Afghan government offers power-sharing as Taliban take Herat, Kandahar

A government source told media outlets on Thursday that the administration of President Ashraf Ghani had offered the Taliban a share in power, as long as the violence comes to a halt.

“Yes, the government has submitted a proposal to Qatar as mediator. The proposal allows the Taliban to share power in return for a halt in violence in the country,” the source was quoted as saying.

It was not clear to what extent the reported offer differed from terms already discussed at stalled talks in the Qatari capital Doha.

Reacting to the development, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said he was unaware of any such offer but ruled out sharing power.

“We won’t accept any offer like this because we don’t want to be partner with the Kabul administration. We neither stay nor work for a single day with it,” he said.

The Taliban took over Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city, on Thursday and seized another district capital just 150 kilometers from Kabul. Unconfirmed reports said much of the city of Kandahar has also fallen to the militants.

Herat – about 150 kilometers from the Iranian border – is home to veteran warlord Ismail Khan, who for weeks has been rallying his forces to make a stand against the Taliban and was seen by many as Herat’s last hope. 

A senior security source from Herat told AFP that government forces and administration officials had retreated to an army barracks outside the city.

“We had to leave the city in order to prevent further destruction,” he said.

A Taliban spokesman, however, tweeted “soldiers laid down their arms and joined the Mujahideen.”

An AFP correspondent had earlier filmed the Taliban flag flying over the police headquarters in Herat, while the insurgents tweeted “the enemy fled… Dozens of military vehicles, weapons and ammunition fell into the hands of the Mujahideen.”

Further details of the Taliban’s presence in the city were not immediately available, but it has been under siege for weeks.

Fighting was also raging in Kandahar and Lashkar-Gah — pro-Taliban heartlands in the south, AFP reported.

An official in Lashkar-Gah said Taliban fighters were inching closer to government positions after a massive car bomb badly damaged the city’s police headquarters Wednesday evening.

In Kandahar, the Taliban said they had overrun the heavily fortified jail, saying “hundreds of prisoners were released and taken to safety.”

Earlier on Thursday, the Taliban took control of Ghazni, the capital of the province of the same name, about 130 km southwest of capital Kabul.

The militants seized key government offices, including that of the governor’s office and the police headquarters. They also broke into the province’s central prison.

Ghazni sits on the major Kabul-Kandahar highway and its fall provides the militants with a route to the national capital from their strongholds in the south.