Where the Hell Is Afghanisthan Again?

Kabul falls to the Taliban every bit the Afghan government collapses and the president flees.

Video player loading — The Afghan government complanate after the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday. Evacuations of international diplomats and civilians take been underway at the international airdrome in the capital. Credit Credit... Zabi Karimi/Associated Printing

The Taliban effectively sealed their control of Afghanistan on Lord's day, pouring into the capital, Kabul, and meeting picayune resistance as President Ashraf Ghani fled the land, the government collapsed, and chaos and fright gripped the city, with tens of thousands of people trying to escape.

The insurgents' return to ability, two decades subsequently they were ousted, came despite years and hundreds of billions of dollars spent past the U.s.a. to build up the Afghan government and its defence forces. In a lightning offensive, the Taliban swallowed dozens of cities in a matter of days, leaving Kabul as the last major redoubt of government control.

On Lord's day evening, former President Hamid Karzai announced on Twitter that he was forming a coordinating quango together with Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the Afghan delegation to peace talks, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hesb-i-Islami party, to manage a peaceful transfer of power. Mr. Karzai called on both government and Taliban forces to act with restraint.

Merely the Taliban appeared to ignore his appeal and advanced into the metropolis on its ain terms.

The Taliban'south lead negotiator in talks with the authorities, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, congratulated all of Afghanistan for the victory. "Now information technology volition be shown how we can serve our nation," he said. "Nosotros tin assure that our nation has a peaceful life and a meliorate futurity."

Mr. Baradar fabricated the comments in a video posted on social media, surrounded by other members of the Taliban delegation to the talks in Doha, Qatar.

"In that location was no expectation that nosotros would achieve victory in this war," he said. "But this came with the help of Allah, therefore we should be thankful to Him, exist humble in front of Him, and then that nosotros do not act arrogantly."

Al Jazeera reported that information technology had interviewed Taliban fighters who were belongings a news conference in the presidential palace in Kabul. The fighters said they were working to secure Kabul and so that leaders in Qatar and outside the capital could render safely. Al Jazeera reported that the fighters had taken downwardly the flag of Afghanistan.

Every bit it became clear that Taliban fighters were entering Kabul, thousands of Afghans who had sought refuge there after fleeing the insurgents' brutal military machine offensive watched with growing alert as the local police seemed to fade from their usual checkpoints.

The U.South. Embassy warned Americans to not head to the drome in Kabul after reports that the facility was taking fire, and said that the situation was "changing chop-chop." Late Sunday, the U.South. Country Department said that all diplomatic mission personnel had been evacuated.

President Ghani released a written statement on Facebook proverb he had departed the country to save the majuscule from further bloodshed.

"If I had stayed, endless countrymen would accept been martyred and Kabul city would accept been ruined," he wrote, "in which case a disaster would have been brought upon this metropolis of five million."

At half-dozen:30 p.m. local time, the Taliban issued a statement that its forces were moving into law districts in order to maintain security in areas that had been abandoned past the government security forces. Taliban fighters, meeting no resistance, took up positions in the metropolis, subsequently Zabiullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban, posted the statement on Twitter.

"The Islamic Emirates ordered its forces to enter the areas of Kabul city from which the enemy has left because in that location is risk of theft and robbery," the argument said. The Taliban had been ordered not to harm civilians and not to enter private homes, it added. "Our forces are entering Kabul urban center with all caution."

Equally the lord's day set behind the mountains, the traffic was clogged as crowds grew bigger, with more than and more than Taliban fighters appearing on motorbikes, police pickups and fifty-fifty a Humvee that once belonged to the American-sponsored Afghan security forces.

Earlier in the afternoon, Interior Minister Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal appear that an agreement had been made for a peaceful transfer of power for greater Kabul, and that his forces were maintaining security.

Mr. Mirzakwal subsequently announced a nine p.1000. curfew in the capital, and chosen on its residents to become dwelling house.

Mr. Ghani left Kabul in a plane with his wife, Rula Ghani, and ii close aides, and arrived in Uzbekistan, according to a fellow member of the Afghan delegation in Doha, Qatar, that has been in peace negotiations with the Taliban since last year. The official asked not to be named considering he did non desire to be identified speaking well-nigh the president'southward movements.

It could not exist confirmed that Mr. Ghani was in Uzbekistan, and there were reports that he had gone to other countries. Muslem Hyatt, a former Afghan war machine attaché, said Mr. Ghani had traveled through Uzbekistan and landed in Dushanbe, the majuscule of Tajikistan.

In negotiations being managed by Mr. Abdullah, Mr. Ghani had been set to travel to Doha on Sunday with a larger grouping to negotiate the transfer of power, but flew instead to Uzbekistan, the peace delegation member said.

With rumors rife and reliable data hard to come up by, the streets were filled during the day with scenes of panic and desperation.

"Greetings, the Taliban have reached the urban center. We are escaping," said Sahraa Karimi, the head of Afghan Film, in a post shared widely on Facebook. Filming herself every bit she fled on foot, out of breath and clutching at her head scarf, she shouted at others to escape while they could.

"Hey woman, girl, don't go that way!" she called out. "Some people don't know what is going on," she went on. "Where are you lot going? Go quickly."

Christina Goldbaum , Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Carlotta Gall, Ruhullah Khapalwak, Sharif Hassan , Jim Huylebroek , Najim Rahim , and Lara Jakes contributed reporting.

Fear and confusion have concur in Kabul every bit the Taliban move in and the government crumbles.

Image

Credit... Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Panic gripped the Afghan capital, Kabul, Sunday as Taliban fighters started arriving in the city, inmates bankrupt out of the main prison on the east side of the city, and the American-backed regime appeared to crumble.

By the afternoon, President Ashraf Ghani was reported to accept fled. And as American forces focused their energies on evacuation flights for diplomatic mission staff and other personnel, Afghan authorities officials were shown in video footage accepting a handover of power to their Taliban counterparts in several cities.

Early in the day, senior Afghan politicians were seen boarding planes at Kabul airport. Bagram Air Base was taken by Taliban forces midday Sun every bit was the provincial town of Khost in eastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan media reports. The fall of Khost was office of a domino-like collapse of power of astonishing speed that saw metropolis later on city fall in merely the terminal calendar week, leaving Kabul as the last major urban center in government easily.

Interior Minister Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal appear in a video statement in the early on afternoon that an agreement had been made for a peaceful transfer of ability for greater Kabul and sought to reassure residents, saying that the security forces would remain in their posts to ensure security in the urban center.

"Equally the minister of interior, nosotros have ordered all Afghan National Security Forces divisions and members to stabilize Kabul," he said in a video statement released on the Facebook folio of the ministry building at 2 p.thou. local time. "There will exist no set on on the city. The agreement for greater Kabul city is that under an interim administration, God Willing, power will be transferred."

Only residents seemed unconvinced by their leaders' assurances. In the center of the city people were pictured painting over advertisements and posters of women at beauty salons, apparently preparing for a takeover past the fundamentalist Taliban who do not let images of humans or brute life, and have traditionally have banned music and the mixing of the sexes.

Residents confirmed that police had abandoned many of their posts or inverse into civilian apparel. The Taliban denied rumors that their primary negotiator, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was already in the upper-case letter and preparing to take over control at the Interior Ministry building.

Throughout the twenty-four hours, surreal scenes played out as information technology appeared always more clear the Taliban were taking over.

The insurgency has long had its own power structure of shadow governors appointed for every province, and Sunday it was articulate who was in control in strategic areas. The governors and tribal and political leaders who had been in power were shown in videos formally handing command to their Taliban counterparts in the strategic cities of Kandahar, the main stronghold of the s, and in Jalalabad, the main city of the east.

Just in Kabul fears of the city being overrun were running high later a breakout of prisoners, many of them members of the Taliban, from the main prison at Pul-i-Charkhi.

"Look at this, the whole people are permit free," a homo said as he filmed a video footage of people carrying bundles walking away from the prison house, posted on Facebook. "This is the Day of Judgment."

The breakout seems to have been by the prisoners from the inside, rather than an attack past Taliban forces from the exterior.

Some Afghans yet found room for humor amid the chaos: "Taliban have reached Kabul airport … their speed is faster than 5G," one resident of Kabul posted on Facebook.

But others fled, though it is unclear where they could go with the Taliban in control of so much of the country.

"Greetings, the Taliban have reached the urban center. We are escaping," said Sahraa Karimi, the head of Afghan Film, in a post shared widely on Facebook. Filming herself as she fled on foot, out of breath and clutching at her head scarf, she called on passers-by to get abroad.

The erstwhile president Hamid Karzai and other leaders tried to stride into the vacuum, and announced they were not leaving. Mr. Karzai, who has been involved in discussions with the Taliban for an acting regime, posted a video on his Facebook page of himself with his daughters in his garden as helicopters sounded overhead.

"My dear residents of Kabul, I want to say that I and my daughters and family are hither with you," he said. "We are working with the leader of the Taliban to resolve the difficulties of Afghanistan in a peaceful way."

Abdullah Abdullah, who has led recent talks with the Taliban also made a video statement from his garden.

"The terminal few days accept been very difficult for our countrymen all over the country," he said. He chosen on the Taliban to negotiate "so that the security situation does non deteriorate and our people practice not suffer further."

As news broke that the president had left the country, Vice President Amrullah Saleh, a former head of intelligence who has been fighting against the Taliban from the 1990s, tweeted that he would not surrender.

Yet the Afghan security forces seemed to be melting away. Abdul Jabar Safi, head of the Kabul Industrial Park, an area of hundreds of factories and businesses, said concern owners were trying to fend off looters with a few pistols and rifles left them by the regime guards.

"We want the Taliban to achieve u.s.a. as soon as possible and so they tin can secure the area," he said when reached by telephone. "Nosotros are in touch with the Taliban and they accept bodacious us that until they reach the industrial park we must keep the security of the park past ourselves."

Officials at the National Museum of Kabul on the western side of Kabul too appealed through a western official for aid, saying that police guards had abandoned their mail exterior the museum and that they feared the museum, which was badly looted in the 1990s, would fall prey once again to thieves.

Correction :

Aug. fifteen, 2021

An earlier version of this briefing item misstated the name of the main urban center in eastern Afghanistan. It is Jalalabad, not Nangarhar.

Evacuation from Kabul falters as chaos at airport reigns.

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Credit... Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

KABUL, Afghanistan — The U.South. diplomatic mission warned Americans not to head to the airport in Kabul considering of a situation that was "irresolute chop-chop" later on the Taliban entered the urban center on Sun.

Witnesses at the noncombatant domestic final said they had heard occasional gunshots and said thousands of people had crammed into the terminal and filled the parking lots, badly seeking flights out.

"The security situation in Kabul is changing apace including at the airport," the embassy said in a statement. "There are reports of the drome taking fire; therefore we are instructing U.S. citizens to shelter in place."

Late Lord's day, the State and Defense Departments issued a statement saying the U.Due south. was working to secure control of the aerodrome and to speed up the evacuation using civilian and military flights.

"Tomorrow and over the coming days," the statement said, "we will be transferring out of the land thousands of American citizens who have been resident in Afghanistan, likewise as locally employed staff of the U.S. mission in Kabul and their families and other particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals."

The Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday, completing the near total takeover of Afghanistan two decades after the American military machine drove them from power. A frenzied evacuation of U.S. diplomats and civilians kicked into high gear last calendar week, while Afghans made a mad nuance to banks, their homes and the airport. Crowds of people ran downwardly the streets every bit the sound of gunfire echoed in downtown Kabul.

Helicopter subsequently helicopter — including massive Chinooks with their twin engines, and speedy Black Hawks that had been the workhorse of the grinding war — touched downward and and then took off loaded with passengers. Some shot flares overhead.

On Saturday, President Biden accelerated the deployment of 1,000 boosted troops to Afghanistan to assistance in the evacuation. On Dominicus, orders went out to deploy another 1,000, temporarily bringing the U.S. presence there to half-dozen,000, according to a Pentagon official who was non authorized to discuss the matter publicly and was granted anonymity.

Those existence evacuated over the weekend included a core grouping of American diplomats who had planned to remain at the embassy in Kabul, according to a senior administration official. They were beingness moved to a compound at the international airport, where they would stay for an unspecified amount of fourth dimension, the official said.

The track of the airport was filled with a constellation of uniforms from different nations. They joined contractors, diplomats and civilians all trying to grab a flight out of the urban center. Those who were eligible to fly were given special bracelets, denoting their condition equally noncombatants.

For millions of Afghans, including tens of thousands who assisted the U.S. efforts in the country for years, in that location were no bracelets. They were stuck in the urban center.

Hundreds of people swarmed to the noncombatant side of the airport in the hopes of boarding planes out, only by evening scores were still waiting inside the final and milling around on the apron amid the constant roar of planes taking off from the adjacent military machine air base. A long line of people waited exterior the check-in gate, unsure if the flights they had booked out of the country would arrive.

While President Biden has dedicated his decision to concur firm and pull the last U.S. troops out of Transitional islamic state of afghanistan by Sept. xi, his assistants has become increasingly worried virtually images that could evoke a foreign policy disaster of the by: the fall of Saigon at the end of the disharmonize in Vietnam in 1975.

Fahim Abed , Fatima Faizi , Thomas Gibbons-Neff , Christina Goldbaum , Sharif Hassan , Jim Huylebroek , Najim Rahim and Lara Jakes contributed reporting.

Afghan Americans, angry over Taliban victory, protest in Washington.

As their homeland fell one time again into the hands of the Taliban, more than 300 Afghan Americans went to the White House on Sunday to make their frustrations known.

Demonstrators, some with young children and babies in strollers, spilled into Lafayette Square, wielding signs that read "Assistance Afghan kids" and "America betrayed us."

Some held up the flag of Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. Others draped information technology over their shoulders. They stood in a circle around organizers who used bullhorns to become their message out.

"Nosotros want justice," they declared.

Amongst those attending the three-hour protest was Sohaila Samadyar, a 43-year-old banker in Washington, who was in that location with her 10-year-old son. Ms. Samadyar, who immigrated to America in 2000, said she wanted to enhance awareness about Afghans still stuck in the land, similar her blood brother and sis in Kabul.

Ms. Samadyar said that she had voted for President Biden in Nov, only that she now regretted that decision, "disappointed" in his handling of the state of war.

"He has basically disregarded the Afghan community," she said. "It's unbelievable how fast everything has inverse."

Yasameen Anwar, a 19-year-old sophomore in higher, drove well-nigh three hours from Richmond, Va., with her friends and sister to nourish the protest. Ms. Anwar said she was concerned well-nigh the future of women and children in Afghanistan.

"Before, when America was in Afghanistan, at that place was promise in that we were fighting the Taliban and that they could finally be defeated after twenty years," Ms. Anwar said. "But by the Biden administration completely stepping out, information technology's giving them no hope anymore."

A commencement-generation Afghan American, Ms. Anwar said she had always dreamed of visiting her family unit's abode country. She now doubts that she will be able to go.

"It just seems like we're never going to go peace," Ms. Anwar said.

The U.S. is non moving Afghan allies out fast enough to avoid reprisals, critics say.

Paradigm

Credit... Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

As the U.S. raced to evacuate personnel from its embassy in Kabul, homo and refugee rights groups sharply criticized the Biden administration for not moving faster to relocate America's Afghan allies from a land where they are at hazard of lethal Taliban reprisals.

"The Biden assistants has taken too long to create a process that ensures prophylactic for Afghans who served with American military and civil society actors," Jennifer Quigley, senior director for government affairs at Human Rights First, said in a statement. "As Transitional islamic state of afghanistan'south military machine and political leaders abandon their posts, the United States risks abandoning allies who stood with us, who translated for and protected our troops."

"Unless in that location is a swift and meaningful effort to evacuate the thousands of allies and their families to the United States or a U.S. territory, we will accept broken our promise to exit no one backside," she added.

Congress created the Special Immigrant Visa programme to allow Afghans who worked with the Americans over the past 20 years to relocate to the Us. The Land Section has given eligibility to tens of thousands of people and their families, and some take been flown out of Afghanistan.

But the charge per unit of evacuation has not matched the speed of the Afghan government collapse. "If evacuation flights continue at their electric current pace, it would have until March 2023 to evacuate all the eligible Afghans out of the country," Ms. Quigley said.

Earlier this calendar month, the Biden administration appear that Afghans who are not eligible for the programme — including ones who worked for U.S.-based media organizations and nongovernmental organizations — could apply for high-priority refugee status.

Just U.Due south. officials said those Afghans, who may number in the tens of thousands, must first exit the country under their own auspices simply to begin an application process that tin can have more than a twelvemonth. With the Taliban in command of cities, highways and border crossings, it may now be too late for many of them to leave.

Correction :

Aug. eighteen, 2021

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this item misstated when the Special Immigrant Visa program was created. It was created in 2009, not this year.

The Taliban has advanced and resistance has complanate with surprising speed.

Image

Credit... Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The fall of Kabul follows days in which one urban heart after some other fell to the insurgents with astonishing speed, frequently with footling or no resistance, leaving the government in command of cipher only fast-shrinking pockets of the state.

The insurgents took Mazar-i-Sharif, in the north, late on Sabbatum, just an hour after breaking through the front lines at the city's border. Soon after, government security forces and militias — including those led past the warlords Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Muhammad Noor — fled, effectively handing control to the insurgents.

On Sunday morning, the Taliban seized the eastern urban center of Jalalabad. In taking that provincial capital and surrounding areas, the insurgents gained control of the Torkham border crossing, a major trade and transit route between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They took over Bagram Air Base of operations, which had been the hub of U.S. military power in the land until the Americans handed control of information technology dorsum to Afghan forces vi weeks earlier.

Afterward Dominicus, Taliban fighters began taking up positions in Kabul, the capital — the last major city that had been under government control — as government forces melted abroad and the president fled the country.

The Taliban offensive, which started in May when the The states began withdrawing troops, gathered speed over the by week. In city after city, the militants took downwards Afghan government flags and hoisted their own white banners.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken acknowledged on Sunday that the offensive had moved faster than U.S. officials had expected.

Despite 2 decades of war with American-led forces, the Taliban have survived and thrived, without giving upwardly their vision of creating a country governed past a stringent Islamic code.

Afterwards the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the 1990s, motion-picture show theaters were closed, the Kabul tv set station was shut down and the playing of all music was banned. Schools were airtight to girls.

Despite many Afghans' memories of years nether Taliban rule before the U.South.-led invasion in 2001, the insurgents accept taken command of much of the country in recent days with only minimal resistance.

Their rapid successes accept exposed the weakness of an Afghan military that the United States spent more than $83 billion to support over the past two decades. As the insurgents' campaign has accelerated, soldiers and constabulary officers have abandoned the security forces in ever greater numbers, with the cause for which they risked their lives actualization increasingly to be lost.

The speed of the Taliban'south advance has thrown leave planning into disarray. While many analysts had believed that the Afghan military could be overrun after international forces withdrew, they thought it would happen over months and years.

President Biden has accelerated the deployment of an additional ane,000 troops to Afghanistan to help get American citizens out. He made it clear that he would not reverse his decision to withdraw all combat forces.

"I was the quaternary president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan — 2 Republicans, two Democrats," Mr. Biden said on Saturday afternoon. "I would not, and will non, pass this war onto a fifth."

In pictures: The Taliban plant their flag.

Kandahar

EPA, via Shutterstock
Herat

Hamed Sarfarazi/Associated Press
Herat

Reuters
Ghazni

Reuters
Kabul

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Kabul

Rahmat Gul/Associated Press
Kabul

Wakil Kohsar/Agence French republic-Presse — Getty Images

With their seizure of Jalalabad on Sun, followed hours subsequently by their entry into Kabul, the capital, the Taliban finer took command of Afghanistan. Planes departing the airport in Kabul were filled with people fleeing the country.

The U.N. principal urges the Security Council to 'utilise all tools' to help Afghanistan.

The Un' leader and the Security Council appealed on Monday for an end to hostilities in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, humanitarian assistance to the land and the creation of a representative government that will protect the rights of women, forbid human rights abuses and keep the country from once again condign a haven for global terrorist plots.

The 15-member Security Council held an emergency meeting on the rapidly escalating chaos a twenty-four hours after Kabul and the regime fell to Taliban forces. U.N. Secretary Full general António Guterres and diplomats conveyed alarm but also tacitly best-selling that the Taliban finer controlled Afghanistan and the era of foreign military machine intervention was over.

The Council argument, agreed by consensus, called for "an immediate stop to the violence in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, the restoration of security, civil and constitutional gild, and urgent talks to resolve the current crisis of potency in the country and to get in at a peaceful settlement through an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned process of national reconciliation."

As terrified Afghans flocked to the airport in Kabul, rushing the runway and clinging to U.S. military airplanes scrambling to airlift Americans and Afghan allies, Mr. Guterres said the U.North. remained committed to providing aid and other services in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. Virtually 18 million people in the state, half of its population, currently demand humanitarian assistance.

"At this grave hour, I urge all parties, especially the Taliban, to practice utmost restraint to protect lives and to ensure that humanitarian needs are met," Mr. Guterres said in his prepared remarks.

He urged all other countries "to be willing to receive Afghan refugees and refrain from whatsoever deportations."

Ghulam Isaczai, Transitional islamic state of afghanistan'due south administrator to the U.N., said Kabul residents reported the Taliban had already started searching houses, registering names. He said people were living "in accented fear right at present."

While Quango members spoke of their concerns that the rights gained for women and girls, journalists and activists would be lost and terrorist groups would shelter in the land, there was little sign of a plan for preventing those fears from becoming reality.

Afghan leaders who have remained in the land, including Hamid Karzai, the former longtime president, say they want to negotiate formation of a regime with the Taliban, but it is not clear that the victorious insurgents accept whatsoever interest in compromise.

Afghanistan surged toward the top of U.N. humanitarian priorities over the past few weeks equally it became increasingly clear that the Afghan government was collapsing. On Friday, Mr. Guterres said the country was "spinning out of control."

It remains unclear how the United Nations volition regard the Taliban should the militant movement declare itself the legitimate power in Afghanistan and demand a seat in the 193-member system. Many countries accept condemned the Taliban's brutality and would probably non recognize such a declaration.

The United Nations employs roughly 3,000 employees who are Afghan and about 720 international staff members in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, although roughly half of the international employees take been working outside the country since the coronavirus pandemic started. U.North. officials have said that there are no plans to evacuate whatever staff members from the country.

The Taliban take pledged non to interfere in U.Northward. help operations, just they attacked a U.N. office in the western city of Herat on July 30, and a local security official guarding the office was killed.

A grouping of 26 U.Northward. human rights experts issued a articulation statement on Mon maxim it was unacceptable for countries to sit on the sidelines as a group labeled terrorists by the Security Council takes over Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan is a exam instance for the value of the U.Northward. Lease, and the commitment of States to prevent the scourge of terrorism from destroying rights-begetting societies and values," the statement said.

The Taliban took over Kunduz a week agone and shortly began spreading terror.

Epitome

Credit... Abdullah Sahil/Associated Press

It was his first twenty-four hour period every bit the Taliban-appointed mayor of Kunduz, and Gul Mohammad Elias was on a charm offensive.

Last Sunday, the insurgents seized control of the city in northern Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, which was in shambles after weeks of fighting. Power lines were down. The water supply, powered by generators, did not accomplish most residents. Trash and rubble littered the streets.

The civil servants who could fix those issues were hiding at habitation, terrified of the Taliban. So the insurgent-commander-turned-mayor summoned some to his new office, to persuade them to render to piece of work.

Just day past day, as municipal offices stayed generally empty, Mr. Elias grew more frustrated — and his rhetoric grew harsher.

Taliban fighters began going door to door, searching for absentee city workers. Hundreds of armed men fix upward checkpoints across the city. At the archway to the regional hospital, a new notice appeared on the wall: Employees must return to work or face punishment from the Taliban.

The experience of those in Kunduz offers a glimpse of how the Taliban may govern, and what may be in store for the rest of the country.

In just days, the insurgents, frustrated past their failed efforts to cajole ceremonious servants back to work, began instilling terror, co-ordinate to residents reached by phone.

"I am afraid, because I do not know what will happen and what they volition practise," said i, who asked non to exist identified for fear of retaliation. "Nosotros have to grinning at them because we are scared, but securely we are unhappy."

Nearly every shop in Kunduz was airtight. Shopkeepers, fearing that their stores would be looted past Taliban fighters, had taken their goods home. Each afternoon, the streets emptied of residents, who feared airstrikes as regime planes buzzed in the sky. And well-nigh 500 Taliban fighters were stationed around the metropolis, staffing checkpoints on nearly every street corner.

At the regional infirmary, armed Taliban members were keeping runway of attendance. Out of fear, one health worker said, female staff members wore sky-blue burqas every bit they assisted in surgeries and tended to wounds from airstrikes, which even so splintered the metropolis each afternoon.

Afghan women fear what will happen with the Taliban once once more in power.

Prototype

Credit... Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

A loftier school student in Kabul, Afghanistan'due south war-scarred capital, worries that she now volition non be allowed to graduate.

The girl, Wahida Sadeqi, 17, like many Afghan civilians in the wake of the U.S. troop withdrawal and ahead of a Taliban victory, keeps asking the same question: What will happen to me?

The American withdrawal, which effectively ends the longest war on foreign soil in United states of america history, is also probable to be the showtime of another difficult chapter for Afghanistan'south people.

"I am and so worried about my future. It seems then murky. If the Taliban take over, I lose my identity," said Ms. Sadeqi, an 11th grader at Pardis High School in Kabul. "It is about my existence. It is not most their withdrawal. I was born in 2004, and I take no idea what the Taliban did to women, simply I know women were banned from everything."

Uncertainty hangs over nigh every facet of life in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. It is unclear what the future holds and whether the fighting will ever stop. For two decades, American leaders take pledged peace, prosperity, democracy, the stop of terrorism and rights for women.

Few of those promises have materialized in vast areas of Afghanistan, but now even in the cities where real progress occurred, there is fear that everything will be lost when the Americans get out.

The Taliban, the extremist grouping that once controlled well-nigh of the land and continues to fight the regime, insist that the elected president step down. Militias are increasing in prominence and power, and there is talk of a lengthy civil war.

Over two decades, the American mission evolved from hunting terrorists to helping the government build the institutions of a operation government, dismantle the Taliban and empower women. But the U.S. and Afghan militaries were never able to finer destroy the Taliban, who sought refuge in Islamic republic of pakistan, allowing the insurgents to phase a comeback.

The Taliban never recognized Afghanistan's democratic authorities. And they appear closer than always to achieving the goal of their insurgency: to render to ability and establish a government based on their extremist view of Islam.

Women would be most at risk under Taliban rule. When the group controlled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, it barred women from taking virtually jobs or receiving educations and practically made them prisoners in their own homes — though this was already custom for many women in rural parts of the country.

"It is too early to comment on the subject. We demand to know much more," Fatima Gailani, an Afghan regime negotiator who is involved in the continuing peace talks with the Taliban, said in April. "One thing is sure: Information technology is about time that we larn how to rely on ourselves. Women of Afghanistan are totally dissimilar now. They are a force in our country — no one can deny them their rights or status."

Afghans working for U.Due south. regime broadcasters fear Taliban backfire.

Epitome

Credit... Rahmat Gul/Associated Printing

More a hundred journalists employed by the American authorities's own radio stations remain in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan every bit the Taliban have power, U.S. officials and Afghan journalists said Sunday.

"Journalists are being left behind," said Rateb Noori, the Kabul agency news manager of Radio Azadi, in a phone interview from Kabul on Sunday.

The station, a branch of the U.S. government'south Radio Costless Europe and Radio Liberty services, formerly called Radio Free Afghanistan, broadcast through the day Sunday, including ambulation an interview with a Taliban spokesman. Its sis station, Voice of America, reported on Sunday that ane of its reporters "was in the passport office when everyone was told to get out immediately and go home."

The Afghans working for the U.S. government broadcasters in Kabul and effectually the state have long been targets of the insurgents, who killed a journalist with Radio Free Transitional islamic state of afghanistan in a targeted bombing in November. They are amongst the most exposed of hundreds of Afghans who have worked with American news organizations since the arrival of U.Due south. troops in 2001, and media organizations have been scrambling to help local employees evacuate. The U.S. regime made journalists eligible for a visa program that could allow them to leave the land. They have yet to be evacuated and the window to do so is closing quickly.

The acting acting chief executive of the U.South. Agency for Global Media, which oversees the broadcasters, said in an e-mail to staff Sunday that the bureau is "doing everything in our power to protect" journalists and "will not back downwards in our mission to inform, appoint, and connect Afghans in support of liberty and democracy."

The president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Jamie Fly, said in a text message that the service is "doing everything possible to make sure they can safely proceed their work."

Mr. Noori, who was awake late on Sunday because he was worried about looters at his abode, said in that location was no protection and petty certainty — including whether the stations will continue to broadcast Monday.

"Everybody is locked down in their homes, and no one knows what happens tomorrow," he said.

Afghan journalists accept little to practice but rely on early Taliban promises that they will non assail members of the news media.

"Having feel last time of their role in Afghanistan, I retrieve they cannot go on their promises — they cannot command their people," he said. "I'm just hoping that we can survive for a while, and then allow's see if we have a way out to whatever neighboring state," Mr. Noori said.

Mujeeb Angaar, who worked for Radio Free Transitional islamic state of afghanistan from 2010 to 2013 before fleeing the state, said in a telephone interview from his home in Canada that he was told past the Taliban at the time that he "should be killed, because you piece of work for Jews, you work for the CIA."

The American-backed services "will be the first target," he said.

Great britain joins line of U.S. allies scrambling to evacuate staff from Kabul.

Having sent thousands of troops to Afghanistan during two decades of disharmonize, Uk is one of the biggest losers from a Taliban takeover that has humiliated the United States and its allies and left thousands stranded.

Estimates vary, but about iii,000 Britons are thought to be in Afghanistan. Officials say they are confident that the citizens can exist evacuated every bit part of an airlift expected to involve hundreds each 24-hour interval. They are less certain about existence able to provide a safe exit to all of the Afghans who aided the British and whose lives could now exist at risk.

Time is critical, because once the U.Due south. withdraws the remainder of its forces, there will be no way of safely having planes land and take off.

One pick to speed up the procedure is to initially fly people leaving Kabul to a rubber Middle Eastern country rather than repatriating them directly to Britain.

On Mon, Prime Minister Boris Johnson chaired a meeting of an emergency commission in Downing Street after cut short his vacation. Britain'southward Parliament is also being recalled from its summer recess to discuss the crisis in Afghanistan on Wednesday among growing alarm nearly the humanitarian and strategic consequences of the Taliban's advances.

The terminal fourth dimension Parliament was recalled for an emergency session to discuss a like foreign policy question was in 2014, during a crisis in Iraq.

In the by two decades, 150,000 British war machine personnel have served in Afghanistan, mainly in Helmand Province, though combat missions ended in 2014, leaving behind a pocket-sized contingent for support work.

In all, 457 British personnel died in Afghanistan, and on Monday, amidst the chaotic scenes in Afghanistan, the front-folio headline of ane tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mail, read: "What the hell did they all die for?"

Last month, Britain announced the withdrawal of its remaining forces from Afghanistan to coincide with the American military's pullout, though it said final calendar week that it was sending an additional 600 military personnel to help with the evacuation.

This weekend, nigh 370 diplomatic mission employees and British citizens were flown out of the country, the British defense ministry said.

United kingdom'due south defense secretarial assistant, Ben Wallace, acknowledged on Mon that some of those who aided the United States and its allies in the last ii decades in Afghanistan risked existence abandoned to their fate under the Taliban.

"Information technology's a actually deep part of the regret for me that some people won't get back," he told LBC Radio, his voice breaking with emotion. "Some people won't get back, and nosotros will have to do our all-time in third countries to process those people."

Asked why he felt it so personally, Mr. Wallace started his reply by saying that it was considering of his experience as a soldier. Merely he so added: "Because it's distressing, and considering the West has done what it has done and we accept to exercise our best to go people and stand past our obligations and 20 years of sacrifice is what it is."

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/15/world/taliban-afghanistan-news

Where the Hell Is Afghanisthan Again?

Kabul falls to the Taliban every bit the Afghan government collapses and the president flees.

Taliban Occupy Afghan Presidential Palace

The Afghan authorities collapsed after the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday. Evacuations of international diplomats and civilians accept been underway at the international airdrome in the capital.

Fear and confusion have concur in Kabul every bit the Taliban move in and the government crumbles.

Evacuation from Kabul falters as chaos at airport reigns.

Afghan Americans, angry over Taliban victory, protest in Washington.

'Biden, Y'all Betrayed United states of america': Afghan Americans Protest in D.C.

More than 300 demonstrators rallied outside the White House to decry the The states' withdrawal from Afghanistan that led to the Taliban seizing control of the country.

The U.S. is non moving Afghan allies out fast enough to avoid reprisals, critics say.

The Taliban has advanced and resistance has complanate with surprising speed.

In pictures: The Taliban plant their flag.

The U.N. principal urges the Security Council to 'utilise all tools' to help Afghanistan.

United nations Must Not 'Abandon' Afghanistan, Secretary General Says

António Guterres, the Un Secretary General, voiced concern over accounts of human rights violations in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and fears that its seizure of power would bring "a return to the darkest days" for Afghan women and girls.

The Taliban took over Kunduz a week agone and shortly began spreading terror.

Afghan women fear what will happen with the Taliban once once more in power.

Afghans working for U.Due south. regime broadcasters fear Taliban backfire.

Great britain joins line of U.S. allies scrambling to evacuate staff from Kabul.

Dominic Raab Outlines British Efforts to Gainsay the Taliban

Dominic Raab, the British foreign secretary, outlined efforts to combat the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and to ensure British citizens are out of damage'southward way.

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