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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Mark Milley says it's possible the US will seek to coordinate on strikes in Afghanistan, though defence secretary Lloyd Austin remains sceptical
US Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said it was “possible” the United States will seek to coordinate with the Taliban on counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan against Islamic State militants or others.
The extent and nature of a US-Taliban relationship, now that the war is over, is one of the key issues to be worked out. US military commanders have coordinated daily with Taliban commanders outside Kabul’s international airport over the past three weeks to facilitate the evacuation of more than 124,000 people, but that was a matter of convenience for both parties.
Continue reading...Analysis: Insurgents’ cooperation is needed for evacuations, but PM could face criticism for engaging with them
Boris Johnson’s decision to dispatch a senior spy chief to talk directly to the Taliban in Qatar reflects an uncomfortable but necessary reality: the UK has little option but to engage with the insurgent group now in control of Afghanistan.
Thousands of Afghans eligible for resettlement in the UK are believed to remain trapped in the country – UK ministers refuse to say how many – and hundreds of British nationals. With western troops withdrawn, it is only with Taliban cooperation that people will be able to leave safely and smoothly.
Continue reading...Women forced out of jobs despite Taliban promises to allow them to keep working, survey finds
Female journalists in Afghanistan are being forced out of jobs and told to stay at home despite Taliban promises to allow them to keep working and to respect press freedom, according to a report.
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) says it believes fewer than 100 of Kabul’s 700 female journalists are still working and only a handful are continuing to work from home in two other Afghan provinces. Others have been attacked and harassed.
Continue reading...Francis ‘moved’ by Angela Merkel’s words on western intervention – in fact said by Russian president
Pope Francis has criticised the west’s recent involvement in Afghanistan – inadvertently quoting Vladimir Putin in doing so.
In a wide-ranging interview with Spanish radio station COPE, the pope was asked for his thoughts on the redrawn political map of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of the US and its allies from the country after 20 years of war.
Continue reading...Taliban soldiers inspected damaged aircraft and equipment at Kabul airport after the last US troops withdrew from a shattered Afghanistan. US troops destroyed more than 70 aircraft and dozens of armoured vehicles before they left. A day after their departure, Taliban supporters celebrated across the country, with even a mock funeral held with coffins draped with US, British and French flags
The president appeared indignant and unwilling to concede defeat in a 26-minute speech that marked the close of a 20-year chapter
Victory speeches are easy; conceding defeat is much harder. On Tuesday, Joe Biden tacitly blamed his predecessors for the failure of America’s longest war but implied that, against all odds, one winner had emerged: him.
In a 26-minute speech at the White House, the US president fiercely defended his decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan and hailed the mass evacuation from Kabul as a triumph. He scored highly in making the case against forever wars and expressing compassion for US military families.
Continue reading...Bordering states such as Pakistan urged to temporarily take in Afghans bound for Europe and the US
Countries neighbouring Afghanistan have been offered millions in aid if they are prepared to temporarily harbour tens of thousands of refugees, prior to security checks clearing them for transit to Europe and the US, but Pakistan and other bordering states have warned they will not take more refugees permanently.
Iran could see a large influx of refugees – mainly Hazara Shias – reaching the country overland. Refugee specialists inside Iran have suggested as many as 7,000 people were crossing the border illegally a day, with no serious control over the entire 980km (608-mile) border, and very little international aid.
Continue reading...