Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has fled the country. Taliban forces have entered the capital city of Kabul after quickly commandeering huge swaths of territory. And officials said Sunday that personnel at the U.S. Embassy were sent to the airport for their safety.
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Two decades after an American-led invasion — with weeks to go before the U.S. military’s planned exit deadline — the Taliban is retaking Afghanistan and is on its way to controlling the country. Here are key people, groups and places to know:
Afghan president flees country after Taliban enters Kabul, a sign the government has collapsed
President Ashraf Ghani
Ghani became president of Afghanistan in 2014 after advising former president Hamid Karzai, serving as finance minister and later on chairing a group tasked with shifting authority from foreign troops to Afghan ones. Dismal turnout in the 2019 election, which Ghani won over his rival’s allegations of fraud, underscored the problems dogging his government — including a “relentless threat of violence and popular mistrust of political leaders,” as one researcher told The Washington Post.
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Ghani’s exit along with family and many in his government, confirmed this weekend by the head of the Afghan High Council for National Reconciliation, signaled the state’s rapid collapse.
U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad
Zalmay Khalilzad was sworn in as U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan in September 2018, tasked with helping negotiate a peace process between the Afghan government and the Taliban. A veteran diplomat who spent his childhood in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, Khalilzad has also served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations.
In April, Khalilzad expressed doubt that Afghanistan’s government would face swift collapse, telling members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “I believe the choice that the Afghans face is between a negotiated political settlement or a long war.”
Haibatullah Akhundzada
Haibatullah Akhundzada is the supreme leader of the Taliban. Akhundzada took command in 2016, after his predecessor Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan.
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A religious scholar, Akhundzada served as one of the Taliban’s senior judicial officials during the organization’s 1996-2001 rule over Afghanistan. He later fled to Pakistan and taught in various madrassas before being named one of Mansour’s deputies. Since taking command, Akhundzada has worked to consolidate power among political and military factions. His tenure has also been marked by secrecy, as Akhundzada has not appeared in public in many years.
Abdul Ghani Baradar
Abdul Ghani Baradar is the Taliban’s top political leader and was the organization’s chief negotiator in Doha.
Baradar helped his former commander in the anti-Soviet resistance movement, Mohammad Omar, establish the Taliban in the mid-1990s. Baradar was captured in Pakistan in 2010 and held for eight years before being released and assuming his current role.
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In 2020, Baradar became the first Taliban leader to communicate directly with a U.S. president when he spoke with Donald Trump over the phone shortly after signing an initial agreement to end the conflict.
With Kabul almost entirely in Taliban hands and President Ashraf Ghani having fled the country, Baradar emerged as Afghanistan’s new de facto leader. “We have reached a victory that wasn’t expected. … We should show humility in front of Allah,” Baradar said in a statement recorded in Doha. “Now it’s about how we serve and secure our people and ensure their future to the best of our ability.”
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai was Afghanistan’s long-serving president, picked by U.S. officials as Taliban forces collapsed in 2001. He held office until 2014. Karzai presided over a government often plagued with corruption and dysfunction.
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As Taliban forces entered Kabul on Sunday, Karzai appeared in a video posted online.
“We are trying to solve the issue of Afghanistan with the Taliban leadership peacefully,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
With Ghani having fled the country, Karzai announced that he had joined a “coordination council” with Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the Afghan High Council for National Reconciliation, and former Islamist leader-turned-politician Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to negotiate with the Taliban.
Karzai wrote that the goal of the council was to “prevent chaos and reduce the suffering of the people and to better manage the affairs related to peace and the peaceful transfer” of power.
The Taliban
The Taliban first rose to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, formed by guerrilla fighters who drove out Soviet forces in the previous decade with support from the CIA and Pakistani intelligence services. Most of their members are Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in the country.
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In 1996, the Islamist group seized Kabul and declared Afghanistan an Islamic emirate. Taliban rule was brutal and repressive. Women had virtually no rights; they were barred from education and forced to wear clothing that completely covered them. Music and other forms of media were banned.
The Taliban’s ideology was similar to that of its counterpart, al-Qaeda, though its interests were limited to ruling Afghanistan. In exchange for help fighting groups aligned with the nation’s government, Taliban leaders harbored Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda members involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A U.S.-led coalition ousted the regime later that year — but it has rebuilt.
The presence of U.S. forces helped provide the Taliban with an anti-colonialist rallying cry for recruits, as did corruption in the Afghan government. Now it is poised to control the country.
How the Taliban rebuilt and what it wants
Bismillah Khan Mohammadi
Bismillah Khan Mohammadi was the recently appointed acting defense minister under the Ghani government. This month, as Taliban forces seized territory in the face of minimal opposition, Mohammadi survived an attack on his life in Kabul.
As Taliban forces advanced into the capital, Mohammadi wrote of the government: “They tied our hands behind our backs and sold the homeland.”
Kabul
Kabul is Afghanistan’s capital and biggest urban area, home to more than 4 million people. The city has seen significant growth and development since the U.S.-led invasion that in 2001 overthrew Taliban rule. At its center is the highly fortified Green Zone, sequestered from outside traffic and containing the presidential palace and various embassies, including the U.S. compound.
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U.S. personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan were being relocated to the city’s airport, Hamid Karzai International, to “ensure they can operate safely and securely” as the Taliban encircled Kabul, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC News on Sunday. Acting U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson was among those moved to the airport.
The U.S. Embassy later warned of reports that the airport was taking fire and told U.S. citizens to shelter in place.
Doha
Doha, the capital of Middle Eastern nation of Qatar, has been the site of important negotiations over Afghanistan’s future. It is where the Taliban and the United States last February reached an agreement seeking a full American withdrawal, leaving Afghan forces feeling newly vulnerable. That Doha deal paved the way for mounting Afghan surrenders that accelerated after President Biden announced this spring that American forces would pull out without conditions in a matter of months.
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Afghan government and Taliban leaders have also met in Doha for negotiations, but plans to discuss a transition of power there with the militant group have apparently dissolved in the wake of Ghani’s flight.
Turkey
Afghans have been fleeing to Turkey in the thousands for months, fearful of life under the Taliban as the United States pulls back. Many travel on foot. Some pay smugglers for safe passage. Turkey is already home to several million refugees, most of whom escaped its war-torn southern neighbor Syria. The desperate influx has stoked anti-immigrant backlash: One mayor said he would increase water bills for refugees, while the Foreign Ministry declared last month that Turkey “will not be the E.U.’s border guard or refugee camp,” the Economist reported.
Derek Hawkins, Susannah George, Bryan Pietsch, Claire Parker, John Hudson, Karen DeYoung and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.
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