Taliban fighters take city of Lashkar Gah following capture of Kandahar and Herat

Published

4 years ago

August 12, 2021

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Taliban fighters have taken the Afghan city of Lashkar Gah, following their capture of Kandahar and Herat, as the security situation in the country rapidly deteriorates.

A police official confirmed the capture of the city in the southern province of Helmand, with Afghan officials moving to Camp Bastion and about 1,500 soldiers surrendering.

If follows the announcement by Defence Secretary Ben Wallace on Thursday morning that the UK is sending military personnel to help evacuate Britons from Afghanistan.

He said 600 troops will be sent to Kabul on a “short-term basis” in response to the increasing violence across the country. They are expected to arrive in the coming days.

Taliban forces took Kandahar and Herat – Afghanistan’s second and third-largest cities respectively – on Thursday and US intelligence warned Kabul could fall within 90 days.

The capture of Kandahar marks the biggest prize yet for the Taliban, which has now taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals.

Officials said Kandahar fell last night and that government officials and their entourage managed to flee to the airport to escape the city by air.

Taliban fighters rushed past the Great Mosque in the historic city of Herat – which dates to 500 BC and was once a spoil of Alexander the Great – and seized government buildings.

Mr Wallace said: “I have authorised the deployment of additional military personnel to support the diplomatic presence in Kabul, assist British nationals to leave the country and support the relocation of former Afghan staff who risked their lives serving alongside us.

“The security of British nationals, British military personnel and former Afghan staff is our first priority. We must do everything we can to ensure their safety.”

The Ministry of Defence has characterised the move as part of the ongoing withdrawal of NATO forces, but in reality it is an unplanned emergency response to the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan as the Taliban rampages across the country.

The British soldiers will also assist with the acceleration of the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy.

“This will help to make sure interpreters and other Afghan staff who risked their lives working alongside UK forces in Afghanistan can relocate to the UK as soon as possible,” the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

The number of staff working at the British Embassy in Kabul has also been significantly reduced to a “core group”, the government has announced – the remaining staff will focus on consular help to anyone wanting to leave the country.

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The British ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, will remain in Kabul but will relocate to a more secure location.

The US has also announced that it is deploying some 3,000 additional troops to help the departure of its embassy staff.

The American embassy will remain open, although personnel will be reduced to a “core diplomatic presence”.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani last night – telling him the US “remains invested in the security and stability of Afghanistan”.

Analysis by Martha Kelner, US correspondent

This is fast becoming a chaotic end to America’s 20-year presence in Afghanistan as 3,000 troops are rushed in to facilitate the extraction of US embassy personnel from the capital, Kabul.

Understandably, many people here are now recalling the 1975 fall of Saigon when US staff were airlifted to safety from the roof of the embassy, a situation the US was desperate to avoid.

When President Joe Biden announced the withdrawal of US troops in April, the biggest fear was that provincial cities in Afghanistan would fall one after the other – and that is exactly what is happening as the Taliban advances at a speed even the most gloomy predictions did not forecast.

Intelligence officials here suggested privately in June that Kabul could be taken within six months. The timeline was later revised to 90 days, but the current situation and the lack of resistance being put up in many areas to repel the Taliban means it could be taken even sooner than that. The momentum now is solely with the Taliban and it is almost certainly already too late to reverse their gains.

With 2,312 US troops lost in combat in this Afghanistan war, more than $1trn spent on the conflict and all the positive advancements now crumbling, the question is this: what exactly was the last 20 years all for?

On Wednesday, David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, warned the West not to take its eyes off Afghanistan as the Taliban’s forces continue to make gains after British and US troops were withdrawn.

Conservative MP and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Tugendhat suggested the UK’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is a mistake.

“We can turn this around. We need to. Investing in ourselves, our allies and partners has never been easier or more important. This is a choice. So far we’re choosing to lose,” he posted on social media.

World

Drones and salami: How Putin is testing the West with Poland airspace violation

Published

7 hours ago

September 10, 2025

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Drones and salami: How Putin is testing the West with Poland airspace violation

The unprecedented Russian drone attacks on Poland are both a test and a warning. How Europe and NATO respond could be crucial to security on this continent.

The Russians are past masters at what’s called “salami slicing”. Tactics that use a series of smaller actions to produce a much bigger outcome that otherwise would have been far more provocative.

The Kremlin is probing the West with gradual but steady escalation. A British Council building and an EU installation are bombed in Kyiv; a senior EU official’s plane’s GPS is jammed.

On their own each provocation produces nothing more than rhetoric from the West – but new lines are crossed and Russia is emboldened.

Ukraine war latest: NATO chief sends message to Putin

Putin is good at this.

He used salami slicing tactics masterfully in 2014 with his “little green men” invasion of Crimea, a range of ambiguous military and diplomatic tactics to take control. The West’s confused delay in responding sealed Crimea’s fate.

He has just taken a larger slice of salami with his drone attacks on Poland.

They are of course a test of NATO’s readiness to deploy its Article 5 obligations. Russia has attacked a member state, allies believe deliberately.

Will NATO trigger the all for one, one for all mechanism in Poland’s defence and attack Russia? Not very likely.

But failing to respond projects weakness. Putin will see the results of his test and plot the next one.

Expect lots of talk of sanctions but remember they failed to avert this invasion and have failed to persuade Russia to reverse it. The only sanctions likely to bite are the ones the US president refuses to approve, on Russia’s oil trade.

So how are the drones also a warning? Well, they pose a question.

Vladimir Putin is asking the West if it really wants to become more involved in this conflict with its own forces. Europeans are considering putting boots on the ground inside Ukraine after any potential ceasefire.

If this latest attack is awkward and complicated and hard to respond to now, what happens if Russia uses hybrid tactics then?

Deniable, ambiguous methods that the Russians excel in could make life very difficult for the alliance if it is embroiled in Ukraine.

Think twice before committing your troops there, Russia is warning the West.

There is more Europe could do.

It could stop buying Russian energy, which it is still astonishingly importing – more than 20 billion euros a year at the last count.

It could use its massive economic advantage (20 times that of Russia’s, and that was before the war) to do more to fund Ukraine’s defence.

While it continues to do neither, expect more excruciating slices of the salami to come.

World

Riot police clash with ‘Block Everything’ protesters in Paris

Published

12 hours ago

September 10, 2025

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Riot police clash with 'Block Everything' protesters in Paris

Riot police have clashed with protesters in Paris after they took to the streets in response to calls to ‘Block Everything’ over discontent with the French government.

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of the French capital and other cities, including Marseille and Montpellier, in response to the online ‘Bloquons Tout’ campaign, which is urging people to strike, block roads, and other public services.

The government has deployed more than 80,000 officers to respond to the unrest, which has seen 200 arrested nationwide so far, according to police, and comes on the same day the new prime minister is being sworn in.

Demonstrators were seen rolling bins into the middle of roads to stop cars, while police rushed to remove the makeshift blockades as quickly as possible.

Tear gas was used by police outside Paris‘s Gare du Nord train station, where around 1,000 gathered, clutching signs declaring Wednesday a public holiday.

Others in the city blocked the entrance to a high school where firefighters were forced to remove burnt objects from a barricade.

Elsewhere in the country, traffic disruptions were reported on major roads in Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, and Lyon.

Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau told reporters a group of protesters had torched a bus in the Breton city of Rennes.

Fourth prime minister in a year

The ‘Block Everything’ rallies come amid spiralling national debt and are similar to the Yellow Vest movement that broke out over tax increases during President Emmanuel Macron’s first term.

‘Bloquons tout’ was first spearheaded online by right-wing groups in May but has since been embraced by the left and far left, experts say.

On Monday, former Prime Minister Francois Bayrou lost a vote of no confidence, and was replaced by Sebastien Lecornu at the Hotel Matignon on Wednesday afternoon, becoming the fourth person in the job in just 12 months.

A teacher, Christophe Lalande, taking part in the Paris protests, told reporters at the scene: “Bayrou was ousted, [now] his policies must be eliminated.”

Elsewhere, union member Amar Lagha said: “This day is a message to all the workers of this country: that there is no resignation, the fight continues, and a message to this government that we won’t back down, and if we have to die, we’ll die standing.”

World

Israel has crossed a huge diplomatic red line with Qatar strike

Published

12 hours ago

September 10, 2025

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Israel has crossed a huge diplomatic red line with Qatar strike

A lot has changed in Qatar in just 24 hours.

Israel brought its war with Hamas to the streets of Doha and people can’t quite believe it.

The sound of explosions on Tuesday afternoon in a residential neighbourhood has shattered the sense of peace and security that defines life here.

Israel-Hamas latest – Qatar attack puts talks in doubt

It’s also shattered the critical sense of trust needed in these fragile ceasefire talks.

Qatar has played a critical role as an intermediary between Israel and Hamas for the last two years and those diplomatic efforts have been blown apart by this unprecedented attack.

Qatar has reacted with absolute fury and it has shocked and angered other Gulf neighbours, who, like Qatar, stake their reputation on being hubs of regional peace and stability.

Donald Trump is clearly unhappy, too. A strike on Qatar – a key American ally and home to Al Udeid Air Base, the largest US military hub in the Middle East – is seen as a dangerous escalation.

There’s no suggestion that permission was sought by Israel from its own closest ally in Washington.

And there’s little clarity if they were even forewarned by the IDF, as the White House said it learned of the attack from its own military.

Donald Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was then tasked with alerting Qatar immediately, but by this point, it was too late.

According to Qatar’s foreign ministry, that call came 10 minutes after the first explosion was heard in Doha.

It’s clear Israel has crossed a huge diplomatic red line here.

Qatar plays a pivotal role on the international stage, punching well above its diplomatic weight for a country of its size.

For decades, it has hosted negotiations in a number of conflicts, providing a safe haven for warring parties to hold talks.

Arguably, far more is achieved in Doha’s many five-star hotels than on any battlefield.

But there was never any sense that you were in danger here.

During the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan in August 2021, I interviewed the Taliban in Doha.

It was a constructive and civil interview where their international leader presented their position to the world on Sky News.

It was vital information and there was never any sense we were at risk in meeting to talk here.

There is so much at stake in the Israel-Hamas war.

More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, children are starving in Gaza and 48 Israeli hostages have not been returned home.

What was Israel thinking, carrying out this attack? And was it worth it?

They claim it was a “precise strike”, but none of the Hamas leadership were taken out as they claimed was their objective.

Five lower-ranking officials were killed along with a member of Qatar’s security forces. What it has done is left any hope of ceasefire talks in tatters.

For many, this was a huge miscalculation by Benjamin Netanyahu.