![]() A lot of this was just the collapse of government authority, and if it could collapse in the face of 10 Taliban fighters, we have to be honest: It was barely there to begin with. One Afghan government official told them some of these districts fell when 10 Taliban fighters showed up. The New York Times ran a piece and got someone to go on the record with something I’ve been told over the last couple of weeks. #AFPGraphics map showing parts of Afghanistan under government control and territories under the influence of the Taliban, from April till August /x1U1QiFhg0- AFP News Agency August 9, 2021 The Taliban's increasing hold over Afghanistan. The fewer obstacles that stand in the Taliban’s way in the countryside, the fewer speed bumps they have on their way to the doorsteps of the cities - which is where they are now - around most of the country. That’s not only what’s happening, but that’s also the significance of what’s happening. It’s just that those little village outposts have fallen one by one, so there’s nobody around to stop the Taliban from closing in on the cities. So when we see the Afghanistan map with all the color-coded territory, it’s not so much that the Taliban has full control over those large swaths. So when we ask, “How did we get here?” - where all of a sudden in one week, nine out of 34 provincial capitals fall to the Taliban, or seem like they’re on the verge of falling - the answer is, well, half of the country slipped out of the government’s control in the last three months, and it no longer had a buffer protecting those provincial capitals, which were these village outposts and district centers standing in the way. That’s happened in just the last three months. ![]() The fact is, the government has either been kicked out of or abandoned more than 200 of the 400 districts in the country. But we can measure how much the government has lost. The map could be very misleading if you say every time the government leaves, the Taliban now controls all of that space. ![]() In the end, what we can say is not how much the Taliban controls, but how much the Afghan government has lost. In some places, they cause the Afghan troops or police to run away, to surrender, to retreat, to simply go home. They haven’t left a garrison of their fighters to control the area. But it’s not accurate to say the Taliban now controls all of the districts they’ve captured, because in many places they haven’t set up a shadow government. The Taliban has swept across the country through these districts. That is the only government that exists in that entire district, for miles around in any direction. The rapid fall of Afghanistan to Taliban forces, explainedįor the longest time, the Afghan government has pointed to this district center map as a means of demonstrating their authority, when in reality, their only presence or assertion of authority might be a district center where they have a couple buildings that are protected by a small military or police force, or sometimes just a militia that’s outfitted and paid by the government. It’s one village covering sometimes crazy square mileage, rivaling that of smaller US states like Rhode Island. There are a little over 400 districts across Afghanistan almost all of them have what’s called a district administrative center. One imperfect measure is the Afghan government’s control of district centers. I want to be careful about how I phrase it because everyone nitpicks - and they nitpick correctly - about various measures of which actor is in control of which, or how much, territory. Starting about three months ago, in late May and then June, picking up speed in July, the Taliban launched an offensive campaign that has swept across the country in a way that has been unprecedented since the US intervened in late 2001. Where are things right now? It would be a mistake to get caught up in the collapse of provincial capitals because what has happened this week is just the continuation of what we’ve seen over the last three months. ![]() It is a huge question, but it’s the right question to start with. This may be a huge question, but can you give a sense of where things stand on the ground right now? Andrew Watkins We’ve seen all these headlines about the Taliban taking provincial capitals. He explained how the Taliban took these provincial capitals, and what missteps by both the US and Afghan governments did - and didn’t - contribute to the Taliban’s advance.Ī transcript of our conversation, edited and condensed for clarity, follows. To understand the pace of the Taliban’s advance and what it means for Afghanistan’s future, I spoke to Andrew Watkins, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Afghanistan. Sign up to receive our newsletter each Friday. Vox’s German Lopez is here to guide you through the Biden administration’s burst of policymaking.
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