Taliban move to within 40 miles of Kabul as former British marine tells of absolute panic

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The Taliban seized its 17th major city on Friday as they raced to take full control of Afghanistan and inched closer to Kabul, with the main settlement in Logar province – just 40 miles from the capital – falling to the militants.

The blitz through Afghanistan’s southern heartland means the insurgents now hold half of the country’s 34 provincial capitals and control more than two-thirds of the nation – weeks before the U.S. plans to fully withdraw.

As Kabul looks to be on the brink of being taken by the Taliban, fears have also been raised of a refugee crisis and a rollback of gains in human rights. Some 400,000 civilians have been forced from their homes since the beginning of the year, 250,000 of them since May, the U.N. says. 

Speaking from Kabul as refugees from across the country retreated to the city, former British marine Paul Farthing spoke of his despair that Afghanistan is once again on the cusp of being under the Taliban’s rule after two decades of British and Western military presence in the country.

‘I lost two of my young marines in Helmand back in 2006,’ Mr Farthing told Sky News on Friday. ‘I truly now want somebody to tell me – what was the point? I have no words to describe the hurt, the upset, the confusion.’ 

The loss of Helmand’s provincial capital of Kandahar in the past 24 hours comes after years of toil and blood spill by American, British and allied NATO forces. Estimates suggest those countries lost some 800 troops over the decades-long war there.

Britain alone lost more than 450 troops in Afghanistan. Just over 400 were the result of hostile action, and the vast majority of causalities were in Helmand province.

Describing the scenes in Afghanistan’s capital, Mr Farthing – who founded Afghan animal welfare charity ‘Nowzad‘ in the country – said it was ‘absolute panic’.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it at all,’ he described. ‘There are thousands of refugees now coming in from the country hoping that Kabul is going to be their last hope of safety, and it is just desperation everywhere.’ 

Both Britain and the United States will deploy thousands of troops to evacuate their citizens from the city, which some have predicted could fall within days as the Taliban continue their march to seize it from the government.

The evacuation orders came as the Taliban took control of Kandahar – the nation’s second-biggest city – in the insurgency’s heartland, leaving only Kabul and pockets of other territories in government hands. 

Asked whether he would be evacuating the city, Mr Farthing said he would want to stay with his staff, many of whom are young women he fears for, should the Taliban take control of Kabul.

‘Right now, I’m going to say no – I cannot just leave my staff behind. We’ve got young women who work for us – what do I say to them? “Well, I’ve got a British passport and Boris (Johnson) is sending in the troops to get me out, but sorry you’ve got to stay.”

‘Whether or not I can (stay), I honestly don’t know. Whether I put my staff in more danger by being here is something we’re actually discussing now. Right now, I couldn’t give you an honest answer. My heart says I want to stay for my staff.’  

Afghanistan‘s government has now effectively lost control of most of Afghanistan to the Taliban, following an eight-day blitz into urban centres by the group.  

Following a meeting on Friday, NATO called on countries to support the Afghan government ‘as much as possible’, and to maintain diplomatic presence, as some – such as Denmark and Germany – announced plans to either close or greatly reduce their embassy presence in Kabul.

‘Our aim remains to support the Afghan government and security forces as much as possible. The security of our personnel is paramount. NATO will maintain our diplomatic presence in Kabul, and continue to adjust as necessary,’ NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, in a statement following the meeting of NATO envoys.  

On Friday, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani chaired a national security meeting, after which Afghan First Vice President Amrullah Saleh said he was proud of the country’s armed forces.

‘It was decided with conviction & resolve that WE STAND FIRM AGAINST TALIBAN TERRORISTS & DO EVERYTHING TO STRENGTHEN THE NATIONAL RESISTANCE BY ALL MEANS AND WAYS. PERIOD,’ Saleh tweeted. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin both spoke to Ghani on Thursday and told him the United States remained ‘invested’ in Afghanistan’s security.

The United Nations has said a Taliban offensive reaching Kabul would have a ‘catastrophic impact on civilians’. But there is little hope for a negotiated end to the fighting, with the insurgents apparently set on a military victory.

Television footage showed families camping out in a Kabul park with little or no shelter, escaping violence elsewhere in the country.

In the last 24 hours, the country’s second and third-largest cities – Herat in the west and Kandahar in the south – have fallen to the insurgents as has the capital of the southern province of Helmand, where American, British and Nato forces fought some of the bloodiest battles of the conflict. 

The Taliban also took the towns of Lashkar Gah in the south and Qala-e-Naw in the northwest, security officers said. Firuz Koh, capital of central Ghor province, was handed over without a fight, officials said. 

Attaullah Afghan, head of the provincial council in Helmand, said the Taliban captured Lashkar Gah after weeks of heavy fighting and raised their white flag over government buildings.

He said three national army bases outside the city remain under control of the government.

Atta Jan Haqbayan, council chief in Zabul province, said the local capital of Qalat fell and officials were in a nearby army camp preparing to leave.

Bismillah Jan Mohammad and Qudratullah Rahimi, legislators in Uruzgan province, said local officials had surrendered Tirin Kot. Taliban fighters paraded through a main square there, driving a Humvee and a pick-up seized from Afghan security forces.

In the west, Fazil Haq Ehsan, head of the council in Ghor province, said its capital Feroz Koh also fell to the insurgents. 

As the Taliban completed their sweep of the country’s south on Friday, the United Nations begged neighbouring countries to keep their borders open to allow people to escape the militant group, and U.N. agencies warned of a growing humanitarian catastrophe amid spreading hunger.

The plea comes as hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled their homes amid fears the Taliban will again impose a brutal, repressive government, all but eliminating women’s rights and conduct commonplace public executions. 

Meanwhile, Taliban insurgents detained veteran militia commander Mohammad Ismail Khan on Friday after they seized the western city of Herat, a provincial council member said.

Khan, who has been leading fighters against the Taliban in recent weeks, was handed over to the insurgents along with the provincial governor and security officials under a pact, provincial council member Ghulam Habib Hashimi told Reuters.

‘The Taliban agreed that they will not pose any threat or harm to the government officials who surrendered,’ Hashimi said.

Khan is one of Afghanistan’s most prominent warlords. Known as the Lion of Herat, he battled Soviet occupiers in the 1980s and was a key member of the Northern Alliance whose U.S.-backed forces toppled the Taliban in 2001.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that Khan had been detained. 

Pictures from Friday showed fleeing Afghans entering neighbouring Pakistan after the country re-opened its Chaman-Spin Boldak border crossing for people who had been otherwise stranded in recent weeks. 

The crossing is a major gateway between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and is reported to be under Taliban control.

Juma Khan, the border town’s deputy commissioner, said the crossing was reopened following talks with the Taliban.

The decision to open the border was made after the United Nations refugee agency called on Afghanistan’s neighbours to keep crossings open as the crisis intensifies.

‘An inability to seek safety may risk innumerable civilian lives. UNHCR stands ready to help national authorities scale up humanitarian responses as needed,’ a spokesperson for the agency told a briefing in Geneva.

The World Food Programme sees food shortages in Afghanistan as ‘quite dire’ and worsening, a spokesperson added, saying the situation had all the hallmarks of a humanitarian catastrophe. 

As Western embassies prepare to send in troops to help evacuate staff, the United Nations said its 320 staff members would remain.

‘We fear the worst is yet to come and the larger tide of hunger is fast approaching… The situation has all the hallmarks of a humanitarian catastrophe,’ the World Food Programme’s Thomson Phiri told a U.N. briefing.

More than 250,000 people have been forced from their homes since May, 80 percent of them women and children, the U.N. refugee agency’s Shabia Mantoo said.

Many reported extortion by armed groups on the way and having to dodge improvised explosive devices along major roads.

Thousands of people are rushing from rural areas to the capital Kabul and other urban centres in search of shelter, another U.N. official said.

‘They are sleeping in the open, in parks and public spaces,’ Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. ‘A major concern right now is simply finding shelter for them.’

A World Health Organisation official reported a doubling of trauma cases in the last two to three months in the health facilities it supports. 

She also expressed concerns about shortages of medical supplies and said it was training medical staff on mass casualty management. 

But as people fled on foot with nothing but the clothes on their back, the nephew of Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani was seen on Instagram taking a different approach.

Posting to his private Instagram account on Thursday, Sultan Ghani shared pictures of him walking across a runway to a private jet.

‘Moving from one crisis to the other as elegantly as I can’ his caption read, sparking outrage on social media.

‘While Afghanistan is burning & the ppl are suffering across the country because of his uncle’s disastrous leadership, posts these photos on his Instagram account,’ one user wrote on Twitter while sharing the images of the Sultan and his plane. 

The Taliban insurgency seized Lashkar Gah – the capital of the southern province of Helmand – on Friday, and two afghan lawmakers officials had surrendered the capital of Uruzgan province to the rapidly advancing Taliban.

On Thursday, the group took of Kandahar and Herat, marking the biggest prizes yet for the Taliban, who have taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals as part of a week-long blitz

‘The city looks like a front line, a ghost town,’ provincial council member Ghulam Habib Hashimi said of Kandahar via telephone from Herat, a city of about 600,000 people near the border with Iran.

‘Families have either left or are hiding in their homes.’

Of Afghanistan’s major cities, the government still holds Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and Jalalabad, near the Pakistani border in the east, in addition to Kabul. 

According to recent UN data, 400,000 people have fled their homes inside Afghanistan since the start of the year, with almost 300,000 of those fleeing since May as fighting between the government and Taliban stepped up.

The vast majority of those are still inside the country, the UN says, but with Islamist fighters making rapid gains in almost every region and government forces in retreat, many are looking to leave the country.

Just how many is largely unknown. The UN says just 200 crossed the border into Iran on the weekend just gone, but only counts those who are officially registered as refugees.

Speaking to the MailOnline by phone from Zaranj, one smuggler said: ‘I and my team here used to send around 50 or even fewer people to Iran on our pickup trucks each day for years it now stands at 100 or 150 on a good day.

‘I should thank Trump, Biden and the Americans. Many of these people are highly educated, sometimes I regret sending them out, but it may save their lives.

‘We are responsible for getting these people to Teheran, and our job ends there.

‘But I know through talking with many of them that their final destination is not Iran. Many have plans for Europe in their heads. Thousands are being sent out of Afghanistan each day through this city.’

Most migrants make their way to the smuggling hub of Herat – which has come under attack by the Taliban in recent days – before they are either taken north to the Khosan border crossing with Iran, or south to Zaranj – which has also fallen into Taliban hands.

The northern route is the most expensive and also the most dangerous – with migrants forced to swim a river and then crawl for two hours to avoid security cameras – but carries the least risk of getting caught. 

A second route goes from Zaranj directly into a Iran and to a safehouse in Kerman, before a final journey to Tehran.

The third route – the cheapest and most commonly used – goes into Iran via Pakistan, then to Kerman and Tehran. It is also the safest route, but carries the greatest chance of getting caught.

Rapid advances by the Taliban has led to warnings from anti-migrant Turkish opposition that new refugee crisis mirroring 2015 is looming – with opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu saying up to a million Afghans could come.

Frontex, the EU’s migration agency, said on Wednesday that migration through the Balkans almost-doubled in the first half of this year compared to last, driven mostly by an increase in Afghans and Syrians. 

That prompted Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi to warned the EU is ‘not ready’ for another migrant crisis. 

Peace talks in Qatar remain stalled, though diplomats are still meeting, as the US, European and Asian nations warned that any government established by force would be rejected.

‘We demand an immediate end to attacks against cities, urge a political settlement, and warn that a government imposed by force will be a pariah state,’ said Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy to the talks.

Fazel Haq Ehsan, chief of the provincial council in western Ghor province, said on Friday that the Taliban had entered Feroz Koh, the provincial capital, and there was fighting inside the city.

The Taliban meanwhile claims to have captured Qala-e Naw, capital of the western Badghis province. There was no official confirmation. 

The latest US military intelligence assessment suggests Kabul could come under insurgent pressure within 30 days and that, if current trends hold, the Taliban could gain full control of the country within a few months.

The Afghan government may be forced to pull back to defend the capital and just a few other cities in the coming days if the Taliban maintain momentum.

The onslaught represents a stunning collapse of Afghan forces after the US spent nearly two decades and 830 billion dollars trying to establish a functioning state after toppling the Taliban in the wake of the September 11 attacks.