[Ashraf Ghani comments come as
government forces battle to prevent Lashkar Gah falling to the Taliban]
By Staff and agencies in Kabul
Taliban fighters assaulted at least
three provincial capitals overnight – Lashkar Gah, Kandahar and
Herat – after a weekend of heavy fighting that resulted in thousands
of civilians fleeing the advancing militants.
On Monday, Ghani told parliament
that “an imported, hasty” peace process “not only failed to bring peace but
created doubt and ambiguity” among Afghans.
In an apparent recognition of the
scale of the Taliban advance,
Ghani said that his administration would now focus on protecting provincial
capitals and major urban areas in the face of a rapid Taliban advance.
“The Taliban do not believe in
lasting or just peace,” he said.
Fighting raged in Lashkar Gah,
Helmand’s provincial capital, where the Taliban launched coordinated attacks on
the city centre and its prison after the government announced the deployment of
hundreds of commandos to the area.
Hours after the president’s
remarks, Taliban fighters seized control of the provincial government’s radio
and TV building, replacing normal broadcasts with religious songs. The building
sits just 400 metres to the north of the provincial governor’s office, which
was still under the control of the government, along with a few other
government installations.
Fighting has intensified since
early May, with the insurgents capitalising on the final stages of the
withdrawal of US-led foreign forces after almost 20 years.
One resident, Hawa Malalai, warned
of a growing crisis in the city. “There is fighting, power cuts, sick people in
hospital, the telecommunication networks are down. There are no medicines and
pharmacies are closed.”
For years, Helmand was the
centrepiece of the US and British military campaign in Afghanistan, only for
it to slip deeper into instability.
The province was the scene of some
of the fiercest fighting between foreign forces and the Taliban over the years
when tens of thousands of troops poured in for the former US president Barack
Obama’s surge.
The vast poppy fields in the
provinces provide the lion’s share of the opium
for the international heroin trade, making it a lucrative source of tax and
cash for the Taliban’s war chest.
The loss of Helmand’s capital would
be a massive strategic and psychological blow for the government, which pledged
to defend provincial capitals at all costs after losing much of the rural
countryside to the Taliban over the summer.
Fighting also raged in some
districts of Kandahar, the former bastion of the insurgents, and on the
outskirts of the provincial capital.
Kandahar airport came under attack
overnight on Sunday, with the Taliban firing rockets that damaged the runway,
leading to the suspension of flights for several hours. The facility is vital
to maintaining the logistics and air support needed to keep the Taliban from
overrunning the city, while also providing aerial cover for large tracts of
southern Afghanistan including nearby Lashkar Gah.
In the west, hundreds of commandos
were also defending Herat after days of fierce fighting.
“The threat is high in these three
provinces … but we are determined to repel their attacks,” the Afghan security
forces spokesperson Ajmal Omar Shinwari told reporters on Sunday, adding it was
an “emergency situation”.
The capture of any major urban
centre by the Taliban would take its current offensive to another level and
fuel concerns that the army is incapable of holding out.
“If Afghan cities fall … the
US decision
to withdraw from Afghanistan will be remembered as one of the most notable
strategic blunders in American foreign policy,” the Australia-based Afghanistan
expert Nishank Motwani told AFP.
It would show that Washington
“abandoned the most pro-American government in the region to radical Islamists
that believe in turning to rubble all that has been built over the past two
decades”.
Kabul has repeatedly dismissed the
militants’ steady gains over the summer as lacking strategic value, but has
largely failed to reverse their momentum.
The Taliban have seized Afghan
cities in the past but have retained them only briefly.
On Monday, the Biden administration
announced that because of increased Taliban violence, it
was expanding the eligibility of refugee admissions for Afghans with US links.
The state department said that the
expanded eligibility would include Afghans who worked with US-based media
organisations or non-governmental organisations or on projects backed by US
funding.
But the US does not intend to help
them leave the country, nor support them during the 12-14-month adjudication
process.