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...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...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...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...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.
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...James Heappey, armed forces minister, says it is important to let veterans know their service was not in vain
British veterans of the conflict in Afghanistan will be feeling vulnerable and questioning whether their service was worth it as they witness the country fall to the Taliban once again, a UK government minister has said.
James Heappey, the armed forces minister and former British army officer, was forced to backtrack during media interviews on Monday over a claim he made that a soldier who served in Afghanistan had taken his own life in the last few days.
Continue reading...In speech marking 20 years since 9/11 attacks, former British PM warns that non-state actors may turn to bio-terrorism
The west still faces the threat of 9/11-style attacks by radical Islamist groups but this time using bio-terrorism, Tony Blair has warned.
Blair also challenges the US president, Joe Biden, by urging democratic governments not to lose confidence in using military force to defend and export their values.
Continue reading...Taliban fighters pictured outside governor’s compound, but Ahmad Massoud’s rebels deny province has fallen
The Taliban have fought their way to the capital of Panjshir, the last Afghan province holding out against their rule, and seem on the brink of total victory.
The group posted pictures on social media showing Taliban fighters standing in front of the gate of the governor’s compound. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid issued a statement, saying Panjshir was under the control of Taliban fighters.
Continue reading...Covid, climate breakdown, poverty and war threaten return to school after pandemic kept 1.5bn children out of classes
The education of hundreds of millions of children is hanging by a thread as a result of an unprecedented intensity of threats including Covid 19 and the climate crisis, a report warned today.
As classrooms across much of the world prepare to reopen after the summer holidays, a quarter of countries – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa – have school systems that are at extreme or high risk of collapse, according to Save the Children.
Continue reading...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...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...Six-year-old pronounced dead a day after his younger brother also died after eating soup made from death cap mushrooms
A second child of an Afghan family evacuated from Kabul to Poland has died after eating soup containing death cap mushrooms, which the family had unknowingly gathered in a forest outside their quarantine centre.
The six-year-old boy received an emergency liver transplant but doctors were unable to save him. His five-year-old brother died on Thursday at Poland’s main children’s hospital in Warsaw, where both were treated.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Lyrics to My Homeland strike powerful chord with new generation of refugees from war-torn country
As yet another generation of Afghans fled their homeland over the past fortnight, one song has resonated as a poignant anthem for the exodus.
My Homeland – Sarzamin i Man in Farsi – was written in 1998 by the singer Dawood Sarkhosh, who himself had to leave Afghanistan in the civil war that erupted following the Soviet withdrawal.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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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