Taliban Captures Afghanistan’s Main Tajikistan Border Crossing

By Staff, Agencies 

Taliban announced that it has captured Afghanistan’s main border crossing with Tajikistan, an Afghan provincial official and army officer said on Tuesday. 

According to reports, security forces abandoned their posts and fled across the frontier.

The seizure of Shir Khan Bandar, in the far north of Afghanistan about 50km [30 miles] from Kunduz city, is the most significant gain for the Taliban since it stepped up operations on May 1 when the US began the final stages of its troop withdrawal.

“Unfortunately this morning and after an hour of fighting the Taliban captured Shir Khan port and the town and all the border check posts with Tajikistan,” said Kunduz provincial council member Khaliddin Hakmi.
An army officer stated: “We were forced to leave all check posts … and some of our soldiers crossed the border into Tajikistan.”

“By the morning, they [Taliban fighters] were everywhere, hundreds of them,” he said on condition of anonymity.

The attack comes as the UN special envoy on Afghanistan warned that Taliban militants have taken more than 50 of 370 districts in the country since May and that increased conflict “means increased insecurity for many other countries, near and far”.

“Those districts that have been taken surround provincial capitals, suggesting that the Taliban are positioning themselves to try and take these capitals once foreign forces are fully withdrawn,” the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Deborah Lyons told the UN Security Council.