Taliban takes Helmand province capital

People in Afghanistan know they now “live in a different country,” Afghan journalist Ali Latifi said after Herat and Kandahar, two prominent Afghan cities, fell to the Taliban.

They were “cities that people never would have imagined would have fallen,” he said. The news of these cities falling has affected the whole country, he told CNN.

Herat and Kandahar are historically and culturally significant cities, with large populations, and people are angry, Latifi said.

“They felt like there wasn’t much of a fight put up, that there wasn’t much of an effort put into defending the cities, that these cities fell too easily, and too quickly, considering their significance.”

People are fleeing the cities as soon as they hear the Taliban are coming, he added.

“There is a lot of fear of the fighting that will come with it. Because if they come and they take over the city, that means that they will be fighting with the security forces, and the security forces will be fighting with them.”