Taliban take northern Afghan stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif and enter outskirts of Kabul

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The Taliban took the Afghan northern stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif Saturday, the capital of Balkh Province, which was one of the last three major cities under government control, including the Kabul.  

‘The army is not fighting. It is only Atta (Muhammad) Noor and (Marshal Abdul Rashid) Dostum’s militias defending the city,’ Mohammad Ibrahim Khairandesh, a former provincial council member who now lives in the city, told The New York Times. ‘The situation is critical, and it’s getting worse.’ 

Dostum is an infamous warlord and a former Afghan vice president who has survived the past 40 years of war by cutting deals and switching sides, and Noor is longtime power broker and warlord in Balkh Province who fought the Soviets in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s, according to The Times. 

The Taliban now controls territories to the North, South and West of Kabul and is squeezing the throat of Afghanistan’s capital city, which is where the US Embassy is located and thousands of refugees are trying to flee the country.  

US Embassy staff are destroying ‘sensitive’ materials while the first two waves of 3,000 US Marines and Army soldiers arrived to help evacuate Afghanistan’s capital as the Taliban prepares to strike. 

The US military is preparing to lower the American flag over the Embassy – if the State Department gives the order – signaling its closure.  

The situation appears to be dire as insurgent forces have tightened their grip around Kabul after warlords captured two more provinces on Saturday and moved within seven miles of the city.  

Herds of civilians who escaped the violence flooded the streets of Kabul and set up camps while diplomats work with other countries to see who’s willing to take in Afghan refugees.  

The State Department is in talks with several other countries to house US-affiliated Afghan refugees, and Canada has already welcomed 20,000 Afghan refugees threatened by the Taliban, the IRCC – Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada – said in a Twitter statement. 

So far, about 1,200 Afghans have been evacuated to the United States and that number is set to rise to 3,500 in the coming weeks under ‘Operation Allies Refuge,’ with some going to a U.S. military base in Virginia to finalize their paperwork and others directly to US hosts, Reuters reported.

A deal  house about 8,000 Afghans in Qatar, which hosts a large US military base, has been close for weeks, a US official told Reuters, although no official deal has been announced. 

While the American government works to get people out of Kabul, US Embassy officials are shredding and burning sensitive material, which a Department of State spokesperson said that was ‘standard operating procedure’ to avoid enemy propaganda efforts.  

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani addressed the nation in a minute-long video statement Saturday morning (US time) that was translated into English. 

‘Afghanistan is in serious danger of instability,’ Ghani said. 

Scroll down for video statement.  

‘Though I know that you are worried about your current situation and your future, I assure you that as your president, my focus is prevent the expansion of instability, violence and displacement of my people,’ Ghani said.

‘As part of a historical mission, I will do my best to stop this imposed conflict on the Afghan people to result in further killing of innocent people, loss of your achievements of the last 20 years, destruction of public property and prolonged instability.’ 

He said he’s engaging with Afghan and international leaders, and consultations are ‘urgently ongoing and the results will soon be shared.’ 

This was his first public comment since the Taliban demanded he resign. 

Between Friday and Saturday, the Taliban made major advances in what’s already been an efficient takeover of the country. 

They captured Herat and Kandahar, which are the country’s second- and third-largest cities, as well as the Logar province, just south of Kabul. 

The Taliban continues its swift movement towards Kabul by capturing Mazar-i-Sharif.

Insurgents now control 20 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, leaving the Western-backed government in control of a smattering of provinces in the center and east, as well as Kabul. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has called for Biden to launch US airstrikes against the Taliban after speaking to to US Ambassador to Afghanistan Adela Raz on Friday.  

The Kentucky Republican said in a statement that ‘this debacle was not only foreseeable, it was foreseen.’ 

‘With that said, it is not too late to prevent the Taliban from overrunning Kabul,’ McConnell said. 

‘The Administration should move quickly to hammer Taliban advances with air strikes, provide critical support to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) defending the capital and prevent the seemingly imminent fall of the city.

 ‘If they fail to do so, the security threat to the United States will assuredly grow and the humanitarian cost to innocent Afghans will be catastrophic.’ 

But it might be too late. Axios is reporting that the Biden administration is preparing for the fall of Kabul, despite the president’s statements in recent days showing confidence in the Afghan military to ward of insurgents. 

Hoda Ahmadi, a lawmaker from Logar province, told The Associated Press that the Taliban have reached the Char Asyab district, which is just seven miles south of Kabul. The latest to fall is reportedly Gardez, the capital of Paktia. 

The American flag flying over what’s considered US Territory will be brought down soon and brought back to the United States or a different safe haven, Axios reported. 

Taliban forces began reclaiming land they lost during the United State’s 20-year occupation months before Biden announced his plans to withdraw troops by September 11. 

Between May and June, the Taliban recaptured 50 of Afghanistan’s 421 districts, Deborah Lyons, the UN’s special envoy on Afghanistan, told Newsweek.

But the troop drawn down sped up the take over, and now the Taliban has a vice grip around the capital. 

‘Clearly from their actions, it appears as if they are trying to get Kabul isolated,’ Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, referring to the Taliban’s speedy and efficient takedown of major provincial capitals this past week. 

Kirby declined to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment of whether the Taliban will converge on Kabul.  

Currently, there are 650 American troops still in the country to help protect the nation’s diplomatic presence, according to the Associated Press, but there’s no plan for how long the 3,000 Marines and Army infantrymen will remain in the country and there appears to be no appetite from either party to engage the Taliban. 

‘This is a temporary mission with a narrow focus,’ Kirby said. 

Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, told The Associated Press that sending the troops is a morale killer for the Afghan military. 

‘The message that sent to Afghans is: “The city of Kabul is going to fall so fast that we can’t organize an orderly withdrawal from the embassy,”‘ Biddle told the news outlet. 

This suggests to Afghans that the Americans see little future for the government and that ‘this place could be toast within hours.’

Scroll down for video. 

 Meanwhile, Biden was on his way to Camp David in Maryland on Friday but didn’t speak to reporters. 

He’s been taking criticism at home and abroad for pulling the troops out of the country.  

Ata Mohammed Noor, an Afghan warlord and key US ally during the occupation, said the withdrawal was ‘irresponsible’ and the sudden exit weakened the Afghanistan military, which Noor said is not in a position to ward off insurgents, Newsweek reported.    

He has since warned about a possible civil war.  

Within the US, several Republican leaders, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, have ripped Biden for this decision. 

Friday night, McCarthy tweeted, ‘Tonight we held a call with Afghanistan’s Ambassador to the US to discuss the deteriorating situation. I remain deeply concerned with the Biden Admin’s mismanagement of their bungled withdrawal. Much like his failed withdrawal from Iraq, it is an embarrassment to our nation.’ 

Biden continued to defend his decision to pull the troops out of Afghanistan.  

On Tuesday, the commander-in-chief said the Afghan military is more powerful than the Taliban.

‘The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability,’ Biden said this week from the White House. ‘There’s going to be no circumstances where you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the United States from Afghanistan.’

The president alluded to the $1trillion and 20 years worth of investments to train and arm the Afghan forces. 

‘And Afghan leaders have to come together. We lost to death and injury, thousands of American personnel. They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation,’ Biden said. 

The US is not the only country pulling out of Afghanistan. 

European countries – including Britain, Germany, Denmark and Spain – all announced the withdrawal of personnel from their respective embassies on Friday.

For Kabul residents and the tens of thousands who have sought refuge there in recent weeks, the overwhelming mood was one of confusion and fear of what lies ahead.

‘We don’t know what is going on,’ one resident – Khairddin Logari – told AFP.

The Taliban has reportedly been ruthless when during its takeover.  

Taliban fighters are going door-to-door and forcibly marrying girls as young as 12 and forcing them into sex slavery as they seize vast swathes of the Afghanistan government forces.

Jihadist commanders have ordered imams in areas they have captured to bring them lists of unmarried women aged from 12 to 45 for their soldiers to marry because they view them as ‘qhanimat’ or ‘spoils of war’ – to be divided up among the victors. 

They’re also killing Afghan government troops who surrender, the US claimed. 

Video taken in Faryab province last month appeared to show Taliban fighters massacring 22 Afghan commandos after they had surrendered, including the son of a well-known general. 

Hundreds of government troops have surrendered to the Taliban since fighting escalated in May with the withdrawal of US troops – some without firing a shot, others after being cut off and surrounded with little or no chance of reinforcement or resupply from the government in Kabul.

The scale and speed of the Taliban advance has shocked Afghans and the US-led alliance that poured billions into the country after toppling the Taliban in the wake of the September 11 attacks nearly 20 years ago.

Days before a final US withdrawal ordered by President Joe Biden, individual soldiers, units and even whole divisions have surrendered – handing the insurgents even more vehicles and military hardware to fuel their lightning advance.

Despite the frantic evacuation efforts, the Biden administration continues to insist that a complete Taliban takeover is not inevitable, as McConnell believes. 

‘Kabul is not right now in an imminent threat environment,’ Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Friday, while acknowledging that Taliban fighters were ‘trying to isolate’ the city. 

Officials took pains to avoid describing the operation as an evacuation as they announced that the State Department would reduce its civilian footprint of 4,000 people to a ‘core diplomatic presence.’ 

But that was before Saturday’s news that the Taliban have moved to within seven miles of Kabul, which has triggered fresh questions about whether Biden had been right to announce a complete withdrawal. 

Officials insist they always had contingency plans to help American staff leave safely, but critics said the result has been chaos.

But even allies have expressed concern. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the Trump administration had forged a ‘rotten deal’ with the Taliban that risked allowing terrorists to return.

‘I’ve been pretty blunt about it publicly and that’s quite a rare thing when it comes to United States decisions, but strategically it causes a lot of problems and as an international community, it’s very difficult for what we’re seeing today,’ he told Sky News.

The Taliban offensive has accelerated at the end of the week with the capture of Herat in the north and Kandahar – the group’s spiritual heartland – in the south.

Kandahar resident Abdul Nafi told AFP the city was calm after government forces abandoned it for the sanctuary of military facilities outside, where they were negotiating terms of surrender.

‘I came out this morning, I saw Taliban white flags in most squares of the city,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be the first day of Eid.’

Eid is one of two celebrations in the Islamic faith. 

Pro-Taliban social media accounts have boasted of the vast spoils of war captured by the insurgents – posting photos of armored vehicles, heavy weapons, and even a drone seized by their fighters at abandoned military bases.