Astounding advance of Taliban threatens Afghan government says former NATO commander

TORONTO -- The rapid advance of the Taliban as it retakes much of Afghanistan represents an unprecedented unravelling of the security situation and raises the question of whether the country’s government may soon fall, says retired Canadian Maj.-Gen. David Fraser, a former commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan.

“To see Kandahar, the city that we fought so hard for in 2006 to keep it from the Talban, to watch it fall last night essentially by just the government leaving is shocking to me, quite frankly,” Fraser told CTV News Channel on Friday.

Both Kandahar and Herat, the country’s second and third-largest cities, have now fallen to the Taliban in the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s announcement that the U.S. would withdraw its troops from the country by Sept. 11. Canadian special forces were preparing to deploy to the capital of Kabul to help evacuate the Canadian embassy.

“The Canadian Forces have contingency plans that they practise all the time for such things, and hopefully that we’d never ever have to execute,” he said. The special forces personnel going into the country would be seeking to both get the people out of the embassy and safely to an ‘airhead’ or staging area, and also to remove any sensitive materials, he said.

“The Canadian Forces are immensely professional, and they would have all the resources they need to run this operation in as safe a manner as it can in a situation that is unravelling and changing by the hour,” he said.

Many are now worried about the fate of Kabul, the country’s capital. Fraser said he doubts the city would fall militarily.

“There's not going to be the Taliban walking in and taking over militarily. The challenge is whether or not the Afghan government stays in power or loses the confidence of the people and flees. That is the real challenge that we have to watch in the coming days weeks ahead,” he said.

Around 40,000 Canadian troops were deployed to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. For Fraser, who commanded the Southern NATO Coalition forces in Afghanistan beginning in 2006 and led Operation Medusa, a massive effort to establish control over a key area in Kandahar Province, the deteriorating situation has been hard to watch, he said.

“Canada did everything to buy time for the Afghans to find a solution, which they have not found,” he said. “But it’s actually too late now for us to go back in to help out and really this is an Afghan problem, and they’ve got to solve it.”

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