The Taliban has said that Afghan people were not involved in recent attacks in Pakistan, and they think it’s not true.
The Pakistan military said that the suicide bombing in March, which killed five Chinese engineers and a Pakistani driver, was planned in Afghanistan and the bomber was from Afghanistan.
Maj. Gen. Ahmad Sharif, who speaks for Pakistan’s army, said that the army has arrested four men who were responsible for the March 26 attack in Bisham, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Enayatullah Khawarazmi, who speaks for the Taliban’s Ministry of Defense, said on Wednesday that blaming Afghanistan for these incidents is just a way to distract people from the truth. We don’t agree with that.
“Khawarazmi said that the murder of Chinese people in a secure area in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa shows that the Pakistani security agencies are not strong enough. ”
He said that the Islamic Emirate promised China that Afghans were not involved.
Sharif said that the Afghan Taliban did not keep their promises to the world before taking control and promised that no one could use Afghanistan to launch attacks on any country.
Khawarazmi said that Islamic state members are coming from Pakistan to Afghanistan, and they are using Pakistan’s land against Afghanistan. Pakistan needs to give an answer for this.
Tag: Taliban
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Taliban disputes allegations over recent strikes in Pakistan
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Taliban puts battered Afghan women in jail – UN
The Taliban government in Afghanistan is putting women who have survived abuse in prison, saying it is for their safety, a UN report says.
The UN said that doing this thing hurts the mental and physical health of the survivors.
The Taliban government doesn’t think there is a need for government-funded women’s shelters anymore. So, there are none.
The Taliban in Afghanistan treat women very badly and don’t give them rights.
The United Nations help group in Afghanistan said that violence against women and girls has always been a big problem, even before the Taliban took control of the country.
“But now, these types of incidents happen a lot because of the problems with money, finance, and people’s well-being in the country,” UNAMA said. More and more, women have been forced to stay at home. This makes them more likely to experience violence from their family or partner.
Before the Taliban took control again in 2021, there were 23 government-supported shelters for women’s safety in Afghanistan. According to UNAMA, these shelters have disappeared.
The Taliban officials told UNAMA that women should not need shelters because they should be with their husbands or male family members. Someone said that shelters like this are “a concept from the western world”.
The officials said they would ask the male family members to promise not to harm the woman survivor.
If there were no men in her family to stay with, or if she might be in danger, the survivor would be sent to prison to keep her safe. This is like how some people who are addicted to drugs and people who don’t have a home are given a place to live in the capital city of Kabul, according to UNAMA.
UNAMA said that this would mean taking away someone’s freedom without a good reason.
“Punishing women in a vulnerable situation by keeping them confined could make their mental and physical health worse. It could also make them feel like victims again and put them at risk of being discriminated against and stigmatized when they are released. ”
UNAMA said that the Taliban did not handle gender-based violence complaints clearly or consistently for a year starting on 15 August 2021.
For instance, it’s hard to tell the difference between criminal and civil complaints, which means women and girls might not get the legal help they need.
Most complaints are dealt with by men. The United Nations said that because there are not many women handling complaints, it makes it hard for survivors to speak up.
People who have experienced something bad can no longer be sure they will get help for their problems, like through the legal system or getting money to make up for what happened to them. UNAMA reported that people are scared of the Taliban government and how they do things, so they don’t want to ask for help from the official justice system.
Between 2001 and 2021, there were some moves to improve women’s rights, like changing laws and policies. But now, these changes have almost all gone away.
Since the Taliban took over again in 2021, they have almost completely gone back on their promises to allow women to work and go to school.
In Afghanistan, only young girls can go to primary school. Young girls and women are not allowed to go to school or college.
They can’t go to parks, gyms, and pools. Beauty shops are closed, and women have to cover their bodies except for their eyes. They need to have a male family member with them if they are traveling more than 72km (45 miles). -
More than 2,000 people feared dead after powerful earthquake hit Afghanistan – Taliban government
Many people may have died after a strong earthquake happened in western Afghanistan, close to Iran.
As more information is received from rural areas, the number of people who have died is expected to increase. The Taliban, a government group, believes that the death toll could be greater than 2,000.
The strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6. 3 caused a lot of destruction and damage to at least 12 villages near the city of Herat on Saturday.
There were strong tremors after the main earthquake. People who survived the event were very scared because buildings were falling down all around them.
Rescue teams worked all night to search for people who were trapped under the collapsed buildings.
Many people got hurt. In a country with very limited and insufficient medical resources, hospitals are having a difficult time treating the injured. The UN and other organizations have started quickly bringing in urgent supplies.
The earthquake happened on Saturday at around 11:00 local time (06:30 GMT). It hit about 40km (25 miles) northwest of Herat.
The communities that are suffering the most are located far away and their houses are made of mud. “In the beginning, when the earthquake happened, all the houses fell down,” said Bashir Ahmad, a resident of Herat whose family lives in one of the villages, to AFP news agency.
“He said that the people who were in the houses got buried. ” We haven’t heard anything about some families.
The Taliban minister in charge of public health is going to Herat to see how much damage has been done. The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that at least 465 homes had been completely destroyed.
Videos from Herat Central Hospital showed injured people connected to IV drips being treated outside the main building. This indicates a sudden and overwhelming need for emergency care.
Other pictures show the destruction in Injil district of Herat, where debris has blocked roads, making it difficult for rescue teams to reach the affected areas.
“The situation was really bad, and I have never experienced anything like it,” said student Idrees Arsala to AFP. He was the last person to leave his classroom safely after the earthquakes started.
The city of Herat is about 120km (75 miles) away from the border of Iran. It is known as the cultural capital of Afghanistan. About 19 million people are thought to live in the province.
Afghanistan often experiences earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountains area because it is close to where the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates meet.
Last year in June, there was a very big earthquake in the province of Paktika. It was a 5. 9 magnitude earthquake and it caused more than 1,000 people to die. It also made tens of thousands of people lose their homes and become homeless. -
Taliban conducts spectacular welcome ceremony for China’s new ambassador to Afghanistan
The Taliban has accepted and celebrated Zhao Sheng as the new ambassador from China to Afghanistan. The welcome took place at a fancy event at the presidential palace in Kabul on Wednesday.
China is one of a few countries, like Pakistan, Iran, and Russia, that have stayed in Afghanistan with diplomats after the Taliban gained power in 2021.
During a palace ceremony, the Prime Minister of the Taliban, Mohammad Hasan Akhund, shook hands with Zhao and “accepted the proof of the new Chinese Ambassador,” according to the official Twitter account of the Prime Minister’s office.
“The Prime Minister of the Islamic Emirate thanked China for appointing Mr. Zhao Sheng as ambassador. He hopes that this appointment will improve the relationship between the two countries and mark the start of a new chapter,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid stated.
According to the prime minister’s office, Zhao said that China is a friendly neighbor to Afghanistan and completely respects Afghanistan’s freedom, borders, and ability to make decisions on their own.
Zhao also stated that China doesn’t interfere in Afghanistan’s internal matters and it doesn’t want Afghanistan to become under its control.
The leader of the Taliban said that the relationship between the two countries has been good. He also expressed his hope for making the relationship even stronger. This information was shared by Mujahid.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that the ambassador appointment in Afghanistan is a regular practice and is meant to keep improving communication and cooperation between China and Afghanistan.
The government of China has stated that their approach to Afghanistan remains the same and is easy to understand.
China, which is close to Afghanistan and has invested a lot in the area, was careful about the possible security problems caused by the sudden return of the Taliban after the US left the country in August 2021.
After that, Chinese officials have said it is important to work together with Afghanistan and nearby countries on things like fighting terrorism, working together on economic projects, and making sure the region is stable and developing.
In May, China, Afghanistan, and Pakistan promised to make their relationship in security and counterterrorism stronger. They discussed this at a meeting in Islamabad with their foreign ministers.
At the meeting, the Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang said that China values its friendship with Afghanistan and Pakistan a lot.
The three groups agreed to work together on China’s Belt and Road trade and infrastructure program, which involves a lot of China’s money invested in the area.
They also agreed to make the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) longer by including Afghanistan. This move is meant to improve connectivity, boost cross-border trading, and strengthen the economic integration of the three countries in order to achieve sustainable development.
CPEC is a big project called the Belt and Road that costs $60 billion. It connects a region in China called Xinjiang to an important port in Pakistan called Gwadar. They are connected by roads, railways, pipelines, and power plants. -
Taliban forbids women from entering well-known national park
In Bamiyan province, the Taliban government has stated that women are prohibited from visiting Band-e-Amir national park.
The acting minister of virtue and vice in Afghanistan, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, said that women were not wearing hijab in the park.
He asked religious leaders and security agencies to not let women in until they found a solution.
Band-e-Amir is a famous place for tourists and it became Afghanistan‘s first national park in 2009.
Many families like to go to this place, but because women are not allowed to go there, many people will not be able to enjoy the park.
Unesco says that the park is a group of lakes that were made by nature, and they have special shapes and structures. The park is also very beautiful and unlike anything else.
However, Mr Hanafi stated that visiting the park to look around was not something that had to be done. This information was reported by Afghan agency Tolo News.
Religious leaders in Bamiyan said that the women who were not following the rules while visiting the park were just tourists.
People are complaining that some people are not wearing hijab properly or not wearing it at all. These people are not from Bamiyan. “They come to this place from different areas,” said Sayed Nasrullah Waezi, who leads the Bamiyan Shia Ulema Council, in an interview with Tolo news.
Mariam Solaimankhil, a former MP from Afghanistan, posted a poem on Twitter. She talked about the ban and said she is confident that things will get better and they will be able to return.
Fereshta Abbasi from Human Rights Watch mentioned that on Women’s Equality Day, women were not allowed to go to the park. She stated that this action was a complete lack of respect towards the women in Afghanistan.
Richard Bennett, who is in charge of documenting human rights issues in Afghanistan for the UN, is wondering why women are not allowed to go to Band-e-Amir. He wants to know if this restriction is really necessary based on Islamic law and Afghan customs.
The Taliban have a habit of stopping women from doing certain things, like going to school, for a limited time. One example is when they stopped women from attending schools in December 2022.
The recent ban on visiting Band-E-Amir national park is part of a series of things that women have not been allowed to do since the Taliban took control again in August 2021.
Recently, the Taliban told hair and beauty salons in Afghanistan to close down. In the middle of July, they also stopped women from taking the important exams to get into university. -
We have been ‘erased from everything’ after two years under Taliban rule – Afghan women
She had “a lot of friends” when she was a student in Afghanistan.
She remarked, “We were happy together. We were studying, occasionally getting together, and riding bikes.
20-year-old Zahra no longer rides bicycles. Or visit friends who have left the nation, attend to school, or go outside without hiding her face. She claims that the only thing she can do is stay at home and fret about a future that is disintegrating in front of her.
“When I stand in front of the mirror, when I look at myself, I just see a different Zahra from two years ago,” she said. “I feel sad for my past.”
On Tuesday, the Taliban will have been in power in Afghanistan for two years. The Taliban took power during the chaotic and contentious American pullout from the country following nearly two decades of conflict.
Tuesday has been proclaimed a national holiday by the Taliban, who are not acknowledged by the majority of nations in the world. The day is “full of pride and honour for Afghans,” Taliban deputy spokesperson Bilal Karimi told CNN.
Afghans were able to reclaim their nation, freedom, government, and will once the country was liberated from occupation. Pressure and force are not reasonable solutions; understanding and communication are the only options, he continued.
But as life under the Taliban regime becomes more oppressive and harsh, celebrating is the last thing many Afghan women like Zahra, who CNN is only identifying by her first name for safety reasons, want to do.
Activists caution that as the world turns its back on Afghanistan because it is weary of the country’s protracted battles and is too consumed with its own domestic problems, things could only grow worse. Millions of Afghans are suffering from disease, malnutrition, and drought in the midst of a crisis that the UN’s human rights experts warned this week is becoming worse.
Mahbouba Seraj, an Afghan women’s rights advocate and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize finalist, declared that “women’s freedom” no longer exists.
The women of Afghanistan are gradually being eliminated from society, from daily life, from everything, including their voices, opinions, and whereabouts.
They are unable to attend school? Afghan woman upset over Taliban’s restriction on women attending universities
When the Taliban, a hardline Islamist organisation that had previously controlled Afghanistan in the 1990s, came to power in 2021, it originally portrayed itself as a more moderate version of its former self and even made the promise that women would be permitted to pursue higher education.
But since then, it has stepped up its enforcement, closing girls’ secondary schools, prohibiting women from going to college and working for NGOs like the United Nations, restricting their freedom to travel without a chaperone, and barring them from public places like parks and gyms.
Since the Taliban shut down all beauty salons nationwide last month, women have lost access to the majority of professions. The sector had employed about 60,000 women, many of whom were the only wage earners in their homes, adding to the financial difficulties of already struggling families.
The abrupt disruption of daily life is especially upsetting to young women like Zahra as they mature and form goals for the future. She likes art and had hoped to become a designer or launch her own company, but neither of those things seem feasible in Afghanistan now.
She said, “I’m twenty years old, and it’s time for me to study, to get educated.” But I’m not permitted. I’m only at home. I’m only concerned about my future, the future of my sisters, and the future of all Afghan women.
She attempts to keep herself busy at home by drawing, reading, and enrolling in any accessible online classes because she is unable to spend much time outside. However, she claims that it seems confining, like being in jail.
I am having trouble focusing because I can see my sister and the other girls sitting in their homes. They are powerless to act.
According to a UN report last month, collected following a week-long visit to Afghanistan, it has also had a devastating impact on mental health, with widespread allegations of sadness and suicide, especially among adolescent females who have been stopped from pursuing an education.
According to the poll results, about 8% of respondents knew of a girl or woman who had tried suicide. According to the report, restrictions and economic difficulties have also contributed to an increase in domestic violence and girl forced marriages.
The Taliban has asserted time and time again that women are welcome to work in specific fields as long as they adhere to “Islamic values.”
Another Taliban representative, Zabiullah Mujahid, agreed that there was still a “problem regarding the girls’ education,” but stated that the group wished to “pave the ground for Islamic rules and regulations” and create a “safe environment for their education.”
Additionally, he asserted that “women are actively working in health, education, police departments, passport offices, airports, and so on.”
However, experts and nonprofit organisations assert that this is untrue, and the health care industry is one area where there is a glaring gap.
Women are only permitted to receive medical care from other women under Taliban regulations, but due to the ban on women’s higher education, no female medical students have been able to complete their degrees, which has led to a dearth of much-needed female doctors, midwives, and nurses.
Heather Barr, association director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, cautioned that “(the Taliban) seem perfectly comfortable with the idea that women and girls are almost certainly already dying because of a lack of health care professionals, because of their policies.”
“I did nothing wrong,” Afghan girl: “I only want my right to education.”
The Taliban’s treatment of girls and women has drawn widespread condemnation from the international community, and last week the UN human rights body urged the group to implement reforms and respect women’s rights.
However, these messages haven’t done much to affect change, and the international spotlight has largely receded, leaving many Afghans to feel bitter and abandoned by the outside world.
According to Seraj, a women’s rights activist, “the young people of Afghanistan are screaming their lungs out, trying to bring the world’s attention to themselves and to the situation of the war, of the woman in Afghanistan.”
Zahra questioned why other nations appeared prepared to turn a blind eye. She remarked, “They are at ease; their daughters, sisters, and kids are in school. But there are girls and women in this area of the world who are helpless because they are disregarded by the rest of the population.
Following the Taliban takeover, the US and its allies cut off international assistance and frozen roughly $7 billion of the nation’s foreign funds. With millions of Afghans out of work, government employees going without pay, and the cost of food and medication increasing, the decision destroyed an economy that was already highly dependent on aid.
The US established a $3.5 billion economic assistance fund with the frozen assets last year, but officials said they won’t immediately give the funds to an institution in Afghanistan and will instead go through an external organisation that is independent of the Taliban and the nation’s central bank.
Following the Taliban’s restriction on women working for NGOs, humanitarian help has become even more scarce recently. Numerous organisations, including the UN, were forced to halt crucial operations or programmes in the nation.
Even though the Taliban is not generally seen as a legitimate administration and does not hold power over Afghanistan’s UN seat, advocates worry that it may gradually become more accepted on the international scene.
They’re getting on private aircraft to fly off to significant high-level meetings where people spread out the red carpet for them, and they’re posing for photos with beaming ambassadors, according to Barr. “They are being given permission to take over embassies in an increasing number of nations. So, in my opinion, things are going fairly well from their perspective.
According to the UN, the catastrophic situation has caused more than 1.6 million Afghans to leave their country since 2021. Even those refugees face an unclear future because many are still awaiting admission to the US and other Western countries, and some have waited for so long that they were forcibly deported back to Afghanistan and were forced to go into hiding.
Seraj, a women’s rights activist, stated, “The only reason I’m here Afghanistan and why I’m remaining here is to be next to my sisters and attempt to help them. “I haven’t given up on hope. But I can tell that it’s getting harder and harder with each decision and step along the way.
And it appears like escaping is the only way forward for young Afghans seeking to save what’s left of their future.
Naturally, everyone enjoys visiting their home country because it is where they were born and raised. However, I believe that staying here is the only option, said Zahra. “I must make a choice on my future. So leaving the nation is the greatest option.
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Afghanistan’s Taliban outlaws women’s beauty parlours
The Taliban‘s most recent assault on Afghan women’s rights calls for the closure of all beauty parlours.
The prohibition was announced today by the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Propagation of Virtue, but a letter about it, dated June 24, has been making the rounds on social media.
The timeframe for closing women’s beauty salons is one month, according to spokesperson Mohammad Sadiq Akif.
Each salon is then required to file a report attesting to the fact that it has closed for business.
These places are usually female-only and have their windows covered so that customers cannot be seen from outside.
Despite the Taliban’s promise to implement a more moderate rule than when they were previously in power in the 1990s, the group is essentially barring women from public life.
Women are not allowed at parks, gyms, or public baths and their access to education has been suppressed with all universities for women ordered to close at the end of last year.
One woman, named only as Sahar for security reasons, said the salon ban takes away the final avenue women had for socialising safely outside of the family.
The Kabul local, who is used to getting her hair and nails done every few weeks, said: ‘Parks are not allowed for women so it was a good place for us to meet our friends.
‘It was a good reason to see each other, to meet other women, other girls to talk about issues.
‘Now I don’t know how to meet them, how to see them, how to talk to each other… I think it will be very impactful for us and women around Afghanistan.’
The Taliban’s measures have triggered a fierce international uproar, increasing the country’s isolation at a time when its economy has collapsed.
Western governments and major organisations have said the restrictions on women are essentially preventing the Taliban from getting any international recognition.
The administration says it respects women’s rights in accordance with its interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan customs.
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Qatari’s prime minister meets Taliban leader in Afghanistan
Two individuals familiar with the encounter confirmed to CNN that Qatar’s prime minister had a covert meeting with the Taliban‘s top official earlier this month in Afghanistan.
On May 12, the Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani met in the southern city of Kandahar.
The encounter between Akhundzada and a foreign leader is said to be their first. Reuters broke the news first.
The Biden administration was quickly briefed by Qatar in Washington and then in a phone call the day after the meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Al-Thani, who also serves as foreign minister. A brief readout by the State Department on May 13 only noted Blinken’s “appreciation for Qatar’s continued assistance on Afghanistan.”
CNN has reached out to the US State Department and the Qatari Embassy in the US for comment.
Qatar’s Al Jazeera reported a few days later that Al-Thani had visited the Afghan capital as part of “facilitating the relations between the caretaker [Taliban] government and the international community…”
American officials have met occasionally with Taliban representatives in the Qatari capital, Doha, since the US left Afghanistan in August 2021 amid the Taliban takeover of the country.
Despite American warnings to the Taliban not harbor terrorists, Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri took up residence in Kabul before being killed in a US drone strike last July.
Qatar serves as the US protecting power in Afghanistan, where it does not have a diplomatic presence. The diplomatic compound in Kabul – once one of the largest US Embassies in the world – has been shuttered since August 2021, and the US relocated its diplomatic mission to Doha.
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UN advises Afghan personnel to remain at home as Taliban prevents women from working with organizations
Following the Taliban’s ban on female Afghan humanitarian workers, the United Nations instructed all of its employees in Afghanistan to avoid the organization’s offices in the nation and claimed that this forced it to make a “appalling choice.”
“UN national personnel, both genders, have been advised not to report to UN offices, with only restricted and calibrated exceptions provided for vital activities,” the agency said in a statement.
It happens after Afghan men who work for the UN in Kabul last week choose to stay at home in support of their female coworkers.
The UN said the Taliban’s move was an extension of a previous ban, enforced last December, that prohibited Afghan women from working for national and international non-governmental organizations.
The decree forced the UN “into having to make an appalling choice between staying and delivering in support of the Afghan people and standing by the norms and principles we are duty-bound to uphold,” the organization said in a statement Tuesday.
It added that the ban was “the latest in a series of discriminatory measures implemented by the Taliban de facto authorities with the goal of severely restricting women and girls’ participation in most areas of public and daily life in Afghanistan.”
The UN will continue to “assess the scope, parameters and consequences of the ban, and pause activities where impeded,” the statement said, adding that the “matter will be under constant review.”
Several female UN staff in the country had already experienced restrictions on their movements since the Taliban seized power in 2021, including harassment and detention.
Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN Deputy Special Representative, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, called the Taliban’s decision an “unparalleled violation of human rights” last week.
“The lives of Afghanistan women are at stake,” he said, adding, “It is not possible to reach women without women.”
The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, is engaging with the Taliban at the highest level to “seek an immediate reversal of the order,” the UN said last week.
“In the history of the United Nations, no other regime has ever tried to ban women from working for the Organization just because they are women. This decision represents an assault against women, the fundamental principles of the UN, and on international law,” Otunbayeva said.
Other figures within the organization also condemned the move, with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights calling it “utterly despicable.”
After the Taliban banned female aid workers in December, at least half a dozen major foreign aid groups temporarily suspended their operations in Afghanistan – diminishing the already scarce resources available to a country in dire need of them.
The Taliban’s return to power preceded a deepening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, worsening issues that had long plagued the country. After the takeover, the US and its allies froze about $7 billion of the country’s foreign reserves and cut off international funding – crippling an economy heavily dependent on overseas aid.
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Taliban closes female-run radio station after it played music during Ramadan
According to Al-Jazeera, the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan has shut down a women-run radio station for playing music during the fasting month of Ramadan.
The only radio station in the nation that is run primarily by women is named Sadai Banowan, which translates to “women’s voice” in Dari.
Six of the eight employees are female.The station was shut down as a result of playing songs and music during Ramadan, according to Moezuddin Ahmadi, the Taliban‘s director for communication and culture in the province of Badakhshan. He claimed that the station had broken multiple “rules and regulations of the Islamic Emirate.”
The station’s head, Najia Sorosh, denied that there was any violation, saying there was no need for the closure and called the action a “conspiracy”.
The Taliban “told us that you have broadcast music. We have not broadcast any kind of music,” she claimed.
Reports indicated that, local Afghan journalists who refuse to comply with the Taliban’s policies have been arrested, and put behind bars with some reporting abuse and torture after their release.
According to the Afghan Independent Journalists Association, many journalists in Afghanistan have reportedly lost their jobs after the Taliban takeover in August 2021 and many Media outlets have been closed over lack of funds or because their staff left the country.
The Taliban-led government has prevented women from most forms of employment and education beyond the sixth grade, including university; something which has continued to generate wider condemnation by global key players who are promoting girl child education in especially developing countries.
The latest sanction imposed by the Taliban regime on the Sadai Banowan is viewed by many human rights activists as a deliberate attempt to muzzle the press in Afghanistan.
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Taliban allegedly holding 3 British men hostage
According to a humanitarian organization, the Taliban are now holding three British people hostage in Afghanistan.
One of the males was identified by Scott Richards of the Presidium Network as Kevin Cornwell, a 53-year-old Middlesbrough resident.
According to Mr. Richards, Mr. Cornwell and a different nameless guy were both detained in January. He stated that on a different day, a third man was also taken into custody.
The home secretary stated that the men were “the subject of discussions” by the administration.
Speaking to Sky News, Suella Braverman said: “Anyone travelling to dangerous parts of the world should take the utmost caution. If they are going to do that they should always act on the advice of the Foreign Office travel advice.
“If there are risks to people’s safety, if they’re a British citizen abroad, then the UK government is going to do whatever it takes to ensure that they’re safe.
“The government is in negotiations and working hard to ensure people’s safety is upheld.”
The Foreign Office said it was working hard to contact the men.
The Presidium Network is a UK-based non-profit organisation that provides support to communities in crisis, representing the needs of people affected by violence or poverty to international policy makers.
Mr Richards confirmed the organisation is representing Mr Cornwell, a paramedic who works for a charity, and the second unnamed man but not the third British national.
Mr Richards said while there were “no official charges as such”, the two men’s detention on 11 January was understood to be over a weapon in a safe in Mr Cornwell’s room, which he said was stored with a licence issued by the Afghan interior ministry.
“That license is missing,” he said, adding: “But we have taken several statements from witnesses who have seen the licence and affirm its existence.
“It is perfectly possible that during the search the licence was separated from the weapon and, as such, why we refer to this scenario as a probable misunderstanding.”
The third man is understood to be Miles Routledge, 23, from Birmingham, who was evacuated from Afghanistan by British Armed Forces in August 2021.
Image caption,Miles Routledge said previously he travelled to Afghanistan as he enjoys “dark” and “extreme” tourism The former Loughborough University student has attracted attention by travelling to dangerous countries and posting about it on social media.
He previously shared that he chose Afghanistan because he enjoyed “dark” and “extreme” tourism.
Following his extraction from the country less than two years ago, he told the BBC he was “exhausted but relieved” and thanked the British Army who had been deployed to support the evacuation of UK nationals from Kabul.
Mr Richard told Sky News: “To our knowledge and awareness, we do believe they are in good health and being well treated.
“We have no reason to believe they’ve been subject to any negative treatment such as torture and we’re told that they are as good as can be expected in such circumstances.”
He added that there has been “no meaningful contact” between authorities and the two men Presidium is assisting.
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Taliban detains professor who protested ban on women’s education
Ismail Mashal was arrested after he tore up his degree certificates on live television to protest the exclusion of women from higher education, according to the Taliban.
An academic who tore up his degrees on live television in protest against a ban on women attending universities in the nation was detained by Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities, according to his aide on Friday.
“From today I don’t need these diplomas any more because this country is no place for an education. If my sister and my mother can’t study, then I don’t accept this education,” veteran journalism lecturer Ismail Mashal said in the video that went viral on social media last month.
Mashal’s aide Farid Ahmad Fazli told AFP news agency that the academic was “mercilessly beaten” and taken away in a very disrespectful manner by members of “the Islamic Emirate”, the Taliban government.
Al Jazeera was also able to confirm Mashal’s detention.
The shredding of his degree certificates on local Tolonews in December caused a storm, adding to protests by women and activists against a Taliban edict ending women’s university education.
A Taliban official confirmed the detention.
“Teacher Mashal had indulged in provocative actions against the system for some time,” tweeted Abdul Haq Hammad, director at the Ministry of Information and Culture.
“The security agencies took him for investigation.”
‘Giving free books’
In recent days, domestic channels showed Mashal carting books around the capital, Kabul, and offering them to passers-by.
Mashal, who has worked as a lecturer for more than 10 years at three Kabul universities, was arrested on Thursday despite having “committed no crime”, Fazli said.
“He was giving free books to sisters (women) and men,” he added. “He is still in detention and we don’t know where he is being held.”
Astonishing scenes as a Kabul university professor destroys his diplomas on live TV in Afghanistan —
— Shabnam Nasimi (@NasimiShabnam) December 27, 2022
“From today I don’t need these diplomas anymore because this country is no place for an education. If my sister & my mother can’t study, then I DON’T accept this education.” pic.twitter.com/cTZrpmAuL6It is rare to see a man protest in support of women in Afghanistan but Mashal, who ran a co-educational institute, said he would stand up for women’s rights.
“As a man and as a teacher, I was unable to do anything else for them, and I felt that my certificates had become useless. So, I tore them,” he told AFP at the time.
“I’m raising my voice. I’m standing with my sisters … My protest will continue even if it costs my life.”
Curb on women’s rights
The denial of secondary and tertiary education for girls and women has been a continuing concern expressed by the international community.
The majority of girls’ secondary schools remain closed, and most girls who should be attending grades 7-12 are denied access to school, based solely on their gender, experts have said.
Women and girls in Afghanistan have been protesting against the measures continuously for the past five months, demanding their rights to education, work and freedom.
Their Taliban rulers have repeatedly beaten, threatened or arrested demonstrating women.
The Taliban, which returned to power in August 2021, initially promised women’s rights and media freedom but has since gradually imposed curbs on women, bringing back memories of its last rule between 1996 and 2001.
Some senior Taliban leaders have said that Islam grants women rights to education and work but the hardline faction of the group has prevailed in implementing anti-women measures.
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Afghanistan: Some Taliban open to talks on women’s rights, says top UN official
A senior UN official thinks Afghanistan’s restrictions on women participating in public life are gradually being lifted.
Amina Mohammed, the deputy secretary-general, has been in Kabul for four days in an effort to persuade the Taliban to change their minds.
The nation’s Islamist leaders outlawed all women from working for non-governmental organisations last month (NGOs).
Several aid organisations had to halt operations as a result of the action.
At the conclusion of her trip, Ms. Mohammed told the BBC that the majority of senior Taliban figures she encountered were eager to discuss women’s and girls’ rights.
However, she described the talks as tough and cautioned that it would be a very long journey before the leadership took the fundamental steps required for international recognition of their rule.
“I think there are many voices we heard, which are progressive in the way that we would like to go,” Ms Mohammed said. “But there are others that really are not.”
“I think the pressure we put in the support we give to those that are thinking more progressively is a good thing. So this visit, I think, gives them more voice and pressure to help the argument internally.”
Ms Mohammed also criticised the international community, including other Islamic states, for not doing enough to engage on the issue.
Since seizing back control of the country last year, the Taliban has steadily restricted women’s rights – despite promising its rule would be softer than the regime seen in the 1990s.
As well as the ban on female university students – now being enforced by armed guards – secondary schools for girls remain closed in most provinces.
Women have also been prevented from entering parks and gyms, among other public places.
It justified the move to ban Afghan women from working for NGOs by claiming female staff had broken dress codes by not wearing hijabs.
Ms Mohammed’s comments come as Afghanistan suffers its harshest winter in many years.
The Taliban leadership blames sanctions and the refusal of the international community to recognise their rule for the country’s deepening crisis.
Ms Mohammed said her message to Afghanistan’s rulers was that they must first demonstrate their commitment to internationally recognised norms and that humanitarian aid cannot be provided if Afghan women are not allowed to help.
“They’re discriminating against women there. for want of a better word, they become invisible, they’re waiting them out, and that can’t happen,” she said.
But she said the Taliban’s stance was that the UN and aid organisations were “politicising humanitarian aid”.
“They believe that… the law applies to anyone anywhere and their sovereign rights should be respected,” she said.
The Taliban health ministry has clarified that women can work in the health sector, where female doctors and nurses are essential, but Ms Mohammed said this was not enough.
“There are many other services that we didn’t get to do with access to food and other livelihood items that that will allow us to see millions of women and their families survive a harsh winter, be part of growth and prosperity, peace,” she said.
This visit by the most senior woman at the UN also sends a message that women can and should play roles at all levels of society.
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Pakistani FM Zardari blast former government’s TTP policy
Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari says his administration has changed the ‘wrong approach’ taken by the previous administration toward the Pakistan Taliban.
According to Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the previous administration of Prime Minister Imran Khan was accused of taking the “wrong approach” toward the armed group Pakistan Taliban (Tahreek-e-Taliban, or TTP).
In an interview with Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Zardari said, “Its policy of appeasement towards the Taliban has created problems for the people of Pakistan.” He added that his government has abandoned the previous strategy.
“We recently had a national security meeting of the top political and military leadership our country where it was decided that we would not tolerate terrorist groups and anybody who violates the law in Pakistan,” the foreign minister said.
Pakistan has seen rise in attacks by the Pakistan Taliban after the armed group unilaterally ended an Afghan Taliban-brokered ceasefire agreement in November.
The Pakistani Taliban, which claims to have thousands of fighters and supporters, shares some ideological affinity with the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan but it comprises of mostly local fighters.
Islamabad repeatedly accuses the Taliban government in Afghanistan of sheltering Pakistan Taliban leadership on Afghan soil – an allegation denied by Kabul.
“We recently had a national security meeting of the top political and military leadership our country where it was decided that we would not tolerate terrorist groups and anybody who violates the law in Pakistan,” the foreign minister said.
Pakistan has seen rise in attacks by the Pakistan Taliban after the armed group unilaterally ended an Afghan Taliban-brokered ceasefire agreement in November.
The Pakistani Taliban, which claims to have thousands of fighters and supporters, shares some ideological affinity with the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan but it comprises of mostly local fighters.
Islamabad repeatedly accuses the Taliban government in Afghanistan of sheltering Pakistan Taliban leadership on Afghan soil – an allegation denied by Kabul.
Pakistan Taliban threat
Earlier in January, Pakistan Taliban warned the country’s main ruling parties of “concrete action” against their top leadership in the government for “declaring war” against it.
A statement released by the Pakistan Taliban in first week of January explicitly named Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Zardari.
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government was against taking military action against the Pakistan Taliban before using consuming other options.
Earlier in January he blamed the government of his successor, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, for making “dangerously irresponsible” statements against the Afghan Taliban authorities and causing strains in bilateral ties rather than seeking cooperation over the Pakistan Taliban threat
The Pakistani foreign minister also reiterated on the need to engage with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers despite the group’s hardline policies vis-a-vis women. Last month, the Taliban banned women from universities. Shortly after the group also banned women from working in NGOs.
Some aid groups have resumed operations after women healthworkers were allowed to work.
“The solution is to engage the Afghan government and try to convince them to live up to their promises to the international community whether it is to do with women’s rights or the issue of terrorism,” Zardari told Al Jazeera.
“I do not think turning our back and disengaging is an option. And it’s certainly not an option for Pakistan which shares such a long and porous border with Afghanistan.”
In the interview with Al Jazeera, foreign minister Zardari also confirmed that he has not recalled the Pakistani ambassador in Afghanistan back home after an attack on its mission in Kabul last month.
“He was due back for some briefings and dialogues. I hope we will have the security necessary to send him soon,” he said.
Source: Al Jazeera.com
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Prince Harry will face trial over killing of 25 in Afghanistan, Taliban says
The Taliban administration has declared that Duke of Sussex Prince Harry, who has admitted to killing 25 Afghan soldiers, will appear before the International Court.
The Taliban’s police spokesman, Khalid Zadran, made this declaration on Friday in Kabul, the nation’s capital.
The Telegraph reports that Zadran responded to Prince Harry’s admission that he killed 25 Taliban fighters while operating an Apache helicopter during the conflict.
The Duke of Sussex described how he flew six sorties during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2012 and killed 25 Taliban in his upcoming biography, Spare.
Reacting, the Taliban official said, “Prince Harry will always be remembered in Helmand – Afghans will never forget the killing of their innocent countrymen.”
“The perpetrators of such crimes will one day be brought to the international court and criminals like Harry who proudly confess their crimes will be brought to the court table in front of the international community.”
Zadran added that Prince Harry’s description of those he had killed as “chess pieces” and that he was “neither proud nor ashamed” of his actions, was “cruel”, “barbaric” and that such actions had legitimised the Taliban’s deadly insurgency against NATO troops in Afghanistan.
“Occupying forces in Afghanistan used to start operations under nightfall on our villages. Prince Harry was involved in this and he has taken the lives of dozens of defenseless Afghans,” said Zadran.
“The cruel and barbaric actions of Harry and others aroused the Afghan population and led to an armed uprising against them. We call this kind of uprising holy jihad,” he added.
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Harry criticised for remarks on killing Taliban in Afghanistan
According to a veteran British commander, Prince Harry’s comments about murdering Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have damaged his reputation.
In his memoir, the Duke of Sussex describes his 25 kills as “chess pieces taken off the board”.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former army officer, told the BBC that Harry’s remarks were “ill-judged.”
He stated that the comments might have jeopardized his security and aroused retaliation.
In his biography Spare, which BBC News has a copy of after it went on sale early in Spain, Prince Harry goes into depth about his time serving as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan.
After two deployments in the country’s Helmand province, he makes the first public admission in it that he killed 25 enemy combatants.
“It wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it make me ashamed,” he writes.
“When I was plunged into the heat and confusion of battle, I didn’t think about those as 25 people. You can’t kill people if you see them as people.
“In truth, you can’t hurt people if you see them as people. They were chess pieces taken off the board, bad guys eliminated before they kill good guys.
“They trained me to ‘other’ them and they trained me well.”
Prior to beginning his second longer tour while piloting Apache helicopters, Harry temporarily worked as a forward air controller on the ground calling in strikes.
Responding to the prince’s comments, a senior Taliban leader Anas Haqqani tweeted: “Mr Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return…
“I don’t expect that the (International Criminal Court) will summon you or the human rights activists will condemn you, because they are deaf and blind for you.”
The US and its Nato allies invaded in October 2001 to oust the Taliban, whom they said were harbouring Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda figures linked to the 9/11 attacks.
Col Kemp, who was sent to Kabul in 2003 to take command of forces in Afghanistan, said the Taliban insurgents killed were bad people and he did not have a problem with Prince Harry revealing his kill number – but took issue with the way Harry suggested Taliban insurgents were seen by the army as “sub-human and just as chess pieces to be knocked over”.
He told BBC Breakfast: “I think he’s wrong when he says in his book that insurgents were seen just as being virtually unhuman – subhuman perhaps – just as chess pieces to be knocked over.
“That’s not the case at all. And it’s not the way the British Army trains people as he claims…
“I think that sort of comment that doesn’t reflect reality, is misleading and potentially valuable to those people who wish the British forces and British government harm, so I think it was an error of judgement.”
In defense of Harry, he claimed that the prince should be “proud” of his kill total because of the “effective impact” it would have had on the campaign, his bravery in the field, and the way he has supported wounded soldiers.
However, he warned that it would make the duke’s security issues worse and might “provoke attempt revenge” among those who support the Taliban.
Adam Holloway, the Conservative MP for Gravesham who fought in Iraq for the British Army, wrote in the Spectator that many soldiers did not think it was appropriate to publicise their kill count.
“It’s not about macho codes. It’s about decency and respect for the lives you have taken,” he wrote.
Ben McBean, who lost an arm and a leg serving with the Royal Marines in Afghanistan and was described by Prince Harry as a hero after the pair met at several events, said the royal needed to “shut up”.
He wrote on Twitter: “Love you #PrinceHarry but you need to shut up! Makes you wonder the people he’s hanging around with.
“If it was good people somebody by now would have told him to stop.”
Another serviceman still serving told the BBC Harry’s comments were “very unsoldier-like”.
The soldier, who’s done several tours of Afghanistan, said he would struggle to work out how many “kills” he had been directly involved in – without access to all the specific patrol reports. Lots of people firing roughly in the same direction would make it harder to tell too.
And like many military personnel he said he had no interest in keeping count. More often it is those who write books who seem to take more of an interest in their kill statistics.
Harry in his role as a helicopter pilot would have had a better view than most from his cockpit – seeing individuals up close using sensors and screens.
He would also see the impact of his cannon and hellfire missiles – although clarity would be soon obscured by dust – and he would be able to review footage from the cockpit. But it is not always possible to count bodies on the ground or to distinguish between someone injured or killed.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would not comment on the appropriateness of the prince’s 25 kills claim, but added he was “enormously grateful to our armed forces”.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson, when asked about the prince’s kill number, said: “We do not comment on operational details for security reasons.”
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ISIL fighters dead in Afghanistan raids, Taliban says
The raids come after a string of ISIL assaults, including a deadly bombing close to a checkpoint in Kabul.
According to a senior Taliban government spokesman, eight ISIL (ISIS) fighters have been killed and a number of others have been arrested in a series of raids targeting prominent figures in a wave of attacks in Kabul.
The raids in the capital city and western Nimroz province the day before were directed at ISIL members who were responsible for the recent attacks on Kabul’s Longan Hotel, Pakistan’s embassy, and the military airport, according to Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Thursday.
Eight ISIL fighters, including foreign nationals, were killed and seven others arrested in Kabul, while a separate operation in western Nimroz province resulted in two more ISIL arrests, Mujahid said.
“These members had a main role in the attack on the [Logan] hotel and paved the way for foreign [ISIL] members to come to Afghanistan,” the spokesperson said in a tweet.
ISIL claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing near a checkpoint at the Afghan capital’s military airport on Sunday. The group said that attack was carried out by someone that also took part in the Longan Hotel assault in mid-December.
ISIL had published a photo of the attacker, identifying him as Abdul Jabbar, saying he withdrew safely from the attack on the hotel after he ran out of ammunition. It added he detonated his explosives-laden vest targeting the soldiers gathered at the checkpoint.
Mujahid said light weapons, hand grenades, mines, vests and explosives were confiscated by the Taliban’s security forces during the raids on an ISIL hideout in the Shahdai Salehin neighbourhood of Kabul. Residents reported sounds of several explosions and an hours-long gun battle.
ISIL’s regional affiliate – known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) – is a key rival of the Taliban and has increased its attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Targets have included Taliban patrols and members of Afghanistan’s Shia minority.
The Taliban swept across the country in August 2021, seizing power as United States and NATO forces were in the last weeks of their final withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.
Source: Aljazeera.com -
Dozens feared dead in explosion outside Kabul military airport
A spokesman for the interior ministry controlled by the Taliban says that an explosion outside the airport resulted in numerous casualties.
Multiple people have been hurt in an explosion that occurred near Kabul’s military airport, according to a spokesman for the Taliban-run interior ministry.
“Today morning an explosion took place outside Kabul military airport, due to which a number of our citizens were martyred and injured,” spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor told Reuters news agency, adding that an investigation is underway.
He did not specify the nature or target of the explosion. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.
Local residents said a loud explosion was heard before 8am (03:30 GMT) in the vicinity of the military side of the heavily fortified airport.
They said the area had been sealed off by security forces, and all roads had been closed.
The Taliban authorities claim to have improved security since storming back to power in August 2021 but there have been scores of bomb blasts and attacks, many claimed by the local chapter of the ISIL (ISIS) armed group.
Last month, at least five Chinese nationals were wounded when ISIL attackers stormed a hotel popular with Chinese nationals in Kabul.
Hundreds of people, including members of Afghanistan’s minority communities, have been killed and wounded in attacks since the Taliban returned to power.
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Foreign aid groups halt work after Taliban ban on female staff
Five top non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have halted work in Afghanistan after women were banned from working for them by the Taliban government.
Care International, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Save the Children said they could not continue their work “without our female staff”.
The International Rescue Committee also suspended services while Islamic Relief said it was stopping most of its work.
Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have been steadily repressing women’s rights.
The latest edict on NGOs came just days after the Taliban banned women from attending university.
Abdel Rahman Habib, spokesman for the Taliban’s ministry of economy, accused female workers at the foreign aid groups of breaking dress codes by not wearing hijabs.
The Taliban threatened to cancel the licence of any organisation that did not swiftly comply with the ban.
A number of aid groups have since spoken out, demanding that women should be allowed to continue working for them.
The leaders of Care, the NRC and Save the Children said in a joint statement the organisations “would not have jointly reached millions of Afghans in need since August 2021” were it not for their female staff.
“Whilst we gain clarity on this announcement, we are suspending our programmes, demanding that men and women can equally continue our lifesaving assistance in Afghanistan,” their statement added.
Separately, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) – which employs 3,000 women across Afghanistan – said its ability to deliver services relied on “female staff at all levels of our organisation” and if women could not be employed, they could not deliver to “those in need”.
Islamic Relief said it had taken the “difficult decision to temporarily suspend non-lifesaving activities in Afghanistan” including “projects that support impoverished families to earn a living as well as education and some healthcare projects”. Life-saving healthcare, it added, would continue.
“Islamic Relief is calling on the Afghan authorities to immediately lift the ban on female NGO workers,” the organisation said.
“The ban will have a devastating humanitarian impact on millions of vulnerable men, women and children across the country. We are dismayed that this ruling comes just a few days after increased restrictions on Afghan girls’ access to education.”
Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations’ top humanitarian coordinator, said the UN was trying to get the ban reversed and that it was a “red line for the entire humanitarian community”.
The United Nations could stop humanitarian aid delivery in Afghanistan if the Taliban authorities do not reverse their edict banning women aid workers, the official told the BBC.
But Mr Alakbarov said it was still unclear what the Taliban meant by its edict.
He said the Taliban’s minister of health had told the UN the agency should continue its health-related work and women could “report to work and discharge their services”.
Other ministries had also contacted the UN directly to say work in the areas of disaster management and emergencies should continue, he added.
Jan Egeland of the NRC said nearly 500 of the aid group’s 1,400 workers were women, and that female staff had been operating “according to all traditional values, dress code, movement, [and] separation of offices”.
He said he hoped the decision would be “reversed in the next few days” and warned that millions would suffer if NGOs’ work was obstructed.
NGOs also expressed concern about the effect the ban would have on jobs “in the midst of an enormous economic crisis”.
Female Afghan NGO workers acting as the main earners in their household previously told the BBC of their fear and helplessness following the ban.
One asked: “If I cannot go to my job, who can support my family?” Another breadwinner called the news “shocking” and insisted she had complied with the Taliban’s strict dress code.
The ban triggered international outcry, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning it would “disrupt vital and life-saving assistance to millions”.
Since seizing back control of the country last year, the Taliban have steadily restricted women’s rights – despite promising its rule would be softer than the regime seen in the 1990s.
As well as the bans on NGO workers and female university students – in the case of students, now being enforced by armed guards – secondary schools for girls remain closed in most provinces.
Women have also been prevented from entering parks and gyms, among other public places.
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Foreign aid groups halt work after Taliban ban on female staff
Three major non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have halted work in Afghanistan after women were banned from working for them by the Taliban.
In a joint statement, Care International, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Save the Children said they would be unable to continue their work “without our female staff”.
The aid groups are “demanding” that women can continue to work for them.
Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have been steadily repressing women’s rights.
The latest edict on NGOs came just days after the Taliban banned women from attending university.
Abdel Rahman Habib, spokesman for the Taliban’s ministry of economy, claimed female workers at the foreign aid groups had broken dress codes by not wearing hijabs.
The Taliban threatened to cancel the licence of any organisation that did not swiftly comply with the ban.
The leaders of Care, the NRC and Save the Children said the organisations “would not have jointly reached millions of Afghans in need since August 2021” were it not for their female staff.
“Whilst we gain clarity on this announcement, we are suspending our programmes, demanding that men and women can equally continue our lifesaving assistance in Afghanistan,” their statement added.
Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations’ top humanitarian coordinator, said the UN was trying to get the ban reversed and that it was a “red line for the entire humanitarian community”.
The United Nations could stop humanitarian aid delivery in Afghanistan if the Taliban authorities do not reverse their edict banning women aid workers, the official told the BBC.
But Mr Alakbarov said it was still unclear what the Taliban meant by its edict.
He said the Taliban’s minister of health had told the UN the agency should continue its health-related work and women could “report to work and discharge their services”.
Other ministries had also contacted the UN directly to say work in the areas of disaster management and emergencies should continue, he added.
Jan Egeland of the NRC said nearly 500 of the aid group’s 1400 workers were women, and that female staff had been operating “according to all traditional values, dress code, movement, [and] separation of offices”.
He said he hoped the decision would be “reversed in the next few days” and warned that millions would suffer if NGOs’ work was obstructed.
NGOs also expressed concern about the effect the ban would have on jobs “in the midst of an enormous economic crisis”.
Female Afghan NGO workers acting as the main earners in their household previously told the BBC of their fear and helplessness following the ban.
One asked: “If I cannot go to my job, who can support my family?” Another breadwinner called the news “shocking” and insisted she had complied with the Taliban’s strict dress code.
The ban triggered international outcry, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning it would “disrupt vital and life-saving assistance to millions”.
Since seizing back control of the country last year, the Taliban has steadily restricted women’s rights – despite promising its rule would be softer than the regime seen in the 1990s.
As well as the bans on NGO workers and female university students – in the case of students, now being enforced by armed guards – secondary schools for girls remain closed in most provinces.
Women have also been prevented from entering parks and gyms, among other public places.
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Afghanistan: Taliban bans women from working for NGOs
An order by the Taliban banning women from working for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has been condemned by the United Nations, which said the move violated fundamental rights.
The Islamist rulers justified the move by saying female NGO staff had broken dress codes by not wearing hijabs.
The US Secretary of State also criticised the move saying it would be “devastating for the Afghan people”.
Female Afghan NGO workers acting as the main earners in their household told the BBC of their fear and helplessness.
One asked: “If I cannot go to my job, who can support my family?” Another breadwinner called the news “shocking” and insisted she had complied with the Taliban’s strict dress code.
A third woman questioned the Taliban’s “Islamic morals”, saying she would now struggle to pay her bills and feed her children.
“The world is watching us and doing nothing,” said another female interviewee. The BBC is not publishing the women’s names in order to protect them.
Saturday’s order came in a letter from the Ministry of Economy to both national and international NGOs. It threatened to cancel the licence of any organisation that did not swiftly comply.
By way of explanation, it said women were breaking Sharia law by failing to wear the hijab.
The move has sparked international outrage, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying he was deeply concerned, adding that it “will disrupt vital and life-saving assistance to millions”.
“Women are central to humanitarian operations around the world. This decision could be devastating for the Afghan people,” Mr Blinken said.
It was also described as a “clear breach of humanitarian principles” by a senior United Nations official.
UN agencies have a significant presence in the country, carrying out relief and development work. An urgent meeting of the Humanitarian Country Team was planned for Sunday to respond to the news.
An employee of Save the Children told BBC News the organisation was planning to meet Taliban authorities, saying that if women were not allowed to work then some NGOs would have to close.
It is also feared that Afghan women could be left unable to receive aid directly, if organisations are only allowed to employ men. Taliban rules prevent men from working with women.
Female employees were “essential” for reaching other women and girls, explained Melissa Cornet from Care International.
She added: “Without them, the humanitarian situation might deteriorate rapidly, in a situation where most of the country is already facing life-threatening levels of hunger.”
The South Asian branch of Amnesty International described the ban as “yet another deplorable attempt to erase women from the political, social and economic spaces” of Afghanistan.
One doctor working in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and nearby remote villages said she was “sad and devastated” at the development.
She predicted “great difficulty” for women trying to access medical treatment, as they “can’t fully tell their problems to men”.
Meanwhile, one imam – whose identity is again being protected by the BBC – said the Taliban was “not committed to any Islamic value”.
He explained: “Islam has not said that men can educate and women cannot. Or men can work and women cannot. We are confused about this decision.”
A ban on women attending Afghan universities earlier this week met similar criticism. It triggered protests – including in Herat on Saturday – which were rapidly suppressed by the Taliban.
Since seizing back control of the country last year, the group has steadily restricted women’s rights – despite promising its rule would be softer than the regime seen in the 1990s.
As well as the ban on female university students – now being enforced by armed guards – secondary schools for girls remain closed in most provinces.
Women have also been prevented from entering parks and gyms, among other public places.
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Afghanistan: Taliban bans women from attending universities
A letter from the higher education minister has noted that , the Taliban have announced that women’s universities in Afghanistan will close.
The change, according to the minister, is temporary. Immediate implementation is anticipated.
Given that they are already prohibited from attending secondary school, it further restricts women’s access to formal education.
Numerous women and girls took entrance exams for universities across Afghanistan three months ago.
But sweeping restrictions were imposed on the subjects they could study, with veterinary science, engineering, economics and agriculture off limits and journalism severely restricted.
After the Taliban takeover last year, universities included gender segregated classrooms and entrances.
Female students could only be taught by women professors or old men.
In November, the authorities banned women from parks in the capital Kabul, claiming Islamic laws were not being followed there.
Source: BBC.com
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TTP seizes hostages at Pakistan counterterrorism center
The facility in northwest Bannu town is the scene of a standoff after Pakistani Taliban men overpower security guards, steal weapons, and take hostages.Pakistani authorities have started negotiations in an effort to end a standoff with attackers who have taken over a counterterrorism facility in the country’s northwest and are holding several security personnel hostage. According to reports on Monday, security forces have encircled the heavily fortified military cantonment that houses the interrogation centre in Bannu district, where about 20 Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) fighters — also known as the Pakistani Taliban — are holed up.
Bannu is located just outside of North Waziristan, a region of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that is dominated by tribes and borders Afghanistan. The area has long served as a refuge for TTP combatants.
Pakistan has been fighting an armed rebellion by the TTP since 2007 when it emerged. The group associates itself with Afghanistan’s Taliban and is fighting for the enforcement of their strict interpretation of Islamic law in the country, the release of their members who are in government custody, and a reduction of Pakistani military presence in the country’s former tribal regions.
There has been a surge in attacks on security forces since the TTP pulled out of peace talks with Islamabad last month.
Security officials stand guard on a blocked road outside the Bannu facility [Muhammad Hasib/AP] The incident in Bannu erupted late on Sunday and quickly evolved into a standoff.
According to Mohammad Ali Saif, a provincial government spokesman, the attackers were demanding safe passage to Afghanistan.
“We are in negotiations with the central leaders of the Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan,” the Reuters news agency quoted Saif as saying.
He said the authorities were yet to receive a response from the TTP, adding that relatives of the attackers and area tribal elders were also involved in initiating talks with the hostage-takers.
Authorities said at least one counterterrorism official was killed by the attackers who snatched weapons from the guards during their interrogation, Reuters said.
Several significant TTP members were present at the centre, Saif said.
He did not say how many security personnel were being held hostage. An intelligence officer told Reuters, however, that there were six hostages – four from the military and two counterterrorism officials.
Security officials patrol near the counterterrorism centre in Bannu, Pakistan [Muhammad Hasib/AP] Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper on Monday said the situation at the facility remains tense 15 hours after it was seized and that there has been no breakthrough in negotiation with the TTP attackers.
There were concerns that the military could storm the facility if the negotiations fail.
In a video message circulating on social media, the hostage-takers threatened to kill the officers if their safe passage was not arranged.
Pakistan’s military has conducted several offensives in the tribal regions since 2009, the time when the area was in full control of armed groups.
The operations forced the groups and their leadership to run into neighbouring Afghanistan where Islamabad says they set up training centres to plan and launch attacks inside Pakistan, a charge Kabul denies.
The attackers in control of the interrogation facility had demanded a safe passage to Afghanistan, a TTP statement sent to Reuters said. It added that the TTP had also conveyed the demand to Pakistani authorities, but hadn’t heard back any “positive” response.
A statement by the TTP said the hostage-takers were demanding safe passage to North or South Waziristan districts and had “mistakenly mentioned Afghanistan” in a video they released on Sunday.
The hostage situation came a day after the TTP claimed the killings of four policemen in a nearby district.
Also on Monday, a roadside bombing targeted a security convoy in North Waziristan, killing at least two passersby, police said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing.
The violence by TTP has strained relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, who had brokered the ceasefire with the group in May this year.
Source: Aljazeera.com
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Taliban carry out their first public execution since seizing power
Taliban has carried out their very first public execution since assuming power in Afghanistan last year.
According to a Taliban government spokesperson, a man was killed after confessing to murder at a crowded sports stadium in south-western Farah province.
The hanging was attended by dozens of leaders, including the majority of their government’s top ministers.
It comes just weeks after judges were told to fully implement Sharia law.
Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, issued the edict last month, ordering judges to impose punishments that could include public executions, amputations, and stoning.
However, the exact crimes and corresponding punishments have not been officially defined by the Taliban.
While several public floggings have been carried out recently – including that of a dozen people before a crowded football stadium in Logar province last month – it marks the first time the Taliban have publicly acknowledged carrying out an execution.
According to their spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, the execution was attended by several Supreme Court justices, military personnel and senior ministers – including the justice, foreign and interior ministers.
Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, charged with imposing the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic law as minister for vice and virtue, was also present. However, Prime Minster Hasan Akhund did not attend, the statement said.
According to the Taliban, the executed man named Tajmir, a son of Ghulam Sarwar and a resident of Herat province, had stabbed a man named Mustafa about five years ago.
He was subsequently convicted by three Taliban courts and his sentence was approved by Mullah Akhundzada.
Before the execution, a public notice was issued publicising the event and “asking all citizens to join us in the sport field”.
The murdered man’s mother told the BBC that Taliban leaders had pleaded with her to forgive the man, but she had insisted upon his execution.
“Taliban came to me and begged me to forgive this infidel,” she said. “They insist me to forgive this man in sake of God, but I told them that this man must be executed and must be buried the same as he did to my son.”
“This could be a lesson to other people,” she added. “If you do not execute him he will commit other crimes in the future.”
During their rule from 1996-2001, the Taliban were condemned for regularly carrying out punishments in public, including executions at the national stadium in Kabul.
The Taliban vowed that they would not repeat the brutal repression of women. Since they seized power, women’s freedoms have been severely curbed and a number of women have been beaten for demanding rights.
At present, no country has recognised their new government and the World Bank has withheld around $600m (£458m), after the Taliban banned girls from returning to secondary schools.
The US has also frozen billions of dollars held by Afghanistan’s central bank in accounts around the world.
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Pakistan Taliban end ceasefire with the government and threaten new attacks
The armed group calls off a truce agreed with the government in June and orders fighters to ‘carry out attacks in the entire country’.
The Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has ended an indefinite ceasefire in June and issued orders for its fighters to continue attacks nationwide.
“As military operations are ongoing against mujahideen in different areas, … so it is imperative for you to carry out attacks wherever you can in the entire country,” the group said in a statement on Monday.
The group, which is ideologically aligned with the Afghan Taliban, said it is facing a rising number of attacks by the Pakistani military, particularly in the Lakki Marwat district of Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“We submit to the people of Pakistan that we have repeatedly warned you and continued to be patient so that the negotiation process is not sabotaged at least by us, but the army and intelligence agencies do not stop and continue the attacks, so now our retaliatory attacks will also start across the country,” the statement said.
Al Jazeera reached out to the Pakistani military for comment but did not receive a response.
The TTP has been waging a rebellion against the state of Pakistan for more than a decade. The group demands the imposition of hardline Islamic law law, release of key members arrested by the government and a reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s tribal areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
On November 16, the TTP claimed responsibility for an attack on a police patrol in Lakki Marwat, about 200km (125 miles) southwest of the provincial capital, Peshawar. Six policemen were killed.
After the attack, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said “terrorism” continues to be one of Pakistan’s foremost problems.
The TTP made its declaration hours after the government said the state minister for foreign affairs, Hina Rabbani Khar, will visit Afghanistan on Tuesday.
According to the foreign ministry, Khar will hold talks on regional security with the Taliban government in Kabul.
Security specialist Asfandyar Mir of the United States Institute of Peace told Al Jazeera that while the TTP has been escalating its violence recently, it has also exercised restraint by not carrying out attacks outside tribal areas.
“I have inferred the targeting as a function of Afghan Taliban pressure on the TTP to calibrate their escalation,” he saId. “Now if the TTP follows through in its declaration of countrywide attacks, the key question is how will the Taliban respond.”
The government and the TTP have held multiple rounds of talks facilitated by the Afghan Taliban, the last of which took place in June. The talks began weeks after the Taliban took control of Kabul last year.
Despite the ceasefire, the TTP continued its attacks this year, saying they were defensive in nature and only in retaliation for operations carried out by Pakistan’s military.
According to data compiled by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based research organisation, at least 65 such attacks took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through the end of October. They killed at least 98 people and wounded 75, it said.
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Afghanistan: ‘I drug my hungry children to help them sleep’
Afghans are giving their hungry children medicines to sedate them – others have sold their daughters and organs to survive. In the second winter since the Taliban took over and foreign funds were frozen, millions are a step away from famine.
“Our children keep crying, and they don’t sleep. We have no food,” Abdul Wahab said.
“So we go to the pharmacy, get tablets and give them to our children so that they feel drowsy.”
He lives just outside Herat, the country’s third largest city, in a settlement of thousands of little mud houses that has grown over decades, filled with people displaced and battered by war and natural disasters.
Abdul is among a group of nearly a dozen men who gathered around us. We asked, how many were giving drugs to their children to sedate them?
“A lot of us, all of us,” they replied.
Ghulam Hazrat felt in the pocket of his tunic and pulled out a strip of tablets. They were alprazolam – tranquilisers usually prescribed to treat anxiety disorders.
Ghulam has six children, the youngest a year old. “I even give it to him,” he said.
Others showed us strips of escitalopram and sertraline tablets they said they were giving their children. They are usually prescribed to treat depression and anxiety.
Doctors say that when given to young children who do not get adequate nutrition, drugs such as these can cause liver damage, along with a host of other problems like chronic fatigue, sleep and behaviour disorders.
Image caption, The men in this area outside Herat are struggling to find work At a local pharmacy, we found that you can buy five tablets of the drugs being used for 10 Afghanis (about 10 US cents), or the price of a piece of bread.
Most families we met were sharing a few pieces of bread between them each day. One woman told us they ate dry bread in the morning, and at night they dipped it in water to make it moist.
The UN has said a humanitarian “catastrophe” is now unfolding in Afghanistan.
A majority of the men in the area outside Herat work as daily wage labourers. They have been leading difficult lives for years.
But when the Taliban took over last August, with no international recognition for the new de-facto government, foreign funds flowing into Afghanistan were frozen, triggering an economic collapse which left the men with no work on most days.
On the rare day they do find work, they make roughly 100 Afghanis, or just over $1 (£0.83).
Everywhere we went, we found people being forced to take extreme steps to save their families from hunger.
Ammar (not his real name) said he had surgery to remove his kidney three months ago and showed us a nine-inch scar – stitch marks still a bit pink – running across his abdomen from the front of his body to the back.
He’s in his twenties, in what should have been the prime of his life. We’re hiding his identity to protect him.
“There was no way out. I had heard you could sell a kidney at a local hospital. I went there and told them I wanted to. Some weeks later I got a phone call asking me to come to the hospital,” he said.
“They did some tests, then they injected me with something that made me unconscious. I was scared but I had no option.”
Image caption, Ammar said he had his kidney removed for payment three months ago Ammar was paid about 270,000 Afghanis ($3,100) for it, most of which went into repaying money he had borrowed to buy food for his family.
“If we eat one night, we don’t the next. After selling my kidney, I feel like I’m half a person. I feel hopeless. If life continues like this, I feel I might die,” he said.
Selling organs for money is not unheard of in Afghanistan. It used to happen even before the Taliban takeover. But now, even after making such a painful choice, people are finding that they still cannot find the means to survive.
In a bare, cold home we met a young mother who said she sold her kidney seven months ago. They also had to repay debt – money they had borrowed to buy a flock of sheep. The animals died in a flood a few years ago and they lost their means of earning a living.
The 240,000 Afghanis ($2,700) she got for the kidney are not enough.
“Now we are being forced to sell our two-year-old daughter. The people we have borrowed from harass us every day, saying give us your daughter if you can’t repay us,” she said.
“I feel so ashamed of our situation. Sometimes I feel it’s better to die than to live like this,” her husband said.
Over and over again, we heard of people selling their daughters.
“I sold my five-year-old daughter for 100,000 Afghanis,” Nizamuddin said. That’s less than half what a kidney goes for, according to what we found on the ground. He bit his lip, and his eyes welled up.
The dignity that people here led their lives with has been broken by hunger.
“We understand it’s against Islamic laws, and that we’re putting our children’s lives in danger, but there’s no other way,” Abdul Ghafar, one of the heads of the community, said.
Image caption, Nazia is still living with her family but has been sold to be married when she is 14 In one home we met four-year-old Nazia, a cheerful little girl who made funny faces as she played with her 18-month-old brother Shamshullah.
“We have no money to buy food, so I announced at the local mosque that I want to sell my daughter,” her father Hazratullah said.
Nazia has been sold to be married to a boy from a family in the southern province of Kandahar. At 14, she will be sent away. So far Hazratullah has received two payments for her.
“I used most of it to buy food, and some for medicine for my younger son. Look at him, he’s malnourished,” Hazratullah said, pulling up Shamsullah’s shirt to show us his bloated belly.
The staggering rise in malnutrition rates is evidence of the impact that hunger is already having on children under the age of five in Afghanistan.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has seen the rate of admissions at their facilities treating malnutrition across the country increase by as much as 47% this year over the last.
MSF’s feeding centre in Herat is the only well-equipped malnutrition facility catering not just to Herat, but also to the neighbouring provinces of Ghor and Badghis, where malnutrition rates have gone up by 55% over the last year.
Since last year, they’ve increased the number of beds they have to cope with the number of sick children they’re having to admit. But even so, the facility is almost always more than full. Increasingly the children arriving have to be treated for more than one disease.
Omid is malnourished, and has hernia and sepsis. At 14 months, he weighs just 4kg (9lb). Doctors told us a normal baby at that age would weigh at least 6.6kg. His mother Aamna had to borrow money to make the journey to the hospital when he began to vomit profusely.
Image caption, Omid is 14 months old but weighs much the same as a newborn baby We asked Hameedullah Motawakil, spokesman of the Taliban’s provincial government in Herat, what they were doing to tackle hunger.
“The situation is a result of international sanctions on Afghanistan and the freezing of Afghan assets. Our government is trying to identify how many are in need. Many are lying about their conditions because they think they can get help,” he said. It’s a stance he persisted with despite being told that we have seen overwhelming evidence of how bad the situation is.
He also said the Taliban were trying to create jobs. “We are looking to open iron ore mines and a gas pipeline project.”
It’s unlikely that will happen soon.
People told us they felt abandoned, by the Taliban government and the international community.
Hunger is a slow and silent killer, its effects not always immediately visible.
Away from the attention of the world, the scale of the crisis in Afghanistan might never truly come to light, because no one is counting.
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TTP assassinates six police officers in an ambush in northwest Pakistan
In one of the deadliest attacks in months, Pakistan Taliban attackers ambush a police vehicle in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
In one of the deadliest attacks in months, at least six police officers were killed in an ambush while patrolling in a vehicle in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
According to local officials, the incident occurred on Wednesday morning in the city of Lakki Marwat, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the provincial capital of Peshawar.
The police said, there were no security cameras installed in the area where the incident occurred. An investigation has already begun.
In a statement, the banned armed group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, adding that its attackers made it back to safe havens.
The Pakistani Taliban, allied with the Afghan Taliban, has been waging an armed rebellion in Pakistan for more than a decade, calling for the stricter enforcement of Islamic laws, the release of their members from government custody and a reduced Pakistani military presence in tribal-dominated regions.
In May this year, the group extended an indefinite ceasefire agreement with Islamabad, with the talks brokered by the Taliban government in Kabul.
But attacks by the Pakistani Taliban have not stopped, mainly in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
In a statement, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office condemned the latest attack, calling the police a “vanguard against terrorism”.
“Let us make no mistake. Terrorism continues to be one of Pakistan’s foremost problems. Our armed forces and police have valiantly fought the scourge,” he tweeted.
Let us make no mistake. Terrorism continues to be one of Pakistan’s foremost problems. Our armed forces & police have valiently fought the scourge. No words are enough to condemn terrorists’ attack on a police van in Lakki Marwat. My thoughts & prayers are with bereaved families.
— Shehbaz Sharif (@CMShehbaz) November 16, 2022
Police officials told Al Jazeera it was the fourth such attack on law enforcement officials in the past few weeks.
According to data compiled by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), an Islamabad-based research organisation, at least 65 such attacks took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this year, killing at least 98 people and wounding 75.
Seven of those attacks took place in Lakki Marwat, PIPS data shows.
PIPS director and security analyst Amir Rana told Al Jazeera that while the government and the Pakistani Taliban have a ceasefire in place, the armed group portrays its attacks as defensive manoeuvres.
“Security forces face this issue that whenever they get complaints of abductions or extortion, they carry out their operations which the TTP says is a clear violation of the ceasefire agreement, and then they retaliate,” he said.
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Taliban leader orders Sharia law punishments in Afghanistan
Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada has directed Afghan judges to impose punishments for specific crimes, including public amputations and stoning.
According to his spokesman, crimes such as robbery, kidnapping, and sedition must be punished in accordance with the group’s interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.
The Taliban were condemned for such punishments, which included public executions, when they were in power in the 1990s.
When they retook power last year, they promised to govern more moderately.
But since then the militant Islamist group has steadily cracked down on freedoms. Women’s rights in particular have been severely restricted.
The Taliban’s supreme leader said judges must punish criminals according to Sharia, if the crime committed is a violation of those laws.
The Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted late on Sunday that the “obligatory” command came after Mullah Akhundzada met a group of judges.
“Carefully examine the files of thieves, kidnappers and seditionists,” Mujahid quoted Akhundzada as saying.
The exact crimes and punishments have not been defined by the Taliban, but one religious leader in Afghanistan told the BBC that under Sharia law, penalties could include amputations, public lashings and stoning.
The order is the latest evidence the Taliban are taking a tougher line on rights and freedoms.
IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS Image caption, Women were barred from all parks and funfairs in Kabul last week Last week they banned women from visiting all parks in Kabul, excluding them still further from public life. It has since emerged the ban extends to women in the capital visiting public baths and gyms, although the latter attracted relatively few women.
Entry to parks, baths and gyms was already segregated under Taliban rules on segregating people by gender. The group claims Islamic laws were not being followed.
Levels of violence have fallen across Afghanistan since foreign troops pulled out after 20 years of war, in the face of the Taliban advance in the summer of 2021.
But the group has faced numerous allegations that it is abusing human rights, including of opponents, women and journalists.
It has vowed there will be no brutal repression of women as there was when it was in power from 1996-2001, but half the population face severe curbs on what they can do.
Women are barred from going on longer distance journeys without a male chaperone. Teenage girls have still not returned to school in most of the country, despite Taliban promises to allow them to do so.
While some women still work in sectors such as healthcare and education, most were told not to go to work after the Taliban swept back to power.
In May women were ordered to wear the Islamic face veil in public. A number of women have been beaten for demanding their rights.
Billions of dollars in Afghan assets held abroad are frozen as the international community waits for the Taliban to honour promises still to be met on security, governance and human rights.
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Afghanistan: Taliban ban women from Kabul parks
The Taliban have prohibited women from entering all parks in Kabul, further excluding them from public life in Afghanistan.
According to a spokesman for the Vice and Virtue Ministry, those in charge of parks in the capital have been told not to allow women in.
According to the group, Islamic laws are not being followed in parks.
Since the militant Islamists took power in August 2021, women’s rights and freedoms have been severely restricted.
Under Taliban rules on segregating people by gender, women have been allowed to visit parks on three days every week – Sunday, Monday, Tuesday – and men on the remaining four.
Now women won’t be allowed even if accompanied by male relatives.
“We’ve done this because in the past 15 months, despite our efforts, people have been going to the park and not respecting Sharia laws,” Mohammed Akif, spokesman for the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, told the BBC.
“The restriction is for all women, whether they are with or without a mahram [male escort].”
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES Image caption, Taliban fighters – seen here in September 2021 – were spotted visiting a park soon after arriving in the capital The ban on women extends to amusement parks that usually have rides like bumper cars or a ferris wheel, and where families visit together with their children.
It appears to be in force only in the capital for now, but in the past such rules have eventually applied across the country.
One woman who Reuters news agency caught up with at the entrance to a Kabul park was disappointed after being turned away.
“When a mother comes with their children, they must be allowed to enter the park, because these children haven’t seen anything good… they must play and be entertained,” said Masooma, who gave only her first name for security reasons.
Under the Taliban women in Afghanistan have been subjected to a series of curbs on their freedoms.A number of women have been beaten for demanding their rights.
Women are barred from going on longer distance journeys without a male chaperone. Teenage girls have still not returned to school in most of the country, despite Taliban promises to allow them to do so.
While some women still work in sectors such as healthcare and education, most were told not to go to work after the Taliban swept back to power. In May a decree was passed ordering women to wear the Islamic face veil in public, although some in urban areas can still be seen failing to comply.
The Taliban have vowed there will be no brutal repression of women as there was when they were first in power in the 1990s.
They say they now respect women’s rights in line with Sharia law, and are not against women being educated or having jobs.
But Western diplomats have indicated to the Taliban that resuming development funding for a country in deep economic crisis depends on the treatment of women improving.
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Taliban official: Women barred from using Afghanistan’s gyms
According to a Kabul official, the Taliban have banned women from using gyms in Afghanistan as part of their latest religious edict which restricts women’s rights and freedoms since taking power more than a year ago.
The Taliban took over the country last year and will take power in August 2021. Despite initial promises to the contrary, they have barred girls from middle and high school, restricted women from most fields of employment, and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public.
According to a spokesman for the Ministry of Virtue and Vice, the ban was implemented because people were disobeying gender segregation orders and women were not wearing the required headscarf, or hijab. Parks are also off-limits to women.
The ban on women using gyms and parks came into force this week, according to Mohammed Akef Mohajer, a Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Ministry of Virtue and Vice.
The group has “tried its best” over the past 15 months to avoid closing parks and gyms for women, ordering separate days of the week for male and female access or imposing gender segregation, he said.
“But, unfortunately, the orders were not obeyed and the rules were violated, and we had to close parks and gyms for women,” said Mohajer. “In most cases, we have seen both men and women together in parks and, unfortunately, the hijab was not observed. So we had to come up with another decision and for now we ordered all parks and gyms to be closed for women.”
Taliban teams will begin monitoring establishments to check if women are still using them, he said.
A female personal trainer told The Associated Press that women and men were not exercising or training together before at the Kabul gym where she works.
“The Taliban are lying,” she insisted, speaking on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. “We were training separately.
On Thursday, she said two men claiming to be from the Ministry of Virtue and Vice entered her gym and made all the women leave.
“The women wanted to protest about the gyms (closing) but the Taliban came and arrested them,” she added. “Now we don’t know if they’re alive or dead.”
Taliban-appointed Kabul police chief spokesman Khalid Zadran said he had no immediate information about women protesting gym closures or arrests.
The U.N. special representative in Afghanistan for women, Alison Davidian, condemned the ban. “This is yet another example of the Taliban’s continued and systematic erasure of women from public life,” she said. “We call on the Taliban to reinstate all rights and freedoms for women and girls.”
Hard-liners appear to hold sway in the Taliban-led administration, which struggles to govern and remains internationally isolated. An economic downturn has driven millions more Afghans into poverty and hunger as the flow of foreign aid has slowed to a trickle.
Kabul-based women’s rights activist Sodaba Nazhand said the bans on gyms, parks, work, and school would leave many women wondering what was left for them in Afghanistan.
“It is not just a restriction for women, but also for children,” she said. “Children go to a park with their mothers, now children are also prevented from going to the park. It’s so sad and unfair.”
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The United States will not fund non-state actors in Afghanistan – Taliban sources
Taliban sources, US officials assured them during a conference in Doha.
According to Taliban sources, the US has informed Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities that it will not sponsor any armed organisations or non-state actors in the nation.
The assurances were welcomed by the Taliban as Tajik armed groups, which have been backed by the West in the past, continue to challenge the group’s leadership – even as it has managed to contain the Tajik-dominated National Resistance Front and other groups aligned with the former Western-backed government since it returned to power in August last year.
The assurances were given during a meeting between US Department of State officials and Taliban representatives in Doha earlier this month.
While few details about the meeting in the Qatari capital are available, Taliban sources told Al Jazeera its members met with members of a high-level US delegation, including the CIA deputy director.
This meeting was the first since July when the US said it killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone attack on his hiding place in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
Al-Zawahiri’s presence in Afghanistan led the West to accuse the Taliban of violating the 2020 Doha Agreement, in which the Afghan group agreed not to provide safe haven to al-Qaeda and other armed groups.
The Taliban swept into power last year in a lightning offensive but violence by armed groups such as ISIL affiliate ISKP has surged in recent months, posing a security challenge to the group.
Taliban reject US plan for Afghan assets
In the meeting, the Taliban also conveyed its rejection of the US announcement that it would transfer $3.5bn in frozen Afghan central bank assets into a Swiss-based trust, according to the Taliban sources, who have knowledge about the meetings.
Last month, the Taliban said the US decision to put part of nearly $10bn in Afghan assets – which it froze last August in an attempt to keep the Taliban from accessing it – into trust was “unacceptable and a violation of international norms”.
The US announcement had said the fund will be managed by an international board of trustees and used for debt payments, electricity, food, printing new currency and other essential needs and services.
The Afghan group has repeatedly called for the lifting of sanctions and the release of frozen funds, including international aid that was suspended after the Taliban takeover, to help its dying economy. Sanctions that had been placed on the Taliban during their first period of rule that ended in 2001 came back into force with them taking power last year.
The Taliban’s isolation
More than half of Afghanistan’s 39 million people need humanitarian help and six million are at risk of famine, the United Nations said in August.
No country has recognized the Taliban’s self-styled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and its diplomatic and financial isolation has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in the country, which has suffered from decades of war, including the last 20 years under US occupation.
The international community has urged the Taliban to respect human rights, including allowing girls access to schools and workplaces. But the group has put in place increasing curbs on human rights, further angering the international community and dashing any hopes of recognition.
However, the revelations about the Doha meeting show the US continues to engage with the Taliban despite the rift.
A state department spokesperson confirmed the Doha meetings to Al Jazeera.
“As we’ve made clear, we’ll continue to engage the Taliban pragmatically regarding American interests,” she told Al Jazeera.
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Mark Frerichs: US hostage exchanged for Taliban-affiliated Afghan leader
The Taliban have released a US engineer they had held hostage since 2020 in exchange for an Afghan tribal leader held in US custody since 2005.
Mark Frerichs was handed over at Kabul airport on Monday, the Taliban said.
In return, they received Bashir Noorzai, a Taliban ally serving a life sentence for drug trafficking.
US President Joe Biden said that the swap required “difficult decisions” that he did not take lightly.
Mr Frerichs, 60, was abducted by the Taliban the year before the group swept back to power in Afghanistan and its Western-backed government collapsed.
He had been living and working in Kabul as a civil engineer for 10 years. Mr Frerich’s sister, Charlene Cakora, said the family had never given up hope of getting him back.
“I am so happy to hear that my brother is safe and on his way home to us. Our family has prayed for this each day of the more than 31 months he has been a hostage,” she said in a statement.
“There were some folks arguing against the deal that brought Mark home, but President Biden did what was right. He saved the life of an innocent American veteran.”
The detention of the former navy officer has been a major impediment to improving relations between the US and the Taliban, whose government is still to be recognised by any country in the world.
President Biden said in January: “The Taliban must immediately release Mark before it can expect any consideration of its aspirations for legitimacy. This is not negotiable.”
At least one other American remains in Taliban hands. Filmmaker Ivor Shearer and his Afghan producer, Faizullah Faizbakhsh, were detained in Kabul in August.
Eric Lebson, a former national security official who worked as a volunteer to help the Frerichs family, said he hoped Mr Biden’s actions to secure Mr Frerichs’ release “are an indicator of his commitment to do the same on an urgent basis for other Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad”.
“They are being held because they are Americans and they need the US government to bring them home,” Mr Lebson said.
Bashir Noorzai told reporters in Kabul his release would bring peace with the US Bashir Noorzai was given a hero’s welcome on his return to the Afghan capital, and was greeted by Taliban fighters carrying garlands of flowers.
“My release together with that of an American will make peace between the countries,” he told a news conference.
Noorzai was a close ally and friend of Taliban founder Mullah Omar and helped finance the first Taliban government in the 1990s.
He did not hold an official position but “provided strong support including weapons”, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the AFP news agency.
Noorzai had served 17 years in US custody for heroin smuggling. Prosecutors said he ran a vast opium-growing operation in Kandahar province, the Taliban’s traditional heartlands in the south of the country.
At the time of his arrest in 2005, he was considered one of the biggest drug dealers in the world, controlling more than half of Afghanistan’s drug exports, which account for most of the world’s harvest.In 2008, he was convicted by a court in New York of conspiring to smuggle more than $50m of heroin into the United States.
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One year on, Afghans at risk await evacuation, relocation
More than a year after the Taliban takeover that saw thousands of Afghans rushing to Kabul’s international airport amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal, Afghans at risk who failed to get on evacuation flights say they are still struggling to find safe and legal ways out of the country.
Among those left behind is a 49-year-old interpreter who worked for a NATO contractor in 2010 accompanying convoys in Kandahar. Only six days after the Taliban reached the capital last August, they came looking for him.
,
“They come to my house and they threatened my son and my wife (when) I was not at home. They (then) destroy my office,” he told AP via WhatsApp referring to the place where he taught English. He asked that his name not be revealed for security reasons.
This month, he was interrogated by the Taliban again for more than two hours.
During the chaotic days of the U.S. pullout, he had tried several times to reach Kabul Airport but, like many, failed to get through massive crowds made even more dangerous by attacks around the airport that killed dozens. He then tried to leave Afghanistan by crossing the land border with Pakistan but was stopped by the Taliban who demanded $700 per person to cross — money he did not have. To make matters worse, his passport is no longer valid.
Like millions of Afghans, he’s also been impacted by the country’s economic freefall, caused in part by international sanctions and vanishing foreign aid.
“We eat once a day,†the interpreter said. Still, he continues hoping he and his family will leave Afghanistan at some point.
“I never give up because of my future and my children future,†he said.
Since their return to rule, the Taliban have been trying to transition from insurgency and war to governing, with the hard-liners increasingly at odds with the pragmatists on how to run a country in the midst of a humanitarian and economic crisis. But a year on they have so far failed to gain international recognition. Initial promises to allow girls to return to school and women to continue working have been broken.
Those who have failed to evacuate include interpreters and drivers but also women journalists, activists and athletes who say they cannot live freely under a Taliban-led government.
The U.S., together with other Western nations, hastily evacuated more than 120,000 people, both foreign nationals and Afghan citizens, in August last year.
Some 46,000 Afghans who remained in the country after Aug. 31 have since applied for U.S. humanitarian parole, according to the Migration Policy Institute. But only 297 have been approved so far.
Because there is no longer a U.S. consulate in Afghanistan, asylum-seekers must make their way to other countries with consular services for in-person interviews.
The list of obstacles to getting out of Afghanistan is extensive, starting with the difficulty in obtaining passports as offices repeatedly close due to technical problems.
Source: Associated Press
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Taliban break up rare protest by Afghan women in Kabul
Taliban fighters have dispersed dozens of women protesters in Kabul, almost a year after the militant group seized power.
About 40 women marched through the Afghan capital demanding rights, before the Taliban broke it up by firing into the air.
The fighters seized their mobile phones, stopping one of the first women’s protests in months.
Since the Taliban takeover, women rights’ have been severely restricted.
The protesters chanted their demands for “bread, work and freedom”, carrying a banner reading “August 15 is a black day” – a reference to the day the Taliban captured Kabul in 2021.
Some journalists covering the march were reportedly also beaten.
In the year since the Taliban returned to power, they have issued various orders restricting the freedom of women – barring them from most government jobs, secondary education and from travelling more than 45 miles (70km) without a male guardian.
In May, the militants decreed that Afghan women will have to wear the Islamic face veil for the first time in decades.
If a woman refuses to comply, her male guardians could be sent to jail for three days – although this is not always enforced.
There have been minor sporadic protests over the past year, but any form of dissent is being crushed.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world that officially limits education by gender – a major sticking point in the Taliban’s attempts to gain international legitimacy.
Girls have been banned from receiving secondary education, the ministry for women’s affairs has been disbanded, and in many cases women have not been allowed to work.
Source: BBC
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Bomb killing: Afghan cleric killed by bomb -reports indicate
A distinguished Afghan cleric who supported the Taliban and subscribed to female education has been killed.
Reports indicate that Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani died in a suicide bomb blast in Kabul.
Speaking to Reuters, Taliban sources say the religious leader was targeted by a man who detonated explosives hidden in an artificial plastic limb.
It is not currently clear who is responsible for the killing, but he had previously been targeted by the Islamic State (IS) group.
According to local reports, the attack took place at an Islamic seminary in the Afghan capital.
Sheikh Haqqani was a supporter of Afghanistan’s Taliban government and a prominent critic of the jihadist militant group Islamic State Kohrasan Province (IS-K), a regional affiliate of IS that operates in Afghanistan and opposes the Taliban’s rule.
“It’s a very huge loss for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” a senior Taliban official told Reuters news agency, adding that authorities were investigating who was behind the attack.
Despite sharing the same name, he was not related to Afghanistan’s Haqqani militant group network.
The religious leader had previously issued a fatwa, or religious decree, in support of female education – a contentious issue inside Afghanistan.
In an interview with the BBC’s Secunder Kermani earlier this year, he argued that Afghan women and girls should be able to access education: “There is no justification in the sharia [law] to say female education is not allowed. No justification at all.”
He added: “All the religious books have stated female education is permissible and obligatory, because, for example, if a woman gets sick, in an Islamic environment like Afghanistan or Pakistan, and needs treatment, it’s much better if she’s treated by a female doctor.”
In all but a handful of provinces in the country, girls’ secondary schools have been ordered to remain closed by the Taliban.
Sheikh Haqqani had previously survived two assassination attempts, most recently in 2020 when IS claimed responsibility for an explosion at a religious school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar that killed at least seven people.
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One dead after Afghan-Iran border clash
On the border between the two nations, the Taliban, who currently control Afghanistan, have clashed with Iranian border guards. According to the militants, one of their members was killed during a battle on Sunday in the region where Nimroz province in Afghanistan and Hirmand in Iran meet.
Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan a year ago, this incident—the most recent—has been placed on both countries by the other.
Last month Iran reported the death of one of its guards in an incident in the same area.
The details of the most recent clash are unclear, but according to an Iranian account, the Taliban forces attempted to hoist their flag on non-Afghan soil when the firing began.
No casualties were recorded on the Iranian side.
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Afghan-Iran border clash: Taliban says one killed
The militants say one of their fighters was killed in Sunday’s fighting in the border area between Nimroz province in Afghanistan and Hirmand in Iran.
Each country blamed the other for the incident, the latest since the Taliban overran Afghanistan a year ago.
Last month Iran reported the death of one of its guards in an incident in the same area.
The exact circumstances of the latest skirmish are unclear but one Iranian report says shooting started when Taliban forces tried to raise their flag on non-Afghan territory.
There were reportedly no casualties on the Iranian side.
Source: BBC -
Afghanistan: How one TV presenter became a refugee
When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last August, life for many women in the country changed overnight. For one TV presenter, it meant the end of her career, along with her hopes and dreams. Now, almost a year on, she is trying to a build a new life as a refugee in the UK.
On 14 August 2021, the night before the Taliban took control of Kabul, Shabhnam Dawran was preparing to present the prime time news show on Tolo News and Radio Television Afghanistan.
In recent days, the Taliban had swept across Afghanistan and had now reached the outskirts of the capital.
The 24-year-old Shabhnam was a rising star. She went on air to break the news to viewers who were glued to their TV screens following every development of the story.
“I was so emotional that I couldn’t even read the lead story. People watching me at home could tell what I was going through,” she says.
When she woke the next morning, Kabul had fallen to the militant group.
A Taliban member, with the group’s black and white flag behind him, was now sitting in the same seat in the studio where Shabhnam had sat the night before.
It marked the end of an era.
Image source, Radio Television Afghanistan Image caption, People were sharing before and after screengrabs from Radio Television Afghanistan
At their first official news conference, a Taliban spokesman told a room filled with journalists that women could work “shoulder to shoulder with men”.
The next day, a nervous but excited Shabhnam put on her work clothes and made her way to the office.
But as soon as she arrived, she was confronted by Taliban soldiers, who she says were guarding the building and only allowing male workers to enter.
Shabhnam says a soldier told her that “in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, we haven’t decided about women yet”. Another soldier, she says, told her: “You’ve worked enough, now it’s our time.”
When she told them she had every right to work, Shabhnam says one of the soldiers pointed his rifle at her, placed his finger on the trigger and said: “One bullet will be enough for you – will you leave or should I shoot you here?”
She then left, but posted a video describing the encounter on social media. It went viral, putting her and her family’s life in danger.
She packed a small bag and fled the country a few days later, taking her two younger siblings – Meena and Hemat – with her.
Image caption, Shabhnam (left) with her younger brother and sister, Hemat and Meena, in their local park in north LondonA new life
Shabhnam and her siblings later arrived in the UK, along with thousands of other Afghan refugees. They faced a long wait to be settled.
As a refugee with no English and limited job prospects, Shabhnam had a hard time adjusting to her new surroundings.
“I feel like I lost the six years I worked in Afghanistan. Now I have to learn English and go to university. On the first days we couldn’t even go shopping. If we needed some essentials, we couldn’t express what we wanted. It was extremely difficult and painful.”
Almost a year on, the majority of recent Afghan refugees in the UK remain in hotels across the country. Shabhnam and her siblings, however, have been lucky – they were provided with a council house earlier this year.
“Our life starts now. We’re like a new baby that has to start from the very beginning,” she says with a smile as she instructs her sister Meena to put the kettle on to make “chai sabz”, the traditional Afghan green tea that contains cardamom.
They are slowly getting used to life in London and have been enjoying their first English summer, though they still miss home.
“I’m a local now,” Shabhnam says, giggling. She knows where to find the bakery with the warm bread that looks and smells like the ones they had back home, and where to get the best dried fruit and green tea.
She and her sister are now studying English at a college and her brother attends secondary school.
Image caption, Shabhnam and Meena are adjusting to life in London – and their new homeShabhnam believes her family has been well supported by the UK government, but worries about other Afghan refugees, some of whom are her friends. She says their plight has been overshadowed by the war in Ukraine.
“Processing the cases of Afghans, and especially those stuck in hotels, has been massively delayed because of Ukrainian refugees. They [the British government] have put a limit on Afghans coming to the UK but not on Ukrainians. They shouldn’t have behaved like that with Afghans.”
The BBC put her concerns to the UK Home Office. It said: “It is wrong to set these two vulnerable groups against each other. Our Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme will provide up to 20,000 women, children and other at risk groups with a safe and legal route to resettle in the UK.
“The housing of Afghan individuals and families can be a complex process. We are working with over 300 local authorities across the UK to meet the demand and have moved – or are in the process of moving – over 6,000 people into homes since June 2021.”
A lot has changed in Afghanistan since Shabhnam left home. Girls have been banned from going to secondary school in most parts of the country, parks have been segregated and women have been ordered to cover their faces.
This rule has particularly affected female TV presenters who have been forced to wear face coverings on air.
Image source, ReutersImage caption, The Taliban have ordered female presenters to cover their faces when appearing on TVShabhnam sympathises with her colleagues who have no choice but to accept the harsh edicts if they wish to continue working.
“[The Taliban] want to force women to say ‘we give up, we don’t want to come to work anymore and we submit to staying at home’,” she says. “Until they change their way of thinking, they’ll not bring a positive change in society.”
But she has not given up hope of one day returning to Afghanistan.
“Like a glass that falls on the floor and breaks into pieces, my hopes, plans and dreams were shattered,” she says.
“I hope for a day when Afghanistan is a place where people are not just surviving – but thriving. I will not be in doubt of returning then.”
Source: BBC
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Afghanistan: In a quiet valley the Taliban face armed resistance
Travelling through the scenic Andarab valley north of Kabul there is no visible sign of conflict.
But whilst the Taliban are more powerful and better armed than ever before, here and in neighbouring province of Panjshir they are facing a nascent armed resistance to their rule in Afghanistan.
Small groups of guerrillas, hidden away on mountain tops, led by soldiers from the former Afghan army, have been launching ambushes and engaging in clashes with the Taliban.
Driving past fertile, green fields, we are accompanied by the Taliban at all times, and under their watchful eye locals praise improved security under their rule and are dismissive of the rebels. Some of the praise does appear genuine, but in the side street of one bazaar, a man tells us darkly: “I can’t tell you the truth – if I did, I could be killed.”
It is difficult to get a sense of the true scale of the fighting – the resistance forces often exaggerate their strength, whilst the Taliban outright deny their presence. In Panjshir, however, anti-Taliban fighters managed to shoot down a military helicopter and capture those on board.
Elsewhere in Baghlan Province, resistance fighters have recently filmed themselves pulling down a Taliban flag from a military post.
When the BBC travelled to the Andarab valley in June, however, the Taliban appeared in firm control of the territory.
We visit the village of Qais Tarrach and are assured by the local military commander that “there are no problems”.
Image caption, Military commander Qari Jumadin Badri denies the presence of resistance fighters “You can see for yourself, we only have a very small military presence here,” Qari Jumadin Badri, who leads a battalion from the army’s Omari Corps, tells me from a hilltop overlooking the valley.
But we have been reliably told of an ambush by resistance forces on a Taliban vehicle close to here in May, in which two Taliban members were killed.
“That was a long time ago,” Mr Badri says. “We launched some operations in the mountains and now there is nothing.”
In Panjshir videos have emerged of long convoys of Taliban reinforcements, but there too Taliban officials have denied consistent reports of clashes.
Andarab, the other bastion of anti-Taliban sentiment, appears less heavily militarised, but speaking secretly to local residents we have been told of repeated and serious allegations of human rights abuses carried out by the Taliban in trying to stamp out the resistance movement.
A relative of a villager named Abdul Hashim tells us he and three other men were detained and killed by the Taliban immediately after the ambush near Qais Tarrach, after wrongly being accused of involvement in the attack.
“He had his hands tied and was shot in the head and chest,” the relative said.
Image caption, Abdul Hashim (left) and Noorullah, said to have been detained and killed by the Taliban He shared photographs of Abdul Hashim’s body and said his brother-in-law, Noorullah, had also been killed in the incident.
“They didn’t let men attend Abdul Hashim’s funeral,” he told the BBC. “Only women were allowed to bury him.”
One resident, who was also detained alongside the men by the Taliban during the search operation following the ambush, told the BBC around 20 men had been taken away from their village by the Taliban towards the location of the ambush, where they were beaten on their legs with metal cables and sticks.
“They put me in the back of one pick-up truck, someone pushed our heads down… Noorullah and Abdul Hashim were in another truck – they took them down and behind a Humvee and shot them by a small stream,” he said.
Two other men from the same village were also killed that day.
There are other worrying allegations. A group of four men, travelling towards Tagharak village, a hotspot of resistance activity, were stopped and questioned by the Taliban in June, then allegedly killed.
Last year, shortly after the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August, resistance fighters in Andarab said they had briefly “liberated” a number of districts.
After they were recaptured by the Taliban, a doctor named Zainuddin was murdered at his home along with five of his relatives including young children. A relative alleged he had been killed for having provided treatment to resistance fighters.
“As a doctor, it was his duty to treat everyone,” said the relative angrily.
In February this year another doctor, Dr Khorami, from Deh Salah district, was also killed. A relative alleged he had previously received threats from the Taliban warning him to stop treating those linked to the resistance.
Locals said a third doctor remained in custody, whilst a number of families accused of having links to the resistance said they had been told to leave their villages.
Image source, AFPImage caption, The Taliban’s control of Andarab and Panjshir is not at present threatened – but their fighters have come under attack The Taliban’s head of information in Baghlan province, where Andarab is situated, Asadullah Hashimi, rejected the allegations.
A doctor had been killed in the area, he admitted, but he ascribed the incident to “personal enmity”.
As for the allegations of extra-judicial killings, Mr Hashimi was categorical in denying any detainee had been killed, though he added, if anyone “violently resists government forces” during an operation they could be killed or arrested.
“That happens everywhere in the world.”
Mr Hashimi refused to recognise the presence of resistance forces in the region, instead referring to a small number of “terrorists”, but the area has a long history of opposition to the Taliban.
Both Andarab and Panjshir are dominated by the Persian-speaking Tajik community, whereas the Taliban are predominantly Pashtun.
The Taliban have managed to successfully recruit some locals into their ranks, unlike their previous regime in the 1990s. A number of local Taliban intelligence and police chiefs are Tajik or Persian-speaking, as are some of the soldiers stationed in Andarab.
Most others, however, are Pashtun. Many in Andarab worked in the security forces of the previous Afghan government and now strongly oppose the Taliban, regarding them as outsiders.
Some of the relatives of the victims of extra-judicial killings, however, also criticised the resistance forces, saying their guerrilla tactics left the civilian population vulnerable to Taliban reprisals.
Image caption, Residents of Andarab and Panjshir can find themselves caught between resistance fighters and the Taliban The BBC managed to establish contact with one senior resistance fighter in Andarab, Commander Shuja.
In a pre-recorded message, responding to questions sent to him, he told the BBC: “Our fight is for justice, for brotherhood, equality and for the real Islam, not the Islam of the Taliban – which defames the religion…
“Our fight is for the rights of our sisters. The Prophet Muhammad said education is compulsory for both men and women.”
The violence in Andarab and Panjshir is localised and does not yet represent a serious threat to the Taliban’s overall control of the country, but they look to be at risk of repeating some of the same mistakes as their old opponents.
Over the past two decades, intrusive raids and allegations of the killing of innocent civilians by Afghan and international forces helped fuel the Taliban’s popularity in parts of the country where they already had a presence and a degree of support.
Now, they are accused of using those same counter-insurgency tactics, whilst there appears to be little sense of accountability.
Speaking angrily, the relative of Abdul Hashim, who was allegedly detained and killed by the Taliban, told the BBC: “The Taliban claim to be a government, so they should investigate someone, not just kill them straight away.”
Source: BBC
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Freed Taliban prisoners eye return to the battlefield
Afghan authorities are opening prison doors for thousands of Taliban inmates in a high-risk gambit to ensure the insurgent group begin peace talks with Kabul.
Security concerns are mounting as many of the newly liberated fighters say they are ready to resume their holy war.
“If the Americans do not pull out, we will continue our jihad, because they have killed many Afghans in their operations,” said Mohamed Daud, who was freed from Bagram jail north of Kabul last month.
“We do not want foreign forces in our country anymore,” he told AFP, dressed in a traditional shalwar kameez, before taking a taxi back to his village with a cash handout from authorities worth $65.
US forces arrested Daud, 28, in the northwest province of Faryab nine years ago.
Afghan authorities accelerated the planned release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including Daud, as a “goodwill gesture” after the insurgents called a three-day ceasefire to mark the Eid holiday.
Those released include members training to be suicide bombers, suicide vest makers, kidnappers and even foreign fighters, a security official said.
The move is part of a larger prisoner swap agreed as a precursor to peace talks starting.
Before their release, inmates were required to sign a pledge that they would not pick up arms again. It is increasingly clear such commitments mean little.
A Taliban commander in Pakistan told AFP there should be “no ambiguity” that the released men will eventually be deployed to Afghanistan’s front lines.
“It’s an ongoing jihad, and will continue until and unless we reach some sort of agreement with the Kabul government,” he said.
Several other freed insurgents say they remain angry at US troops, but under a US-Taliban deal signed in February, the insurgents committed to stopping attacking American and foreign forces as they withdraw from the country by next year.
The immediate enemy is instead the struggling Afghan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF), with whom no such pledge has been made.
‘Additional leaders, fighters’
A key concession Washington extracted from the Taliban during negotiations was the requirement to begin peace talks with Kabul.
In return, the Afghan government must release 5,000 insurgent inmates while the Taliban pledged to free 1,000 security force prisoners.
Since the swap started, Afghan authorities have freed 3,000 Taliban inmates while the insurgents have released more than 750 government prisoners, officials said.
It could represent a boost of up to 10 per cent for the Taliban’s fighting force, with estimates on the number of insurgents ranging between 50,000 and 100,000.
Afghan security officials said the US did not consult them as Washington and the Taliban finalised the prisoner swap.
The Taliban heralded the US deal as proof they have defeated America in its longest war, and the bluster has only grown in recent months.
“Politics and negotiations should not be taken to mean that we will neglect jihadi affairs and the strengthening and development of our jihadi military force,” Taliban deputy leader Sirajuddin Haqqani said in a broadcast last week.
The Taliban now find themselves in a win-win situation – even if peace talks with Kabul fail.
With its key donor calling the shots, the Afghan government had no choice but to yield to Washington’s demand to proceed with the exchange.
Still, some observers hold out hope for successful peace talks that would bring an end to Afghanistan’s 19-year-old war.
“These talks hold a better hope for a lasting ceasefire than any other current approach,” said Andrew Watkins, an analyst with International Crisis Group.
“Swift initiation of talks is the best way to eliminate that threat.”
No start date has been set for the talks.
Source:Â france24.com
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Afghanistan: Taliban announce three-day Eid ceasefire with government
The Taliban have announced a ceasefire with the Afghan government that will take effect when the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr begins on Sunday.
It follows a rise in attacks by the hardline Islamist group against government troops in recent weeks.
President Ashraf Ghani welcomed the announcement, and said his soldiers would respect the terms of the truce.
The three-day ceasefire is likely to raise hopes of a longer-term reduction in violence in the country.
But a similar ceasefire was announced for same festival in 2018 and was not extended.
“Do not carry out any offensive operations against the enemy anywhere. If any action is taken against you by the enemy, defend yourself,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Saturday.
He added that the ceasefire had been declared solely for Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
“I welcome the ceasefire announcement,” Mr Ghani wrote on Twitter shortly after. “I have instructed [the military] to comply with the three-day truce and to defend only if attacked.”
Source:Â bbc.com
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Dozens dead in fresh wave of Taliban violence in Afghanistan
The Taliban have killed at least 23 Afghan troops and nine civilians, officials said Monday, as a fresh wave of violence grips Afghanistan despite a deal with the US and a worsening coronavirus crisis.
Under the terms of the US-Taliban deal, the Afghan government and the insurgents were by now supposed to have concluded a prisoner exchange and started talks aimed at bringing about a comprehensive ceasefire.
But the stalled prisoner swap has been beset with problems — with Kabul claiming the Taliban are demanding the release of some of the group’s most notorious warriors — and peace talks seem as elusive ever amid ongoing attacks.
Late Sunday night in Takhar province in northeast Afghanistan, the Taliban struck an Afghan army base, killing 16 soldiers and two policemen, provincial police spokesman Khalil Asir told AFP.
The governor’s spokesman, Mohammad Jawad Hejri, confirmed the attack and also blamed the Taliban, putting the death toll at 19.
In the south, the Taliban attacked a police checkpoint near Tarin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province.
“Five Afghan policemen were killed and three others were wounded,” Zilgai Ebadi, the provincial governor’s spokesman, told AFP.
The toll was confirmed by the head of Uruzgan provincial council, Amir Mohammad.
In the northern province of Balkh, the Taliban killed nine civilians after they resisted when insurgents tried to extort money from them, district governor Sayed Arif Iqbali told AFP.
The Taliban did not immediately comment, but they have previously complained their fighters are still being targeted by US and Afghan forces.
The violence has mostly been limited to rural areas and small towns. Under the framework of the US-Taliban deal, the insurgents have agreed not to attack cities.
Under the US-Taliban deal, American and other foreign forces are meant to quit Afghanistan by July 2021, provided the Taliban stick to several security guarantees and hold talks with the Afghan government.
Fighting has continued even as coronavirus spreads throughout Afghanistan.
It has so far seen 1,026 cases of coronavirus and 36 deaths, though real numbers are feared to be much higher as the impoverished country has only limited testing capabilities.
Source:Â AFP
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Taliban truck bomb kills police, wounds children in Afghanistan
A Â Taliban suicide bomber has killed at least three security officers and wounded dozens, mostly children, when he set off explosives in a truck near a police headquarters building in eastern Afghanistan, officials have said.
The spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs, Nasrat Rahimi, said Wednesday’s attack in Alishang district, in Laghman province, wounded 36 people, mainly civilians.
Asadullah Daulatzai, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said among the wounded were 20 children studying inside a nearby religious school, which was also damaged.
Read:Taliban car bomb hits hospital in Afghan province of Zabul
“The students were wounded by flying glass,” he said. “The explosion was huge.”
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, confirmed in a statement that fighters had used a large truck, packed with explosives in the attack, leaving dozens of Afghan security forces dead and wounded.
Rescuers searched through the ruins of buildings destroyed by the blast.
Read:More Americans will die after Trump abruptly ends Afghan talks, Taliban say
“We, with the rescue teams, are still looking for bodies under the rubble,” Obaidullah, a resident, told Reuters news agency.
The attack came during a relative lull in violence after a presidential election last month that saw a surge in attacks by the Taliban, who denounced the vote as a sham.
The United Nations said 85 civilians were killed in election-related Taliban violence.
Afghanistan is currently awaiting the results of the first round.
Source:Â aljazeera.com
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Taliban car bomb hits hospital in Afghan province of Zabul
A Taliban car bomb has killed at least 20 people and wounded 95 others when it exploded near a hospital in southern Afghanistan, officials said.
The armed group said the target of the attack on Thursday was a nearby government intelligence department building in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province.
A senior defence ministry official in Kabul said the fighters wanted to target a training base for the country’s powerful security agency the National Directorate of Security (NDS), but parked the explosives-laden vehicle outside a hospital gate nearby.
Residents, many of whom had come to see their sick family members, used shawls and blankets to carry the wounded inside the destroyed hospital building, while authorities scrambled to take the worst of the wounded to hospitals in nearby Kandahar.
Read:More Americans will die after Trump abruptly ends Afghan talks, Taliban say
Haji Atta Jan Haqbayan, a member of the provincial council in Qalat, said 20 bodies and 95 wounded had been evacuated from the blast site.
Haqbayan said the wall of the NDS building was damaged. He couldn’t say whether any personnel were among the casualties.
“The number of casualties may rise as rescue teams and people are still searching the bodies under the rubble,” he said.
Several women, children, health workers and patients in the hospital were critically injured the blast.
On Wednesday, at least 48 people were killed in the Afghan capital Kabul in two separate attacks, one of which was aimed at a campaign rally of President Ashraf Ghani.
Read:Taliban claim bomb attack in Afghan capital
The Taliban has warned in recent days that its fighters will intensify their campaign against the Afghan government and foreign forces to dissuade people from voting in the September 28 poll. President Ghani is running for a second five-year term.
After months of peace talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, US President Donald Trump last week abruptly called off the talks with the Taliban following the killing of an American marine in a suicide attack.
The US president, who is eager to end US involvement in the 18-year-old Afghan war, was open to withdrawing thousands of American troops from Afghanistan in exchange for security guarantees from the armed group.
The talks, which did not include the Afghan government, were intended as a prelude to wider peace negotiations.
Source:Â aljazeera.com
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Afghanistan war: Taliban tell Trump their ‘doors are open’
The Taliban have told the BBC that their “doors are open” should US President Donald Trump want to resume peace talks in the future.
Chief negotiator Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai insisted negotiation remained “the only way for peace in Afghanistan” during an exclusive interview.
Mr Stanikzai’s words came a week after Mr Trump declared the talks “dead”.
Earlier this month, the two sides had appeared close to a deal to end the 18-year conflict.
Mr Trump had even invited senior Taliban leaders and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to meet at Camp David on 8 September.
But a Taliban attack in the Afghan capital Kabul on 6 September, which killed a US soldier and 11 others, prompted Mr Trump to pull out, saying the group “probably don’t have the power to negotiate” if they were unable to agree to a ceasefire during talks.
Read:More Americans will die after Trump abruptly ends Afghan talks, Taliban say
Late on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement condemning recent Taliban attacks, saying the group “must begin to demonstrate a genuine commitment to peace”.
Mr Stanikzai dismissed American concerns, telling the BBC the Taliban had done nothing wrong.
“They killed thousands of Talibans according to them,” he told the BBC’s chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet. “But in the meantime, if one [US] soldier has been killed that doesn’t mean they should show that reaction because there is no ceasefire from both sides.”
“From our side, our doors are open for negotiations,” he added. “So we hope the other side also rethink their decision regarding the negotiation.”
What did the deal include?
The full and exact details are not known.
However, Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington’s top negotiator, revealed some details of the agreement “in principle” – including the US withdrawing 5,400 troops from Afghanistan within 20 weeks – during a television interview on 3 September.
In exchange for the troop withdrawal, the Taliban were willing to pledge that Afghanistan would never again be used as a base for foreign terrorism.
Mr Stanikzai told the BBC a ceasefire between the Taliban and foreign troops would have come into effect after the agreement was signed.
Read:As many as 100 Afghan security forces killed in Taliban attack
However, no such ceasefire would have existed between the Taliban and Afghan government forces, he said.
The Taliban – who are now in control of more territory than at any point before the 2001 US-led invasion – do not recognise the legitimacy of President Ashraf Ghani’s administration. They have refused to hold direct talks with the Afghan government until a US deal is agreed.
Mr Stanikzai said intra-Afghan talks would have started on 23 September, had a deal been reached, and would have included discussions about a wider ceasefire.
He also confirmed that the Taliban had approached both Russia and China for help in the peace negotiations.
Meanwhile the Afghan national security advisor said that Taliban “intimidation tactics” would not succeed.
“The only way they can see peace in Afghanistan is by negotiating with the Afghan government,” Dr Hamdullah Mohibt told the BBC.
He added: “Open discussions with our neighbours, those who are sponsoring and supporting the Taliban – that needs to be at the front of our discussions, not the back of it.”
Source:Â bbc.com
