Khalilzad asked the Islamic Emirate to listen to the aspirations of the people.
The former US special envoy for Afghanistan’s reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, in an interview with Kurdistan 24 Television expressed concern over the current situation in Afghanistan.
According to him, Afghanistan is facing “economic deprivations.”
“For the United States it is good, it is sort of out of a war, but for Afghanistan, it is a difficult situation. The Taliban, first, economically, services-wise… is not what it should be, there is a lot of suffering, a lot of economic deprivations,” he said.
Khalilzad asked the Islamic Emirate to listen to the aspirations of the people.
“In terms of the world relations with it and in terms of stability of Afghanistan, the government needs to listen to the people, it needs to be responsive to the aspirations of the people for — for example on education. People want girls to go to school, they need to respond to that aspiration,” he added.
Political experts consider the demands of the international community and the citizens of the country to be important for the recognition of the Islamic Emirate.
“The Taliban should begin high-level talks with all Afghan citizens. The problem of recognizing and opening girls’ schools will then be solved,” said Tariq Farhadi, another political analyst.
On February 29, 2020, the US and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan signed the peace agreement, or Doha agreement, in Qatar, paving the way for the departure of US soldiers from Afghanistan.
Khalilzad: US is ‘Out of a War’ But Afghanistan is Suffering
Meanwhile, some lecturers said that because of economic challenges students cannot continue their education in a normal way.
On Thursday, International Students’ Day, students at universities complained of a lack of teachers.
According to them, the lack of teachers has a negative impact on the educational process of students.
“We don’t have good lecturers in universities and that is one of the biggest problems,” said Mohammad Reza, a student.
“We call on the government to deal with problems that exist against women,” said Maryam, a student.
Meanwhile, some lecturers said that because of economic challenges students cannot continue their education in a normal way.
“Lack of motivation, immigration issues and economic challenges are the reasons that our youth cannot learn completely,” said Mohammad Zahir Halimi, a lecturer.
“It is necessary that organizations and the Ministry of Higher Education support public and private universities,” said Mustafa Ibrahimi, a lecturer.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Higher Education spoke about efforts being made to keep the educational system strong.
“We are trying to make laboratories and libraries, do comparative research and hold conferences at universities and build good relations between public and private universities,” said Ziaullah Hashimi, spokesman for the Ministry of High Education.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban will stick to their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, a spokesman said Thursday, underscoring the group’s intention to continue hard-line policies implemented since they took over the country more than a year ago.
During their previous years in power in the late 1990s, the Taliban carried out public executions, floggings, and stoning of those convicted of crimes in Taliban courts.
After they overran Afghanistan in August 2021 as American and NATO forces were in the last weeks of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war, the Taliban initially promised to be more moderate and allow for women’s and minority rights.
Instead, they have cracked down heavier on rights and freedoms.
Women are banned from parks, funfairs, gyms, and most forms of employment. They are ordered to cover themselves from head to toe. Girls are forbidden from going to school beyond sixth grade. There are also clampdowns on music and the media.
According to Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, the group’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhunzada, met with Taliban judges a few days ago and instructed them to implement Sharia law in their rulings.
Mujahid said this instruction prompted perceptions that Islamic law had been abandoned in the Islamic emirate, as the Taliban call their administration. But that’s not the case, he added.
“It doesn’t mean that the Islamic emirate didn’t implement the limits of Allah Almighty since it came to power,” he said. “Rather, the Islamic emirate is committed to implementing all Sharia laws from day one.”
Videos and photos of Taliban fighters punishing people for various offences have frequently appeared on social media in the last 15 months, although officials have never confirmed these incidents.
On Thursday, in Bamiyan province, a young man and woman were arrested and publicly lashed 39 times each for allegedly having an extramarital relationship, a witness who lives in the area said.
The resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said he went to the Shaheed Mazari stadium where the punishment took place. Hundreds of locals watched but were barred from taking photographs and filming, the resident added.
The Taliban brought the couple in and started lashing the pair, at which point the witness said he left. He added that he did not know who the couple were, where they were from or what ultimately happened to them.
The Taliban could not immediately be reached to comment on the incident.
The former insurgents have struggled in their transition from insurgency and warfare to governing amid an economic downturn and the international community’s withholding of official recognition.
The United Nations has said it is increasingly concerned that restrictions on girls’ education, as well as other measures curtailing basic freedoms, will deepen Afghanistan’s economic crisis and lead to greater insecurity, poverty, and isolation.
Afghan Taliban say group will stick to strict Islamic law
SIGAR identifies six factors that contributed to the collapse of the Afghan government and the return of the Taliban to power.
The United States sought to build “stable, democratic, accountable” Afghan governance institutions, but it ultimately failed, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) concluded in a report published on Wednesday.
SIGAR pointed the finger at the US but also laid blame on former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who it said governed through “a highly selective, narrow circle of loyalists, destabilising the government at a critical juncture”.
This is not the first time the US watchdog has blamed Washington and Ghani for the return of the Taliban to power. In a report published in May, the watchdog said the withdrawal of US troops prompted the collapse of the Afghan army, while another report released days after the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021 blamed the US’s failure to “implement a coherent strategy” over 20 years in Afghanistan.
The report says the US exit from Afghanistan resulted in the Taliban regaining control of the country and triggering an exodus of foreign nationals and workers, along with Afghans who worked with international aid groups as well as the US military.
Despite some progress with capacity building, the US failed to resolve issues of corruption; “to legitimise the Afghan government through democratic elections; and to adequately monitor and evaluate the outcomes and impacts of its efforts”, the report said.
SIGAR identified six factors that contributed to the collapse of the Afghan government. These included the failure of the Afghan government to recognise that the US would actually leave, the exclusion of the Afghan government from US-Taliban talks, which weakened it; the Afghan government’s insistence that the Taliban would somehow be integrated into the country, and the Taliban’s unwillingness to compromise.
The Taliban took over Afghanistan after a blistering offensive, reaching Kabul on August 15, 2021 and forcing President Ghani to flee the country.
Moreover, “the Afghan government’s high level of centralisation, endemic corruption, and struggle to attain legitimacy were long-term contributors to its eventual collapse”, the report said.
The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks and after accusing the Taliban, which was in power, of harbouring al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
US forces swiftly took over the country, but they struggled to defeat a guerrilla warfare campaign by the Taliban in the following 20 years.
With the war growing increasingly unpopular in the US, former President Donald Trump reached an agreement with the Taliban in 2020 that would ensure the withdrawal of the American military from the country.
The deal also stipulated that Afghan authorities would “prevent the use of Afghan soil by any international ‘terrorist’ groups or individuals against the security of the United States and its allies” and called for “intra-Afghan dialogue” between the Taliban and the government in Kabul.
US President Joe Biden, who came to office in January 2021, pushed on with the withdrawal plan, stressing that Afghan forces had the numbers, training and equipment to fight off the Taliban. But in early August 2021, with the US withdrawal deadline approaching, provincial capitals began falling to the Taliban with little resistance from Afghan security forces.
Chris Mason, assistant professor of national security at the US Army War College, was quoted in the SIGAR report as saying, “US efforts to build and sustain Afghanistan’s governing institutions were a total, epic, predestined failure on par with the same efforts and outcome in the Vietnam war, and for the same reasons.”
“The fact that the United States had supported Afghanistan for 20 years and that Afghanistan had been highly dependent on external support for much of its modern history, made it all the harder for Afghan politicians and leaders to envision a future without such support,” Mason said.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
US watchdog blames Washington, Ghani for the fall of Kabul
Acclaimed documentarian Matthew Heineman talks about his often devastating account of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan
‘They didn’t leave winning. They left losing. No matter what your belief sets are, we lost the war’ … a still from Retrograde. Photograph: Film PR handout
Wearing a dark hijab and gripping the wire fence, a young Afghan woman shakes her head slightly, seemingly fights back tears, searches the faces of American soldiers, glances away pensively then looks back in anger, her eyes gleaming like black diamonds.
“She writes a novella for us in 36 seconds,” director Matthew Heineman says of the lingering shot that closes his documentary film Retrograde. “I’m curious what you interpreted in her face? To me it speaks volumes.”
The moment was captured in August last year at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, a day before 13 American service members and 170 Afghan civilians were killed there by an Islamic state suicide bomber following the US military’s chaotic withdrawal from the country.
Retrograde conjures an immersive look at the final nine months of America’s longest war through the eyes of one of the last US special forces units deployed there, a young Afghan general fighting a losing battle with the ever-encroaching Taliban, and civilians desperately trying to flee as the government collapsed.
The Oscar-nominated and Emmy award-winning Heineman had made films about citizen-journalists exposing the atrocities of Islamic State, vigilantes taking on Mexican drug cartels and frontline healthcare workers in one of New York’s hardest-hit hospitals at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
But the bloody exodus through Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate shook even him. “Never in my life have I ever witnessed or experienced anything like that,” the 39-year-old reflects via Zoom from home in New York. “I’ve filmed a lot of sad things my career and certainly witnessed a lot of death in the past couple of years in the work that I’ve done.
“But that feeling of being at the Abbey Gate as thousands of Afghan civilians were packed like sardines in four-foot sewage ditch, as 18-year-old marines who weren’t even alive during 9/11 were making these impossible Sophie’s Choice decisions on who to let and who not to let in, as the Taliban was watching us at gunpoint a hundred yards away, as Isis [the Islamic State] was circling around us with suicide vests waiting to attack, it just was surreal and I had tears streaming down my face, continually having to wipe down the lens, and all I could think about was: what have we done?”
Don’t expect clearcut answers to that question from Heineman who – although he opens with speeches from presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden – is the opposite of a didactic film-maker, preferring a cinéma vérité approach that lets sights and sounds, intimate moments and, above all, facial expressions do the talking.
After years of trying to get permission, he and his small team embedded with the Green Berets with the initial intention of giving the world an insight into that special forces unit as it fought what had become a largely forgotten war.
Heineman explains: “What I try to do is take these large, amorphous subjects that we’re inundated with stats and headlines and, in some cases, misinformation [about] and try to humanise them, try to put a human face to them, and that’s certainly what I tried to do here. These conflicts can feel so far away and distant and I feel like it’s my job to make them feel immediate, to create an empathetic connection between the audience and these issues that feel so distant and so far away.
“And also to make you feel what it’s like to be there, what it’s like to be a two star general in the Afghan army staving off the Taliban, a US soldier leaving a conflict that you’ve been deployed in countless times and lost numerous friends in, in a Blackhawk helicopter as you’re being shot at by the Taliban. My goal is to put you in these rooms, in these places to make you think, ‘What would I do if I was there?’ or ‘What if that was my brother, my cousin or my sister or my mother?’
He adds: “I do it without context, without interviews. There’s no intent or execution of how we got here or what went wrong, which is obviously very intentional and I get criticised for that but I don’t feel like that’s my job. There’s a lot of other people doing that. My job is to give you a sort of visceral, emotional window into these conflicts in a way that I think ‘traditional media’ isn’t able to do (it’s not a talent thing: I have the luxury of time to be able to sit with a story for months or years).”
Soon it became apparent that tectonic geopolitical plates were moving beneath Heineman’s feet. In April 2021, Biden announced the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan. In July, he denied it would be a repeat of the debacle of Vietnam: “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a[n] embassy of the United States from Afghanistan,” he told a press conference. “It is not at all comparable.”
Meanwhile the 12-person Green Beret team that Heineman and his team were embedded with were forced to begin to “retrograde” – shipping out or destroying equipment, pulling out and going home. Or as one soldier puts it: “Retrograde means you’re shitting in a trench. That’s just what it is.”
In one of the film’s most poignant scenes, the Green Berets have to break the news to their Afghan comrades – sitting cross-legged and barefooted – that, after 20 years of fighting, nation building and promises, America is done with their homeland.
Matthew Heineman during a Q&A following a screening of Retrograde. Photograph: David M Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for National Geographic
A bearded American soldier says: “It’s with a little bit of a heavy heart that I have to tell you this but we’re going to be leaving Afghanistan pretty soon.” His voice catching with emotion, he thanks the despondent men and adds: “I want all of you guys to know we were blindsided with this news very, very recently.”
Looking distraught, an Afghan points out that if he and his compatriots go back to civilian life or work for the Afghan government, none of them will be safe. His own house has been targeted twice already. The man plays some traditional music and the sound is joyful but the expressions of his comrades – Afghan and American – is anything but. Their faces are written with loss.
Heineman comments: “That’s why I love making films this way. Faces never lie and there’s a reason why we hold on faces for so long in this film. It wasn’t just a trick we figured out in the edit room; it was a real methodology of shooting.
“The Green Beret faces, the Afghan faces in that scene spoke more than any 30-minute, two-hour, six-hour interview could ever speak. A feeling on the American side of abandonment, leaving these friends a friendship and a bond that they developed over years or decades; a partnership. They felt like they’re leaving their brothers behind with their arms tied behind their back.
“And then, obviously, on the Afghan side a feeling of of trepidation of what this meant for their personal future, their personal safety, the safety of their families, and obviously the fate of their country. There’s dialogue in that scene but the emotion of that scene is played off of the faces.”
Heineman had also been filming with General Sami Sadat, a 35-year-old rising star in the Afghan military working with the Green Berets who emerged as a central figure in the government’s fight against the Taliban. Heineman’s tiny production team shifted its focus to him after the US forces left, watching him lead 15,000 soldiers in the most perilous region of Afghanistan.
“When the US left, I didn’t really have a film; I didn’t know what the film was. We had the beginning of the film, we had the first act of a film but this story surely was not over and so that’s when we reached out to Gen Sadat and asked him if we had come back and embed with him.”
Photograph: Film PR handout
Sadat is a graduate of the Defence Academy of the UK and holds a master’s degree from King’s College London. In August last year he wrote an opinion column in the New York Times headlined: “I Commanded Afghan Troops This Year. We Were Betrayed.”
Heineman filmed the general up to 20 hours a day, from shaving in his bathroom to giving orders from his control room, from touring battlefields under fire to scrolling through gruesome images on his phone. Sadat refuses to accept defeat despite insuperable odds and Catch-22-style bureaucracy on his own side (“I can’t fight the Taliban and the administration at the same time,” he says at one point).
Heineman explains: “I found him deeply fascinating – extremely young for the amount of responsibility he had. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He felt – despite metaphorically every neon sign saying, stop, stop, give up, surrender, your country is falling – this sort of unwavering belief that maybe, just maybe, if he held on to Lashkargah or Helmand or southern Afghanistan, the country will hold together.
“There’s a thousand reasons why the Afghan army lost to the Taliban. One of them surely is a lack of morale, a loss of morale, after the US left. That was definitely one of the major factors. One of the things that Gen Sadat was forced to do in his role was to instill belief and faith in his men, in the men that he’s recruiting, that they could win and he held this belief up until the final days and moments.”
Sadat says in the film that the Taliban sentenced him to be hanged and the US refused to help him, so he fled to the UK. He is seen in London with a cigar perched between two fingers, his eyes staring into the middle distance. He says: “It was the hardest decision of my life to leave Afghanistan. I left my soul and I feel like I am walking in an empty vessel.”
Having seen Sadat’s never-say-die commitment up close, Heineman takes issue with Biden’s remark that “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves”. But in keeping with his work, the film-maker is reluctant to make overtly political pronouncements on the war and how it ended.
Asked how the Green Berets felt about Biden’s decision to withdraw, he replies that was not the intent of the film. “In making films that are pointedly apolitical, it makes people uncomfortable. People don’t know how to interpret without being spoon-fed information and I love doing that because it forces you to come to your own conclusions and beliefs.
“What’s interesting is that both the war in Afghanistan and the end of the war in Afghanistan do not break down according to like clean ideological lines. People on the left think it was horrible and awful and we should have stayed and kept fighting; people on the right think we should have gotten out of there, what are we doing, we’re wasting taxpayers money. It’s a complex topic and issue and war.”
Heineman adds: “But to actually answer your question, I think the general feeling was: we are abandoning our friends and was there a better way to do this? They didn’t leave winning. They left losing. No matter what your belief sets are, we lost the war and so, when you’ve lost friends and trillions of dollars have been spent, that doesn’t feel good.”
Retrograde is out in US and UK cinemas now
‘I had tears streaming’: a sobering film about the last months of the Afghan war
A new report details the reasons the Taliban were able to retake Afghanistan. (Javed Tanveer/AFP/Getty Images)
Six main factors led to the collapse of the Afghan government as the U.S. drew down its last troops in the country, according to a report released Wednesday. Chief among them was key Afghan officials’ refusal to believe the U.S. would keep its promise to leave the country.
“Even as the United States officially expressed its desire to exit Afghanistan in the years leading up to its departure, contradictory messaging by U.S. officials undermined efforts to convey the seriousness of U.S. intentions to Afghan officials, who optimistically believed that alternative scenarios were possible,” the report found.
So, as President Joe Biden’s September deadline drew nearer, the report continues, “The result was that the Afghan government was fundamentally unprepared to manage the fight against the Taliban as the United States military and its contractors withdrew.”
The State Department’s response to SIGAR’s findings refutes that claim, calling into question whether the report evaluated the U.S.’s role in both Afghanistan’s reconstruction and its conduct during the withdrawal properly.
“Around the world, the United States aids in combatting corruption, advocates for representative government, and supports accountability mechanisms among the various initiatives based on democratic values and human rights,” Erik Schnotala, acting director of State’s Office of Afghanistan Affairs, wrote in his review of the report.
“Whether a country is successful or not in making progress in these areas is ultimately a reflection its own efforts,” he added.
The other top two reasons for the fall of Afghanistan’s democratically elected government had more to do with the way the U.S. chose to negotiate its exit.
That negotiation came in a series of talks with Taliban leaders that excluded the Afghan government as a stakeholder, the second primary issue. That was at the Taliban’s request, the report points out, but the U.S. hoped that settling with the Taliban would be a starting point to fulfilling the Afghan government’s wish that the Taliban be integrated into its governing structure ― the third issue.
“Instead, the Taliban reinvigorated its battlefield campaign against the Afghan government, which was weakened by its exclusion from U.S.-Taliban talks and the perception that the United States was withdrawing its support,” according to the report.
In some ways, these good-faith efforts might not have mattered, the report found, because the fourth reason for the fall was that the Taliban wasn’t really interested in compromising.
After negotiating a drawdown timeline with the U.S., the Taliban turned its efforts to beating down Afghan national forces.
“By April 2021, a U.S. intelligence community assessment had concluded that ‘the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory,’ ” according to the report. “Over the next 2 months, the Taliban’s offensive accelerated as the insurgency rapidly gained control of half of Afghanistan’s 419 districts. On August 15, 2021, Kabul fell.”
Reasons five and six dealt more specifically with the Afghan government and the way it was run.
For example, President Ashraf Ghani, who fled Kabul as the Taliban marched in, was seen as insular and “undiplomatic,” governing with a small group of loyalists and dealing harshly with any rivals.
“The president’s political and social isolation appears to have been a function of both his personality and his desire to centralize and micromanage policy implementation,” according to the report.
This undermined any support that other Afghan powerbrokers might have provided to the government and limited the amount of information Ghani received about what was going on in the country.
“The net effect was a leader who was largely ignorant of the reality confronting the country he led, particularly just prior to the Republic’s collapse,” the report found.
That environment led to the sixth and final reason for the fall: The Afghan government was so centralized and fraught with “endemic corruption” that there was little understanding of how the country was being run in far-flung rural areas, the places the Taliban took first.
“By investing so much power in the executive, Afghanistan’s political system raised the stakes for political competition and reignited long-running tensions between an urban elite eager to modernize and a conservative rural populations distrustful of central governance,” the report found.
US failures — disputed
The SIGAR also looked into whether the U.S. met its own objectives in the Afghanistan reconstruction efforts, finding that while the U.S. made incremental progress in helping establish a stable government, it never approached self-sustaining.
Except, in some ways, the Taliban has tried to keep the former government functioning.
“For example, although the Taliban have dissolved several ministries of the former government, the Afghan ministries of finance, health and economy, as well as the country’s central bank, have continued to execute some basic functions,” the report found. “Moreover, although the Taliban have installed their own members in many leadership positions, they have largely kept lower-ranking civil servants in their jobs.”
The State Department, in its response to the SIGAR report, was less than pleased with the findings.
“First, SIGAR’s report notes that American officials delivered mixed messages regarding U.S. intentions,” wrote Schnotala, the State Department official. “President Biden is the third American President in succession to express interest in bringing American forces home from Afghanistan.”
In February 2020, the Trump administration negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban and established May 1, 2021, as the date for the final withdrawal. The administration then began drawing down U.S. troops, from 13,000 to 2,500. After the 2020 election, President Biden delayed the final withdrawal until the end of August 2021. Throughout all of this time, however, the Taliban continued to attack Afghan government forces and failed to live up to the terms of the agreement.
Communications between the Biden and Ghani governments “made clear” that the U.S. intended to fully withdraw, Schnotala wrote.
“With this in mind, the standard by which the U.S. government succeeded or failed in its political objectives in Afghanistan needs to be wholly reconsidered in this report,” he added.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.
Afghan government didn’t think US would actually leave, report finds
He made the remarks at the Moscow Format, which was held on Wednesday with envoys from more than 10 countries.
Iran’s special envoy Iran for Afghanistan Hassan Kazimi Qomi said that Tehran will host a regional meeting on Afghanistan in the near future.
He made the remarks at the Moscow Format, which was held on Wednesday with envoys from more than 10 countries.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran … announces its readiness for a regional discussion,” he said.
The head of the Islamic Emirate’s political office in Doha, Suhail Shaheen, said they welcome the meetings which benefit Afghanistan, but stressed the need for the presence of representatives from Afghanistan.
“Any problem which is being held about our problems, particularly economic problems, a representative from the Islamic Emirate should be there,” he said.
Political analysts said the regional meetings for Afghanistan can find solutions to the country’s problems.
“The meetings are important but the presence of Afghanistan’s representative is important. The representative of Afghanistan should be invited to these meetings,” said Sayed Bilal Ahmad Fatimi, a political analyst.
“These are defensive meetings so that how they can … secure their national interests,” said Ahmad Suhail, a political analyst.
The participants of the Moscow Format discussed the current situation in Afghanistan with an emphasis on regional security, military-political stability, socio-economic and humanitarian issues, a joint statement of the meeting participants said.
Iran to Host Regional Meeting on Afghanistan: Qomi
The HRW said that it has investigated raids and found that many were based on faulty intelligence or false presumptions over the past 20 years.
Not all civilian deaths in wartime are violations of the laws of war, but warring parties have an obligation to investigate possible war crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
The HRW said that it has investigated raids and found that many were based on faulty intelligence or false presumptions over the past 20 years.
“During the conflict, the US military often responded to queries about possible civilian losses that all those killed were insurgents. Rarely was information provided showing that serious investigations into incidents of civilian deaths were carried out. During night raids – such as the attack that killed L’s family – even less evidence was offered, especially if there was CIA involvement,” the state reads.
“One of the bad decisions made in Bonn was that the Afghan delegation give the US and NATO the authority of judgement. This means if they conduct night raids or commit any crime, it cannot be prosecuted,” said Janat Chakari, an analyst.
The family members of the victims of the night raids called for justice.
“We call on the international criminal court to investigate our problems and help us. The raid happened 12 years ago,” said Sadam, a relative of a victim.
“The people now want their rights, so that their rights could be provided to them. And we want our voice to be heard,” said Abdul Karim, a relative of the victim.
The Islamic Emirate welcomed the investigation into incidents with foreign troops in Afghanistan.
“Our country was under bombardment for 20 years. We welcome it if they investigate the brutalities and crimes of the invaders neutrally,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate.
Earlier, the Action on Armed Violence (AAOV) said that Britain has provided compensation to the families of 64 children who were killed during a military operation by this nation’s army in Afghanistan.
HRW Calls for Investigation into “Possible War Crimes”
Islamabad – Russia hosted a multilateral meeting Wednesday where participants renewed a call for the United States to unblock Afghanistan’s central bank assets and urged the Taliban rulers to ensure women access to public life and education in Afghanistan.
China, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, India, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey attended what is known as the Moscow format of consultations on Afghanistan.
Zamir Kabulov, the Russian special presidential envoy, said in his inaugural speech the meeting was being held for the first time without the participation of Afghan representatives.
‘We resolutely demand that the U.S. and its allies unconditionally unblock Afghanistan’s national financial assets in order to provide the (Taliban) authorities with the opportunity to exercise their legal right to pursue an independent financial and economic policy,” said Kabulov.
He expressed concern over the Taliban’s not forming what he called an ethno-political inclusive government to run the country, referring to marginalized Afghan minority groups in the country. Kabulov said such a system of governance would promote “a true national reconciliation in Afghanistan.”
Russian authorities continue to treat the Taliban as a terrorist group and outlaw it on their territory. Moscow has allowed the Taliban to operate the Afghan diplomatic mission in Russia.
The Taliban seized power in August 2021 when the internationally-supported Kabul government collapsed and all U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan.
Speakers at Wednesday’s event in the Russian capital noted that Taliban delegates were invited to last year’s Moscow format consultations, where participating countries had “laid down principles to govern practical engagement” with the new Afghan rulers.
Pakistan’s special envoy, Mohammad Sadiq, said promoting political inclusivity, countering terrorism and respecting rights of Afghans, including women were among the principles outlined in the engagement. But the Taliban did not show progress on those counts, he said.
“Nowhere this is more apparent than on the question of ‘inclusiveness.’ Unfortunately, there is little to show on this count,” Sadiq said. ‘Despite assurances by the interim Afghan government, the rights of women and girls also appear to have regressed, not progressed. The footprint of terrorist organizations in Afghanistan has yet to be fully eradicated, the Pakistani envoy said.
Delegates at the Moscow event largely stressed the need for the global community’s sustained engagement and cooperation with the country to help Afghans secure a durable peace after four decades of war and bloodshed.
The United States and other Western partners suspended financial assistance to Kabul after the Taliban seized power. The Biden administration subsequently imposed banking sector sanctions and froze $7 billion in Afghan central bank foreign reserves to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Islamist group. More than $2 billion is also held in Europe.
The Taliban have increasingly excluded women from public life since returning to power 15 months ago, despite promising a moderate version of the harsh governance that characterized their first government from 1996 to 2001. The policies have deterred foreign governments from formally recognizing the new Afghan leadership.
Most female public sector employees in Afghanistan have been ordered to stay at home, women are barred from long road travel without a male guardian and they must cover their faces in public.
Teenage girls have also been barred from resuming secondary-school education beyond grade six. Last week, the radical group banned women from visiting amusement parks and using public baths as well as gyms across Afghanistan.
The Taliban defend their male-only government, saying it represents all Afghan groups. They reject criticism of their governance, maintaining it is in line with Afghan culture and Islamic law.
On Tuesday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan or UNAMA renewed its call for the Taliban to reverse their latest restrictions on women’s rights.
“UNAMA is deeply concerned by recent Taliban officials’ statements & mounting on-the-ground reports of women being prevented from using parks, gyms and baths. All Afghans’ rights should be upheld, particularly women’s access to all forms of public life and girls right to education,” the mission said on Twitter.
Regional Nations Urge US to Unfreeze Afghan Assets
Afghanistan’s copper deposits can alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people and help the world’s green transition.
Since it assumed power in Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban has faced the formidable task of undertaking the reconstruction and development of a country devastated by decades of war. The new government is attempting to turn a new page, but Western sanctions are suffocating its economy. An agreement to lift the sanctions has been elusive so far.
As the government tries to break its international isolation to receive financial support, it is also considering other sources of revenue, including developing its mineral deposits, some of which may be key for the world’s energy transition. According to a Brookings Institute report, Afghanistan sits on some 2.3 billion metric tonnes of iron ore and 1.4 million metric tonnes of rare earth minerals.
More significantly, the country is estimated to possess some 30 million metric tonnes of copper. In fact, one of the most important copper deposits in the world is located in an area called Mes Aynak in Logar Province.
This resource may not only bring significant funds to the country to help pursue its development goals, but can also help the rest of the world with its struggle against climate change and poverty. Copper is a critical component of advanced renewable energy technologies. There is a growing demand for it, as the world goes through its green energy transformation and tries to meet the seventh UN sustainable development goal – to provide access to affordable and clean energy to all.
Building an electric vehicle requires 2.5 times as much copper as an internal combustion vehicle. Solar farms use two times more copper per megawatt of installed capacity than gas or coal-powered electricity plants; for offshore wind installations, the amount is five times bigger.
At the same time, 733 million people globally are without access to electricity. This means that poor countries, which try to expand their energy production and electric grids, have to compete with rich ones for copper, as growing demand is pushing up the price. Mining Mes Aynak would have a significant global impact, helping meet demand for copper and perhaps lowering the price so poorer countries can better afford it.
In this context, developing the deposits at Mes Aynak is in the interest of the whole world, as well as in the interest of Afghanistan. And there is a way to develop these resources that is acceptable to the Taliban and to the foreign powers, which have imposed sanctions and financial restrictions on the group.
Our organisation, Sustainable Development Strategies Group took a look at the requirements for the development of Mes Aynak a few years ago at the behest of ARCH International, an organisation working to protect world cultural heritage.
The development of this site would be challenging and require the construction of new sources of electricity, transmission systems, transport systems and water supply routes. It would also necessitate setting up processing plants.
The revenues from the project could improve significantly the lives of Afghans. The country would benefit not only from newly built infrastructure, but also from employment opportunities and investment. Community development agreements could be drawn up to allocate funding for schools, hospitals, roads, and other infrastructure for the benefit of nearby communities.
Developing Mes Aynak would require capital investment, technology sector development and mining expertise, which the Taliban government does not have and cannot access because of Western sanctions and restrictions. That is why, achieving this would require an agreement between the Taliban and at least some of its foreign critics, namely the United States.
A deal can see international recognition of the government and the lifting of sanctions and financial restrictions on the basis of the UN framework for human security in exchange for the Taliban’s flexibility on education and recognition of women’s rights.
Both sides stand to benefit from such an agreement. For the cash-strapped Taliban government, developing the copper deposits can provide much-needed funds to tackle the deepening humanitarian crisis in the country, where 92 percent of the population faces food insecurity.
For the US, greater copper supply on the global market can lower the cost of its own green transition and stimulate its economy. Taliban concessions on key human rights issues would also be a policy win for Washington.
In the absence of any agreement, there are at least two major dangers in trying to develop this project. One would be an attempt to generate quick money by skimming the highest-grade ore and trucking it away for processing abroad, perhaps to China. While this might generate some quick cash, it would come nowhere near fulfilling the potential of this site.
It would be settling for short-term benefits, for pennies, when the value of a properly developed project would be enormous and its benefit – long-term. The employment and infrastructure benefits of a fully developed project would be lost.
Furthermore, exploiting the site for a quick profit would most likely hurt the environment. Water aquifers near the mine that supply water to Kabul and beyond would be at risk of severe contamination from mining activity. This would also affect farming in the region, killing the livelihoods of local communities.
The other major danger brings an unhappy parallel with the past. Twenty years ago, the Taliban destroyed the ancient Buddha statues of Bamiyan, which caused international outrage and further motivated foreign powers to isolate the group.
Today, the important Buddhist heritage site at Mes Aynak is in peril if its resources are improperly exploited. The Buddhist monastery complexes are located on, over and in the copper deposits. It seems that the earlier inhabitants of this area worked as miners, producing copper. These buildings, tunnels and relics are all part of world historical heritage, and mining at this site should not damage or destroy them.
Our earlier review of this site for ARCH International seems to indicate that with care, the deposit of copper can be exploited with only limited damage to part of this priceless archaeological complex, which has yet to be fully explored, studied and understood.
The Taliban government has indicated that it is committed to protecting and preserving this cultural heritage. This could best be achieved if the development of the site occurs in close consultation with international archaeological organisations and the cultural authorities of the United Nations. It can even be developed as a cultural heritage tourist attraction, drawing visitors from around the world.
Illegal mining in Afghanistan has already been a problem for years. It has not only deprived the state budget of much-needed revenue, but it has also enriched warlords and undermined security and stability in the country.
If the Taliban and the US strike a deal to lift the sanctions, there is a much higher chance that Mes Aynak would be developed in a way that guarantees transparency, environmental protections and local development. This is because the UN and international financial institutions would be involved and would require accountability for investments and observance of environmental and developmental standards.
We hope the Afghan government would also show commitment to transparency in how the revenues from any exploitation of Mes Aynak would be spent. They should be dedicated to improving health, education and infrastructure.
If these conditions are met, Mes Aynak could set an example for other mineral resources to be developed and managed to the benefit of the Afghan people. However, if that does not happen, Afghanistan risks joining a long list of countries where the exploitation of mineral resources has resulted in environmental devastation, impoverishment, and wealth plunder.
We suggest that the potential for seeking an agreement that allows the development of Mes Aynak, and the investment flows necessary for that end should be explored with vigour.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Nadia Ahmad is a law professor based in Orlando, Florida, and fellow with the Center for Race, Security, and Rights at Rutgers Law School.
Luke Danielson is President and co-founder of Sustainable Development Strategies Group. He is an attorney, professor and consultant on mineral policy, national development strategies, and environmental and social performance in the mining and oil and gas industries.
Afghan needs, global priorities, and the treasures of Mes Aynak
The United Nations says aid workers are still in a “race against time” to remove rubble and rebuild after the devastating earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan last month, killing at least 2,200 people and cutting off remote areas.
The 6.0-magnitude quake on Aug. 31 was shallow, destroying or causing extensive damage to low-rise buildings in the mountainous region. It hit late at night, and homes — mostly made of mud, wood, or rocks — collapsed instantly, becoming death traps.
Satellite data shows that about 40,500 truckloads of debris still needs to be cleared from affected areas in several provinces, the United Nations Development Program said Wednesday. Entire communities have been upended and families are sleeping in the open, it added.
The quake’s epicenter was in remote and rugged Kunar province, challenging rescue and relief efforts by the Taliban government and humanitarian groups. Authorities deployed helicopters or airdropped army commandos to evacuate survivors. Aid workers walked for hours on foot to reach isolated communities.
“This is a race against time,” said Devanand Ramiah, from the UNDP’s Crisis Bureau. “Debris removal and reconstruction operations must start safely and swiftly.”
People’s main demands were the reconstruction of houses and water supplies, according to a spokesman for a Taliban government committee tasked with helping survivors, Zia ur Rahman Speenghar.
People were getting assistance in cash, food, tents, beds, and other necessities, Speenghar said Thursday. Three new roads were under construction in the Dewagal Valley, and roads would be built to areas where there previously were none.
“Various countries and organizations have offered assistance in the construction of houses but that takes time. After the second round of assistance, work will begin on the third round, which is considering what kind of houses can be built here,” the spokesman said.
Afghanistan is facing a “perfect storm” of crises, including natural disasters like the recent earthquake, said Roza Otunbayeva, who leads the U.N. mission to the country.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
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