Taliban occupies today (Friday) the second largest city in the country, Kandahar, and the largest city in the west of the country, Harat.
The two important conquests of the extremist Sunni organization are a springboard for a major attack planned by the organization on the capital Kabul, which could lead to the final fall of the Afghan government.
The organization's military achievements, established by Sunni Islamic extremists in the country's Pashtun majority group in the 1990s, indicate for the first time the possibility of the Taliban regaining control of the country, as they did between 2001 and 1996.
While in the United States and Europe they seem to have come to terms with the possibility of Afghanistan falling into the hands of the organization, for millions of Afghans, especially city dwellers and ethnic minorities, it is a complete catastrophe.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees are on the roads across the country, sleeping in makeshift encampments along the roadsides in order to escape the fighting and the reign of terror of the Taliban.
In very few places were members of the organization, who used severe violence against the civilian population as they progressed, accepted as liberators.
Thousands of displaced people across the country are arriving in the capital, Kabul, in order to gain protection from the Taliban.
"We have no money to buy bread or medicine for our children," said Aboudallah, a peddler from the city of Kunduz who fell to the Taliban earlier this week and came to the capital to find shelter there.
"The Taliban burned all my property and house, there is nothing left for me in this world," he told the staff of the British Broadcasting Authority.
Afghan women and children displaced from their homes, today in Kabul, Photo: Getty Images
"Nobody cares about us"
But those who will pay the most severe price if the Taliban become the master of Afghanistan are the women of the country.
Under the Taliban's previous rule, girls were not allowed to enroll in schools, women were expelled from workplaces and required to be accompanied by a family member to leave the threshold of their pavilion.
Many women in the country are now shaken by the possibility that this situation will become their daily reality again.
In a video that went viral on the social network Twitter, an Afghan girl tells in tears about her anxiety for her future in a country under the control of the Taliban.
"We are not considered because we were born in Afghanistan. I can not help but cry. No one cares about us. We will die slowly over time," says the Afghan girl.
"We do not count because we're from Afghanistan. We'll die slowly in history"
Tears of a hopeless Afghan girl whose future is getting shattered as the Taliban advance in the country.
My heart breaks for women of Afghanistan.
The world has failed them.
History will write this.
pic.twitter.com/i56trtmQtF
- Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) August 13, 2021
Pashtana Durani, a teacher and educator at a foreign charity in the city of Kandahar, told Reuters before the city fell to the Taliban that she feared the worst.
"All my students have already run away. Now I have to fear for my life, after years of preaching about the education of women and their rights," says the educator.
Al-Qaeda on the horizon
The Taliban takeover raises concerns not only about an unprecedented violation of human rights, but about turning the Central Asian country back into a hotbed for terrorist organizations, under the auspices of the Taliban state.
The British Minister of Defense, Ben Wallace, today warned his colleagues in the West that al-Qaeda's return as a protégé of the Taliban is a real possibility.
ISIS cells are also active in the country, but at this stage they are not cooperating with the Taliban.
In light of the Taliban's tremendous achievements, in recent weeks in general and in recent days in particular, it seems that one should not ask whether he will succeed in overthrowing President Ashraf Ghani's government, but when the scenario will become a reality. Some have come to terms with the takeover of the extremists, but it is important to address the heavy price for the Afghan people, the region and perhaps even the entire world.