War in Afghanistan: Taliban push closer to Kabul after US withdrawal

The capital of Afghanistan could be cut off by the Taliban within a month and overrun in three, according to a US intelligence assessment, after a string of militant gains dramatically cut the odds of the Afghan government's survival.

A Taliban blitz across northern Afghanistan in which nine provincial capitals have fallen has prompted American officials to revise down already bleak predictions.

Earlier forecasts that Ashraf Ghani's government in Kabul could potentially be overrun in six to 12 months have now been slashed to three months, a defence official told Reuters. One official told the Washington Post it could be as little as 30 days.

Ghani, the Afghan president, on Wednesday flew to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif to rally forces after the fall of neighbouring provinces left the city as the only anti-Taliban bastion remaining in the north of the country.

"Everything is moving in the wrong direction," one person familiar with the US military's new intelligence assessment said.

The loss of Mazar would be a heavy blow to the Kabul government and represent the complete collapse of its control over the north, which has long been a bastion of anti-Taliban feeling.

Ghani held talks with long-time local strongman Atta Mohammad Noor and warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum about the defence of the city, as Taliban fighters inched closer to its outskirts.

Marshal Dostum, whose militia forces helped US special forces sweep the Taliban from power in 2001, vowed to kill the insurgents and said they "never learn from the past".

"The Taliban have come to the north several times but they were always trapped. It is not easy for them to get out," he said.

He was also criticised for appearing to suggest Taliban prisoners could be killed in a repeat of atrocities from November 2001, when up to 2000 people were shot or suffocated to death in shipping containers.

Taliban fighters patrol inside the city of Farah, the capital of Farah province, southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP

As the military crisis grew, the Afghan president replaced Gen Wali Ahmadzai, the Afghan army chief of staff, with Gen Hibatullah Alizai, former commander of the army's special operations corps.

It also emerged that Afghanistan's acting finance minister, Khalid Payenda, had quit and fled the country after the Taliban captured key customs posts.

A group of Afghani civilians who worked with the the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan Province. They plead for Jacinda Ardern's help. Photo / Supplied

Payenda has "left the country because Afghanistan is grappling with declining revenues after the takeover of the custom posts", Finance Ministry spokesman Mohammad Rafi Tabe told Bloomberg.

The Taliban's gains mean the Islamist insurgents have taken a quarter of the country's 34 provinces in less than a week.

Taliban fighters patrol inside the city of Farah, capital of Farah province southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP

While the capital, Kabul, has not yet been directly threatened, the scale and speed of the government losses have raised questions over how long Ghani's government can hold out. Army morale has plummeted and several provincial capitals have fallen almost unopposed.

The collapses of the capitals of Badakhshan and Baghlan provinces to the northeast and Farah province to the west have put increasing pressure on the country's central government to stem the tide of the advance.

The Taliban also sealed its takeover of Kunduz with the capture of an airbase to the south of the city. Social media footage appeared to show the militants had captured an Afghan helicopter gunship at the base, though it was without rotor blades.

Internally displaced Afghan women from northern provinces, who fled their homes receive medical care in a public park in Kabul. Photo / AP

As the Taliban continued to seize territory, both Germany and the Netherlands said they would stop the forced repatriation of Afghans who had failed to be gain asylum in their countries.

Their moved marked a sharp U-turn. As late as Tuesday, officials had rejected Afghan requests to halt the deportations, despite campaigners saying people were being deported back to a dangerous war zone.

"Due to current developments in the security situation, the interior minister has decided to suspend deportations to Afghanistan for the time being," Germany's interior ministry spokesman Steve Alter said.

Separately in The Hague, Dutch State Secretary for Justice and Security Ankie Broekers-Knol announced a "moratorium on (deportation) decisions and departures."

The halt "will apply for six months and will apply to foreign nationals of Afghan nationality", she wrote in a letter to the Dutch parliament.

An Afghan boy receives medical care at the International Committee of the Red Cross physical rehabilitation centre after being injured in fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security. Photo / AP

US President Joe Biden has said he has no regrets deciding to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan and has urged the country's leaders to unite and "fight for their nation".

Staying in Afghanistan without US forces was a "bridge too far" for Nato and shows the limitations of the alliance, security experts have said.

It was "very telling" that a mission involving only 12,000 Nato troops at the beginning of 2021, "couldn't be done without the United States".

Michael O'Hanlon, director of research in the Foreign Policy Programme at the Brookings Institution, said Europe had been attacked more often than the US by violent extremism in the years after 9/11 and, arguably, had a greater interest in remaining in Afghanistan.

"The mission was not just about loyalty to the United States," he told Britain's Daily Telegraph.

"If everybody wanted to make Afghanistan priority number one, they probably still could have mustered those 12,000 troops. But in the absence of it being such a top priority, it seemed as just a bridge too far.

"It's puzzling that a group of Nato countries could not have considered continuing this mission without us. Militarily speaking they should be able to do so.

"That's an indication that Nato needs more capacity."