Afghanistan Conflict: Following swift takeover, Taliban seek peaceful transfer of power
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The Taliban have power in Afghanistan two weeks before the U.S. was set to complete its troop withdrawal after a costly two-decade war. The insurgents stormed across the country, capturing all major cities in a matter of days, as Afghan security forces trained and equipped by the U.S. and its allies melted away. Dr. Afzal Ashraf, Visiting Fellow at University of Nottingham, joins France 24 to explain how the Taliban were able to seize large parts of Afghanistan with lightning speed. One thing that's clear is that "there has been no (government) leadership," adding that "the leadership in Kabul has failed to inspire the soldiers to risk their lives." And so in the coming months, Dr. Ashraf says that we'll need to debate and take a hard look at how this happened, especially since "you have a military force that has been trained by the West for nearly two decades, which is larger, which is far better than the Taliban and that military force has melted away." The key here, and Dr. Ashraf has been "saying for decades now that you can train and equip an army, but you can't give it the moral fiber necessary to kill and die for a cause."