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.
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.
The U.S. military has warned that security in Afghanistan is "not going in the right direction" and challenged the country's leadership amid reports that Taliban fighters have captured at least six provincial capitals in the span of a week.
Taliban fighters overran two provincial capitals, including the strategic city of Kunduz and Sar-e Pol in the north of the country on August 8, local officials and a spokesman for the militants said as the group stepped up its northern offensive and threatened more urban centers.
A senior police official in Jawzjan Province told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi on August 7 that the Taliban has seized Sheberghan, the capital of the province, after reports of heavy fighting in and around the city.
Demonstrations known as the Allahu Akbar (God is the Greatest) protests took place in a number of Afghan provinces on August 5. (Radio Azadi)
The Taliban’s leadership structure shows its political team in Doha has no direct control over battlefield commanders and fighters in Afghanistan.
A source in the western Afghan provincial hub of Zaranj says Taliban fighters have entered the city and its Kabul-backed governor and other senior officials have fled, leaving the militant group poised to capture its first major population center since an all-out offensive began four months ago.
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