'Taliban will be a threat to Central Asia and the world'

The Taliban militants that have captured Kabul and most of Afghanistan "will be a threat to Central Asia and the world", a senior member of the Panjshir Valley-based National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) told The Moscow Times.

"Russia should be concerned about the rise of the Taliban. The country will become a terrorist hub that will endanger Central Asia and Russia itself," Fahim Dashty told The Moscow Times by phone from the Panjshir Valley, where his resistance group has gathered as the country's last holdout against the Taliban.

The Panjshir region is famous for having successfully fought off invasions by Soviet forces in the Soviet-Afghan war from 1979-1989 as well as by the Taliban in the 1990s.

The NRF is currently led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a powerful guerrilla commander who led the resistance against the former Soviet Union.

Dashty was a close ally of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was assassinated in a suicide bombing instigated by Al Qaeda and the Taliban on September 9, 2001, an attack in which he was also injured.

He now acts as spokesperson for the slain commander's son.

On Wednesday, Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the greatest threat posed by the Taliban was the "enormous" amount of arms the groups had captured as American troops hastily exited the country.

"The first and major threat is that the Taliban received an enormous amount of weapons. Enormous," Shoigu said, adding that he believed the Islamists now had hundreds of armoured vehicles, aircraft and helicopters.