As the Taliban expand their victories, Afghanistan is rushing soldiers to the border.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AFP) – The Taliban claimed control of 85 percent of Afghanistan on Saturday, as authorities prepared to recapture a vital border crossing taken by the militants in a broad operation begun as US soldiers leave the war-torn country.

The Taliban announced on Thursday that its forces had taken two crossings in western Afghanistan, completing an arc of land stretching from the Iranian border to the Chinese border, just hours after President Joe Biden made a vehement defence of the US departure.
A group of Taliban leaders in Moscow claimed to control roughly 250 of Afghanistan’s nearly 400 districts, a claim that could not be independently verified and was challenged by the government.

Separately, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP that his forces have taken the Iranian border town of Islam Qala and the Turkmenistan border crossing of Torghundi.
The authorities are planning to send additional soldiers to reclaim Islam Qala port, the main commercial crossing between Iran and Afghanistan, according to Jilani Farhad, a spokesperson for the governor of Herat.
“At this time, no reinforcements have been deployed to Islam Qala. He told AFP that they will be transferred there soon.
The Afghan government has dismissed the Taliban’s victories as having little strategic importance, but the takeover of numerous border crossings as well as mineral-rich districts is expected to replenish the group’s coffers from a variety of sources.

Biden said that the US military operation in Afghanistan will finish on August 31, nearly 20 years after it began, but he conceded that Kabul’s control of the whole nation was “very improbable.”

Staying in the nation is “not an option,” according to Biden. “I will not send a new generation of Americans to Afghanistan to fight.”

With the Taliban routing most of northern Afghanistan in recent weeks, the government now controls nothing more than a smattering of provincial capitals that rely heavily on air support and resupply.

Even before the Taliban’s rapid attack overwhelmed the government’s northern and western defences, the air force was under great strain, placing even more burden on the country’s scarce aircraft and pilots.

Biden stated that the Afghan people should decide their own fate, but he admitted that he had no idea what that would entail.

“No, it is not inevitable,” the president responded when asked if a Taliban takeover was inevitable.

“The possibility of their being one united administration in Afghanistan ruling the entire nation is extremely unlikely,” he conceded.