Afghanistan will stand firm against Taliban, says first vice president

Afghanistan's six provincial capitals have been captured in the past 24 hours by the Taliban pushing the number of provinces overrun by the terrorists to 18.

Afghanistan will continue its fight against the Taliban and the government would do all it could to support the Afghan forces and the public uprising forces, Afghan first vice president Amrullah Saleh has said. “In today’s meeting on national security chaired by President Ashraf Ghani, it was decided with conviction and resolve that we stand firm against Taliban terrorists and do everything to strengthen the national resistance by all means and ways,” Saleh said in a tweet on Friday.

The Afghan government still holds Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad.   (AP Photo)

Saleh also said the Taliban will be defeated and that he will never surrender to the group, according to the Tolo News channel. He said he will not bow to any deal named peace with the nature of surrender. “I will never accept Taliban domination on the people of Afghanistan under any deal that is dictated and imposed by Taliban,” Saleh added.

According to media reports, the Taliban has captured six provincial capitals in the past 24 hours pushing the number of provinces overrun by the terrorists to 18. Kandahar, Helmand, Herat, Badghis, Ghor, Logar, Zabul and Oruzgan provinces fell to the Taliban in the past 24 hours. The Afghan government still holds Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad, near the Pakistani border in the east.

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The Taliban has in a statement asked government officials to surrender to them and that they will be forgiven.

Tolo News reported citing some politicians and lawmakers as saying that the current situation in Afghanistan is due to the government’s “wrong policies.”

“Nowhere in the world, it is in a way that those who are responsible do not feel their responsibility towards the people and the government… and apply policies that do not favour national interests,” former vice president Ahmad Zia Massoud was quoted as saying by the news channel.

“They were busy in taking seats and land grabbing and were seeking ways to fill their pockets,” Asif Sediqqi, a senator, said.

Amid the sweeping and surprising speed with which the Taliban has captured cities, experts say capital Kabul could fall within days. "Kabul is not right now in an imminent threat environment, but clearly… if you just look at what the Taliban has been doing, you can see that they are trying to isolate Kabul," Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday.

As many as 400,000 civilians have been forced to flee from their homes since the start of the year and 250,000 of them since May, a UN official said. Many of them who have escaped the violence have been camping out in a Kabul park. "The situation has all the hallmarks of a humanitarian catastrophe," Thomson Phiri of the UN World Food Programme told a briefing.

Several countries, including the US, the UK and India, have asked their citizens to leave the war-torn country immediately. The United States and the United Kingdom have said they will send troops to help evacuate embassy staff and their nationals.

(With agency inputs)