RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
August 11, 2021
The Taliban has captured the airport of the strategic northern provincial capital of Kunduz, where hundreds of members of the Afghan security forces reportedly surrendered to the militants as President Ashraf Ghani replaced the army chief of staff.
Amid a string of rapid advances by the militants across Afghanistan, Defense Ministry deputy spokesman Fawad Aman tweeted that General Hibatullah Alizai has replaced General Wali Ahmadzai as the Afghan Army chief of staff.
The Kunduz airport fell to the militants on August 11 when most government forces there surrendered, while others retreated to the Aliabad district of Kunduz, sources told RFE/RL under the condition of anonymity.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid tweeted that the group had taken control of the airport and posted a video purportedly showing government soldiers joining the militants’ ranks.
Amruddin Wali, a local lawmaker, told AFP that hundreds of Afghan soldiers and police who had retreated to the airport outside Kunduz after the Taliban captured most of the northern city at the weekend have surrendered to the Taliban “with all their military gear.”
The Taliban has been on the offensive across Afghanistan since May 1, when the United States and its allies officially began withdrawing their forces in a pullout that is expected to be completed by the end of this month.
As militants extended their territorial gains to more than a quarter of the country’s provincial capitals in less than a week, Ghani flew to Mazar-e Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province, “to check the general security in the northern zone,” according to a statement released by the presidential office.
Earlier on August 11, the Taliban reportedly captured Faizabad, the capital of the remote northeastern province of Badakhshan, making it the ninth of Afghanistan’s 34 regional capitals to be overrun since August 6.
On August 10, the militant group seized the northern city of Pol-e Khomri, capital of Baghlan Province, and Farah city, the capital of the southwestern Farah Province, and consolidated their grip on Aybak, the capital of the northern Samangan Province which had fallen the previous day.
That added to the five provincial capitals that the militants had overrun since August 6: Kunduz; Sar-e Pol; Taloqan; Zaranj; Sheberghan.
But the loss of Mazar-e Sharif would be a huge drawback for the government and would mean the total loss of control over northern Afghanistan — long a stronghold of anti-Taliban warlords.
Government forces are also battling the militants in Kandahar and Helmand, the southern Pashto-speaking provinces from where the Taliban draw their strength.
In Kandahar, a spokesman said that government forces repelled an attack on the morning of August 11.
“Some 15 Taliban fighters were killed, and eight others were wounded due to the security forces’ resistance to the Taliban attacks,” Sadiq Issa told RFE/RL.
He did not provide details on casualties among Afghan forces.
The head of Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar, Mohammad Daud Farhad, told RFE/RL that two civilians were killed and 14 were wounded, including women and children, in the past 24 hours.
Ghani arrived in Mazar-e Sharif on August 11 and held talks with two longtime local strongmen — Atta Muhammad Noor and Abdul Rashid Dostum — about the defense of the northern city as Taliban fighters inched closer to its outskirts.
Dostum, who flew into Mazar-e Sharif on August 11 with a group of fighters from Kabul, issued a warning to the Taliban after arriving in the city.
“The Taliban never learn from the past,” he told reporters, vowing to kill the militants.
“The Taliban has come to the north several times but they were always trapped. It is not easy for them to get out.”
Dostum stands accused of massacring hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war during the 2001 U.S. invasion that toppled the hard-line Islamists’ rule over the country.
In Faizabad, a local lawmaker told the media that security forces had retreated after days of heavy clashes.
“The Taliban has captured the city now,” said Zabihullah Attiq.
The militants also confirmed in a social-media post that they were in control of the city.
Taliban gains over the past several weeks have been accompanied by widespread reports of revenge killings and other attacks on civilians.
As fighting raged, U.S. diplomats were scrambling to breathe life back into all but dead talks between the Afghan government and Taliban in Doha, where Washington’s special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad was pushing the Taliban to accept a cease-fire and stop its sweeping offensive.
In Washington, U.S. President Joe Biden on August 10 stood firmly by his deadline to withdraw all American troops by August 31, instead urging Afghan leaders to “fight for themselves.”
“I do not regret my decision” to withdraw U.S. troops after two decades of war, he told reporters.
“They have got to want to fight. They have outnumbered the Taliban,” Biden said.
The European Union said on August 10 that it was considering more support for countries neighboring Afghanistan while a handful of EU member states insisted on continuing forced deportations amid fears of an exodus of hundreds of thousands of Afghans as Taliban fighters advance.
EU states reportedly fear a repeat of the migrant crisis that engulfed Europe in 2015 when well over 1 million migrants, including many from war-torn Syria, arrived in the European Union and sparked lasting political divisions in the bloc.
But Germany’s Interior Ministry on August 11 announced that it was halting deportations to Afghanistan for the time being due to the unstable security situation in the country.
The United Nations said there have so far been no “large-scale displacements” across Afghanistan’s borders, although an EU official was quoted as saying the UN estimated that 500,000 Afghans could be pushed toward neighboring Pakistan, Iran, and Tajikistan if the situation continues to deteriorate.
The Afghanistan representative for UNICEF, the UN’s children’s agency, said on August 9 that it was “shocked by the rapid escalation of grave violations against children in Afghanistan,” adding, “The atrocities grow higher by the day.”
The U.S. Central Command has said the troop withdrawal is more than 95 percent complete and will be finished by August 31, ahead of the September 11 anniversary of two decades since the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States that prompted the invasion of Afghanistan.
This story includes reporting by Radio Azadi correspondents on the ground in Afghanistan. Their names are being withheld for their protection.
With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and Tolo News
Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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