A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas
Continue reading...Category Archives: Taliban
Afghans protesters reportedly killed during Taliban crackdown on demonstrations, says UN – video
The UN’s rights spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, received reports of house-to-house searches for Afghan demonstrators during the Taliban’s violent crackdown on protests against their rule that has already led to four documented deaths.
The UN has said Taliban officers used live ammunition – reportedly fired into the air – whips and batons to break up demonstrations and have since formally banned protests against the regime
Continue reading...How mass killings by US forces after 9/11 boosted support for the Taliban
Some Afghan families were all but wiped out by massacres and airstrikes, provoking survivors to take up arms against the west
The men of Zangabad village, Panjwai district lined up on the eve of 11 September to count and remember their dead, the dozens of relatives who they say were killed at the hands of the foreign forces that first appeared in their midst nearly 20 years ago.
Their cluster of mud houses, fields and pomegranate orchards was the site of perhaps the most notorious massacre of the war, when US SSgt Robert Bales walked out of a nearby base to slaughter local families in cold blood. He killed 16 people, nine of them children.
Continue reading...‘Tomorrow they will kill me’: Afghan female police officers live in fear of Taliban reprisals
With at least four women, including a pregnant mother, targeted and killed by Taliban fighters, female ex-officers feel abandoned by the world
Negar Masumi, a female police officer with 15 years of experience, was determined not to flee when the Taliban took control of her home province of Ghor in central Afghanistan.
On Saturday night, gunmen, who called themselves Taliban mujahideen, stormed Negar’s home. They took her husband and four of her sons into another room and tied them up. Then they beat Negar with their guns and shot her dead, according to a family member, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Continue reading...Afghanistan flight carrying more than 100 foreign passengers lands in Doha
Antony Blinken thanks Qatar and Taliban for facilitating flight that he says shows US commitment to help citizens and others who assisted US
A flight carrying more than 100 international passengers out of Kabul has landed in Doha, the first such civilian flight since the chaotic evacuation of 124,000 foreigners and at-risk Afghans sparked by the Taliban’s swift takeover of the country.
About 113 people were aboard the flight to Doha operated by state-owned Qatar Airways, officials said. The passengers included US, British, Canadian, Ukrainian, Dutch and German citizens.
Continue reading...Afghan journalists describe violent Taliban beatings when reporting on protests – video
Two reporters from Kabul have said they were beaten for about 10 minutes by at least six men then locked in a cell, after reporting on protests in Panjshir valley. An acting Taliban minister, who declined to be identified, said attacks on journalists would be investigated.
The founder of Afghan publication Etilaat Roz said the beatings sent a chilling message to the media in Afghanistan
Continue reading...Afghans at risk of near-universal poverty, UN report warns
Study suggests a worst-case scenario where 97% of Afghans would sink below poverty line by 2022
Afghanistan’s population of 38 million people risks being plunged into near-universal poverty faced with a “catastrophic deterioration” of the country’s heavily aid-dependent economy, according to a warning issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The study, which examines a series of scenarios facing the already impoverished country under the Taliban’s new hardline rule, suggests a worst-case scenario where as many as 97% of Afghans would sink below the poverty line by next year – a staggering increase of 25%.
Continue reading...Violent attacks on Afghan journalists by Taliban prompt growing alarm
As images circulate of the brutal flogging of two reporters, a senior Afghan journalist declares ‘press freedom has ended’
A spate of violent attacks on Afghan journalists by the Taliban is prompting growing alarm over the freedom of the country’s media, with one senior journalist declaring that “press freedom has ended”.
As images and testimony circulated internationally of the arrest and brutal flogging of two reporters who were detained covering a women’s rights demonstration in Kabul on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists raised concern over the recent string of attacks.
Continue reading...Taliban ban protests and slogans that don’t have their approval
Rallies in Afghanistan have already been broken up violently, now ‘severe consequences’ are threatened for demonstrators
The Taliban has moved to tighten its crackdown on escalating protests against its rule, banning any demonstrations that do not have official approval for both the gathering itself and for any slogans that might be used.
In the first decree issued by the hardline Islamist group’s new interior ministry, which is led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is wanted by the United States on terrorism charges, the Taliban warned opponents that they must secure permission before any protests or face “severe legal consequences’”.
Continue reading...US-led meeting to set out framework for Taliban cooperation
Talks involving up to 20 nations come as militants ignore calls to form inclusive government in Afghanistan
The US is convening an expanded group of western nations to set a framework for cooperation with the new Taliban government, amid fears that isolating the militant group could backfire.
The meeting on Wednesday, chaired by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, faces an all-male, Pashtun-dominated caretaker government that has ignored calls to form an inclusive administration.
Continue reading...‘They came for my daughter’: Afghan single mothers face losing children under Taliban
Life for single mothers in Afghanistan has always been marred by stigma and poverty. Now with the Taliban in control, what few protections they had have disappeared
The day after Mazar-i-Sharif, the provincial capital of Balkh province, fell to the Taliban on 14 August, gunmen came for Raihana’s* six-year-old daughter.
Widowed when her husband was murdered by Taliban forces in 2020, Raihana had been raising her child as a single mother. After her husband’s death she had fought her in-laws for custody of her daughter and won, thanks to the rights she had under Afghan civil law – which state that single women can keep their children if they can provide for them financially.
Continue reading...What’s next for American foreign policy?
Anniversary of 9/11 and fall of Kabul trigger questions over US interventionism
The 20th anniversary of 9/11 and its fallout was always going to be a moment of deep soul searching about what has been lost and learned.
But the retrospective, until a few weeks ago, risked having a historical, even sepia, quality as the attention of political leaders moved to a more contemporary set of threats – health pandemics, climate emergencies, Big Tech and great power competition, including the rise of China. The “war on terror”, after all, looked if not won, at least drawn. It was even possible Islamist terrorism was a temporary manageable phenomenon, increasingly confined to Africa and some lethal loners in European shopping centres.
Continue reading...Taliban name Afghanistan’s new government
Key positions given to figures who dominated 20-year battle against US-led coalition
The Taliban have named UN-sanctioned veteran Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund as the leader of Afghanistan’s new government, while giving key positions to figures who dominated the 20-year battle against the US-led coalition and its allies.
Chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference on Tuesday that Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar would be the deputy leader.
Continue reading...Afghanistan services collapsing and aid about to run out, says UN
Unicef says hundreds of children have been separated from their families in chaos of Kabul evacuation
Access to food aid and other life-saving services in Afghanistan is close to running out, the United Nations has warned, as concern mounts that the country is facing a “looming humanitarian catastrophe”.
The grim assessment from the UN’s Office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs [OCHA] came amid an appeal for an extra $200m (£145m) in emergency funding in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover sparked a host of new issues.
Continue reading...The Taliban are showing us the dangers of personal data falling into the wrong hands
Digital ID systems are a powerful development tool, providing a legal identity to millions, but their misuse can be deadly
The Taliban have openly talked about using US-made digital identity technology to hunt down Afghans who have worked with the international coalition – posing a huge threat to everyone recorded in the system. In addition, the extremists now also have access to – and control over – the digital identification systems and technologies built through international aid support.
These include the e-Tazkira, a biometric identity card used by Afghanistan’s National Statistics and Information Authority, which includes fingerprints, iris scans and a photograph, as well as voter registration databases. It also includes the Afghan personnel and pay system, used by the interior and defence ministries to pay the army and police.
Continue reading...‘Our children are hungry’: economic crisis pushes Afghans to desperation
Afghans forced to sell possessions on streets of Mazar-e-Sharif as fragile economy buckles under instability
Yasemeen sits in the back of an open trailer with a bundle of her family’s old clothes wrapped in scarves and some used notebooks already full of a child’s handwriting. The vehicle pulls over in a busy roundabout in central Mazar-e-Sharif, a city that until the Taliban takeover last month was known as the economic powerhouse of northern Afghanistan.
Now, it is a scene of desperation as Afghanistan’s economic crisis sends ordinary people like Yasemeen on to the street to sell their last possessions.
Continue reading...Taliban claim victory over last resistance stronghold of Panjshir province – video
Video released by the Taliban shows the militants raising their flag outside the governor's office in the capital of Panjshir province, the last major holdout since Kabul fell in August. The Taliban say they've captured the mountain valley where anti-Taliban militia and remnants of the regular Afghan army and special forces have been holding out. But an official from the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan has said the fight continues.
- Afghanistan: Taliban claim to have taken control of Panjshir valley
- Four men arrested over violence at Kabul women’s rights march, say Taliban
Biden under pressure as NGO says flights from Afghanistan blocked
Marina LeGree claims group of Americans and at-risk Afghans prevented from flying for a week
Joe Biden’s administration is facing mounting pressure amid reports that several hundred people, including Americans, had been prevented for a week from flying out of an airport in northern Afghanistan.
Marina LeGree, the founder and executive director of a small American NGO active in Afghanistan, said 600 to 1,300 people, including girls from her group, had been waiting near the Mazar-i-Sharif airport for as long as a week amid confusion involving the Taliban and US officials.
Continue reading...Four men arrested over violence at Kabul women’s rights march, say Taliban
Spokesman says men ‘mistreated the women and a reporter’ but tells Afghans it is ‘not a time for protest’
The Taliban have arrested four men who hit protesters and held journalists at gunpoint to break up a women’s rights’ demonstration in Kabul on Saturday, the spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.
The demonstration came amid fierce fighting in Panjshir valley, the last holdout of anti-Taliban forces from the fallen government, and as Afghanistan waits for the country’s new rulers to reveal how they plan to govern.
Continue reading...Afghan musicians silently await their fate as Taliban’s ban looms
Amid upheaval across the country, it remains unclear whether a new government will forbid music as it did 25 years ago
The shutters have been down all along Kharabat Street, the storied heart of Afghan musical life, since the Taliban swept into Kabul in mid-August.
Musicians have taken their instruments home, or crammed them into store rooms, waiting to see if the group will do the unthinkable again, and ban music as they did 25 years ago.
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