Taliban rivals confront the royal palace in Kabul

The Afghan royal court in Kabul met with a rocket on Tuesday as President Ashraf Ghani attended prayers for the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Adha.

The bomber struck shortly after noon in front of a packed Taliban with US forces set to close down Afghanistan’s military base later this month.

The Islamic State has already seized a number of territories and demolished borders, confiscating Kabul’s necessary funds and leaving them dependent on foreign aid.

The Taliban flag was hoisted last week along with Pakistan as it crossed the Spin Boldak border in Kandahar province, one of the seven international borders that Islamist militants claim to have rescued since June.

The disappearance of Spin Boldak and Torghundi, the border crossing with Turkmenistan in the province of Herat in northeastern Afghanistan, is a major blow to the Ghanaian government as it tries to return the Taliban to speak peacefully.

“This is the best way we have ever seen from the Taliban to circumnavigate cities, cut roads, and close border crossings,” said Ahmed Rashid, author of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Taliban. “What keeps the Taliban here is the hope of capturing Kabul, not the hope of a peaceful alliance with Kabul.”

Despite tensions between the US and its allies, talks in Doha between Kabul and the Taliban over the weekend ended without a coalition agreement, showing Taliban indifference to politics as it progressed.

Increased violence has forced people to relocate to rural areas led by the Taliban where repressive laws have been reinstated. The attack also disrupted urban sprawl at a time when the country was experiencing a food crisis as a second drought in four years.

Asfandyar Mir, a South Asian researcher at Stanford University, said the Taliban “want the government to stop working and be less committed”.

“Some political leaders do not see a way to bring back or stop the army from going to the Taliban. They are ready to bow down,” he said.

Ghani and his vice president Amrullah Saleh have publicly attacked Pakistan, which he says gave Taliban leadership the sanctuary within its borders and is keen to protect its interests in the region as a defense in India.

At a regional conference in Uzbekistan last week, Ghani said Islamabad had sent “10,000 jihadist fighters” to the border last month. Standing next to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, the Afghan president said Islamabad had failed to allow the Taliban to negotiate peacefully “deeply”. Khan said Ghani’s remarks were unfair, adding: “Peace in Afghanistan is a priority.”

Ghani deported an Afghan ambassador to Pakistan after the ambassador’s daughter was abducted briefly and “severely tortured” over the weekend.

Pakistani officials say Afghanistan is trying to blame them for their failures. A senior government official said: “The Taliban are making rapid progress in anger over the sudden departure of US troops from Afghanistan. This is not in line with Pakistan.”

The question is whether the Afghan security forces have the power and international support to recover the missing territories and cross over to the US military.

David Mansfield, a researcher in Afghanistan at the Overseas Development Institute in London, thought seriously about the border crossing, “it is a matter of not following the cities and having a Kabul ransom.

The border crossing will also force neighboring countries, including Iran and Turkmenistan, to deal with the Taliban, say experts, and empower them as they test their control powers.

The method is gambling. By disrupting trade, the Taliban are able to provoke its followers who rely on the flow of goods between countries to make money.

“It’s a question of who is shooting first,” Mansfield said. “It is dangerous but the boundaries are important. This is another way to burden cities. ”