Taliban Extends Dominance, Seizes 16th Afghan City
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Taliban Extends Dominance, Seizes 16th Afghan City
… UK warns of civil war
The Taliban armed group takes the provincial capitals, Terenkot, Pul-e Alam, Feruz Koh, Qala-e Naw and Lashkar Gah within hours after capturing Herat and Kandahar cities.
It so far has control over 17 provincial capitals across Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is tipping towards civil war and the West must understand that the Taliban is not a single entity but a title for a myriad of competing interests, the United Kingdom’s defence minister says.
“Britain found that out in the 1830s, that it is a country led by warlords and led by different provinces and tribes, and you end up, if you’re not very careful in a civil war, and I think we are heading towards a civil war,” Defence Secretary Ben Wallace tells the BBC.
“The Taliban is not entirely a single entity, they break down underneath the title into all sorts of different interests,” Wallace said.
Bismillah Jan Mohammad and Qudratullah Rahimi, two lawmakers from Afghanistan’s southern Uruzgan province, say local officials have surrendered Terenkot, the provincial capital, to the Taliban.
Mohammad says the governor is en route to the airport to depart for Kabul.
The United Nations refugee agency calls on Afghanistan’s neighbours to keep borders open as Taliban advances heightened the country’s crisis.
“An inability to seek safety may risk innumerable civilian lives. UNHCR stands ready to help national authorities scale up humanitarian responses as needed,” a spokesperson for the agency says at a briefing in Geneva.
The World Food Programme sees food shortages in Afghanistan as “quite dire” and worsening, a spokesperson adds, saying the situation had all the hallmarks of a humanitarian catastrophe.
ALJAZEERA
