The Taliban fighters who were once embedded in Afghanistan’s rugged mountains are now a feared urban police force. Felipe Dana joins them on patrol
Continue reading...Category Archives: Taliban
Civilians killed in deadliest Kabul attack since US withdrawal
Islamic State suspected of carrying out bombing outside mosque in Afghan capital
At least five civilians have been killed in a bomb blast at the entrance to a Kabul mosque on Sunday, a Taliban official said, the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since US forces left at the end of August.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion fell on Islamic State extremists, who have stepped up attacks on the Taliban in recent weeks, particularly in the IS stronghold in eastern Afghanistan.
Continue reading...Inside the CIA’s secret Kabul base, burned out and abandoned in haste
A Taliban commander invited the media to inspect the site where America plotted killing raids and tortured prisoners
The cars, minibuses and armoured vehicles that the CIA used to run its shadow war in Afghanistan had been lined up and incinerated beyond identification before the Americans left. Below their ashy grey remains, pools of molten metal had solidified into permanent shiny puddles as the blaze cooled.
The faux Afghan village where they trained paramilitary forces linked to some of the worst human rights abuses of the war had been brought down on itself. Only a high concrete wall still loomed over the crumpled piles of mud and beams, once used to practise for the widely hated night raids on civilian homes.
Continue reading...‘I don’t know where to go’: uncertain fate of the women in Kabul’s shelters
Women in refuges have been sent home to their abusers or to prison since the Taliban takeover. Those in the few shelters still open fear what lies ahead
Zari was seven years old when her parents died, forcing her to move in with her uncle. But when he died four years later, his two widows beat Zari and forced her to work long hours weaving carpets. During her teenage years, Zari tried to kill herself.
After her suicide attempt, Zari, now 28, moved into a shelter for abused women. For the past eight years she has held on to the belief that things would get better. She made friends and learned to sew clothes, eventually teaching others to do the same.
Continue reading...Trump-Taliban deal had ‘psychological’ effect on Afghan government says top US general – video
The collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces can be traced to a 2020 agreement between the Taliban and the Trump administration that promised a complete US troop withdrawal, senior Pentagon officials have told Congress.
Gen Frank McKenzie, the head of central command, told the House 'the signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military'. He identified a troop reduction ordered by Joe Biden as the 'second nail in the coffin'.
Continue reading...Top US general says Afghan collapse can be traced to Trump-Taliban deal
The Doha agreement, signed in February 2020, set a date for the US to fully withdraw troops by May 2021
The collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces can be traced to a 2020 agreement between the Taliban and the Trump administration that promised a complete US troop withdrawal, senior Pentagon officials have told Congress.
Gen Frank McKenzie, the head of central command, told the House armed services committee that once the US troop presence was pushed below 2,500 as part of President Joe Biden’s decision in April to complete a total withdrawal by September, the unraveling of the US-backed Afghan government accelerated.
Continue reading...Fears grow for photojournalist arrested by Taliban as executions resume
Taliban deny Morteza Samadi, 21, has been sentenced to death but family concerned for his safety after he was detained while covering women’s protests in Herat
Fears are growing for a photojournalist who has been detained by the Taliban for more than three weeks after being arrested while covering the women’s protests in Herat.
Morteza Samadi, 21, a freelance photographer, was one of several journalists who were arrested at street protests at the beginning of September. All were quickly released except Morteza, whose whereabouts is not known. Some of those detained in Kabul have alleged they were badly beaten and tortured.
Continue reading...‘Living in a cave is no life’: Pakistani villagers trapped by Taliban and poverty
Seven years after fleeing army clashes with militants, 100 families eking out an existence on a hillside near the Afghan border are unable to return home
“Don’t talk to me about the government. They don’t help.”
Ninety-year-old Shah Mast is angry. He has been living in the cave he calls home for seven years, ever since an offensive by the Pakistan army against the Islamist militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) destroyed his home.
Continue reading...Blame-shifting over US withdrawal ignores deeper failings in Afghanistan
Analysis: Senators’ questions to military leadership a contest in sharing out responsibility for failures
The deeply partisan US Congress is rarely a conducive place for national introspection and Tuesday’s Senate hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal did not provide an exception.
In the midst of the point-scoring and blame-shifting on display in the senators’ questions to the nation’s military leadership, it was clear that it was a contest to apportion shares in failure.
Continue reading...Fears for Afghan psychiatrist abducted by armed men
Dr Nader Alemi, who opened the country’s first private psychiatric hospital, had received death threats before being taken on his way home from work last week
One of Afghanistan’s most prominent psychiatrists has been abducted on his way home from work by a group of armed men.
Dr Nader Alemi, 66, who opened the country’s first private psychiatric hospital in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, was stopped by seven men in a white car last week, said his family.
Continue reading...Ambassador in limbo makes plea for Afghans to be allowed into EU
Former Afghan government’s ambassador in Greece appalled by Athens’ media blitz against ‘illegal migrant flows’
In other times, Mirwais Samadi would have welcomed a campaign to deter his compatriots from opting to become illegal migrants and embarking on the often dangerous trek from Afghanistan to Europe.
By far the worst part of his job as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Athens – apart from the strange limbo he has found himself in representing a nation whose leaders he refuses to recognise – is notifying families back home of loved ones who died along the way. Invariably they are the victims of smuggling networks motivated solely by profit.
Continue reading...UK urged to resettle fleeing Afghan women’s football team
Leeds United have offered support but players face return to Taliban regime unless accepted soon
The UK government is being asked to urgently resettle female players from Afghanistan’s junior football team who fled the Taliban and have been offered a new life with Leeds United.
The 35 young women – many of whom are in their teens – their families and football coaches are in Lahore, Pakistan, on 30-day visas. But the 136-strong group face returning to Afghanistan unless they are accepted by a third country soon – they have to leave Pakistan by 12 October.
Continue reading...Mismatch of mindsets: why the Taliban won in Afghanistan
Analysis: the west tried to impose its alien values and it is time to try a new approach, as Joe Biden has indicated
Some years ago, in Afghanistan, the anthropologist Scott Atran asked a Taliban fighter what it would take to stop the fighting, because families on both sides were crying. The fighter replied: “Leave our country and the crying will stop.”
The crying may not have stopped, but the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan without an air force, heavy arms or expensive training, against US-backed Afghan government forces that outnumbered them four to one. In doing so, they have taken an important step closer to realising their stated goal, which is the creation of an Islamic emirate governed according to their interpretation of sharia law.
Continue reading...‘Necessary for security’: veteran Taliban enforcer says amputations will resume
Nooruddin Turabi, in charge of Afghan prisons, says executions and removal of hands will restart, but possibly not in public
The Taliban will resume executions and the amputation of hands for criminals they convict, in a return to their harsh version of Islamic justice.
According to a senior official – a veteran leader of the hardline Islamist group who was in charge of justice during its previous period in power – executions would not necessarily take place in public as they did before.
Continue reading...‘We buried our sportswear’: Afghan women fear fight is over for martial arts
Female taekwondo and karate trainers are forced to practise in secret since the Taliban takeover and fear they may never compete again
On the morning of 15 August, when the Taliban were at the gates of Kabul, Soraya, a martial arts trainer in the Afghan capital, woke up with a sense of dread. “It was as though the sun had lost its colour,” she says. That day she taught what would be her last karate class at the gym she had started to teach women self-defence skills. “By 11am we had to say our goodbyes to our students. We didn’t know when we would see each other again,” she says.
Soraya is passionate about martial arts and its potential to transform women’s minds and bodies. “Sport has no gender; it is about good health. I haven’t read anywhere in Qur’an that prevents women from participating in sports to stay healthy,” she says.
Continue reading...Zahra Joya: the Afghan reporter who fled the Taliban – and kept telling the truth about women
As a child in Afghanistan, she pretended to be a boy in order to get an education, before starting her own women’s news agency. Now living in Britain, her fight continues
Just over a month ago, Zahra Joya left her house in Kabul to walk to her office, as she had been doing every day. From this small office, Joya, a journalist, ran Rukhshana Media, the news agency she founded last year to report on the stories of women and girls across Afghanistan. By the time she returned home in the afternoon, however, men with guns were on street corners and her sisters were shut inside their house, shaking with fear. In just a few hours, normal life had been obliterated.
“Right to the end, on that afternoon of 15 August, I couldn’t believe what was happening,” she says. “It was like a bad dream. Even on that day, it just seemed impossible that the Taliban could come to power so quickly, wipe away 20 years and drag us all back to the past.”
Continue reading...‘The challenge for us now is drought, not war’: livelihoods of millions of Afghans at risk
After years caught in the crossfire between the Taliban and security forces, farmers in Kandahar face a new threat, as water sources dry up
The war in Afghanistan might be over but farmers in Kandahar’s Arghandab valley face a new enemy: drought.
It has hardly rained for two years, a drought so severe that some farmers are questioning how much longer they can live off the land.
Continue reading...‘It’s heartbreaking’: Steve McCurry on Afghan Girl, a portrait of past and present
The US photographer’s image of Sharbat Gula captured the story of a country, its people and refugees across the world. Thirty six years on, another picture tells a similar tale – but also one of hope
On 1 September, a young Afghan girl stood in line with her family at a US base in Sicily waiting to board a flight to Philadelphia. She is about nine years old and is one of more than 100,000 people evacuated from Kabul by allied forces after the Taliban took control of the country in August.
Her photo, taken for the Guardian by Italian photojournalist Alessio Mamo and featured on the front page of the UK print edition, resembles the Afghan Girl by American photographer Steve McCurry. McCurry’s portrait, of a Pashtun child, Sharbat Gula, which appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic, became the symbol, not only of Afghanistan, but of displaced refugees across the world.
Continue reading...Afghan women stage protest in Kabul after Taliban crack down on women’s rights – video report
More than a dozen women staged a protest in Kabul on Sunday, holding up signs calling for the participation of women in public life. The protest came as female government employees in Kabul were told to stay home, with work only allowed for those who cannot be replaced by men. The order was given by the interim mayor of Kabul, detailing the latest restrictions on women by the new Taliban rulers.
- Kabul government’s female workers told to stay at home by Taliban
- ‘We don’t want people to be in a panic,’ says chief of Taliban morality police
Kabul government’s female workers told to stay at home by Taliban
Only those who cannot be replaced by men may remain, in further sign of Taliban’s hardline rule over Afghans
Female employees in the Kabul city government have been told to stay home, with work only allowed for those who cannot be replaced by men, the interim mayor of Afghanistan’s capital said on Sunday, detailing the latest restrictions on women by the new Taliban rulers.
The decision to prevent most female city workers from returning to their jobs is another sign that the Taliban, who overran Kabul last month, are enforcing their harsh interpretation of Islam despite initial promises by some that they would be tolerant and inclusive. Under their previous rule in the 1990s, the Taliban barred girls and women from schools, jobs and public life.
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