Category Archives: Taliban

Afghanistan: former Chevening scholars accuse UK of abandoning them

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Government has prioritised rescue of current scholars but estimated 70 alumni are still in country

A group of former Chevening scholars have accused the British government of abandoning them in Afghanistan, where they say their lives are at grave risk from the Taliban.

The UK government has prioritised the rescue of 35 current Chevening scholars who were due to embark on their studies in the UK before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, but an estimated 70 former scholars are also thought to still be in the country.

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#DoNotTouchMyClothes: Afghan women’s social media protest against Taliban

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Women around the world are sharing pictures of themselves in traditional colourful clothes in a campaign against the new strict dress code for female students

After street demonstrations across major cities in Afghanistan, women have now taken to social media to protest against the Taliban’s hardline policies towards them.

An online campaign has seen Afghan women around the world share photos of themselves wearing traditional colourful clothes, using the hashtag #DoNotTouchMyClothes.

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Taliban governor of Helmand’s message to west: ‘Come back with money, not guns’

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Talib Mawlawi, who spent years fighting the British, urges western nations to recognise Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate leaders

Helmand’s new Taliban governor, who spent years as a commander fighting the British in Sangin, welcomes visitors with an assault rifle lying on his desk. Yet he insists the time for fighting is over.

He has a message for the British, and the rest of Nato: recognise the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate leaders and then come back, but with money not guns.

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Questions in Kabul as two top Taliban leaders ‘missing from public view’

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Group’s leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, and one of their most recognisable faces, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, have not been seen

Two senior Taliban leaders have gone missing from public view, leading some Afghans to question whether the group’s supreme leader and new deputy prime minister are alive.

Related: Taliban assure UN over safety and security of humanitarian workers

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Taliban takeover of Afghanistan will reshape Middle East, official warns

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Gulf states are having to reconsider their alliances and especially whether they can still trust the US, says senior source

The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan is a shattering earthquake that will shape the Middle East for many years, a senior Gulf official has said, warning that – despite the group’s promises of moderation – the militant group is “essentially the same” as last time it was in power.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official also said that the rapid and chaotic US withdrawal also raises serious questions for Gulf states about the value of US promises of security over the next 20 years.

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Taliban assure UN over safety and security of humanitarian workers

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Written assurances also say aid agencies will be able to operate independently of government and will be free to employ women

The Taliban have given the UN written assurances on the safe passage and freedom of movement for humanitarian workers operating in Afghanistan, the UN under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, has told a UN fundraising conference in Geneva.

Reading extracts from the Taliban undertakings, Griffiths said he had also received the assurances that aid agencies would be able to operate independently of the government, and would be free to employ women.

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Morning mail: calls to extend aged care vaccination, Covid inequities, and the joy of tinned food

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Monday: A union is pushing for a compulsory vaccination deadline of aged care workers to be extended. Plus: why tinned food is no longer the embarrassing option

Good morning. A union is calling for the extension to the compulsory vaccination for aged care workers as the Friday deadline approaches. Analysis of green space in greater Sydney reveals another element of how Covid lockdowns are magnifying inequity. The Taliban will allow women to study in universities in gender-segregated classrooms. And it’s time to stop looking down on tinned fruit and veggies as a lesser choice.

The Health Services Union is calling for the federal government to extend compulsory Covid vaccination for aged care workers beyond Friday’s deadline, saying the sector cannot afford to lose even 5% of its workforce. The federal government has said that 90.8% of staff have now received a single dose of a Covid vaccine and 70.5% two doses. The HSU’s federal president, Gerard Hayes, said the government needed to extend the deadline by between two weeks and a month given existing workforce pressures.

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Afghan women at university must study in female-only classrooms, Taliban say

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Islamic dress code will be compulsory as new regime enforces gender segregation in Afghanistan

The Taliban have announced that women in Afghanistan will only be allowed to study at university in gender-segregated classrooms and Islamic dress will be compulsory, stoking fears that a gender apartheid will be imposed on the country under the new regime.

On Saturday, the Taliban raised their flag over the presidential palace on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, signalling that their work governing the newly formed Islamic emirate had begun. The white banner bearing a Qur’anic verse was hoisted by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the prime minister of the interim Taliban government.

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Afghanistan’s shrinking horizons: ‘Women feel everything is finished’

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The Taliban claim to have changed, but the crackdown has begun for women across the country

In two months, Parwana estimates she has crossed the threshold of her home perhaps four times. She used to leave early in the morning, for work that supported her entire family, and then go on to an evening degree course.

After the Taliban took over Kandahar, her manager told her not to come to work and her university hasn’t yet sorted out how to put on the gender-divided classes they demanded.

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The Taliban are not the only threat to Afghanistan. Aid cuts could undo 20 years of progress

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The most vulnerable people will bear the cost of sanctions, as services and the economy collapse

Watching Afghanistan’s unfolding trauma, I’ve thought a lot about Mumtaz Ahmed, a young teacher I met a few years ago. Her family fled Kabul during Taliban rule in the late 1990s.

Raised as a refugee in Pakistan, Ahmed had defied the odds and made it to university. Now, she was back in Afghanistan teaching maths in a rural girls’ school. “I came back because I believe in education and I love my country,” she told me. “These girls have a right to learn – without education, Afghanistan has no future.”

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The disappeared in Mexico, Afghan female footballers and a giant puppet: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas

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Afghans protesters reportedly killed during Taliban crackdown on demonstrations, says UN – video

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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

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How mass killings by US forces after 9/11 boosted support for the Taliban

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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.

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‘Tomorrow they will kill me’: Afghan female police officers live in fear of Taliban reprisals

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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.

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Afghanistan flight carrying more than 100 foreign passengers lands in Doha

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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.

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Afghan journalists describe violent Taliban beatings when reporting on protests – video

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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

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Afghans at risk of near-universal poverty, UN report warns

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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%.

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Violent attacks on Afghan journalists by Taliban prompt growing alarm

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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.

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Taliban ban protests and slogans that don’t have their approval

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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’”.

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US-led meeting to set out framework for Taliban cooperation

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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.

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