{"id":2151,"date":"2021-08-16T14:38:50","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T14:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=2151"},"modified":"2021-08-22T15:24:19","modified_gmt":"2021-08-22T15:24:19","slug":"2151","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=2151","title":{"rendered":"Taliban take Kabul’s presidential palace after seizing nearly all of Afghanistan in little more than a week"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The sight of gun-toting Taliban\u00a0fighters behind President Ashraf Ghani\u2019s ornate wooden desk, deep inside the Afghan presidential palace now under their control, served as visual confirmation that power in the country had fully shifted hands.<\/p>\n

Few people imagined two decades ago \u2014 or even two weeks ago \u2014 that the heavily defended palace in a heavily defended capital would fall so swiftly. Just several days ago, Mr. Ghani addressed the nation from behind the same desk, in front of the same painting.<\/p>\n

But hours after Mr. Ghani fled the country on Sunday, Taliban leaders were\u00a0addressing the news media there, saying that they would use the palace to announce the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Their takeover of the palace, known as the Arg, was made peacefully. The head of the Presidential Protection Service, which has guarded it for most of the last two decades, shook hands with a Taliban commander and announced the handover.<\/p>\n

The government official, Muhammadullah Amin, said he had been asked to meet and escort the Taliban commander, whom he addressed by the religious title Maulvi, into the palace by the government\u2019s longtime chief negotiator with the Taliban.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a few contacts with Maulvi Saheb, I came here together and currently we are in the Gulkhana palace,\u201d he said, referring to one of the palace buildings.<\/p>\n

The Taliban commander stood and shook his hand. \u201cI said, \u2018We will take a selfie, and now we have taken it together,\u2019\u201d Mr. Amin said.<\/p>\n

The encounter, filmed and aired by Al Jazeera on Sunday night, was widely shared on social media.<\/p>\n

Mr. Amin said that Mr. Ghani had left from the palace via helicopter for Kabul\u2019s international airport on Sunday afternoon and then boarded a flight out of the country. He did not say where the president had gone, but Mr. Ghani is thought to be in Tajikistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the beginning here, during the day, the situation was not good,\u201d Mr. Amin said. \u201cEverybody was frightened that, God forbid, something would happen here. Most of the officials left. I myself left.\u201d<\/p>\n

The peaceful seizing of the palace stood in contrast to past exchanges of power in Afghanistan, when the palace was the scene of violence and vandalism.<\/p>\n

In 1978,\u00a0rebel troops killed President Mohammad Daud\u00a0inside the palace, which suffered severe damage during a daylong siege. The next year, President Noor Mohammad Taraki\u00a0was mortally wounded\u00a0in a gun battle inside the palace. His successor,\u00a0Hafizullah Amin, was executed\u00a0when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan and stormed the palace in December 1979.<\/p>\n

In front of a Taliban flag, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, center, speaks at his first news conference, in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 17, 2021. (AP)<\/p>\n

Source: AP, ABC, TWP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sight of gun-toting Taliban\u00a0fighters behind President Ashraf Ghani\u2019s ornate wooden desk, deep inside the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2156,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[41,4,42],"tags":[51,66,2],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/t.jpeg",960,540,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/t-150x150.jpeg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/t-300x169.jpeg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/t-768x432.jpeg",640,360,true],"large":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/t.jpeg",640,360,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/t.jpeg",960,540,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/t.jpeg",960,540,false],"enternews-featured":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/t.jpeg",960,540,false],"enternews-medium":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/t-720x475.jpeg",720,475,true],"enternews-thumbnail":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/t-480x315.jpeg",480,315,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Politics<\/a> Stories<\/a> World<\/a>","tag_info":"World","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2151"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2157,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151\/revisions\/2157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}