'War Is Raging', says Afghan defense minister as Taliban launches attack on Qala-i-Naw

Taliban, which is seeking to re-establish Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, on Wednesday launched its first major attack on the provincial capital of Qala-i-Naw. With foreign troops nearly out of the country, the ever emboldened insurgents seized police headquarters and offices of the National Directorate of Security. Responding to the same, the country’s Defence Minister Bismillah Mohammadi asserted that the “war is raging” with the Taliban and that Afghanistan’s defence forces will pull all the stops to defend the “homeland.”

"We recognize that the war is raging and we are in a very sensitive military situation," Mohammadi said, hours after the Taliban launched their assault on the city of Qala-i-Naw, the capital of Badghis province. "I want to reassure all of you that our national forces, with the support of local resistance forces, will use all their power and resources to defend our homeland and our people," he said in a statement released to reporters.

Meanwhile, Pentagon's Central Command on Tuesday announced that the United States has withdrawn almost 90 per cent of its troops from Afghanistan. President Joe Biden had instructed the Pentagon to complete the military withdrawal by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States, where he had said it’s time to end America’s longest war that killed 2,200 U.S. troops and 38,000 Afghan civilians, with a cost as much as $1 trillion.

US military has vacated its biggest airfield in Afghanistan

According to CentCom (United States Central Command), it had handed over seven former US bases to Afghanistan. Also, it had evacuated nearly 1,000 C-17 air freighter loads of equipment from the country. Earlier on July 2, it had handed over the sprawling Bagram airbase-- which is considered as the main centre of US military operations in Afghanistan-- for the past two decades of conflict.

Subsequently, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, "We expect it to be handover the complete role of the US troops to the Afghanistan security forces by August." However, it is considered the withdrawal comes with many uncertainties as a resurgent Taliban captures ground and fears mount that the country could soon fall into civil war. The U.S. is still working on agreements to base counterterrorism forces in the region and evacuate thousands of interpreters and other Afghans who helped the American war effort.

Image: AP