Taliban advances closer to Kabul as US seeks to avoid battles with its troops staging evacuations

The Taliban’s blitz across Afghanistan pushed closer to Kabul on Saturday, as U.S. diplomats appealed to the militants to stop the advance or risk conflict with thousands of U.S. troops flooding into the capital to evacuate U.S. diplomats and other personnel.

But in Qatar’s capital, Doha, U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met with Taliban political leaders who had a message of their own: calling for an end to escalating U.S. airstrikes trying to hold the fast-moving push by Taliban forces to gain territory, occupy provincial capitals and hold key roadways.

With Kabul in the Taliban crosshairs, the fate of the country’s Western-allied government also hung in the balance. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in his first public appearance since the Taliban’s stunning sweep of provincial capitals over the past week, said he was turning to the international community for help even as events appeared to be overtaking him and his administration.

On Saturday, the Taliban appeared to have full control of Logar province, bringing fighters as close as seven miles from Kabul, a provincial lawmaker, Hoda Ahmadi, told the Associated Press. Logar’s flatlands, ringed by mountains, serve as an important gateway to Kabul, with roadways connecting to cities to the south.

The many battle fronts have also pushed Afghanistan toward a potential humanitarian catastrophe as tens of thousands of people flee their homes amid the swift advance of Taliban insurgents.

In Kabul, scenes were reminiscent of the Taliban’s rise in the mid-1990s â€" with families selling everything and doing whatever they could to flee the country. Many fear a return to the repressive and brutal rule the Taliban inflicted when it was last in power, rooted in an extreme interpretation of Islamic law. Civilians are already reporting shuttered girls’ schools, poor families forced to cook food for ravenous fighters and young men pressured to join the ranks of the militants.

The U.S. argument to the Taliban is that if it avoids a direct confrontation with the more than 3,000 U.S. troops arriving in Kabul and waits for the completion of the evacuation, that increases the likelihood that both the international community and Afghans will accept the Taliban’s entry into the capital.

Ghani has proposed waiting at least a week for a government delegation with a plan for a new power-sharing agreement to arrive in Doha. But that timetable was seen as unrealistic amid the fast-shifting developments, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unfolding events.

Any political settlement at this point is likely to be tantamount to full Taliban control, even if it includes elements of power-sharing with non-militant political figures and power brokers. The Taliban, however, has been adamant that Ghani cannot remain in power.

Ghani’s recorded address, aired on national television Saturday, appeared in part to be directed toward boosting the rapidly flagging morale and effectiveness of Afghanistan’s security forces. While the Americans want at all costs to avoid a direct confrontation between the Taliban and U.S. troops, the extent to which the Afghan military will resist the militants’ entry into Kabul is unclear.

Ghani said he was in talks with international partners and political groups inside the country in an effort not to “lose the gains of the past 20 years.”

He did not offer specifics on what he expected from world leaders, other than to say that his first priority was “organizing the Afghan forces”â€" many of which have crumbled in the face of the rapid Taliban advance in recent days. He said consultations have begun with elders, political leaders and international allies. “Soon the results will be shared with you,” he said.

Ghani also expressed concern about the thousands of displaced Afghans who have fled to the relative safety of Kabul in recent weeks, and who could fan a fresh wave of refugees moving into neighboring countries and beyond.

The insurgents also seized the capital of Paktika, an eastern province bordering Pakistan, lawmaker Khalid Asad confirmed to the AP. Early Saturday, he said, fighting had broken out in the capital, Sharana, and lasted until local elders intervened to negotiate a pullout. Local officials, including the governor, left for Kabul after surrendering.

In northern Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents launched a multipronged assault on Mazar-e Sharif, a major city where Ghani had flown days earlier to rally pro-government forces.

The Taliban’s advance, staggering in speed and scale, leaves the insurgents holding more than half of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals and controlling large parts of the country in the final days of the U.S. withdrawal. More than a dozen major cities fell to the Taliban in the past week.

“Afghanistan is spinning out of control,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres told reporters in New York on Friday, as he called on all sides to do more to protect civilians. “This is the moment to halt the offensive. This is the moment to start serious negotiation. This is the moment to avoid a prolonged civil war, or the isolation of Afghanistan.”

As the fighting intensifies, the United States and its allies are racing to extract embassy staff and local Afghans who have assisted the U.S.-led coalition during their 20-year mission. The first of some 3,000 combat troops being deployed to Kabul to assist with the evacuations arrived Saturday. The Pentagon has said two battalions of Marines and one Army combat unit already deployed in the region will arrive in Kabul by late Sunday.

About 1,200 Afghans have been transported to the United States in recent days, and the Biden administration has committed to temporarily relocating another 4,000 applicants and their families to other countries while their immigration paperwork is finalized.

Canadian officials on Friday committed to bringing 20,000 refugees to the country, focusing on those most in danger, including women leaders, human rights advocates, journalists, LGBTQ individuals, persecuted religious groups and families of interpreters already resettled in Canada. No timeline was given for the resettlements.

These official rescue efforts account for only a fraction of Afghans displaced by the conflict. A quarter-million people have fled their homes since the end of May, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said Friday. Of them, most â€" 80 percent â€" are women and children. Some 400,000 people have been displaced since the beginning of the year.

“While most people have fled as close to home as hostilities permit, some have reportedly been trapped in their homes by continuing fighting,” Catherine Stubberfield, senior communications officer for the UNHCR regional bureau for Asia, told The Washington Post.

“The situation has all the hallmarks of a humanitarian catastrophe,” Tomson Phiri, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program, said in a statement Friday, noting that the conflict “has accelerated much faster than we all anticipated.”

The UNHCR on Friday appealed to neighboring countries to “keep their borders open” or risk “innumerable civilian lives.” In just the past month, more than 1,000 people have been killed or injured in indiscriminate attacks against civilians, particularly in Helmand, Kandahar and Herat provinces, according to the United Nations.

Rory Stewart, a former international development secretary in the British government who has criticized the decisions by the United States and Britain to withdraw troops, warned that millions of Afghans could become refugees.

“This is going to feel like Iraq and Syria,” he told Sky News. “This is going to be a barely governed space, teetering on the edge of civil war and run by an extreme Islamist group.”

In the western city of Herat, an entire Afghan army corps crumbled, with hundreds of troops handing over their weapons to the Taliban and others fleeing, according to local officials.

And in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, government control has shrunk to the local airport and adjoining military base. Sayed Ahmad Seylab, a provincial council member, said Afghan forces and officials retreated from the main government compound to “avoid civilian casualties and the destruction of Kandahar city.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday called for a political solution to the conflict, saying that NATO allies are “deeply concerned about the high levels of violence caused by the Taliban’s offensive, including attacks on civilians, targeted killings, and reports of other serious human rights abuses.”

“The Taliban need to understand that they will not be recognized by the international community if they take the country by force,” Stoltenberg said.

Pannett reported from Sydney, George from Kabul, and Westfall and DeYoung from Washington. Ezzatullah Mehrdad in Kabul contributed to this report.

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