Last Afghanistan resistance pocket in Panjshir Valley 'completely captured', Taliban claim

The Taliban has announced that the last pocket of resistance in Afghanistan, the Panjshir Valley, has been "completely captured".

"With this victory, our country is completely taken out of the quagmire of war," Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement on Monday.

Afghanistan's last major bastion of resistance to Taliban rule had been on the brink of falling after the militants claimed to have taken key parts of the Panjshir Valley from an anti-Taliban coalition.

The Panjshir, a fortress-like area of rugged mountain territory north of Kabul, was the stronghold of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, a militia group formed to oppose the Taliban take-over.

The anti-Taliban force vowed on Monday to carry on fighting and said it was present in "strategic positions" across the valley, adding "the struggle against the Taliban and their partners will continue".

After several days of fighting their way into the valley, Taliban forces claimed on Sunday night to have seized a police headquarters and a district centre of Rukhah, a town next to the Panjshir's provincial capital, Barazak. They also captured large numbers of prisoners, vehicles and weapons, Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi said on Twitter.

It was not possible to verify the Taliban's claims on Sunday night, which were disputed by the NRF.

However, late Sunday the NRF had acknowledged suffering major battlefield losses in Panjshir and called for a ceasefire.

The NRF includes local fighters loyal to Ahmad Massoud - the son of the famous anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud - as well as remnants of the Afghan military that retreated to the Panjshir Valley.

The group said in a tweet Sunday that NRF spokesman Fahim Dashti - a well-known Afghan journalist - and General Abdul Wudod Zara, a prominent military commander, had been killed in the latest fighting.

However, the Taliban also claimed to have taken the Panjshir districts of Khinj and Anabah, which would theoretically hand them control of four of the Panjshir province's seven districts.

Those claims appeared to partially corroborated by Emergency, an Italian medical aid organisation, which said that Taliban forces had reached Anabah, where the group has medical facilities.

Flanked by mountains as high as the Alps, the Panjshir was previously a stronghold of the anti-Taliban northern Alliance, which helped the US topple the previous Taliban regime after the 9-11 attacks.

They in turn grew out of a mujahedeen group loyal to Ahmad Shah Massoud, a legendary guerrilla fighter who cut his teeth fighting Russian troops in the Panjshir during Afghanistan's Soviet occupation. He was killed by the Taliban's al-Qaeda allies just before 9-11.

The NRF is led by Ahmad Shah Massoud's Sandhurst-educated son, also called Ahmad, and backed by Amrullah Saleh, a former mujahedeen fighter who was also vice-president of the ousted civilian government.

The NRF's ranks have been boosted by remnants of the Afghan National Army, which largely collapsed in the wake of last month's US military pull-out from Afghanistan.

However, while the NRF enjoy the territorial advantage in the Panjshir - there is only one road route in, and its cliffs and gorges make it easy to ambush intruders - few believe that the NRF's force of a few thousand fighters can hold out against the Taliban for much longer.

On Sunday night, Mr Massoud appeared to hold out an olive branch to the Taliban, saying on Facebook that he was willing to enter peace talks if the Taliban stopped its attacks.

"The National Resistance Front is ready to stop the war immediately in order to achieve stable peace, if the Taliban group ends its military attacks and movements... and hopes that it will end the war with scholars and reformers in a large gathering all inclusively," he said. "Keep the conversations going."

Mr Saleh, who stayed in Afghanistan while the president, Ashraf Ghani, fled to the UAE, has vowed to remain in the country come what may. He claims to have instructed a bodyguard to shoot him twice in the head rather than face capture by the Taliban.

In a newspaper article this weekend, he tried to strike an upbeat tone, despite admitting that his forces had taken heavy casualties in previous days.

"Survival does not necessarily mean defending each and every inch of the territory," he wrote. "It means ensuring that the enemy will never gain control here."

General Khodaidad, a former Afghanistan special forces commander who fought alongside the Russians in the Panjshir in the 1980s, told The Telegraph that he expected the NRF would negotiate rather than fight to the very end.

"The Panjshir is a difficult area to fight in, but the Taliban have control of the five provinces around it, and I can't see how the NRF forces will be able to keep safe tactically,” he said. “I think they will negotiate rather than fight it out."