ISLAMABAD – KANDAHAR AND HERAT, Afghanistan’s second- and third-largest cities, had been under assault for days. On August 12th both fell into the hands of the Taliban. So did a string of other cities, in what amounted to a rout of Afghan forces. Among them were Lashkar Gah, in Helmand province in the south, and Ghazni, near Kabul, the capital. Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s president, has now lost around half the country’s provincial towns and cities in just a week. That includes territory in the north and west, traditional strongholds of resistance to the Taliban. The Taliban claimed to have taken Pul-e-Alam, the capital of Logar province, just 70km south of the capital. “The Taliban can now focus on the east and the road to Kabul,” says Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal, a website which tracks the war. “This is close to [the] endgame.”
The speed and success of the Taliban’s advance has astonished both Afghans and the Western governments that had backed Mr Ghani’s government with money and military support; America has spent $88bn on training and equipping Afghan security forces over the years. Yet between April 13th, when President Joe Biden announced a swift American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and August 10th, the Taliban had tripled the number of districts it controlled, according to data collected by the Long War Journal. In just the one week starting on August 6th, the insurgents seized more than a dozen provincial capitals. On August 11th Mr Ghani sacked his army chief.
Even then, it was hoped that the Afghan government and its army, larger, on paper, than the Taliban, might consolidate around major cities to halt the insurgents’ advance. Instead, as the crisis has accelerated, American intelligence assessments have turned gloomier, lengthening the odds of Mr Ghani’s government surviving. The capital could be surrounded and cut off in a month, and fall within 90 days, according to one assessment leaked in Washington on August 10th. That was two days before the fall of Kandahar and Herat; Kabul now looks even wobblier.
The British and American governments responded to the fall of those cities by rushing troops back to Afghanistan—not to bolster Mr Ghani’s crumbling government, but to protect and evacuate their citizens. Britain dispatched 600 troops and said that it would relocate its embassy in Kabul to a more secure location. America said it would send 3,000 troops to Kabul and several thousand more to Kuwait and Qatar.
Both countries had hoped it would not come to that. It carries humiliating echoes of Vietnam for America and colonial retreats for the British. Kabul was the scene of the first military evacuation airlift in 1928-29 when the entire diplomatic corps was ferried in Royal Air Force biplanes over the Hindu Kush to escape a tribal uprising. On July 8th Mr Biden had waved away any comparison with the evacuation of Saigon, the capital of south Vietnam, in 1975. “There’s going to be no circumstance where you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy,” he declared. The exodus is real, nevertheless.
For Afghans, the historical echoes are more chilling and more recent. The Taliban last seized Kabul in 1996 and ruled most of the country under a brutal version of Islamic law, until their defeat in 2001. Stories of summary executions and abuses of women have flowed out of the cities captured in recent weeks. In recent days, Kabul’s international airport has been thronged with those seeking a way out. Passengers jostle in desperate lines to board flights to Tashkent, Istanbul, Delhi, Islamabad and Tehran. Yet these are the middle-class Afghans who have had the foresight, money and contacts to secure visas and tickets.
Kabul’s parks, meanwhile, are filled with poorer Afghans displaced from provinces in the north. Thousands of families from Kunduz, Takhar and other regions now lost to the government have reached the capital this week. Around 390,000 people have been displaced this year, according to the United Nations. “We are bracing ourselves for a major humanitarian crisis,” says Tracey Van Heerden, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s acting country director in Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s lightning advance has capitalised on disillusionment and dysfunction in the government and armed forces. Daoud Laghmani, the governor of the south-eastern city of Ghazni, and members of his staff were arrested by Afghan police for handing over their province to the Taliban without a fight. The governor of Farah province, in the south-west, is reported to have surrendered and then fled to Iran. In Herat, the Taliban entered the headquarters of 207 Corps, an army unit, “like guests” and “drank tea”, accompanied by tribal elders, according to a report by Bilal Sarwary, an Afghan journalist. The Taliban have also captured artillery pieces and attack helicopters left behind by fleeing forces.
It is a bleak situation for Mr Ghani; his predecessors have often met grisly ends. The president and his small inner circle have turned to the country’s warlords to arm militias and hold the line. But as the Taliban seize more territory, capture more weaponry and take control of decisive points, like border posts, they are likely to grow in strength and confidence. Afghan forces, by contrast, are despondent.
In Doha, the capital of Qatar, a superficial “peace process” continued to play out, with Taliban representatives meeting Afghan, American and other officials. But unless their advance stalls, the Islamists have little incentive for compromise. The fall of Kabul is not inevitable, but many western officials now think it more likely than not. That raises the grim possibility of Afghans marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, which marked the beginning of the end of the Taliban government, with their tormentors back in charge.
By The Economist
