[custom_adv] Protests against the Taliban takeover spread to more Afghan cities on Thursday, including the capital Kabul.Several people were killed when Taliban militants fired on a crowd in the eastern city of Asadabad, a witness said. Another witness reported gunshots near a rally in Kabul, but they appeared to be Taliban firing into the air. [custom_adv] On the day Afghanistan celebrates its independence from British control in 1919, a social media video showed a crowd of men and women in Kabul waving black, red and green national flags. “Our flag, our identity,” they shouted. [custom_adv] “We saw the Taliban firing in the air when people in several cars and motorbikes carried the national flag,” Kabul resident Rashiduddin told Arab News. “People were dispersed, some with flags, some without flags fled.” [custom_adv] “Any violent response would cost the Taliban losing international legitimacy, and anger at home,” Kabul-based political analyst Taj Mohammad told Arab News.“The world has been watching events very closely and any possible firing in Kabul and elsewhere due to the removal of the Taliban’s flag will be seen as a grave development.” [custom_adv] At some protests elsewhere, media reported people tearing down the white and black flag of the Taliban. Some demonstrations were small, but combined with the desperate scramble of thousands of people seeking to flee the country they underline the challenge the Taliban face in governing. Protests flared in the city of Jalalabad in Paktia province, also in the east. [custom_adv] First Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who is trying to rally opposition to the Taliban, said on Twitter: “Salute those who carry the national flag and thus stand for dignity of the nation.” [custom_adv] Ahmad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan and the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a veteran guerrilla leader killed by suspected Al-Qaeda militants in 2001, called for Western support to fight the Taliban. [custom_adv] Anti-Taliban protesters defied their new rulers for a second day Thursday, marking Afghanistan’s independence day by attempting to hoist the red, green and black national banner but often getting beaten down by militant fighters who control the streets of the capital and elsewhere. [custom_adv] The jarring, violent scenes marked the latest unrest as the Taliban sought to gain a firmer grip on a nation that has changed much since it first ruled two decades ago. [custom_adv] That was proving increasingly difficult, even as the militant group sought to compare Afghanistan’s independence from Britain in 1919 to the insurgents’ swift takeover of the country this week from an American-backed government. [custom_adv] The Taliban said in a statement that its “jihadi resistance forced another arrogant power of the world, the United States, to fail and retreat from our holy territory of Afghanistan.”But anger against the group was rising, and governing was proving perilous. [custom_adv] A gridlock crush at the international airport in Kabul, meanwhile, surged again, with desperate Afghans and others attempting to flee abroad. In Washington, the Pentagon said that since July it had flown 12,000 people out of the airport in the capital, including American diplomats, Afghans eligible for special visas because of their work on behalf of the U.S. military and diplomatic missions, and others.
