US Intel: Taliban could Control Kabul within 90 Days

By Staff, Agencies 

A US military intelligence assessment unveiled by Reuters estimated that The Taliban’s pace of advance is so rapid that it could isolate Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, within 30 days, and overrun it within 90.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a US military source said that this assessment - superseding an earlier evaluation leaked to the press in June that Kabul could last six months - was due to the rapid gains of the extremist group. 

“But this is not a foregone conclusion,” the military official said, noting that the pace of collapse could be halted or reversed if Afghan security forces were able to muster greater resistance. 

The Afghan government is so alarmed at the Taliban’s sweep across the country that it announced plans to recruit and arm militias of civilians - a plan that has been tried, evidentially without sufficient success to end the war, in the past under the Afghan Local Police program.

Despite this, the government will muster ‘uprising forces’ as part of a wider strategy to check the Taliban and drive them back, Interior Minister Gen. Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal told Al Jazeera Wednesday.

Afghan government forces have crumbled since the sudden departure of US forces and their Western allies, which has stripped the local military of critical logistical and air power assets. 

If the Kabul government was to fall within weeks of its US allies departure it would be a slap in the face for Western militaries and their twenty years of effort to build a credible security force in Afghanistan.