The Taliban forces continued to rout Afghan forces, amid calls for President Ashraf Ghani to step down, and Joe Biden administration has dispatched more than 3,000 troops to help evacuate American and Afghan civilians.
The Taliban seek to isolate Kabul, the Pentagon says as four more major cities are under Taliban control and the government’s forces near collapse."
The Taliban has made rapid gains and now controls half of Afghanistan's provincial capitals, leaving the capital city of Kabul increasingly isolated.
Four more cities fell to the Taliban overnight including the country's second-biggest city, Kandahar, which is of particular strategic importance and was formerly a major hub for US military operations.
According the CNN, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby was directly asked if the war in Afghanistan could conclude with a Taliban takeover done with US-made weapons:
"What's it going to say for a 20-year war in Afghanistan if it ends with the Taliban rolling into Kabul in US-made MRAPs and Humvees and carrying weapons that our allies turned over to them?" a reporter asked him during a press briefing on the security situation in Afghanistan.
"I can't see the future," Kirby said. "And what I can tell you is our troops who deployed to Afghanistan after 9/11 did what they were sent there to do, which is to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven for terrorist attacks upon the homeland and to severely degrade the capabilities of groups like al Qaeda."
"In the process of that effort, a lot of progress was made in Afghanistan, progress which we obviously don't want to see put at greater risk. Going forward, we're going to do a couple of things: We're going to make sure that a terrorist threat can't emanate from Afghanistan again by maintaining robust over the horizon counterterrorism capabilities in the region. And we're going to continue to support our Afghan partners, bilaterally, through maintenance support, through financial support, and we're going to continue to want to see a stable, secure Afghanistan. The other thing I would say is that we want to continue to see that there's a negotiated political settlement here for governance going forward, so that's what our focus is on right now," Kirby continued.
He was then asked if the Taliban is actually interested in any sort of negotiations.
"I think that's a question for Taliban leaders to speak to. They have a team in Doha. They have participated in the past in negotiations. Now, whether they're still interested in that or not, I think it's for them to speak to. We are still interested in seeing that outcome, and so should the rest of the international community," Kirby said.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called on the Taliban to halt their offensive in Afghanistan.
“I call on the Taliban to immediately halt the offensive, negotiate in good faith in the interest of Afghanistan and its people," he told reporters Friday.
"I hope that discussions in Doha, Qatar between representatives of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Taliban — supported by the region and the wider international community — will restore the pathway to a negotiated settlement to the conflict. Only an Afghan-led negotiated political settlement can ensure peace,” he added.
At least 241,000 people have been forced to leave their homes due to the Afghan conflict, and in the last month alone, more than 1,000 people have “been killed or injured from indiscriminate attacks against civilians, notably in Helmand, Kandahar and Herat provinces,” he said.
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