MOSCOW, July 20. /TASS/. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan may be real if no progress is achieved at intra-Afghan talks, Russia’s Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov told an online discussion at the Valdai International Discussion Club on Tuesday.
According to him, if no real progress is seen in the process of national reconciliation, the military-political balance in Afghanistan will be reformatted in favor of the Taliban. "And then their takeover in the country will become a very real prospect," Kabulov pointed out.
The Taliban movement (outlawed in Russia) so far is unable to seize big cities in Afghanistan, said Zamir Kabulov, who is also director of the Foreign Ministry’s Second Asia Department.
"So far, the Taliban is unable to capture big administrative centers in [Afghanistan’s] provinces. However, I don’t rule out that in the near future they will be able to take control of two or three administrative centers but they are not strong enough to seize and, importantly, to establish long-term control of the country’s big provinces," he said.
Kabulov stressed that this process certainly hurts the interests of the Kabul government, but it is not capable of leading to the collapse of the entire regime.
After talks in Doha late last week, delegations of the Afghan government and the Taliban adopted a brief statement on their plans to continue high-level peace talks. Head of the government delegation Abdullah Abdullah, who is also Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, vowed that the Afghan government was committed to the peaceful settlement of the conflict. Afghan observers note however that the final statement said nothing either about a reduction of the combat intensity or about a truce.