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Afghan government forces are battling the Taliban in three key cities

Ferocious fighting is taking place in a major Afghan city, amid fears it could be the first provincial capital to fall to the Taliban.

Lashkar Gah in southern Helmand province is under heavy assault from the militants, despite persistent US and Afghan air strikes.

The Taliban are said to have seized a TV station. Thousands of people fleeing rural areas took shelter in buildings.

"There is fighting all around," a doctor told the BBC from his hospital.

Hundreds of Afghan reinforcements have been deployed to battle the militants. The Taliban have made rapid advances in recent months as US forces have withdrawn after 20 years of military operations in the country.

Helmand was the centrepiece of the US and British military campaign, and Taliban gains there would be a blow for the Afghan government.

If Lashkar Gah fell, it would be the first provincial capital won by the Taliban since 2016. It is one of three provincial capitals under attack.

An Afghan military commander in the city warned that a Taliban victory would have a "devastating effect on global security".

"This is not a war of Afghanistan, this is a war between liberty and totalitarianism," Maj Gen Sami Sadaat told the BBC.

On Monday, the Afghan information ministry announced that 11 radio and four television networks in Helmand province had stopped broadcasting due to what it described as Taliban "attacks and threats".

Attempts by the militants to capture Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, have continued after rocket strikes hit its airport on Sunday.

Seizing control of Kandahar would be a hugely symbolic victory for the Taliban, giving them a grip on the south of the country.

In a third besieged city, Herat, in the west, government commandos are battling the insurgents after days of fierce fighting. Government forces have taken back some areas after a UN compound was attacked on Friday.

Videos shared on social media appeared to show residents on the streets and rooftops of Herat shouting "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest") in support of the government's gains.

Story continues

Map showing areas of full Taliban or government control, updated 29 July 2021

As government forces struggled to contain Taliban advances, President Ashraf Ghani blamed the sudden withdrawal of US troops for the increase in fighting.

"The reason for our current situation is that the decision was taken abruptly," he told parliament.

Mr Ghani said he had warned Washington that the withdrawal would have "consequences".

Although nearly all its military forces have left, the US has continued its air offensive in support of government troops. Strikes targeting Lashkar Gah continued late on Monday.

President Biden's administration announced on Monday that because of the increase in violence, it would take in thousands more Afghan refugees who worked with US forces.

The US and UK have accused the Taliban of committing possible war crimes by "massacring civilians" in a town captured near the Pakistan border.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had seen reports of "deeply disturbing and totally unacceptable" Taliban atrocities.

Gruesome videos that emerged from Spin Boldak apparently showed revenge killings. The Taliban have rejected the accusations.

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Afghanistan: Street fighting rages as Taliban attack key city

Taliban fighters continue to seize territory in Afghanistan as the militant group mounts new offensives in the northern part of the war-torn country victories that have come as the US prepares to withdraw its troops by Sept. 11.

There have been reports of intense fighting between Taliban and Afghan government forces surrounding the northern provincial capitals of Kunduz, Faryab and Balkh in recent days.

Militant forces were closing in on Kunduz on Monday and had overrun the district headquarters in Imam Sahib and taken control of the police headquarters, Inamuddin Rahmani, the provincial police spokesman, told the Associated Press.

Since the Biden administration announced in April that it would pull the remainder of US troops from Afghanistan, ending Americas longest war, the Taliban have moved beyond their southern strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar and begun taking control of areas like Imam Sahib, which islocated near the border with Tajikistan and on a key supply route from Central Asia.

The latest offensive comes as peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan officials in Qatar have stalled and just days before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah, will visit President Biden at the White House.

The talks on Friday will focus on how the US will continue to provide support for the Afghan people following the withdrawal, including offering diplomatic, humanitarian and economic assistance, the White House said.

The United Nation Secretary-Generals Special Representative for Afghanistan said she pressed the Security Council to urge both sides to begin negotiations again.

Increased conflict in Afghanistan means increased insecurity for many other countries, near and far,Deborah Lyons said.

But while the talks are halted, the Taliban continue to advance their military presence in the north.

The Talibans strategy is to make inroads and have a strong presence in the northern region of the country that long resisted the insurgent group, a senior Afghan security official told Reuters.They would face less resistance in other parts of the country where they have more influence and presence.

And while the fighting has been fierce in places, the Taliban have also begun paying Afghan government forces to return home.

A senior police official told the AP that many of the police in his district come from poor families and havent seen their financial conditions rise despite the trillions of dollars the US spent during the 20-year war.

They have not seen changes in their lives and are indifferent so they see no difference. They want to save their lives just for today, the official said.

Many observers fear that the Taliban will overrun the country once US and NATO troops leave Afghanistan a predicament that could lead to the rise of al Qaeda in the country again.

The US overthrew the Taliban in 2001 for allowing the terror groups leader Osama bin Laden to use Afghanistan as a base of operations as they planned the Sept. 11 attacks.

At a Senate hearing last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were questioned about the possibility that al Qaeda could regenerate and once again become a threat to the US.

I would assess it as medium, Austin said. I would also say, Senator, that it would take possibly two years for them to develop that capability.

Milley said he agreed.

I think that if certain other things happen if there was a collapse of the government or the dissolution of the Afghan security forces that risk would obviously increase, but right now I would say medium and about two years or so, hesaid.

With Post wires

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Taliban fighters continue to grab territory in Afghanistan

Is Afghanistan destined to return to barbarism? Some hope that the hasty and haphazard U.S. withdrawal wont lead to Taliban rule or that the jihadist group will govern more gently than before. That optimism is misplaced, and the disaster likely to come will have global consequences.

Many observers fear that the Taliban will soon re-establish an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan. Scarcely a day passes without news of their advances. They now control about half of Afghanistans roughly 400 districts. Taliban fighters are at the gates of or inside at least three important provincial capitalsHerat, Kandahar and Lashkar Gah. They have captured border crossings with Iran, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and the strategic town of Spin Boldak on the Pakistan border. At times, Afghan government troops have fled in disarray or surrendered U.S.-provided equipment.

Atrocities have accompanied the Talibans battlefield gains. A video last month purportedly showed the Taliban executing 22 Afghan government special forces after they surrendered. On Monday the U.S. and the U.K. accused the Taliban of murdering civilians in Spin Boldak.

Last month the Taliban brutalized and murdered Danish Siddiqui, an Indian Pulitzer-prize winning photojournalist with Reuters. They also murdered a folksy Afghan comedian known for poking fun at them. In some places, Taliban commanders have reportedly demanded lists of widows and unmarried women between 15 and 45 to be married off to their fighters. They have murdered civil society leaders, closed girls schools, and forced women out of public roles.

They havent yet reinstated the classical Islamic punishment of amputating limbs for theft, but a Taliban spokesman told this newspaper that this was only because they first need to establish the appropriate healthcare apparatus.

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Have No Illusions About the U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan - The Wall Street Journal

Afghan Taliban fighters and villagers attend a gathering in Laghman province, Alingar district, in March 2020 as they celebrate the peace deal signed between the U.S. and the Taliban. Wali Sabawoon/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

Afghan Taliban fighters and villagers attend a gathering in Laghman province, Alingar district, in March 2020 as they celebrate the peace deal signed between the U.S. and the Taliban.

Nearly two decades after U.S. forces toppled a repressive Taliban regime, the militant religious movement is again winning territory on battlefields across Afghanistan, vying to fill a power vacuum left as America prepares to exit its longest war.

The prospect of a Taliban takeover reminiscent of the movement's 1996 blitz on the capital, Kabul, has people both inside and outside Afghanistan worried about the future.

While the Taliban have been making rapid gains particularly since U.S.-led forces began a withdrawal in May few experts see a complete takeover of the capital as imminent.

However, the question remains: After 20 years in the political wilderness, how would the Taliban govern if they regained power? The short answer might be, not much differently from the last time.

"I think everyone is trying to read some pretty sparse tea leaves here," says Laurel Miller, the Asia program director for the International Crisis Group.

When the Taliban last held power, in 2001, their treatment of women who were denied education and employment and forced to wear the all-encompassing burqa as well as minorities, such as Afghanistan's mostly Shiite Hazaras, earned the country pariah status in the international community. Only Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would even recognize the Taliban government.

The Taliban are keen not to repeat the mistakes of the past. In recent weeks, they have reached out for allies and to reassure past adversaries, dispatching high-level delegations to Russia, China and Iran in hopes of gaining legitimacy, if not outright support, from powerful regional players, Miller says.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, political chief of Afghanistan's Taliban, in Tianjin, China, on July 28. Li Ran/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images hide caption

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, political chief of Afghanistan's Taliban, in Tianjin, China, on July 28.

"They are currently pursuing a fairly savvy foreign policy," she says, pointing to last week's visit to Beijing by a delegation of Taliban led by the movement's second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The Taliban "have been very eager for public displays of their acceptance by governments around the world," Miller says.

Baradar also sat across the table from then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last year to discuss a peace deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Despite viewing Washington as the enemy, Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban, got a world stage to bolster the movement's standing, she says.

For the Taliban, these high-profile photo ops give them the legitimacy they crave but it goes further than that. Beijing has reportedly promised big investments in energy and infrastructure projects, including the building of a road network in Afghanistan.

Earlier, a Taliban delegation visited Russia, which invaded Afghanistan in 1979, setting in motion events that have led to 40 years of conflict there. The Kremlin's concern is security for the Central Asian states along its southern border, says Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. from 2008 to 2011.

Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (center) arrives with other members of the Taliban delegation for an international peace conference in Moscow in March. A delegation of the Taliban visited Moscow in July to offer assurances that their quick gains in Afghanistan don't threaten Russia or its allies in Central Asia. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP hide caption

Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (center) arrives with other members of the Taliban delegation for an international peace conference in Moscow in March. A delegation of the Taliban visited Moscow in July to offer assurances that their quick gains in Afghanistan don't threaten Russia or its allies in Central Asia.

"Russia, China and Iran have for the last several years taken an interest in Afghanistan only to ensure that the Americans leave and leave in an embarrassment," says Haqqani, who is director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute.

Both Russia and China are concerned about "spillover," he says Russia doesn't want the Taliban to embolden unrest in Central Asia, and Beijing wants to make sure Afghanistan doesn't become a base for Uyghur separatists from China's Xinjiang region.

By casting their net wide in an effort to gain international recognition, the Taliban would not necessarily be as reliant on Pakistan, with which it has had relatively close, but nonetheless frequently strained, relations.

Having Pakistan as an ally "is less important to the Taliban now than it was in the 1990s, when it had very few governments recognizing it," says Madiha Afzal, the David M. Rubenstein fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

Pakistan is keen to avoid a civil war in Afghanistan that could trigger the type of outflow of refugees that has destabilized its western border region in the past, Afzal says. It also wants to keep the deadly Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban, in check. Although the group's deadly attacks have waned in recent years, the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban could reinvigorate it.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged concerns over the rapid progress of Taliban fighters as the U.S. approaches an Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawal of its forces. "We've also seen these reports of atrocities committed by the Taliban in areas that it's taken over that are deeply, deeply troubling and certainly do not speak well to the Taliban's intentions for the country as a whole," he said during a news conference in India.

Little has changed from the time the Taliban methodically fought off or bought off warlords in the countryside in the lead-up to their 1996 victory over the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Haqqani says. Today, in areas where the Taliban have seized power, mainly in the country's more religiously conservative countryside, their conduct "is exactly what it was before."

"They have not changed at all ideologically," he says.

Much like they did in the runup to their 1996 takeover, the Taliban have implemented their own style of local government based on their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law wherever they have grabbed territory.

"They have conducted summary executions. They are beating up women. They are shutting down schools. They are blowing up clinics, and they are blowing up infrastructure," Haqqani says.

Women in regions controlled by the Taliban cannot study or even step out of the house unless they are wearing a burqa and are accompanied by a male relative. Voice of America reports that the Taliban have handed out leaflets in some areas they control ordering locals to follow many of the strict rules imposed under the previous Taliban regime.

Despite this, the Taliban leadership has made vague promises to the contrary, the Crisis Group's Miller says.

"They say women can have jobs and education, that it's consistent with Islamic principles and Afghan traditions," she says. "Well, who's going to be the judge of what Islamic principles and Afghan traditions mean and what kind of limitations that would impose?"

The extrajudicial killing of Afghan comedian Nazar Mohammad Khasha in July sparked widespread anger. "Taliban forces apparently executed [Khasha] ... because he poked fun at Taliban leaders," Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "His murder and other recent abuses demonstrate the willingness of Taliban commanders to violently crush even the tamest criticism or objection."

It's also not certain how much control the senior leadership has over rank-and-file militia members, Brookings' Afzal says.

"The political leadership presents one face," she says. "The soldiers on the ground look different."

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The Taliban Say They've Changed. Experts Aren't Buying It And Fear For Afghanistan - NPR

WASHINGTON The White House authorization of one more bombing campaign in Afghanistan, just weeks before the U.S. military mission is set to end, has a modest stated goal to buy time for Afghan security forces to marshal some kind of defense around the major cities that are under siege by a surging Taliban.

But the dozens of airstrikes, which began two weeks ago as the Taliban pushed their front lines deep into urban areas, also laid bare the big question now facing President Biden and the Pentagon as the United States seeks to wind down its longest war. Will the American air campaign continue after Aug. 31, the date the president has said would be the end of combat involvement in Afghanistan?

The White House and the Pentagon insist these are truly the final days of American combat support, after the withdrawal of most troops this summer after 20 years of war. Beginning next month, the president has said, the United States will engage militarily in Afghanistan only for counterterrorism reasons, to prevent the country from becoming a launchpad for attacks against the West. That would give Afghan security forces mere weeks to fix years of poor leadership and institutional failures, and rally their forces to defend what territory they still control.

Pentagon and White House officials say the current air campaign can blunt the Talibans momentum by destroying some of their artillery and other equipment, and lift the sagging morale of Afghan security forces.

But administration officials say the Pentagon will most likely request authorization from the president for another air campaign in the next months, should Kandahar or Kabul, the capital, appear on the verge of falling. Mr. Biden appeared to hold out that possibility last month when he said that the United States had worked out an over-the-horizon capacity that can be value added if Kabul came under serious threat, phrasing the military often uses to suggest possible airstrikes.

Such a move would foreshadow the inching toward a longer campaign that could give Mr. Biden space between his decision to withdraw American troops and an eventual fall of Kabul, and the possible specter of evacuations of the U.S. and other Western embassies, like the scene that preceded the fall of Saigon in 1975, when Americans were evacuated from a rooftop by helicopter.

Mr. Bidens aides say that he is aware of the risks, but that he remains skeptical of any effort by the Pentagon that looks as though it is prolonging the American military engagement. Still, officials say that they expect Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to approach Mr. Biden at the end of August about the possibility of continuing airstrikes into September if the Taliban look as if they are about to overrun key population centers.

Already, the Taliban have been making advances, sweeping through the Afghan countryside and closing in on the center of Kandahar. Taliban fighters launched rockets over the weekend at the airport in Kandahar, and fierce fighting near Herat shut down the airport there.

At the moment, the official line from the White House and the Pentagon is that these are truly the final days of American combat support.

My personal belief is that the closer the Taliban get to the urban areas, I think the fighting gets more intense, and they cant take advantage like they could in the rural areas, said Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the former commander of United States Central Command. As they get to the built-up areas, where theres leadership in place who will be fighting for their lives, I think those fights will become more difficult.

But that has not been the case in recent days and weeks, as Taliban fighters have entered several provincial capitals such as Kunduz in the north, Kandahar and Lashkar Gah in the south and Herat in the west.

Even with American B-52 bombers and AC-130 gunships helping where they can, the Taliban have pushed into Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province.

One Afghan officer in the city described the situation last week as hell. Even now, with reinforcements and continued American airstrikes there were at least two on Monday morning fighting was still continuing in nearly every part of the city.

But helping Afghan partners fight for their lives is the point of the stepped-up bombing campaign, military officials said.

Mohammad Sadiq Essa, a spokesman for the Afghan Army corps fighting in Kandahar, said the U.S. strikes had been useful in busting the momentum of the Taliban. But continued strikes from both U.S. and Afghan aircraft, especially around urban areas, run the risk of causing a high number of civilian casualties.

Since the U.S. military began its official withdrawal in May, thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded the highest number recorded for the May-to-June period since the United Nations began monitoring these casualties in 2009.

Mr. Biden, in announcing the withdrawal of U.S. troops, initially gave Sept. 11 as the date when the American combat mission was to end. Then last month, he said it would wrap up by Aug. 31. That gave the Pentagon and Afghan forces just over a month to slow the Taliban surge.

Were prepared to continue this heightened level of support in the coming weeks if the Taliban continue their attacks, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the top American general overseeing operations in Afghanistan, said last week in explaining the intensified airstrikes.

What is happening now echoes the past. After the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014, the Obama administration had to backtrack and permit more airstrikes for the Afghan security forces as they lost the bases and outposts that international forces had transferred to them.

In the past, air power has not been enough unless it was accompanied by a competent force on the ground. Right now, those forces are still lacking, with the Afghan military relying on an exhausted commando corps to fill in for many police officers who have fled or surrendered and army troops who refuse to fight or even venture outside their bases.

Administration and military officials have voiced conflicting views on whether the United States will continue airstrikes after Aug. 31 to prevent Afghan cities and the Afghan government, led by President Ashraf Ghani, from falling. General McKenzie declined last week to say that U.S. airstrikes would end at the end of the month.

Mr. Biden has been clear in meetings with his senior aides and advisers that continued American bombing runs from the skies over Afghanistan after the pullout are not what he wants, administration officials said. But his hand might be forced if Taliban forces are on the verge of overrunning Kandahar or even Kabul, where the United States maintains an embassy, with some 4,000 people.

The Afghan military is trying to hold key cities and roads, a strategy that American military officers have pushed for years while the Afghan security forces, backed by U.S. air power, clung to far-flung, isolated and indefensible districts after the U.S. combat mission ended in 2014. Afghan officials largely ignored the suggestions until now, unwilling to cede any territory despite its strategic insignificance to the insurgents.

So for the time being, the United States is trying to make the fight as difficult as it can for the Taliban. This is about buying time, General Votel said in an interview. Its about blunting and slowing down the Taliban and helping the Afghans to get a little more organized.

Defense Department officials said they expected the strikes, up to five a day, to continue at least through August. The attacks, carried out by armed Reaper drones and AC-130 aerial gunships, are targeting specific Taliban equipment, including heavy artillery, that could be used to threaten population centers, foreign embassies, Afghan government buildings or compounds, or airports, officials said.

A Taliban official shrugged off the presence of hulking B-52 bombers that have appeared in Afghanistans skies, though officially the group has decried the bombings as a breach of the 2020 peace agreement with the United States and promised consequences.

The American airstrikes have underscored the shortcomings of the Afghan Air Force, which U.S. officials say is overstretched and breaking down.

All of the Afghan Air Forces aircraft platforms are overtaxed due to increased requests for close air support, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance missions and aerial resupply now that the ANDSF largely lacks U.S. air support, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction said in a report released last week, referring to Afghan security forces.

The departure of all but a couple of hundred U.S. aircraft maintenance contractors has led to sharp decreases in readiness rates for five of the seven aircraft in the Afghan air fleet, the report found. But even with the litany of issues, including the loss of aircraft to Taliban fire at an increasing rate, Afghan pilots have been trying to support the forces.

Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff from Kabul, Afghanistan. Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

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U.S. Airstrikes in Afghanistan Could Be a Sign of What Comes Next - The New York Times