The Taliban have taken more than a quarter of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals in less than a week as US-led foreign forces pull out of the country. The fall of Mazar-e-Sharif, the country’s fourth-largest city, which Afghan forces and two powerful former warlords had pledged to defend, hands the insurgents control over all of northern Afghanistan, confining the Western-backed government to the center and east.
Here is a look at the three months since their sweeping offensive began:
- In early May, NATO begins a final withdrawal of its mission in Afghanistan involving 9,600 soldiers — 2,500 of them American. Intense fighting soon breaks out between the Taliban and government forces in southern Helmand province.
- A bomb blast outside a girls’ school on May 8 in Kabul kills 85, mostly pupils. The deadliest attack in a year is blamed on the Taliban, though they do not claim it.
- US forces withdraw from one of Afghanistan’s largest air bases in Kandahar, the country’s…