South East Asia

The lightning speed with which the Taliban has overrun large swathes of rural territories in Afghanistan’s north has shocked locals and surprised foreign observers with some worrying whether the internationally recognized government in Kabul can weather the storm.

But the speed of the Taliban’s advances has everyone asking how a group composed of ragtag militants could overrun dozens of districts in eight strategic provinces that share borders with Afghanistan’s neighbors: Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran.

Over the last week, I have been watching the Taliban sweep across the map of northern Afghanistan, capturing places that I first visited in 2001 at the beginning of the US-backed war. Taliban fighters have seized the main bridge to Tajikistan on the Amu Darya, a river that I crossed on an unwieldy raft a few months into the conflict.

As the United States continues its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, disputed reports indicate a rising number of asylum seekers of Afghan origin are crossing Turkey’s eastern border.

Videos posted on social media this weekend reportedly showed a stream of asylum seekers entering Turkey through its eastern border with Iran, raising concerns among local officials and humanitarian agencies.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has warned of a looming humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as the escalating conflict brings increased human suffering and civilian displacement.

An estimated 270,000 Afghans have been newly displaced inside the country since January 2021 – primarily due to insecurity and violence – bringing the total uprooted population to over 3.5 million, the UNHCR said in a statement Tuesday.

Turkey is allegedly planning to use Syrian fighters in its proposed mission to guard and run Kabul’s airport, but this time recruitment is expected to proceed via private security firms.

Turkey’s government appears to have learned little from the troubles it has faced for deploying Syrian fighters in the wars in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, as media reports suggest it is now out to recruit mercenaries for its planned mission to secure Kabul’s airport after the US-led NATO mission completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

State Ministry for Natural Disaster Management said Thursday that at least five million Afghans have been displaced due to conflict in the country in the past two years.

According to the ministry, amid escalating violence by the Taliban in the past two months alone, 32,384 families have been displaced in 25 provinces, of which 20,000 have been assisted so far.

Worse still, US diplomats continued to mumble about a “peace accord” with an outfit that has no notion of peace, while US military commanders publicly warned that withdrawing without a sober step-by-step plan could persuade the Taliban that they could secure all power without a deal that, at best, would give them only a slice of it.

Forgetting years of denial that Iran had any relations with Al-Qaeda and Taliban, the IRGC analyst now says “Iran has succeeded in persuading them to cooperate in securing Iran’s interests.”

Kabul by Christmas.

Which is where we were, Kabul at Christmas, 2001, when the Taliban had just been toppled, ousted by an intense bombing campaign led by American and British forces, with the brutal regime’s Al Qaeda “guests’’ in disarray and on the run.

With U.S. and coalition combat troops all but gone from Afghanistan, Western officials are preparing to face down terrorist threats with the promise of “over-the-horizon” capabilities that may be ill-suited to the danger that groups such as al-Qaida and Islamic State currently pose.