The taliban’s impending takeover of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, led to the flight of President Ashraf Ghani and thousands of Afghan and foreign civilians on Sunday, who crowded into airports and highways. After 20 years under the administration of a U.S.-led alliance, the city is surrounded by the Taliban group demanding a transfer of power. After news broke of Ghani’s flight, they announced that they were entering the city to prevent looting, after Afghan police left police stations and other posts. The U.S. and Canadian embassies have already been evacuated, and the same is expected of other diplomatic headquarters.
Meanwhile, civilians fear that the Taliban will re-enter the regime that characterized their Government from 1996 to 2001, which left women without rights, among other things. At the time, long queues were seen at ATMs in Kabul to extract life savings. The streets were also filled with vehicles loaded up to the roof trying to leave the city or take refuge in a safer area, the AFP news agency reported. A witness quoted by CNN described scenes of chaos at Kabul airport, with “large crowds trying to get in” and even gunfire.
In a surprising breakthrough on the heels of the withdrawal of defeated foreign forces from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, the Taliban took almost all of northern Afghanistan last week, despite billions of dollars spent by the United States and NATO to train Afghan forces. Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told British news network BBC today that the Islamist movement wanted a “peaceful transfer of power in the coming days.” Speaking from Doha, Qatar, where negotiations are taking place between the Afghan government and the Taliban, spokesman Shaheen promised that the militia would not attack embassies or diplomats or foreign NGO workers, that it would not retaliate against Afghans and that it would allow women to study and work.
The Taliban began their military advance after US President Joe Biden announced plans to withdraw forces from his country by the end of this month. Within a week, Islamist rebels captured the capitals of 26 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, five of them today. In Afghanistan, the Taliban said they had no intention of taking Kabul “by force.” “Negotiations are ongoing to ensure that the transition process is absolutely safe, without compromising anyone’s lives, property or honour, and without compromising the lives of Kabul residents,” the militia said in a statement. Hours earlier, after the Taliban said they would remain at the gates of Kabul, Interior Minister Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal promised a “peaceful transition of power” to a non-Taliban transitional government.” The Afghan people should not worry. There will be no attack on the city and there will be a peaceful transition of power,” he said in a recorded message.
