The U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan is stepping down following the chaotic American withdrawal from the country, the State Department said Monday.

Zalmay Khalilzad will leave the post this week after more than three years on the job under both the Trump and Biden administrations. He had been criticized for not pressing the Taliban hard enough in peace talks begun while Donald Trump was president but Secretary of State Antony Blinken thanked him for his work.

“I extend my gratitude for his decades of service to the American people,” Blinken said of Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Afghanistan. 

Khalilzad had initially planned to leave the job in May after Biden’s announcement that the U.S. withdrawal would be completed before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in September. However, he was asked to stay on and did so.

Khalilzad had served as the special envoy for Afghan reconciliation under both the Trump and Biden administrations since September 2018, when the-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought him on board to lead negotiations with the Taliban and the Afghan government. 

An Afghan native, Khalilzad was unsuccessful in getting the two sides together to forge a power-sharing deal but he did negotiate a U.S. agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 that ultimately led to the end of America’s longest-running war.

The agreement with the Taliban served as the template for the Biden administration’s withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, which many believe was conducted too hastily and without enough planning. Thousands of Afghan citizens who worked for U.S. forces there over the past two decades were left behind in the rush to leave as were hundred of American citizens and legal residents.

President Joe Biden and his aides frequently said the agreement that Khalilzad negotiated tied their hands when it came to the pullout and led to the sudden takeover of the country by the Taliban, although administration critics noted that Biden had abandoned the “conditions-based” requirements for a complete U.S. withdrawal.

In interviews and in his resignation letter described to The AP, Khalilzad noted that the agreement he negotiated had conditioned the final withdrawal of US forces to the Taliban entering serious peace talks with the Afghan government. He also lamented that those negotiations and consequently the withdrawal had not gone as planned.

Despite the criticism, Khalilzad remained on the job, although he skipped the first high-level post-withdrawal U.S.-Taliban meeting in Doha, Qatar earlier this month, prompting speculation he was on his way out. Khalilzad will be replaced by his deputy Thomas West, who led the U.S. delegation to that last round of talks in Doha.

However, the U.S. will not be sending a representative to a Russia-hosted conference on Afghanistan this week, the State Department said. Speaking before Blinken’s announcement of Khalilzad’s departure, department spokesman Ned Price cited “logistics” as the reason the U.S. would not participate in the Moscow talks.

Khalilzad said in his resignation letter that after leaving government service he would continue to work on behalf of the Afghan people and would offer his thoughts and advice on what went wrong in Afghanistan and the path forward.
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The United Nations announced Monday that a nationwide house-to-house polio vaccination campaign in conflict-torn Afghanistan will recommence next month and hailed the new Taliban government for agreeing to lift a ban on such drives.

Afghanistan is one of two countries in the world, along with neighboring Pakistan, where the highly infectious and incurable disease continues to cripple children.  

Officials on both sides documented only one infection each so far in 2021 of the wild poliovirus Type 1 (WPV1), the lowest-ever transmission seen at the same time in Pakistan and Afghanistan, compared to 84 and 56 cases respectively last year.  

The house-to-house Afghan anti-polio campaign due to start November 8 is aimed at reaching around 10 million children under the age of 5 across the country, including more than 3 million in remote and previously inaccessible areas, according to the World Health Organization and U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

The Taliban, who regained power in August, banned door-to-door vaccinations in April 2018 in areas under their control as they waged insurgent attacks against the ousted Western-backed Afghan government and international forces.

“Over this 3-and-a-half-year period, there were approximately 3.3 million children, some of whom could never be reached — or some of them inconsistently reached — with vaccination because of this ban,” Dr. Hamid Jafari, director of polio eradication for the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, told VOA.

He explained that the Taliban had seen polio teams’ house-to-house movement as a security risk for their fighters in the wake of the nature of the conflict at the time.  

“They have now the controlling authority across the country, and there is not much active conflict right now. So, they (Taliban) have decided to continue their support for polio eradication and specially vaccination through house-to-house vaccination,” the WHO official said.

Jafari recalled the polio eradication program started in Afghanistan in the 1990s when the Taliban were in government and hailed the Islamist group for being supportive of the anti-polio efforts from the outset.  

He stressed the need for aggressively implementing the anti-polio campaign, saying the low number of cases offer a “truly unique opportunity” to eradicate the virus from Afghanistan.

Jafari underlined the economic importance of the house-to-house campaign, saying it will be the first major mobilization of Afghan health workers for delivery of a nationwide vaccination service since the Taliban takeover of the country.

“In the current situation of real economic challenges, where many workers and people have not been paid their salaries, this campaign will be one activity in which a large number of the workforce will actually participate in vaccine delivery and will get paid for it,” he said.  

WHO officials said a second campaign in Afghanistan, due to begin in coordination with a campaign in Pakistan in December, has also been agreed to.

Jafari cautioned that it is too early for both countries to celebrate that they are nearing polio eradication. He noted there are still several million children in Afghanistan who have not been administered polio drops in recent years, and there are areas in Pakistan where children still need to be inoculated against the virus.

“We have an unprecedented epidemiological opportunity right now to succeed in final polio eradication in both countries. The progress is encouraging, but it is very fragile, and both countries still have to work very hard. This is not a time to be complacent,” Jafari said.

 
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International Aid agencies are working to help resettle millions of people in Afghanistan who were displaced during war. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem spoke with some of those who were displaced and living in a Kabul camp.
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The man known as the last Jew of Kabul could soon be heading to Israel, after agreeing to grant his estranged wife a religious divorce in a Zoom call — a precondition for smooth entry to the Holy Land. 

Zebulon Simentov, who fled Afghanistan last month after the Taliban takeover, landed Sunday in Turkey on what his rescuers say is a final stop before traveling to Israel, perhaps as soon as this week. 

It caps a weeks-long odyssey that included an escape from his homeland as well as a videoconference divorce procedure meant to ensure he will not run into trouble with Israeli authorities. 

Under Jewish religious law, a husband must agree to grant his wife a divorce, something he had refused to do for many years. Facing the prospect of legal action in Israel, where his ex-wife lives, Simentov, after resisting for years, finally agreed to the divorce last month in a special Zoom call supervised by Australian rabbinical authorities. 

The Associated Press viewed part of the proceeding. During the sometimes chaotic discussion, conducted through an interpreter who struggled to explain the procedure, Simentov agrees to sign a divorce document known as a “get” after receiving assurances that he will not face trouble in Israel. 

Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, whose nonprofit group Tzedek Association funded the journey, said Simentov had spent the last few weeks living quietly in Pakistan, an Islamic country that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. 

He said his group had looked into bringing Simentov to the U.S. but decided that Israel was a better destination both because of difficulties in arranging a U.S. entry visa and because Simentov has many relatives, including five siblings and two daughters, already in Israel. 

“We are relieved we were successful in helping Zebulon Simentov escape from Afghanistan and now into safety in Turkey,” said Margaretten, whose group has helped evacuate several dozen other people from Afghanistan. “Zebulon’s life was in danger in Afghanistan.” 

Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, greeted Simentov at the airport in Istanbul on Sunday.  

He said he had an appointment to take Simentov to the Israeli consulate on Monday to arrange his entry into Israel. Under Israel’s Law of Return, any Jew is entitled to Israeli citizenship. 

Chitrik said he had been working with Margaretten and other volunteers for several months to get Simentov out of Afghanistan. 

“I’m happy this issue is finally coming to rest,” he said. 

How long that will take remains unclear. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it was unaware of the request and Simentov could also be delayed by coronavirus protocols restricting entry to Israel. 

Simentov, who lived in a dilapidated synagogue in Kabul, kept kosher and prayed in Hebrew, endured decades of war as the country’s centuries-old Jewish community rapidly dwindled. But the Taliban takeover in August seems to have been the last straw. 

Moti Kahana, an Israeli-American businessman who runs a private firm that organized the evacuation on behalf of Margaretten, told The Associated Press last month that Simentov was not worried about the Taliban because he had lived under their rule before. He said that threats of the more radical Islamic State group and pressure from neighbors who were rescued with him had helped persuade him to leave. 

Hebrew manuscripts found in caves in northern Afghanistan indicate a thriving Jewish community existed there at least 1,000 years ago. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan was home to some 40,000 Jews, many of them Persian Jews who had fled forced conversion in neighboring Iran. The community’s decline began with an exodus to Israel after its creation in 1948. 

In an interview with The Associated Press in 2009, Simentov said the last Jewish families left after the 1979 Soviet invasion. 

For several years he shared the synagogue building with the country’s only other Jew, Isaak Levi, but they despised each other and feuded during the Taliban’s previous rule from 1996 to 2001. 

The Taliban arrested both men and beat them, and they confiscated the synagogue’s ancient Torah scroll, which went missing after the Taliban were driven from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. 

When his 80-year-old housemate died in 2005, Simentov said he was happy to be rid of him. 

Reporters who visited Simentov over the years — and paid the exorbitant fees he charged for interviews — found a portly man fond of whiskey, who kept a pet partridge and watched Afghan TV. He observed Jewish dietary restrictions and ran a kebab shop. 

Born in the western city of Herat in 1959, he always insisted Afghanistan was home. 

The Taliban, like other Islamic militant groups, are hostile to Israel but tolerated the country’s miniscule Jewish community during their previous reign. 
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Former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said the current Taliban government in Afghanistan needs internal legitimacy in order for it to gain international recognition.

He said that could only be achieved through the expression of the will of the Afghan people, either in the form of elections or holding the Loya Jirga, a traditional grand council of representatives from various parts of the country.

Karzai spoke with the Voice of America on Saturday, nearly two months after the United States and its NATO allies left Afghanistan, ending the U.S.’s longest war in history. 

He charged that Afghanistan is at a critical juncture in its history and Afghans have a responsibility to “unite” and create a government premised on “the expression of the will of the Afghan people.”

“Legitimacy within our own country for this government [Taliban] or for any other government is the foundation of recognition by countries and the international community,” Karzai said, adding that governments derive legitimacy from the will of their people.

“How to bring about legitimacy within the country is of course premised on either an election or, in the case of Afghanistan, especially under the current circumstances, the expression of the will of the Afghan people through the Loya Jirga and the introduction of a constitution and so on,” he added.

Pakistan

Since taking over the country in mid-August after self-exiled Afghan President Ashraf Ghani left the country, the Taliban have yet to be officially recognized by any country, including Pakistan, viewed by many as its closest ally.

Pakistani leaders, including Prime Minister Imran Khan and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Quresh, have advocated for the Taliban and have urged the international community to work with the new government in Kabul.

“If we neglect Afghanistan right now, there’s a huge humanitarian crisis looming ahead, and this will have serious repercussions not just for the neighbors of Afghanistan, but it will have repercussions everywhere,” Imran Khan told the U.N. General Assembly in September.

“We must strengthen this current government [Taliban], stabilize it, for the sake of the people of Afghanistan. What have the Taliban promised? They will respect human rights, they will have an inclusive government, they will not allow this soil to be used by terrorists,” Khan added.

The Taliban are notorious for their restrictions on women, on civil liberties and their harsh interpretation of Islamic law. Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in mid-August, the international community has strongly criticized the militant group for not fulfilling pledges to respect the rights of women and minorities, and for not including enough members from other ethnic groups in the Cabinet.

Karzai told VOA that Pakistan is not the representative of the Afghan people.

“My message to Pakistan, our brotherly country, is that they should not try to represent Afghanistan. On the contrary, the country should try to establish a civil relationship with our country,” he said.

“We have deep people-to-people relations with Pakistan. … Our hope from Pakistan is that the country should not try to maintain its relations with us through interference, the encouragement of extremism and terrorism or by force, but rather establish relations with Afghanistan through civil principles and principles of international relations, and we will happily maintain that relationship with them,” he added.

While in power, both Karzai and his successor, Ghani, have frequently accused Pakistan of supporting the Afghan Taliban and providing them with training and safe havens on its soil, charges that Islamabad has denied.

IS threat, regional consensus

Karzai voiced concerns about the Islamic State terror group’s uptick in violence in Afghanistan and deemed it a threat to both Afghanistan and the region. 

The militant group’s local branch, known as the Islamic State Khorasan, has claimed responsibility for several vicious attacks in recent weeks in Kabul, Kunduz and Kandahar provinces, where more than 100 civilians have been killed and many others wounded.

“As proven by the unfortunate bomb blasts — rather, suicide attacks in the mosque in Kabul two weeks ago, then in Kunduz last week, and then in Kandahar yesterday (October 15) — this has proven that Daesh is a threat to Afghanistan and to the life and livelihood of the Afghan people,” Karzai said, using another acronym for the Islamic State terror group.

Karzai showed optimism that the region will support Afghanistan in its fight against IS, because it could pose a threat to their security. In addition, he said he hopes that regional powers would seek common ground in Afghanistan,.

He said it is Afghanistan’s responsibility to work with other countries in the region “in a way that results in peace and stability in Afghanistan.”

Women’s rights

Karzai stressed the importance of women returning to the workplace, universities and schools. He said this desire primarily comes from the Afghan people, whether or not the international community demands it.

“The rights of Afghan women to work and to be present in all walks of life in our country is primarily the demand of the Afghan people,” he said. “So, even if the international community doesn’t ask for it, it is our demand, the Afghan demand, and our need.”

Karzai continues to live in Kabul with his family and is the father of two daughters and a son. He said he wants his daughters and son to be educated.

“I want my son to be the best educated. I want him to study, to study at home and study abroad and get the best education. I want my daughters to be the best educated, study at home, and when the time comes, study abroad, and fulfill their personal aspirations, and through the fulfillment of their personal aspirations, the aspirations of the Afghan people,” he said.

“I want them to remain patriotic Afghans, as all other Afghan children,” he added.
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Two laborers were killed by gunmen in Indian-administered Kashmir Sunday, police said, the latest victims of a fresh outbreak of violence that has sent jitters through the disputed Muslim-majority region.

The two laborers, who were Hindus from Bihar, a state outside the Himalayan territory, were shot in the southern Wanpoh area of Kashmir valley. A third was critically injured, police said.

The killings came a day after a street vendor and a laborer, also from Bihar, were killed in separate shootings. One was Muslim, the other was Hindu.

No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the four deaths, which have sent shockwaves through minority communities in the region.

Tensions have risen in Kashmir since August 2019 when Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government scrapped the region’s semi-autonomy and brought it under New Delhi’s direct rule.

This was accompanied by a huge security operation and communications blackout with tens of thousands of extra soldiers joining the estimated half-million already on the ground.

Modi said the change was to end decades of violence and bring prosperity to Kashmir.

But locals said the laws enacted since then favored Indians from outside the territor.

The latest killings come hard on the heels of a series of street shootings last week that left seven more civilians dead, among them three members of the local Hindu and Sikh communities. 

Those shootings were claimed by The Resistance Front (TRF) rebel group, which accused them of working for India’s security agencies.

In total, 32 civilians have been shot dead this year so far, a majority of them local Muslims.

Meanwhile deadly clashes between insurgents and government forces have claimed roughly 30 lives — including soldiers and rebels — in the past two weeks.

Police said five TRF militants have been killed since last week, including two on Saturday.

Two soldiers died in a firefight near the cease-fire line between India- and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir on Saturday, the military said.

Kashmir was divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947. The nuclear-armed rivals have fought two wars over its control.

An armed rebellion against Indian rule of Kashmir started in 1989 with groups demanding independence or merger of the region with Pakistan.

Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting.

Pakistan denies India’s repeated accusations that it supports the rebels.  
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The United Nations refugee agency says the first of three emergency airlifts of relief supplies for Afghanistan that landed in Termez, Uzbekistan, Friday will be followed by two more flights this week.

With Afghan airports closed to commercial traffic, the U.N. refugee agency has diverted flights to the Uzbekistan border town of Termez, which will act as the epicenter of a massive Afghan relief operation.

UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch said the three planes together are delivering more than 100 metric tons of shelter materials, blankets, plastic sheeting, and other supplies to help Afghans withstand the rigors of winter.

He said the supplies will be trucked from Termez to Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan and distributed to 126,000 people in the country. He said more supplies will be needed, as his agency hopes to aid some half a million Afghans.

“We need Kabul to resume activities as soon as possible. I mean so many things depend on it. And, also, we hope to fly in special flights into Kabul as well with our relief items and bringing in more aid. … So, if supplies are available anywhere, we will be moving them to Afghanistan,” said Baloch.

The United Nations estimates 18 million people, half of Afghanistan’s population, needs humanitarian aid. More than 3.5 million Afghans are internally displaced, including more than half a million newly displaced this year.

Baloch said people are living on a knife’s edge. A few days ago, he said he visited a distribution center 15 to 20 kilometers outside Kabul, where he witnessed the desperation of people lining up for aid.

“When I was standing there, we saw an old mother collapsing in front of our eyes. So, when colleagues attended to her, the reason was she has not eaten for days. And she is the one who is heading the household because of what has happened to her. You have grandfathers, you have children, you have little girls who should be in school, and they are queueing up or they are being in the aid distribution queue,” he said.

Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in mid-August, girls have not been allowed to go to school and women have been prohibited from working.

Baloch said it is a race against time to provide aid to millions of Afghans before winter sets in and access to many will be cut off. He warns the blistering cold weather can kill anyone caught out in the cold without any help.
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At least eight people have died and a dozen are feared missing after a day of torrential rains in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Rescue operations were under way on Sunday after heavy rains lashed the state the day before, triggering flash floods and landslides, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported.

The National Disaster Response Force and the Indian Army deployed teams to help with rescue efforts in two of the worst-hit districts, Kottayam and Idukki, where a dozen people are still feared missing.

On Saturday, when the heavy rains began, television reports showed people wading through chest-deep waters to rescue passengers from a bus that was nearly submerged by the torrents flooding the roads.

Officials said the intense rainfall has subsided, but they fear the death toll could rise as relief and rescue operations continue.

Home Minister Amit Shah said the federal government was monitoring the situation in Kerala and would provide all possible support to the state. “Praying for everyone’s safety,” he said in a tweet.

In 2018, Kerala suffered catastrophic floods when heavy downpours amid the monsoon season killed 223 people and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes. 

 
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Pakistan has opened its air trade route for the first time to commercial cargo destined to landlocked Afghanistan to help its war-torn neighbor’s Taliban government deal with a deepening economic crisis.

“Islamabad International Airport is now opened for high value Afghan transit trade,” Mohammad Sadiq, Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan, tweeted Saturday.

Sadiq said a chartered aircraft brought “various industrial inputs” to Islamabad on Friday and the Afghan transit cargo was then loaded into containers before being transported by road to Kabul through the northwestern Torkham crossing on the Afghan border.

“I congratulate Pakistan Customs for arranging first ever plane-to-truck transfer of international cargo via Pakistan. It shows Pakistan’s commitment to a geo-economics led foreign policy,” the envoy tweeted.

In a later tweet, Sadiq also rejected as propaganda reported allegations that trucks transporting Afghan exports to Pakistan, mainly fresh fruits, were being blocked by Pakistani authorities from crossing the border. The envoy tweeted what he said was a picture of the Torkham terminal showing no fruit trucks were waiting on the Afghan side.

Trade treaty

A bilateral transit treaty, enacted in 1965 and renegotiated in 2010 with the United States mediating, grants Kabul the right to conduct duty-free international trade through Pakistani airports, seaports and overland routes.

In turn, Islamabad is allowed to use the designated Afghan transit corridor to trade with Central Asian countries.

But strained political ties with the previous Kabul government had discouraged Islamabad from allowing the transit of any goods through its air trade route until now. Kabul’s close security cooperation with Pakistan’s archrival India was also a source of mutual distrust.

The tensions largely stemmed from allegations by Afghanistan that the Taliban had been using sanctuaries in Pakistan from which to direct insurgent attacks against the Afghan government and U.S.-led coalition troops for almost 20 years, charges denied by Islamabad.

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August prompted Washington to freeze nearly $10 billion in Afghan assets, mostly deposited in the U.S. Federal Reserve.

The restriction has raised the prospects of an economic meltdown in the poverty-stricken country where the United Nations says about 1 million Afghan children are at risk of starvation and at least 18 million more people need urgent humanitarian aid, citing years of conflict and a prolonged drought. U.N. officials warn the approaching winter is only going to make matters worse.

Humanitarian crisis

The U.S. and other countries have vowed to scale up humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan. But they have refused to grant the Taliban government legitimacy until they see the Islamist group keep its promises to protect the human rights of all Afghans, including women, and fight international terrorism.

For its part, Pakistan has sent dozens of truckloads of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, including food and medicines, nearly every day since the Taliban took over Kabul.

The Pakistani government last month eliminated the sales tax on fruits imported from Afghanistan to encourage Afghan traders and farmers. The move, officials say, has led to an increase in Afghan exports to Pakistan.

Islamabad has also withdrawn a ban on exports of poultry products to the neighboring country, hoping it would reduce the price of poultry there and ensure a supply of fresh chicken as well eggs to the general population.

Pakistani leaders, however, have withheld recognition of the Taliban government, saying they will wait for the global community to do so and the new rulers in Kabul to deliver on their pledges.

Refugee flood feared

Pakistan, which shares a roughly 2,600-kilometer border with Afghanistan, has been urging the U.S. and the world in general to engage with the Taliban to prevent the country from descending into chaos again.

Islamabad insists that continued Afghan instability will pose security challenges and trigger economic migration toward Afghanistan’s neighbors.

Pakistani officials have refused to accept more Afghan refugees, saying their country already hosts nearly 3 million Afghans and the international community should help in their repatriation.
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Funeral services were held Saturday for victims of Friday’s suicide bomb attack on a Shiite mosque in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar that killed at least 47 people and wounded more than 70.

Islamic State’s Amaq news agency said late Friday that two of its members fatally shot security guards at the entrance to the mosque before blowing themselves up inside between two groups of hundreds of worshippers. 

IS identified the attackers as Afghan nationals Anas al-Khurasani and Abu Ali al-Baluchi.

Taliban officials vowed to bolster security at Shiite mosques Saturday as hundreds gathered while the victims were buried by their families. Sixty-three graves were prepared, but a provincial Taliban official said the official death toll was 47. 

United Nations Secretary-General spokesman Stéphane Dujarric described the attack in a statement Friday as “despicable” and said the attackers “must be brought to justice.”

In a statement Friday, the U.N. Security Council stressed the need to hold everyone involved in “these reprehensible acts of terrorism accountable and bring them to justice.”

It is the second consecutive week an attack occurred at a Shiite mosque and was claimed by IS. Forty-six people were killed in an October 9 attack on a mosque in northern Afghanistan.

The attacks are fueling concerns that IS, an adversary of the Taliban and the West, is enlarging its base in Afghanistan since the withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from the country in August.

Some in information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
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Protests erupted for a second day in Bangladesh’s capital on Saturday, amid a wave of violence against local Hindus following a viral social media image perceived as insulting to the country’s Muslim majority.

Some 10,000 protesters — many of them carrying banners of Islamist political parties — took to the streets outside the main mosque in the capital, Dhaka, a day after demonstrations on the same site ended in clashes with police.

The crowd chanted “Down with the enemies of the Islam” and “Hang the culprits.”

Photos showing a copy of the Quran —Islam’s holy book—at the feet of a statue in a Hindu temple in the eastern district of Cumilla triggered the protests, as well as incidents of vandalism at Hindu temples across Bangladesh.

“We ask the government to arrest those who defamed the Quran by putting it at the feet of an idol in Cumilla,” Mosaddek Billah Al Madani, president of Bangladesh’s Islami Movement. He added that protesters demanded “the death sentence” for those responsible for the images.

Separately, in a nearby intersection about 1,000 Hindus protested attacks on temples and the killing of two Hindu devotees in another district where several temples were vandalized by Muslim mobs. 
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U.S. officials and independent analysts reacted skeptically Friday to a Taliban claim that China is ready to invest billions of dollars in Afghanistan.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki indicated the United States is more concerned with helping the Afghan people as the nation’s economy collapses than with countering any future spread of Chinese influence in the country.

“Our focus is on working with the vast majority of the international community on delivering humanitarian assistance and getting it to the right people in Afghanistan to make sure they have what they need,” she said in response to a question from VOA.

In an interview in Kabul earlier this week, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Afghanistan’s new rulers have pledged to ensure the safety of Chinese workers and assets in return for billions of dollars of Chinese investment.

“They are interested in investment in some sectors in Afghanistan and want to negotiate the details,” Mujahid told VOA.

“One of the projects is Mes Aynak (the site of one of Afghanistan’s largest copper mines and ancient Buddhist ruins), which is one of the important areas where they want to invest billions of dollars, and Afghanistan also needs this,” Mujahid said.

‘Wishful thinking’

China has invested in neighboring countries including Pakistan and Iran and has invited Kabul to join the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a flagship project of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative.

But the idea that China is ready to invest in Afghanistan now is “wishful thinking,” said Husain Haqqani, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank focused on U.S. policy. An investment of billions of dollars means an expectation of hundreds of millions of dollars in return annually, and right now the Afghan economy simply does not present that opportunity.

Haqqani notes that the Chinese have so far given the Taliban only $31 million in humanitarian assistance.

“That is certainly not an indication of somebody who’s ready to invest billions,” he said.

Large-scale investment in Afghanistan is also unlikely before the Taliban gain international recognition. No country has recognized the Islamic Emirate — the name proclaimed by the group — as the official government of Afghanistan, including China and Russia, another U.S. rival.

“We are aware that they should be cooperated with, but there is no place for haste,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said to leaders of the former Soviet republics at the Commonwealth of Independent States Summit on Friday.

Unstable and dangerous

While the Taliban have pledged to restore peace, Beijing and other potential investors will need to see more political stability and a safer security environment.

“China will be certainly the first country knocking at the door, but there’s no countries knocking at the door right now,” said Erol Yayboke, director of the Project on Fragility and Mobility at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They require a certain level of stability.”

Certainly, the security situation remains unstable, and many fear that other militant groups are getting stronger under Taliban rule.

On Friday, suicide bombers attacked a Shiite mosque in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, killing dozens of people during crowded Friday prayers. Responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, the same group that killed at least 45 people and wounded dozens more in last week’s suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in northern Kunduz province.

Moving on

Beyond providing humanitarian assistance and evacuating Americans and Afghan allies, the Biden administration has signaled it is moving on. Officials have repeatedly said that the military component of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is over.

“The U.S. is no longer in the game in Afghanistan,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center.

He said the U.S. is much more focused on great power rivalries elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, including the South China Sea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. And so far, America’s rivals have not rushed in to fill the vacuum the U.S. left in Afghanistan.

“China and Russia are going to want to be very cautious, at least for the near term, and watch and see what happens in Afghanistan,” Kugelman said.

Beyond security considerations, neither the Chinese Communist Party nor the Kremlin is a natural partner for the Taliban, particularly as the group does not appear willing to become more moderate or inclusive to gain greater international legitimacy.

However, Haqqani warned, the political and security calculus would change should Afghanistan become a haven for international jihadis once again.

“At that point, everybody will recalculate, including the United States,” he predicted. 

 
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World soccer’s governing body FIFA said on Friday it had worked with the Qatari government to evacuate almost 100 football players and their families from Afghanistan.

The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on Aug. 15 and announced a new government last month after U.S.-led foreign forces withdrew and the Western-backed government collapsed.

Qatar’s assistant foreign minister, Lolwah al-Khater, had said the players and their families were among the passengers to arrive on a flight from Kabul on Thursday.

FIFA said in a statement that the group, which included female players, were deemed to have been “at the highest risk.” It thanked Qatar for its support and for “ensuring the safe passage” of the players and families.

“The FIFA leadership has been closely coordinating with the government of Qatar since August on the evacuation of the group and will continue to work closely on the safe evacuation of further members of the sporting family in the future,” it added.

Cycling’s world governing body UCI said on Monday it helped in the evacuation of 165 refugees from Afghanistan, which included female cyclists, journalists and human rights campaigners.

The International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said last month that the organization had helped around 100 members of the “Olympic community” in Afghanistan to leave the country on humanitarian visas.

Australia evacuated more than 50 female Afghan athletes and their dependents in August, while several players from Afghanistan’s national female youth soccer squad were granted asylum in Portugal last month. 
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Suicide bombers struck a Shiite mosque Friday in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, killing at least 47 people and wounding more than 70, according to a Taliban official.

Witnesses said two to four suicide bombers carried out the attack.

One witness said he was inside the mosque and heard two explosions inside the mosque and two outside. A second witness, Murtaza, who was in charge of mosque security, told The Associated Press he saw one attacker outside the gate and one inside the mosque. Murtaza, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said security personnel shot a third suspected attacker outside the mosque.

The mosque’s imam, Sardar Mohammad Zaidi, said there were four attackers, two outside and two inside, Reuters reported.

Islamic State Khorasan Province claimed responsibility for the attack, saying on its Telegram channels that it was carried out by two suicide bombers.

The blasts went off during Friday prayers, usually attended by large crowds. Pictures and videos shared on social media showed a bloody scene inside the mosque, with bodies and body parts strewn about and worshippers trying to rescue the wounded.

“When I arrived at the mosque, I saw injured, dead bodies, and people who had fallen on top of each other,” Haji Sarwar Hazara, a local construction contractor who arrived soon after the blast, told Reuters.

Hafiz Sayeed, the Taliban chief for Kandahar’s department of culture and information, later told The Associated Press at least 47 people were killed and at least 70 wounded.

The attack came a week after a Friday-prayer bombing in another Afghan city, Kunduz, left more than 50 dead. That attack was also claimed by Islamic State Khorasan Province, the local branch of the Islamic State group. IS Khorasan had claimed a Uyghur carried out the Kunduz attack.

In an interview with VOA earlier this week, Taliban Deputy Information Minister Zabihulah Mujahid denied that IS was a serious threat, despite multiple attacks, including one on a gathering for the last rituals of Mujahid’s own mother in Kabul.

He said the only reason IS Khorasan had managed to carry out attacks in recent weeks was that the Taliban broke open many jails when it took over the country, allowing IS Khorasan facilitators to escape.

“Our forces are trying to find its roots. In the last week-and-a-half we have arrested several people belonging to IS and have destroyed several of their safe houses. We have neutralized several of their attacks,” Mujahid said.

IS Khorasan claimed a Uyghur had carried out the Kunduz attack, but Mujahid said China had not discussed the issue with the Taliban.

Friday’s bombing was the fourth high-profile bombing claimed by IS Khorasan since Aug. 15, the day the Taliban took control of Kabul.

The group also claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on Kabul airport while thousands of Afghans who were fleeing from the Taliban were being evacuated. That attack killed nearly 100 Afghans and 13 American service personnel.

VOA’s Ayaz Gul contributed to this report.

Some information came from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
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A former Taliban commander previously accused of kidnapping an American journalist pleaded not guilty on Friday to murdering three U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2008, telling a federal judge that the “accusations are incorrect.” 

Haji Najibullah, 45, appeared in federal court in Manhattan to enter the plea after prosecutors last week unveiled new charges against the accused former Taliban commander in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province, adjacent to Kabul. 

The indictment alleged that Taliban fighters under Najibullah’s command attacked a U.S. military convoy, killing U.S. Army Sergeants First Class Matthew Hilton and Joseph McKay, Sergeant Mark Palmateer and their unnamed Afghan interpreter. 

If convicted, Najibullah could face life in prison. 

Najibullah is charged with 13 counts, including providing material support for acts of terrorism resulting in death, murdering U.S. nationals, kidnapping and hostage-taking. 

“These accusations are incorrect,” Najibullah said through a Pashto language interpreter. “None of these belong to me. There are many other stories behind this.” 

The Taliban in August retook power in Afghanistan, almost 20 years after being ousted in a U.S.-led invasion. Washington is pressing the Taliban to release a kidnapped American and to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a hotbed for extremist groups. 

Senior U.S. and Taliban officials held their first face-to-face meeting in Doha, Qatar, over the weekend. 

The latest indictment comes a year after prosecutors accused Najibullah of kidnapping an American journalist in 2008. 

Though prosecutors did not identify the journalist, a law enforcement official familiar with the matter told Reuters last year that the case involved David Rohde. Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize winner who is now at The New Yorker magazine and previously worked for Reuters and the New York Times, escaped in 2009. 

 
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Afghan businesswomen say that they have been forced to close their businesses as the Taliban have imposed a ban on women working outside. Yalda Baktash has the story.
Script writer: Roshan Noorzai
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The U.N. refugee agency is calling on countries to ease bureaucratic requirements and speed up Afghan family reunification procedures. 

More than 3.5 million Afghans are displaced inside Afghanistan and many more are displaced across the region in neighboring countries as refugees.

U.N. refugee agency spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo said it is difficult to collect data under the current turbulent conditions. Therefore, it is hard to know how many people would qualify for family reunification. 

However, based on a 10-year study done before the current situation, she said the number is likely to be significant. 

“So, from 2010 to 2019, I believe … a bit over 286,000 Afghans were granted family permits in OECD countries and Brazil. … I do not know if that is indicative, but it does give a bit of a picture,” Mantoo said. 

She said many separated families abroad approach UNHCR offices, desperately concerned about the safety and welfare of their relatives, who remain in Afghanistan. She described conditions inside Afghanistan as exceptionally challenging.

She said the UNHCR is urging countries to simplify family reunification admission procedures to help protect lives. 

“While many countries have specific legal frameworks that provide for refugee family reunification and offer specific safeguards and waivers, UNHCR is worried that many Afghan refugees could face considerable administrative barriers in realizing this legal right,” she said. “Some of these barriers include prohibitive costs, lengthy waiting times and inflexible documentation requirements.” 

Mantoo suggested that countries could fast-track family reunification by adopting humanitarian visa programs, prioritizing procedures for Afghan families, and applying liberal and humane criteria in identifying family members who qualify. 

She said many people likely will have to wait a long time before they can join their families in a third country. Given their precarious situation, she said they would qualify as refugees, making them eligible for all refugee protection safeguards. 

 
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The United States announced Friday an additional 9.6 million doses of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine are being shipped to Pakistan through the global vaccine-sharing COVAX initiative.

The shipment brings to more than 25 million the total number of COVID-19 vaccine doses donated by Washington to the Pakistani people, said the American Embassy in Islamabad.

“The United States is proud to partner with Pakistan to get effective, life-saving Pfizer vaccinations into the arms of Pakistanis, and Pakistan has done a great job of distributing our donated vaccines,” U.S. Chargé d’affaires Angela Aggeler was quoted as saying. “This donation comes just in time for young Pakistanis over age 12 to get their first jabs.” 

COVID-19 infections are decreasing in Pakistan, with fewer than 1,000 new daily cases reported on average. The government last week eased restrictions on almost all public movement, education activities and businesses across the country of roughly 220 million people.

The latest government data show there have been 1,262,771 confirmed cases of infections, 39,953 of them active, and 28,228 COVID-19-related deaths since the pandemic hit Pakistan. 

Officials reported Friday that more than 95 million doses have been administered to Pakistanis, including roughly 1 million in last 24 hours alone, since the national vaccination drive was rolled out in February.

The vaccination campaign has largely relied on Chinese vaccine, but the U.S. donations are helping officials overcome critical shortages of Western-developed anti-coronavirus shots. 

“These Pfizer vaccines are part of the 500 million Pfizer doses the United States purchased this summer to deliver to 92 countries worldwide, including Pakistan, to fulfill President [Joe] Biden’s commitment to provide safe and effective vaccines around the world and supercharge the global fight against the pandemic,” the U.S. Embassy noted in its statement. 

Washington has also delivered $63 million in COVID-19 assistance to Islamabad. 

The COVAX program is co-led by Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance), the WHO (World Health Organization) and CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness). The United States is the single largest contributor supporting the initiative toward global COVID-19 vaccine access.
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An explosion ripped through a Shi’ite mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, killing at least 16 people and wounding more than 50, according to sources at the local Mirwais hospital.

The blast went off during Friday prayers, usually attended by large crowds. Pictures and videos shared on social media showed a bloody scene inside the mosque, with bodies and body parts strewn about and worshippers trying to rescue the wounded. 

A spokesman for the Taliban, Bilal Karimi, confirmed to VOA that the bomb attack in Kandahar “killed and injured a number of compatriots.” He said an investigation into the violence is ongoing “to identify the culprits and bring them to justice.”

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. 

The explosion came a week after a Friday-prayer attack in another Afghan city, Kunduz, left more than 50 dead. That attack was claimed by Islamic State Khorasan Province, the local branch of the Islamic State group. ISKP had claimed a Uyghur carried out the Kunduz attack. 

In an interview with VOA earlier this week, Taliban Deputy Information Minister Zabihulah Mujahid denied that IS was a serious threat, despite multiple attacks, including one on a gathering for the last rituals of Mujahid’s own mother in Kabul. 

He said the only reason why ISKP had managed to carry out attacks in recent weeks was that the Taliban broke open many jails when it took over the country, allowing ISKP facilitators to escape. 

“Our forces are trying to find its roots. In the last week-and-a-half we have arrested several people belonging to IS and have destroyed several of their safe houses. We have neutralized several of their attacks,” Mujahid said. 

ISKP claimed a Uyghur had carried out the Kunduz attack but Mujahid said China had not discussed the issue with the Taliban. 

This is the fourth high-profile attack IS Khorasan has carried out since August 15, the day the Taliban walked into Kabul. 

The group also claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on Kabul airport while thousands of Afghans who were fleeing from the Taliban were being evacuated. That attack killed nearly 100 Afghans and 13 American service personnel.

VOA’s Ayaz Gul contributed to this report.
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In Mosul’s Old City, the rule of the Islamic State group is not a distant memory of horrors long past. On every block are reminders: bombed out houses, piles of rubble and families toiling daily, just to survive. 

“An IS family lived over there,” says Sahara Mahmoud, a mother of 11, pointing to a sparse pile of rocks that was once a house. “And another house over there. That’s why they bombed those houses directly.” 

“Families?” I ask. It’s odd for anyone living in Mosul to sound remotely sorry for the deaths of IS fighters. 

“There were children in there,” she says. 

It has been more than four years since IS was driven out of Mosul, and the possibility the group could reemerge and take over again seems far-fetched to many Iraqis. But here in the Old City, they are wary. Some say the recent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has them on edge, dredging up memories they wish they could forget. 

In other parts of the city, and in the far-off Iraqi capital, Baghdad, locals say the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan sent them a signal: The U.S. is no longer interested in policing the region. 

For some, this is a good thing, and they welcome U.S. plans to end the combat mission in Iraq this year. But others, including Warqa Talib, a mother of five in the Old City, fear IS will be emboldened by the move and try to reclaim the towns and cities it held between 2014 and 2017. 

“It’s 50/50 that they will come back,” Talib says, poking her head out the door of her house. 

From the outside, her home appears to have been mostly rebuilt since the neighborhood was pummeled by international coalition airstrikes that rained down on IS fighters in the Old City for months in 2017. But, she tells us, the outside repairs are mostly superficial, only partially alleviating the postwar strain on her family. 

“If you look inside,” she insists, “you will see we have nothing.” 

Will dark days return? 

Across town, the lush University of Mosul campus has largely been rebuilt since the war destroyed 80% of its buildings, school administrators say. 

The campus is a study in contrasts. A bullet-riddled dorm and a fenced-off parking lot littered with broken streetlights stand neglected, while, nearby, an imposing new library and a cafeteria painted with murals sprawl across a carefully tended garden. 

Students here are more confident than Old City residents that the days of IS rule are over, citing the public’s general loathing of the group, and the national security forces’ apparent determination to prevent its resurgence. But watching the Taliban take control of Kabul on TV was shockingly eerie, say medical students Ibrahim Saddam and Omar Ahmed. 

“It was exactly like it happened here in 2014,” Saddam says, laughing nervously. At that time, most Iraqi security forces departed ahead of the takeover, leaving Mosul in the hands of IS in a matter of days or, in some places, hours. 

During IS rule, Saddam lived near the oil fields of Qayyarah, a town south of Mosul where militants often lit the fields on fire, supposedly to guard their positions from coalition airstrikes. 

The sky above Qayyarah darkened, and many locals, their skin and clothes smudged with black, developed a cough. “There was a time we didn’t see the sun for six months,” Saddam says. 

Unless elements of Iraq’s currently fragile peace change drastically, Saddam says, those dark days are unlikely to return. 

But, he says, the U.S. drawdown could be concerning for reasons unrelated to IS. Troops are expected to stay in an advisory role, but what that will mean for security in Iraq is unclear. 

Considering this eventuality gives both young men pause. Ahmed contends that the situation in Afghanistan is not comparable to that in Iraq. The Taliban were poised to take over when the U.S. withdrew, while IS has been mostly in hiding for years. 

More likely, Ahmed says, the U.S. drawdown could increase the power of Iran inside Iraq’s borders. Iran and the U.S. both heavily influence local and national politics in Iraq. And in Iraq’s sectarian landscape, if Iran has more power, so, too, will Shiite political leaders and militias, which is not considered a good outcome in Sunni-dominated Mosul. 

“No,” Ahmed says, shaking his head. “It will not be safe for us if the U.S. withdraws.” 

Future security 

About 400 kilometers south, in Baghdad, many locals are more optimistic about the U.S. drawdown, with reactions ranging from relief to annoyance. Few are worried about an IS comeback. 

“This confirms what we always knew,” says Mushriq al-Freaji, an activist-turned-politician who leads the Taking My Rights movement. “That the U.S. doesn’t care about the countries it occupies. If they are leaving, let them.” 

Many others tell us the country is now secured by a massive semiregular group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), or the Hashd Shaabi. Originally an informal collection of mostly Shiite volunteer fighters, the PMF was folded into the Iraqi state security system in recent years after playing a large role in defeating IS. 

In Mosul, residents are noticeably hesitant when asked whether the PMF will protect them from IS. The group is believed to already wield considerable power in Mosul, where the Shiite fighters are often seen as outsiders and potential threats. 

But at the university, Amina and Ayesha, communications students, say living under IS rule was far more terrifying than living under any of today’s government forces. 

As a teenage girl under IS rule, Amina says, she was forced to wear a burqa in the street and could go out only with a male escort. She says she sympathizes with the women and girls of Afghanistan who now face similar restrictions. But, she adds, under IS rule, she was far more concerned about safety than about oppressive regulations. 

“I was more worried about my family staying alive than anything else,” she says. 

 
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Turkey hosted leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban government for the first time Thursday, repeating its advice to the Islamist group on the need to form an inclusive government in the war-torn South Asian nation and to ensure Afghan female participation in education as well as public life. 

After Thursday’s meeting with the visitors, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a televised news conference in Ankara that the Taliban asked for humanitarian aid and the continuation of Turkish investment in Afghanistan.

Taliban acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and his delegation arrived in Turkey for the talks following meetings in Qatar this week with envoys from the United States and European diplomats. In those discussions, Muttaqi warned that attempts to pressure his government through sanctions would undermine the security of not only Afghanistan but the world in general and spark an exodus of Afghan economic migrants.

“We have told the international community about the importance of engagement with the Taliban administration. In fact, recognition and engagement are two different things,” Cavusoglu said. 

The Taliban have been seeking international legitimacy for their male-only Cabinet in Kabul since returning to power two months ago after waging an insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government for 20 years. Several members of the Taliban Cabinet have been blacklisted by the United Nations. 

Cavusoglu said that in talks with the Taliban delegates, the Turkish side underscored the importance of Afghan girls’ education and women’s employment in business life. 

While boys were allowed last month to return to secondary school, the hardline movement has not permitted girls at the same level to resume their education, insisting that it must put in place a “safe learning environment” before female students could return. 

Taliban acting Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi wrote on his Twitter feed that the wide-ranging discussions with officials in Ankara covered bilateral diplomatic ties, humanitarian aid, Afghan refugees and resumption of Turkish commercial flights to Afghanistan.

Washington has frozen nearly $10 billion in Afghan assets — parked mainly in the U.S. Federal Reserve — since the Taliban took over the country. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have also halted financial assistance and lending programs for Kabul, citing human rights concerns under the Taliban rule. 

The U.S. and other Western countries have been pressing the Taliban to keep their promises to form an inclusive Afghan government, protect human rights (especially those of women), fight terrorism and not restrict freedom of expression. 

However, critics say freezing Afghan assets could trigger an economic meltdown that could worsen the growing humanitarian crisis facing the country.

The United Nations has warned that about 1 million Afghan children are at risk of starvation and more than 18 million people need urgent humanitarian assistance. A deepening drought and the approaching harsh winter are only going to make matters worse, the U.N. says. 

U.N. officials told reporters in New York on Thursday that they are working to scale up assistance to reach Afghans in need. 

The World Food Program last month reached 4 million people with food and nutrition assistance across all 34 Afghan provinces, three times the number it reached in August, said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric 

The head of WFP, David Beasley, stressed that if international aid did not flow as soon as possible, it would be catastrophic, and that this was a war on hunger. 

Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

 
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Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Thursday suspended flights to Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, over what the state-run carrier alleged was “heavy-handed” interference by the neighboring country’s ruling Taliban.

The suspension came on the same day a Taliban Transport Ministry statement warned it will stop PIA flight operations between Islamabad and the Afghan capital unless the airline reduces ticket prices to the levels that existed before mid-August, when the Islamist group took control of the country.

The statement also ordered Afghan airlines Kam Air to reduce fares on the Kabul-Islamabad route to previous levels or face a halt to their flight operations.

“We have suspended our flights (between Islamabad and Kabul) indefinitely,” PIA spokesman Abdullah Khan told VOA on Thursday.

“The decision has been taken due to an inappropriate behavior by the local (Taliban) administration and inadequate conditions for flight operations,” Khan said.

He explained that PIA was flying charter flights out of Kabul on “purely humanitarian grounds,” and it was the only international airline linking the Afghan capital through Pakistan to the rest of the world.

“Information has been conveyed to PIA and Kam Air private company to reduce the fare on the Kabul-Islamabad route to the level prior to the victory of the Islamic Emirate. If the airlines do not agree to this proposal, their operations on the route will be stopped,” the Taliban said in the statement.

Both PIA and Kam Air operate chartered flights with high fares, citing high insurance costs as the reason for not resuming commercial operations.

PIA had been flying regular commercial flights between Islamabad and Kabul until the Taliban takeover of the country in August, and passengers were being charged up to $200 for a return ticket.

With most international airlines no longer flying to Afghanistan, PIA-chartered flights out of Kabul are charging $1,500 for a one-way ticket to Islamabad.

“The insurance cost of these flights is very high and the charter price cannot be reduced as per the insistence of (Taliban) authorities,” PIA’s Khan said.

PIA officials have complained that their staff in Kabul have faced last-minute changes in regulations and flight permissions and “highly

intimidating behavior” from Taliban commanders. They alleged the airline’s country representative had been held at gunpoint for hours at one point and was freed only after the Pakistan Embassy intervened.

Taliban officials have not yet commented on the allegations leveled by PIA officials.
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Taliban spokesperson says China wants Taliban to guarantee security for their workers and assets in Afghanistan in return for billions of dollars’ worth of investments
Camera: Malik Waqar Ahmed Producer: Malik Waqar Ahmed
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