Taleban now within 50km of Kabul after latest victory

KABUL • The Taleban effectively opened a path to Kabul yesterday with the capture of the provincial capital of Pol-e-Alam, in Logar province, just 50km from the Afghan capital.

The latest victory came within hours of the insurgents tightening their grip on the country by wresting control of its second-and third-biggest cities as Western embassies prepared to send in troops to help evacuate staff from Kabul.

The capture of the second-biggest city of Kandahar in the south and Herat in the west after days of clashes are a devastating setback for the government as the deadly Taleban insurgency turns into a rout of the security forces.

"The city looks like a front line, a ghost town," provincial council member Ghulam Habib Hashimi said by 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."

Referring to the southern economic hub of Kandahar, a government official said yesterday: "Following heavy clashes late last night, the Taleban took control."

"Now, the Taleban are 100 per cent in control. There is no fighting at the moment. Most of the officials fled to Kabul," lawmaker Saeed Qaribullah Sadat said after Pol-e-Alam was overrun.

The defeats have fuelled fears that the US-backed government could fall to the insurgents as international forces complete their withdrawal after 20 years of war.

The United Nations World Food Programme sees food shortages in Afghanistan as "quite dire" and worsening, a spokesman said, adding that the situation had all the hallmarks of a humanitarian catastrophe.

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.

In response to the Taleban advances, the Pentagon said it would send about 3,000 extra troops within 48 hours to help evacuate US Embassy staff.

Britain said it would deploy about 600 troops to help its citizens leave, while other embassies and aid groups said that they, too, were getting their people out. Canada would also deploy special forces troops to Kabul to help in the evacuation of embassy staff, the Associated Press reported.

The UN has warned that a Taleban offensive reaching the capital would have a "catastrophic impact on civilians", but there is little hope for negotiations to end the fighting, with the Taleban apparently set on a military victory.

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

Lashkar Gah is the capital of the opium-growing province of Helmand, where British, US and other foreign forces battled the insurgents for years.

The militants, fighting to defeat the government and impose their strict version of Islamic rule, have taken control of 16 of Afghanistan's 34 provincial capitals since Aug 6.

In a blow to anti-Taleban forces, the insurgents detained veteran commander Mohammad Ismail Khan after they seized Herat, a provincial official said, adding that they had promised not to harm him and other captured officials.

The loss of Kandahar will be a heavy blow to the government. It is the heartland of the Taleban, ethnic Pashtun fighters who emerged in the province in 1994 amid the chaos of civil war to sweep through most of the rest of the country over the next two years.

Government forces still controlled Kandahar's airport, which was the US military's second-biggest base in Afghanistan during its 20-year mission, an official said.

The US State Department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday and told him that the United States "remains invested in the security and stability of Afghanistan".

They also said the US was committed to supporting a political solution. Britain's Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said Afghanistan was spiralling into a failed state and civil war in which groups such as Al-Qaeda would thrive and likely pose a threat to the West again.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said this week that the Taleban had refused to negotiate unless Mr Ghani resigned.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS