Are the Taliban returning to Kabul?

The Taliban have captured the rural areas, but the Afghan Army is pushing back

That’s perhaps somewhat exaggerated. I reached Kabul in January 2008. When I was leaving Afghanistan, in the middle of 2010, there were 1,50,000 international forces there, including about 1,00,000 American troops. Even at that time, the Taliban occupied 25% to 30% of the territory. Now, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the U.S. says that strategic momentum is with the Taliban. And people are writing the epitaph of the Afghan government. But I think it’s somewhat exaggerated. The Taliban have made gains. What is remarkable is that they have made gains in the north and the west. They have taken border posts along Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and two main border posts with Pakistan. But to say that the Taliban will occupy Kabul before long is perhaps an overstretch. The Afghan Army has begun to react and reorganise. The Afghan Defence Ministry has a new chief, Bismillah Khan. So, priorities will change. Instead of stretching all over the place, they will concentrate on the border crossings, because these are also the customs collecting points. And they will also concentrate on the main trunk routes and the major cities. I don’t think the Taliban will make great progress in occupying major cities. The Taliban have taken large tracts of rural areas and are now poised outside the cities. But they will remain thus till the beginning of September, when all the foreign forces pull out. September, October and November will be the big test for Afghanistan. If the government can hold off the Taliban during that period, then anything can happen next year, because then the Taliban will know that taking over Afghanistan is not as easy as it might have appeared some time ago. If they realise that, then the peace process may have a better chance next year. There are two aspects to the possibilities that could have existed between the U.S. and the Taliban when they began talking in Doha a few years ago. One is the war, the way it has been executed, and the effect of that execution on any potential negotiation. The Americans and the larger security umbrella provided by the West were not fighting a comprehensive, well-thought-out, long-term campaign to support the current state in a fundamental way. This debate about whether they were there for counterterrorism purposes or nation-building was never resolved. The West was essentially torn in what it actually wanted. That had a structural impact on how it went ahead with the dialogue with the Taliban and what it could have potentially reaped out of that.