Taliban capture Ghazni, come within 90 miles of Kabul

ISLAMABAD: The Taliban have overrun Ghazni, the tenth Afghan provincial capital, in less than a week on Thursday and have come within 90 miles of Kabul, the capital of the country.
While Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is flying to northern towns, like Mazar-e-Sharif to seek help from the warlords, the Taliban march to besiege the capital is picking up pace by the hour.
The fall of Ghazni means that the Taliban now control the most important highway connecting Kabul with the south of the country. It also means that they have effectively severed Ashraf Ghani’s government’s connections to important provinces like Kandahar, Helmand and Farah.
An extensive fighting was going on around Ghazni for days and it was suspected probably to be the next provincial capital to fall to Taliban.
Speaking to media, a provincial council member of Ghazni said that the armed group has taken most of the city, including the governor’s compound, while the Afghan forces currently control a police base on the outskirts of the city.
The country’s interior ministry, meanwhile, said that the Afghan police had arrested Ghazni’s governor Mohammad Dawood Laghmani and his deputy in Maidan Wardak province, south of Kabul, after fleeing the provincial capital.
In southern Afghanistan, the insurgents, who have besieged Kandahar for weeks, claimed to have taken control of the prison and had freed more than 1,000 inmates. While the Afghan government has not confirmed the prison takeover, the militant group has shared a video showing the prisoners walking outside the jail.
In Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in the south, the militants have taken over the regional police headquarters. According to government sources, some police officers had surrendered to the fighters while the others retreated to the nearby governor’s office still controlled by the Afghan forces. Fighting between the Taliban and government forces has been going on for weeks in Lashkar Gah.
While the Taliban are taking over control of the north, the west and the south of the country and would possibly be marching towards the capital within weeks, the inability of the western trained and equipped Afghan defence forces to retake any of the lost ground is worrying their backers in the west.
Reminding the Afghan government that the US has spent over a trillion dollars since 9/11 and has earnestly worked to stabilize the country and raised a defence force to protect not only the government but the country, US President Joe Biden said, "We spent over a trillion dollars over 20 years. We trained and equipped with modern equipment over 300,000 Afghan forces. Afghan leaders have to come together. They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation."