KABUL: President Ashraf Ghani on Monday blamed Afghanistan's fast-deteriorating security situation on a "sudden" decision by the United States to withdraw its troops, but said his government had a plan to bring conditions under control within six months.
Taliban insurgents have moved in on three provincial capitals in the last few days, amid rapid advances nationwide since Washington said it planned a complete withdrawal of troops by September.
"The current situation is due to a sudden decision on the withdrawal of the international troops," Ghani told the Afghan parliament in a speech. "We have had an unexpected situation in the last three months."
However, the Afghan government had a security plan to bring the situation under control within six months, he added, and the United States supported the plan.
The Taliban would not move towards peace unless the worsening security situation was curbed, Ghani said.
Peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban negotiators started last year in the Qatari capital of Doha, but have not made any substantive progress despite a few rounds.
The two sides committed to speeding up the talks, however, at a recent meeting in Doha between a high-level Afghan political delegation and the Taliban.
Ghani said the militants had not severed ties with terrorist groups, and had stepped up attacks on women and civil society activists.
It was time the Taliban and the Afghan government accepted each other and moved towards a peaceful solution, he added.
The Taliban rejected Ghani's accusations.
"Declarations of war, accusations and lies cannot prolong Ghani's government's life; his time has run out, God willing," the movement's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said on Twitter.
DOMESTIC FLIGHTS CANCELLED: In Afghanistan, domestic flights have been cancelled to at least five Afghan provinces for weeks now as fighting intensifies between the pro-government forces and the Taliban militants, officials confirmed.
Badakhshan, Faryab, Helmand, Kunduz and Uruzgan are the affected provinces under a fierce siege by the Taliban.
"It is impossible for the aeroplanes to land because the Taliban will hit them with mortars," Helmand provincial council chief Ataullah Afghan said from the volatile province.
Civilian government employees cannot travel in and out of Maimana city, the capital of Faryab province in the north, because the insurgents control all the surrounding districts to the city, a councillor from the province, Fazel Haq Mohammadi, explained.
In addition to the five provinces, flights had been temporarily suspended to Kandahar and Herat, according to the officials.
The flights from Herat airport resumed on Sunday after a three-day pause while heavy clashes were under way between the warring sides in the western part of the city.
Suliman Omar, the commercial director of Kam Air, the largest private airline in the country, said that the airline conducted two flights on Sunday carrying hundreds of stranded people from the capital Kabul to Herat province and vice versa.
On Sunday, flights from Kandahar airport were cancelled after a Taliban rocket hit the airport runway, provincial councillor Nematullah Wafa said.
In a statement, the Civil Aviation Authority said that all civilian flights will resume after the technical problems are resolved.
Afghanistan is in a state of uncertainty since the withdrawal of international troops began in early May. Many countries have asked their citizens to leave the country via the earliest available commercial flights. - Reuters/dpa
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