunni Muslim insurgent group had taken control of 85 per cent of territory in Afghanistan, and international concern mounted over problems getting medicines and supplies into the country.

Afghan government officials dismissed the assertion that the Taliban controlled most of the country as part of a propaganda campaign launched as foreign forces, including the United States, withdraw after almost 20 years of fighting.

But local Afghan officials said Taliban fighters, emboldened by the withdrawal, had captured an important district in Herat province, home to tens of thousands of minority Shi’ite Hazaras.

Torghundi, a northern town on the border with Turkmenistan, had also been captured by the Taliban overnight, Afghan and Taliban officials said.

Hundreds of Afghan security personnel and refugees continued to flee across the border into neighbouring Iran and Tajikistan, causing concern in Moscow and other foreign capitals that radical Islamists could infiltrate Central Asia.

Three visiting Taliban officials sought to address those concerns during a visit to Moscow.

“We will take all measures so that Islamic State will not operate on Afghan territory ... and our territory will never be used against our neighbours,” one of the Taliban officials, Shahabuddin Delawar, told a news conference.

He said “you and the entire world community have probably recently learned that 85 per cent of the territory of Afghanistan has come under the control” of the Taliban.

As fighting continued, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said health workers were struggling to get medicines and supplies into Afghanistan, and that some staff had fled after facilities came under attack.

The WHO’S regional emergencies director, Rick Brennan, said at least 18.4 million people require humanitarian assistance, including 3.1 million children at risk of acute malnutrition.

“We are concerned about our lack of access to be able to provide essential medicines and supplies and we are concerned about attacks on health care,” Brennan, speaking via videolink from Cairo, told a UN briefing in Geneva.

Some aid will arrive by next week, including 3.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses and oxygen concentrators, he said.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday the Afghan people must decide their own future and that he would not consign another generation of Americans to the two-decadeold war.