The United Nations agency U.N. Women expressed its “profound” disappointment Wednesday at the lack of female participants in Afghanistan’s new Taliban transitional government.“It is unacceptable that the international community would accept that women are not part of the government,” U.N. Women’s deputy representative for Afghanistan, Alison Davidian, told reporters via a video call from Kabul. “Not just for Afghanistan, but for any country.”In announcing a new acting government on Tuesday, the Taliban — known for their severe repression of women’s rights during their previous tenure in the 1990s and early 2000s — presented a slate of male-only ministers. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs was also missing from the list.“Respect for women’s rights is a litmus test for any governing authority and against which any governing authority must be judged,” Davidian said. “But with the announcement yesterday, the Taliban missed a critical opportunity to show the world that it is truly committed to building an inclusive and prosperous society.”U.N. Women has been working in the country for more than a decade, and its presence in Afghanistan is one of its largest, with some 75 national and international staff across the capital and five provincial offices.But the road to more freedoms has been a slow one, with women still overwhelmingly illiterate and underrepresented in the workforce. The 2004 constitution enshrined gender equality as a principle, and women who have enjoyed nearly two decades of progress do not want to see that disappear. There has also been progress to establish laws making violence against women illegal.Fighting backDavidian said their extensive network of female civil society, human rights defenders and leaders has reported worrying rights rollbacks, such as women not being allowed to go to work or run errands without a male relative escorting them.For the past week, women have been taking to the streets demanding their rights.“We are seeing through the protests that Afghan women will not give up their rights; they will not be erased,” Davidian said.She urged the international community to fund women-led civil society organizations to protect gains.“This is the engine for progress. These are the drivers for progress and accountability,” she said.
 
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Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani said Wednesday he fled his country last month for the United Arab Emirates to avoid bloodshed in the streets of the capital of Kabul as Taliban insurgents took control. He denied plundering government funds as he left.“I left at the urging of palace security, who advised me that to remain risked setting off the same horrific street-to-street fighting the city had suffered during the civil war of the 1990s,” Ghani said in a statement. “Leaving Kabul was the most difficult decision of my life, but I believed it was the only way to keep the guns silent and save Kabul and her 6 million citizens.”The 72-year-old Ghani said he had worked for 20 years to create a democratic government in Afghanistan but acknowledged he had failed to ensure “stability and prosperity,” the same outcome as for other Afghan governments for decades.The UAE said it welcomed Ghani “on humanitarian grounds.”Ghani said he would offer a more detailed explanation for his abrupt August 15 departure in the “near future,” but said he “must now address baseless allegations that as I left Kabul, I took with me millions of dollars belonging to the Afghan people.”Russia’s RIA news agency reported he fled Kabul with four cars and a helicopter full of cash and had to leave some money behind as it would not all fit in. Other news agencies reported he allegedly took $169 million from government coffers, an accusation also made by Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan.  “These charges are completely and categorically false,” Ghani said in his statement.He said he and his wife “have been scrupulous in our personal finances” and that he has publicly declared all his assets. Ghani said he would welcome a United Nations review of his finances or other independent audit.Afghanistan’s TOLO news channel released a clip of an interview to be aired Wednesday night local time with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in which a correspondent asked him: “Did you help President Ghani flee the country?”Blinken replied, “What he told me in that conversation the night before he fled is that he was prepared to fight to the death.”Ayaz Gul contributed to this report
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Turkey is voicing caution over Afghanistan’s interim government as it continues talks with the Taliban on restarting air traffic at the Kabul airport.Turkey was among the first countries calling for talks and engagement with the Taliban after it swept to power last month. But the Taliban’s announcement of an interim government this week saw Turkish President Recep Tayyip calling for a cautious approach.”As you know, right now, it’s hard to call it permanent, but an interim cabinet has been announced,” Erdogan said Tuesday.  He said, “We don’t know how long this interim cabinet will last. All we have to do is to follow this process carefully.”Those Fleeing Afghanistan Struggle to Survive in TurkeyVOA reporters meet people who say the Taliban are killing government workers and other ‘enemies’ as they take over areas of Afghanistan But Erdogan said talks between the Taliban and Qatar on restarting full operations at the Kabul airport were making progress although he warned key issues remained unresolved. On Monday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the Taliban’s insistence on being the one to provide the airport’s security remains a key obstacle.Cavusoglu said, “the Taliban or Afghan forces could ensure security outside the airport. But inside,” he said, “there should be a security company trusted by the international community”. He added that “Otherwise, even if airlines, including Turkish Airlines, are keen to fly there, insurance companies would not allow it.”Despite Turkey’s participation in NATO’s twenty-year-long military presence in Afghanistan, the Taliban reached out to Ankara with calls to put the airport back into operation. Turkey is NATO’s only Muslim member, and it shares historical ties with Afghanistan.  Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow of the European Council, says Ankara says believes hese factors could help Turkey play a key role in Afghanistan.Taliban Tells Turkey Continued Troop Presence in Afghanistan Is ‘Unacceptable’Taliban spokesman tells VOA it will view Turkish troops as invaders and a violation of the deal with US”They will want to see as if they can position Turkey as a diplomatic conduit, as a diplomatic sort of go-between, between western countries and the Taliban,” said Aydintasbas.The reopening of the Kabul airport is key for European countries and the United States in efforts to evacuate their citizens who are still in Afghanistan as well as Afghan nationals who once worked for NATO and western embassies.After meeting his Turkish counterpart, German foreign minister Heiko Maas underlined Turkey’s importance in efforts to reopen the airport, offering to help finance the operation. But retired Turkish ambassador Selim Kuneralp says Ankara must deal delicately with the Taliban.”It seems to me they would be a risk in appearing to be too close to the Taliban to be their protectors, so to speak, in the eyes of the West, not just the United States but the European Union too,” said Kuneralp. “If you appear to be close to them, then you would be painted with the same brush.”Ankara’s cautious approach to the new Afghan government and Turkish calls calling for scrutiny of the Taliban’s treatment of women and ethnic minorities could be signs of a growing awareness of Turkey’s need to remain aligned with its Western allies over Afghanistan.
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The United States says it is assessing the Taliban’s announcement of a caretaker government in Afghanistan and has “made clear our expectation that the Afghan people deserve an inclusive government.”“We will continue to hold the Taliban to their commitments to allow safe passage for foreign nationals and Afghans with travel documents, including permitting flights currently ready to fly out of Afghanistan to agreed-upon onward destinations,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA Tuesday. “We also reiterate our clear expectation that the Taliban ensure that Afghan soil is not used to threaten any other countries and allow humanitarian access in support of the Afghan people. The world is watching closely.” The Taliban announced Tuesday a “caretaker” Islamic government, saying it will be headed by Mullah Hasan Akhund, a close associate of the Islamist movement’s late founder Mullah Omar.Taliban leadership structure annunced Sept. 7, 2021Akhund, believed to be in his 60s, hails from the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. He led the group’s leadership council, which directed insurgent attacks against the United States and allied forces during nearly 20 years of war.  Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the group’s political office, will serve as the deputy prime minister in the caretaker government. Sirajuddin Haqqani will be interior minister; Amir Khan Muttaqi will be the foreign minister; and Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Omar, will be the acting defense minister, Mujahid added.  Haqqani is the head of the Haqqani network, designated by the United States as a global terrorist organization. Washington has offered a $10 million reward for information that leads to Haqqani’s arrest on accusations of directing deadly attacks against American and allied forces in Afghanistan. The U.S. denounces the Haqqani network as the “most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group.” Reclusive Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada will be the overall “amir” (supreme leader) of the government, or the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” said Ahmadullah Wasiq, a senior member of the Taliban information ministry, while speaking to reporters after Tuesday’s news conference.The radical group regained power in Kabul last month after capturing the rest of the country in a week of stunningly rapid battlefield victories as American and allied troops withdrew from the country. The absence of the crucial foreign military support led to the collapse of Afghan government forces. Hundreds in Kabul Protest Taliban RuleSome of the aerial firing to disperse the crowds was so long and sustained, it sounded like a fireworks display The Taliban have since assured Afghans and foreign countries that they will install an “inclusive government” in the country and will not bring back their harsh Islamist rule of the 1990s, marked by a brutal justice system and the barring of women and girls from public life. So far, all the people appointed to the caretaker cabinet are Taliban members.  U.S. President Joe Biden, when asked on Monday whether his administration would recognize the Taliban, said, “No. That’s a long way off.” On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated that there was no rush to recognition. “It is really going to be dependent on what steps the Taliban takes. They will be watching, the United States included, they will be watching whether they allow for American citizens and citizens of other countries to depart, whether they allow individuals who want to leave the country to leave … how they treat women and girls around the country.” The U.S. and the global community at large have urged the Taliban to ensure protection of human rights, cut ties with al-Qaida terrorists and give representation to all Afghan ethnicities if they want to remain part of the international community. The United Nations stressed Tuesday, while reacting to the Taliban’s announcement, that only a negotiated and inclusive settlement will bring sustainable peace to Afghanistan.  “The U.N. remains committed to contribute to a peaceful solution; promote the human rights of all Afghans, notably women and girls; promote sustainable development in line with agenda 2030; and provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance and critical support to civilians in need,” U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq said at daily news briefing in New York. Michael Kugelman, deputy Asia program director at the Wilson Center, noted that Taliban leaders have been appointed to essentially all key positions. “It’s not at all inclusive, and that’s no surprise whatsoever. The Taliban had never indicated that any of its cabinet ministers would include anyone other than themselves,” Kugelman tweeted. At least 10 people in the 33-member Taliban Cabinet announced Tuesday were part of the group’s team that negotiated the February 2020 peace agreement with the U.S., paving the way for all foreign forces to withdraw from nearly 20 years of war in Afghanistan. The military drawdown concluded on August 31, in line with Biden’s directives.
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A U.N.-sponsored high-level ministerial meeting on Afghanistan next week will seek to raise $606 million to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance for nearly 11 million people until the end of the year.  
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns Afghanistan is facing a looming humanitarian catastrophe.  The U.N. Chief will travel to Geneva to convene next Monday’s meeting to gain the support of the international community to address the growing needs in the country.     The United Nations reports nearly half of Afghanistan’s population of 38 million needs humanitarian aid.  Among them are 3.5 million people internally displaced by conflict.  FILE – An internally displaced child from northern provinces receives medical treatment in a public park used as a shelter in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 10, 2021.The U.N. Children’s Fund reports 600,000 children under age five are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, a dangerous condition that could kill them if they do not receive emergency aid.   Spokesman for the U.N. office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs Jens Laerke says the appeal will provide treatment for more than a million children and women suffering from acute malnutrition.  He says the appeal also aims to deliver critical food, essential health services, water and sanitation, emergency education, shelter, and other relief.     FILE – In this Aug. 26, 2019 photo, mothers hold their babies suffering from malnutrition as they wait at a UNICEF clinic in Jabal Saraj, north of Kabul, Afghanistan.“Humanitarian organizations have decades of experience in delivering relief in Afghanistan.  This year alone, eight million people have received assistance.  But basic services in Afghanistan are collapsing and food and other life-saving aid is about to run out,” he said.     The World Food Program reports one in three people in Afghanistan is going hungry.    WFP spokesman Tomson Phiri says the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the country will worsen during the fast-approaching winter season.  He says WFP is racing to preposition food before the snow cuts off access to large areas of the country.   “In just a few weeks, sadly, our food will run out.  We have called for resources, and we are urgently requiring $200 million to assist 14 million people between now and the end of 2021…We need to get timely contributions whilst we still have a window of opportunity to bring in food,”  he said.  UN Agencies Pledge to Remain in Afghanistan Despite Challenges  ‘As humanitarians, we will engage with anyone including the Taliban if it pertains to accessing people in need,’ says OCHA U.N. agencies vow to remain in Afghanistan and provide humanitarian aid despite increasing insecurity under Taliban rule.  U.N. officials say they have been present in the country for nearly four decades and have experience in working with different authorities, even the Taliban, when the militant group last held power between 1996 and 2001.   The U.N. assures international donors none of their money will end up in government hands. U.N. officials say all money is channeled to implementing agencies on the ground, who will put it to good use.  
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Qatar has granted academic scholarships to members of a girls’ robotics team from Afghanistan dubbed the “Afghan Dreamers,” the Persian Gulf nation’s education and science foundation said on Tuesday.   Qatar has been instrumental in efforts to evacuate at-risk Afghans and foreigners from Kabul airport, including members of the team who are being housed in Doha’s Education City campus of schools and universities.   “They will receive scholarships that enable them to keep pursuing their studies through a partnership between Qatar Foundation (QF) and Qatar Fund for Development,” QF said in a statement. The team of high-achieving high school girls has about 20 members, mostly still in their teens, and are now dotted around the world with some in Qatar as well as Mexico.  The girls made headlines in 2017 after being denied visas to take part in a robotics competition in Washington — before then-President Donald Trump intervened and they were allowed to travel.   Last year, they worked to build a low-cost medical ventilator from car parts hoping to boost hospital equipment during the coronavirus pandemic.    “These talented, creative students have been living through a time of uncertainty and upheaval, and at Qatar Foundation we want to do whatever we can,” said Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al-Thani, vice-chairwoman and chief executive of QF. “By providing them with scholarships to study at Education City, their education can now continue uninterrupted.” The girls’ needs were being assessed to determine which schools or pre-university programs they should be placed in, she added.   The Taliban’s seizure of power a little over one week ago has furled a chaotic mass exodus as many Afghans fear a repeat of the brutal interpretation of Islamic law implemented during the militants’ 1996-2001 rule.    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with several members of the team on Tuesday during a whirlwind tour of the emirate.   “You’re famous around the world and a source of inspiration,” he told them. “The story you’ve already told about the importance about women engaging in science… sends an important message around the world, well beyond Afghanistan.” Roya Mahboob, the founder of the Digital Citizen Fund, parent organization of the team, said the girls were “excited and grateful for this opportunity to study abroad.” She also questioned Blinken on what the future would hold for Afghan women.   Several other members of the robotics team, none of whom were identified for security reasons, have relocated to Mexico. 
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Female prosecutors in Afghanistan fear the Taliban and the thousands of prisoners released by the militant group. These women, who are still in Afghanistan, are calling on the international community for help. Farkhunda Paimani reports.
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Security forces have blocked reporters from covering a vaccination drive for internally displaced people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, local journalists say.A spokesperson for Myanmar’s military government, Major General Zaw Min Tun, said in late August that members of the Rohingya minority would be given COVID-19 vaccines.But at least two news crews who attempted to visit a camp for internally displaced persons, or IDPs, to cover the vaccination rollout say police told them they could not enter.“Police officers said that journalists are not allowed to enter,” said Tun Tha, the editor of Western News, a Rakhine state news outlet. “If we want to enter the camp, we must seek permission from authorities.” Tun Tha told VOA Burmese that while media have been free to cover other camps without seeking permission, that was not the case at camps housing Muslims.In this June 26, 2014 photo, a girl, self-identified as Rohingya, stands close to her family’s tent house at Dar Paing camp for refugees, suburbs of Sittwe, Western Rakhine state, Myanmar.“We are free to cover Rakhine IDP camp news, whereas we need permission to cover Muslim IDP camps. It seems authorities handle approaches to the Muslim community with discrimination. We take it as disruption of media access in this regard,”  Tun Tha said.A Muslim minority in a predominantly Buddhist country, the Rohingya were targeted in 2017 with a campaign that the U.N. described as  “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” For years before, the Rohingya have been denied citizenship and other basic rights.State officials in Myanmar estimate more than 200,000 Muslim refugees are in Rakhine State.Hla Thein, a military spokesperson for Rakhine State, did not respond to a request for comment from VOA Burmese.A sweeping outbreak of the coronavirus is taxing Myanmar’s public health system that already was strained by the political upheaval after the army seized power in February from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.FILE – Newly built repatriation camps prepared for Rohingya refugees expected to return from Bangladesh are surrounded by barbed-wire, Jan. 24, 2018, in Taungpyo township, border town of northern Rakhine State, Myanmar.Khin Tharapi Oo, senior reporter with Development Media Group (DMG), told VOA Burmese that her team also was denied access to the Thet Kae-Pyin IDP camp located on the outskirts of Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State.“Camp security did not allow us to enter the camp and asked us to get [a] permit, then stopped us from taking video as well. Security even yelled at us to get out,” said Khin Tharapi Oo. “We called state authorities to [seek] permission with no avail. Other news agency reporters faced the same problem, [security would] not even let us take video or photos.”Khin Tharapi Oo said that media had been allowed to visit other Rakhine camps without any restrictions.“This is the first time Muslim refugees get vaccinated, we should be allowed to cover it. Authorities should not restrict us to cover this significant news. They do not have sound reason to restrict us,” she said. Maung Lay, who manages the camp, told VOA Burmese that at least 150 refugees who are over the age of 45 were vaccinated on August 28 and 29, and second doses are scheduled for September 26. He said the camp houses about 3,000 refugees.The media restrictions come amid a general tightening of free speech in Myanmar after the military coup.FILE – Police arrest a Myanmar Now journalist in Yangon, February 27, 2021, as protesters were taking part in a demonstration against the military coup.On September 1, police in Yangon arrested a female journalist who had been in hiding for four months. Ma Thuzar, who contributed to Myanmar Pressphoto Agency and the Friday Times News Journal, was held incommunicado for five days before authorities confirmed her arrest.The reason for her arrest and current location have not been made available, says media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).Ma Thuzar is one of dozens of journalists currently detained in Myanmar by the military.“The way she [Thuzar] has been treated reflects the illegal, brutal and inhuman treatment to which the military junta has subjected all journalists in Myanmar for the past seven months,” RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk head Daniel Bastard said in a statement.Also detained is American journalist Danny Fenster, who has spent more than 100 days in prison since his arrest at Yangon airport in May.At a virtual hearing Monday, a court in Yangon again remanded Fenster, who is managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, in custody for a further two weeks.Elizabeth Hughes contributed to this report. This story originated in VOA’s Burmese service.  
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has agreed to testify next week before a congressional panel examining the country’s chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan at the end of its two-decade war, the longest in U.S. history.
 
Opposition Republican lawmakers and some Democratic colleagues of President Joe Biden have attacked his handling of the withdrawal of troops, American citizens and thousands of Afghans who worked for U.S. forces as interpreters and advisers during the war.  
 
The criticism was especially pronounced after 13 U.S. service members died in a suicide bomb attack at the Kabul airport in the waning days of the withdrawal. Islamic State-Khorasan, an Afghan offshoot of the terrorist group operating in the Middle East, claimed responsibility for the attack.  
 
Blinken agreed to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next Tuesday, although other congressional committees are likely to investigate the withdrawal as well.
 
The formal withdrawal ended more than a week ago, but about 100 Americans remain in Afghanistan, with U.S. officials vowing to help them get out if they want to leave. Thousands of Afghans are also looking to move to the United States or other countries to escape life under Taliban insurgents who took control of the country.  
National polls of U.S. voters show wide support for Biden’s decision to end what he has called a “forever war” in Afghanistan, but not the way the withdrawal unfolded.
 
Blinken, the top U.S. diplomat, is likely to face tough questions about why the U.S. did not start evacuating American citizens sooner, especially since Biden announced his intention in April to honor former president Donald Trump’s agreement with the Taliban to end the war and withdraw American forces.  
 
Lawmakers have also attacked U.S. intelligence-gathering for failing to forecast the rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan government, with President Ashraf Ghani suddenly fleeing to political asylum in the United Arab Emirates.
 
Republicans say they want to focus their questioning on Biden’s performance in the final weeks and days of the war, while Democrats are hoping to examine the whole of the American war effort that was conducted under four presidents — Republicans George W. Bush and Trump, and Democrats Barack Obama and Biden.
 
Bush launched the war in late 2001 to eradicate al-Qaida terrorist training grounds where the September 11 attacks against the U.S. were spawned. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the U.S in attacks using hijacked U.S. passenger airliners. The 20th anniversary of the attacks is on Saturday.
 
Biden has called the withdrawal an “extraordinary success” and defended the decision to end the U.S. war in Afghanistan, saying he would not pass on responsibility for managing U.S. military involvement there to a fifth U.S. leader.
 
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The Taliban named Mullah Hasan Akhund, an associate of the movement’s late founder Mullah Omar, as the head of Afghanistan’s new government on Tuesday, with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the movement’s political office, as deputy.Sarajuddin Haqqani, son of the founder of the Haqqani network, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, will be the new interior minister, the Taliban’s main spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a news conference in Kabul.Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Mullah Omar, has been named as defence minister. All the appointments are in an acting capacity, Mujahid told a news conference in Kabul.It was not clear what role in the government would be played by Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban supreme leader. He has not been seen or heard in public since the collapse of the Western-backed government and the seizure of Kabul by the Islamist militant movement last month.Akhund, the new head of government, has been close to Akhunzada for 20 years.The Taliban have repeatedly sought to reassure Afghans and foreign countries that they will not return to the brutality of their last reign two decades ago, marked by brutal punishments and the barring of women and girls from public life.The appointment of a group of established figures from different elements of the Taliban gave no indication of any concession towards protests that broke out in Kabul earlier in the day, when Taliban gunmen fired in the air to scatter them.Hundreds of men and women shouting slogans such as “Long live the resistance” and “Death to Pakistan” marched in the streets to protest against the Taliban takeover. Neighboring Pakistan has deep ties with the Taliban and has been accused of assisting its return to power – charges Islamabad denies.The Taliban’s rapid advance across Afghanistan as U.S. forces pulled out last month triggered a scramble to leave by people fearing reprisals.U.S.-led foreign forces evacuated about 124,000 foreigners and at-risk Afghans, but tens of thousands were left behind.Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was in contact with about 100 Americans who were still in Afghanistan.About 1,000 people, including Americans, have been stuck in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif for days awaiting clearance for charter flights to leave, an organizer told Reuters, blaming the delay on the U.S. State Department.
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Afghanistan’s Taliban said Monday they had discussed bilateral security cooperation with Pakistan, including measures needed at border crossings between the two countries to stem the movement of terrorists into Pakistan.Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters in Kabul that a delegation from Islamabad visited the country over the weekend for the discussions. The Pakistani team was led by General Faiz Hameed, the head of the country’s spy agency, known as the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. Mujahid said the visitors conveyed their concerns over multiple jail breaks during the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the release of hundreds of prisoners involved in militant attacks in Pakistan. He said the Taliban had assured the delegation that no one will be allowed to use Afghan soil against Pakistan.“It was also discussed that there shall be a check or scrutiny system at the (border) gates to detect individuals who want to harm Pakistan, as per their information, and we don’t know about them because we are dealing with this new situation where doors of prisons had already been opened,” he said.Mujahid said his side had stressed the need for not using this issue to close border gates to Afghan travelers, including patients, refugee families and daily wage workers who move across the border in search of work.Official sources in Islamabad told VOA the ISI chief went to Kabul to discuss with Taliban representatives matters related to border management and “overall security issue(s) to ensure that spoilers and terrorist organizations do not take advantage of the situation.” The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to publicly interact with media.”Will you be meeting senior people in the Taliban?”@lindseyhilsum asks Pakistan’s intelligence chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, about their hopes for Afghanistan as he arrives in Kabul. pic.twitter.com/rp72c8Si9E
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) People arriving from Afghanistan gather after they cross into Pakistan at the Friendship Gate crossing point, in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border town of Chaman, Pakistan, Sept. 6, 2021.“For Pakistan, getting the Taliban to curb the TTP amounts to an ambitious task. The TTP has long been allied with the Taliban, and it has partnered operationally with the Taliban. The Taliban isn’t known for denying space to its militant allies, and I don’t see the TTP being an exception to the rule,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy Asia director at Washington’s Wilson Center. Analysts note an increase in deadly TTP-orchestrated attacks in Pakistan. The latest one occurred Sunday, when a suicide bomber in the city of Quetta killed four Pakistani troops and wounded at least 18 others.“It was widely assumed that as the Afghan Taliban are close to Pakistan for several reasons, the TTP threat to Pakistan will automatically decline/end with its takeover of Afghanistan. However, the August TTP attacks list shows its opposite. TTP has claimed the highest number of attacks in August than in a single month of the last four to five years,” observed Abdul Sayed, a regional security expert.Sayed, who is based in Sweden, noted that around 800 TTP members secured their freedom from Afghan jails with the arrival of the Taliban in Kabul.Pakistani officials, however, remain upbeat that landlocked Afghanistan requires a free flow of trade and transit trade facilities through Pakistan to overcome its humanitarian and critical economic challenges.That leverage, the officials say, and counterterrorism commitments the Taliban have given to the United States and neighboring countries would be used to press the new Afghan rulers to deliver on their pledges.Just before the Taliban took over Kabul, their chief, Hibatullah Akhundzada, had set up a three-member high-powered commission to persuade TTP members to stop violence against Pakistan and return to their homes across the border to live peacefully, VOA had learned from highly placed official sources in Islamabad.Afghan Taliban Commission Looking Into Pakistan’s Terror-Related ConcernsTaliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada set up the tripartite panel recently to look into Islamabad’s complaints that the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is using Afghan soil to plot cross-border terrorist attacksAnalysts say the Taliban are under international scrutiny and must live up to their counterterrorism commitments if they want their country to remain part of the regional community or the world at large and earn global recognition for their rule.On Monday, Taliban spokesman Mujahid said that they would like to join a multibillion-dollar bilateral project China has initiated in Pakistan.“The CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) project is important for entire Asia, including Afghanistan. If the CPEC route goes through Afghanistan, we would cooperate,” he said.China has spent more than $25 billion in Pakistan over the past six years under the bilateral collaboration, building road networks, power plants and a deep-water port on the Arabian Sea and developing agriculture as well as social sectors.Both Islamabad and Beijing say they are set to bring roads and other CPEC-related infrastructure into Afghanistan to help in the reconstruction of the war-shattered nation.Beijing has in recent years developed close contacts with the Taliban and expects the Islamist movement to fight the banned East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which is blamed for conducting terrorist attacks in China. 
 
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Afghanistan’s Taliban said Monday they had discussed bilateral security cooperation with Pakistan, including measures needed at border crossings between the two countries to stem the movement of terrorists into Pakistan.Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters in Kabul that a delegation from Islamabad visited the country over the weekend for the discussions. The Pakistani team was led by General Faiz Hameed, the head of the country’s spy agency, known as the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. Mujahid said the visitors conveyed their concerns over multiple jail breaks during the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the release of hundreds of prisoners involved in militant attacks in Pakistan. He said the Taliban had assured the delegation that no one will be allowed to use Afghan soil against Pakistan.”It was also discussed that there shall be a check or scrutiny system at the (border) gates to detect individuals who want to harm Pakistan, as per their information, and we don’t know about them because we are dealing with this new situation where doors of prisons had already been opened,” he said.Mujahid said his side had stressed the need for not using this issue to close border gates to Afghan travelers, including patients, refugee families and daily wage workers who move across the border in search of work.Official sources in Islamabad told VOA the ISI chief went to Kabul to discuss with Taliban representatives matters related to border management and “overall security issue(s) to ensure that spoilers and terrorist organizations do not take advantage of the situation.” The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to publicly interact with media.”Will you be meeting senior people in the Taliban?”@lindseyhilsum asks Pakistan’s intelligence chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, about their hopes for Afghanistan as he arrives in Kabul. pic.twitter.com/rp72c8Si9E
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) People arriving from Afghanistan gather after they cross into Pakistan at the Friendship Gate crossing point, in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border town of Chaman, Pakistan, Sept. 6, 2021.”For Pakistan, getting the Taliban to curb the TTP amounts to an ambitious task. The TTP has long been allied with the Taliban, and it has partnered operationally with the Taliban. The Taliban isn’t known for denying space to its militant allies, and I don’t see the TTP being an exception to the rule,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy Asia director at Washington’s Wilson Center. Analysts note an increase in deadly TTP-orchestrated attacks in Pakistan. The latest one occurred Sunday, when a suicide bomber in the city of Quetta killed four Pakistani troops and wounded at least 18 others.”It was widely assumed that as the Afghan Taliban are close to Pakistan for several reasons, the TTP threat to Pakistan will automatically decline/end with its takeover of Afghanistan. However, the August TTP attacks list shows its opposite. TTP has claimed the highest number of attacks in August than in a single month of the last four to five years,” observed Abdul Sayed, a regional security expert.Sayed, who is based in Sweden, noted that around 800 TTP members secured their freedom from Afghan jails with the arrival of the Taliban in Kabul.Pakistani officials, however, remain upbeat that landlocked Afghanistan requires a free flow of trade and transit trade facilities through Pakistan to overcome its humanitarian and critical economic challenges.That leverage, the officials say, and counterterrorism commitments the Taliban have given to the United States and neighboring countries would be used to press the new Afghan rulers to deliver on their pledges.Just before the Taliban took over Kabul, their chief, Hibatullah Akhundzada, had set up a three-member high-powered commission to persuade TTP members to stop violence against Pakistan and return to their homes across the border to live peacefully, VOA had learned from highly placed official sources in Islamabad.Afghan Taliban Commission Looking Into Pakistan’s Terror-Related ConcernsTaliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada set up the tripartite panel recently to look into Islamabad’s complaints that the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is using Afghan soil to plot cross-border terrorist attacksAnalysts say the Taliban are under international scrutiny and must live up to their counterterrorism commitments if they want their country to remain part of the regional community or the world at large and earn global recognition for their rule.On Monday, Taliban spokesman Mujahid said that they would like to join a multibillion-dollar bilateral project China has initiated in Pakistan.”The CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) project is important for entire Asia, including Afghanistan. If the CPEC route goes through Afghanistan, we would cooperate,” he said.China has spent more than $25 billion in Pakistan over the past six years under the bilateral collaboration, building road networks, power plants and a deep-water port on the Arabian Sea and developing agriculture as well as social sectors.Both Islamabad and Beijing say they are set to bring roads and other CPEC-related infrastructure into Afghanistan to help in the reconstruction of the war-shattered nation.Beijing has in recent years developed close contacts with the Taliban and expects the Islamist movement to fight the banned East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which is blamed for conducting terrorist attacks in China. 
 
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Students across Afghanistan have started returning to university classrooms after the Taliban stormed to power, and in some cases females have been separated from their male peers by curtains or boards down the middle of the room.What happens in universities and schools across the country will be closely watched by foreign powers for signs of what rights women will have now the Islamist militant movement is back in charge.Some Western countries have said vital aid and recognition of the Taliban would depend on how they ran the country, including their treatment of girls and women.When it last ruled from 1996-2001, the group banned girls from school and women from university and work.Despite assurances in recent weeks that women’s rights would be honored in accordance with Islamic law, it is unclear what that will mean in practice.Teachers and students at universities in Afghanistan’s largest cities – Kabul, Kandahar and Herat – told Reuters that female students were being segregated in class, taught separately or restricted to certain parts of the campus.”Putting up curtains is not acceptable,” Anjila, a 21-year-old student at Kabul University who returned to find her classroom partitioned, told Reuters by telephone.”I really felt terrible when I entered the class … We are gradually going back to 20 years ago.”Even before the Taliban took over Afghanistan, Anjila said female students sat separately from males. But classrooms were not physically divided.The Taliban said last week that schooling should resume but that males and females should be separated.A Taliban spokesperson did not comment on the photograph of the segregated class or on what measures were to be put in place at universities.But a senior Taliban official told Reuters that such dividers were “completely acceptable,” and that Afghanistan had “limited resources and manpower, so for now it is best to have the same teacher teaching both sides of a class.”‘Keep studying’Photographs shared by Avicenna University in Kabul, and widely circulated on social media, show a grey curtain running down the center of the classroom, with female students wearing long robes and head coverings but their faces visible.It was not immediately clear whether the classroom dividers were the result of a Taliban directive.Several teachers said there was uncertainty over what rules would be imposed under the Taliban, who have yet to form a government more than three weeks after they seized Kabul with barely a shot fired in anger.Their return to power has alarmed some women, who fear they will lose the rights they fought for in the last two decades, in the face of resistance from many families and officials in the deeply conservative Muslim country.A journalism professor at Herat University in the west of the country told Reuters he decided to split his one-hour class into two halves, first teaching females and then males.Of 120 students enrolled for his course, less than a quarter showed up at school on Monday. A number of students and teachers have fled the country, and the fate of the country’s thriving private media sector has suddenly been thrown into doubt.”Students were very nervous today,” he said. “I told them to just keep coming and keep studying and in the coming days the new government will set the rules.”Sher Azam, a 37-year-old teacher at a private university in Kabul, said his institute had given teachers the option of holding separate classes for men and women, or partitioning classrooms with curtains and boards.But he was worried about how many students would come back, given the economic crisis the Taliban’s victory has triggered.”I don’t know how many students will return to school, because there are financial problems and some students are coming from families who have lost their jobs.”
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The Taliban said road links to Panjshir valley are now open, and food and other supplies can now be transported. Soon after declaring they had taken over the valley and ended remnants of resistance against their rule, the group said electricity, cellphone and internet services would be restored soon. “Thank God that we do not have civilian casualties in our fight to capture and conquer Panjshir,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a press conference in Kabul on Monday.The Taliban have taken over the provincial capital and the governor’s compound in the valley and shared videos of their fighters in the capital.Taliban Claim Victory in Panjshir ValleyNo immediate reaction from Afghan opposition forcesMeanwhile, in an audio message on his Facebook page, resistance leader Ahmad Massoud said his forces are still present in Panjshir and will continue to fight the Taliban.Earlier in the day, pro-resistance Twitter accounts claimed their fighters retreated to the mountains to regroup but that they will continue to fight.  “Last night, we had to make a hard decision in the face of furious enemy attacks and depleted amunations (sic),” said their Twitter message posted Monday afternoon. “Make a last stand in Bazarak and risk the total elimination of our leadership, or retreat to higher ground in order to continue the resistance. We choose the latter.” Last night we had to make a hard decision in the face of furious enemy attacks and depleted amunations. Make a last stand in Bazarak and risk the total elemination of our leadership or retreat to higher ground inorder to continue the resistance. We choose the latter. #Panjshir— Resistance 2.0 🇦🇫 جبهه مقاومت (@AFG_Resistance) September 6, 2021Another message, posted at the same time, said their leaders were safe and in good spirits.“We are on a terrain that we know and best suits the next chapter of our resistance. We know what we are doing! This was expected!” the tweet said.We don’t fight for governor’s compound or Panjshir. We fight for freedom and the freedom of all #Afghanistan. Everyone is safe and in good spirits. We are on a terrain that we know and best suits the next chapter of our resistance. We know what we are doing! This was expected!— Resistance 2.0 🇦🇫 جبهه مقاومت (@AFG_Resistance) September 6, 2021Massoud is the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader who successfully resisted Taliban rule in the 1990s and was nicknamed the “Lion of Panjshir.” Mujahid said those in the resistance who wanted to return to a normal life in Afghanistan were welcome, but efforts to undermine the new Taliban regime would be considered sedition and dealt with accordingly.He said work for the formulation of a new Taliban government was complete, but the announcement was delayed since some technical issues remained. The new ministers, the Taliban spokesman said, might be considered acting ministers to give the government the flexibility to enact changes if needed. He also assured journalists that Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada was alive and would appear in public soon. Akhundzada’s public absence has given rise to rumors of his death. Taliban founder Mullah Omar had been dead for two years before news of his demise leaked in 2015.Mujahid also asked women and men to refrain from protesting while the country was going through a transition.“Why are you protesting at a time when the new government has not taken over yet? We have seen the protests by women. We are trying, and we hope to resolve their issues as soon as possible,” he said.On Saturday, Taliban fighters in Kabul forcefully broke up a protest by a group of women demanding equal participation in the government. Protesters said the Taliban beat some of them with the butt of their guns, leaving them bloodied, as seen on their social media videos and testimonies.Rabia Sadat one of the today’s protestor in #Kabul beaten by Taliban.#Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/1s3El4TZHW— Zaki Daryabi (@ZDaryabi) September 4, 2021Mujahid said gatherings of people could become a security issue.“As you saw, the Kabul airport had a lot of chaos, and then there were horrible attacks there in which foreigners also died,” he said.A suicide bomb blast at the airport last month, as thousands of Afghans were clamoring to enter the premises in hopes of getting on one of the U.S. or European evacuation flights, left at least 169 Afghans and 13 Americans dead.The attack was claimed by Islamic State Khorasan Province, the regional chapter of IS. It was considered the first big challenge for the Taliban, who had promised that no terrorist group would be able to use Afghan soil against any other country under their watch.In Monday’s press conference, Mujahid also promised swift restoration of the Kabul airport with the help of Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.“I want to assure you that the airport will be ready for flights soon,” Mujahid said, pointing out that some local flights from Kabul to other Afghan cities had already resumed but work was needed to repair the radar system that he claimed was damaged, along with some other equipment, by U.S. forces before they left.  Hinting at Taliban foreign policy going forward, especially at the Taliban’s interest in the Chinese One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, Mujahid said given its economic might, China could play a very important role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.  “The CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) project is important for entire Asia, including Afghanistan. If the CPEC route goes through Afghanistan, we would cooperate,” Mujahid said.CPEC is an arm of the OBOR project, which links northwest China’s Xinjiang province through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. China has hinted it wants to extend the project to central Asia.  Mujahid also responded to questions on the visit to Kabul over the weekend of Pakistan’s intelligence chief, General Faiz Hameed, the first senior foreign official to visit the Afghan capital since the Taliban takeover.He said the visit was focused on Pakistan’s concerns over multiple jail breaks during the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the release of prisoners involved in militant attacks in Pakistan.According to Mujahid, Kabul’s security would now be handed over to the Taliban in uniform. Discussing the fate of the former Afghan security forces and military, the Taliban spokesman said they will be merged with Taliban fighters into security forces for the new government.  
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The Taliban announced Monday they had conquered the northern Panjshir Valley, ending the only armed resistance to their rule in Afghanistan.   “This victory brings an end to the war across the nation and paves the way for a peaceful life and prosperity in an atmosphere of independence,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.   The Taliban media team released several videos of their takeover of Panjshir and the raising of the Taliban flag at government buildings in the province Monday.There was no immediate reaction from the opposition forces, known as the National Resistance Front and led by commander Ahmad Massoud.  The Taliban claimed the victory hours after Massoud said he welcomed proposals from religious scholars for holding peace talks with the Taliban if they pull back their forces from his native Panjshir.  Ahmad Massoud made the offer through a post on his organization’s Facebook page on a day when Taliban forces claimed they had fought their way into the provincial capital, Bazarak, after seizing the rest of the province.Multiple sources also confirmed the killing of the NRF’s official spokesman, Fahim Dashty, along with Massoud’s cousin, General Abdul Wudood, during Sunday’s fighting. 
 
“The National Resistance Front is ready to stop the war immediately in order to achieve stable peace, if the Taliban group ends its military attacks and movements in Panjshir and Andarab,” the Facebook post quoted Massoud as saying. Andarab is a district in the neighboring Baghlan province and sits at the entrance to Panjshir. 
 
Massoud’s statement came in response to reports in Afghan media that said a council of religious scholars had called on the Taliban to accept a negotiated settlement to end the fighting.  Panjshir is the last remaining area of armed resistance to the Taliban’s rule since they captured the other 33 Afghan provinces, including the capital, Kabul, last month in a lightning blitz as Western-trained government forces collapsed and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. 
 
But a week later the NRF, which comprises members of U.S.-trained Afghan security forces and local tribal militias, retook Andarab and two other adjoining districts in Baghlan.   
 
The Taliban denounced the attack as a breach of their general amnesty for all members and politicians of the ousted Afghan government. They repeatedly had urged NRF leaders to surrender their arms and find a negotiated settlement to the security crisis.  
 
The talks eventually broke down, with each side blaming the other for their failure, prompting the Taliban to stage a major offensive several days ago that retook the lost ground.  
 
The advances also paved the way for the Taliban to assault and enter Panjshir, home to the country’s Tajik ethnic minority and located north of the capital, Kabul. 
 
In social media posts, Taliban officials, responding to the conditional offer of talks, said their forces were pressing ahead with the offensive to clear Panjshir of the armed resistance, adding that fighting was ongoing inside Bazarak.Militiamen loyal to Ahmad Massoud, son of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, take part in a training exercise, in Panjshir province, northeastern Afghanistan, Aug. 30, 2021.The claim could not be verified from independent sources, and both the adversaries have issued inflated details about their gains since the fighting broke out.  
 
Massoud’s father successfully defended the province when the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. 
 Taliban government  
 
The lack of control over all of Afghanistan has apparently prevented the Taliban from announcing a new government. 
 
The Islamist group is under international scrutiny to deliver on pledges that their system of governance will represent all Afghan ethnic groups and respect human rights, particularly those of women, unlike their previous exclusive hardline regime in Kabul. 
 
On Saturday, small groups of women activists took to the streets in Kabul and in parts of western Afghanistan, demanding respect for their rights and representation in the new government. 
 
Taliban fighters broke up a rally of about a dozen women in the capital to stop them from heading to the presidential palace. 
 
Footage circulating on social media showed demonstrators, who had been confronted by armed Taliban fighters, covering their mouths and coughing, with one woman saying the security guards had used tear gas to disperse the rally. 
 
“They also hit women on the head with gun magazines, and the women become bloody,” said one of the demonstrators who identified herself as Soraya. 
 
“Taliban blocking protest by beatings and tear gas: unfortunately, this is pretty much on brand for a group that relies on brute force to suppress dissent,” tweeted Patria Gossman, associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch. 
 
The Taliban imposed a brutal justice system and banned women from work and prevented older girls from receiving an education when the fundamentalist group previously seized power in Afghanistan. 
 
Taliban leaders, however, have promised to install an inclusive government in Kabul that they say will allow women to work and receive an education within the framework of Islamic law, or Sharia. Many Afghans doubt the reliability of their pledges. 
 
“It will be an inclusive strong central and sustainable system or government,” Bilal Karimi, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, told VOA on Friday. 
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The United Nations humanitarian chief met Sunday with leaders of the Taliban, who pledged to guarantee the safety of humanitarian workers and aid access in Afghanistan, a U.N. spokesman said.   Martin Griffiths was in the Afghan capital on Sunday and is to have several days of meetings with Taliban leadership amid a looming humanitarian disaster in the country newly under the control of the hardline Islamists.  “The authorities pledged that the safety and security of humanitarian staff, and humanitarian access to people in need, will be guaranteed and that humanitarian workers — both men and women — will be guaranteed freedom of movement,” a statement from UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.  Griffiths reiterated in the meeting that the humanitarian community was committed to delivering “impartial and independent humanitarian assistance,” the statement added.  He also called on all parties to ensure the rights and safety of women, both those contributing to aid delivery and civilians. Women’s freedoms in Afghanistan were sharply curtailed under the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule.  The Taliban delegation, led by the group’s co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, thanked U.N. officials for the “promised continuation of humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people” and assured them “of cooperation and provision of needed facilities,” according to a statement posted on Twitter by Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen. 1/2Mullah A. Baradar, Deputy-Amir, IEA for Political Affairs and Head, PO and his delegation met Martin Griffiths, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs at the foreign Ministry in Kabul, today. The UN delegation promised continuation of humanitarian assistance— Suhail Shaheen. محمد سهیل شاهین (@suhailshaheen1) September 5, 2021The U.N. says Afghanistan is mired in a humanitarian crisis affecting 18 million people, or half the population. Even before the Taliban ousted the Western-backed government on August 15, Afghanistan was heavily aid-dependent, with 40% of the country’s GDP drawn from foreign funding. But the future of aid missions in the country under the Taliban has been a source of concern for the U.N. and aid groups, despite Taliban pledges of a softer brand of rule than during their first stint in power. Many Afghans doubt the reliability of their pledges and many countries are taking a wait and see approach.  Several relief organizations have previously confirmed to AFP they were in talks with the Taliban to continue their operations or have received security guarantees for existing programs. The U.N. said this week humanitarian flights had resumed to several Afghan provinces.
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At least four planes chartered to evacuate several hundred people seeking to escape the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan have been unable to leave the country for days, officials said Sunday, with conflicting accounts emerging about why the flights weren’t able to take off as pressure ramps up on the United States to help those left behind to flee.An Afghan official at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif said that the would-be passengers were Afghans, many of whom did not have passports or visas, and thus were unable to leave the country. He said they had left the airport while the situation was sorted out.  The top Republican on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, however, said that the group included Americans and they were sitting on the planes, but the Taliban were not letting them take off, effectively “holding them hostage.” He did not say where that information came from. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the accounts.The final days of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan were marked by a harrowing airlift at Kabul’s airport to evacuate tens of thousands of people — Americans and their allies — who feared what the future would hold, given the Taliban’s history of repression, particularly of women. When the last troops pulled out on August 30, though, many were left behind.  The U.S. promised to continue working with the new Taliban rulers to get those who want to leave out, and the militants pledged to allow anyone with the proper legal documents to leave. But Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas told “Fox News Sunday” that American citizens and Afghan interpreters were being kept on six planes.”The Taliban will not let them leave the airport,” he said, adding that he’s worried “they’re going to demand more and more, whether it be cash or legitimacy as the government of Afghanistan.” He did not offer more details.The Afghan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said it was four planes, and their intended passengers were staying at hotels while authorities worked out whether they might be able to leave the country. The sticking point, he indicated, is that many did not have the right travel papers.  Residents of Mazar-e-Sharif also said the passengers were no longer at the airport. At least 10 families were seen at a local hotel waiting, they said, for a decision on their fates. None of them had passports or visas but said they had worked for companies allied with the U.S. or German military. Others were seen at restaurants.The small airport at Mazar-e-Sharif only recently began to handle international flights and so far only to Turkey. The planes in question were bound for Doha, Qatar, the Afghan official said. It was not clear who chartered them or why they were waiting in the northern city. The massive airlift happened at Kabul’s international airport, which initially closed after the U.S. withdrawal but where domestic flights have now resumed.Searing images of that chaotic evacuation — including people clinging to an airplane as it took off — came to define the final days of America’s longest war, just weeks after Taliban fighters retook the country in a lightning offensive.Since their takeover, the Taliban have sought to recast themselves as different from their 1990s incarnation, when they last ruled the country and imposed repressive restrictions across society. Women and girls were denied work and education, men were forced to grow beards, and television and music were banned.Now, the world is waiting to see the face of the new government, and many Afghans remain skeptical. In the weeks since they took power, signals have been mixed: Government employees including women have been asked to return to work, but some women were later ordered home by lower-ranking Taliban. Universities and schools have been ordered open, but fear has kept both students and teachers away.Women have demonstrated peacefully, some even having conversations about their rights with Taliban leaders. But some have been dispersed by Taliban special forces firing in the air.Some signs of normalcy have also begun to return. Kabul’s streets are again clogged with traffic, as Taliban fighters patrol in pickup trucks and police vehicles — brandishing their automatic weapons and flying the Taliban’s white flag. Schools have opened, and moneychangers work the street corners.  Among the promises the Taliban have made is that once the country’s airports are up and running, Afghans with passports and visas would be allowed to travel. More than 100 countries issued a statement saying they would be watching to see that the new rulers held to their commitment.Technical teams from Qatar and Turkey arrived in recent days and are working to get the civilian airport operational.On Saturday, state-run Ariana Airlines made its first domestic flights, which continued on Sunday. The airport is without radar facilities, so flights are restricted to daylight hours to allow for visual landing, said official Shershah Stor.Several countries have been bringing in humanitarian supplies. The Gulf state of Qatar, where the Taliban maintained a political office since 2013, is making daily flights into Kabul, delivering humanitarian aid. Bahrain also announced humanitarian assistance deliveries.
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The commander of an armed opposition group in Afghanistan said Sunday he welcomed proposals from religious scholars for holding peace talks with the Taliban if they pull back their forces from his native northern Panjshir province.  Ahmad Massoud made the offer through a post on his organization’s Facebook page on a day when Taliban forces claimed they had fought their way into the provincial capital, Bazarak, after seizing the rest of the province.Multiple sources also confirmed the killing of the NRF’s official spokesman, Fahim Dashty, along with Massoud’s cousin, General Abdul Wudood, during Sunday’s fighting.Blinken to Visit Qatar, Germany for Afghanistan DiplomacyAlso, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit US allies in Persian Gulf to hold talks on Afghanistan 
“The National Resistance Front is ready to stop the war immediately in order to achieve stable peace, if the Taliban group ends its military attacks and movements in Panjshir and Andarab,” the Facebook post quoted Massoud as saying. Andarab is a district in the neighboring Baghlan province and sits at the entrance to Panjshir.
 
Massoud’s statement came in response to reports in Afghan media that said a council of religious scholars had called on the Taliban to accept a negotiated settlement to end the fighting.   Panjshir is the last remaining area of armed resistance to the Taliban’s rule since they captured the other 33 Afghan provinces, including the capital, Kabul, last month in a lightning blitz as Western-trained government forces collapsed and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.
 
But a week later the NRF, which comprises members of U.S.-trained Afghan security forces and local tribal militias, retook Andarab and two other adjoining districts in Baghlan.   
 
The Taliban denounced the attack as a breach of their general amnesty for all members and politicians of the ousted Afghan government. They repeatedly had urged NRF leaders to surrender their arms and find a negotiated settlement to the security crisis.  
 
The talks eventually broke down, with each side blaming the other for their failure, prompting the Taliban to stage a major offensive several days ago that retook the lost ground.  
 
The advances also paved the way for the Taliban to assault and enter Panjshir, home to the country’s Tajik ethnic minority and located north of the capital, Kabul.
 
In social media posts, Taliban officials, responding to the conditional offer of talks, said their forces were pressing ahead with the offensive to clear Panjshir of the armed resistance, adding that fighting was ongoing inside Bazarak.  White House Again Pledges to Get Americans Out of Afghanistan  Republican lawmaker says Taliban blocking exit flights, executing interpreters who assisted United States  
The claim could not be verified from independent sources, and both the adversaries have issued inflated details about their gains since the fighting broke out.  
 
Massoud’s father successfully defended the province when the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
 
Taliban government  
 
The lack of control over all of Afghanistan has apparently prevented the Taliban from announcing a new government.
 
The Islamist group is under international scrutiny to deliver on pledges that their system of governance will represent all Afghan ethnic groups and respect human rights, particularly those of women, unlike their previous exclusive hardline regime in Kabul.
 
On Saturday, small groups of women activists took to the streets in Kabul and in parts of western Afghanistan, demanding respect for their rights and representation in the new government.
 
Taliban fighters broke up a rally of about a dozen women in the capital to stop them from heading to the presidential palace.
 
Footage circulating on social media showed demonstrators, who had been confronted by armed Taliban fighters, covering their mouths and coughing, with one woman saying the security guards had used tear gas to disperse the rally.
 
“They also hit women on the head with gun magazines, and the women become bloody,” said one of the demonstrators who identified herself as Soraya.
 
“Taliban blocking protest by beatings and tear gas: unfortunately, this is pretty much on brand for a group that relies on brute force to suppress dissent,” tweeted Patria Gossman, associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch.
 
The Taliban imposed a brutal justice system and banned women from work and prevented older girls from receiving an education when the fundamentalist group previously seized power in Afghanistan.
 
Taliban leaders, however, have promised to install an inclusive government in Kabul that they say will allow women to work and receive an education within the framework of Islamic law, or Sharia. Many Afghans doubt the reliability of their pledges.
 
“It will be an inclusive strong central and sustainable system or government,” Bilal Karimi, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, told VOA on Friday.
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Hundreds of thousands of farmers gathered in India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, the biggest rally yet in a months-long series of demonstrations to press Narendra Modi’s government to repeal three new agricultural laws.More than 500,000 farmers attended the rally in the city of Muzaffarnagar, according to local police.The demonstration in Uttar Pradesh, a predominantly agricultural state that’s home to 240 million people, will breathe fresh life into the protest movement, said Rakesh Tikait, a prominent farmers’ leader.India’s Most Populous State to Drop Crop Burning Cases Against Farmers The predominantly agricultural northern state of Uttar Pradesh is considering waiving fines imposed on farmers, an influential voting bloc, for burning crop stubble   “We’ll intensify our protest by going to every single city and town of Uttar Pradesh to convey the message that Modi’s government is anti-farmer,” he added.Over the past eight months, tens of thousands of farmers have camped on major highways to the capital, New Delhi to oppose the laws, in India’s longest-running farmer’ protest against the government.The measures, introduced last September, allow farmers to directly sell their produce, outside government-regulated wholesale markets, to big buyers. The government says this will unshackle farmers and help them get better prices.Farmers, however, say the legislation will hurt their livelihood and leave them with scant bargaining power against big private retailers and food processors.Farming is a vast sector that sustains almost half of India’s more than 1.3 billion people, and accounts for about 15% to the country’s $2.7 trillion economy.Balbir Singh Rajewal, another farmers’ leader, said Sunday’s rally was a warning for Prime Minister Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, which next year will a contest state assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, often seen as a barometer of the popularity of the federal government.”Our message is very clear – either repeal the laws or face defeat in the state election,” he added.
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A top White House official pledged Sunday that the United States would find a way to get the remaining Americans out of Afghanistan if they want to leave, but a key Republican foreign affairs lawmaker said Taliban insurgents are blocking easy passage out of the Kabul airport. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that U.S. officials believe “around 100” Americans remain in Afghanistan nearly a week since the U.S. military pulled its last troops out of the country after a nearly two-decade war against al-Qaida terrorists and the Taliban. FILE – White House chief of staff Ron Klain attends a weekly economic briefing in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, April 9, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)“We’re going to find ways to get them out if they want to leave,” Klain said, likely through the resumption of flights to Qatar. In addition, he said the U.S. would continue to try to help Afghans who assisted U.S. troops over the years to escape the country and life under Taliban rule. FILE – Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, center, speaks on the close of the war in Afghanistan, at the Capitol in Washington, Aug. 31, 2021.But a key opposition lawmaker, Congressman Michael McCaul, the lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the “Fox News Sunday” show that based on U.S. intelligence briefings he believes “hundreds of Americans” were left behind as the last U.S. military flights left Kabul last Monday. He said no U.S. citizens have gotten out of Afghanistan since then. “The Taliban have been making demands, not clearing airplanes to leave,” McCaul said. He said the Taliban “want something in exchange,” full U.S. recognition of its control of the Afghan government.   “This is not a new and improved Taliban,” McCaul said, compared to the group’s conduct in 2001 when the U.S. overthrew it in an invasion targeting al-Qaida terrorists harbored by the Taliban as they planned the September 11 attacks on the U.S. that killed nearly 3,000 people. He said that some Afghan interpreters who assisted U.S. troops over the years and are looking to leave their homeland have been turned back from the Kabul airport and forced to return to their homes to watch as their family members have been executed, including some beheaded, before the interpreters themselves are killed. He did not say how many had been killed by the Taliban. “I’ve said all along [President Joe Biden] has blood on his hands,” McCaul said. After the U.S. pulled its last troops out of Afghanistan last week, Biden forcefully defended his withdrawal in getting 98% of Americans out of the country as an “extraordinary success.” FILE – Hundreds of people gather, some holding documents, on Aug. 26, 2021, near an evacuation control checkpoint on the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan.Biden often has said he would not continue the American presence in Afghanistan as a “forever war.” National polls in the U.S. show that Americans support Biden’s decision to leave the country but not the chaotic end to operations there. In the waning days of the U.S. presence, 13 U.S. troops were killed in a suicide bomb attack at the airport that Islamic State Khorasan, an Afghan offshoot of the terrorist group, claimed. 
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In the vast Sunderbans delta that spans eastern India and Bangladesh, coastal erosion due to rising sea levels has been slowly carving away chunks of its low-lying islands, forcing thousands of people to relocate, according to climate experts.“When we talk to families in the Sunderbans, we find that only elderly people are left behind. Many young people are already working in different parts of the country as day laborers or semiskilled workers,” Harjeet Singh, senior adviser at Climate Action Network International, said.The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body, warns that the Indian Ocean is warming faster than other seas. As a result, it says that sea levels around South Asia have increased faster than the global average, leading to coastal area loss and retreating shorelines in densely populated countries such as India and Bangladesh.That is affecting millions — a December report by ActionAid and Climate Action Network South Asia estimated that the combined effects of climate change will result in the displacement of 63 million people in South Asia from their homes by 2050 if emissions continue at the same levels.Many of those displaced will be from coastal communities, and are already seeing their homes regularly inundated from rising sea levels and their farms shrinking or becoming unusable because of increased soil salinity, say experts.Millions displacedWhile disasters such as cyclones and floods linked to climate change have grabbed headlines, the displacement of millions of people in the region has gotten less attention.“The IPCC report points out that the sea level is rising much faster than earlier research had suggested,” said Roxy Mathew Koll at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.“A 3-centimeter rise in a decade might not seem much but it is equivalent to 17 meters of land carved out by the sea every decade along the entire coast of India. That is what we are seeing happening currently,” Koll said.Mega cities in India, such as Mumbai and Chennai, have been witnessing increased monsoon flooding, as rural communities along the shore see livelihoods destroyed.Low-lying Bangladesh, where more than 35 million people live in coastal areas, could lose more than 15% of its land, affecting the homes and livelihoods of millions in coastal areas.“This region is not prepared to deal with such levels of displacement because the poor do not have resources to relocate. These climate migrants are mostly pushed into slums in nearby towns and cities, which are already densely populated,” Singh said.Barriers of mud and rock erected by residents, as well as concrete structures, have done little to keep the ocean out.Bangladesh’s government is planning to improve coastal embankments that were built to keep out tidal flooding and offer protection against severe cyclones, according to Malik Fida Khan at the Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services in Dhaka.Ocean damages soilEven where the land is not swallowed by the ocean, though, the sea water pushing into farms has caused long-term damage.“We can build embankments and resilience against cyclonic storms and sea level rise, but it is very difficult to handle soil salinity. You need fresh water to push back the salinity,” Khan said.“For example, it will take 50 years or more to remove soil salinity that has increased in 10 years. So, you need different kind of adaptation measures such as growing saline-tolerant varieties of rice,” he said.While Bangladesh has developed several such varieties of rice, some studies say the soil salinity has increased so much that even growing these is difficult.Nowhere is the situation more dire than in the Sunderbans, often called one of the world’s climate hotspots. Increasingly battered by more intense cyclones, the region is witnessing one of the fastest rates of coastal erosion in the world, with islands dotting the delta steadily shrinking, according to several studies.Ghoramara island in the Indian state of West Bengal for example has diminished by half since 1970, according to several studies. Once home to 40,000 people, India’s 2011 census counted only 5,000 on the island.Those who have grown up in the Sunderbans in India, such as Bhakta Purakayastha, founder of the Sunderbans Social Development Center, describe the dramatic changes they have witnessed.“When I was a child, we used to cross the river in a boat. Now the river has shrunk so much due to silt deposits from upstream that we can walk across,” he said.He said fish were once abundant in the river but the catch has shrunk as the rising sea pushes into rivers, affecting poor communities that rely on their rice paddies and fish for sustenance.“Now they have to go out into the deep sea to catch fish, but rising tides pose a challenge” Purakayastha said.’We do not have a plan’A severe cyclone that hit the region in May has exacerbated the problem in the delta, with even drinking water becoming scarce because of rising salinity in rivers.Experts are calling on regional governments to develop plans to assist the growing tide of climate migrants, saying marginalized communities are the hardest hit by climate change.“The reality is we do not have a plan, although many of the impacts of climate change are already locked in,” Singh of Climate Action Network International said.“None of the governments in South Asia have specific policies for people forced to migrate due to climate change to eke out a living. Even the recognition of climate induced migration is not there,” he said. 
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Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir charged family members of late resistance leader Syed Ali Geelani under a harsh anti-terror law for raising anti-India slogans and wrapping his body in the Pakistani flag, officials said Sunday.Geelani, who died Wednesday at age 91, was the emblem of Kashmir’s defiance against New Delhi and had been under house arrest for years.His son, Naseem, said Indian authorities buried Geelani’s body in a local cemetery without any family members present after police snatched his body from the home. Police denied that and called it “baseless rumors” by “some vested interests.”A video widely shared on social media purportedly showed Geelani’s relatives, mostly women, frantically trying to prevent armed police from forcing their way into the room where his body, wrapped in a Pakistani flag, was being kept. It showed women wailing and screaming as police took the body and locked his family and relatives inside the room.Police said unspecified family members and some others were charged Saturday under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. They have not yet been taken into custody.The anti-terror law was amended in 2019 to allow the government to designate an individual as a terrorist. Police can detain a person for six months without producing any evidence, and the accused can subsequently be imprisoned for up to seven years.Rights activists have called the law draconian.Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan, which administer parts of the Himalayan region while claiming it entirely.Geelani spearheaded Kashmir’s movement for the right to self-determination and was a staunch proponent of merging Kashmir with Pakistan. For many in Kashmir and beyond, he was an enduring icon of defiance against India.Rebels have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989. The region is one of the most heavily militarized in the world. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the raging conflict.Meanwhile Sunday, authorities eased some restrictions that had been imposed since Geelani’s death, allowing some private vehicles on roads and vendors to operate in some parts of Srinagar.Mobile phones were restored late Friday but mobile internet and restrictions on the movement of people continued in many parts of the Kashmir Valley. 
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At least three paramilitary guards were killed Sunday when a suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up in Quetta, southwestern Pakistan, police said.The bomber targeted Frontier Constabulary guards in the Mian Ghundi neighborhood of the city — close to the Afghanistan border — where Hazara Shiite merchants were trading vegetables.Azhar Akram, a deputy inspector general of police, told AFP that 20 people were injured in the blast, including civilians.A spokesperson for the police’s Counter-Terrorism Department confirmed the toll.Shiite Muslims have been frequently targeted in restive Balochistan by radical Sunni Islamist groups, who consider them a heretical sect.Frontier guards have also been targeted by Baloch insurgents, who have been waging a simmering insurgency for greater autonomy. 
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Afghanistan will “likely” erupt in civil war, the top U.S. general told U.S. media Saturday, warning that those conditions could see a resurgence of terrorist groups in the country.As American forces began their withdrawal, the Taliban took over Afghanistan in a lightning campaign, with only the northern province Panjshir holding out against the hardline Islamists.”My military estimate… is that the conditions are likely to develop of a civil war,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Fox News.He questioned whether the Taliban — who are yet to declare a government — would be able to consolidate power and establish effective governance.”I think there’s at least a very good probability of a broader civil war and that will then in turn lead to conditions that could, in fact, lead to a reconstitution of al-Qaida or a growth of ISIS or other … terrorist groups,” Milley said.Emphasizing that he could not predict what would happen next in Afghanistan, he nonetheless gave a bleak assessment.”The conditions are very likely,” Milley told Fox News, “that you could see a resurgence of terrorism coming out of that general region within 12, 24, 36 months.”The United States invaded Afghanistan and toppled the first Taliban regime in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaida, which had sanctuary in the country.Western governments fear Afghanistan could again become a haven for extremists bent on attacking them.The United States has said it will maintain an “over-the-horizon” capability to strike against any threats to its security in Afghanistan. 
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