Posted by The Taliban’s lightning-speed return to power in Afghanistan has shocked Western governments
What happens next in Afghanistan after Taliban takeover? Here’s what we know so far
It is a triumph for the Taliban, and a humiliation for the West.
This week the Taliban swept into Kabul and took control of the country having captured swathes of territory with minimal resistance from the Afghan military.
The takeover of Afghanistan caught Western powers by surprise, with the United States, Britain and Germany admitting they had not anticipated that the country would fall to the Taliban so quickly.
It is a fast-moving situation and with telephone lines down across the country it is difficult to confirm exactly what is happening. Here is what we know.
Why are the Taliban winning?
Senior US officers and White House officials insisted before the withdrawal began in May that the Afghan police and army were up to the job of defending themselves. They were clearly wrong.
At least part of the problem seems to be morale. While special forces units continue to fight, regular troops in many places appear to have withdrawn voluntarily or accepted offers to surrender, allowing Taliban fighters to roll into towns unopposed.
Others argue that is partly due to a loss of hardware and capability.
Tom Tugenhadt, a Conservative MP and former soldier who served for four years in Afghanistan, argues Afghan troops have been cynically deprived of the battle-winning technology Western forces taught them to rely on.
“The decision to withdraw is like a rug pulled from under the feet of our partners. No air support, none of the maintenance crews able to service their equipment – that was done by US contractors, now gone,” he wrote on Thursday night.
“Training a man to fight with his eyes open and then blindfolding him before his title bout is going to have only one result.”
Will the Taliban impose sharia law?
Taliban officials have signalled that sharia – Islamic law – will be imposed, but have offered few details on how it would work in practice.
During its first period in power, which ended in 2001, the Taliban followed a radical interpretation of sharia law in which public executions and floggings were commonplace.
Western books and films were also banned, artefacts deemed blasphemous to Islam were destroyed and women were confined to their homes unless they ventured outside with a male guardian.
In a recent interview with the BBC, one Taliban provincial leader said that cutting off a person’s hand was a legitimate punishment under the group’s interpretation of sharia law.
As it takes power for the second time, the Taliban’s leadership has sought to present its style of rule as more moderate, though many observers are sceptical of this.
“The Islamic Emirate doesn’t want women to be victims,” Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, told reporters this week. “They should be in the government structure according to Shariah law.”
Those remarks offer some insight into how the Taliban wishes to present its judicial system to the West. But it is feared that in the weeks to come many of Taliban’s oppressive laws from the tail end of the 20th century will return to Afghanistan.
Who funds the Taliban?
Somehow, the Taliban has been able to deploy a well-planned nation-wide offensive, with simultaneous operations at opposite ends of the country.
And they suddenly appear to have no shortage of men, weapons, ammunition, or fuel.
Some of those resources will be self-funded. The Taliban make a lot of money from opium smuggling, and as the offensive rolls on they have captured an increasing quantity of American kit abandoned by government troops.
There are also reports of jihadi fighters from neighbouring countries bolstering their ranks.
But is that enough to explain their recent success? Many Afghans and Western observers also place the blame squarely on Pakistan.
Pakistan’s government has always denied allegations that its ISI intelligence service provides the Taliban with training, funding, and weaponry – not to mention a safe haven from US-led troops.
In 20 years of war, those accusations have never gone away. And it is clear that Pakistan sees installing a client government in Kabul as key to its national security. The Taliban, many observers believe, are that client.
Pakistan’s government has always denied allegations that its ISI intelligence service provides the Taliban with training, funding, and weaponry – not to mention a safe haven from US-led troops.
In 20 years of war, those accusations have never gone away. And it is clear that Pakistan sees installing a client government in Kabul as key to its national security. The Taliban, many observers believe, are that client.
But the past week has also seen the Taliban make gains in parts of the country where Pakistan traditionally has little sway.
On Sunday, the Taliban overran Kunduz, a strategic city in the north of the country.On Thursday, hundreds of troops holding out at the city’s airport surrendered, handing over even more weaponry and equipment.
Can the Taliban be stopped?
Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, has fled the country along with numerous other senior officials.
The government has been strongly criticised by President Joe Biden for failing to mount any clear resistance against the insurgents.
But Predominantly Uzbek and Tajik militias loyal to controversial figures like Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammad Noor held parts of the North against the Taliban in the 1990s and were allies of the US-led invasion in 2021. They may conceivably do so again.
The US government is also mulling increasing airstrikes in support of government forces.
But it is difficult to see how the Afghan government could win back control in the future without concerted foreign support.
What is the West doing?
The United States is sending thousands of troops to Kabul to assist in evacuation. The British government is sending 600 paratroopers to do the same.
The choice of troops is telling. The Paras are a tip-of-the-spear unit that is deployed in an emergency and when there might be serious fighting to do.
But the limits of their mission are clear: to assist in evacuating UK citizens and Afghans granted permission to seek refuge in Britain, and move the embassy to a secure location. They are not to assist their former Afghan allies in combat.
What happens next in Afghanistan?
In the coming weeks, the Taliban will formalise its power over the country and is set to enforce ultra-conservative laws such as a ban on women working or going outside without a full-body veil, or burqa.
The Taliban has already banned women from working in the banking sector and has ordered male relatives to take their places.
The British and American governments, along with other allies whose citizens are in Afghanistan, will continue evacuation efforts.
Afghans who worked alongside the West and now face reprisals have been told they will also be evacuated, but there are fears that many will be left behind.
The Taliban takeover is likely to trigger a major wave of refugees towards Europe, though they will first need to cross Middle East countries such as Iran and Turkey.
Is the Taliban a threat to the UK?
Western allies are concerned that the return of the Taliban’s power in Afghanistan could turn the country into a haven for numerous terrorist groups, notably al-Qaeda.
Baron Robertson, a British former Nato chief, has warned that the UK needs to increase its defences against terror attacks in the wake of the Taliban takeover.
“The longer term implications are going to be very worrying indeed,” he said. “The rise of a terrorist threat that can affect us in the streets of this country, the humiliation of the eyes in the eyes of the authoritarians in the world today – all of these are long term consequences which are certainly going to haunt us.
“There is going to be a vacuum, and it will be filled by all sorts of nefarious sources,” he added.
Why did US troops leave Afghanistan?
Two decades of US military engagements in Afghanistan have wearied the American public, who are broadly supportive of President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw its forces.
Mr Biden has long argued that the US presence in Afghanistan is unsustainable and that he is no longer willing to put American soldiers in harm’s way.
“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,” he said in a speech defending the withdrawal of US troops on Monday.