Taliban
Afghanistan's Taliban order women to wear burqa in public
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Saturday ordered all Afghan women to wear the all-covering burqa 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 evoked similar restrictions on women during the Taliban's previous hard-line 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.
READ: Militants in Afghanistan strike Pakistan army post, kill 3
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 Hajib is necessary and the best Hajib 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.
The decree added if women had no important work outside it is better for them to stay at home. “Islamic principles and Islamic ideology are more important to us than anything else,” Hanafi said.
Afghan women's team plays first game in Australia
Afghanistan’s women’s soccer team has played its first match since its evacuation from the Taliban-led country last year, helped by A-League team the Melbourne Victory.
The Melbourne Victory Afghan Women's Team played a 0-0 draw in its opening game Sunday in Victoria's senior women's competition, only months after 30 players and coaches were rescued as part of an evacuation operation by the Australian government as the Taliban took back control of the country after 20 years and again placed women’s sports in jeopardy.
Also read: Optimistic female Afghan students attend university classes
The Victory are providing their support to the members of the team who relocated to Melbourne. The team held its first training session in February and will play under Victory’s banner this year.
But instead of sporting Victory's traditional navy blue with a white ‘V’, the team will wear a kit which pays homage to their homeland, a red home shirt and white away shirt with the Afghanistan flag on the back
The shirts do not have the player's family names on the back which the players say is to protect family members still in Afghanistan and potentially under threat from the Taliban. Instead the players have their first names or nicknames on their shirts.
The Afghan team was created in 2007, played its first official international in 2010 against Nepal and won its first match 2-0 over Qatar in 2012.
Also read: Afghanistan's Taliban announce ban on poppy production
The rise of the Taliban and the subsequent escape of the players also led to the team withdrawing from qualifying matches for Women’s Asian Cup in India in February, which doubled as a qualifier for next year’s Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
Afghanistan's Taliban announce ban on poppy production
Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban announced a ban Sunday on poppy production, even as farmers across the country began harvesting the bright red flower that produces the opium used to make heroin.
The order warns farmers that their crops will be burned and they can be jailed if they proceed with the harvest. The ban is reminiscent of the Taliban's previous rule in the late 1990s when the religion-driven movement outlawed poppy production. At that time, the ban was staggered and implemented countrywide within two years. The U.N. verified that production had been eradicated in most of the country.
However, after their ouster in 2001 farmers in many parts of the country reportedly plowed over their wheat fields — which had been almost impossible to bring to market because of the lack of roads and infrastructure — and returned to poppy production.
During the last years of the Taliban rule, wheat was rotting in fields because the farmers were unable to bring it to market to be sold and ground into flour.
Poppies are the main source of income for millions of small farmers and day laborers who can earn upwards of $300 a month harvesting them and extracting the opium.
Today, Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium and in 2021, before the Taliban takeover, produced more than 6,000 tons of opium, which a report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said could potentially yield 320 tons of pure heroin.
Also read: With eye to China investment, Taliban now preserve Buddhas
Afghanistan produces more opium than all opium-producing countries combined and last year was the sixth straight year of record opium harvests. That's the case even as the U.S. and international community was spending billions of dollars to eradicate poppy production. The Taliban reportedly made millions of dollars charging taxes on farmers and middle men to move their drugs outside Afghanistan and senior officials of the U.S.-backed government were implicated in the flourishing drug trade.
Washington spent more than $8 billion trying to eradicate poppy production in Afghanistan during its nearly 20-year war, which ended with the return of the Taliban in August.
Nearly 80% of heroin produced from Afghan opium production reaches Europe through Central Asia and Pakistan.
In desperately poor Afghanistan the ban on poppy production will further impoverish its poorest citizens.
According to a U.N. report in 2021, income from opiates in Afghanistan was a whopping $1.8 to $2.7 billion, more than 7% of the country's GDP. The same report said “illicit drug supply chains outside Afghanistan” make much more.
The Taliban's ban comes as the country faces a humanitarian crisis that spurred the U.N. to ask for $4.4 billion last month as 95% of Afghans do not have enough to eat. The ban, while hitting drug production houses hard, will likely devastate the small farmer who relies on his opium production to survive. It's difficult to know how the Taliban rulers will be able to create substitute crops and financing for Afghanistan's farmers as their economy is in free fall and international development money has stopped.
Poppy production and income are often used as a form of banking among Afghanistan's poorest who use the promise of the next year's harvest to buy staples such as flour, sugar, cooking oil and heating oil.
Also read: Taliban blocked unaccompanied women from flights
The decree also outlawed the “transportation, trade, export and import of all types of narcotics such as alcohol, heroin, tablet K, hashish ... drug manufacturing factories in Afghanistan. are strictly banned.”
When the Taliban last ruled, they employed village elders and mosque clerics to enforce the ban and in villages that ignored the ban, the Taliban arrested the elders and clerics, as well as the offending farmer. As a result the elders and clerics were incentivized to prevent poppy production in their areas.
Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid announced the ban at a news conference in the capital.
With eye to China investment, Taliban now preserve Buddhas
The ancient Buddha statues sit in serene meditation in the caves carved into the russet cliffs of rural Afghanistan. Hundreds of meters below lies what is believed to be the world’s largest deposit of copper.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers are pinning their hopes on Beijing to turn that rich vein into revenue to salvage the cash-starved country amid crippling international sanctions.
The fighters standing guard by the rocky hillside may once have considered destroying the terracotta Buddhas. Two decades ago when the Islamic hard-line Taliban were first in power, they sparked world outrage by blowing up gigantic Buddha statues in another part of the country, calling them pagan symbols that must be purged.
But now they are intent on preserving the relics of the Mes Aynak copper mine. Doing so is key to unlocking billions in Chinese investment, said Hakumullah Mubariz, the Taliban head of security at the site, peering into the remnants of a monastery built by first-century Buddhist monks.
Read: Second 'black box' found in China Eastern plane crash
“Protecting them is very important to us and the Chinese,” he said.
Previously, Mubariz commanded a Taliban combat unit in the surrounding mountains battling with U.S.-backed Afghan forces. When those troops capitulated last year, his men rushed to secure the site. “We knew it would be important for the country,” he said.
The Taliban’s spectacular reversal illustrates the powerful allure of Afghanistan’s untapped mining sector. Successive authorities have seen the country’s mineral riches, estimated to be worth $1 trillion, as the key to a prosperous future, but none have been able to develop them amid the continual war and violence. Now, multiple countries, including Iran, Russia and Turkey are looking to invest, filling the vacuum left in the wake of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal.
But Beijing is the most assertive. At Mes Aynak, it could become the first major power to take on a large-scale project in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, potentially redrawing Asia’s geopolitical map.
TOP PRIORITY
In 2008, the administration of Hamid Karzai signed a 30-year contract with a Chinese joint venture called MCC to extract high-grade copper from Mes Aynak. Studies show the site holds up to 12 million tons of the mineral.
But the project got tied up in logistical and contract problems, and it never got past some initial test shafts before it ground to a halt when Chinese staff left in 2014 because of continued violence.
Mere months after the Taliban seized Kabul in August, consolidating power over the country, the group’s newly installed acting Minister for Mining and Petroleum Shahbuddin Dilawar urged his staff to re-engage Chinese state-run companies.
Ziad Rashidi, the ministry’s director of foreign relations, approached the consortium made up by MCC, China Metallurgical Group Corporation and Jiangxi Copper Ltd. Dilawar has had two virtual meetings with MCC in the last six months, according to company and ministry officials. He urged them to return to the mine, terms unchanged from the 2008 contract.
A technical committee from MCC is due in Kabul in the coming weeks to address the remaining obstacles. Relocating the artifacts is key. But MCC is also seeking to renegotiate terms, particularly to reduce taxes and slash the 19.5% royalty rate by nearly half, the percentage owed to the government per ton of copper sold.
“Chinese companies see the current situation as ideal for them. There is a lack of international competitors and a lot of support from the government side,” Rashidi said.
China’s ambassador to Afghanistan has said talks are ongoing, but nothing more.
Acquiring rare minerals is key for Beijing to maintain its standing as a global manufacturing powerhouse. While stopping short of recognizing the Taliban government, China has stood out from the international community by calling for the unfreezing of Afghan assets and has kept its diplomatic mission running in Kabul.
For Afghanistan, the contract at Mes Aynak could bring in $250-300 million per year to state revenues, a 17% increase, as well as $800 million in fees over the contract’s length, according to government and company officials. That’s a significant sum as the country grapples with widespread poverty, exacerbated by financial shortfalls after the Biden administration froze Afghan assets and international organizations halted donor funds. Some has since resumed.
Read: China, Afghanistan pledge orderly, mutually beneficial cooperation
GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES
At Mes Aynak, a 2,000-year-old Buddhist city sits uncomfortably alongside a potential economic engine. Afghanistan’s tumultuous modern history has gotten in the way of both exploring the archaeology and developing the mines.
Discovered in the 1960s by French geologists, the site was believed to have been an important stop along the Silk Road from the early centuries AD.
After the Soviet invasion in the late 1970s, Russians dug tunnels to investigate the copper deposit; the cavernous bore holes are still visible. These were later used as an al-Qaida hideout, and at least one was bombed by the U.S. in 2001.
Looters then pillaged many antiquities from the site. Still, archaeologists who came in 2004 managed a partial excavation, uncovering remnants of a vast complex, including four monasteries, ancient copper workshops and a citadel. It became clear the area had been a major Buddhist settlement, a crossroads for traders coming from the west, and pilgrims from afar, even China.
To the shock of the non-Taliban technocrats in his own ministry, Dilawar is committed to saving the site and told MCC’s director in Beijing it was an important part of Afghanistan’s history, according to two officials present in one virtual meeting.
He dismissed open-pit mining schemes that would raze the site entirely. The alternative option of underground mining was judged too pricey by MCC. The Culture Ministry has been tasked with presenting a plan to relocate the relics, most likely to the Kabul Museum.
“We have already transferred some (artifacts) to the capital, and we are working to transfer the rest, so the mining work can begin,” Dilawar told The Associated Press.
While the ministry is optimistic a deal can be reached, MCC officials are cautious and pragmatic.
They did not speak to the AP on record, citing sensitivities around the talks happening while international sanctions still prohibit dealings with the Taliban.
They expressed concerns over the feasibility of other contractual obligations, including building a railway to the Pakistan border at Torkham, a coal-fired power plant, and community amenities such as a hospital and schools.
Another issue is how to compensate residents of three villages near Mes Aynak cleared out a decade ago.
Mullah Mera Jan, a 70-year-old local elder, said he is still waiting for funds promised to him by ministry officials after being forced out of his village of Wali Baba.
Still, he too hopes mining will start soon. Villagers were promised 3,000-4,000 direct and 35,000 indirect jobs. The men from his village are on top of the hiring list.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
In the ministry’s labyrinthine halls, hopeful investors stand in line, documents ready to stake their claim of Afghanistan’s untapped mineral riches, including large iron deposits, precious stones and -- potentially -- lithium.
Knocking on Rashidi’s office door these days are Russians, Iranians, Turks and of course, the Chinese.
All are “in a great hurry to invest,” he said. Chinese interest is “extraordinary,” he said. Rashidi has also reached out to China’s CNPCI to revamp an oil contract to explore blocks in Amu Darya near the Turkmenistan border, terminated in 2018.
Dozens of small-scale contracts have been handed out local investors, many of whom have joint ventures with international companies, mainly Chinese and Iranian.
Ministry revenues have increased exponentially, from 110 million afghanis ($1.2 million) in the year preceding the Taliban takeover, to $6 billion afghanis ($67 million) in the six months since the Taliban assumed power, according to documents seen by the AP. Most of that, however, appears to be from more aggressive taxing, as the Taliban merged their informal tax economy with that of the government. Apart from coal, it not clear if actual mining production has increased.
Ironically, it was the Taliban that hindered work in Mes Aynak for over a decade.
An MCC official recalled how the road leading to the mine was laden with IEDs targeting Afghan forces and NATO allies. An entire Afghan regiment guarded Chinese engineers at the site compound. Mubariz, now the security chief, said he remembered watching them from the mountains where he plotted attacks.
The MCC official said that when his Taliban hosts told him they had restored safety so work could resume, he replied in jest, “Wasn’t it you who was attacking us?”
The men, machine-guns slung around their necks, laughed too.
Taliban blocked unaccompanied women from flights
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers refused to allow dozens of women to board several flights, including some overseas, because they were traveling without a male guardian, two Afghan airline officials said Saturday.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions from the Taliban, said dozens of women who arrived at Kabul's international airport Friday to board domestic and international flights were told they couldn't do so without a male guardian.
Some of the women were dual nationals returning to their homes overseas, including some from Canada, according to one of the officials. Women were denied boarding on flights to Islamabad, Dubai and Turkey on Kam Air and the state-owned Ariana Airline, said the officials.
The order came from the Taliban leadership, said one official.
By Saturday, some women traveling alone were given permission to board an Ariana Airlines flight to western Herat province, the official said. However, by the time the permission was granted they had missed their flight, he said.
The airport's president and police chief, both from the Taliban movement and both Islamic clerics, were meeting Saturday with airline officials.
“They are trying to solve it,” the official said.
It was still unclear whether the Taliban would exempt air travel from an order issued months ago requiring women traveling more than 45 miles (72 kilometers) to be accompanied by a male relative.
Also read: Taliban break promise on higher education for Afghan girls
Taliban officials contacted by The Associated Press did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Since taking power last August, the Taliban leadership have been squabbling among themselves as they struggle to transition from war to governing. It has pit hard-liners — like acting Prime Minister Mullah Hasan Akhund, who is deeply rooted in the old guard — against the more pragmatic among them, like Sirajuddin Haqqani. He took over leadership of the powerful Haqqani network from his father Jalaluddin Haqanni. The elder Haqqani, who died several years ago, is from Akhund's generation, who ruled Afghanistan under the strict and unchallenged leadership of Mullah Mohammad Omar.
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.
This latest assault on women's rights in Taliban-run Afghanistan denying women air travel, comes just days after the all-male religiously driven government broke its promise to allow girls to return to school after the sixth grade.
The move enraged the international community, which has been reluctant to recognize the Taliban-run government since the Taliban swept into power last August, fearing they would revert to their harsh rule of the 1990s. The Taliban's refusal to open up education to all Afghan children also infuriated large swaths of the Afghan population. On Saturday, dozens of girls demonstrated in the Afghan capital demanding the right to go to school.
After the Taliban's ban on girls education beyond the sixth grade, women's rights activist Mahbouba Seraj went on Afghanistan's TOLO TV to ask: “How do we as a nation trust you with your words anymore? What should we do to please you? Should we all die?”
An Afghan charity called PenPath, which runs dozens of "secret' schools with thousands of volunteers, is planning to stage countrywide protests to demand the Taliban reverse its order, said Matiullah Wesa, PenPath founder.
On Saturday at the Doha Forum 2022 in Qatar, Roya Mahboob, an Afghan businesswoman who founded an all-girl robotics team in Afghanistan, was given the Forum Award for her work and commitment to girls education.
U.S. special representative for Afghanistan Tom West canceled meetings with the Taliban at the Doha Forum after classes for older girls were halted.
Deputy U.S. State Department spokesperson Jalina Porter said in a statement that “We have canceled some of our engagements, including planned meetings in Doha and around the Doha Forum, and have made clear that we see this decision as a potential turning point in our engagement.
"The decision by the Taliban, if it is not swiftly reversed, will profoundly harm the Afghan people, the country’s prospects for economic growth, and the Taliban’s ambition to improve their relations with the international community,” she said.
Also read: Afghanistan world's unhappiest country, even before Taliban
In an interview after receiving the Doha Forum award, Mahboob called on the many global leaders and policy makers attending the forum to press the Taliban to open schools for all Afghan children.
The robotics team fled Afghanistan when the Taliban returned to power but Mahboob said she still hoped a science and technology center she had hoped to build in Afghanistan for girls could still be constructed.
“I hope that the international community, the Muslim communities (have not) forgotten about Afghanistan and (will) not abandon us,” she said. "Afghanistan is a poor country. It doesn’t have enough resources. And if you take (away) our knowledge, I don’t know what’s going to happen."
Taliban break promise on higher education for Afghan girls
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers unexpectedly decided against reopening schools Wednesday to girls above the sixth grade, reneging on a promise and opting to appease their hard-line base at the expense of further alienating the international community.
The surprising decision, confirmed by a Taliban official, is bound to disrupt 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 reversal was so sudden that the Education Ministry was caught off guard on Wednesday, the start of the school year, as were schools in parts of the Afghan capital of Kabul and elsewhere in the country. Some girls in higher grades returned to schools, only to be told to go home.
Aid organizations said the move exacerbated the uncertainty surrounding Afghanistan's future as the Taliban leadership seems to struggle to get on the same page as it shifts from fighting to governing.
Read:Taliban nixes girls higher education despite earlier pledges
It also came as the leadership was convening in Kandahar amid reports of a possible Cabinet shuffle.
U.S. Special Representative Thomas West tweeted his “shock and deep disappointment” about the decision, calling it “a betrayal of public commitments to the Afghan people and the international community.”
He said the Taliban had made it clear that all Afghans have a right to education, adding, “For the sake of the country’s future and its relations with the international community, I would urge the Taliban to live up to their commitments to their people.”
The Norwegian Refugee Council, which spends about $20 million annually to support primary education in Afghanistan, was still waiting for official word from the Taliban about canceling the classes for girls above the sixth grade. The NRC also provides emergency shelter, food and legal services.
Berenice Van Dan Driessche, advocacy manager for the council, said their representatives had not gotten official word of the change as of Wednesday night, and that girls in the 11 provinces where they work had gone to school but were sent home.
The committee's staff in the provinces “reported a lot of disappointment and also a lot of uncertainty” about the future, she said. They said that in some areas, teachers said they would continue to hold classes for the girls until the Taliban issued an official order.
Waheedullah Hashmi, external relations and donor representative with the Taliban-led administration, told The Associated Press the decision was made late Tuesday night.
“We don’t say they will be closed forever,” Hashmi added.
U.N. special representative Deborah Lyons will try to meet Thursday with the Taliban to ask them to reverse their decision, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
Earlier in the week, a statement by the Education Ministry had urged “all students” to return when classes resumed Wednesday.
Taliban nixes girls higher education despite earlier pledges
In a surprise decision the hardline leadership of Afghanistan’s new rulers has decided against opening educational institutions to girls beyond Grade six, a Taliban official said Wednesday on the first day of Afghanistan's new school year.
The latest setback for girls' education is certain to receive widespread condemnation from the international community that has been urging the Taliban leaders to open schools and give women their right to public space.
The unexpected decision came late on Tuesday as Afghanistan’s education ministry prepared for the new year opening of school, which was expected to herald the return of girls to school. A statement by the ministry earlier in the week urged “all students” to come to school.
Read: Optimistic female Afghan students attend university classes
However the decision to postpone a return of girls going to school in higher levels appeared to be a concession to the rural and deeply tribal backbone of the hardline Taliban movement, that in many parts of the countryside are reluctant to send their daughters to school.
Girls have been banned from school beyond Grade 6 in most of the country since the Taliban returned to power in mid-August. Universities opened up earlier this year in much of the country, but since taking power the Taliban edicts have been erratic and while a handful of provinces continued to provide education to all, most provinces closed educational institutions for girls and women.
In the capital Kabul private schools and universities have operated uninterrupted.
The religiously-driven Taliban administration fears going forward with enrolling girls beyond Grade 6 could erode their base, said Waheedullah Hashmi, external relations and donor representative with the Taliban-led administration.
“The leadership hasn't decided when or how they will allow girls to return to school,” Hashmi said. While he accepted that urban centers are mostly supportive of girls education, much of rural Afghanistan is opposed, particularly in tribal Pashtun regions.
In some rural areas a brother will disown a brother in the city if he finds out that he is letting his daughters go to school,” said Hashimi, who said the Taliban leadership is trying to decide how to open education for girls beyond Grade 6 countrywide.
Read: Afghanistan world's unhappiest country, even before Taliban
Most Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns. In their sweep through the country last year, other ethnics groups such as Uzbeks and Tajiks in the north of the country either joined the fight to give the Taliban their victory or simply chose not to fight.
“We did everything the Taliban asked in terms of Islamic dress and they promised that girls could go to school and now they have broken their promise,” said Mariam Naheebi, a local journalist who spoke to the Associated Press in the Afghan capital. Naheebi has protested for women's rights and says “they have not been honest with us."
Afghanistan world's unhappiest country, even before Taliban
Afghanistan is the unhappiest country in the world — even before the Taliban swept to power last August. That's according to a so-called World Happiness report released ahead of the U.N.-designated International Day of Happiness on Sunday.
The annual report ranked Afghanistan as last among 149 countries surveyed, with a happiness rate of just 2.5. Lebanon was the world’s second saddest country, with Botswana, Rwanda and Zimbabwe rounding out the bottom five. Finland ranked first for the fourth year running with a 7.8 score, followed by Denmark and Switzerland, with Iceland and the Netherlands also in the top five.
Researchers ranked the countries after analyzing data over three years. They looked at several categories including gross domestic product per capita, social safety nets, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity of the population, and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels.
Also read: Islamic world unites to aid desperately poor Afghanistan
Afghanistan stacked up poorly in all six categories, a confounding result coming as it does before the Taliban's arrival and despite 20 years of U.S. and international investment. The U.S. alone spent $145 billion on development in Afghanistan since 2002, according to reports by the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan.
Still, there were signs of increasing hopelessness.
Gallup did a polling in 2018 and found few Afghans they surveyed had much hope for the future. In fact the majority said they had no hope for the future.
Years of runaway corruption, increased poverty, lack of jobs, a steady increase in people forced below the poverty line, and erratic development all combined into a crushing malaise, said analyst Nasratullah Haqpal. Most Afghans had high hopes after 2001, when the Taliban were ousted and the U.S.-led coalition declared victory,
“Unfortunately the only focus was on the war, the warlords and the corrupt politicians,” said Haqpal.
Also read: Taliban Govt reaches out to India seeking visas for Afghan students stuck in Afghanistan
“People just became poorer and poorer and more disappointed and more unhappy... that is why these 20 years of investment in Afghanistan collapsed in just 11 days," he said referring to the Taliban's lightning blitz through the country before sweeping into Kabul in mid August.
When Masoud Ahmadi, a carpenter returned to Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan after the 2001 collapse of the Taliban, his hopes for the future were bright. He dreamed of opening a small furniture-making shop, maybe employing as many as 10 people. Instead, sitting in his dusty 6-foot by 10-foot workshop on Saturday, he said he opens just twice a week for lack of work.
“When the money came to this country the leadership of the government took the money and counted it as their personal money, and the people were not helped to change their life for the better,” said Ahmadi.
The report warns that Afghanistan's numbers might drop even further next year when it measures Afghans' happiness level after the arrival of the Taliban. The economy is currently in free fall as the group struggles to transition from fighting to governing.
UN says over 100 ex-Afghan and international forces killed
The United Nations has received “credible allegations” that more than 100 former members of the Afghan government, its security forces and those who worked with international troops have been killed since the Taliban took over the country Aug. 15, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says.
In a report obtained Sunday by The Associated Press, Guterres said that “more than two-thirds” of the victims were alleged to result from extrajudicial killings by the Taliban or its affiliates, despite the Taliban’s announcement of “general amnesties” for those affiliated with the former government and U.S.-led coalition forces.
The U.N. political mission in Afghanistan also received “credible allegations of extrajudicial killings of at least 50 individuals suspected of affiliation with ISIL-KP,” the Islamic State extremist group operating in Afghanistan, Guterres said in the report to U.N. Security Council.
Read: Afghan police rescue physician from kidnappers' clutch, arrest 8 suspects
He added that despite Taliban assurances, the U.N. political mission has also received credible allegations “of enforced disappearances and other violations impacting the right to life and physical integrity” of former government and coalition members.
Guterres said human rights defenders and media workers also continue “to come under attack, intimidation, harassment, arbitrary arrest, ill-treatment and killings.”
Eight civil society activists were killed, including three by the Taliban and three by Islamic State extremists, and 10 were subjected to temporary arrests, beatings and threats by the Taliban, he said. Two journalists were killed — one by IS — and two were injured by unknown armed men.
The secretary-general said the U.N. missions documented 44 cases of temporary arrests, beatings and threats of intimidation, 42 of them by the Taliban.
The Taliban overran most of Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO forces were in the final stages of their chaotic withdrawal from the country after 20 years. They entered Kabul on Aug. 15 without any resistance from the Afghan army or the country’s president, Ashraf Ghani, who fled.
The Taliban initially promised a general amnesty for those linked to the former government and international forces, and tolerance and inclusiveness toward women and ethnic minorities. However, the Taliban have renewed restrictions on women and appointed an all-male government, which have met with dismay by the international community.
Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy was already stumbling when the Taliban seized power, and the international community froze Afghanistan’s assets abroad and halted economic support, recalling the Taliban’s reputation for brutality during its 1996-2001 rule and refusal to educate girls and allow women to work.
Guterres said: “The situation in Afghanistan remains precarious and uncertain six months after the Taliban takeover as the multiple political, socio-economic and humanitarian shocks reverberate across the country.”
He said Afghanistan today faces multiple crises: a growing humanitarian emergency, a massive economic contraction, the crippling of its banking and financial systems, the worst drought in 27 years, and the Taliban’s failure to form an inclusive government and restore the rights of girls to education and women to work.
“An estimated 22.8 million people are projected to be in `crisis’ and `emergency’ levels of food insecurity until March 2022,” the U.N. chief said. “Almost 9 million of these will be at `emergency’ levels of food insecurity -– the highest number in the world. Half of all children under five are facing acute malnutrition.”
On a positive note, Guterres reported “a significant decline” in the overall number of conflict-related security incidents as well as civilian casualties since the Taliban takeover. The U.N. recorded 985 security-related incidents between Aug. 19 and Dec. 31, a 91% decrease compared to the same period in 2020, he said.
The eastern, central, southern and western regions accounted for 75% of all recorded incidents, he said, with Nangarhar, Kabul, Kunar and Kandahar ranking as the most conflict-affected provinces.
Read: Islamic world pitches ways to aid desperately poor Afghans
Despite the reduction in violence, Guterres said the Taliban face several challenges, including rising attacks against their members.
“Some are attributed to the National Resistance Front comprising some Afghan opposition figures, and those associated with the former government,” he said. “These groups have been primarily operating in Panjshir Province and Baghlan’s Andarab District but have not made significant territorial inroads” though “armed clashes are regularly documented, along with forced displacement and communication outages.”
Guterres said intra-Taliban tensions along ethnic lines and competition over jobs have also resulted in violence, pointing to armed clashes on Nov. 4 between between Taliban forces in Bamyan city.
In the report, the secretary-general proposed priorities for the U.N. political mission in the current environment, urged international support to prevent widespread hunger and the country’s economic collapse, and urged the Taliban to guarantee women’s rights and human rights.
Despite mistrust, Afghan Shiites seek Taliban protection
Outside a Shiite shrine in Kabul, four armed Taliban fighters stood guard on a recent Friday as worshippers filed in for weekly prayers. Alongside them was a guard from Afghanistan’s mainly Shiite Hazara minority, an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.
It was a sign of the strange, new relationship brought by the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. The Taliban, Sunni hard-liners who for decades targeted the Hazaras as heretics, are now their only protection against a more brutal enemy: the Islamic State group.
Sohrab, the Hazara guard standing watch over the Abul Fazl al-Abbas Shrine, told The Associated Press that he gets along fine with the Taliban guards. “They even pray in the mosque sometimes,” he said, giving only his first name for security reasons.
Not everyone feels so comfortable.
Syed Aqil, a young Hazara visiting the ornate shrine along with his wife and 8-month-old daughter, was disturbed that many of the Taliban still wear their traditional garb — the look of a jihadi insurgent — rather than a police uniform.
Read: US urged to help more people escape Taliban-led Afghanistan
“We can’t even tell if they are Taliban or Daesh,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
Since seizing power three months ago, the Taliban have presented themselves as more moderate, compared with their first rule in the late 1990s when they violently repressed the Hazaras and other ethnic groups. Courting international recognition, they vow to protect the Hazaras as a show of their acceptance of the country’s minorities.
But many Hazaras still deeply distrust the insurgents-turned-rulers, who are overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtu, and are convinced they will never accept them as equals in Afghanistan. Hazara community leaders say they have met repeatedly with Taliban leadership, asking to take part in the government, only to be shunned. Hazaras complain individual fighters still discriminate against them and fear it’s only a matter of time before the Taliban revert to repression.
“In comparison to their previous rule, the Taliban are a little better,” said Mohammed Jawad Gawhari, a Hazara cleric who runs an organization helping the poor.
“The problem is that there is not a single law. Every individual Talib is their own law right now,” he said. “So people live in fear of them.”
Some changes from the previous era of Taliban rule are clear. After their August takeover, the Taliban allowed Shiites to perform their religious ceremonies, such as the annual Ashura procession.
The Taliban initially confiscated weapons that Hazaras had used, with permission from the previous government to guard some of their own mosques in Kabul. But after devastating IS bombings of Shiite mosques in Kandahar and Kunduz provinces in October, the Taliban returned the weapons in most cases, Gawhari and other community leaders said. The Taliban also provide their own fighters as guards for some mosques during Friday prayers.
“We are providing a safe and secure environment for everyone, especially the Hazaras,” Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. “They should be in Afghanistan. Leaving the country is not good for anyone.”
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The Hazaras’ turning to Taliban protection shows how terrified the community is of the Islamic State group, which they say aims to exterminate them. In past years, IS has attacked the Hazaras more ruthlessly than the Taliban ever did, unleashing bombings against Hazara schools, hospitals and mosques, killing hundreds.
IS is also a shared enemy. Though they are Sunni hard-liners like the Taliban, IS militants are waging an insurgency, with frequent attacks on Taliban fighters.
Some Hazara leaders see a potential for cooperation. Ahmed Ali al-Rashed, a senior Hazara cleric, praised the Taliban commanders who now run the main police station in Dashti Barchi, the sprawling district of west Kabul dominated by Hazaras.
“If all Taliban were like them, Afghanistan would be like a garden of flowers,” he said.
Others in Dashti Barchi were skeptical the Taliban will ever change.
Marzieh Mohammedi, whose husband was killed five years ago in fighting with the Taliban, said she’s afraid every time she sees them patrolling Dashti Barchi.
“How can they protect us? We can’t trust them. We feel like they are Daesh,” she said.
The differences are partly religious. But also Hazaras, who make up an estimated 10% of Afghanistan’s population of nearly 40 million, are ethnically distinct and speak a variant of Farsi rather than Pashtu. They have a long history of being oppressed by the ethnic Pashtu majority, some of whom stereotype them as intruders.
Aqil said that when he tried to go to a police station for a document, the Taliban guard at the gate only spoke Pashtu and impatiently slammed the door in his face. He had to come back later with a Pashtu-speaking colleague.
“This sort of situation makes me lose hope in the future,” he said. “They don’t know us. They are not broadminded to accept other communities. They act as if they are the owners of this country.”
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A young Hazara woman, Massoumeh, said four people were killed last month in her part of Dashti Barchi, raising residents’ fears that people with roles in the previous government were targets.
She went with a community delegation led by a local elder to the area’s Taliban police station to discuss security. The only woman in the delegation, she had to wait in the yard while the others met with the district commander, who she said tried to blame the security failings on the local elder. As the delegation left, a guard told them not to bring a woman with them again, she said.
“How can you keep security in Afghanistan if you can’t keep security in our village?” she said.
The 21-year-old Massoumeh was a nurse at Dashti Barchi’s main hospital in 2020 when IS gunmen stormed the maternity ward, killing at least 24 people, mostly mothers who were pregnant or had just given birth — one of the militants’ most horrific attacks.
Since then, she has been too afraid to return to work because of death threats after she spoke about the attack on Afghan TV. Soon after the attack, two militants approached her on a bus late at night, picking her out using a photo on their phone, and pulled a gun on her, warning her not to go back to work, she said. She and her father still get threatening phone calls, she said.
Police under the previous government gave her some protection, she said. But she doesn’t even bother to ask the Taliban police for help.
“Of course not. We are afraid of them,” she said. “No one will come and help us.”
Other events in the Hazaras’ central Afghanistan heartland have raised the community’s concerns. In Daikundi province, Taliban fighters killed 11 Hazara soldiers and two civilians, including a teenage girl, in August, according to Amnesty International. Taliban officials also expelled Hazara families from several Daikundi villages after accusing them of living on land that didn’t belong to them.
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After an uproar from Hazaras, further expulsions were halted, Gawhari and other community leaders said.
But so far, the Taliban have rejected repeated requests from the Hazaras for a say in government. Gawhari, the cleric, said a Hazara delegation approached the Taliban and proposed 50 Hazara experts and academics to be brought into the administration. “They were not interested,” he said.
The international community is pressing the Taliban to form a government that reflects Afghanistan’s ethnic, religious and political spectrum, including women. The Taliban’s Cabinet is comprised entirely of men from their own ranks.
Last week, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi expressed impatience with international demands for inclusivity. “Our current Cabinet fulfils that requirement, we have representatives from all ethnicities,” he told reporters.
The highest level Hazara in the administration is a deputy health minister. Several other Hazaras hold some provincial posts, but they are Hazaras who long ago joined the Taliban insurgency and adopted its hard-line ideology. Few in the Hazara community recognize them.
Ali Akbar Jamshidi, a former parliament member representing Daikundi province, said Hazaras won’t be satisfied with a few local positions and want to be brought into the Cabinet and the intelligence and security services.
The Taliban, he said, are running a government “that acts like a warlord who has seized everything.”
“Physical security is not enough. We need psychological security as well, feeling like we are part of this government and it is part of us,” he said. “The Taliban can benefit from us. They have the opportunity to form a government for the future, but they are not taking this opportunity.”