On Saturday there were fighting over Maidan Shar, capital of the Maidan Wardak province, which is around 35 kilometers from the Afghan capital, said MP Hamida Akbari of the German press agency. Meanwhile, the first US soldiers arrived in Kabul to secure evacuations.
More troops would arrive by Sunday, says a US representative. However, the Islamists tried to isolate the capital with its four million inhabitants, said ministry spokesman John Kirby. There is a risk that the Taliban could advance into Kabul within a few days. “Afghanistan is getting out of control,” warned UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He called on the Taliban to stop their offensive immediately.
Nationwide, fighting between the Taliban and government forces continued in at least five provinces on Saturday. Mazar-i-Sharif, where the German Bundeswehr had its headquarters until June, is also a clear target of the Islamists. The Taliban tried to invade the city in the north on Saturday morning, but were pushed back, according to local politicians. Ex-provincial governor Mohammad Atta Nour and former warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum have built a line of defense in Balkh province, where Mazar-i-Sharif is located. The Taliban have already taken surrounding provinces.
On Saturday, the Islamists were also able to take over the 19th of the country’s 34 provincial capitals. Sharana, with its estimated 66,000 inhabitants in the Paktika province in the south-east of the country, went to the Taliban without a fight after mediation by elders, three local officials confirmed. Fighting over the provincial capitals of Paktia and Kunar has been reported in the east. This week, Herat and Kandahar, the third and second largest cities in the country, fell to the Islamists.
Video: Dr. Ellinor Zeino, head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Kabul, speaks about the situation in the country.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said in a short TV address on Saturday that he did not want the blood of innocent people to continue to be shed in Afghanistan. He had held consultations with political leaders in the country and international partners and wanted to share the results with his compatriots “soon”.
Read about it: Ashraf Ghani: A President Without a Country
As the resistance of the Afghan government troops is crumbling, western states are feverishly trying to get their compatriots and embassy staff to safety. The US government had announced that it would temporarily send around 3,000 soldiers for this purpose. Great Britain plans to send around 600 soldiers to Kabul to bring embassy staff and local employees to safety. The German armed forces are also planning a large evacuation mission and other countries are organizing the departure of their embassy staff, including the Netherlands and Spain. Austria does not have an embassy in Kabul; the Afghanistan department is managed from Islamabad.
Paris wants to give Afghan local workers and other vulnerable groups of people uncomplicated protection in France. As one of only three countries, France continues to issue visas in Kabul, it was said on Friday evening from Élysée circles. “Extraordinary efforts” are being made to facilitate access to France for Afghan artists, journalists and human rights campaigners, for example.
Guterres said the international community must make it clear that “a seizure of power through military force is a hopeless endeavor”. This could only “lead to a prolonged civil war or the complete isolation of Afghanistan”. The United Nations warned on Thursday of a humanitarian catastrophe and called on Afghanistan’s neighbors to keep their borders open to refugees.
Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) called on the Taliban to “stop their ruthless action immediately and return to the negotiating table”. In a statement sent to the APA on Saturday night, Schallenberg let the radical Islamist militias know: “You cannot hold out one hand in dialogue and keep clutching the weapon with the other.” Austria supported the intensive efforts of the international community to advance the peace talks in Doha.
The Taliban had ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until it was overthrown by US-led troops in late 2001 and enforced a very strict interpretation of Islamic law. This is now feared again. There is concern that the progress made with Western aid over the past 20 years on human and freedom rights, especially for women, will be lost again and that a refugee crisis will arise. According to UN figures, 250,000 Afghans have been on the run since May, which means 400,000 since the beginning of the year. The World Food Program fears a famine.
The Afghan politician and doctor Sima Samar was extremely concerned in the “Salzburger Nachrichten”: “The situation is frightening. Not only for women. It is a terrible situation for the entire civilian population. Public life comes to a standstill, people are cautious”, The 64-year-old, who was the first minister for women’s affairs in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2002, described the current situation. “Wherever the Taliban are already in power, women can no longer leave the house without men. Girls can no longer go to school. The Taliban have not changed,” said Samar, referring to the laborious progress made in enforcing Women’s rights through fears. “Everything we have achieved is in jeopardy,” Samar told the newspaper, expressing her hope that “the international community will stand by our side.”
The German EU State Minister Michael Roth (SPD) expects that the situation in Afghanistan will greatly increase the refugee pressure on the European Union and Germany. Tyrol’s governor Günther Platter (ÖVP) is also expecting “a larger wave of refugees” which, not least because of the situation in Afghanistan, “cannot be ruled out”, as he said in the APA summer interview.
