Latest Taliban victories cut off road from Kabul to north
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan forces essentially collapsed in three more strategic provincial capitals Tuesday, adding to an already alarming drumbeat of Taliban victories around the country and effectively cutting off the main highway connecting the country’s capital with northern Afghan provinces.
The three cities — Pul-i-Khumri, roughly 150 miles north of Kabul in Baghlan province; Farah, the capital of the western province of the same name; and Fayzabad, in remote and rugged Badakhshan province — were the seventh, eighth and ninth to be overrun by the Taliban in less than a week. There, as in other fallen cities, witnesses and defenders described twinned crises of low morale and exhaustion in the face of unrelenting pressure by the insurgents.
The rapid Taliban victories have been a devastating blow to the government forces that the U.S. and its Western allies spent years and billions of dollars training to stand against the Taliban. And the losses are coming just three weeks before American troops are to complete their final withdrawal from the country, leaving a modest force behind to defend the U.S. Embassy.
For now the Afghan government’s most pressing problem is defending Mazar-i-Sharf, the country’s economic engine and capital of Balkh province, now effectively surrounded by the Taliban and cut off by ground from Kabul.
Mohammad Kamin Baghlani, a pro-government militia commander in Baghlan province, described a sudden fall in Pul-i-Khumri after withstanding a Taliban siege that had stretched on for months.
“We were under a lot of pressure, and we were not able to resist anymore,” he said. “All areas of the city fell.”
Pul-i-Khumri is a city of more than 200,000 people on the highway connecting Kabul to Afghanistan’s northern region, where the insurgents have now effectively seized all but two provinces.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed tweeted the insurgents had taken Farah city, but Abdul Naser Farahi — a lawmaker from the area who is in Kabul — said the government still retained control of the intelligence department and a military base.
Masood Bakhtawar, the provincial governor of Farah, denied that the city had been captured by the insurgents and said that fighting was ongoing.
Hasib Siddiqi, a resident of Farah city, said his neighbors had fled the city in recent days.
“We were deceived by the government’s assurances,” he said. “They said the city won’t collapse and that they have brought choppers and aircraft and they will defend the city.”
Ahmad Jawid Mojadadi, a member of Badakhshan’s provincial council, confirmed Tuesday night that Fayzabad had fallen.
There had been fighting around the small city, with a population of around 33,000, for about a week. Its seizure by the Taliban marks the first time the city was captured by the insurgent group since their rise to power in the 1990s.
As the Taliban’s power in the country grows, a U.S. peace envoy warned the group Tuesday that any government that comes to power through force in Afghanistan won’t be recognized internationally.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy, traveled to Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office, to tell the group that there was no point in pursuing victory on the battlefield because a military takeover of the capital, Kabul, would guarantee they would be global pariahs. He and others hope to persuade Taliban leaders to return to peace talks with the Afghan government as American and NATO forces finish their pullout from the country.
Khalilzad plans to “press the Taliban to stop their military offensive and to negotiate a political settlement, which is the only path to stability and development in Afghanistan,” the State Department said.
Meanwhile, the Taliban military chief Mohammad Yaqoob released an audio message on Twitter to his fighters on Tuesday, ordering them not to harm Afghan forces and government officials in territories they conquer.
He also told the insurgents to stay out of abandoned homes of government and security officials who have fled, leave marketplaces open and protect places of business, including banks.
Some civilians who have fled Taliban advances have said that the insurgents imposed repressive restrictions on women and burned down schools. The office of the U.N. human-rights chief said it has received reports of summary executions and military use and destruction of homes, schools and clinics in captured areas.
U.S. and U.N. diplomats and officials described a fledgling strategy to slow the Taliban. The plan aligns closely with long-standing U.S. recommendations that the Afghans consolidate their remaining forces around crucial roads and cities, as well as key border crossings, and abandon most of the dozens of districts already seized by the Taliban.
The U.S. has provided air support to Afghan security forces only in two southern cities.
Barring intervention by the White House or Pentagon, such support is considered likely to end by Aug. 31.
Information for this article was contributed by Taimoor Shah, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Najim Rahim of The New York Times and by Kathy Gannon, Tameem Akhgar, Matthew Lee and Jamey Keaten of The Associated Press.