The Taliban completed the seizure of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city and the Islamist movement’s birthplace, and took into custody a warlord who organized the failed defenses of the western city of Herat.
Combined with other advances, including the capture of the provincial capital of Helmand, the fall of these two major cities has given the Taliban full control of southern and western Afghanistan, allowing the insurgent movement to pool its forces for a final march on Kabul.
“The Taliban don’t care about people, they just like war, and now you see the city filling up with displaced people,” said Yama Rashid, a 29-year-old seller of mobile-phone cards.
The only big cities that the Afghan government still holds besides Kabul are Jalalabad in the country’s east and the northern hub of Mazar-e-Sharif, which is surrounded by the Taliban.
Some of the provinces that fell to the Taliban over the past week were surrendered in negotiated deals, as happened Thursday in Ghazni, whose governor was subsequently arrested by Kabul.
The Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in a statement that Mr. Khan, thousands of his men, the governor of Herat and other senior officials had switched sides and joined the Taliban.
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