A surge of Taliban wins in northern Afghanistan has prompted some consulates in the nation’s north to close, while in Tajikistan, reservists are being called up to reinforce its southern border, officials and reports said yesterday.
Nearly 1,000 Afghan soldiers have fled the Taliban advances by crossing the border into Tajikistan, reports from Tajikistan said.
A statement on Monday from Dushanbe said that Tajik President Emomali Rahmon had ordered the mobilization of 20,000 military reservists to bolster its border with Afghanistan.
Photo: AP
The Afghan military exodus comes as the Taliban has overrun most districts in Badakhshan Province.
Many of the districts collapsed without a fight, but along the province’s border with Tajikistan, hundreds of Afghan National Security and Defense Forces crossed the border seeking safety.
The consulates of Turkey and Russia have reportedly closed in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province.
Iran said that it has restricted activities at its consulate in the city.
There has been fighting in Balkh, but the provincial capital has been relatively peaceful.
The consulates of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, India and Pakistan have reduced their services, Balkh provincial governor’s spokesman Munir Farhad said yesterday.
Turkey and Russia had closed their consulates and their diplomats had left the city, Farhad said.
Dushanbe said that Afghan troops were being allowed to cross on humanitarian grounds, but the Tajik side is in control of its forces and there was no fighting with Taliban from the Tajik side.
The Taliban march has gained momentum days after the US vacated Bagram Airfield, just 1 hour drive north of the capital, Kabul, and a sure sign that the majority of its troops had left Afghanistan.
The US withdrew from what had been the epicenter of the US-led coalition’s nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.
Meanwhile, Moscow also weighed in on Monday, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying there is “heightened concern” over the fighting, but Russia has no plans to send troops to assist its former republic.
“We have repeatedly said many times that after the withdrawal of the Americans and their allies from Afghanistan, the development of the situation in this country is a matter of our heightened concern,” Peskov said. “We’re monitoring it very closely and are noting that destabilization [of the situation] is taking place, unfortunately.”
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