Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: With the Taliban fiercely battling the government forces just 11 km south of Kabul, the national capital, and the imminent collapse of his government staring at him, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, on Saturday, made his first—and probably last—publicly televised address since the Islamist militia made major gains in recent days in its drive to return to power.
“Under the current situation, remobilizing the Afghan security and defense forces is our top priority,” said Ghani, according to a TOLOnews report.
Saturday, August 14, also happened to be the Independence Day of Pakistan, which indoctrinated, raised, funded, sponsored, trained, armed, and launched the Taliban in the 1990s to drive the Soviet forces out under American stewardship. Now with the highly radicalized, resourceful, and battle-hardened Frankenstein’s return, Islamabad is mortally afraid of burning its own hands.
On the other hand, the terrorist group, which had at Pakistan’s instance helped in hijacking and landing of an Indian Airlines plane (IC-814) at Kandahar airport in 1999 with 171 passengers and crew on board, is likely to capture Kabul on or soon after Sunday, August 15, India’s Independence Day.
“I assure you that as your president my focus is to prevent further instability, violence, and displacement of people. I’ll not allow imposed war on Afghans to bring further killings, loss of the gains of the last 20 years, destruction of public property,” Ghani said.
His last public appearance was on Wednesday in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, where the Islamist insurgents launched a multi-pronged attack early Saturday to take full control.
The Taliban have captured much of northern, western, and southern Afghanistan, and are now battling government forces just 11 kilometers (7 miles) south of Kabul.
The Taliban’s lightning advance came less than three weeks before the US is set to withdraw its last forces by August-end, after nearly 20 years of war. Western countries’ own forces are guarding their embassies in Kabul while the Afghan army is increasingly losing out in the battle.
Ghani and other top officials in the Western-backed government have been largely silent on the insurgents’ recent gains.