Kandahar falls to Taliban

The Taliban seized more major cities yesterday as they raced to take full control of Afghanistan and inched closer to Kabul, with the United States and Britain deploying thousands of troops to evacuate their citizens from the capital. 

The evacuation orders came as the Taliban took control of Kandahar -- the nation's second-biggest city -- in the insurgency's heartland, leaving only Kabul and pockets of other territories in government hands.

The Taliban also captured the capital of Logar province, just 50kms (30 miles) from Kabul, with a local lawmaker saying the insurgents were in complete control of Pul-e-Alam city.

Earlier yesterday, officials and residents in Kandahar told AFP that government forces had withdrawn en masse to a military facility outside the southern city.

"Kandahar is completely conquered. The Mujahideen reached Martyrs' Square," a Taliban spokesman tweeted, referring to a city landmark.

Hours later, the Taliban said they had also taken control of Lashkar Gah, the capital of neighbouring Helmand province.

A security source confirmed the fall of the city, telling AFP that the Afghan military and government officials had evacuated Lashkar Gah after striking a local ceasefire deal with the militants.

The Taliban also captured the town of Qala-e-Naw in the northwest, security officers said. Firuz Koh, capital of central Ghor province, was handed over without a fight, officials told Reuters.

The loss of Kandahar will be a heavy blow to the government. It is the heartland of the Taliban, ethnic Pashtun fighters who emerged in 1994 amid the chaos of civil war to sweep through most of the rest of the country over the next two years.

The defeats have fuelled concern that the US-backed government could fall to the insurgents within weeks as international forces complete their withdrawal after 20 years of war.

US intelligence assessments concluded this week that the Taliban could isolate Kabul within 30 days and take it over in 90.

"The situation has all the hallmarks of a humanitarian catastrophe," the UN World Food Programme's Thomson Phiri told a briefing, adding the agency was concerned about a "larger tide of hunger".

The fighting has also raised fears of a refugee crisis and a rollback of gains in human rights. Some 400,000 civilians have been forced from their homes since the beginning of the year, 250,000 of them since May, a UN official said.

Under the Taliban's 1996-2001 rule, women could not work, girls were not allowed to attend school and women had to cover their face and be accompanied by a male relative if they wanted to venture out of their homes. In early July, Taliban fighters ordered nine women to stop working in a bank.

Of Afghanistan's major cities, following the eight-day blitz by Taliban, the government still holds Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and Jalalabad, near the Pakistani border in the east, in addition to Kabul.

The first wave of the offensive was launched in early May after the United States and its allies all but withdrew their forces from Afghanistan, with President Joe Biden determined to end two decades of war by September 11.

Biden insists he does not regret his decision, but the speed and ease of the Taliban's urban victories in recent days has been a surprise and forced new calculations.

Washington and London announced plans late Thursday to pull out their embassy staff and citizens from the capital.

"We are further reducing our civilian footprint in Kabul in light of the evolving security situation," US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters, while noting the embassy would remain open.

"This is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal."

The Pentagon said 3,000 US troops would be deployed to Kabul within the next 24 to 48 hours, underscoring they would not be used to launch attacks against the Taliban.

Many embassies were asking staff to destroy or remove classified documents as part of evacuation plans, a Western official told Reuters.

Nato was also set to hold an urgent meeting later yesterday about the deteriorating situation, diplomatic and official sources told AFP.

After months of taking what were considered less strategically important rural areas, the Taliban since early June zeroed in on the cities.

The insurgents have taken over more than a dozen provincial capitals in the past week.

And in Herat yesterday, a day after its fall, the Taliban said they had captured the city's long-time strongman Ismail Khan, who helped lead the defence of the provincial capital along with his militia fighters.

The warlord's spokesman later confirmed Khan had been allowed to return to his residence following negotiations with the insurgents.

On Thursday, the interior ministry also confirmed the fall of Ghazni, opening a corridor along the major highway to Kabul from the Taliban heartlands in the south.

As the rout unravelled, three days of meetings between key international players on Afghanistan ended in Qatar without significant progress Thursday.

In a joint statement, the international community, including the United States, Pakistan, the European Union, and China, said they would not recognise any government in Afghanistan "imposed through the use of military force."

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday and told him the United States remained "invested" in Afghanistan's security.

But at home, criticism of Biden's policy has been mounting.

The Republican leader in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, said the exit strategy was sending the United States "hurtling toward an even worse sequel to the humiliating fall of Saigon in 1975", and urged Biden to commit to providing more support to Afghan forces.

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said Afghanistan was spiralling into a failed state and civil war in which groups such as al Qaeda would thrive and likely pose a threat to the West again.