 The eyes of the entire world are on Afghanistan and the reason is pretty obvious that Taliban has been making massive advances in the country over the past few days. The rate at which provincial capital ski cities are falling across the country is staggering. The Afghan government seems almost powerless to act. What is going to happen in the next few hours or the next few days is difficult to predict. Today is the 14th of August and we're mentioning the date because even a few hours could change a lot of things. This is Mapping Fault Lines and in today's episode we are going to be discussing the situation in Afghanistan. We are joined by Prabir Purga. I started to talk about this issue. Prabir, so just to take our viewers quickly through what has been happening over the past one week, a very eventful week. So say for instance on August 6th we have the city of Zarange falling to the Taliban. On a couple of days later there's a city of Fezabad which is much more to the north of course which is the headquarters of the Northern Alliance at one point of time. And on August 12th and 13th two very important days we have Kandahar and Herat also falling to two of the biggest cities in Afghanistan. Now ever since the US announced that it would withdraw last year during Donald Trump's period and this year during Joe Biden's period, a lot of people had expressed doubts about whether the Afghan government and Ashraf Ghani would be able to really resist the Taliban. But what one has seen now also is the kind of fall of ski cities which is really surprising a lot of people. So what explains according to you this rapid loss by the Afghan government and the search by the Taliban? If we look at it very quickly, if you remember originally the US was supposed to leave in September, now they've already planned to leave it in August. The question is will they be able to leave before Taliban takes over Kabul? That seems to be now the issue. So obviously the speed at which particularly the last seven days things have worked are stunning. This speed of advance of Taliban into major cities was not expected, not at this rate. It was felt that the Afghan forces would be able to resist somewhat. We didn't expect a long-term resistance by the Afghan government or the Kabul government more correctly. But we didn't think that it would not be so rapid. The other part which has really taken all of us by surprise is the fact that northern region which was felt is something which was anti-Taliban. That the Taliban seems to have swept quite easily. Seven of the provincial capitals or nine have fallen in the northern region and including as you said, Shavargan, Fazilabad, these are important places for the northern alliance once upon a time. And that is again very striking. You know, if you take some one city, Shavargan, that is Dostam's home city, the warlord, Uzbek warlord as he is called, Abdul Rashid Dostam. So all of this is one part. The second part is the circular road which surrounds the Kabul region, the larger Kabul region. And in fact that seems to have been taken over by the Taliban. So there is a ring around, large ring around the region which still the Kabul government holds. But more critically, you can see that Kabul itself is being partially encircled, even though there are regions which the Kabul government controls, which is a little distance from it. So if you look at the map that you are showing, that you will see that Kabul is being squeezed into a smaller area, the Kabul government. And it is in the nature of being cut off if this is the rate of advance that takes place. So one thing that we do find interesting is the fact that Taliban now seems to have influence in different parts of Afghanistan. There could be the simple reason that once the US leaves, most of the forces will not stay with the Kabul government because they do not feel that they are long term sustainabilities there. So it is quite possible Taliban has been making overtures to them saying that why do not you come over, let us not fight, we will give you some space, but you come and join us. As you can see, Ismail Khan, the warlord of Herat again has surrendered to Taliban. And the way he has surrendered, it looks like that he was allowed to surrender and that therefore a certain understanding has finally been reached. The lot of cities which seem to be surrendering without fight, that also seems to indicate the reaching agreements with Taliban of some kind and they do not intend to fight for the Kabul government anymore. The Kabul government survived the two things. One is of course the American air power, the Bagram air bases now been evacuated so that is not there. If they have to attack in Afghanistan today, the Taliban forces, the US has to fight from at least 500, 600 kilometers away from either aircraft carriers or in its bases which are even a little further. So given that Pakistan is not available for these kind of flights anymore, Bagram air base is not there, air power is not there. Second is the Afghan army and particularly different sections of the Afghan army were fighting for money. Now they do not see that as a long term prospect and the way the Kabul government is regarded, they are regarded as basically internal looters. They do not have a very high respect among the people. They are not certainly fighting for democracy. They are seen in the pay of the United States and have made a lot of money out of it. So the credibility of the government is not high. The only solution that the Kabul government could have sought earlier is to try and get closer to the warlords and try and see to build up a coalition with the warlords against the Taliban. Now the warlords seem to have been deserting one by one except now Dostam and Atta who is in again Mazar-e-Sharif, he controls Mazar-e-Sharif today. So they have met but again it seems to be a very late overture and it does not appear that even if the northern section, the warlords, some of them hold out, they will be holding out in a very small pocket. The Kabul government seems to be not in a position to be able to resist the Taliban. Is it a matter of days? Is it a matter of weeks? We do not know. These are imponderable because I think Taliban will let the Americans leave Kabul before they enter because that is the only assurance they have that United States will not bomb them again. So I think they will let the American troops leave. Americans brought in 3,000 more troops as you know in trying to organize its evacuation. So we will have to see how this pans out. But this is at the at the moment of the mercy of the Taliban when the takeover and what part of the country they take over, the speed at which they have moved seems to indicate there is no will to resist of the Kabul forces. I think that is an important issue and the fact the warlords either are deserting them or are getting rapidly neutralized. This is I think the second issue that we see. So is this a Taliban new which is more matured than the earlier Taliban? We do not know. Does it has its ideology changed? No. It seems to be willing to now at least not attack the Hazaras, reach some agreement with Iran and not having fights with them. So I think they have mellowed on at least more maturity on the international front being able to negotiate with various parties. But their aims are very clear. They want the total control of Afghanistan and that they seem to be on the fairly certain of doing it rather quickly rather than later. Absolutely. Right. But in this context, a quick question on the intra-Afghan talks that have been the subject of a lot of discussion as well. There are talks going on in Qatar, they have been going on for quite some time. And recently the Kabul government also made the proposal of a power sharing agreement. So on the one hand you see the Taliban does seem to be negotiating but at the same time it is also very clear that its military strategy is going to be the same. It is going to be very aggressive. So is there even a possibility that these talks might continue or have any meaningful resolution or does it look more like a holding action by the Taliban? No, I do not think Taliban is interested in talking to the Kabul government. So Ghani is not somebody they are going to negotiate with. Will they negotiate with Dostam? Will they negotiate with Atta in Bazaar-e-Sharif? We do not know. There is an Erdogan factor. There is also the fact that the Tajiks and Uzbeks who are on the border, northern border of Afghanistan, they have some stake that the ethnicities, Uzbek ethnicity as well as Tajik ethnic population is there in that region. So there is a natural, shall we say, sympathy for those groups over there. So what Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkey will do will matter to some extent because Turkey has said these are our people. This is really the Turkic speaking people that is referring to. So that part of it will have to see what is the equation that Taliban will have now but it does seem the US is out of the picture. British are talking various things. I do not know what locus they have except for the fact that they have been a part of the coalition over there fighting the Afghan people. But beyond that I do not see the locus of any of these countries. The issue that really is important is what will Russia do? What will Iran do? What will Uzbekistan, Tajikistan do? And we are now seeing also Erdogan coming in as a party. It does seem the Taliban is no longer particularly cozy with Saudi Arabia who used to at one point of time be close to them. So I think that phase is over and Qatar has emerged as their new interlocutors. As you know Qatar and Saudis have not been friends for quite some time. So there is some reapproachment taking place there. So I think in all of this the Kabul government is out and the rest Taliban thinks it can negotiate after taking Kabul. So I think I do not see that intra-Afghan negotiations of the kind that the U.S. wanted is going to take place. In fact the common denominator here is the Kabul government should be out and U.S. should be out. U.S. troops should be out, NATO troops should be out and whether the northern two warlords there who are holding on to Mazar-e-Sharif as of now will they be able to retain a small sliver over there? A bulk province will they be able to retain that? So only 1 out of 34, maybe 2 out of 34 provinces that we are talking about will that make a difference to Afghanistan? It seems no. So it is really the issue now of the neighboring countries including Pakistan. How to handle this? China is also again a small border but it has a lot of stake in Afghanistan that the Islamic fundamentalism does not spill over to Xinjiang. We have to see what are the stakes the approximate countries have and also the stake for countries like India, countries like Turkey who want to be players over there. India particularly because it had invested with the United States in building a lot of infrastructure over there. How does it actually retain some influence or does it retain any influence over there? You know the basic thing for me is that I think it's a complete reordering of the equation in the region and that is something that we should really look at that this is not going to be a continuation of the last 20 years or the last 30 years. I think we're looking at fundamentally something emerging which we may not like but which will be different from what it has been in the past. That's all your time for today. We'll be covering this issue over the next few days in the next few weeks as the speed of the Taliban's attacks increases and the Kabul government seeks to defend its last remaining territory. Keep watching.