Initial reports suggest a Taliban convoy may have been targeted in the ISKP’s stronghold region
At least three people have been killed and more than 18 people injured in three explosions in Jalalabad in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province.
It is reported that the intended target may have been a passing convoy of the Taliban in the provincial capital. It is the first attack in the province since the Taliban came into power in mid-August.
Continue reading...Everyone here has tales of lost loved ones, but many want foreigners back – with aid not weapons
A parade of white Taliban flags lines Musa Qala bazaar right up to the central monument where two kidnappers were hanged in a public execution earlier this year. The flags flutter from almost every shop in celebration, some rough and handmade, others printed and lined with tinsel.
The dusty town, an opium trading centre reached most of the year by driving up the gravel bed of a seasonal river, was the Taliban’s southern capital from 2015 until the militant group took over the national capital. Before that it was the site of intense fighting by British and US forces for more than a decade, including a bitter 2006 British siege in which 88 men were holed up for two months, leading to the first – albeit hyperlocal – international ceasefire negotiations with the Taliban.
Continue reading...Government announces re-opening of high schools for boys but makes no mention of girls
The Taliban have effectively banned girls from secondary education in Afghanistan, by ordering high schools to re-open only for boys.
Girls were not mentioned in Friday’s announcement, which means boys will be back at their desks next week after a one-month hiatus, while their sisters will still be stuck at home.
Continue reading...Evacuation of employees, not contractors, ‘splitting hairs’, says HRW, warning of days left to save lives
Afghan employees who worked as contractors on UK aid projects fear for their lives after not being granted resettlement in Britain.
The Guardian has been in contact with four families who said they had been targeted by the Taliban because they worked for the UK government, and have now been forced into hiding.
Continue reading...One was a young footballer, another a dentist. Their shocking deaths haunt the families who could not stop their desperate bids to escape
When Zaki Anwari scaled the fence of Kabul airport, he was determined to escape. The 17-year-old footballer with the Afghan national youth team had taken a break from studying maths for his exams to accompany his brother as he tried to catch a flight. Zaki had always told his family he was not interested in going abroad, unless he could return to Afghanistan.
But the Taliban takeover had changed things. Zaki did not have a passport but, as night fell on Kabul after the Taliban took control of the city, he told his brother Zakir that he wanted to leave. Zakir did his best to talk him out of it, but he would not let go of the idea.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas
Continue reading...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...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...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...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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