Taliban advance in Afghanistan continues, US sends 3,000 marines to Kabul to evacuate embassy

the Taliban advance in Afghanistan is devastating. Government forces crumble like columns of sand in water. The withdrawal of US troops, after 20 years and $ 1 billion in military spending, has left a huge power vacuum and widespread discouragement within the pro-Western government. Until last week, forecasts from military analysts said that if the chaotic situation persists, the Taliban could take power in Kabul in nine months. Now they believe this situation can be produced in days. In Washington, they fear a desperate exit like that of Hanoi in 1975, when American troops left Vietnam. For this reason, some 3,000 marines arrive in Kabul in the next few hours with the mission of evacuating all Americans and diplomats from European countries. President Joe Biden’s administration wants to avoid by all means the image of the last helicopter leaving the embassy with people hanging.

The Taliban they have already taken power in Ghazni, the capital of the province of the same name, just 150 kilometers from Kabul. The same situation that happened there when it all started in December 2001, but in the opposite direction. At that time, fighters from the pro-Western Northern Alliance were advancing towards Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan, the spiritual capital of the Taliban, as they fled to the mountains of the Hindu Kush range. From there they descended every summer to confront the Americans and other NATO forces. Two decades later, and after the deaths of 150,000 civilians, 3,600 American soldiers, 51,000 Taliban and 2,000 Al-Qaeda terrorists, after the passage of four presidents at the White House, everything returns, as if it were a board game, to the first record.

This is the situation I experienced as a war correspondent in December 2001, surely not too far from the one recorded today in the same place:

The first shots are heard as Commander Abdul Ahmad explains the situation of the offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. We are in what was then their headquarters: the second floor of a bombed out school between the villages of Maidan Shar and Pol-i-Sakh, about 100 kilometers south of Kabul, next to the road that goes to Kandahar. Ahmad claims he heard nothing. She remains calm and speaks in a gentle tone, slowly passing the beads of her tasby, the “Muslim rosary”. His men don’t seem to have the same courage. Three of them take the Kalashnikov rifles they were keeping beside them on the ground and run away. Ta-ta-tra-tra-ta-ta. Boooommmm. The second shock comes a few minutes later and shakes the walls of the school. It is all too obvious that a fight is taking place a short distance from the stage.

Ahmad, a tall, burly man of around 45 with a chest-deep black beard, insists on downplaying the importance of the matter. But a new exchange of heavy artillery defeats their arguments. A few meters from where we are sitting there is fighting between his Northern Alliance Mujahedin forces with Taliban groups who are desperately resisting. Just three days earlier, the Taliban had left Kabul and headed south, where they still hold. There, near the border with Pakistan, in 1995, they had initiated the advance which led them in a few months to seize power in Afghanistan and reigned under sharia, the brutal Islamic law of the 14th century, for five years.

Across the canyon, in a small town of mud houses with wide defensive walls, The local Taliban, a group of around 100 under the command of fierce Taliban commander Gul Mohammed, are in cover.. These fighters are resisting despite the mullahs’ orders to surrender. With them are several foreigners from the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, says Commander Ahmad. Tatatata. Boooooommmm. Tatatata. The fight continues for another half hour until any moment there is a convent silence.. Neither side seems ready for an offensive. Ahmad’s men lower their weapons and slowly return to where they were before the shooting began. A scene they seem to be used to. The Mujahedin and the Taliban hold their positions and exchange fire two or three times a day, while waiting for what is happening further south, in Ghazni and Kandahar, to be defined.

We continue to advance along the road for about 50 kilometers, the possible limit. Beyond that, we risk being shot or kidnapped and sold for a few dollars. After a short provincial road, we entered the city of Ghazni, the provincial capital of the same name, where the situation is similar to what we experienced in the morning. In the streets, there is an apparent calm, but gunshots are heard and vans full of Mujahedin can be seen speeding through the few cobbled streets of the center. “The Taliban still control 50% of the province,” Commander Mohammed Shajahan assures us as we hurtle down a dusty lane behind his headquarters. Shajahan’s story is very special. Until just three months ago, I worked at a gas station in the state of Virginia, United States. But immediately after the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers, which sparked this war, he returned to his hometown to regain command of his 1,000 Mujahedin soldiers whom he had left five years earlier when the Taliban took over. power in Kabul. “At that point, I wanted to stop fighting. It didn’t make sense … Now it does. And that’s why I came back “he tells me as he gets into a Toyota pickup that will take him to the front. In the neighboring province to the south, that of Zabol, an area known for its magnificent almond trees, the forces of the Pashtun Mujahedin commander (the predominant ethnic group in Afghanistan) Hamidullah –a man who became famous for his courage in the fight against the Soviets in the 1980s– and those of the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Rokketi. In Kandahar, just 100 kilometers further south, the fighting also remains undefined. The commander of the Northern Alliance, Gul Agha, who negotiated the surrender directly with the one-eyed mullah, Mohammad Omar, Maximum leader of the Taliban, ensures that everything is only a matter of hours. As part of the deal, he let Omar and all his commanders flee to the Hindu Kush.

Ghazni today it is once again in the hands of the Taliban. As well Herat, the third largest city in Afghanistan, and 11 other provincial capitals. President Biden is determined to complete the full evacuation of troops on August 31. It would be a blow to the esteem of the Americans if the Taliban seized Kabul before the departure of the last helicopter. But it is a probable situation.

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