We’ve launched a new blog at the link below and will be closing this one now – head there for the very latest developments:
The Guardian’s front page headline on Monday morning: “The Fall of Kabul”.
Guardian front page, Monday 16 August 2021: The fall of Kabul pic.twitter.com/e3Pf6nsSRs
— The Guardian (@guardian) August 15, 2021
Taliban official: real test begins now that we have won power
One of the Taliban’s most senior officials declared on Sunday that the movement’s swift victory over the Afghan government was an unrivalled feat but that the real test of governing effectively would begin now that it had won power, Reuters reports.
In a brief video statement, Baradar, the head of the Taliban’s political bureau, said the victory, which saw all of the country’s major cities fall in a week, was unexpectedly swift and had no match in the world.
However he said the real test would begin now with meeting the expectations of the people and serving them by resolving their problems.
'Chaos' at Kabul airport
We understand that there is currently “chaos” at Kabul airport, where it is 2.30am.
PBS correspondent Jane Ferguson says that she is hearing “multiple accounts accounts of civilians being injured in scenes of chaos on tarmac in #Kabul Airport as desperate people try to get flights”.
She points out that those who decide to leave the airport now face Taliban checkpoints on their way home. She calls the situation a “nightmare”.
Here is video of the scenes from Natalie Amiri, correspondent for Germany’s ARD
Flughafen #Kabul… #Afganistan pic.twitter.com/vd8fx8hWQy
— Natalie Amiri (@NatalieAmiri) August 15, 2021
Hi, Helen Sullivan here taking over from Joanna.
I’ll be bringing you the very latest for the next while. If you are in Kabul, see something you think we may have missed, or have any questions, the best place to find me is on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Summary
It’s been an extraordinarily dramatic 24 hours in Afghanistan as the Taliban has taken over the capital, Kabul, essentially sweeping to power in the country. They have yet officially to declare victory and that they are now in control of the nation, but it is considered only a matter of time before that happens.
It’s approaching 3am local time in Kabul now and the night sky is noisy with the thumping whir of large helicopters, widely understood to be the US military evacuating US nationals and Afghan support individuals from the country as fast as it possibly can.
The Guardian US team is now handing over this live blog to our terrific colleagues in Australia, who will keep it running and continue to bring you all the developments promptly.
There were reports earlier that the extremist insurgency was about to formally declare, from the captured presidential palace in Kabul following the escape of Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani, that the country would henceforth be known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
This is the title the country was given during the previous control by the Taliban, before they were ousted in late 2001 by US-led forces following the terrorist attacks on the US, which were masterminded from the country by Islamist fundamentalist group Al Qaida, led by Osama Bin Laden. An emirate refers to a land or a reign by an emir, a Muslim religious military commander, chief or ruler.
US president Joe Biden has not made any public comments so far today but is expected to address the American public and the world in the next few days.
British prime minister Boris Johnson gave a TV interview earlier and said the Taliban should not be recognized as holding power in Afghanistan and that the country must not once again become a “breeding ground” for global terrorism.
Here is a summary of the main events of the day. You can also keep abreast of developments via Guardian stories on the site from my colleagues on the Taliban and Afghanistan.
- The Taliban has said from Kabul that the war in Afghanistan “is over”.
- The US is sending another 1,000 troops, directly to Kabul, bringing US military numbers expected in Afghanistan up to 6,000 in an attempt to execute the safe withdrawal of US nationals and Afghan support staff - between two and three times the number of soldiers that were there last week.
- Afghanistan’s erstwhile president Ashraf Ghani is reported to have fled to Tashkent, the capital of neighboring Uzbekistan.
- Ghani put out an extraordinary message on Facebook saying he left the country to try to avoid, essentially, a bloody war in Kabul, instead enabling the Taliban to, it seems, take control with almost no fighting.
- US secretary of state Antony Blinken spent a bunch of Sunday on TV defending the Biden administration, talking about the big picture plan that was always in place for the US to leave Afghanistan but often sidestepping questions about the chaotic nature of this rushed withdrawal itself. He did acknowledge that events in the last few days had happened more quickly than anticipated.
- The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting in New York at 10am local time on Monday to discuss the crisis in Afghanistan.
- A Nato official said all commercial flights have been suspended from the airport in Kabul and only military aircraft are currently allowed to operate. The airport is now the only way out of Afghanistan. The Taliban control all land crossings.
- The Taliban are on the verge of declaring that they have taken control of the country and that it is now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a live TV interview after emergency meetings with relevant senior department heads in London: “Nobody wants Afghanistan to be a breeding ground for terror … or to lapse back into the pre-2001 situation.” He said he believed Britain could brings its remaining nationals and Afghan support staff out safely.
- The Stars & Stripes flag was lowered at the US embassy in Kabul and the evacuation of the compound was completed. Only a handful of security contractors were left behind.
- Taliban commanders and fighters took control of the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul. This followed the arrival of the Taliban on the outskirts and then into the heart of Kabul earlier on Sunday - days, weeks, if not months more quickly than most expected.
Updated
The war in Afghanistan is over – Taliban, via report
The spokesman for the Taliban’s political office has told Al-Jazeera TV today that the war is over in Afghanistan and that the type of rule and the form of regime will be clear soon.
Reuters reports:
“We assure everyone that we will provide safety for citizens and diplomatic missions. We are ready to have a dialogue with all Afghan figures and will guarantee them the necessary protection,” spokesman Mohammad Naeem told the Qatar-based channel.
Updated
Afghanistan’s fallen and president Ashraf Ghani slipped out of his country earlier today, with no warning to the outside world, in the same way he had led it in recent years: a lonely and isolated figure.
The Associated Press has this analysis:
Ghani quietly left the sprawling presidential palace with a small coterie of confidants and didn’t even tell other political leaders who had been negotiating a peaceful transition of power with the Taliban that he was heading for the exit.
Abdullah Abdullah, his long-time rival who had twice buried his animosity to partner with Ghani in government, said that “God will hold him accountable” for abandoning the capital.
Abdullah, as well as former President Hamid Karzai, who had beaten a path to Ghani’s door on numerous occasions to plead with him to put compromise above retaining power, were blindsided by the hasty departure.
They said they had still been hoping to negotiate a peaceful transition with the Taliban, said Saad Mohseni, the owner of Afghanistan’s popular TOLO TV.
“He left them in them lurch,” he said. Earlier Sunday, Karzai had posted a message to the nation on his Facebook page, surrounded by his three daughters, to reassure Kabul residents that the leadership had a plan and was negotiating with the Taliban.
Just hours later, he discovered the presidential palace had been abandoned.“Ghani’s inability to unite the country and his proclivity to surround himself with his cadre of Western-educated intellectuals brought Afghanistan to this point,” said Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a U.S.-based research institute.
“As Afghanistan collapsed, he refused to deal with the problems and further isolated himself from the power brokers he needed to deal with the problem, and the Afghan people as well.”
Ghani’s style of rule was often characterized as cantankerous and arrogant, rarely heeding the advice of his government and often publicly berating those who challenged him.
He was accused by ethnic minorities of championing the ethnic Pashtuns, like himself, seeing himself as a counter to the Taliban, who are mostly from the same ethnic group. He alienated other ethnic minorities and the gap between Afghanistan’s ethnic groups grew ever wider.
As he campaigned for the presidency in 2014, Ghani was taking an anger management course. It seemed to have faltered as multiple tribal elders in meetings with the president have spoken of his verbal lashings.
Ghani’s critics say his heavy-handed leadership style is to blame, to some degree, for the rapid disintegration of the Afghan army and an anti-Taliban alliance of warlords who fled or surrendered to the insurgents rather than fight for a widely unpopular president.
“His downfall was his insistence on centralizing power at all costs and a stubborn refusal to bring more people under his tent,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the U.S.-based Wilson Center.
“Later on, his inability to develop a clear strategy to address the Taliban insurgency and perceptions that he was obstructing the peace process hurt him as well.”
Ghani, 72, spent most of his career overseas as a student and academic before returning to Afghanistan in 2002.
Updated
The Taliban, who entered the Afghan capital Kabul today after president Ashraf Ghani fled, previously governed the Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, imposing a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law before being ousted and launching an insurgency.
The Taliban originated among young Afghans who studied in Sunni Islamic schools called madrassas in Pakistan after fleeing Afghanistan during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation.
They take their name from talib, the Arabic word for student.
In the early 1990s, with Afghanistan in the chaos and corruption of civil war, the Taliban was formed in the southern province of Kandahar under the leadership of one-eyed warrior-cleric Mullah Omar.
Mullah means a Muslim learned in Islamic theology and sacred law.
Agence France Press (AFP) futher reports taht:
Omar, who led them until his death in 2013, was from a stronghold of the powerful Pashtun ethnic group from which most Taliban fighters come.
Haibatullah Akhundzada is now the top leader, while Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar heads the political wing.
They drew substantial support from Pakistan and initially had the tacit approval of the United States.
In 1994, they seized the city of Kandahar almost without a fight.
Equipped with tanks, heavy weapons and the cash to buy the support of local commanders, they steadily moved north, before capturing the capital Kabul on September 27, 1996.
President Burhanuddin Rabbani had already fled. Taliban fighters dragged former communist president Mohammed Najibullah from a United Nations office where he had been sheltering, and hanged him in a public street after torturing him.
The Taliban government imposed the strictest interpretations of sharia, establishing religious police for the suppression of “vice”.
Music, television and popular pastimes such as kite-flying were banned. Girls’ schools were closed, while women were prevented from working and forced to wear an all-covering burqa in public.
Taliban courts handed out extreme punishments including chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning to death women accused of adultery.
By 1998, they had control of 80 percent of the country, but were only recognised as the legal government by Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
In 2001, they blew up 1,500-year-old giant statues of the Buddha in the central Bamiyan valley.
Mullah Omar was based mostly in Kandahar where he lived in a house reportedly built for him by Osama bin Laden.
The Taliban allowed Afghanistan to become a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda, which set up training camps.
The September 11, 2001 attacks that killed around 3,000 people in the US were immediately blamed on Al-Qaeda.
Accusing the Taliban of refusing to hand over Bin Laden, the US and allies launched air strikes on Afghanistan in October.
By early December, the Taliban government had fallen, its leaders fleeing to their strongholds in the south and east, or across the border into Pakistan’s tribal zone.
At first written off as a spent force, the Taliban rebuilt to lead an insurgency against the new Western-backed government.
Here’s my colleague Julian Borger on Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
Updated
US to send 1,000 more troops, directly to Kabul – report
The United States is is sending an additional 1,000 troops to Afghanistan, raising the US deployment to roughly 6,000.
A defense official told the Associated Press today that 1,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne are going directly to Kabul instead of going to Kuwait as a standby force.
The defense official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a deployment decision not yet announced by the Pentagon, the AP said, adding:
On Saturday, Joe Biden authorized the U.S. troop deployment to rise to roughly 5,000 by adding about 1,000. Since then, the Taliban have entered the capital of Kabul and Afghanistan’s president has fled the country.
Helicopters have been evacuating personnel from the U.S. Embassy, and several other Western missions also are preparing to pull their people out.
The US announced last week that it was dispatching 3,000 extra troops rapidly to Afghanistan, to join the roughly 2,000 there already, and that those extra soldiers would be expected to arrive over the weekend.
Now the US is adding 1,000 more soldiers and expressing them towards Kabul, as the American public and wider world waits to hear anything from Joe Biden today.
The US president is at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, where he flew in the Marine One helicopter from Wilmington, Delaware, his personal home when he’s not at the White House, on Friday afternoon, without answering questions posed by the press as he left.
Secretary of state Antony Blinken has been on TV today defending the Biden administration’s abrupt pull-out from Afghanistan which comes in the season when the Taliban are usually at the peak of their fighting , while acknowledging that the taking of control by the insurgents has “happened more quickly than we anticipated”.
Updated
Leaders of the Taliban extremist insurgency have been shown resting their guns on desks in the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul and milling around, holding weapons, loud-hails and flashing triumphal grins since taking control earlier today after the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the country.
Media outlet Al Jazeera English published exclusive pictures and video clips showing the fundamentalist fighters inside the palace.
Armed Taliban fighters have entered Afghanistan’s presidential palace in Kabul hours after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 15, 2021
🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/B5EwRybCpq pic.twitter.com/oPIGxxKT1V
Interim Summary
It’s been a dramatic few hours in Afghanistan news. Even though it’s now just into the earliest hour of Monday in Kabul, there is still plenty of news, reaction and analysis to keep you abreast of as it develops, so do stay tuned.
Here are the main events of recent hours, in terms of what has happened. Well have a longer summary in a bit about who has been saying what, too:
- Ashraf Ghani, now essentially being regarded as the former president of Afghanistan, although he has not pubicly relinquished the title and Afghanistan does not currently have a formal leader in the country, has flown to Uzbekistan.
- Ghani said on Facebook that he left the country to try to avoid bloodshed.
- The United Nations security council in New York will hold an emergency meeting on Monday morning, at 10am local time.
Please be in touch if you have any news from the ground in Afghanistan or environs, or we’ve missed anything really important. You can ping me on Twitter: @JoannaWalters13.
Updated
Afghani president Ashraf Ghani in Uzbekistan - report
Afghanistan’s official president Ashraf Ghani, who fled without public warning earlier today in the face of Taliban extremist fighters entering the capital city, Kabuyl, is currently in Uzbekistan, according to the news outlet Al Jazeera, which has been subsequently reported by Reuters.
He is with his wife, his chief of staff and his national security adviser, in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, about 700 miles (1,100 km) north of Kabul.
Afghan President Ghani, his wife, his chief of staff and national security adviser left the country for Uzbekistan's capital city of Tashkent – Al Jazeera
— Mohamad Rasheed محمد رشيد (@mohmad_rasheed) August 15, 2021
Al Jazeera are citing a personal bodyguard of Ashraf, whom those left from the Afghan government inside Kabul are publicly calling the former president amid reports earlier that he had escaped and expectations that the Taliban is going to declare that Afghanistan is now once again an “Islamic Emirate” under its control.
Updated
The United Nations security council is to hold an emergency meeting at 10am local time in New York (3pm in London, 6.30pm in Kabul) tomorrow.
That loud banging noise you can hear in your head is the sound of stable doors being closed after the horses have bolted.
The UN secretary General, Antonio Guterres, will brief council members on the latest situation, AP said, following the Taliban takeover of Kabul today.
As one of several leaders engaged in futile public finger-wagging, Guterres on Friday had urged the Taliban to immediately halt their offensive in Afghanistan and negotiate in good faith and noted that he was “deeply disturbed” by early indications (which many have predicted and are not surprised at) that the Taliban are imposing severe restrictions in the areas under their control.
Meanwhile, UK troops have now arrived in Kabul to help evacuate remaining Britons, the British government has just said and the AP has reported.
Updated
Ashraf Ghani, who until a few hours ago was the president of Afghanistan, but has fled to an unknown location, says further in a post he just put out on Facebook – his first public comments since leaving the country – that he left in order to avoid clashes with the Taliban that he said would endanger millions of Kabul residents, Reuters has reported.
Clearly, the millions of people in Kabul remain in grave peril, with the Taliban believed to be on the verge of declaring total power.
In the post, Ghani said: “If there were still countless countrymen martyred and they would face the destruction and destruction of Kabul city, the result would have been a big human disaster in this 6 million city. The Taliban have made it to remove me, they are here to attack all Kabul and the people of Kabul. In order to avoid the bleeding flood, I thought it was best to get out.”
He continued that the Taliban has won by “the judgment of sword and guns” not hearts and that many were now in fear.
“It is necessary for Taliban to assure all the people, nation, different sectors, sisters and women of Afghanistan, to win the legitimacy and the hearts of the people. Make a clear plan to do and share it with the public. I will always continue to serve my nation with an intellectual moment and a plan to develop. Lots more talk for the future. Long live Afghanistan.”
Updated
The Guardian’s Emma Graham-Harrison has drawn my attention to this:
France's ambassador to Afghanistan has shared a video which crystalises the collapse of Kabul and the western mission there.
— Emma Graham-Harrison (@_EmmaGH) August 15, 2021
Leaving in flak jacket on a military helicopter.
Unclear why he shared (tho glad he did) https://t.co/8srzOQAgo4
Afghan president left country 'to avoid bloodshed'
Ashraf Ghani, the erstwhile president of Afghanistan, who fled the country earlier today with no official warning or public pronouncement, has made a post on Facebook talking of his “hard choice”.
He says he left to prevent “disaster”. He has not disclosed his location.
Ashraf Ghani statement on Facebook. pic.twitter.com/1z6euxujKA
— Ankur Agarwal (@unapologeticAnk) August 15, 2021
Updated
Further in the “not Saigon” narrative from Tony Blinken, who did also acknowledge that the Taliban takeover of control “has happened more quickly thank we anticipated”, we have this from Reuters reminding us that:
A U.S. intelligence assessment earlier in the week had said Kabul could be encircled in 30 days and could fall to the Taliban within 90 days, but the insurgents captured most of Afghanistan’s major cities in less than a week and entered the capital today.
Some 4,200 people remained in the U.S. embassy until Thursday, when the Taliban’s rapid gains forced the Biden administration to begin flying in thousands of troops to help pull out many of the remaining diplomats. The deployment included an additional 1,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division.
Earlier today U.S. officials said they were weighing whether more troops were needed. Another 3,000 are on standby in Kuwait.
Washington invested billions of dollars over four U.S. administrations in Afghan government forces, giving them advantages over the Taliban, but they were unable to defend the country in the face of the militants’ advance, Blinken told CNN. “That has happened more quickly than we anticipated,” Blinken said.Biden has faced rising domestic criticism after sticking to the plan to withdraw, which was agreed under his Republican predecessor Donald Trump. Yesterday, Biden defended his decision, saying an “endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me”. Republican lawmaker Michael McCaul said a Taliban takeover would revive the threat to the United States.
Biden met with his national security team earlier today by secure videoconference from the presidential retreat at Camp David, a White House official said.
Updated
US secretary of state insists situation in the Afghan capital 'manifestly not Saigon'
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state and America’s top diplomat, appeared on political TV shows on Sunday to defend the US’s mission in Afghanistan and attempt to hold back a tide of comparisons between the chaotic scenes now unfolding in Kabul, where the Taliban are poised to retake power after being held at bay by Afghan and western forces for almost 20 years, and the humiliating fall of Saigon 46 years ago as the North Vietnamese took that southern city.
“This is manifestly not Saigon,” Blinken told ABC’s This Week. “We went into Afghanistan 20 years ago with one mission in mind, and that was to deal with the people who attacked us on 9/11, and that mission has been successful.”
Blinken’s rejection of any parallels with the iconic image of helicopters evacuating personnel from the US embassy in Saigon in April 1975 at the end of the Vietnam war came as the skies over the Afghan capital were filled with Chinooks and Black Hawks ferrying US embassy staff to a secure location at the international airport in Kabul.
Taliban forces were massing inside the capital with their representatives already negotiating a “peaceful transfer” of power at the presidential palace.
With the Biden administration increasingly on the defensive over the Taliban’s stunningly rapid sweep across the country, Blinken attempted to justify the rout by arguing that the US mission in Afghanistan had been accomplished and that retaining forces in the country was not an option. “Al-Qaida has been vastly diminished, and its capacity to attack us again from Afghanistan right now does not exist,” he said.
To have kept a military presence in Afghanistan beyond the 1 May deadline set by the previous Trump administration would have been to invite a revival of Taliban attacks on US personnel, Blinken said. “In that instance I would be having to explain why we were sending tens of thousands of forces back into Afghanistan to continue a war that the country needs to end after 20 years.”
But the unseemly scramble to evacuate the embassy staff, coupled with the redeployment of 5,000 US troops to the country in a reversal of the withdrawal effectively completed just weeks ago, has left the White House facing accusations that it has botched the US departure with potentially long-term consequences. Concern is also rising for the more than 18,000 Afghans and their families who worked for the US as translators and in other capacities who are at risk of Taliban reprisals.
The potent analogy with Saigon, one of the most ignominious episodes in the US’s long history of foreign interventions, is increasingly being held against Joe Biden personally. When asked in July whether there was substance to the Vietnam comparison, the president, six months into office, replied: “None whatsoever. Zero … There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.”
You can read more of this report here, including what the House Speaker and Democrat Nancy Pelosi and the Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy are saying.
Updated
Boris Johnson gave a live television interview earlier in which he called for a unified western front in not recognising a Taliban regime as a legitimate government of Afghanistan and a joint effort to ensure that the country does not once again become a breeding ground for international terrorism.
Here’s the video clip.
The prime minister said he didn’t want the gains made by the efforts of international allies in the country in the last 20 years to be lost.
“This has caught you by surprise, hasn’t it?” Sky’s News’s pool reporter Sam Coates asked the PM.
Johnson said it was “very clear” from his recent statements that the situation in Afghanistan “was going to change”.
He acknowledged that the US decision to pull out has “accelerated things”. But he insisted: “We’ve known for a long time that this was the way things were going.”
This despite there being so many unanswered questions about the Taliban’s lightning blitz across the country and into Kabul today and reports of “pandemonium” at the airport there, with commercial flights out abruptly halted a little while ago and only military aircraft coming and going at present, according to wire reports.
Updated
UN security council to meet on Monday – report
The United Nations security council, which is based in New York, is expected to meet tomorrow morning to discuss the political emergency in Afghanistan.
In its own words:
The security council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It has 15 members, and each member has one vote. Under the charter of the United Nations, all member states are obligated to comply with council decisions.
The security council takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression. It calls upon the parties to a dispute to settle it by peaceful means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement. In some cases, the security council can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorise the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security.
The security council has five permanent members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, collectively known as the P5. Any one of them can veto a resolution, the Council on Foreign Relations notes.
The body seeks to address threats to international security. Its five permanent members were chosen in the wake of the second world war.
The security council fosters negotiations, imposes sanctions, and authorises the use of force, including the deployment of peacekeeping missions. Critics say the council’s structure is outdated and that it fails to represent many regions of the world, spurring calls for reforms, CFR notes.
It adds: “The security council, the United Nations’ principal crisis-management body, is empowered to impose binding obligations on the 193 UN member states to maintain peace. The council’s five permanent and 10 elected members meet regularly to assess threats to international security, including civil wars, natural disasters, arms proliferation and terrorism.”
Updated
If the Taliban soon declares they have taken power and created an “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”, that will be the same name the extremist regime gave itself before it was ousted by the US and western allies’ invasion following the terrorist attacks on the US on 11 September 2001.
The Associated Press echoes Britain’s Press Association in saying this is now the prospect in the country, following a reported declaration by senior Taliban commanders that the insurgency had taken control of the presidential palace in Kabul earlier today following the flight of the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani.
AP has this multi-point and useful latest summary of the situation, where a Taliban blitz has taken large swaths of territory just weeks before the final pullout of American and Nato troops, including entering the capital, Kabul, earlier today. It’s now 10.30pm local time in Afghanistan.
A Taliban official says the group will soon declare the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the presidential palace in the capital, Kabul.
That was the name of the country under the Taliban government ousted by U.S.-led forces after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief media.
The US Embassy in Kabul has suspended all operations and told Americans to shelter in place, saying it has received reports of gunfire at the international airport.
The U.S. is racing to airlift diplomats and citizens out of Afghanistan after the Taliban overran most of the country and entered the capital early Sunday.
“The security situation in Kabul is changing quickly and the situation at the airport is deteriorating rapidly,” the embassy said in a statement.
“There are reports of the airport taking fire and we are instructing U.S. citizens to shelter in place. The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan has suspended consular operations effective immediately. Do not come to the Embassy or airport at this time.”
France is relocating its embassy in Kabul to the airport to evacuate all citizens still in Afghanistan, initially transferring them to Abu Dhabi.
Afghan leaders have created a coordination council to meet with the Taliban, including former president Hamid Karzai, and manage the transfer of the power, after the religious militia’s lightning offensive.
The United Nations refugee agency says more than 550,000 people in Afghanistan have fled their homes due to the conflict since the start of this year.
German military aircraft are heading to Kabul to evacuate Germans and Afghan support staff as soon as possible.
Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the Afghan National Reconciliation Council, confirmed Ghani had left. Ghani did not announce his departure, having previously pledged to stick it out and try to arrange a peaceful transition.
“He left Afghanistan in a hard time, God hold him accountable,” Abdullah said. Ghani’s whereabouts and destination are currently unknown.
Canada has suspended diplomatic operations in Afghanistan and Canadian personnel are on their way back to Canada.
Turkey says its embassy in Kabul continues to operate.
Updated
The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said a short while ago in a live television interview after emergency meetings of his senior security personnel in London that Britain had the means “at the moment” to bring remaining Britons out of Afghanistan.
Johnson said Britain had already brought out a large number of Afghan nationals who assisted the western efforts in Afghanistan in the last 20 years and “we are working very fast on all the UK nationals, all the consulate cases and they are coming forward in numbers at the moment. But I do appeal to all those who have yet to make themselves known to us at the airport to come forward but we certainly have the means at the moment to get them out. It’s just a question of making sure they are able to do it over the next few days.”
Johnson was asked by the pool reporter Sam Coates on behalf of the British media whether he was afraid that a hostage situation could arise where the Taliban keep Britons and eligible Afghans who are awaiting evacuation in the country.
The PM said he thought the UK teams working at the airport to get people away were “doing an outstanding job in pretty difficult circumstances, with clearly a change of regime now happening in Afghanistan that has implications for the UK presence, for the platform that we’ve had there for some years.”
He added: “But don’t forget, all our viewers know that the British presence has been substantially reduced since 2014. The numbers of UK nationals there are not enormous and the vast bulk of the embassy staff and officials there are now outside Afghanistan.”
He then said, somewhat ominously, presumably in relation to further numbers of Afghan nationals who’ve worked with the British teams in Afghanistan and now appealing to the UK for evacuation, that: “We will keep going with teams that we have to process as many applications as we have in the time available.”
Here’s Johnson on the need to prevent a new threat of international terrorism:
Updated
A Nato official has said all commercial flights have been suspended from the airport in Kabul and only military aircraft are currently allowed to operate, according to the Reuters news agency.
Foreign governments have been flying their embassy staff out and trying to plan to get all their nationals in Afghanistan out of the country as soon as possible.
Boris Johnson said in a television interview a few moments ago that the UK was in the process of bringing Britons home. “We have the means to get them out,” he said.
The American ambassador to Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, has reportedly now left the country. He is understood to have been transported to the airport in Kabul from the embassy in the last hour.
The American ambassador has left Kabul
— Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim) August 15, 2021
The US government has not confirmed that the American embassy has ceased all operations but CNN and other media are reporting that the embassy’s evacuation has been completed and the only Americans left there are a handful of security contractors who will be leaving soon.
Once the flag comes down, which media reports say it has, that marks the formal departure of the US government from its diplomatic base in Afghanistan.
The precise location of the British ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, is not clear at this moment, but he is understood still to be in Kabul.
Updated
Here is more from Boris Johnson’s television interview from Downing Street a few moments ago.
“It’s very important that the west collectively should work together to get over to that new government, be it by the Taliban or anybody else: nobody wants Afghanistan once again to be a breeding ground for terror and we don’t think it’s in the interests of Afghanistan that it should lapse back into that state that pre-2001 state.
“And so what the UK will be doing is working with its partners in the UN [United Nations] security council, in the … Nato … to get that message over. We don’t want anyone bilaterally recognising the Taliban, we want a united position among all the like-minded, as far as we can get one, so that we can do whatever we can to prevent Afghanistan lapsing back into being a breeding ground for terror.”
Johnson was then asked if that is his No 1 priority and, if so, what about the human rights situation. (Many in Afghanistan now fear slaughter at worst, oppression at best if there is total control by a fundamentalist theocracy, which is the Taliban’s raison d’être.) The interview with the prime minister was conducted by Sam Coates of Sky, on behalf of the duty reporting pool – ie it was shared across the media and, in this case, live directly to the public, too.
Boris Johnson pool interview on Afghanistan
— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) August 15, 2021
- says there will be a new government in Afghanistan but can’t say the makeup will be
- says priority for international community will be to make sure it doesn’t become a terrorist training ground
Johnson was asked if he is going to throw human rights “out of the window”. NB: most expert commentators do not expect 2021’s Taliban to be any less ruthless in its doctrines or methods than the pre-2001 leadership.
“I think we need to see, of course we continue to attach huge importance to human rights, to equalities, think of everything that the UK has helped to achieve in the last 20 years, the sacrifice of that mission, a lot of women and girls were educated thanks to the efforts of the UK, and rights and equalities were promoted and protected in a way that Afghanistan hadn’t seen before,” said Johnson.
“Of course we don’t want to see that thrown away, and what we are trying to do now is to concert the rest of the like-minded around the world, of whom there are a great many, to make sure that we don’t prematurely, bilaterally, recognise a new government in Kabul without forming a common view and setting the same conditions for how that government should behave.
Updated
Taliban to declare 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan' soon – report
The Taliban, who have rampaged across Afghanistan in recent days and earlier today entered the capital, Kabul, are on the verge of declaring that they have taken control of the country and that it is now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, according to Press Association reports citing a Taliban official.
The declaration is expected to be made from the presidential palace in Kabul following the departure of Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, earlier, who apparently fled, initially to Tajikistan. His current location is unconfirmed.
Senior Taliban commanders announced within the last two hours that they had taken control of the palace, according to news wire reports. More details and further confirmation are awaited.
#Breaking A Taliban official says they will soon declare the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the presidential palace in Kabul
— PA Media (@PA) August 15, 2021
Updated
UK PM: Afghanistan must not become breeding ground for terrorism again
Boris Johnson is interviewed live on television. He says: “Nobody wants Afghanistan to be a breeding ground for terror … or to lapse back into the pre-2001 situation.”
But the prime minister acknowledges: “There is clearly a change of regime now happening” in Afghanistan. He adds: “We don’t know exactly what kind of regime that will be.”
He appeals to the United Nations and Nato powers to unite, saying: “We do not want anyone bilaterally recognising the Taliban.”
Johnson, like the US’s Antony Blinken, is trying to give every impression that the Taliban takeover in this way is not a shock, despite it contradicting what leaders said just last month.
Johnson’s interview and our livestream of same have just finished. We’ll bring you a little more of what was said by Johnson and, simultaneously on the other side of the Atlantic, by Blinken, the US secretary of state, who was being interviewed on CNN, in more posts here as soon as possible.
Updated
US secretary of state defends Biden administration
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is on TV right now talking about the big-picture arguments for the US pulling out of Afghanistan, but not yet addressing the particulars of the current chaos of the Taliban taking over with a speed few anticipated.
Blinken said: “We were in Afghanistan for one overriding purpose – to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11.”
Meanwhile, here’s Boris Johnson, live.
Updated
Stars and stripes lowered at US embassy in Afghanistan – report
The American flag at the US embassy in Kabul has been removed, according to numerous media reports. The US ambassador and the flag are reported now to be at the airport in Kabul, the only way out of Afghanistan with the capital surrounded by the Taliban and road crossings controlled by the extremist insurgency forces.
NEW: US AMBASSADOR HAS LEFT THE EMBASSY IN #KABUL. He and the flag are at the airport, per @CBSNews.
— Ruffini (@EenaRuffini) August 15, 2021
The last reports were that the US embassy would be closed by Tuesday and was being staffed by a skeleton-level team. The situation on the ground is not completely clear.
There is “pandemonium” at the airport, according to CNN’s reporter in Afghanistan, Clarissa Ward, just now. The road to the airport is choked with traffic as Afghan people desperately try to reach it to take or seek a flight out.
This could account for the so-far unconfirmed and isolated reports of gunfire – ie chaos in the approach to the airport and frustration boiling over.
Boris Johnson’s public appearance to give a statement after an emergency meeting is delayed. He was due to talk 10 minutes ago, and there is no word yet on the new schedule. We’ll keep you informed and will stream the PM live, here.
Updated
Reports are coming out from US embassy staff in Afghanistan that Kabul airport is taking fire. The embassy has instructed US citizens to “shelter in place” – ie stay put wherever you are right now and try to find a safe place to wait.
The security situation in Kabul is “changing quickly, including at the airport”, according to a report from Reuters.
Meanwhile, the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan’s presidential palace, two senior Taliban commanders present in Kabul told Reuters a little earlier, after the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, left the country.
There was no confirmation from the Afghan government about the Taliban’s claim. Government officials were not immediately contactable
Updated
UK prime minister to make a statement soon
The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, is due to make a statement at the top of this hour after emergency meetings in London.
We will carry this live, here.
Johnson is attending a meeting of the civil contingencies committee that gathers to discuss matters of national emergency for the UK or major disruption to government.
It coordinates different departments of the British government in response to matters regarded as emergencies and meets at Cobra, the acronym for the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms, located in the Cabinet Office on Whitehall in London, the street dominated by government offices off which the cul-de-sac of Downing Street is located.
Updated
Taliban commanders are saying they have taken control of the Afghan presidential palace. There is no confirmation of this from what remains of the Afghan government at this point, Reuters is reporting.
The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, has, by all accounts so far, fled the country earlier today.
Taliban leaders had been understood to be at the 19th-century palace in Kabul for negotiations but now claim to have taken it over.
Updated
Summary
Hello to all our live blog readers around the world on this dramatic international news day. The Guardian US team is now taking the blog baton from London. I’m Joanna Walters and will keep you up to date with developments as they unfold in Afghanistan and related commentary.
If you are on the ground in Afghanistan or in the region and/or spot anything vital that we’re missing in our Guardian coverage, please do ping me on Twitter: @JoannaWalters13.
Here are the key recent events:
- Afghan officials told the Associated Press news agency a short while ago, and most major news outlets have been reporting in the last few hours, that the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, left the country, and the Taliban announced they would move further into the capital, Kabul, as the government there unravels.
- Abdullah Abdullah, the head of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation, who has been leading talks between the crumbling Afghan government and the Taliban, posted a video to Facebook earlier confirming that Ghani had left.
- Taliban fighters have penetrated not just the outskirts of Kabul but the capital city proper. Kabul covers about 400 sq miles and its population has been swelling from around 4 million towards 5 million as Afghans have been fleeing there trying to stay ahead of the Taliban advance.
- Some foreign leaders are resorting to what appear to be futile tweets. The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, posted: “It is critical that the international community is united in telling the Taliban that the violence must end.”
- The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said the US embassy in Kabul has in effect transferred to the airport there. The majority of US embassy personnel have now left the embassy. The Taliban controls all road crossings, so the only way out of the country is by air from Kabul.
Updated
More than 40 wounded in clashes on outskirts of Kabul
A Kabul hospital has tweeted that “more than 40 people” have been wounded in clashes on the outskirts of the Afghan capital and admitted for treatment.
Updated
The UK Foreign Office says “we are doing all we can to enable remaining British nationals who want to leave Afghanistan to do so”.
Updated
Our deputy political editor, Rowena Mason, reports the British ambassador to Kabul remains in post despite reports to the contrary.
FCDO says British ambassador to Kabul remains despite reports he was airlifted last night. “We have reduced our diplomatic presence in response to the situation, but our ambassador remains in Kabul and UK Govt staff continue to work to [assist] British nationals and Afghan staff"
— Rowena Mason (@rowenamason) August 15, 2021
Updated
The UK foreign secretary has expressed his “deep concerns” about the future facing Afghanistan.
Dominic Raab tweeted: “It is critical that the international community is united in telling the Taliban that the violence must end.”
Shared my deep concerns about the future for Afghanistan with FM Qureshi. Agreed it is critical that the international community is united in telling the Taliban that the violence must end and human rights must be protected.
— Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) August 15, 2021
Updated
Shooting has been reported in several parts of Kabul, according to witness accounts and the country’s interior ministry.
A Taliban spokesman has confirmed that Taliban fighters have entered the city in response to a “law and order issue”.
We’ll bring you more on this as reports come in.
Updated
The independent Russian news agency Interfax reports that Russia is “ready to cooperate” with Afghanistan’s interim government.
The interim administration is widely expected to be led by Taliban officials.
A spokesperson for the embassy, which earlier said there was no immediate need to evacuate the Afghan capital, also said Russia was taking part in political contacts in Afghanistan.
However, the Russian foreign ministry has confirmed that Moscow does not yet recognise the Taliban as Afghanistan’s lawful authority.
Updated
Taliban spokesman: police have fled, fighters to enter city 'to prevent looting'
A Taliban spokesman has said Taliban fighters have entered the city in response to a “law and order issue”.
Journalists on the ground including the former Wall Street Journal reporter Habib Khan have confirmed the Taliban will enter the city in order to “control the chaos”.
Taliban said that they will enter the city of Kabul to secure areas abandoned by the government forces and control the chaos. #Afghanistan
— Habib Khan (@HabibKhanT) August 15, 2021
Taliban, which had said it was holding off on entering kabul, now saying they will enter to “stop looting”
— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) August 15, 2021
Updated
Abdullah Abdullah, head of the High Council for National Reconciliation, has posted a video to Facebook confirming that the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, has left the country.
He has asked people to keep calm and for the Afghan security forces to cooperate in ensuring security.
Abdullah asks the Taliban to allow time for talks before entering the city of Kabul. Taliban forces have been seen within the city but most insurgents remain massed on the city’s outskirts.
My message to the people of AFGHANISNAN, to the security forces and to the Taliban: https://t.co/MiFk0zaNRJ
— Dr. Abdullah Abdullah (@DrabdullahCE) August 15, 2021
Updated
Taliban forces have entered Kabul
Taliban insurgents have entered Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, and there are unconfirmed reports that advertising billboards and hoardings featuring women are being pulled down or whitewashed.
Taliban forces have moved through the country at lightning speed but there are no confirmed reports of violence within the city of Kabul itself.
The Taliban earlier issued a statement saying they had “no plans to take the city by force” and no intention of “taking revenge” against those serving in the Afghan government or military.
Updated
Canada said it was temporarily suspending its diplomatic operations in Kabul and that its personnel were on their way back home.
The Canadian foreign minister, Marc Garneau, said:
The situation in Afghanistan is rapidly evolving and poses serious challenges to our ability to ensure the safety and security of our mission.
Canadian personnel were “now safely on their way back to Canada”.
Updated
Reuters: A senior interior ministry official says Ghani has left for Tajikistan.
Updated
Afghan president Ashraf Ghani reported to have left the country
Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, has left the country, reports Afghanistan’s Tolo News.
The story has now been confirmed by Al Jazeera.
The Afghan president’s office has just told Reuters they “cannot say anything about Ashraf Ghani’s movement[s] for security reasons”.
Updated
Reuters: Estonia and Norway have requested the 15-member United Nations security council meet on Afghanistan as soon as possible, diplomats said on Sunday.
I’ll be bringing more on this story as more countries issue requests.
Updated
Governments around the world have reacted to the impending collapse of the Afghan government. Many have announced evacuation efforts in the last few hours, although Russia says it has no plans to follow suit.
The Russian state news agency reports that the Taliban promised to guarantee the safety of the Russian embassy in Kabul.
Spain’s defence ministry says it has not yet begun evacuating Spanish nationals and Afghan staff including translators who are expected to be flown out alongside its citizens, but it is speeding up its plans.
Germany is sending military transport planes to Kabul to begin the evacuation of its embassy staff on Monday.
The Dutch embassy in Kabul has moved to a new location near the airport which is located 6km north-east of the city centre.
Updated
“This is not Saigon,” says Blinken. The US has succeeded in its mission to stop attacks on US.”
“It’s simply not in our interests to remain in Afghanistan,” he added.
The Taliban are poised to take full control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, after their fighters took up positions on the outskirts of the city and the US sent helicopters to evacuate diplomats from its embassy.
Secretary Blinken: US embassy to move to Kabul airport
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says Kabul embassy staff are leaving the city and moving to Kabul International airport, the sole remaining route out of Afghanistan.
Blinked said: “The fact of the matter is Afghan forces have been unable to defend the country.”
CNN reports the US embassy has lists of people to get out of harm’s way.
Updated
I’m Alex Mistlin on the Guardian’s dedicated live blog, bringing you the latest developments coming out of Afghanistan and the rest of the world.
On the ground? Spotted something we’ve missed: get in touch on Twitter @amistlin
The Taliban reached Kabul earlier following the fall of Jalabad, the fifth largest city in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is on the brink of being taken over by a Taliban-led government pending a meeting in Doha, Qatar, between an Afghan government delegation and Taliban leaders.
Updated
Ragip Soylu, the Turkish bureau chief for Middle East Eye, has tweeted the first picture of the evacuation from the US embassy in Kabul.
First picture out of the US Embassy in Kabul, capturing the actual evacuation via @yarotrof pic.twitter.com/rZnlHQYOfb
— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) August 15, 2021
Updated
Boris Johnson convenes Cobra meeting for this afternoon
The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has convened an emergency meeting of the government’s Cobra contingencies committee for later this afternoon to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.
The Taliban have entered the outskirts of Kabul. An Afghan government delegation will travel to Qatar today to meet Taliban representatives.
Updated
The American journalist Matthieu Aikins, who is on the ground in Kabul, says he’s “witnessing government forces put on plain clothes and walk away from their posts, heading home to find loved ones. Streets are peaceful, mostly empty.”
It comes further to reports that Taliban soldiers are not expecting a great deal of resistance from government forces in Kabul.
Around Kabul, I’m witnessing government forces put on plainclothes and walk away from their posts, heading home to find loved ones. Streets are peaceful, mostly empty.
— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) August 15, 2021
Updated
The first evacuation flight from Kabul has landed in Islamabad, Pakistan.
The Pakistani journalist Wajahat Kazmi tweeted: “The first evacuation flight from #Kabul lands in Islamabad.”
It is the first of two flights carrying 499 passengers including diplomats from several countries.
The first evacuation flight from #Kabul lands in Islamabad. The second flight has got permission to fly as well. PIA will run three more flights tomorrow to evacuate Pakistani nationals and foreign diplomats stranded in Afghanistan.
— Wajahat Kazmi (@KazmiWajahat) August 15, 2021
Nato is maintaining its diplomatic presence in Kabul and is helping to keep up operations at Kabul airport, a Nato official has said.
Updated
The German foreign ministry has closed its embassy in Kabul and asked German nationals to leave Afghanistan, Reuters reports.
“The security situation has deteriorated drastically. The German embassy Kabul is closed as of 15 August,” the foreign office in Berlin said on its website.
Updated
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for female education who was shot for speaking out against oppression by the Taliban, has said she is in “complete shock” about the events unfolding in Afghanistan.
We watch in complete shock as Taliban takes control of Afghanistan. I am deeply worried about women, minorities and human rights advocates. Global, regional and local powers must call for an immediate ceasefire, provide urgent humanitarian aid and protect refugees and civilians.
— Malala (@Malala) August 15, 2021
Updated
Afghan delegation to meet Taliban in Qatar
An Afghan government delegation will travel to Qatar today to meet Taliban representatives, an Afghan government negotiator has said.
The delegation will include Abdullah Abdullah, head of the Afghan reconciliation committee.
Fawzi Koofi, a member of the Kabul negotiating team, confirmed to Reuters the delegation would meet with the Taliban in the Gulf state after the militant group earlier entered Kabul.
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters the Afghan delegation and Taliban representatives would discuss a transition of power, adding that US officials would also be involved.
Updated
As the Taliban prepare to rule Afghanistan after sweeping across the country in a under a week, an obvious question is what does this mean for the future of al-Qaida and other extremist Islamist groups committed to waging a global jihad.
There is no doubt that the astonishing rapidity of the Taliban’s victory will deliver a tremendous boost to Islamist extremists everywhere.
Last week, the UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, told Sky when asked about Afghanistan that he was “absolutely worried that failed states are breeding grounds for those types of people” and that “al-Qaida will probably come back”.
Wallace was right to worry about failed states – the 9/11 attacks of 2001 were planned and prepared by al-Qaida in Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban – but wrong about the group making some kind of return. Al-Qaida is already there.
Last month, the UN published an assessment based on intelligence received from member states stating that al-Qaida “is present in at least 15 Afghan provinces”, and al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, an affiliate of the group, “operates under Taliban protection from Kandahar, Helmand and Nimruz provinces”. Al-Qaida’s media celebrate its fighters’ apparently frequent operations in Afghanistan.
This was always a problem for the Biden administration, and one it tried to ignore. As part of last year’s deal with the US, the Taliban pledged not to allow training, fundraising or recruitment “of terrorists, including al-Qaida, that would threaten the security of the United States and our allies”.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, told Congress in May that the Taliban had “made substantial progress” in meeting these commitments. But even if that was true then, and it probably wasn’t, now all bets are off.
Updated
United Arab Emirates airline flydubai will suspend flights to Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, from Monday, a spokesperson told Reuters.
A flight to Kabul on Sunday returned to Dubai before reaching the Afghan capital, the spokesperson said, adding that flights would be suspended until further notice.
Updated
Summary
Summary
It’s 4pm Kabul time as talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban continue over a peaceful transition of power. We will continue to bring you the latest developments as they happen.
If you are in Afghanistan, or have any information that we may have missed please get in touch: alex.mistlin@theguardian.com or on Twitter @amistlin.
Here is the latest:
- The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, is in emergency talks with US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, and other top Nato officials as US officials exit the embassy by helicopter.
- The Taliban has entered the outskirts of Kabul, AP reports. There’s conflicting reports of whether Taliban forces have entered Kabul’s city centre.
- The collapse of Afghanistan is “the biggest single policy disaster since Suez”, according to the chairman of the UK Commons foreign affairs committee.
- Afghanistan’s acting interior minister says the transition will take place peacefully with security forces remaining in place to “ensure Kabul’s security”.
- The Taliban have issued a statement saying they have “no plans to take the city by force” and they have no intention of “taking revenge” against those serving in the Afghan government or military.
- Thousands of troops from the US and Britain are flying in to secure the airport, which is now the only route out of the country with the Taliban holding all of the country’s border crossings.
- Afghan official says government troops have surrendered Bagram airbase to the Taliban; the base is home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates, including both Taliban and Islamic State insurgents.
- The UN has warned that 390,000 people could be displaced across the country.
- The UK parliament will be recalled this week to discuss the worsening situation in Afghanistan, a No 10 source said.
Updated
Taliban wants peaceful transition of power in days, spokesman says
The Taliban expects a peaceful transition of power in the next few days, a spokesman has said, as the insurgents reached Afghanistan’s capital Kabul with little resistance.
Suhail Shaheen added that the militant Islamist group would protect the rights of women, as well as freedoms for media workers and diplomats.
“We assure the people, particularly in the city of Kabul, that their properties, their lives are safe,” the spokesman said in an interview with the BBC.
“Our leadership had instructed our forces to remain at the gates of Kabul, not to enter the city.
“We are awaiting a peaceful transfer of power,” he said, adding the Taliban expected that to happen in a matter of days.
Updated
Sweden will evacuate all its embassy staff from Kabul on Sunday, public service broadcaster Swedish Radio reported, citing sources.
There are conflicting reports as to whether Taliban insurgents have already entered Kabul but they are massed at the gates of the city having taken control of all of Afghanistan’s major cities apart from the capital.
The expected transition to a Taliban-led administration in the coming days has sparked fears over the level of rights and freedoms to be granted women.
Last month, fighters from the group walked into the offices of Azizi Bank in the southern city of Kandahar and ordered nine women working there to leave, explaining that male relatives could take their place.
Speaking live on the BBC, Taliban Spokesman Suhail Shaheen said women “will have access to education and work” and leave their homes without male accompaniment.
However, a number of “horror stories” have emerged from areas that have fallen to Taliban insurgents in recent days.
The Guardian’s Women report Afghanistan project features a number of women describing their fears that the freedoms won since 2001 will be crushed.
Taliban fighters entered Kabul on Sunday and sought the unconditional surrender of the central government, marking the end of the west’s “20-year experiment at remaking Afghanistan”.
AP reports:
In a stunning rout, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the US and Nato over nearly two decades to build up Afghan security forces. Just days earlier, an American military assessment estimated it would be a month before the capital would come under insurgent pressure.Instead, the Taliban swiftly defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swaths of the country, even though they had some air support from the US military.
The beleaguered central government, meanwhile, hopes for an interim administration, but increasingly had few cards to play. Civilians fearing that the Taliban could reimpose the kind of brutal rule that all but eliminated women’s rights rushed to leave the country, lining up at cash machines to withdraw their life savings.
Helicopters buzzed overhead, some apparently evacuating personnel at the US embassy. Several other western missions were also preparing to get staff out.
Updated
Taliban spokesman Shaheen says: “We will respect rights of women … our policy is that women will have access to education and work, to wear the hijab.”
He restated the Taliban’s position that “no one should leave the country … we need all the talents and capacity, we need all of us to stay in the country and participate”.
Updated
A senior US official says there are no current reports of Taliban forces entering Kabul, reports Reuters.
Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen is live on the BBC. He said: “We are awaiting a peaceful transition of power … we seek inclusive Afghan government where all Afghans will have participation.”
On whether we can expect to see Sharia law instituted in Afghanistan over the coming days, the Taliban spokesman said: “Of course, we want an Islamic government.”
Updated
The Guardian’s foreign correspondent, Luke Harding, has interviewed Sayed – an Afghan resident – who spoke from Kabul this morning as Taliban forces entered the city:
“People are afraid. They are fearful for their families, their wives and their daughters especially. A few residents in Kabul with links to the Taliban are happy. But the majority are really afraid.
“This morning I was out an about in the city. I saw women crying by the side of the road. People were running, with everyone trying to find a vehicle to get home. There were no taxis. Before a ride would cost $2. Now the prices have gone up five times and the taxis don’t take anyone.
“I heard some gunfire a few hours ago. Now the city is pretty quiet. Everyone is holed up in their homes, the shops and banks which were busy earlier are mostly closed. Schoolchildren were due to take examinations today. These are not happening.
“The Taliban arrived this morning on the outskirts of Kabul. A few are already inside, talking to the people, without weapons for now. They are said to have taken Pul-e-Charkhi prison [the biggest in Afghanistan] and let all the prisoners out. The Taliban flag is flying in some districts of Kabul including in Babur garden, a historic district where the Mughal emperor Babur is buried.
“In district seven fighters have surrounded the police station, I heard. They have told the police to give up their weapons. I’m sceptical about the Taliban’s claim that no one will be harmed. We know what will happen next. They will start looking for ‘traitors’ – anyone who served with the Afghan military, or who worked with Nato forces and the Americans.
“They will also target the houses of rich businessmen in Kabul, asking them how they made their money, and were able to build a four- or five-storey property. Meanwhile, the situation for ordinary Afghans is terrible. Last week, the price for a packet of flour was 1,700 Afghanis ($25). Today it is 2,500 Afghanis ($35).
“Some people say the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has left the city already. Others say he is still here and plans to resign at 5pm today, with the Taliban due to move in and take over at 6pm today, local time. We don’t know which version is true. At the moment we are waiting to see what happens’.
“We are in a bad situation. I have no money and four children – boys aged three, five and 14 and a 12-year-old daughter. I don’t have any money to escape, the borders are now shut, and the Taliban have taken Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad. I may try and lie low with my father-in-law for a couple of days. But after that what?”
Updated
UN: 390,000 Afghan civilians set to be internally displaced
As the fighting across Afghanistan intensifies, the UN has warned that 390,000 could be displaced across the country.
The United Nations Assistance Mission has warned that without a significant de-escalation in violence, Afghanistan is on course to witness the highest ever number of documented civilian casualties in a single year since the UN’s records began.
This video taken in the capital, Kabul, roughly an hour ago shows extreme traffic disruption as concerned people rush to and from their homes.
Capital Kabul right now, Traffic blocked, everyone is in a hurry and are rushing to their homes.#Kabul #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/QqDXwUm5c7
— Obaidullah Rahimi Mashwani (@IamObaidRahimi) August 15, 2021
The Afghan journalist Bilal Sawary has told BBC Radio 4 the imminent transition from Ghani’s government to a Taliban-led administration is “a chaotic ending to years of massive investment of blood and treasure”.
“A chaotic ending to years of massive investment of blood and treasure”. “We will have to see how the transition takes place”. @bsarwary tells @BBCRadio4 #kabul #Afghan
— Philippa Thomas (@PhilippaBBC) August 15, 2021
CNN’s chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour, has questioned if today’s events reflect the fact that the initial intervention was a “reckless American gamble”.
Hearing Taliban entering Kabul takes me back to Nov 2001 watching them flee Kabul at the tip of America’s spear, bringing hope to women, children and all who want peace, education and freedom from fundamentalist terror. Now progress and hope die again. Reckless American gamble?
— Christiane Amanpour (@camanpour) August 15, 2021
Updated
CNN’s national security correspondent, Kylie Atwood, reports that the US will be withdrawing all of its embassy and security personnel over the next 72 hours.
US president Joe Biden earlier authorised an additional 1,000 US troops for deployment to Afghanistan.
There are roughly 5,000 US troops on the ground helping to ensure what Biden earlier called an “orderly and safe drawdown” of American and allied personnel.
Updated
UK PM Boris Johnson will recall parliament this week to discuss the situation in Afghanistan
Our deputy political editor, Rowena Mason, has the latest update on the UK’s rapidly developing political response to the crisis:
Updated
Pope Francis has called for a dialogue in Afghanistan so that the country’s “martyred population” can live in peace and security.
Updated
Ali Ahmad Jilali, a US-based academic and former Afghan interior minister, has been tipped to head an interim administration, Reuters report based on diplomatic sources.
Updated
Afghan forces surrender Bagram air base, home to prison housing 5,000 prisoners, to Taliban
Afghan official says government troops have surrendered Bagram air base to the Taliban; the base is home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates, including both Taliban and Islamic State insurgents.
AP reports:
An Afghan official says forces at Bagram airbase, home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates, have surrendered to the Taliban.
Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi said Sunday that the surrender handed the one-time American base over to the insurgents.
The prison housed both Taliban and Islamic State group fighters.
It came as the Taliban entered the outskirts of Kabul.
Updated
The Taliban are poised to take control of Kabul with insurgents appearing to have met little or no resistance entering the Afghan capital.
US diplomats are being ferried from the embassy to Kabul airport by helicopter in what our foreign correspondent, Luke Harding, calls “deeply humiliating scenes for the Biden administration”.
You can read his full report here:
UK parliament will be recalled, says No 10 sources
Boris Johnson is expected to seek a recall of Parliament this week to discuss the worsening situation in Afghanistan, a No 10 source said.
The Taliban have entered the outskirts of Kabul as a massive evacuation of western citizens, including UK embassy staff and officials, is underway.
The Home Office has confirmed that it’s working to protect UK citizens and other eligible former UK staff to leave the country with the transition of power to a Taliban-led administration imminent.
Updated
US efforts to evacuate its Afghan employees regarded as too little, too late, as many visa recipients struggle to leave country.
The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, has the story from Washington:
The Wall Street Journal’s Afghanistan and Iran correspondent, Sune Engel Rasmussen, reports that the Taliban has entered Kabul.
I never thought we'd run this headline in 2021, but here we go: Afghanistan's Taliban Enter Kabul https://t.co/O9DPtuDYQz via @yarotrof
— Sune Engel Rasmussen (@SuneEngel) August 15, 2021
He earlier stated that employees at the American University in Afghanistan are burning documents containing information about students in order to protect them.
Updated
The UK leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, has called for the recall of parliament so MPs can discuss the worsening crisis in Afghanistan, PA Media reports.
The Labour leader said in a statement:
The situation in Afghanistan is deeply shocking and seems to be worsening by the hour. The immediate priority now must be to get all British personnel and support staff safely out of Kabul.
The government has been silent while Afghanistan collapses, which let’s be clear will have ramifications for us here in the UK.
Updated
There is “absolute chaos” on the streets of Kabul as the Taliban are waiting a “peaceful transition of power”.
Kabul’s streets are gridlocked and people are driving down the wrong side of the road as reports of shots fired outside a bank during an attempted run on it.
CNN’s international correspondent, Clarissa Ward, says people are desperately trying to prepare for the invasion, which she says “does not appear imminent”.
Updated
More UK reaction to the rapidly developing situation in Afghanistan as Boris Johnson has been urged to recall parliament.
Our deputy political editor, Rowena Mason has the full report:
Updated
Afghanistan 'biggest policy disaster since Suez' says chair of UK foreign affairs committee
The collapse of Afghanistan is “the biggest single policy disaster since Suez”, according to the chairman of the UK Commons foreign affairs committee.
Tory MP Tom Tugendhat told BBC News that Afghans who helped the British faced reprisals if they fell into the hands of the Taliban:
This isn’t just about interpreters or guards. This is about those people who we trained in special forces to serve alongside us, those who helped us to understand the territory through our agencies and our diplomats,” he said.
This is the people who, on our encouragement, set up schools for girls. These people are all at risk now.
“The real danger is that we are going to see every female MP murdered, we are going to see ministers strung up on street lamps.”
Updated
Afghanistan faces a “catastrophic” humanitarian disaster if action is not taken to prevent the country’s collapse in the face of the Taliban advance, the chairman of the UK Commons defence committee has warned.
Tory MP Tobias Ellwood told Times Radio: “This is completely humiliating for the west. We assembled the most incredible, technologically advanced alliance the world has ever seen and we are being defeated by an insurgency that’s armed with AK47s and RPGs.
“This will be the biggest own goal made by the west so far this century.
Updated
The UK government is working to protect its citizens and help other eligible former UK staff to leave Afghanistan, the Home Office has confirmed.
1/2 The Home Office has already resettled over 3,300 Afghan staff and their families who have worked for the UK.
— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) August 15, 2021
We will continue to fulfil our international obligations and moral commitments.
Updated
Afghan interior minister: Kabul will shift power to a 'transitional administration'
Reuters: Afghan’s acting interior minister says the transition will take place peacefully with security forces remaining in place to “ensure Kabul’s security”.
CNN reports that the administration will “likely” contain senior Taliban figures along with some remnants of the Ghani administration.
Updated
AP: Taliban negotiators heading to presidential palace to prepare for 'transfer' of power
A Taliban spokesman said earlier that militants are “awaiting a peaceful transfer of Kabul city” after they entered the capital’s outskirts.
Suhail Shaheen made the comment to Qatar’s Al Jazeera English satellite news channel after Afghan officials said the Taliban were in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman in the capital.
Updated
Summary
Summary
Its early afternoon in Kabul as the Afghanistan government is reportedly in talks with Taliban leaders over a peaceful transition of power. We will continue to bring you the latest developments as they happen.
If you are in Afghanistan, or have any information that we may have missed, please get in touch: alex.mistlin@theguardian.com or on Twitter @amistlin.
Here are the latest developments:
- The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, is in emergency talks with US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad and other top Nato officials as US officials exit the embassy by helicopter.
- The Taliban has entered the outskirts of Kabul, AP reports. There’s conflicting reports of whether Taliban forces have entered Kabul’s city centre.
- The Taliban have issued a statement saying they have “no plans to take the city by force” and they have no intention of “taking revenge” against those serving in the Afghan government or military.
- Thousands of troops from the US and Britain are flying in to secure the airport which is now the only route out of the country with the Taliban now holding all of the country’s border crossings.
- On Sunday, the Taliban took the eastern city of Jalalabad without a fight. The main highway from there to Kabul passes through Surobi.
- The Taliban say they are close to capturing Maidan Shahr. They have already taken Ghazni, down the road from Maidan Shahr, and have a strong presence in surrounding areas.
- The US has begun expediting its evacuation of staff and officials from the US embassy to Kabul International airport. The State Department’s original deadline of 31 August has been brought forward to Tuesday morning amid fears the Taliban will enter the city today.
- US embassy personnel were destroying sensitive documents, according to two US military officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Updated
Afghan president Ghani in emergency talks with US special envoy Khalilzad and NATO officials
Reuters: An official at the presidential palace in Kabul has confirmed that the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani is in emergency talks with US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad and other top Nato officials.
Reuters earlier reported that Ghani’s government were in talks with the Taliban over “a peaceful surrender” of Kabul.
Updated
Ragip Soylu, Turkish bureau chief for Middle East Eye, is reporting that Russia does not intend to evacuate its embassy staff in Kabul.
BREAKING — Russia does not intend to evacuate its embassy staff in Kabul — Russian envoy to Afghanistan
— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) August 15, 2021
Updated
Taliban spokesman: no intention to "take revenge on anyone"
Reuters reports that a spokesman for the Taliban has said they do not intend to take revenge on anyone, including those who have served in the country’s government or military.
The spokesman added a call for Afghan civilians to “remain in their country, not leave due to fear”.
Many in the Afghan capital are employed by the government or military, sparking fears of violent reprisals from Taliban forces. The Taliban have begun entering the city “from all sides” but say the have no plans to take the city by force.
Updated
CNN’s International Correspondent Clarissa Ward says there will be 24/7 evacuations in an effort to get everybody out of the US embassy before Tuesday, including Afghan employees.
It remains to be seen whether they will have that long as it “becomes increasingly clear” that the Afghan government will not be able to defend Kabul.
She says there is “a very real potential” for clashes between the Taliban and the roughly 5,000 US forces personnel either in or on their way to Kabul.
Updated
A Taliban leader in Doha has told Reuters that Taliban fighters have been asked to stand at entry points in Kabul and that their forces are not responsible for any deaths or injuries in the Afghan capital.
They also called on Afghan forces to cease gunfire and allow for safe passage through the city for all civilians and foreigners.
Updated
AP: Biden orders 1,000 more troops to aid Afghanistan departure
As confirmed earlier, US president Joe Biden has authorised an additional 1,000 US troops for deployment to Afghanistan.
There are roughly 5,000 U.S. troops on the ground helping to ensure what Biden earlier called an “orderly and safe drawdown” of American and allied personnel.
US troops will also help in the evacuation of Afghans who worked with the military during the nearly two-decade war.
The Taliban have issued a statement saying they have instructed their fighters to “stay at the gates of Kabul and not enter the city”.
US embassy personnel have been ordered to urgently destroy sensitive documents.
The last-minute decision to re-insert thousands of US troops into Afghanistan reflected the dire state of security as the Taliban seized control of multiple Afghan cities in a few short days. Biden had set 31 August deadline to fully withdraw combat forces before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Updated
Thousands of Afghan soldiers, fearing “violent reprisals”, are seeking amnesty from the Taliban in the large western city of Herat.
AFP reports:
Afghanistan’s third-biggest city fell without a fight on Thursday as government forces retreated and Herat’s famous warlord Ismail Khan was detained by the insurgents.
With fears of violent reprisals growing as the Taliban get closer to a full takeover of the country, Afghan soldiers in Herat – nearly all of them in civilian clothes – gathered Saturday to try and get a letter of amnesty.
Inside the office that once housed the Herat governor, Taliban members sat on couches – some cradling American military rifles – as they jotted down names and reviewed lists spread on a glass-top coffee table.
On stationery with the Taliban letterhead, one wrote amnesty notes – some long-term, some valid for just a few days.
One Afghan soldier at the compound told AFP that his unit was surrounded by the Taliban before the fall of the city. Now he just wanted security.
“I have come here to get an amnesty letter to go out of the city,” said Ahmed Shahidi. “Until I find a place where I can stay safe in the future.”
Taliban member Najeebullah Karokhi said around 3,000 people were given amnesty.
“Those who are from other provinces will be provided a three-day temporary amnesty letter so they can get to their home provinces, where they need to get another long-term amnesty letter from our officials,” he said.
In the shaded part of a courtyard on the compound, hundreds sat patiently as a man holding amnesty slips shouted names one by one for them to be collected.
The banal bureaucratic process belied the shocking speed and efficiency of the Taliban’s victories across Afghanistan.
The fear of Taliban revenge is not unfounded: the insurgents have imposed brutal punishments on opponents, and anyone who violated their harsh brand of Islamic law when they were in power from 1996 to 2001.
They have recently been accused of committing war crimes, including massacres of civilians and soldiers outside combat but the insurgents deny committing such atrocities.
Updated
Taliban say they have no plans to take Kabul 'by force'
The Taliban have issued a statement saying they have instructed their fighters to “stay at the gates of Kabul and not enter the city. Until the transition takes place, the Afghan government is responsible for the security of Kabul.”
The statement adds: “We don’t want a single, innocent Afghan civilian to be injured or killed as we take charge but we have not declared a ceasefire.”
A spokesman for the Taliban says “ Taliban fighters instructed to stay at the gates of Kabul and not enter the city. Until the transition takes place , the Afghan government is responsible for the security of Kabul.” https://t.co/jYAsuL7beO
— BILAL SARWARY (@bsarwary) August 15, 2021
Updated
CNN report that the US are expediting their evacuation efforts as the Taliban have begun entering the capital, Kabul, from all sides.
US officials say the embassy will continue to operate “with limited staff” from Kabul International Airport and the US have instructed other embassies in Kabul to operate with limited staff from a suitable location.
Crossbench peer in the UK House of Lords, David Alton, has shared this video of a Taliban commander speaking to CNN.
The Taliban often say “you have the clocks, we have the time.” As they turn the clocks back to year zero in Afghanistan we should be crystal clear that as time runs out for Afghan women, girls, minorities, dissenters, their deadly ideology and Jihad has not changed. https://t.co/n2jjEPniSO
— Lord (David) Alton (@DavidAltonHL) August 15, 2021
Lord Alton said in a follow-up tweet: “As they [the Taliban] turn the clocks back to year zero in Afghanistan we should be crystal clear that as time runs out for Afghan women, girls, minorities, dissenters, their deadly ideology and Jihad has not changed.
Updated
Taliban enter outskirts of Kabul, AP reports
Further to the update below: AP have now confirmed that Taliban have entered the outskirts of the capital, Kabul.
The Taliban fighters were in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman.
Updated
The BBC World News anchor and correspondent, Yalda Hakim, reports the Taliban are facing “zero-resistance” in the city centre of Kabul.
Sources tell me the Taliban are in the Kabul city centre, Shahr-naw. Zero resistance #Kabul
— Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim) August 15, 2021
Updated
Tajouden Saroush, the Iran International journalist, reports that US forces have taken on responsibility for Kabul’s security.
BREAKING:
— Tajuden Soroush (@TajudenSoroush) August 15, 2021
Afghan official:
Do not worry, US forces taking over Kabul security.
He says government buildings in Kabul are being evacuated as the Taliban press through into the city.
AP reports that an Afghan official and the Taliban say the militants have seized the provincial capital of Khost, 200km south-east of Kabul.
The capture makes Khost, the latest capital to fall to the militants since they began their advance over a week ago.
A provincial council member confirmed the capture to the AP. The official spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
It leaves Afghanistan’s central government in control of just Kabul and five other provincial capitals out of the country’s 34.
The former UK international development secretary Rory Stewart has criticised President Biden’s handling of Afghanistan on Twitter.
Stewart described Afghanistan as a place Biden has “just broken through reckless and precipitate withdrawal”.
On Friday, Stewart described the Taliban advance as “our fault” and told CNN that the county’s collapse was a “shameful” humanitarian catastrophe.
Stewart completed a 36-day solo walk across Afghanistan in 2002 which formed the basis of his New York Times bestseller, The Places in Between.
President Biden is implying here that he is being asked to randomly intervene in Afghanistan- as though it were a random place which he could never effect. As opposed to a place that he has just broken through reckless and precipitate withdrawal https://t.co/8gCWRzJeJ0
— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) August 15, 2021
Updated
Pakistan’s interior minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, confirmed that the Taliban had taken the Torkham border crossing, the last post still under government control.
The move came as the Taliban earlier seized Jalalabad, the last major city outside of Kabul held by the country’s increasingly isolated central government, cutting off the capital to the east and tightening their grip on the nation as tens of thousands fled their rapid advance.
The collapse of Jalalabad, near a major border crossing with Pakistan, leaves Afghanistan’s central government in control of only Kabul and six other provincial capitals out of the country’s 34.
In a nationwide offensive that has taken just over a week, the Taliban has defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swathes of the country, even with some air support by the US military.
Updated
AP: Officials say the Taliban now hold all of Afghanistan’s border crossings, leaving Kabul airport as only route out of the country.
Hi all, Alex Mistlin here. If you’re on the ground or have spotted a mistake or an update I’ve missed then please do get in touch: alex.mistlin@theguardian.com or on Twitter @amistlin
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. I’ll now be handing over to my colleague Alex Mistlin, who will be bringing you the latest.
Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai has tweeted that he met Abdullah Abdullah, head of the Afghan reconciliation committee, on Sunday to decide who to send to negotiate with the Taliban.
Al Jazeera reported earlier this week that Abdullah had said it was clear the Taliban did not believe in a political solution.
حامد کرزی رئیس جمهور پیشین افغانستان روز یکشنبه با جناب محترم داکتر عبدالله عبدالله رئیس شورا عالی مصالحه ملی دیدار کرد.
— Hamid Karzai (@KarzaiH) August 15, 2021
در این دیدار در مورد اعزام هیئت با صلاحیت و صاحب اختیار مذاکره کننده با تحریک اسلامی طالبان به قطر و اتخاذ تصامیم لازم مشوره صورت گرفت. pic.twitter.com/EId3tNCYU7
Updated
NBC’s Richard Engel:
Kabul this morning. Afghans crowding a visa processing center, trying to get visas to the United States. Stories of desperation. Many came up to me crying. pic.twitter.com/7l8PXBpY63
— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) August 15, 2021
The New York Times’ Sharif Hassan:
My heart breaks into pieces for my people who have lined up outside the banks to cash their savings and waiting at the gates foreign embassies to secure visas to leave. #Afghanistanisburning #Afganistan #Kabul pic.twitter.com/FfKsYiXRLa
— Sharif Hassan (@MSharif1990) August 15, 2021
Summary
It is just past 11am in Kabul. We will continue to bring you the latest developments as they happen.
If you are in Afghanistan, see news you think we may have missed, or have questions, get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Here is a summary of the latest developments:
- On Sunday, the Taliban took the eastern city of Jalalabad without a fight. The main highway from there to Kabul passes through Surobi.
- Kabul’s population of 5 million people has grown as thousands flee other parts of the country. Thousands of troops from the US and Britain are flying in to secure the airport.
- The Afghan army has vowed to defend the capital.
- Kabul covers an area of about 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles) and is ringed by mountains. There are four main roads into the city: from Maidan Shahr in the south-west, Pul-e-Alam in the south, Surobi in the east and Bagram in the north.
- The Taliban say they are close to capturing Maidan Shahr. They have already taken Ghazni, down the road from Maidan Shahr, and have a strong presence in surrounding areas.
- The US has started evacuating diplomats from its Kabul embassy, according to two US officials.
- US embassy personnel were destroying sensitive documents, according to two US military officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
- Arrangements are being made to airlift the British ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow our of Kabul by Monday evening.
Updated
Australian reporter Kate Banville writes:
A former Afghan who worked for Australia, and has been trying to flee on a special category visa, told me his home village in Laghman Province was captured overnight and he has lost contact with family.
The Defence Department found him ineligible to apply for the visa because he worked for a third party contractor. It was rejected despite having copies of support letters by serving members who detailed his employment, as well as an Appreciation Certificate given by the Australian Army.
“Last night the Taliban took Laghman province and they took my uncle with them,” he told me. “Next will be me, the Talibans are next to Kabul. I will be next.”
American troops have already arrived in Afghanistan as part of the evacuation mission, and with Taliban’s stranglehold gripping tighter by the minute Afghans counting on Australia to save them worry it has all been left too late.
One interpreter tells me he is in the final step of the application process and hasn’t heard from the government to tell him what happens next. Even those who have been given visas and approved to travel are waiting to hear what they need to do.
The Australian Department of Defence would not comment, and provided this statement instead:
‘The Australian Government is deeply concerned about the evolving situation in Afghanistan,” the Defence spokeswoman said.
‘Australia is in close consultations with our allies and security partners, as we always have been since operations in Afghanistan began in 2001.
‘Defence will not comment further for operational security reasons at this time.’
Updated
Rapid shuttle-run flights near the embassy began early this morning as diplomatic armoured SUVs could be seen leaving the area around the post, the Associated Press reports.
The US government did not immediately acknowledge the movements.
However, wisps of smoke could be seen near the embassy’s roof as diplomats urgently destroyed sensitive documents, according to two American military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the situation.
Afghan artist Omaid Sharifi in Kabul:
Good morning #Kabul 🫂🍀🕊 - we are painting a mural today-now. It reminded me of the famous scene from @TitanicMovie, where the musicians play until the ship sinks. I hope you are enjoying as you see our miseries - world 🌎 pic.twitter.com/5JXsVhxQkJ
— Omaid H. Sharifi-امید حفیظه شریفی (@OmaidSharifi) August 15, 2021
The US Embassy in Kabul has tweeted, saying, “We have conveyed to the Taliban reps in Doha that any action on their part that puts US personnel or our mission at risk will be met with a swift & strong @DeptofDefense response.
“Ambassador Tracey Jacobson is in charge of a whole-of-government effort to process, transport, & relocate SIV applicants & other Afghan allies. Our hearts go out to the brave Afghan men & women who are now at risk. We are working nonstop to evacuate thousands who helped our cause.”
Updated
Dozens of Afghans who worked for the British Council or on British government projects are in hiding and fearing for their lives because they say they have been excluded from the refugee visa scheme for people who supported the UK mission in Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s rapid advance across Afghanistan has put people with links to the British mission in grave danger, say former colleagues, even if they were not directly employed by the British government or military.
The Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy is a fast-track resettlement scheme for people under threat from the Taliban for their UK links, run by the Ministry of Defence. The government says there is no cap, and it is open to Afghans who worked for the military or the embassy.
But the Taliban have targeted Afghans with broader links to the western effort in their country. The US has effectively recognised that by widening its refugee visa scheme for Afghans to include employees of US-based NGOs, US-funded projects and others earlier this month.
The UK is lagging behind and that could cost lives, campaigners and Afghans affected warn, although the foreign secretary agreed earlier this month to include Afghans who worked for UK media outlets in the scheme:
Engel has also said on Twitter that, “Some say Afghanistan is coming full circle. Taliban were in power, now returning. It’s much worse than that: people tasted freedom, and Taliban can now claim they drove the US out. So it’s not back to the beginning, but to a new, far worse place.”
From NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel:
lots of choppers over kabul, shuttle runs back and forth, as US and other countries evacuate personnel.
— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) August 15, 2021
Summary
A summary of the situation in Kabul as this story unfolds:
- Kabul’s population of 5 million people has been swollen with thousands fleeing other parts of the country. Thousands of troops from the United States and Britain are flying in to secure the airport.
- The Afghan army has vowed to defend the capital.
- Kabul covers an area of about 1,000 square km (400 sq miles) and is ringed by mountains. There are four main roads into the city: from Maidan Shahr in the southwest, Pul-e-Alam in the south, Surobi in the east and Bagram in the north.
- The Taliban took Pul-e-Alam on Saturday without much resistance, a local provincial council member said.
- The Taliban say they are close to capturing Maidan Shahr. They have already taken Ghazni, down the road from Maidan Shahr, and have a strong presence in surrounding areas.
- On Sunday, the Taliban took the eastern city of Jalalabad without a fight. The main highway from there to Kabul passes through Surobi.
- The US has started evacuating diplomats from its Kabul embassy, according to two US officials.
- US Embassy personnel were destroying sensitive documents, according to two US military officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
- Arrangements are being made to airlift the British ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow our of Kabul by Monday evening.
Updated
An anonymous female reporter has written for the Guardian about her experience being forced into hiding in recent days:
New York Times reporter Fahim Abed in Kabul:
Being an Afghan journalist in Afghanistan is like writing a story about different fires in your house and report the burning of each part, despite your family members being stuck there and you can’t help them.
— Fahim Abed (@fahimabed) August 10, 2021
Just in case if you don’t know how it feels.
Our latest story on the recent developments in Afghanistan:
On Saturday night, Kabul was plunged into darkness and communication networks appeared to be down, hampering desperate efforts by its residents to escape the bloodshed many fear could lie ahead.
Taliban advances have brought them to the edge of Kabul’s Char Asyab district, just seven miles (11km) south of the capital city, lawmaker Hoda Ahmadi told the Associated Press.
The capital is gripped with fear of street fighting or a takeover by the Taliban. Panicked residents formed long lines outside banks, hoping to withdraw their savings, and some branches appeared to have already run out of cash.
Residents near Pul-e-Charkhi prison outside Kabul told AFP they had heard gunfire coming from the facility – possibly the result of an inmate uprising.
Early on Sunday, the Taliban took control of the key eastern city of Jalalabad, which means the Taliban have secured major roads connecting the country to Pakistan.
Here is an idea of how difficult it will be for Afghans to get out of the country and to the US, via the Wall Street Journal:
About 18,000 Afghans who have applied for the US’s Special Immigrant Visa, as well as their families, remain on the ground in Afghanistan, with about half of those outside Kabul, in areas either already under Taliban control or likely to fall soon, a congressional aide said.
In addition, the State Department this month said tens of thousands more Afghans would be eligible for priority treatment under a US refugee settlement program.
...
The precise criteria remain uncertain, and the State Department hasn’t said whether part-time and contract workers for US organisations would be eligible. The prospective refugees would have to get themselves out of Afghanistan to a third country at their own expense, the State Department said.
...
Commercial flights from Kabul are booked solid, with expatriates and Afghans holding visas for foreign countries attempting to leave. Tens of thousands of people escaping the Taliban’s advances in the provinces, meanwhile, have flocked into the Afghan capital, sleeping in city parks and mosques.
Among the tasks for the remaining US diplomats is the processing of Special Immigrant Visa applications for Afghans like Rahmat. The troops arriving beginning this week will help airlift Afghan applicants who have reached the latter stages of the 14-step Special Immigrant Visa process.
Updated
The Observer’s editorial today, just published:
Joe Biden bears immediate responsibility for a preventable reversal that will have lasting, deeply negative consequences for the longsuffering Afghan people and for western security. But this failure is shared with previous US presidents who took their eye off the ball in the years after al-Qaida’s 9/11 attacks – and especially with Donald Trump, whose unbelievably inept, self-serving “peace deal” with Taliban leaders in Doha last year paved the way for capitulation.
Britain, America’s steadfast but unconsulted ally, also faces searching questions about what was achieved and what happens next. Boris Johnson and Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, claim the occupation prevented more al-Qaida attacks and advanced women’s education. But Wallace also admits there is a resurgence of al-Qaida in Afghanistan, as well as of Islamic State fanatics, which is a looming worry. It’s obvious the job is incomplete – and that what good has been done may quickly be undone.
Reuters analysis:
Taliban fighters’ taking one provincial city after another highlights the failure of the United States to create a fighting force in the image of its own highly professional military with a motivated, well-trained leadership, high-tech weaponry and seamless logistical support.
On paper, Afghan security forces numbered around 300,000 soldiers. In reality, the numbers were never that high.
Dependent on a small number of elite Special Forces units that were shunted from province to province as more cities fell to the Taliban, the already high rate of desertion in the regular army soared.
Here is a reminder of how quickly Taliban insurgents have advanced across Afghanistan in just nine days:
Provincial capitals taken:
6 August - Zaranj. The Taliban take over the city in Nimroz province in the south, the first provincial capital to fall to the insurgents since they stepped up attacks on Afghan forces in early May.
7 August - Sheberghan.
8 August - Kunduz, Taloqan and Sar-E-Pul. Taliban fighters seize control of Kunduz, the northern city of 270,000 people, regarded as a strategic prize as it lies at the gateway to mineral-rich northern provinces and Central Asia.
9 August - Aaybak.
10 August - Pul-E-Khumri.
11 August - Faizabad.
12 August - Ghazni and Firus Koh.
13 August - Qala-E-Naw, Kandahar, Lashkar Gah and Herat.
14 August - Pul-e-Alam, Maymana and Mazar-I-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province and the biggest city in the north.
15 August - Jalalabad. Taliban insurgents take control of the key eastern city and capital of Nangarhar province without a fight on Sunday, leaving the territory controlled by the crumbling government to little more than the capital Kabul.
Updated
US starts evacuating diplomats from embassy in Kabul
The United States has started evacuating diplomats from its embassy in Kabul, two US officials told Reuters on Sunday.
“We have a small batch of people leaving now as we speak, a majority of the staff are ready to leave...the embassy continues to function,” one of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.
It had been expected that the evacuation of most diplomats would begin on Sunday, as Taliban insurgents continued lightning advances that brought the Islamist group to the door of Kabul in a matter of days.
Here are photos of some of the 120,000 Afghans who have fled rural areas in recent months to Kabul seeking safety from the Taliban:
This is a useful analysis of how the Taliban penetrated the Afghan military, from the Wall Street Journal.
The Afghan army fighting alongside American troops was moulded to match the way the Americans operate. The US military, the world’s most advanced, relies heavily on combining ground operations with air power, using aircraft to resupply outposts, strike targets, ferry the wounded, and collect reconnaissance and intelligence.
In the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the US pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore. The same happened with another failed American effort, the South Vietnamese army in the 1970s, said retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger, who commanded the US-led coalition’s mission to train Afghan forces in 2011-2013.
...
When the Taliban launched their offensive in May, they concentrated on overrunning [200 far-flung countryside bases that could be resupplied only by air], massacring soldiers who were determined to resist but allowing safe conduct to those who surrendered, often via deals negotiated by local tribal elders. The Taliban gave pocket money to some of these troops, who had gone unpaid for months.
By the time the Taliban began their assault on major population centres this month, the Afghan military was so demoralised that it offered little resistance. Provincial leaders and senior commanders replicated surrender deals struck on the local level before. The elite commando units were one exception, but they were too few in number and lacked aircraft to move them around the country.
It is now nearly 9am in Afghanistan. We will bring you the latest developments as they happen.
If you are in Kabul, see news you think we may have missed, or have questions, get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Daniel L Davis, a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lieutenant Colonel in the US army on how the Taliban is managing to take Afghanistan so quickly:
The [Afghan National Defense Security Forces] right now has an army, on paper, of 300,000 men, been given training by the most powerful military alliance on earth, received hundreds of billions in support, has at least a rudimentary air force, an armoured fleet and the backing of its government.
The Taliban, in contrast, has approximately 75,000 men, no formal backing from any state, no trained army, no air force, no technology, and only what vehicles and weapons they can scrounge on the open market – yet they are dominating their more numerous, better equipped and better-funded opponents. The reasons the ANDSF has thus far failed, however, are not hard to identify.
For the better part of at least the past 15 years, senior US civilian and uniformed leaders have been publicly telling the American people that the war in Afghanistan was necessary for US security, making progress, and supporting an Afghan security force that was performing well. All of it, from the beginning, was a lie.
Analysis from the New York Times:
President Biden’s top advisers concede they were stunned by the rapid collapse of the Afghan army in the face of an aggressive, well-planned offensive by the Taliban that now threatens Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.
The past 20 years show they should not have been.
If there is a consistent theme over two decades of war in Afghanistan, it is the overestimation of the results of the $83 billion the United States has spent since 2001 training and equipping the Afghan security forces and an underestimation of the brutal, wily strategy of the Taliban. The Pentagon had issued dire warnings to Mr. Biden even before he took office about the potential for the Taliban to overrun the Afghan army, but intelligence estimates, now shown to have badly missed the mark, assessed it might happen in 18 months, not weeks.
Here is a map showing where the latest two cities to fall to the Taliban – Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad – are in relation to Kabul:
Updated
An Afghan interpreter who was by the side of an Australian soldier slain in battle says he has been abandoned by the Australian government and is resigned to his all but certain death, as Taliban forces seize back swathes of the country.
Australia is preparing to evacuate hundreds of people from Afghanistan, the ABC reported on Sunday, but on the ground former interpreters and contractors for the ADF have said they hold out little hope of rescue.
Kate Banville reports for the Guardian:
Writing in the FT, the paper’s chief foreign affairs columnistGideon Rachman argues that “Joe Biden’s credibility has been shredded in Afghanistan”. He writes:
If Donald Trump were presiding over the debacle in Afghanistan, the US foreign policy establishment would be loudly condemning the irresponsibility and immorality of American strategy. Since it is Joe Biden in the White House there is instead, largely, an embarrassed silence.
It is true that Trump set the US on the path out of Afghanistan and began the delusional peace talks with the Taliban that have gone nowhere. But rather than reverse the withdrawal of troops, Biden accelerated it.
...
The US failure makes it much harder for Biden to push his core message that “America is back”. By contrast, it fits perfectly with two key messages pushed by the Chinese (and Russian) governments. First, that US power is in decline. Second, that American security guarantees cannot be relied upon.
If the US will not commit to a fight against the Taliban, there will be a question mark over whether America would really be willing to go to war with China or Russia. Yet America’s global network of alliances is based on the idea that, in the last resort, US troops would indeed be deployed to defend their allies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere.
The Taliban now control every major Afghan city except Kabul.
A little more on Jalalabad, via the Associated Press:
An Afghan lawmaker and the Taliban say the militants have seized Jalalabad, cutting off Kabul to the east.
The militants posted photos online early Sunday showing them in the governor’s office in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province.
Abrarullah Murad, a lawmaker from the province told The Associated Press that the insurgents seized Jalalabad after elders negotiated the fall of the government there.
More on the view from Australia: Prime Minister Scott Morrison addressed the media in Canberra this morning to announce a National Security Committee of Cabinet meeting yesterday was held to discuss the region, which he described as “highly volatile and dangerous”.
He would not comment any further other than to say Australia was “working closely with our partners to ensure a coordinated response, but we will not be discussing any operational plans at this point.”
ABC reported last night that Australia was joining the US and UK militaries and security forces in an evacuation mission of embassy staff, Australians working for Afghan and international charities and non-government organisations, will also be offered evacuation, as well as journalists and some dual citizens, and Afghans who worked alongside Australian troops.
Australia’s contribution to the mercy mission will be far less than the US, who will also be emptying their Embassy in what is an extraordinary move, highlighting the dire situation unfolding as the Taliban capture swathes of the country.
Australia was the first country in the Western alliance to end its on-ground diplomatic representation in Afghanistan when it shut its embassy abruptly on 18 June.
Australia’s battle ready group is based in Townsville. Defence sources tell us two of the three infantry battalions have been given a notice to move and are preparing to deploy, which is expected to happen within days, and touch down in the region on RAAF planes by the end of the week.
Well-placed sources speaking to former colleagues and NGO staff members still in Kabul say they’ve been told to send all their Afghan staff home and prepare to leave within 72 hours.
It will be almost impossible for anyone to be evacuated from anywhere other than Kabul, leaving those Southern Afghanistan without a lifeline.
It’s unclear what role Australia will play in the coalition mission, as medical equipment and staff, immigration staff would be needed to rapidly work through outstanding visa applications for Afghans who assisted Australia.
Updated
Taliban takes control of Jalalabad 'without a fight'
The Taliban took control of Afghanistan’s key eastern city of Jalalabad without a fight on Sunday morning, securing the roads connecting the country to Pakistan, officials told Reuters early on Sunday morning.
“There are no clashes taking place right now in Jalalabad because the governor has surrendered to the Taliban,” a Jalalabad-based Afghan official told Reuters.
“Allowing passage to the Taliban was the only way to save civilian lives.”
A western security official also confirmed the fall of the city, one of the last besides the capital Kabul to remain under government control.
The animated version of the map I posted earlier:
Time lapse video of the Taliban's offensive when it began taking over provincial capitals and provinces. pic.twitter.com/le6Sx8ZwYY
— Bill Roggio (@billroggio) August 14, 2021
Updated
From Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence Democracies:
The Taliban has entered Jalalabad and has reached the police station. Taliban advance appears to be unopposed. See thread below. Status of city is unclear, likely Taliban controlled. If so, this means Kabul is now effectively surrounded, all major roads to Kabul are closed. https://t.co/J1aX3VgPyw
— Bill Roggio (@billroggio) August 15, 2021
It I undeniable, Jalalabad is now under Taliban control. Given the city's importance to the province, Nangarhar is now assessed as Taliban controlled. Whatever pockets of possible resistance exist won't exist for long. Kabul is effectively surrounded. https://t.co/qfPCesKJxK
— Bill Roggio (@billroggio) August 15, 2021
Updated
We’ll have more from Jalalabad shortly. Reuters is reporting that the Taliban’s taking of the city has been confirmed by an official source.
US secretary of state Anthony Blinken has just tweeted that he has had a “wery productive conversation” with Canada’s foreign minister:
Very productive conversation with Canadian Foreign Minister @MarcGarneau about our efforts to reach a diplomatic solution in Afghanistan. I am grateful for Canada’s shared commitment to bring vulnerable Afghans to safety.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) August 15, 2021
US embassy personnel urgently destroying sensitive documents – reports
US Embassy personnel have been ordered to urgently destroy sensitive documents, according to two US military officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the situation.
This has also been reported by CNN and NPR.
A thread:
The @USEmbassyKabul is being evacuated. We’ve been here before, but not at this scale & with this terrifying urgency. I first came to Kabul as an embassy aide in 2003. Want to reflect here on the place’s history and what it’s meant for thousands who've served there
— Katherine Brown (@_KatherineBrown) August 15, 2021
(1/11)
Here is a map via the FDD’s Long War Journal showing Taliban control in Afghanistan. As mentioned in the previous post, it appears that Jalalabad – on the eastern edge of the country – has now fallen, too:
Updated
Taliban announces entry of militants into Jalalabad – report
With the collapse of Mazar, the only significant city outside of Kabul that had not yet fallen to the Taliban was eastern Jalalabad.
Now, we are seeing credible reports via Al Jazeera that the Taliban has announced the entry of its militants into Jalalabad, which leaves Kabul surrounded:
عاجل | حركة طالبان تعلن دخول مسلحيها إلى مدينة جلال أباد عاصمة ولاية ننغرهار شرقي أفغانستان
— الجزيرة - عاجل (@AJABreaking) August 15, 2021
Updated
From Australian journalist and seven-year army veteran Kate Banville:
The ready battle group for Australia is based in Townsville. I’m told by ADF members 2 battalions have been put on notice move and preparing to deploy. Australian NGO staff in Kabul have been told to prepare to leave #Afghanistan within 72 hours. #auspol
— kate.banville (@katebanville) August 15, 2021
A report from Kabul on what the evacuations are like for westerners in la Repubblica (translated from Italian):
Embassies close, they leave the country. US citizens receive airlift emails - go to the airport now or we won’t be able to help you anymore. Same for Canadians. Then it’s up to us, the Italians: ‘We inform you that, given the serious deterioration in security conditions, an air force flight will be made available tomorrow, August 15’.
The embassy suspends work: only the consul will remain in Kabul, to assist the translators who for years have helped the Italian soldiers in Afghanistan, to whom Italy has guaranteed assistance to leave the country.
All others who want it - diplomats, humanitarian personnel, journalists - will be evacuated by military flight from Hamid Karzai airport, now controlled by the Turks, who have deployed troops after the withdrawal of NATO.
More on the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif, from AP:
The fall of the country’s fourth largest city, which Afghan forces and two powerful former warlords had pledged to defend, hands the insurgents control over all of northern Afghanistan, confining the Western-backed government to the centre and east.
Abas Ebrahimzada, a lawmaker from the Balkh province where the city is located, said the national army surrendered first, which prompted pro-government militias and other forces to lose morale and give up in the face of a Taliban onslaught launched earlier Saturday.
Ebrahimzada said Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ata Mohammad Noor, former warlords who command thousands of fighters, had fled the province and their whereabouts were unknown.
Noor said in a Facebook post that his defeat in Mazar-e-Sharif was orchestrated and blamed the government forces, saying they handed their weapons and equipment to the Taliban. He did not say who was behind the conspiracy, nor offer details, but said he and Dostum “are in a safe place now”
The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson, who reported from Afghanistan in the early 2000s:
There is a conceit that today’s Taliban is different from the Taliban of 2001. This is certainly an idea that some senior Taliban officials have sought to propagate in recent years. Facts on the ground suggest otherwise. They claim to have moved on from their old alliance with Al Qaeda, for instance, but over the years they have partnered with other jihadist groups operating, as they have done, out of sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan, such as the Haqqani network, which is responsible for scores of suicide bombings and so-called complex attacks—involving gunmen and suicide bombers acting in tandem—and for causing hundreds of civilian deaths.
The Taliban have rendered Afghanistan unworkable as a country; unworkable, that is, without them. And the truth is that they were never really beaten. They merely did what guerrillas do in order to survive: they melted away in the face of overwhelming force, regrouped and restored themselves to fighting strength, and returned to battle. Here they are.
The words of political leaders can come back to haunt them. “None whatsoever, zero,” Joe Biden said last month when asked if he saw any parallels between the US withdrawals from Vietnam and Afghanistan.
“The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of the embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”
The dispatch of 3,000 extra US troops to help evacuate embassy staff looks like a pre-emptive move to avoid such a humiliating spectacle. Even so, with the Taliban on the march and closing in on Kabul, it did not stop cable news networks on Friday replaying grainy images from Vietnam nor the rightwing New York Post running the front page headline “Biden’s Saigon”.
A blame game away is under way for an issue that defies finger pointing, simple headlines or strident certainty perhaps more than any other. Biden is only the latest American president to stumble into a hall of mirrors where every argument has a counter-argument, every action has a reaction, no escape route is offered and the only guarantee is that Afghan civilians will lose:
Queues at the passport office in Kabul yesterday:
From Sangar Paykhar, who was born in Afghanistan:
I am very worried. My uncles, aunts, nieces & nephews have never left #Afghanistan. They chose to stay in Kabul and they have been through hell. None of them has money & a Western passport. Unlike ruling elite in Kabul they can't, and won't escape.
— سنګر پیکار (@paykhar) August 15, 2021
The UN’s refugee agency provided this update on Friday. What is particularly worrying about Kabul at the moment is that it is where so many people (120,000 from rural areas) fled to seeking safety in recent months:
Some 80% of nearly a quarter of a million Afghans forced to flee since the end of May are women and children.
Nearly 400,000 were forced from their homes since the beginning of the year, joining 2.9 million Afghans already internally displaced across the country at the end of 2020.
Ongoing fighting has been reported in 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
The overwhelming majority of Afghans forced to flee remain within the country, as close to their homes as fighting will allow. Since the beginning of this year, nearly 120,000 Afghans have fled from rural areas and provincial towns to Kabul province.
The sun will begin rising shortly over Kabul (which has been blacked out for the last few hours) and we should start to get a clearer picture of where things stand.
What are we expecting to happen in coming days?
The Taliban have said they will not stop fighting until the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, resigns. Ghani held urgent talks with local leaders and international partners on Saturday, but gave no sign of responding to the Taliban’s demand, saying “reintegration of the security and defence forces is our priority, and serious measures are being taken in this regard”.
Ghani’s resignation would help to avoid many, many deaths in a battle for Kabul, which is why he is facing international pressure to do so.
Activists have however warned of targeted killings in areas that fell under Taliban control in recent weeks.
There have also been restrictions brought in on women’s rights, which have raised fears the country is returning to the harsh restrictions of Taliban rule in the 1990s, even though the group’s envoys have promised they respect women’s rights under Islam. In Kandahar women were ordered from banking jobs at gunpoint, and told that male relatives could take their place, Reuters reported. And after Herat fell to the Taliban, rights activists said that women have been barred from the university, where they make up over half of students.
The capital is already packed with internal refugees who have fled either fighting or the Taliban. Over a quarter of a million people have been displaced since May, the UN said, the vast majority women and children.
This piece by Human Rights Watch’s associate Asia director, Patricia Gossman, is worth reading.
It includes this on alleged warcrimes by Australian and US forces:
Today, Australia is grappling with the fallout of serious allegations about a pattern of potential war crimes its special forces committed during raids in Uruzgan province that included murdering children, kicking detainees off cliffs, and planting weapons on men whom they had summarily executed.
The alleged crimes echo those of US special forces, including the never-prosecuted 2012 murders of 17 civilians who were detained and tortured to death in Nerkh district. Afghan victims of such crimes never saw justice – which is why the International Criminal Court has sought an investigation into crimes by all parties to the conflict, including the US military and CIA, as well as the Taliban and Afghan government forces. The US response has been to reject the ICC’s jurisdiction and try to shut down any investigation.
Australian PM: 'Our focus now is to ensure that we continue to support those who have aided us'
Australian prime minister Scott Morrison was asked in a press conference moments ago whether the Taliban had “won the war in Afghanistan”.
His response:
My concern is for the people of Afghanistan and seeking to protect the lives of Afghans.
The world is a complex place and there is no place more complex than Afghanistan. Australia and our allies have done much to secure their peace but this remains a very troubled part of the world not just recently but over generations and generations. We went there with our primary purpose, as I’ve indicated, and that was to hunt down Osama bin Laden and prevent al-Qaeda using it as a base and mounting their attack. That was achieved but the challenge for the people of Afghanistan, sadly, remains an unresolved issue and we hope for the best for them but the situation is very dire.
Our focus now is to ensure that we continue to support those who have aided us and ensuring that 400 people have already been brought to Australia as we have been working on this quite rapidly in recent months as the situation continues to deteriorate. We will continue to redouble our effort in that regard with our partners.
The Australian government is currently facing pleas to allow Afghan nationals to stay in Australia when their visas expire, as Canberra separately plans a potential military mission to Afghanistan to rescue former employees fearing the resurgent Taliban.
The Guardian’s Ben Doherty and Daniel Hurst report:
Officials confirmed on Friday that the Taliban had captured Afghanistan’s second biggest city, Kandahar, as well as Lashkar Gah in the south.
The significance of the Taliban’s retaking of Kandahar after 20 years should not be underestimated either in terms of history or strategically. Regarded as the capital of the Pashtun-speaking south, Kandahar has always exerted a special sense of gravity on the rest of the country, representing one of its main ethnic faultlines.
What it underlines most powerfully is how the Taliban survived during the long years of the US-led intervention to be able to return to the place where it began.
If the sight of US and British special forces outside Mullah Omar’s house appeared to mark the emirate’s fall in 2001, the appearance of its fighters in Martyrs Square has reified its resurgence.
It was first formed in the early 1990s by members of the CIA-backed Afghan mujahideen, who had resisted the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989, and attracting younger Pashtun tribesmen who studied in Pakistani madrassas in exile:
UK to evacuate British ambassador by Monday – reports
The Times and Sunday Telegraph are reporting that arrangements are being made to airlift the British ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow our of Kabul by Monday evening.
The Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) had intended Sir Laurie and a small team of officials to remain at the airport with other international diplomats, according to the Press Association.
However, The Sunday Telegraph reported that their departure had been brought forward amid fears the airport could be overrun as the Taliban continue their lightning advance through the country.
Six hundred British troops are being deployed to the city to assist with the evacuation of the remaining nationals, PA reports, as well as Afghans who worked with UK forces and who face reprisals if they fall into the hands of the Taliban.
With signs time is rapidly running out, a RAF Hercules was reported to have flown out of the airport on Saturday carrying diplomats and civilians.
A reminder that the US has been in Afghanistan for 20 years. Biden had vowed to be out by 11 September this year, (the 20-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks).
In a statement on Saturday justifying sticking to that pledge, Biden pointed out that the US has spent almost $1tn dollars in the country in that period, and trained over 300,000 Afghan security forces.
Updated
Here is some insight on what the Taliban’s plans may be, from the New York Times. I will try to bring you the best expert estimates we can find on how long it is expected to take for the US complete evacuations:
The senior US official said Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief American negotiator with the Taliban in peace talks in Doha, had asked the extremist group to not enter Kabul until the United States concludes the evacuation mission. Taliban officials have countered by asking that the US cease airstrikes against its fighters who are rampaging across Afghanistan, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the high-level negotiations.
This is a sobering reminder from the Wall Street Journal’s reporter on Afghanistan, Sune Engel Rasmussen (formerly of the Guardian) of how swiftly the Taliban has been able to capture cities across the country:
Let’s recap how astonishing the collapse of Afghanistan has been: before last week, the Taliban had only captured one major city since 2001 - Kunduz in 2015 - and only for a few days.
— Sune Engel Rasmussen (@SuneEngel) August 14, 2021
Now, in the span of 8 days, they have seized everything but Kabul.
The Taliban captured Mazar-i-Sharif, the country’s fourth-largest city and the government’s last major stronghold in the north on Saturday, as they tightened their grip on the country and closed in on Kabul.
Residents in Kabul were last night gripped by fear and a panicked search for escape routes from the bloodshed many fear could lie ahead. With the collapse of Mazar, the only cities outside the militants’ grasp are eastern Jalalabad, where the Taliban were advancing, and the capital itself.
In the afternoon, President Ashraf Ghani addressed the nation. Kabul had been swirling with rumours that he would step down to pave the way for a peace deal to spare the capital and its population of over 4 million people.
Instead he said he would reorganise the military, and made vague reference to “starting consultations” across society and with international allies. He may not have long to make a decision as much of the country collapses into Taliban hands.
The Guardian’s Emma Graham-Harrison and Michael Savage report:
Summary
This is our live coverage of the latest developments in Afghanistan as the Taliban surrounds Kabul, after taking control of the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the last government stronghold in the country’s north.
My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the news from Afghanistan as it happens.
Here are the key recent developments:
US President Joe Biden has ordered an increased deployment of 5,000 troops to accelerate the departure of US diplomats and their Afghan allies, as he said America would not reverse its decision to leave Afghanistan, despite the Taliban advances.
“I was the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan – two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war on to a fifth,” he said.
Kabul has been in total blackout for at least two hours. The time there now is nearly 5am.
We will bring you the latest developments as they happen.
If you are in Kabul, see news you think we may have missed, or have questions, get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Updated
