Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses. Share the link of this article with your facebook friends

 

Taliban Says 85 Per Cent of Afghanistan's Territory Is Under Its Control

SCMP, June 11, 2021

 

Displaced Afghans at a temporary shelter in Qaderabad village, Herat, July 2021	Armed supporters guard former minister Mohammad Ismail Khan's home in Herat, July 2021

 

Taliban says 85 per cent of Afghanistan’s territory is under its control

SCMP, Reuters, 9:17pm, 9 Jul, 2021

Torghundi, a northern town on the border with Turkmenistan, had also been captured by the insurgents A WHO official said health workers were struggling to get medicines into Afghanistan, where at least 18.4 million people require humanitarian help

Afghan soldiers keep watch at a checkpoint in the Guzara district of Herat province. Photo: Reuters

Taliban officials said on Friday the Sunni Muslim insurgent group had taken control of 85 per cent of territory in Afghanistan , and its fighters were tightening their grip on strategic areas.

Government officials dismissed the assertion by a Taliban delegation visiting Moscow as part of a propaganda campaign launched as foreign forces, including the US, withdraw after almost 20 years of fighting.

But local Afghan officials said Taliban fighters, emboldened by the withdrawal, had captured an important district in Herat province, home to tens of thousands of minority Shiite Hazaras.

Torghundi, a northern town on the border with Turkmenistan, had also been captured by the Taliban overnight, Afghan and Taliban officials said. Taliban insurgents were now in complete control of the police headquarters, intelligence services, customs operations and the municipal centre, they said.

Hundreds of Afghan security personnel and refugees continued to flee across the border into neighbouring Iran and Tajikistan, causing concern in Moscow and other foreign capitals that radical Islamists could infiltrate Central Asia.

Three visiting Taliban officials sought to address those concerns during their visit to Moscow.

“We will take all measures so that Islamic State  will not operate on Afghan territory … and our territory will never be used against our neighbours,” one of the Taliban officials, Shahabuddin Delawar, told a news conference.

Sign up for our Newsletters Find out more He said “you and the entire world community have probably recently learned that 85 per cent of the territory of Afghanistan has come under the control” of the Taliban.

The same delegation said a day earlier that the group would not attack the Tajik-Afghan border, the fate of which is in focus in Russia and Central Asia.

Civil war looms in Afghanistan as UK ends military mission, but Beijing extends a hand asked about how much territory the Taliban held, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby declined direct comment.

“Claiming territory or claiming ground doesn’t mean you can sustain that or keep it over time” he said in an interview with CNN. “And so I think it’s really time for the Afghan forces to get into the field – and they are in the field – and to defend their country, their people.”

“They’ve got the capacity, they’ve got the capability. Now it’s time to have that will,” he said.

As fighting continued, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said health workers were struggling to get medicines and supplies into Afghanistan, and that some staff had fled after facilities came under attack.

The WHO’s regional emergencies director, Rick Brennan, said at least 18.4 million people require humanitarian help, including 3.1 million children at risk of acute malnutrition.

“We are concerned about our lack of access to be able to provide essential medicines and supplies and we are concerned about attacks on health care,” Brennan, speaking via video link from Cairo, told a UN briefing in Geneva.

Some aid will arrive by next week including 3.5 million Covid-19 vaccine  doses and oxygen concentrators, he said. They included doses of Johnson & Johnson’s shot donated by the US and AstraZeneca doses through the Covax facility.

A US donation of more than 1.4 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine arrived on Friday, the UN children’s agency Unicef said.

A prominent anti-Taliban commander of a private militia rejected the assurances made in Moscow, and said he would support efforts by Afghan forces to claw back control of parts of western Afghanistan, including a border crossing with Iran.

Mohammad Ismail Khan, a former minister and a survivor of a Taliban attack in 2009, was a leading member of the Northern Alliance whose militia helped US forces topple the Taliban in 2001.

A veteran Tajik commander widely known as the “Lion of Herat”, Ismail Khan urged civilians to join the fight to protect their basic human rights.

How Putin could jam up Biden’s post-Afghanistan plans 7 Jul 2021

He said hundreds of armed civilians from Ghor, Badghis, Nimroz, Farah, Helmand and Kandahar provinces had come to his house and were ready to fill the security void created by foreign force withdrawal.

US President Joe Biden  on Thursday defended his decision to pull military forces out of Afghanistan despite large parts of country being overrun by the insurgent group.

He said the Afghan people must decide their own future and that he would not consign another generation of Americans to the two-decade-old war.

Biden set a target date of August 31 for the final withdrawal of US forces, minus about 650 troops to provide security for the American embassy in Kabul.

Taliban says 85 per cent of Afghanistan’s territory is under its control | South China Morning Post (scmp.com)

***

Share the link of this article with your facebook friends