Taliban Seize Kandahar, Prepare to March on Afghan Capital Kabul

KABUL—The Taliban concluded the seizure of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-biggest city and the Islamist movement’s birthplace, and took into custody a warlord who structured the failed defenses of the western city of Herat.

Blended with other advances, which includes the capture of the provincial capital of Helmand, the tumble of these two important towns has given the Taliban comprehensive control of southern and western Afghanistan, enabling the insurgent movement to pool its forces for a last march on Kabul.

The U.S. has now introduced the drawdown of its large embassy in Kabul, sending troops to evacuate most of the workers as it cuts the diplomatic presence to an vital main. Other Western embassies are readying similar options, fearing that the Taliban could lay siege to the Afghan capital within just times.

Business flights from Kabul had been booked reliable, with expatriates and Afghans holding visas for overseas nations around the world attempting to go away. Tens of hundreds of people escaping the Taliban’s advances in the provinces, meanwhile, flocked into the Afghan capital, sleeping in city parks and mosques.

“The Taliban really don’t care about people, they just like war, and now you see the city filling up with displaced people,” explained Yama Rashid, a 29-calendar year-old vendor of mobile-phone playing cards. “They say that the U.S. is likely to help people who labored for them. But what about the relaxation of us? Need to we just burn up?”