“The security forces, after resisting for days, left the city in the early afternoon (…), which prompted Taliban fighters to enter the city and seize government buildings,” the Spanish Efe news agency quoted a security official in Baghlan as saying under cover. From anonymity.
Abdul Razzaq Hashmi, a representative of Baghlan province in the lower house of the National Parliament, confirmed to Eva the city’s fall in the hands of the Taliban, and said that Afghan forces withdrew from the provincial capital after resistance for several days.
The Taliban have captured eight of the 34 provincial capitals in about a week, and are continuing their offensive against the Western-backed Kabul government, including in Lashkar Gah in Helmand and Kandahar in the province of the same name.
After 20 years of Western military presence and spending billions of dollars training and equipping Afghan forces, questions are being raised about the rapid collapse of regular forces, with some cases in which hundreds of soldiers have fled the battlefield, the news agency reported. American Associated Press (AP).
The fighting is currently in the hands of small groups of the elite forces and the Afghan Air Force, which is still supported by US aviation.
The success of the Taliban’s quick offensive has heightened the urgency of restarting long-stalled talks that could end the fighting and secure a transitional executive authority in Afghanistan, with the participation of the main factions.
Today, the US envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, warned the Taliban that a government that takes power by force will not be recognized internationally.
Today, the US envoy flew to Doha, the capital of Qatar, where the Taliban has political representation, to tell the rebel group that they should not continue their advance on the battlefield, and that the military invasion of the capital, Kabul, would imply isolation at the international level.
The US envoy, and other stakeholders, hope to persuade Taliban leaders to return to talks with the Afghan government while US and NATO forces finalize their military withdrawal from the Middle Eastern country.
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