Taliban Seize Kandahar, Prepare to March on Afghan Capital Kabul

KABUL—The Taliban accomplished the seizure of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s next-premier town and the Islamist movement’s birthplace, and took into custody a warlord who organized the failed defenses of the western town of Herat.

Combined with other improvements, like the capture of the provincial money of Helmand, the fall of these two main cities has given the Taliban comprehensive regulate of southern and western Afghanistan, allowing the insurgent motion to pool its forces for a last march on Kabul.

The U.S. has presently introduced the drawdown of its substantial embassy in Kabul, sending troops to evacuate most of the staff as it cuts the diplomatic existence to an critical main. Other Western embassies are readying comparable ideas, fearing that the Taliban could lay siege to the Afghan money within just days.

Business flights from Kabul were being booked solid, with expatriates and Afghans holding visas for international international locations trying to leave. Tens of 1000’s of persons escaping the Taliban’s improvements in the provinces, meanwhile, flocked into the Afghan money, sleeping in town parks and mosques.

“The Taliban never care about persons, they just like war, and now you see the town filling up with displaced persons,” explained Yama Rashid, a 29-yr-aged seller of cellular-cellular phone playing cards. “They say that the U.S. is going to assistance persons who labored for them. But what about the relaxation of us? Really should we just burn off?”