How the Taliban manipulated the political downfall of Afghanistan.

Taliban took a few days to sweep all over Afghanistan and snatch territory they did not manage, sometimes grabbing major provincial capitals. A lot has been done to bring the Afghan army down. In interviews, Taliban authorities, Afghan political leaders, diplomats, and other observers said that the Islamist militant motion laid the basis for the army’s victory before all the events started.

Ready for a tough struggle to take back control of a nation they ran from 1996-2001, for months, the rebels said they established relationships with inferior political and military leaders and tribal elders that together with the withdrawal of foreign soldiers from Afghanistan broke the confidence in the administration in Kabul. It is twenty years after the American longest fight started.

A South Asia security analyst connected to Stanford University, Asfandyar More, said that the Taliban didn’t want to fight battles. “They instead wanted to incite a political collapse,” he said. Cities and towns fell rapidly; the Taliban were surprised by themselves, even in the north of the nation where the Taliban are considered weak.

A Taliban commander in the province of Ghazni declared that the moment government forces could realize the U.S. was finally leaving, there would be resistance. “It doesn’t mean the Afghan authorities surrendering to us had changed or become in vain; it’s because there were no funds,” he said, mentioning the financial assistance the government and army had received from U. S. for almost two decades. “They surrendered like goats and sheep.”

With the support of the West, President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, and some other officials of his government have gone missing and cannot be traced. The defense minister criticized Ashraf’s fall. According to a report from SIGAR, a Congressional watchdog institution chosen to keep an eye on the U. S. Mission in Afghanistan, in some parts, Afghan forces show some resistance, “while in others they gave in or ran away.”

As his soldiers took over the presidential palace, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the chief of the Taliban’s political office, said that “it was an unequaled victory that came rapidly and unexpectedly.” Suhail Shaheen, a spokesperson of the Taliban located in Doha, said many provinces were protected through the people who have a long tradition in Afghanistan, where inciting rivals to change sides has been an everyday habit. “We had a direct conversation with the security forces there, and also through tribal elders and religious leader’s mediation across Afghanistan, not in specific districts or geographic area,” he said.

After being withdrawn from ruling in 2001 in a campaign backed by the U. S. the Taliban reorganized slowly, getting funds from opium and illegitimate mining and avoiding foreign countries’ involvement provided that the U. S. supported the Afghan forces. They spread fears in towns through suicide bombings. They also grabbed many provincial regions with a kind of secret government with its own laws and taxations.

Taliban increased attacks on district cities and planned to block main highways as they prepared to invade provincial towns. Several targeted murders of prominent Afghan security officials, including pilots followed, intending to weaken confidence and make the public lose government trust. After taking control of remote cities, the Taliban obtained border posts, affecting the primary source of government revenue and assistance from local communities. The master plan weakened Ghani’s government and forced him to flee the office on Sunday, and other key officials went into hiding, and they cannot be contacted.