RFE/RL's Radio Azadi is one of the most popular and trusted media outlets in Afghanistan. Nearly half of the country's adult audience accesses Azadi's reporting on a weekly basis.
Thousands of people seeking to leave Afghanistan continue to surge on the Kabul airport as the United States and its allies race to meet an August 31 deadline to finish the evacuations that President Joe Biden said are becoming more risky each day for U.S. troops still on the ground.
Residents of Panjshir, the last anti-Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan, have shown an outpouring of support for rising up against the hard-line Islamist group. However, they are also worried about the possible implications of fighting that could see the region being left in a prolonged siege.
President Joe Biden said in his first interview since the Taliban seized Kabul that “chaos” was inevitable once the United States decided to leave Afghanistan after two decades of war.
Seven people have been reported killed as thousands of Afghans flooded the runways and terminals of the Kabul airport amid chaos, attempting to leave after Taliban militants seized control of the country ahead of the withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces after a presence of nearly two decades.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has left country as the Taliban entered the outskirts of the capital, the only major city left in government hands.
Fear and panic is gripping residents of the Afghan capital as Taliban militants march toward the city following a blistering offensive in which they have captured large swaths of the country.
Taliban fighters have reportedly taken control of Mazar-e Sharif, a major northern Afghan city that is one of the last in the country still under government control.
Taliban fighters drag the body of a dead Afghan soldier through dusty city streets, while elsewhere a shopkeeper calmly stacks his shelves and ponders how prices have risen. Scraps of video from areas captured by the Taliban give a glimpse of life there.
The Taliban has captured three major Afghan cities and a string of provincial capitals in a sweeping offensive that threatens the capital, Kabul.
The Taliban seized much of Herat, Afghanistan's third-largest city, and captured two other provincial capitals on August 12 as the insurgent group’s lightning offensive brings them closer to the capital, Kabul.
As Taliban militants overrun more provincial capitals across Afghanistan, one female reporter says she's committed to covering the unfolding humanitarian crisis despite the personal risks.
Residents of the Panjshir Valley, a famed bastion of resistance to the Taliban in the 1990s, are girding for conflict as the militants advance.
Taliban militants are seizing girls and forcing them into marriage, according to an Afghan woman who fled her home for safety in Kabul. Zar Begum was among thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) sleeping in a Kabul park. Another IDP said the Taliban was forcing people to give them food.
The Taliban on August 12 took control of parts of Herat, Afghanistan's third-largest city, and captured Ghazni, the 10th provincial capital to fall, as the insurgent group’s lightning offensive brings them closer to the capital, Kabul.
"The battlefield and the mosque are one," a religious scholar told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi as clerics donate blood for Afghan Army soldiers wounded while fighting Taliban militants.
The Taliban has captured a major military base, airport, and prison in the strategic northern city of Kunduz after the surrender there of hundreds of Afghan troops, while President Ashraf Ghani replaced the army chief of staff and traveled to a key regional hub to rally local defenses.
Russia completed joint military exercises with troops from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on August 10 as the Taliban gains control of much of northern Afghanistan bordering Moscow’s Central Asian allies.
Afghan commando Hasibullah Faizi was captured by Taliban militants when his helicopter was shot down in 2016. He has given RFE/RL's Radio Azadi a horrific account of brutal torture that has left him praying for his own death.
The United States scrambled to press for an Afghan peace deal and the European Union debated greater help in the region to handle refugee flows on August 10 as Taliban fighters continued to overrun at least two new population centers in the war-ravaged country.
Suspected Taliban gunmen shot and killed an Afghan radio station manager in Kabul and kidnapped a journalist in southern Helmand Province, officials said, the latest in a long line of attacks targeting media workers.
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