The United States stated that after the Taliban militants occupied the sixth provincial capital and border towns and trade routes on Monday (August 9), Afghan security forces have the responsibility to defend the country.
President Biden has stated that the US military mission in Afghanistan will end on August 31. He believes that the Afghan people must decide their own future. He will not let another generation of Americans participate in the 20-year war.
The U.S. State Department said on Monday that Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, had gone to Qatar, where he would “press the Taliban to stop their military offensive and negotiate a political solution”.
The US State Department stated that during the three-day talks, representatives of governments and multilateral organizations will urge “to reduce violence and ceasefires, and promise not to recognize governments imposed by force.”
After the Taliban were expelled in 2001, they worked hard to re-enforce strict Islamic laws, and as foreign troops withdrew, they stepped up their campaign to defeat the government.
On Monday, they occupied Ibak, the capital of the northern province of Samangan.
“The Taliban are now fighting against the Afghan army to seize the police headquarters and compound of the governor,” said Qiardinzia, a councilman of Ibak.
“Some parts of the capital have fallen into the hands of the Taliban.”
Last weekend, the insurgents occupied three provincial capitals-Zarangi in the southern province of Nimruz, Sarpur in the northern province of the same name, and Talokhan in the northeastern part of Takhar province.
They have occupied Kunduz, the capital of the northern province, and Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that the United States is deeply concerned about this trend, but the Afghan security forces are capable of fighting insurgent organizations.
Kirby said: “These are their military, their capital city, and the people they want to defend. It really depends on the leadership they are willing to show here at this particular moment.”
When asked what Afghan security forces can do if they don’t fight the U.S. military, Kirby said: “Not much.”
U.S. officials, who asked not to be named, said that although the military warned Biden earlier this year that provincial capitals would fall with the withdrawal of troops, they were still surprised by the speed at which some of the provincial capitals were occupied by the Taliban.
With the Taliban occupying the capital city, the United States carried out less than 12 attacks over the weekend, one of which was the destruction of equipment.
An official said that because of the occupation of Kunduz, the Afghan army did not ask for any support.
resistanceAccuse
The Taliban’s victory triggered accusations of the withdrawal of foreign troops. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace told the Daily Mail that the agreement reached between the United States and the Taliban last year was a “bad agreement.”
Washington agreed to withdraw from Biden’s Republican predecessor Donald Trump in an agreement negotiated last year.
Wallace said that his government had asked some NATO allies to keep their troops in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, but failed to obtain sufficient support.
“Some people say they are keen, but their parliament is not. It soon became clear that without the United States as a framework country, these options would be closed,” Wallace said.
After the Taliban insurgents occupied Kunduz where German troops deployed for ten years, the German defense minister rejected calls for his soldiers to return to Afghanistan.
The Afghan commandos launched a counterattack, trying to repel the Taliban fighters who occupied Kunduz. Residents fleeing the conflict described almost constant gunfire and explosions.
In the west near the Iranian border, security officials said fierce fighting is taking place in the outskirts of Herat. Arif Jalali, director of the Herat Regional Hospital, said that 36 people have been killed and 220 injured in the past 11 days. More than half of the wounded were civilians.
According to UNICEF, in the past 72 hours, 20 children have been killed and 130 children have been injured in southern Kandahar province.
“The atrocities are getting worse every day,” said Herve Ludovick Dries, UNICEF’s representative in Afghanistan.
FFamily run away
In Kunduz, many desperate families, some of them with young children and pregnant women, abandon their homes, hoping to reach the relatively safe 315 kilometers (200 miles) south of Kabul-which usually takes about 10 hours by car.
As the gunfire echoed on the streets of his hometown, engineer Ghulam Rasool was trying to rent a bus to take his family to the capital.
“We may be forced to walk to Kabul, but we are not sure if we will be killed on the way. … not only did the ground conflict stop for 10 minutes,” Rasol told Reuters.
He and several other residents and a security official said that the Afghan commandos launched an operation to clear the Kunduz insurgents.
Government officials said that in Kabul, suspected Taliban militants killed an Afghan radio station manager, the latest in a series of attacks on media workers.
Thousands of people tried to enter Kabul even though the city witnessed an attack in the diplomatic zone.
On Sunday, Taliban spokesman Muhammad Naeem Wardak (Muhammad Naeem Wardak) warned the United States not to intervene further to support government forces in an interview with Al Jazeera.
