Taliban
Taliban bar women from university education in Afghanistan
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Tuesday banned female students from attending universities effective immediately in the latest edict cracking down on women’s rights and freedoms.
Despite initially promising a more moderate rule respecting rights for women’s and minorities, the Taliban have widely implemented their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.
They have banned girls from middle school and high school, restricted women from most employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms.
The Taliban were ousted in 2001 by a U.S.-led coalition for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and returned to power after America’s chaotic departure last year.
Read: Taliban official: 27 people lashed in public in Afghanistan
The decision was announced after a government meeting. A letter shared by the spokesman for the Ministry of Higher Education, Ziaullah Hashmi, told private and public universities to implement the ban as soon as possible and to inform the ministry once the ban is in place.
Hashmi tweeted the letter and confirmed its contents in a message to The Associated Press without giving further details.
The decision is certain to hurt efforts by the Taliban to win recognition from potential international donors at a time when the country is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis. The international community has urged Taliban leaders to reopen schools and give women their right to public space.
The university ban comes weeks after Afghan girls took their high school graduation exams, even though they have been banned from classrooms since the Taliban took over the country last year.
“I can’t fulfill my dreams, my hopes. Everything is disappearing before my eyes and I can’t do anything about it,” said a third-year journalism and communication student at Nangarhar University. She did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals.
“Is being a girl a crime? If that’s the case, I wish I wasn’t a girl,” she added. “My father had dreams for me, that his daughter would become a talented journalist in the future. That is now destroyed. So, you tell me, how will a person feel in this situation?”
Read: Taliban: 2 civilians killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan
She added that she had not lost all hope yet.
“God willing, I will continue my studies in any way. I’m starting online studies. And, if it doesn’t work, I will have to leave the country and go to another country,” she said.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the decision, calling it another “broken promise” from the Taliban and a “very troubling” move.
“It’s difficult to imagine how a country can develop, can deal with all of the challenges that it has, without the active participation of women and the education,” Guterres said.
Robert Wood, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the Taliban cannot expect to be a legitimate member of the international community until they respect the rights of all Afghans.
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the United States also condemned the move by the Taliban.
“This deplorable decision is the latest effort by Taliban leadership to impose additional restrictions on women and girls in Afghanistan and prevent them from exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms,” Watson said.
“As a result of this unacceptable stance to hold back half of the population of Afghanistan, the Taliban will be further alienated from the international community and denied the legitimacy they desire,” she added.
Afghanistan’s U.N. seat is still held by the previous government led by former President Ashraf Ghani, despite the Taliban’s request to represent the country at the United Nations, which was recently deferred again.
Afghanistan’s charge d’affairs Naseer Ahmed Faiq said at the U.N. that the announcement “marks a new low in violation of most fundamental and universal human rights for all of humanity.”
Pakistani Taliban overpower guards, seize police center
Several Pakistani Taliban detainees have managed to overpower their guards at a counter-terrorism center in northwestern Pakistan, snatching police weapons and taking control of the facility, officials said Monday.
The militants at the detention center in Bannu, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and part of a former tribal region, also took police and others inside the compound hostage, according to Mohammad Ali Saif, a spokesman for the provincial government.
Officials say at least 30 Taliban fighters are involved in the takeover and that there could be as many as 10 hostages being held.
The brazen action reflected the Pakistani government’s inability to exercise control at all times over the remote region along the border with Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban are a separate group but also allied with the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in the neighboring country last year, as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout from Afghanistan.
Few other details have emerged about the incident, which started late on Sunday — apparently while police were interrogating the Taliban detainees, according to Saif.
By Monday morning, Pakistan had dispatched military troops and special police forces to the area as security official were trying to negotiate with the hostage-takers. Saif said the place was surrounded and that an operation was underway. He did not elaborate.
Read: Taliban official: 27 people lashed in public in Afghanistan
Authorities were still in talks with the hostage-takers, enlisting the help of several relatives of the Taliban insurgents, security officials told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
The officials said some soldiers were also among the hostages. There were concerns that the military could storm the facility if negotiations fail. In a video message circulating on social media, the hostage-takers threatened to kill the officers if their safe passage was not quickly arranged by the government.
Mohammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban — also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP — confirmed the incident. He said some of the hostage-takers were members of the Pakistani Taliban who had been detained for years. Khurasani said the TTP fighters were demanding safe passage to North or South Waziristan.
Those areas were a Taliban stronghold until a wave of military offensives over the past years declared the region cleared of insurgents. Since then, TTP’s top leaders and fighters have been hiding in neighboring Afghanistan though the militants still have relatively free reign in patches of the province.
Earlier, in a video message, the hostage-takers had demanded they be airlifted to Afghanistan but Khurasani said that demand had been made by mistake, since their fighters were not aware — due to their prolonged detention — that TTP now “enjoys control in some” parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, near the Afghan border.
Read: Taliban captured, bound and shot to death 27 men in Afghan province: Report
The Pakistani Taliban have stepped up attacks on security forces since last month, when they unilaterally ended a monthslong cease-fire with the Pakistani government. The violence has strained relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, who had brokered the cease-fire in May.
The TTP has waged an insurgency in Pakistan over the past 15 years, fighting for stricter enforcement of Islamic laws 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.
Taliban official: 27 people lashed in public in Afghanistan
Twenty-seven people were lashed in public on Thursday in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan as punishment for alleged adultery, theft, drug offenses and other crimes, according to a court official.
Afghanistan’s new authorities have implemented hard-line policies since they took over the country in August 2021 that have underlined their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.
The country’s Supreme Court issued the final rulings after appeals. In a statement, the court said the lashings took place in the northern province of Parwan, with 18 men and nine women punished in all.
Abdul Rahim Rashid, an official with the court, said the men and women were each lashed between 25 to 39 times. An unspecified number of those punished also received two-year prison terms in Charakar, the provincial capital, he added.
The lashings were carried out before a “public gathering of locals and officials,” Rashid added.
Read: Rights group: Taliban unlawfully killed 13 ethnic Hazaras
Provincial officials and local residents attended the public punishments, during which officials spoke about the importance of Sharia law, added the court statement.
Thursday’s lashings come a day after the Taliban authorities executed an Afghan convicted of killing another man, the first public execution since the former insurgents returned to power last year.
The execution, carried out with an assault rifle by the victim’s father, took place in western Farah province before hundreds of spectators and many top Taliban officials, according to Zabihullah Mujahid, the top government spokesman. Some officials came from the capital Kabul.
The execution was met with international criticism. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “the death penalty cannot be reconciled with full respect for the right to life,” spokeswoman Stephanie Tremblay said.
In comments late Wednesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the U.S. condemned the public execution. Price said the Taliban’s future relationship with Washington depended “largely on their actions when it comes to human rights.”
No foreign state has officially recognized the Taliban government that took over as U.S. and NATO troops withdrew last year. The Taliban formerly ruled Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion of 2001.
On Thursday, spokesman Mujahid rejected international criticisms of the Taliban government.
“Unfortunately, a number of countries and institutions still do not have a proper knowledge and understanding of Afghanistan,” he said.
Read: Now silent under Taliban, a Kabul cinema awaits its fate
Mujahid pointed out that capital punishment was practiced in many other countries including the United States.
A separate court statement said that earlier this week, three men convicted of theft were lashed in public in the eastern province of Paktika.
During the previous Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the group carried out public executions, floggings and stonings.
After they overran Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban initially promised to allow for women’s and minority rights. Instead, they have restricted rights and freedoms, including imposing a ban on girl’s education beyond the sixth grade.
The former insurgents have struggled in their transition from warfare to governing amid an economic downturn and the international community’s withdrawal of aid.
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.
“Today, the vast majority of Afghans don’t have access to legal identity, meaning if they need tomorrow to be able to get to safety legally, they can’t,” said Nassim Majidi, co-founder and executive director of Samuel Hall, an independent think tank that conducts research on migration and displacement. Majidi was speaking at a seminar organized by the Migration Policy Institute looking at the situation of Afghans in Afghanistan and abroad a year after the withdrawal.
Read: Taliban: 2 civilians killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan
Around 2,000 Afghans and their families who worked with NATO, its agencies, and member countries were among those evacuated from Kabul according to the military alliance. But the evacuations were organized by individual member countries. NATO, as an organization, had no repatriation plan.
Evacuations from third countries are still happening, although sporadically. Earlier this month a plane carrying nearly 300 Afghans who had collaborated with the Spanish government landed in Madrid. Germany and France also have continued to work on evacuation cases, Majidi said.
But thousands of Afghans are still living in limbo in third countries including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo and Albania while they wait for their applications to be processed for resettlement to the United States and Canada.
Though life-saving for many, the evacuations also fractured families. Among them is that of an Afghan journalist who asked to remain anonymous, fearing for the safety of her relatives in Kabul.
“It was really difficult to leave everything behind in an hour,” she told the Associated Press in a phone interview from her new home in Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, which she moved into after months of living in a temporary refugee shelter.
The government of the Netherlands had called her on Aug. 26 offering a single spot on an evacuation flight. Her relatives told her she needed to save herself first if she wanted to help them.
A year later, three of her family members have recently managed to get evacuated to France, she said. But despite repeated family reunification requests to the Netherlands and other European countries, the majority of her siblings remain in Kabul, living across the street from a police station now in Taliban hands.
On June 17 one of her older brothers was allegedly beaten to death by Taliban forces on the street after he was found carrying a photo of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance that fought the Taliban, she said.
Days later, she said, the men showed up at the family’s home and forced them to sign a death certificate that stated he had died of “natural causes.” The AP was unable to independently verify her claims.
With most of her family still in Afghanistan and many bureaucratic hurdles to face in the Netherlands, it has been difficult to start a new life, she said.
“Until now it is just darkness.”
Afghan girls face uncertain future after 1 year of no school
For most teenage girls in Afghanistan, it’s been a year since they set foot in a classroom. With no sign the ruling Taliban will allow them back to school, some are trying to find ways to keep education from stalling for a generation of young women.
At a house in Kabul, dozens gathered on a recent day for classes in an informal school set up by Sodaba Nazhand. She and her sister teach English, science and math to girls who should be in secondary school.
“When the Taliban wanted to take away the rights of education and the rights of work from women, I wanted to stand against their decision by teaching these girls,” Nazhand told The Associated Press.
Hers is one of a number of underground schools in operation since the Taliban took over the country a year ago and banned girls from continuing their education past the sixth grade. While the Taliban have permitted women to continue attending universities, this exception will become irrelevant when there are no more girls graduating from high schools.
“There is no way to fill this gap, and this situation is very sad and concerning,” Nazhand said.
The relief agency Save the Children interviewed nearly 1,700 boys and girls between the ages of 9 and 17 in seven provinces to assess the impact of the education restrictions.
The survey, conducted in May and June and released Wednesday, found that more than 45% of girls are not going to school, compared with 20% of boys. It also found that 26% of girls are showing signs of depression, compared with 16% of boys.
Also read: Amnesty: Taliban crackdown on rights is 'suffocating' women
Nearly the entire population of Afghanistan was thrown into poverty and millions were left unable to feed their families when the world cut off financing in response to the Taliban takeover.
Teachers, parents and experts all warn that the country's multiple crises, including the devastating collapse of the economy, are proving especially damaging to girls. The Taliban have restricted women’s work, encouraged them to stay at home and issued dress codes requiring them to cover their faces, except for their eyes, though the codes are not always enforced.
The international community is demanding that the Taliban open schools for all girls, and the U.S. and EU have created plans to pay salaries directly to Afghanistan’s teachers, keeping the sector going without putting the funds through the Taliban.
But the question of girls’ education appears to have been tangled in behind-the-scenes differences among the Taliban. Some in the movement support returning girls to school — whether because they see no religious objection to it or because they want to improve ties with the world. Others, especially rural, tribal elders who make up the backbone of the movement, staunchly oppose it.
During their first time ruling Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban imposed much stricter restrictions on women, banning school for all girls, barring women from work and requiring them to wear an all-encompassing burka if they went outside.
Also read: Afghan man charged in killing of 2 Muslims in Albuquerque
In the 20 years after the Taliban were driven from power in 2001, an entire generation of women returned to school and work, particularly in urban areas. Seemingly acknowledging those changes, the Taliban reassured Afghans when they seized control again last year that they would not return to the heavy hand of the past.
Officials have publicly insisted that they will allow teen girls back into school, but say time is needed to set up logistics for strict gender segregation to ensure an “Islamic framework.”
Hopes were raised in March: Just before the new school year was to begin, the Taliban Education Ministry proclaimed everyone would be allowed back. But on March 23, the day of the reopening, the decision was suddenly reversed, surprising even ministry officials. It appeared that at the last minute, the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, bowed to the opposition.
Shekiba Qaderi, a 16-year-old, recalled how she showed up that day, ready to start the 10th grade. She and all her classmates were laughing and excited, until a teacher came in and told them to go home. The girls broke into tears, she said. “That was the worst moment in our lives.”
Since then, she’s been trying to keep up with studies at home, reading her textbooks, novels and history books. She’s studying English through movies and YouTube videos.
The unequal access to education cuts through families. Shekiba and a younger sister can’t go to her school, but her two brothers can. Her older sister is at a private university studying law. But that is little comfort, said their father, Mohammad Shah Qaderi. Most of the professors have left the country, bringing down the quality of the education.
Even if the young woman gets a university degree, “what is the benefit?" asked Qaderi, a 58-year-old retired government employee.
"She won’t have a job. The Taliban won’t allow her to work,” he said.
Qaderi said he has always wanted his children to get a higher education. Now that may be impossible, so he’s thinking of leaving Afghanistan for the first time after riding out years of war.
“I can’t see them growing in front of my eyes with no education; it is just not acceptable to me,” he said.
Underground schools present another alternative, though with limitations.
A month after the Taliban takeover, Nazhand started teaching street children to read with informal outdoor classes in a park in her neighborhood. Women who couldn’t read or write joined them, she said. Some time later, a benefactor who saw her in the park rented a house for her to hold classes in, and bought tables and chairs. Once she was operating inside, Nazhand included teen girls who were no longer allowed to go to public school.
Now there are about 250 students, including 50 or 60 schoolgirls above sixth grade.
“I am not only teaching them school subjects, but also trying to teach them how to fight and stand for their rights,” Nazhand said. The Taliban haven’t changed from their first time in power in the late 1990s, she said. “These are the same Taliban, but we shouldn’t be the same women of those years. We must struggle: by writing, by raising our voice, by any way possible.”
Nazhand's school, and others like it, are technically illegal under the Taliban’s current restrictions, but so far they haven’t shut hers down. At least one other person operating a school declined to speak to reporters, however, fearing possible repercussions.
Despite her unwavering commitment, Nazhand worries about her school's future. Her benefactor paid for six months’ rent on the house, but he died recently, and she doesn’t have any way to keep paying for rent or supplies.
For students, the underground schools are a lifeline.
“It is so hard when you can’t go to school,” said one of them, Dunya Arbabzada. “Whenever I pass by my school and see the closed door ... it’s so upsetting for me.”
Taliban: 2 civilians killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan
A bomb hidden in a cart went off on Friday near a mosque in a minority Shiite neighborhood of the Afghan capital, killing two civilians and wounding another three, a Taliban official said.
According to Khalid Zadran, the Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Kabul police chief, the attack happened in western Kabul, in the Sar-e Karez area. There were fears the casualty numbers could rise after further reports come in.
Read: Taliban under scrutiny as US kills al-Qaida leader in Kabul
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but blame is likely to fall on the Islamic State group, which has targeted Afghanistan’s minority Shiites in large-scale attacks in the past.
The regional affiliate of IS, known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, has increased attacks on mosques and minorities across the country since the Taliban seized power last August. It has been operating in Afghanistan since 2014.
IS is seen as the greatest security challenge facing the country’s Taliban rulers. Following their takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban have launched a sweeping crackdown against the IS headquarters in the country's east.
On Wednesday, in a gunbattle between the Taliban and IS gunmen killed five, including two Taliban fighters. The fighting erupted near the Sakhi shrine in the Karti Sakhi neighborhood as people were busy preparing for Ashoura, which commemorates the 7th century death in battle of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
Taliban under scrutiny as US kills al-Qaida leader in Kabul
The U.S. drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri on the balcony of a Kabul safe house intensified global scrutiny Tuesday of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers and further undermined their efforts to secure international recognition and desperately needed aid.
The Taliban had promised in the 2020 Doha Agreement on the terms of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that they would not harbor al-Qaida members. Nearly a year after the U.S. military’s chaotic pullout from Afghanistan, al-Zawahri’s killing raises questions about the involvement of Taliban leaders in sheltering a mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks and one of America’s most-wanted fugitives.
The safe house is in Kabul's upscale Shirpur neighborhood, home to several Taliban leaders who had moved into mansions of former top Afghan officials of the toppled Western-backed government.
The Taliban initially sought to describe the strike as America violating the Doha deal, which also includes a Taliban pledge not to shelter those seeking to attack the U.S. — something al-Zawahri had done for years in internet videos and online screeds. The Taliban have yet to say who was killed in the strike.
Meanwhile, rumors persist of unease in the Taliban ranks — particularly between the powerful group known as the Haqqani network, which apparently sheltered al-Zawahri, and other Taliban figures.
“The killing of Ayman al-Zawahri has raised many questions," said one Pakistani intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press as he wasn't authorized to speak publicly to reporters. Al-Zawahri took over as al-Qaida’s leader after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011, in an operation by U.S. Navy SEALs.
“The Taliban were aware of his presence in Kabul, and if they were not aware of it, they need to explain their position," the official said.
The strike early Sunday shook awake Shirpur, once home to historic buildings bulldozed in 2003 to make way for luxury homes for officials in Afghanistan's Western-backed government and international aid organizations. After the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, the Taliban elite began taking some of the abandoned homes there.
The house where al-Zawahri stayed was the home to a top aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official. Taliban officials blocked AP journalists in Kabul from reaching the damaged house on Tuesday.
The Haqqani network is an Afghan Islamist insurgent group, built around the family of the same name. In the 1980s, it fought Soviet forces and over the past 20 years, it battled U.S.-led NATO troops and the former Afghanistan government.
Read:Al-Zawahri's path went from Cairo clinic to top of al-Qaida
Sirajuddin Haqqani has also served as the first deputy leader of the Taliban movement since 2016. Since last August, he also served the appointed interior ministry of the Taliban government. The U.S. government maintains a $10 million bounty on him for “numerous significant kidnappings and attacks against U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, the Afghan government and civilian targets.”
But the Haqqanis, from Afghanistan's eastern Khost province, have disagreed with others in the Taliban leadership, mostly from the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. Some believe Sirajuddin Haqqani wants more power. Other Taliban figures have opposed the Haqqanis' violent attacks against civilians in Kabul and elsewhere.
“It seems to me that the power struggle within the Taliban is general. It’s not necessarily about the U.S. or about the international community. It’s about the new regime, how to share power within the new regime, who gets what position, who gets to control what ministries, to decide the general policies and so on,” said Jerome Drevon, the International Crisis Group's senior analyst studying Islamist militant groups.
“It’s not that surprising that the building would be owned by the Haqqani family. ... That creates a tension between what the Taliban movement is, especially in terms of how it’s trying to reach out to the international community, to normalize itself and so on,” he said.
The timing of the strike also couldn't come at a worse time politically for the Taliban. The militants face international condemnation for refusing to reopen schools for girls above the sixth grade, despite earlier promises. The United Nations mission to Afghanistan also criticized the Taliban for human rights abuses under their rule.
The U.S. and its allies have cut off billions in development funds that kept the government afloat in part over the abuses, as well as froze billions in Afghan national assets.
This sent the already shattered economy into free fall, increasing poverty dramatically and creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Millions, struggling to feed their families, are kept alive by a massive U.N.-led relief effort.
The Taliban have been trying to reopen the taps to that aid and their reserves. However, al-Zawahri's killing already has been seized upon by the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken as a sign that the Taliban “grossly violated the Doha Agreement and repeated assurances ... that they would not allow Afghan territory to be used by terrorists to threaten the security of other countries.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, however, alleged the U.S. violated the Doha Agreement by launching the strike. Afghanistan's state-run television channel — now under the Taliban — reported that President Joe Biden said al-Zawahri had been killed.
“The killing of Ayman al-Zawahri closes a chapter of al-Qaida," said Imtiaz Gul, the executive director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies.
In the Mideast, al-Zawahri's killing coincided with the 32nd anniversary of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, which sparked U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia — the same presence that bin Laden pointed to in launching the 9/11 attacks. Anwar Gargash, a senior diplomat in the United Arab Emirates, noted the timing.
It's "a chance for the region to contemplate and reflect on the absurdity of extremism, terrorism and reckless military adventures and how all of this frayed (the region’s) fabric," Gargash wrote on Twitter. The “lessons and teachings are present, and hope rests on the countries of the region uniting together to guarantee security and shared development.”
Amnesty: Taliban crackdown on rights is 'suffocating' women
The lives of Afghan women and girls are being destroyed by a “suffocating” crackdown by the Taliban since they took power nearly a year ago, Amnesty International said in a report released Wednesday.
After they captured the capital, Kabul, in August 2021 and ousted the internationally backed government, the Taliban presented themselves as having moderated since their first time in power, in the 1990s. Initially, Taliban officials spoke of allowing women to continue to work and girls to continue their education.
Instead, they formed an all-male government stacked with veterans of their hard-line rule that has banned girls from attending school from seventh grade, imposed all-covering dress that leaves only the eyes visible and restricted women's access to work.
Amnesty said the Taliban have also decimated protections for those facing domestic violence, detained women and girls for minor violations and contributed to a surge in child marriages. The report also documented the torture and abuse of women arrested by the Taliban for protesting against restrictions.
“Taken together, these policies form a system of repression that discriminates against women and girls in almost every aspect of their lives,” the report said. “This suffocating crackdown against Afghanistan’s female population is increasing day by day.”
The group's researchers visited Afghanistan in March as part of a nine-month-long investigation conducted from September 2021 to June 2022. They interviewed 90 women and 11 girls, between 14 and 74 years-old, across Afghanistan.
Among them were women detained for protesting who described torture at the hands of Taliban guards, including beatings and threats of death.
Read: Hope and despair: Kathy Gannon on 35 years in Afghanistan
One woman told Amnesty that guards beat her and other women on the breasts and between the legs, “so that we couldn’t show the world.” She said one told her, “I can kill you right now, and no one would say anything.”
A university student who was detained said she was electrically shocked on her shoulder, face, neck and elsewhere, while the Taliban shouted insults at her. One held a gun at her and told her, “I will kill you, and no one will be able to find your body.”
The report said rates of child, early and forced marriage in Afghanistan are surging under Taliban rule.
The increase, Amnesty said, is fueled by Afghanistan’s economic and humanitarian crisis and the lack of education and job prospects for women and girls. The report documented cases of forced marriages of women and girls to Taliban members — under pressure by the Taliban member or by the women’s families.
One woman from a central province of Afghanistan told Amnesty that she was compelled her to marry off her 13-year-old daughter to a 30-year-old neighbor in exchange for 60,000 Afghanis (around US$670). She said she felt relieved because her daughter “won’t be hungry anymore.”
She said she was also considering the same for her 10-year-old daughter but was holding off in hopes the girl could get an education and eventually secure a job to support the family. “Of course, if they don’t open the school, I will have to marry her off,” she added.
“You have a patriarchal government, war, poverty, drought, girls out of school. With all of these factors combined … we knew child marriage was going to go through the roof,” said Stephanie Sinclair, director of Too Young to Wed, who was quoted in the report.
The Taliban seized Kabul as U.S. and NATO forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan, ending a nearly 20-year war against the Taliban’s insurgency. The world has refused to recognize the Taliban's rule, demanding it respect human rights and show tolerance for other groups. The U.S. and its allies have cut off billions in development funds that kept the government afloat, as well as froze billions in Afghan national assets.
This sent the already shattered economy into freefall, increasing poverty dramatically and creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Millions, struggling to feed their families, are kept alive by a massive U.N.-led relief effort.
Amnesty called on the international community to take action to protect Afghan women and girls.
“Less than one year after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, their draconian policies are depriving millions of women and girls of their right to lead safe, free and fulfilling lives,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty secretary general.
“If the international community fails to act, it will be abandoning women and girls in Afghanistan, and undermining human rights everywhere,” she said.
Taliban divisions deepen as Afghan women defy veil edict
Arooza was furious and afraid, keeping her eyes open for Taliban on patrol as she and a friend shopped Sunday in Kabul's Macroyan neighborhood.
The math teacher was fearful her large shawl, wrapped tight around her head, and sweeping pale brown coat would not satisfy the latest decree by the country's religiously driven Taliban government. After all, more than just her eyes were showing. Her face was visible.
Arooza, who asked to be identified by just one name to avoid attracting attention, wasn't wearing the all-encompassing burqa preferred by the Taliban, who on Saturday issued a new dress code for women appearing in public. The edict said only a woman's eyes should be visible.
The decree by the Taliban's hardline leader Hibaitullah Akhunzada even suggested women shouldn't leave their homes unless necessary and outlines a series of punishments for male relatives of women violating the code.
Also read: Afghanistan's Taliban order women to cover up head to toe
It was a major blow to the rights of women in Afghanistan, who for two decades had been living with relative freedom before the Taliban takeover last August — when U.S. and other foreign forces withdrew in the chaotic end to a 20-year war.
A reclusive leader, Akhunzada rarely travels outside southern Kandahar, the traditional Taliban heartland. He favors the harsh elements of the group's previous time in power, in the 1990s, when girls and women were largely barred from school, work and public life.
Like Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, Akhunzada imposes a strict brand of Islam that marries religion with ancient tribal traditions, often blurring the two.
Akhunzada has taken tribal village traditions where girls often marry at puberty, and rarely leave their homes, and called it a religious demand, analysts say.
The Taliban have been divided between pragmatists and hardliners, as they struggle to transition from an insurgency to a governing body. Meanwhile, their government has been dealing with a worsening economic crisis. And Taliban efforts to win recognition and aid from Western nations have floundered, largely because they have not formed a more representative government, and restricted the rights of girls and women.
Also read: Taliban blocked unaccompanied women from flights
Until now, hardliners and pragmatists in the movement have avoided open confrontation.
Yet divisions were deepened in March, on the eve of the new school year, when Akhunzada issued a last-minute decision that girls should not be allowed to go to school after completing the sixth grade. In the weeks ahead of the start of the school year, senior Taliban officials had told journalists all girls would be allowed back in school. Akhunzada asserted that allowing the older girls back to school violated Islamic principles.
A prominent Afghan who meets the leadership and is familiar with their internal squabbles said that a senior Cabinet minister expressed his outrage over Akhunzada's views at a recent leadership meeting. He spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely.
Torek Farhadi, a former government adviser, said he believes Taliban leaders have opted not to spar in public because they fear any perception of divisions could undermine their rule.
“The leadership does not see eye to eye on a number of matters but they all know that if they don’t keep it together, everything might fall apart," Farhadi said. “In that case, they might start clashes with each other.”
“For that reason, the elders have decided to put up with each other, including when it comes to non-agreeable decisions which are costing them a lot of uproar inside Afghanistan and internationally,” Farhadi added.
Some of the more pragmatic leaders appear to be looking for quiet workarounds that will soften the hard-line decrees. Since March, there has been a growing chorus, even among the most powerful Taliban leaders, to return older girls to school while quietly ignoring other repressive edicts.
Earlier this month, Anas Haqqani, the younger brother of Sirajuddin, who heads the powerful Haqqani network, told a conference in the eastern city of Khost that girls are entitled to education and that they would soon return to school — though he didn't say when. He also said that women had a role in building the nation.
“You will receive very good news that will make everyone very happy... this problem will be resolved in the following days,” Haqqani said at the time.
In the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sunday, women wore the customary conservative Muslim dress. Most wore a traditional hijab, consisting of a headscarf and long robe or coat, but few covered their faces, as directed by the Taliban leader a day earlier. Those wearing a burqa, a head-to-toe garment that covers the face and hides the eyes behind netting were in the minority.
“Women in Afghanistan wear the hijab, and many wear the burqa, but this isn't about hijab, this is about the Taliban wanting to make all women disappear," said Shabana, who wore bright gold bangles beneath her flowing black coat, her hair hidden behind a black head scarf with sequins. “This is about the Taliban wanting to make us invisible."
Arooza said the Taliban rulers are driving Afghans to leave their country. “Why should I stay here if they don't want to give us our human rights? We are human," she said.
Several women stopped to talk. They all challenged the latest edict.
“We don't want to live in a prison,” said Parveen, who like the other women wanted only to give one name.
“These edicts attempt to erase a whole gender and generation of Afghans who grew up dreaming of a better world,” said Obaidullah Baheer, a visiting scholar at New York’s New School and former lecturer at the American University in Afghanistan.
“It pushes families to leave the country by any means necessary. It also fuels grievances that would eventually spill over into large-scale mobilization against the Taliban," he said.
After decades of war, Baheer said it wouldn’t have taken much on the Taliban’s part to make Afghans content with their rule “an opportunity that the Taliban are wasting fast.”
Afghanistan's Taliban order women to cover up head to toe
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Saturday ordered all Afghan women to wear head-to-toe clothing in public — a sharp, hard-line pivot that confirmed the worst fears of rights activists and was bound to further complicate Taliban dealings with an already distrustful international community.
The decree says that women should leave the home only when necessary, and that male relatives would face punishment — starting with a summons and escalating up to court hearings and jail time — for women's dress code violations.
It was the latest in a series of repressive edicts issued by the Taliban leadership, not all of which have been implemented. Last month, for example, the Taliban forbade women to travel alone, but after a day of opposition, that has since been silently ignored.
On Sunday in the capital, Kabul, many women on the street were wearing the same large shawls as before. Women also arrived unaccompanied at Kabul International Airport, while in the city women boarded small buses alone.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said it was deeply concerned with what appeared to be a formal directive that would be implemented and enforced, adding that it would seek clarifications from the Taliban about the decision.
READ: Afghanistan's Taliban order women to wear burqa in public
“This decision contradicts numerous assurances regarding respect for and protection of all Afghans’ human rights, including those of women and girls, that had been provided to the international community by Taliban representatives during discussions and negotiations over the past decade,” it said in a statement.
The decree, which calls for women to only show their eyes and recommends they wear the head-to-toe burqa, evoked similar restrictions on women during the Taliban's previous rule between 1996 and 2001.
“We want our sisters to live with dignity and safety,” said Khalid Hanafi, acting minister for the Taliban’s vice and virtue ministry.
The Taliban previously decided against reopening schools to girls above grade 6, reneging on an earlier promise and opting to appease their hard-line base at the expense of further alienating the international community. But this decree does not have widespread support among a leadership that's divided between pragmatists and the hard-liners.
That decision disrupted efforts by the Taliban to win recognition from potential international donors at a time when the country is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis.
“For all dignified Afghan women wearing Hijab is necessary and the best Hijab is chadori (the head-to-toe burqa) which is part of our tradition and is respectful,” said Shir Mohammad, an official from the vice and virtue ministry in a statement.
“Those women who are not too old or young must cover their face, except the eyes,” he said. “Islamic principles and Islamic ideology are more important to us than anything else."
Senior Afghanistan researcher Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch urged the international community to put coordinated pressure on the Taliban.
“(It is) far past time for a serious and strategic response to the Taliban’s escalating assault on women’s rights," she wrote on Twitter.
The Taliban were ousted in 2001 by a U.S.-led coalition for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and returned to power in the waning days of America’s chaotic departure last year.
The White House National Security Council condemned the Taliban's Saturday decree and urged them to reverse it.
"We are discussing this with other countries and partners. The legitimacy and support that the Taliban seeks from the international community depend entirely on their conduct, specifically their ability to back stated commitments with actions,” it said in a statement.
Since taking power last August, the Taliban leadership has been squabbling among themselves as they struggle to transition from war to governing. It has pit hard-liners against the more pragmatic among them.
A spokeswoman from Pangea, an Italian non-governmental organization that has assisted women for years in Afghanistan, said the new decree would be particularly difficult for them to swallow since they had lived in relative freedom until the Taliban takeover.
“In the last 20 years, they have had the awareness of human rights, and in the span of a few months have lost them," Silvia Redigolo said by telephone. “It’s dramatic to (now) have a life that doesn’t exist.”
Infuriating many Afghans is the knowledge that many of the Taliban of the younger generation, like Sirajuddin Haqqani, are educating their girls in Pakistan, while in Afghanistan women and girls have been targeted by their repressive edicts since taking power. Haqqani is a U.N.-designated terrorist and head of the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for some of the deadliest attacks during the 20-year U.S.-led invasion.
Girls have been banned from school beyond grade 6 in most of the country since the Taliban’s return. Universities opened earlier this year in much of the country, but since taking power the Taliban edicts have been erratic. While a handful of provinces continued to provide education to all, most provinces closed educational institutions for girls and women.
The religiously driven Taliban administration fears that going forward with enrolling girls beyond the the sixth grade could alienate their rural base, Hashmi said.
In Kabul, private schools and universities have operated uninterrupted.