Gino says he's worried any plan will come too late. If the Kabul airport falls to the Taliban, Kohistany says, they'll be stranded. The Taliban have already taken a vital exit point from the country by land: a key border crossing with Pakistan at Spin Boldak, where this week the Taliban flag was raised. (Danish Siddiqui/Reuters) Taliban seize vital exit point from country The photographer who took this photo, Danish Siddiqui, was killed this week during a clash near a Kandahar-area border with Pakistan. Members of Afghan special forces take cover while travelling in a Humvee that was damaged during heavy clashes with the Taliban in Kandahar province. He waited a few hours before going to hospital because he feared being seen on the street, he said. He stumbled into his parents' home, bleeding from his neck. The man, who asked to be identified by a nickname, Sheriff, said he was lucky to survive. One man who worked in construction as a contractor for the Canadian military said he's been targeted before. A few years ago, he said, he was jumped by two men on a motorbike, one of whom slashed his throat with a knife. Several of them described in interviews with CBC News the sound of gunfire echoing from the outskirts of Kabul as Taliban fighters grab towns and highways, and set up road checkpoints. (Danish Siddiqui/Reuters) Taliban fighters taking control of towns, highways The photographer who took this photo on July 12, Danish Siddiqui, was killed this week amid fighting nearby. Here a militia member loads his rifle as Afghan special forces visit a district centre in Kandahar province. It's unclear how long militias will keep fighting the Taliban. 11, 2001 - governed, once again, by oppressive theocrats, once again sheltering al-Qaeda. troops in Afghanistan is a question conjured by bin Laden's boast all those years ago: Was it worth it?Īfghanistan risks finding itself back where it was on that history-rattling date of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Taliban regime that harboured them, morphed into a bloody counter-insurgency and messy nation-building exercise. What started as a mission to defeat bin Laden and al-Qaeda for attacking the U.S. Next month, the military will complete its exit from the so-called graveyard of empires, after the longest war in American history - with trillions of dollars spent, thousands of soldiers killed, and tens of thousands of Afghan lives lost. Now, two decades later, the United States is pulling out of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden once boasted that, with just a few jihadists, he could draw the United States military to the ends of the Earth, and drag the superpower into suffering economic, political and human losses with no lasting achievements to show for it.
0 kommentar(er)
