The Taliban on Monday seized Panjshir province, a restive mountain region that was the final holdout of resistance forces in the country, cementing its total control over Afghanistan a week after U.S. forces departed the country.
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Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that the Islamist group had “completely conquered” the Panjshir Valley. “Our last efforts for establishing peace and security in the country have given results,” he said.
Taliban officials shared a photo on social media Monday that purported to show their fighters taking control of local administrative buildings.
A senior official of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, confirmed that the Taliban had taken over. “Yes, Panjshir has fallen. Taliban took control of government offices. Taliban fighters entered into the governor’s house,” the person said.
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But on Twitter, the NRF said their forces remained “in all strategic positions across the valley to continue the fight” and that the “Taliban’s claim of occupying Panjshir is false.”
Here’s what to know
A brutal weekend for women in Afghanistan saw a pregnant policewoman reportedly killed by the Taliban, while the Islamist group violently suppressed a women’s rights demonstration in Kabul. The Taliban said at a Monday news conference that the announcement of a new Afghan government would come soon and that its shadowy supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada is slated to appear publicly in the near future, according to Reuters. Taliban officials met on Sunday with the United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, who promised to maintain assistance, a spokesman for the Islamist group said. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is heading to the Persian Gulf to meet leaders that helped with the Kabul airlift. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on his way to the region, where he will discuss resettlement efforts.
Ahmad Massoud, head of the resistance, is “at [a] safe place,” the official said. (Massoud also confirmed his safety in a tweet Monday morning, according to Reuters.) The person added that Amrullah Saleh, another senior anti-Taliban leader who had served as vice president of the ousted government, had fled for Tajikistan.
In a video recorded on Friday, Saleh said reports at the time that he had fled the country were “totally baseless,” although he added that the situation was “difficult.”
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Afghan troops who had been trained by Western governments in the last two decades would be asked to rejoin the country’s security forces alongside Taliban fighters, Mujahid said at a Monday news conference, according to Tolo News. (Some Afghan soldiers had fled to the Panjshir after the Taliban seized Kabul.)
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Some members of the resistance denied that the Taliban had occupied the Panjshir. The National Resistance Front said in a Facebook post that “the people of Afghanistan should be assured that the resistance will continue until the freedom and justice is achieved by God’s help.”
The Taliban’s victory followed an extended period of heavy fighting between resistance guerrillas and Afghanistan’s new rulers. Resistance fighters set up a base in the Panjshir Valley days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul last month, convinced that they could hold a valley that was never conquered by the Taliban in the 1990s nor by the Soviet Union in its nearly decade-long occupation in the 1980s.
News of the conquest came after a brutal weekend that placed the Taliban’s treatment of women again in the spotlight as it prepares to announce Afghanistan’s new leadership and welcomes a resumption of international aid that could be contingent on the new regime protecting basic human rights.
A policewoman was beaten and shot dead by Taliban militants in front of relatives at her home in central Ghowr province on Saturday, the BBC reported, citing eyewitnesses. The Taliban denied killing the woman — who, according to reports, was eight months pregnant — and said they were investigating the incident.
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Separately, a Taliban spokesman told The Guardian that the group had detained four men who allegedly struck female protesters during a Saturday demonstration against the Taliban’s extreme interpretation of Islamic law, which sharply curtails women’s political rights.
As the Taliban swept to power last month, the group sought to convince the world that it won’t return to the harsh rule it imposed when it last controlled the country, from 1996 to 2001. There is deep skepticism about those promises.
The latest developments add to recent reports of reprisal killings across the country. They could make it harder for the Taliban to convince world leaders to resume the flow of foreign aid that has largely been frozen since it took over Afghanistan.
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Taliban officials met in Kabul on Sunday with the United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, who promised to maintain assistance for the Afghan people, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said.
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The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross also arrived in the country on Sunday to visit aid operations. In a video message, Peter Maurer said he would talk to authorities about ensuring “neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian action” continues.
The U.N. has warned of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where foreign aid made up much of the previous Western-backed government’s budget.
Meanwhile, in Mazar-e Sharif, airplanes with Americans and interpreters have been waiting on the ground for days amid conflicting reports that they are being held up either by the Taliban or awaiting State Department clearance for departure.
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Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) said on “Fox News Sunday” that the planes were waiting for clearance from the Taliban in what he described as “a hostage situation.” But Eric Montalvo, a former Marine Corps officer and attorney heading coordination for three of the charter planes in Mazar, told The Post it is the U.S. State Department that must tell the Taliban that the flights are authorized to depart for Qatar.
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A State Department spokeswoman said that the department no longer has personnel on the ground after the U.S.-led evacuation mission ended last month, and it doesn’t control the airspace “whether over Afghanistan or elsewhere in the region.”
“Given these constraints, we also do not have a reliable means to confirm the basic details of charter flights, including who may be organizing them, the number of U.S. citizens and other priority groups onboard, the accuracy of the rest of the manifest, and where they plan to land, among many other issues,” the spokeswoman said.
The United States will, however “hold the Taliban to its pledge to let people freely depart Afghanistan,” she added.
Susannah George, Ezzatullah Mehrdad, Shaiq Hussain and Sammy Westfall contributed reporting.