Taliban complete northeast Afghan blitz as more cities fall
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — The Taliban seized three more Afghan provincial capitals and a local army headquarters Wednesday to complete a blitz across the country’s northeast, giving them control of two-thirds of the nation as the U.S. and NATO finalize their withdrawal after a decades of war.
The fall of the capitals of Badakhshan and Baghlan provinces to the northeast as well as Farah province to the west put increasing pressure on the country’s central government to stem the tide of the advance, even as its lost a major base in Kunduz. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani rushed to Balkh province, already surrounded by Taliban-held territory, to seek help in pushing back the insurgents from warlords linked to allegations of atrocities and corruption. He also replaced his army chief of staff.
While the capital of Kabul itself has not been directly threatened in the advance, the stunning speed of the offensive raises questions of how long the Afghan government can maintain the control of the slivers of the country it has left. The government may eventually be forced to pull back to defend the capital and just a few other cities.
“I think what I would say to President Ghani is if you remain spread out everywhere, the Taliban will be able to continue to apply their current approach with success,” warned Ben Barry, the senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “You’ve got to do a bit more than stopping the Taliban. You’ve got to show you can push them back.”
The success of the Taliban offensive also calls into question whether they’d ever rejoin long-stalled peace talks in Qatar aimed at moving Afghanistan toward an inclusive interim administration as the West hoped. Instead, the Taliban could come to power by force — or the country could splinter into factional fighting like it did after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
The multiple fronts of the battle have stretched the government’s special operations forces — while regular troops have often fled the battlefield — and the violence has pushed thousands of civilians to seek safety in the capital.