Category Archives: Taliban

‘My nightmares came true’: ex-prosecutor of Afghan women’s abusers

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Negin overcame significant disadvantages to obtain her role but now fears those seeking revenge

The Taliban blighted *Negin’s childhood with their ban on girls’ education, but she overcame the late start to her schooling to become a senior prosecutor. Afghanistan’s legal system was slow and often corrupt, but it offered women some hope of escaping abusers and seeing their tormentors jailed. Now she fears that some of those men, freed in a Taliban-orchestrated mass jailbreak last summer, want revenge.

My life was already affected by the Taliban long before they took over Afghanistan this summer. I only started school at 14, because they were in power in the 90s and did not allow girls to study. Once I could go to school, I graduated and went to university.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

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Taliban forces pepper-spray women’s rights protesters in Kabul

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One woman reportedly taken to hospital after protest calling for right to work and education is stopped

Taliban forces have fired pepper spray at a group of women protesting in Afghanistan’s capital to demand rights to work and education.

Since seizing control of the country by force in August, the Taliban authorities have imposed creeping restrictions on Afghans, especially on women.

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‘We are struggling’: two former officials at Afghan women’s affairs ministry

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Gul Bano and Karima’s former offices are in the hands of the Taliban – and they fear for their lives

Gul Bano* and Karima* are activists who ran provincial branches of the ministry of women’s affairs in two different parts of Afghanistan. Their former offices have been taken over by the Taliban’s feared enforcers, the ministry for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice. They are now in hiding, afraid of the men they helped put in prison for domestic violence and other abuses, many of them in the Taliban or with family links to the militants.

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org

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Calls for release of Kabul University professor detained by Taliban

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Prof Faizullah Jalal, an outspoken critic of Afghanistan’s ruling group, was arrested for alleged remarks on social media

Supporters of a prominent university professor, and one of Afghanistan’s most vocal critics of the Taliban, are calling for his release after he was arrested on Saturday.

Faizullah Jalal, a professor at Kabul University, was detained by the Taliban after the group claimed he was responsible for a series of messages on social media attacking them.

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Joy as baby given to US soldier during Afghan withdrawal is reunited with relatives

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Sohail Ahmadi, who was being raised by a local Kabul taxi driver, will hopefully now travel to the US to live with his parents

An infant boy handed in desperation to a US soldier across an airport wall in the chaos of the American evacuation of Afghanistan has been found and reunited with his relatives.

The baby, Sohail Ahmadi, was just two months old when he went missing on 19 August as thousands of people rushed to leave Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban.

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Taliban stop Afghan women using bathhouses in northern provinces

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Decision to close public hammams – most people’s only chance for a warm wash – sparks anger in light of country’s mounting crises

The Taliban sparked outrage this week by announcing that women in northern Afghanistan would no longer be allowed to use communal bathhouses.

The use of bathhouses, or hammams, is an ancient tradition that remains for many people the only chance for a warm wash during the country’s bitterly cold winters.

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Ashraf Ghani blames international allies over Afghanistan’s fall to Taliban

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In first interview since fleeing Kabul in August, former president says US ‘erased’ Afghans in years of peace talks with militants

The former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has broken his silence with his first interview since fleeing Kabul four months ago, in effect blaming the international community and in particular the Americans for the fall of the republic.

Ghani told the BBC he was rushed into fleeing Kabul on a helicopter by his “terrified” national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, and the commander of the collapsing presidential security detail.

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‘On the brink’: drought and politics leave Afghans fighting famine

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Aid collapse after Taliban took control means just 2% of people have enough to eat, UN says

In his seven decades, Mehrajuddin has been a police commander, a fighter for the mujahideen, a district governor and a prosecutor, and even briefly worked in Europe. Until this year, he has never struggled to feed his family.

Now they have just one meal a day, hard discs of stale bread soaked in water until they soften to mush. “All the family are starving,” he says bluntly as he waits at a food distribution centre in Kabul for a handout of lentils, rice, flour and oil. “I even worry about dying, because if it happens tomorrow, how will my family pay for my funeral?”

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Gordon Brown: west is sleepwalking into Afghanistan disaster

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Ex-PM warns poverty and starvation mean country is at risk of world’s biggest humanitarian crisis

The west is “sleepwalking into the biggest humanitarian crisis of our times” in Afghanistan, Gordon Brown has warned, as he called for a support package to save the country from economic and social collapse after the Taliban’s takeover.

Four months after the western-backed government was overthrown following a mass military withdrawal, the former UK prime minister said the case for action was not based only on morals but also “in our self-interest”.

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Briton missing in Afghanistan after reports of Taliban arrest

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Grant Bailey was working as security consultant in Kabul where he liaised with US state department

A British man is missing in Afghanistan after a report he has been detained by the Taliban. Grant Bailey was arrested in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he has been working as a security consultant.

The arrest came during a Taliban security clampdown, according to the Daily Mirror.

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Hundreds queue for passports in bid to leave Afghanistan

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Crowds brave sub-zero temperatues after Taliban announces it will resume issuing travel documents

Hundreds of people have braved sub-zero temperatures in Afghanistan’s capital to queue outside the passport office, a day after the Taliban government announced it would resume issuing travel documents.

Many began their wait the previous night and most stood patiently in single file – some desperate to leave the country for medical treatment, others to escape the Islamists’ renewed rule. Tense Taliban personnel periodically charged crowds that formed at the front of the queue and at a nearby roadblock.

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UK charities launch appeal to help eight million Afghans at risk of starvation

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There is a ‘very small window of opportunity’ to intervene, say aid workers, as poverty, conflict, drought and a freeze in humanitarian funding bring Afghanistan to the brink

Leading UK charities have launched a joint winter appeal to save the lives of 8 million people at risk of starvation in Afghanistan, as aid workers in the country warn of a “small window of opportunity” to intervene.

A combination of conflict, economic collapse, drought and the Covid-19 pandemic has brought the country to a tipping point, according to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), the umbrella group of 15 aid agencies behind the appeal.

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‘The Taliban say they’ll kill me if they find me’: a female reporter still on the run speaks out

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We return to the story of a journalist forced to flee as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August. Unable to return home without putting at risk everyone she loves and hounded by threatening calls, she remains in hiding in the country four months on

I am an Afghan female journalist and I have been on the run for more than four months. I have lived in numerous safe houses and the homes of people who’ve offered me refuge. I am constantly moving to avoid being caught, from province to province, city to city.

The Taliban insurgents have been threatening to kill me and my colleagues for two years, for our reports exposing their crimes in our province. But when they seized control of our provincial capital, they started to hunt for those who had spoken out against them. I decided to escape, for my own and my family’s safety.

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Afghan health system ‘close to collapse due to sanctions on Taliban’

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Health experts issue dire warning as staff go unpaid and medical facilities lack basic items to treat patients

Large parts of Afghanistan’s health system are on the brink of collapse because of western sanctions against the Taliban, international experts have warned, as the country faces outbreaks of disease and an escalating malnutrition crisis.

With the country experiencing a deepening humanitarian crisis since the Taliban’s seizure of power in August amid mounting levels of famine and economic collapse, many medical staff have not been paid for months and health facilities lack even the most basic items to treat patients.

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Fresh evidence on UK’s botched Afghan withdrawal backs whistleblower’s story

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MPs’ inquiry given further details of Britain’s mismanagement of Afghanistan exit with ‘people left to die at the hands of the Taliban’

Further evidence alleging that the government seriously mishandled the withdrawal from Afghanistan has been handed to a parliamentary inquiry examining the operation, the Observer has been told.

Details from several government departments and agencies are understood to back damning testimony from a Foreign Office whistleblower, who has claimed that bureaucratic chaos, ministerial intervention, and a lack of planning and resources led to “people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban”.

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Nearly 100 former British Council staff remain in hiding in Afghanistan

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Staff employed to teach British values and the English language refused the right to come to the UK

Nearly 100 former British Council staff employed to teach British values and the English language remain in hiding in Afghanistan after having so far been refused the right to come to the UK by officials.

Their plight has been taken up by Joseph Seaton, the former British Council Afghanistan English manager, and its deputy director, who has written to the most relevant cabinet members in a bid to gain their support.

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Top civil servant regrets holiday while Afghanistan fell to Taliban

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Sir Philip Barton refused to say precisely when Raab had been on holiday in August

The head of the diplomatic service has admitted failing to show leadership after he began a three-week holiday two days before the Foreign Office internally accepted Kabul was about to fall to the Taliban.

Sir Philip Barton stayed on holiday until 28 August and during bruising evidence to the foreign affairs select committee, he admitted this was a mistake.

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How an Afghan reporter was left to the Taliban by the Foreign Office

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‘Fahim’ was cleared to leave Kabul. Then the phone went dead. Now he moves house every two days to evade capture

Fahim, a journalist who had worked with British media organisations, was one of thousands of Afghans who approached the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for help to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban’s conquest this summer.

Told he was cleared to travel with his family to the UK, he was also one of the many left behind as the promised help from the FCDO failed to materialise.

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Whistleblower condemns Foreign Office over Kabul evacuation

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Ex-diplomat claims string of failings within department led to ‘people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban’

Tens of thousands of Afghans were unable to access UK help following the fall of Kabul because of turmoil and confusion in the Foreign Office, according a devastating account by a whistleblower.

A former diplomat has claimed bureaucratic chaos, ministerial intervention, lack of planning and a short-hours culture in the department led to “people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban”.

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West condemns Taliban over ‘summary killings’ of ex-soldiers and police

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Human Rights Watch says 47 former members of Afghan national security forces have been killed or forcibly disappeared

The US has led a group of western nations and allies in condemnation of the Taliban over the “summary killings” of former members of the Afghan security forces reported by rights groups, demanding quick investigations.

“We are deeply concerned by reports of summary killings and enforced disappearances of former members of the Afghan security forces as documented by Human Rights Watch and others,” read a statement by the US, EU, Australia, Britain, Japan and others, which was released by the state department on Saturday.

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