KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban are pressing on with their surge in Afghanistan, saying they seized a strategic border crossing with Pakistan on Wednesday — the most in style in a series of key border put up to shut help under their regulate in fresh weeks.
The construction used to be the most in style in Taliban wins on the bottom as American and NATO troops total their pullout from the war-battered country. On Tuesday, an Afghan first fee mentioned a senior authorities delegation, collectively with the high of the country’s reconciliation council, would meet the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, to jump-commence the lengthy-stalled peace talks between the 2 facets.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted a video purporting to display conceal Taliban warring parties Wednesday in the southeastern town of Race Boldak along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. On the Pakistani aspect, residents of the border town of Chaman reported seeing the Taliban’s signature white flag flying good across the boundary line and Taliban warring parties in autos utilizing in the enviornment.
Alternatively an Afghan authorities first fee from southern Kandahar province, the build Race Boldak is located, denied that the Taliban had taken regulate. The first fee declined to be identified by name, without explaining why.
The Taliban admire in fresh weeks taken a string of most important Afghan border crossings, collectively with with Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The border crossing with Iran at Islam Qala in Afghanistan’s western Herat province is especially lucrative and a a must admire replace route.
SpinBoldak is a key crossing for all items from Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi to Afghanistan, a landlocked nation counting on the Arabian Sea port.
Remaining week, the Taliban mentioned they now regulate 85% of Afghanistan’s territory — a claim that is terribly unlikely to take a look at but that used to be severely elevated than old Taliban statements that more than a third of the country’s 421 districts and district services and products had been in their regulate.
Many Afghan districts admire fallen to the Taliban and not utilizing a fight as Afghan forces abandoned their posts. Reports indicated that Race Boldak moreover fell and not utilizing a fight.
In northern Afghanistan, a worn stronghold of U.S.-allied warlords, more than 1,000 Afghan militia men fled across the border into northern Tajikistan closing week forward of the advancing Taliban. Iran moreover reported just a few hundred Afghan troops crossing into Iran.
The taking of key border crossings will seemingly mean most important earnings for the Taliban while moreover strengthening their hand in any future negotiations with the Kabul authorities.
The Taliban surge has moreover resulted in tens of hundreds of Afghans fleeing their properties — some as a outcomes of the combating, but many out of terror of what lifestyles might perchance perchance perchance even be love under Taliban rule.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special advisor for Afghanistan reconciliation, acknowledged the continuing chaos in remarks Wednesday. Alternatively, he pointed to the decades of unrest in the country since the 1979 Soviet invasion.
“The truth is that Afghanistan has been at war for 43 years — it isn’t that Afghanistan has been unruffled and now we are withdrawing and due to the this truth it’s changing into a battleground,” Khalilzad urged an on-line seminar organized by the Beirut Institute. “The Taliban had been making progress every three hundred and sixty five days over the closing lots of years while we had been unruffled there.”
The Taliban management has tried to fresh a softer image — even saying that once they return to power in Afghanistan, ladies can help college and women folk will be allowed to work. Alternatively, in areas the build they’ve won regulate, experiences from villagers convey ladies folk are in most cases being ordered internal, allowed out fully when accompanied by a male relative.
Within the video circulated by Mujahid, an unidentified Taliban fighter says that while they’ll admire killed the Afghan soldiers at the border crossing, they had been ordered by their management to now not effort them but to ship them house.
The Taliban had been expected to bring their senior leaders to the talks in Doha, the build the rebel stream has lengthy maintained a political hiss of enterprise.
The negotiations are geared toward ending the violence that has step by step elevated since the U.S. signed a take care of the rebel stream in February closing three hundred and sixty five days spelling out the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.
There are rising concerns for what lies forward and hundreds of Afghans are attempting to head away the country amid rising awe about the long term. Outgoing U.S. commander Gen. Scott Miller, who officially stepped down at a ceremony in Kabul on Monday, has warned that rising violence seriously hurts Afghanistan’s potentialities of discovering a unruffled discontinue to decades of war.
Miller moreover warned of a that you just might perchance perchance perchance perchance also imagine civil war as U.S.-allied warlords had been resurrecting their militias in an try to close the Taliban surge. The militias admire a violent history.
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Gannon reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this file.
