Category Archives: Taliban

‘They came for my daughter’: Afghan single mothers face losing children under Taliban

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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.

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What’s next for American foreign policy?

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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.

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Taliban name Afghanistan’s new government

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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.

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Afghanistan services collapsing and aid about to run out, says UN

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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.

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The Taliban are showing us the dangers of personal data falling into the wrong hands

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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.

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‘Our children are hungry’: economic crisis pushes Afghans to desperation

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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.

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Taliban claim victory over last resistance stronghold of Panjshir province – video

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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. 

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Biden under pressure as NGO says flights from Afghanistan blocked

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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.

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Four men arrested over violence at Kabul women’s rights march, say Taliban

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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.

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Afghan musicians silently await their fate as Taliban’s ban looms

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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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Afghanistan: militia endure ‘heavy assaults’ from Taliban in Panjshir Valley

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Rebels say they are holding on despite celebratory gunfire in Kabul amid reports that hardliners have wiped out last pocket of resistance

Militia forces say they are enduring “heavy assaults” as they battle the Taliban in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, the final holdout against hardline Islamist control.

The Taliban face the enormous challenge of shifting gears from insurgent group to governing power, days after the US fully withdrew its troops and ended two decades of war.

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Anti-Taliban forces endure ‘heavy assaults’ in Panjshir valley – video report

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Afghan resistance fighters clashed with the Taliban in the Panjshir valley, the final province holding out against hardline Islamist control. Celebratory gunfire rang out across Kabul late on Friday as rumours spread that the valley had fallen. The Taliban made no official claim to victory and the former Afghan vice-president Amrullah Saleh, among other opposition leaders, said his side had not given up

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Evidence contradicts Taliban’s claim to respect women’s rights

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There are signs of a return to something worryingly close to the hardline restrictions of the past across Afghan life

When Taliban fighters moved into Herat city in western Afghanistan last month, one thing mattered more to some of them than the battle itself. As gunmen faced off around the governor’s office, a group of militants came to Shogofa’s* workplace and ordered all the women home.

“They hadn’t even taken all the city, but they came to our headquarters. The manager called an emergency meeting and they told all the women to leave,” she said.

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‘Monsters at the door’: migrant workers trapped in UN Afghan compound

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Security contractors among hundreds from the Philippines, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka stuck without clear plans for evacuation

When Taliban fighters started to kick at the door of a UN compound in a northern province 250 miles (400km) from the Afghan capital, Kabul, Rajesh* was certain he was going to be killed.

The Taliban had taken control of the area on that day. Rajesh, a UN security contractor from India, hurried with his colleagues into an emergency steel-doored room. Before they sealed themselves in, they saw a group of seven or eight heavily armed men.

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Evacuations from Kabul may resume ‘in near future’, says Raab

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Foreign secretary says UK must engage with Taliban in Afghanistan after meeting with Qatari officials

Evacuations may be able to resume from Kabul airport “in the near future”, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said as he expressed a need for direct engagement with the Taliban.

Speaking after talks in Qatar on Thursday, Raab raised hopes that the Britons and Afghans left behind may be able to leave on flights from Afghanistan’s capital.

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Some slept, some cried, all were now refugees: inside one of the last Afghan airlifts

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Those on board the cramped military plane weren’t granted a last glimpse of their homeland before the difficult journey ahead, while all knew thousands still waited desperately below

The American marine shouted “push!”. And hundreds of people did, shoving inside the Boeing C-17 military aircraft; tumbling over, then pulling their bodies into tight huddles on the floor to let as many others in as possible.

As the rear door closed and the deafening engines started, lifting the heavy plane off the runway at Kabul’s international airport, people broke down wailing; crying. Now refugees.

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Afghanistan: Taliban expected to announce new government

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Official says ceremony is being prepared at presidential palace in Kabul – two weeks after Islamist militia seized control

The Taliban are expected to announce a new government in Afghanistan within hours, as chaos in the country deepened and aid experts warned of imminent economic collapse.

More than two weeks after the Islamist militia seized control, sources told Agence-France Presse that the cabinet could be presented after morning prayers on Friday and Ahmadullah Muttaqi, a Taliban official, said on social media that a ceremony was being prepared at the presidential palace in Kabul.

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‘Now I don’t have anything’: female TV anchor flees Afghanistan after interviewing Taliban – video

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The Afghan television anchor Beheshta Arghand has been evacuated from Afghanistan amid risks for her safety and freedom after interviewing a Taliban official live on air after the fall of Kabul in late August. 

Arghand, who is now in Qatar, said she had felt trapped in a leadership that did not accept women. The Taliban limited freedom of the press to ask questions, enforced burkas to be worn on some TV stations and suspended female journalists at others

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‘I pray they are alive’: Afghans headed to US think of families left behind

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Kabul evacuees at Sicilian air base of Sigonella worry about those left living under Taliban rule

As another 250 Afghan refugees evacuated from Kabul left the Sigonella airbase in Sicily bound for Philadelphia, Haifa, 30, watches the plane lift off the runway and disappear into the clouds.

With dozens of other compatriots, she waits in line for her turn for an afternoon departure, when another plane will bring hundreds of other Afghans to the other side of the ocean, far away from the Taliban. There are 3,000 Afghans at the base, known as the Hub of the Med and serving as a transit station complete with temporary lodgings, religious and recreational areas, for evacuees moving on to other locations.

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