On Friday night the radical Islamic Taliban captured two other important cities in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan – The militant Islamist Taliban have taken the important city of Lashkargah in southern Afghanistan. This was confirmed by two provincial councilors of the German Press Agency on Friday (August 13th, 2021). The insurgents are thus getting closer to a complete military takeover of power in the country. Three major cities, including the capital Kabul, are still under government control. There have been reports of attacks on other smaller provincial capitals in the country.
Laschkargah in Helmand Province had been fiercely contested for weeks. Because of the violent attacks, many Afghans assumed that it would be the first important city to fall to the Islamists. When the government only held two of the ten police districts in the city with an estimated 200,000 inhabitants at the end of July, special forces were once again dispatched from Kabul. With the support of many air strikes by the Afghan and US armed forces, they initially managed to stabilize the situation, although a hospital and a university were also hit.
Afghanistan: 14th city within a week falls to the Taliban
After sustained heavy attacks and the use of car bombs against the police headquarters, which is still held by the government, the situation turned in favor of the Taliban on Friday night. Provincial councilor Abdul Majid Achundsada said on Friday morning (local time) that the Taliban had taken the entire city. The commander of the 205th Army Corps, Sami Sadat, was flown out with the governor. The rest of the remaining security forces would have left the city by land.
This means that the 14th city falls to the Islamists within a week. Of the major cities, the government only holds the capital Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and Jalalabad in the east.
Taliban take Afghanistan’s second largest city
On Friday morning, parliamentarians confirmed the capture of the country’s second largest city, Kandahar, by the Taliban, their most important conquest to date. Kandahar with its more than 650,000 inhabitants is the capital of the province of the same name and the economic center of the south. Kandahar was the birthplace of the Taliban movement in the 1990s. The city also served as the capital of the Islamists during their rule between 1996 and 2001.
For more than three weeks there were serious clashes between the government and the Taliban in Kandahar before the security forces evacuated the city, said MP Gul Ahmad Kamin, who represents the province in parliament. The government forces eventually left the main authorities and sought refuge in the province’s 205th Army Corps.
USA sends 3,000 additional soldiers to Afghanistan
On Thursday alone, the Islamists were able to take three cities – including the third largest city Herat and the strategically important city of Gasni, which is only 150 kilometers from Kabul. Representatives of the Afghan government have not yet commented on the tumultuous events.
Several states are now preparing to evacuate their embassy staff and other citizens. The US armed forces are immediately relocating around 3,000 additional soldiers to the airport in Kabul. A spokesman for the US Department of Defense said this should support an orderly reduction in US embassy staff. In addition, the US is moving up to 4,000 more soldiers to Kuwait and 1,000 to Qatar – in the event that reinforcements are needed.
The withdrawal of US soldiers from Afghanistan should be completed by August 31, the spokesman said on Thursday (August 12, 2021, local time). Great Britain also wants to send around 600 additional soldiers to secure the return of the British from Afghanistan. Most recently, US President Joe Biden declared in the White House on Thursday that the Afghans now have to “fight for their own state”. (dpa)
