The government could fall within a few months – according to several sources with insight into a new report from the US intelligence service, writes Washington Post.
Magda Gad, Expressen’s reporter on the ground in Afghanistan, is reached by information that one of the security forces’ largest air bases has been taken over by the Taliban.
At the same time, Denmark has now decided to evacuate and grant residence permits to 45 locally employed Afghans.
Afghanistan’s interior minister is now appealing to the Taliban to lay down their arms and rule the country together, writes Al Jazeera.
After a broad political settlement in Denmark, the country has now chosen to evacuate all its locally employed personnel in Afghanistan and grant them and their families residence permits, reports TT.
This is a total of 200 people who, according to Danish TV2 , can be evacuated. Of these, 45 people have been employed at the Danish embassy in the past two years and requested help.
The persons’ families and children will also be evacuated and granted a residence permit for two years. According to TT, the work of getting the people out of the country will begin as soon as possible.
Expressen has previously written about the locally employed staff at the Swedish Embassy in Kabul. The Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that there are no plans to evacuate the embassy and the 30 locally employed Afghans.
“In other respects, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs never comments on issues concerning the security of foreign authorities and employees or contingency measures, as this could complicate our continuous work with security issues.” , they wrote in an email.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in an email to Expressen that the embassy, since it opened in 2008, has had around 70 local employees.
Appeals to share power
The Afghan government is appealing for the Taliban to lay down their arms and sit down at the negotiating table.
- I pray that the Taliban will end this brutality, with the killing. And instead sit down, in peace, and find a solution, Interior Minister Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal according to Al Jazeera.
One solution that the Minister of the Interior believes is relevant is to share power.
- Let us sit down and create a coalition government, one that can be accepted by both sides. The sooner we do it, the better.
Local militias are armed
At the same time, the Afghan government has now launched a three-stage defense plan to ward off the Taliban. Local militia groups, which will fight side by side with the Afghan security forces, are armed.
Mirzakwal believes that the first stage of the plan, to stop losing the battles, is over and that they are now entering the second part: to call back their troops who have left their posts due to the fighting.
Troops will now be deployed around provincial capitals to prevent the Taliban from gaining more ground. The last step, if the matter goes the way of the Afghan forces, is to push the Taliban away through an offensive.
- But we have limited air support, the helicopters we have are busy flying supplies and dead or injured, says Mirzakwal, according to Al Jazeera.
Expressen’s reporter on the ground in Afghanistan, Magda Gad, was reached on Thursday morning on reports that one of the Afghan security forces’ largest air bases, Shindand in Herat, had been taken over by the Taliban. The information has been confirmed, but it is unclear whether the Taliban came across any munitions in connection with the takeover. According to source information to Gad, the base must have been set on fire before it was abandoned.
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Nine provinces have fallen
Within a week, a total of ten provinces have fallen victim to Taliban violence. During the night until Wednesday, the cities of Fayzabad, Pul-i-Khumri and Farah fell, according to local officials. And on Thursday, the news agency Khaama Press wrote that the provincial capital Ghazni, 160 km southwest of Kabul, had fallen to the Taliban.
According to ABC news , Ghazni is strategically located on the only major road from southern Afghanistan to Kabul.
