Taliban intensify push to take control of rebel-held Panjshir
KABUL/ISLAMABAD: Anti-Taliban fighters in Afghanistan’s Panjshir valley said on Friday they were battling to repulse “heavy” assaults, as the Islamists seek to capture the last holdout province defying their rule.
Efforts to strike a peace deal between the two sides have failed, and the Taliban are keen to cap their lightning military offensive which saw them seize control of the rest of Afghanistan last month.
On Friday, Ali Maisam Nazary, a spokesman for the National Resistance Front (NRF) who is understood to be outside the valley but in close contact with key leader Ahmad Massoud, said there had been more attacks by Taliban forces overnight. “There is heavy fighting in Panjshir,” Nazary said. “He (Massoud) is busy defending the valley.”
Massoud is the son of the late guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, dubbed the “Lion of Panjshir” for holding out first against Soviet and then Taliban forces when they were power before. He is understood to want autonomy for the region. Massoud said in a statement on Wednesday that the Taliban had offered them “one or two seats” in their new administration, but he had rejected the deal.
UK keen to engage with new regime
Britain will not recognise the Taliban as the new government in Kabul but must deal with the new realities in Afghanistan and does not want to see the social
and economic fabric of the country broken, foreign secretary Dominic Raab said on Friday.
Speaking during a visit to Pakistan he said it would not have been possible to evacuate some 15,000 people from Kabul without some degree of cooperation with the Taliban, who seized Kabul on August 15. “We do see the importance of being able to engage and having a direct line of communication,” he said.
Taliban: China is our most important partner
Describing China as its “most important partner”, the Afghan Taliban has said it looks to Beijing to rebuild Afghanistan as the war-ravaged country faces widespread hunger and fears of an economic collapse.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said the group supports China’s One Belt, One Road initiative that seeks to link China with Africa, Asia and Europe through an enormous network of ports, railways, roads and industrial parks.
“China is our most important partner and represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity for us because it is ready to invest and rebuild our country,” Geo News quoted Mujahid as saying in an interview to an Italian newspaper.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow wants Kabul to join the international order as soon as possible. “You need to think about the fact that the sooner the Taliban enters, so to speak, the community of civilised nations, the easier it will be to enter into contact, communicate and somehow influence and ask some questions,” Putin said.