Timeline: Taliban’s Rapid Advance Across Afghanistan

A look at the armed group’s significant milestones as it renews its push to capture major cities across the war-torn country.

In three months, the Taliban has more than doubled its territory.

The Taliban has taken control of Qalat, Terenkot, Pul-e Alam, Feruz Koh, Qala-e Naw and Lashkar Gah, raising the number of captured Afghan provincial capitals to 17.

The armed group has made rapid advances since launching its offensive in May while troops from the United States and NATO nations leave the war-torn country after 20 years.

The offensive comes as talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government on a political understanding to lead to a peace deal, backed by the US and its allies, have failed to make significant progress.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the group’s major milestones and advances in recent months:

April 14: Biden announces plan for US troop withdrawal

President Joe Biden announces US troops will withdraw from Afghanistan starting from May 1 and ending on September 11, bringing the US’s longest war to a close. It was an extension of the previous withdrawal deadline of May 1 agreed between the US and the Taliban.

May 4: Taliban launches offensive
Taliban fighters launch a major offensive on Afghan forces in southern Helmand province. They also attack in at least six other provinces.

May 11: Taliban captures Nerkh
The Taliban captures Nerkh district just outside the capital Kabul as violence intensifies across the country.

June 7: More than 150 Afghan soldiers killed
Senior government officials say more than 150 Afghan soldiers are killed in 24 hours as fighting worsens. They add that fighting is raging in 26 of the country’s 34 provinces.

June 22: Series of attacks in northern Afghanistan
Taliban fighters launch a series of attacks in the north of the country, far from their traditional strongholds in the south, and the UN envoy for Afghanistan says they have taken more than 50 of 370 districts.

July 2: Sudden US troop withdrawal from Bagram base
American troops quietly pull out of their main military base in Afghanistan, the Bagram airbase, an hour’s drive from Kabul.

The withdrawal effectively ends the US involvement in the Afghanistan war.

July 5: Taliban says working on a peace plan
The Taliban says it could present a written peace proposal to the Afghan government as soon as August.

July 21: Taliban controls half of Afghanistan’s districts
The Taliban gains control of about half of the country’s districts, according to the senior US general, underlining the scale and speed of their advance.

July 26: US promises continued support to Afghan Govt
The US promised to continue to support Afghan troops “in the coming weeks” with intensified air attacks to help them counter Taliban attacks.

July 26: Afghan civilian death toll rises
The United Nations says nearly 2,400 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in May and June in escalating violence, the highest number for those months since records started in 2009.

August 6: Taliban seizes Zaranj, other provinces
Zaranj, August 6: The Taliban take over the capital of Nimruz province in the south, the first provincial capital to fall to the group since it stepped up attacks on Afghan forces in early May.

Sheberghan, August 7:
The Taliban declare they have captured the entire northern province of Jawzjan, including its capital Sheberghan.

Heavy fighting is reported in the city, and government buildings are taken over by the Taliban. Afghan security forces say they are still fighting there.

Sar-e-Pul, August 8:
The Taliban take control of Sar-e-Pul, capital of the eponymous northern province. It is the first of three provincial centres that fell on the same day.

Kunduz, August 8:
Taliban fighters seize control of the northern city of 270,000 people, regarded as a strategic prize as it lies at the gateway to mineral-rich northern provinces and Central Asia.

Government forces say they are resisting the Taliban from an army base and the airport.

Taluqan, August 8:
The capital of Takhar province, also in the north, falls to the Taliban in the evening. They freed prisoners and force government officials to flee.

Aybak, August 9:
The capital of the northern province of Samangan is overrun by Taliban fighters.

Farah, August 10:
Local sources confirmed the fall of the capital of the western province of the same name.

Pul-e-Khumri, August 10:
The capital of the central province of Baghlan falls to the Taliban, according to officials and residents.

Faizabad, August 11:
The capital of the northeastern province of Badakhshan is under Taliban control, a provincial council member says.

Ghazni, August 12:
The capital of the southeastern province of Ghazni is seized and all local government officials flee to Kabul.

Herat, August 12:
The capital of Herat province in the west of the country, the third-largest city, has fallen to the Taliban after two weeks of fighting.

Kandahar, August 12:
The capital of the southern province of Kandahar is under the armed group’s control.

Lashkar Gah, August 13:
The capital of Helmand province in the south is taken over by the Taliban.

Qala-e Naw, August 13: The capital of the western Badghis province is captured.

Feruz Koh, August 13:
Taliban fighters takes control of Feruz Koh city in Afghanistan’s western province of Ghor without any fighting.

Pul-e Alam, August 13:
The Taliban seizes the capital of the central province of Logar and captures the governor and the head of the city’s spy agency.

Terakot, August 13:
The capital of the southern Uruzgan province is captured and the governor escapes to Kabul.

Qalat, August 13:
The capital of Zabul province in Afghanistan’s south, becomes the 18th city taken over by the Taliban.

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Jalalabad, August 15:
An Afghan lawmaker and the Taliban say the militants have seized Jalalabad, cutting off Kabul to the east.

Amid the Taliban’s rapid gains, U.S., British and Canadian forces are rushing troops in to help their diplomatic staffs withdraw.

Khost, Wardak, Kapisa, Bamyan, Parwan; August 15:
The Taliban took control of Wardak, Khost, Kapisa, and Bamyan provinces. Only 4 provinces remain (still haven’t seen confirmation of Nuristan). It is only a matter of the government surrendering or fighting for Kabul.

Kandahar, Herat, Lashkar Gah, Zabul, Nimroz, Farah, Kunduz and Ghazni, Jalalabad, Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul are the largest cities in Afghanistan.

Re: Timeline: Taliban’s Rapid Advance Across Afghanistan by HonNL: 1:10pm
The Taliban is retaking Afghanistan. Here’s how the Islamist group rebuilt and what it wants.

After two decades of fighting in Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the verge of seizing power again for the first time since 2001.

The fundamentalist force that seeks to install Islamic law has blitzed across the country, overrunning one city after another and closing in on Kabul as the United States has withdrawn troops this summer. Few places outside the imperiled Afghan capital remain under the control of the Western-backed government, which is pleading for the international community to help fend off a complete takeover.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are fleeing, setting off a humanitarian crisis that could ripple around the globe. Those who’ve stayed are reckoning with the return of extremist rule under the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam. Militants have shuttered girls’ schools, banned smartphones in some places and forced young men to join their ranks, they say.

What is the Taliban?

The Taliban first rose to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, formed by guerrilla fighters who drove out Soviet forces in the previous decade with support from the CIA and Pakistani intelligence services. Most of their members are Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in the country. The name means students in Pashto.

The founder, Mohammad Omar, a commander in the anti-Soviet resistance, launched the movement in 1994 to secure the southeastern city of Kandahar, which was plagued by crime and violence. The Taliban’s vision of justice helped them amass power. “At the time people really wanted law and order, and there was none,” said Kamran Bokhari of the Newlines Institute, a foreign policy think tank.

In the fall of 1996, the Taliban seized Kabul and declared the country an Islamic emirate. Taliban rule was brutal and repressive. Women had virtually no rights, were barred from education and forced to wear clothing that covered their entire body. Music and other forms of media were banned.

The Taliban’s ideology was similar to that of its counterpart al-Qaeda, though its interests were limited to ruling Afghanistan. In exchange for help fighting groups aligned with the nation’s government, Taliban leaders harbored Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda members involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A U.S.-led coalition ousted the regime later that year.

In late July 2015, the Afghan government confirmed that Omar had died in April 2013 in Karachi, Pakistan.

How did the Taliban regain strength?

After being ousted, the Taliban scattered. Some leaders found sanctuary in Pakistan, where they began to fortify themselves with help from the Pakistani security establishment. In Afghanistan, the presence of U.S. forces helped provide the Taliban with an anti-colonialist rallying cry for recruits. So did corruption in the Afghan government.

“For two decades now, the Taliban movement has been slowly chipping away, village by village,” said Robert Crews, an expert on Afghanistan at Stanford University. “It’s a very sophisticated kind of ground game of grass-roots mobilization.”

Militants also replenished their ranks through a campaign of fear and violence. People who enlisted in police forces or the national army were assassinated. Public intellectuals, journalists, media figures and others who represent the young face of Afghanistan’s civil society were also targeted.

Afghan troops, their ranks dogged by incompetence and corruption, have withered in the face of the Taliban incursion.

“People are asking, ‘Do I want to die for an administration that has not sent my unit ammunition? We’ve not been paid in months, we’re out of food. Now the Americans are gone’,” Crews said. “It seems kind of hopeless.”

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How is the Taliban funded and armed?

The Taliban gets its funding from a variety of sources. Some money comes from the opium trade and drug dealing, or other crimes such as smuggling. The group taxes and extorts farms and other businesses. Militants are sometimes involved in kidnapping for ransom.

The group also gets donations from a wide array of benefactors who support its cause or view it as an useful asset, experts said.

“It’s not really the case that they need a whole lot of money to operate,” Bokhari said. “They don’t live in big houses. They don’t wear fancy clothes. The biggest expense is salary and weapons and training.”

Arms are easy to come by in a region awash in them. Some are donated, others purchased. Many are stolen.

“As the Afghanistan national army has folded,” Crews said, “one of the first moves the Taliban has made in moving into new territory is to go to a government headquarters, arrest or kill those figures, open the prisons, and then go to the government bases and seize the weapons.”

In some tribal areas, including in Pakistan, a “cottage industry” of foundries has sprung up where workers fashion assault-style rifles, according to Bokhari.

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What is the Taliban’s goal?

The Taliban’s aim is simple, experts said: to take back what the group lost in the early 2000s.

“They want their Islamic emirate back in power,” Crews said. “They want their vision of Islamic law.”

He continued: “They don’t want a parliament. They don’t want electoral politics. They have an emir and they have a council of mullahs, and that’s the vision they see as best for Islam.”

There does not seem to be a single leader of the Taliban, but the group seems to have several main leaders.

Whether life under Taliban rule will be the same as it once was remains unclear. There’s little doubt that the group wants to confine women to their homes, end mixed-gender education and bring back a society with Islamic law at the center.

But a civil society has burgeoned in the past two decades that didn’t exist before. Women have assumed public positions not just in Kabul but also in smaller cities. Cellphones and social media are common. Experts questioned whether the Taliban would be able to govern a population that has changed.

“There are lot of people who are better connected to the world through social media and say, ‘Hey, why can’t we have a life like that?’ ” Crews said. “What will they do with a society that believes in pluralism and doesn’t believe in monopolization of power? To what extent will Taliban violence silence those voices?”