Taliban take Kabul: fighting would have been pointless

The Taliban proceeded in Kabul no differently than in many of the provincial capitals they had captured in the past few days, one after the other.

One of her first trips led to the city's largest prison.

At least there they could expect to be greeted as liberators.

On Sunday, eyewitnesses told the FAZ by phone how hundreds of prisoners were likely to have left Pul-e-Charkhi prison.

As a video shows, the Taliban's white flag was already waving on a nearby traffic roundabout. The Taliban also opened the gates of the detention center in Bagram, just north of Kabul, where the Americans had maintained their largest base for almost twenty years and imprisoned many militant jihadists. There was talk of thousands of men freed; Videos on the Internet capture their exodus. The Islamists have increased their ranks by hundreds, if not thousands, of fighters in one fell swoop.

However, on Sunday there was little to suggest that the Taliban would have to fight for Kabul at all. At first, no one seriously resisted when they drove into the capital from all directions, from which the Americans had been chased shortly after the Al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. Rather, the Taliban spokesman and the de facto deposed government of President Ashraf Ghani were engaged in a kind of appeasement race. Interior Minister Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal addressed the nation in a recorded video message, speaking of a transitional government. This will come about without the megacity of Kabul being attacked. Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen also assured the civilian population that they would not have to fear violent excesses.Negotiations about a safe transfer of power were already underway, he announced in the afternoon.

There had been rumors that Ghani was in Tajikistan

It was only a little later that it became known to the public that President Ashraf Ghani had already fled abroad.

"He left Afghanistan at a difficult time, may God hold him accountable," said the head of the High Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah, a long-time rival of Ghani, in a video message.

Before that, there had been rumors that Ghani was in Tajikistan.

If what a government official said at noon is still true, then Ghani first met with members of parliament on Sunday at the United States Embassy.

He had expressed his hope that the Taliban would agree to a two-week deadline for the transfer of power, the official said.

Apparently Ghani did not believe in that. As early as Saturday, many in Kabul had expected the president to resign after so many governors surrendered to the Taliban instead of remaining loyal to the central government. Instead, Ghani had spoken in a short televised message about the "remobilization" of government troops. There was no sign of this on Sunday either.

On Saturday, Kabul was the last remaining significant city in the country that was not yet controlled by the Taliban. On Saturday, the Islamists then also fell into the hands of Mazar-i-Sharif in the north. Only in June did the Bundeswehr hand over its camp there to the Afghan armed forces in a ceremony in the city, but the Taliban did not offer any significant resistance. What probably weighed more heavily was the flight of the warlords Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Muhammad Noor, who were allied with the government and were more likely to fall back on loyal troops. They fled towards Uzbekistan. "Fighting would have been pointless," declared two provincial councils.