Taliban Captures Key Afghan Cities

The Taliban have tightened the noose around northern Afghanistan, capturing three more provincial capitals as they take their fight to the cities after seizing much of the countryside in recent months.

The insurgents have snatched up five provincial capitals in Afghanistan since Friday in a lightning offensive that appears to have overwhelmed government forces. Fighting in Afghanistan's long-running conflict has intensified since May, when foreign forces began the final stage of a withdrawal due to be completed later this month. Kunduz, Sar-e-Pul and Taloqan in the north fell within hours of each other Sunday, lawmakers, security sources and residents in the cities confirmed.

PERENNIAL TARGET

Kunduz is the most significant Taliban gain since the May offensive began -- it has been a perennial target for the insurgents, who briefly overran the city in 2015 and again in 2016 but never managed to hold it for long.

The defence ministry said government forces were fighting to retake key installations. Spokesman Mirwais Stanikzai said that reinforcements including special forces had been deployed to Sar-e-Pul and Sheberghan. "These cities that the Taliban want to capture will soon become their graveyards," he added.

Northern Afghanistan has long been considered an anti-Taliban stronghold that saw some of the stiffest resistance to militant rule in the 1990s. The region remains home to several militias and is also a fertile recruiting ground for the country's armed forces.

"The capture of Kunduz is quite significant because it will free up a large number of Taliban forces who might then be mobilised in other parts of the north," said Ibraheem Thurial, a consultant for International Crisis Group.

Vivid footage of the fighting was posted on social media over the weekend, including what appeared to be large numbers of prisoners being freed from jails in captured cities. The Taliban frequently target prisons to release incarcerated fighters to replenish their ranks.

On Friday, the insurgents seized their first provincial capital, Zaranj in southwestern Nimroz on the border with Iran, and followed it up by taking Sheberghan in northern Jawzjan province the next day.

US AIR STRIKES

The pace of Taliban advances has caught government forces flatfooted, but they won some respite late Saturday after US warplanes bombed Taliban positions in Sheberghan.

Sheberghan is the stronghold of notorious Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose militiamen and government forces were reportedly retreating east to Mazar-i-Sharif in Balkh province.

Dostum has overseen one of the largest militias in the north and garnered a fearsome reputation fighting the Taliban in the 1990s -- along with accusations his forces massacred thousands of insurgent prisoners of war.

A retreat of his fighters dents the government's recent hopes that militias could help the overstretched military.

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been displaced by the recent fighting, and on Saturday, 12 people were killed when their bus was struck by a roadside bomb as they tried to flee Gardez in Paktia province.

"I lost my mother, father, two brothers, two sisters-in-law and other members of the family," said Noor Jan.

The withdrawal of foreign forces is due to finish at the end of this month ahead of the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The US-led invasion sparked by 9/11 toppled the first Taliban regime in 2001.