Taliban Takes Over More Major Afghan Cities, Controls Majority Of Nation, Seizes U.S. Military Weapons
The situation is Afghanistan continues to rapidly deteriorate as numerous reports now say that the Taliban has taken over two of the nation’s largest cities and has reportedly seized American weapons and military equipment.
“The seizure of Kandahar and Herat marks the biggest prizes yet for the Taliban, who have taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals as part of a weeklong blitz,” the Associated Press reported, adding that the Taliban has also captured Ghazni, which cuts of a critical highway linking the nation’s capital, Kabul, with the nation’s southern provinces.
“While Kabul itself isn’t directly under threat yet, the losses and the battles elsewhere further tighten the grip of a resurgent Taliban, who are estimated to now hold over two-thirds of the country and continue to press their offensive,” the report added. “The latest U.S. military intelligence assessment suggests Kabul could come under insurgent pressure within 30 days and that, if current trends hold, the Taliban could gain full control of the country within a few months.”
The Taliban’s rapid advancement through the country has netted the extremist group control of U.S.-made military vehicles, anti-aircraft guns, armored tanks, and artillery that were provided to Afghan security forces to fight against the Taliban.
“These captured systems will increase the mobility and lethality of the Taliban, making them a more formidable adversary,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “We have already seen the Taliban using captured humvees to patrol Kunduz and Sar-e Pol.”
Newsweek added:
The Taliban have used American rifles to gun down [Afghan National Army] soldiers and explosive-laden Humvees to bomb their checkpoints. Every fresh Taliban offensive brings with it pictures of captured weapons, ammunition, uniforms, fuel, and other vital military equipment. The beleaguered AAF and its 307,000 personnel require between $5 and $6 billion per year in funding, some 75 percent of which is provided by the U.S. Ninety-percent of all funding is drawn from U.S.-led international sources.
The top 10 highest value items sent to the [Afghan Armed Forces] in the last quarter totaled just over $212 million. This is the largest total since early 2019. The last quarter’s most valuable items included six EMB 314 Super Tucano light attack aircraft, 174 Humvees, almost 100,000 2.75 inch air-to-ground rockets, 60,000 40mm high-explosive rounds, and more than 2 million 7.62 mm cartridges.
The U.S. announced on Thursday that it was deploying thousands of troops to Afghanistan to assist with evacuating Americans. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said three battalions – one from the Army and two from the Marines – will enter Afghanistan over the next 48 hours to assist with security at the Kabul airport and that a brigade of 4,000 Army soldiers was being sent to Kuwait to be on standby if more troops were needed.
The news comes as Biden stated last month that it was “not inevitable” that the Taliban would take over the country once the U.S. left. Biden further claimed that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”
Robert Gates, who served as defense secretary for the Obama administration, previously warned that Democrat President Joe Biden had “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
