Taliban entered Kabul, Afghan president on the run abroad

"The Taliban have won," the fugitive Afghan president said Sunday evening as the Taliban entered Kabul.

On the French side, a Defense Council relating to the situation in Afghanistan will be held on Monday at noon by videoconference, the Elysee said on Sunday.

President Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan on Sunday, effectively handing over power to the Taliban who entered Kabul as a symbol of their total military victory in just 10 days.

"The Taliban have won," Ashraf Ghani said on Facebook, claiming to have left his country to avoid a "bloodbath" because "countless patriots would have been killed" and the capital "would have been destroyed" if he was. rest.

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"Military units from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have entered the city of Kabul for security," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter Sunday evening, adding: "Their progress is continuing normally ".

Three senior Taliban officials told AFP that insurgents also seized the presidential palace, without the information being able to be confirmed by other sources, and that a meeting on the security of the capital was underway. .

Uncertainties about the destination of the Afghan president

In 10 days, the radical Islamist movement, which launched an offensive in May with the start of the withdrawal of American and foreign troops, took control of almost the entire country. He is at the gates of power, 20 years after being ousted by a coalition led by the United States because of his refusal to hand over the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, in the wake of the September 11 attacks. 2001. 

The debacle is total for the Afghan security forces, yet funded for 20 years with hundreds of billions of dollars by the United States, but which collapsed, and for the government.

Shortly before the Taliban's announcement, former vice-president Abdullah Abdullah first made it known that President Ashraf Ghani had "left" his country after seven years in power, without specifying where he was going.

The Afghan president did not say where he was going either.

The Tolo News television channel mentioned Tajikistan.

His departure had been one of the main demands of the Taliban during the months of negotiations with the government.

Insurgent spokesman Suhail Shaheen told the BBC they expected a peaceful transfer of power "in the coming days".

The Taliban also promised that they would not seek revenge on anyone, including military personnel and officials who served for the current government.

Interior Minister Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal also spoke of a "peaceful transfer of power" to a transitional government.

"This is not Saigon"

Fears are strong of a security vacuum in Kabul, with thousands of police and soldiers having abandoned their posts, their uniforms and even their weapons. The United States has started the evacuation to the airport, now the country's only exit, of its diplomats and Afghan civilians who have worked for them who fear for their lives, some 30,000 people protected by 5,000 American soldiers. The American embassy spoke of "information about shooting at the airport", without being able to confirm them. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance was helping to secure and operate the airport, where Westerners and Afghans converge in an attempt to flee Afghanistan.

President Joe Biden has defended his decision to end 20 years of war, America's longest.

"I am the fourth president to govern with an American military presence in Afghanistan (...) I do not want, and I will not, transmit this war to a fifth," he said on Sunday.

"This is not Saigon", meanwhile assured US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on CNN, referring to the fall of the Vietnamese capital in 1975, a memory still painful for the United States.

Kabul had already started to adapt to the arrival of the Taliban

As the day progressed, panic gripped Kabul.

Shops closed, traffic jams appeared, police were seen swapping their uniforms for civilian clothes.

In the district of Taimani, in the center of the capital, fear, uncertainty and incomprehension could be read on the faces of the people.

"We appreciate the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan, but we hope that their arrival will lead to peace and not to a bloodbath. I remember, when I was a child, very young, the atrocities committed by the Taliban," he said. said Tariq Nezami, a 30-year-old trader.

There were signs that people were already resigned to changing their lives. The advertising billboard of a beauty salon showing a glamorous bride was thus painted by a worker on Sunday in a district of Kabul. Many Afghans, especially in the capital, and women in particular, accustomed to the freedom they have enjoyed over the past 20 years, fear the return to power of the Taliban. 

When they ruled the country, between 1996 and 2001, they imposed their ultra-rigorous version of Islamic law.

Women were prohibited from going out without a male chaperone and from working and girls from going to school.

Women accused of crimes such as adultery were whipped and stoned.

Thieves had their hands cut off, murderers were executed in public, and homosexuals were killed.

The Taliban have repeatedly promised that if they return to power, they will respect human rights, especially those of women, in accordance with "Islamic values".

But in the newly conquered areas, they have already been accused of many atrocities: murder of civilians, beheadings, kidnapping of teenage girls to marry them by force, in particular.

France is "doing everything to ensure the safety of the French"

A Defense Council relating to the situation in Afghanistan will be held Monday at 12:00 by videoconference, the Elysee said Sunday.

France is currently "doing everything possible to ensure the safety of the French" still in Afghanistan, its "absolute priority", and Emmanuel Macron "is monitoring the very worrying deterioration of the situation hour by hour," continued the French presidency.

"The immediate and absolute priority in the coming hours is the security of the French, who have been called upon to leave Afghanistan, as well as the personnel there, French and Afghan," the Elysee told AFP.

"These operations, which concern several hundred people, have been carried out in recent weeks and are continuing," said the Elysee.

"France is one of the few countries to have maintained on the ground the capacity to protect the Afghans who worked for the French army, as well as journalists, human rights activists, artists and Afghan personalities particularly threatened ", adds the presidency.

"The French present in Afghanistan were invited from April 2021 to leave the country and had the opportunity to take a flight organized on July 16 by the French authorities to facilitate this departure", specified the Quai d 'Orsay Friday.

On Friday, Paris had also promised "an exceptional effort" to welcome to France Afghan personalities threatened for their commitment to human rights or freedom of expression - artists, journalists and human rights defenders.

Paris specifies having organized since May the reception of 625 Afghans employed in the French structures present in Afghanistan and their families.

France, which has had recourse in recent years to locally recruited civilians to help its staff on site, in particular interpreters, has already organized the reception of 550 people with their families between 2013 and 2015 and 800 in 2018 and 2019 , specifies the Elysee. And like other European countries, France has since July suspended the expulsions of Afghan migrants who have refused their asylum applications.