Afghanistan: Taliban lay siege to cities as forces run out of guns
Fighters encircle ten cities across Afghanistan as government forces buckle under insurgents’ push to recapture country after the US troop withdrawal.
Taliban fighters have encircled ten cities across Afghanistan as government forces buckle in the face of the insurgent offensive to recapture the country after the US withdrawal.
Fighting was reported from the southern cities of Kandahar, Ghazni and Lashkah Gar, and Pul-e-Khumri and Taluqan in the north. In the western city of Qala-i-Naw, overrun by the Taliban last week before a counter-attack by government special forces, the battle has raged for days.
Only 600 American troops are left in the country, deployed to protect the US embassy in Kabul and the capital’s international airport.
President Biden said last week that US military operations would formally end on August 31, but the withdrawal is all but complete.
General Scott Miller, the senior US commander in Afghanistan, stepped down at a ceremony in Kabul on Monday. General Miller, who served as head of US and NATO forces from 2018, is replaced by General Frank McKenzie, who will oversee the final days of America’s longest war from Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida.
‘Civilians are suffering’
The Taliban advance has brought insurgents to the gates of several cities. “The fighting in Lashkar Gah is terrible and civilians are suffering. Mortar shells are everywhere. We are trapped in our homes and running short of food,” said one resident in the capital of Helmand province, who did not want to be named. “We do not want the Taliban to occupy this city again, but the way they are taking control of dozens of districts it seems government forces are surrendering.”
In several districts, Taliban fighters have broken into jails, releasing inmates to join their ranks. Empty homes, abandoned by residents, have been occupied by the insurgents.
“The Taliban presence is felt everywhere in Kandahar city but they have not managed to enter the city yet. We can hear sporadic gunfire to the west and southwest,” Taimoor Shah, a journalist, said from Kandahar, the former capital of the Taliban regime during the 1990s. The Taliban has yet to show it can capture and hold a big city, but with total command of rural areas, the group can lay siege to urban centres almost at will.
Supplies of weapons, ammunition, breaking down
In the north, where the Taliban offensive has brought the militants to Afghanistan’s borders with central Asia, the government of President Ghani has tried to arm militias to hold back the insurgents. The region was once a stronghold of resistance to the Taliban, and thousands of locals have taken up arms against the Islamists.
Government supplies of weapons and ammunition is breaking down, however, according to reports at the weekend. Leaders complained they had been betrayed and abandoned by the Ghani government. “We contacted them repeatedly,” Enayatullah Babur Farahmand, a senior official with the National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, an ethnic Uzbek party opposed to the Taliban, told Tolo News. “We asked senior security authorities, including the defence minister, the national security adviser, and the interior minister … but unfortunately, they are not paying the required attention to supply the public uprising forces.”
The speed of the Taliban advance forced foreign governments and aid agencies into a swift evacuation of regional consulates and offices across Afghanistan. India pulled staff from its diplomatic mission in Kandahar at the weekend.
The Times
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