The Taliban say they control 85% of Afghanistan, a humanitarian concern that Reuters does

KABUL / MOSCOW (Reuters) – Taliban officials said on Friday that rebel Sunni Muslim groups had taken control of 85 percent of Afghanistan’s territory, and international concern arose over problems with access to medicines and supplies in the country.

Afghan government officials ruled out that the Taliban controlled most of the country, after nearly 20 years of fighting, foreign forces, including the United States, withdrew as part of a propaganda campaign.

But local Afghan officials said Taliban fighters, driven by withdrawals, had captured an important district in Herat province, home to tens of thousands of Shiite minorities.

Torghundi, a northern town on the border with Turkmenistan, was also captured by the Taliban overnight, Afghan and Taliban officials said.

Hundreds of Afghan security workers and refugees continued to flee across the border to neighboring Iran and Tajikistan, raising concerns that radical Islamists could infiltrate Central Asia in Moscow and other foreign capitals.

Three visiting Taliban officials tried to address these concerns during a visit to Moscow.

“We will take all measures to prevent the Islamic State from operating in Afghanistan … and our territory will never be used against our neighbors,” Taliban official Shahabuddin Delawar told a news conference.

He said, “You and the entire community around the world have recently learned that 85% of Afghanistan’s territory is under the Taliban.”

The same delegation said a day earlier that the group would not attack the Tajik-Afghan border, whose fate lies in Russia and Central Asia.

Asked how much territory the Taliban had, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby (NYSE 🙂 declined to comment directly.

“Proclaiming land or claiming land doesn’t mean you can maintain that or maintain it over time,” he said in an interview with CNN. “And so I think it’s really time for Afghan forces to get into the field – and they’re on the field – and to defend their country, the people.”

“They’ve got the ability, they have the ability. Now it’s time to have that will,” he said.

HUMAN INFECTIONS

As the fighting progressed, an official from the World Health Organization (WHO) said health workers were struggling to obtain medicines and supplies in Afghanistan, and some workers fled after the facility was attacked.

WHO Regional Emergency Director Rick Brennan said at least 18.4 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, including 3.1 million children at risk of acute malnutrition.

“We are concerned about the lack of access to essential medicines and supplies and we are concerned about attacks on health care,” Brennan said in a video link from Cairo in a UN statement in Geneva.

Some aid will arrive next week including COVID-19 3.5 million vaccine doses and oxygen concentrators, he said. The United States and the AstraZeneca (NASDAQ 🙂 dose introduced the Johnson & Johnson (NYSE 🙂 dose dose through COVAX facilities.

A donation of more than 1.4 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to the United States arrived on Friday, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said.

In Afghanistan, a prominent anti-Taliban commander said Afghan forces will make efforts to regain control of parts of western Afghanistan, including crossing the border into Iran.

Mohammad Ismail Khan, known as the Lion of Herat, called on civilians to join the fight. He said hundreds of armed civilians from Ghor, Badghis, Nimroz, Farah, Helmand and Kandahar provinces had come to his home and were ready to fill the security gap created by the withdrawal of foreign forces.

U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday that the people of Afghanistan must decide their own future and not focus another ten generations of Americans on the two-decade war.

Biden had set August 31 for the final withdrawal of U.S. forces, minus about 650 soldiers to provide security to the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

Biden said Washington had long since achieved the original reason for invading the country in 2001: rooting out al-Qaeda militants and preventing another attack on the U.S. like the one launched on September 11, 2001.

The main leader of the attack, Osama bin Laden, was killed by a U.S. military group in 2011 near Pakistan.