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The Taliban mentioned Monday they’d captured the final pocket of resistance in Afghanistan, the Panjshir Valley, at the same time as opposition fighters vowed to maintain up their wrestle towards the hardline Islamists.
Following their lightning-fast rout of Afghanistan’s military final month and celebrations when the final US troops flew out after 20 years of warfare, the Taliban turned to battle the forces defending the mountainous Panjshir Valley.
“With this victory, our nation is totally taken out of the quagmire of warfare,” chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid mentioned.
A picture posted on social media by the Taliban confirmed its fighters on the governor’s workplace of Panjshir province.
Nonetheless, the Nationwide Resistance Entrance (NRF) — made up of anti-Taliban militia and former Afghan safety forces — mentioned its fighters had been nonetheless current in “strategic positions” throughout the valley, and that they had been persevering with the wrestle.
“We guarantee the individuals of Afghanistan that the wrestle towards the Taliban and their companions will proceed till justice and freedom prevails,” the NRF tweeted in English.
Late Sunday they’d acknowledged struggling main battlefield losses in Panjshir and referred to as for a ceasefire.
The NRF contains native fighters loyal to Ahmad Massoud — the son of the well-known anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud — in addition to remnants of the Afghan army that retreated to the Panjshir Valley.
The group mentioned in a tweet Sunday that NRF spokesman Fahim Dashty — a widely known Afghan journalist — and Normal Abdul Wudod Zara, a outstanding army commander, had been killed within the newest preventing.
The NRF had vowed to battle the Taliban but additionally mentioned it was keen to barter with the Islamists. However preliminary contact didn’t result in a breakthrough.
The Panjshir Valley is famed for being the location of resistance to Soviet forces within the Nineteen Eighties and the Taliban within the late Nineties.
Taliban authorities
The Taliban are but to finalise their new regime after rolling into Kabul three weeks in the past at a pace that analysts say probably shocked even the hardline Islamists themselves.
Afghanistan’s new rulers have pledged to be extra “inclusive” than throughout their first stint in energy, which additionally got here after years of battle — first the Soviet invasion of 1979, after which a bloody civil warfare.
They’ve promised a authorities that represents Afghanistan’s complicated ethnic make-up — although girls are unlikely to be included on the prime ranges.
Ladies’s freedoms in Afghanistan had been sharply curtailed below the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule.
This time, girls shall be allowed to attend college so long as courses are segregated by intercourse or at the very least divided by a curtain, the Taliban’s training authority mentioned in a prolonged doc issued on Sunday.
However feminine college students should additionally put on an abaya (gown) and niqab (face-veil), versus the much more conservative burqa necessary below the earlier Taliban regime.
Because the Taliban come to grips with their transition from insurgency to authorities they’re going through a bunch of challenges, together with humanitarian wants for which worldwide help is essential.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths has arrived in Kabul for a number of days of conferences with the Taliban management, which has promised to assist.
“The authorities pledged that the security and safety of humanitarian employees, and humanitarian entry to individuals in want, shall be assured and that humanitarian employees — each women and men — shall be assured freedom of motion,” a press release from UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric mentioned.
The Taliban spokesman tweeted that the group’s delegation assured the UN of cooperation.
Flurry of diplomacy
The worldwide neighborhood is coming to phrases with the brand new Taliban regime with a flurry of diplomacy.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due Monday in Qatar, a key participant within the Afghan saga.
Qatar, which hosts a serious US army base, has been the gateway for 55,000 individuals airlifted out of Afghanistan, almost half the whole evacuated by US-led forces after the Taliban takeover on August 15.
Blinken will even communicate to the Qataris about efforts alongside Turkey to reopen Kabul’s airport, which is critical for flying in badly wanted humanitarian help and evacuating remaining Afghans.
Blinken will then head Wednesday to the US air base in Ramstein, Germany, a short lived dwelling for hundreds of Afghans transferring to the US, from which he’ll maintain a digital 20-nation ministerial assembly on the disaster alongside German Overseas Minister Heiko Maas.
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