Meanwhile, female students asked the Islamic Emirate to finalize its decision about reopening schools and universities for girls as soon as possible.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the dreams of 222 million girls & boys are being crushed by conflicts, displacement & climate chaos.
Two-thirds of those whose education is suffering within protracted crises come from just 10 countries, said Guterres. They are Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen.
“Today 222 million girls and boys are affected by the horrors of war, disaster and displacement, and over 78 million children don’t go to school at all. 78 million,” said the UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
The United Nations held a two-day conference called Education Cannot Wait (ECW) in Geneva on February 16–17, 2023.
Somaya Faruqi, who attended this conference on behalf of Afghan girls, asked all world leaders to aid Afghanistan and not forget Afghan girls.
“Me, Somaya Faruqi, and millions of Afghan girls have a dream of becoming an engineer, a doctor or a teacher. Exactly 514 days ago my heart was shattered along with the hearts of millions of girls inside Afghanistan,” Faruqi said.
Meanwhile, female students asked the Islamic Emirate to finalize its decision about reopening schools and universities for girls as soon as possible.
“We ask the Islamic Emirate to open schools and universities and not to play with the future of Afghan women, and let us have a progressive Afghanistan,” said Halima, a student.
“I hope that the current government reviews its decision so that half of the society will get an education,” said Suraya Paykan, a women’s rights activist.
However, the Islamic Emirate said that it is not against education but wants to address all the issues in accordance with Islamic principles.
“It is obvious that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is not against education; rather, it wants that all issues be resolved in accordance with Islamic and national values. Some of the media’s claims are untrue,” said Suhail Shaheen, the head of the Islamic Emirate’s political office in Qatar.
It has been over 500 days since girls above the sixth grade were banned from going to school.
The prohibition of female education and employment in non-governmental organizations in only temporary, said Islamic Emirate officials.
Guterres Urges Attention to Education for Children in Crisis
KABUL, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Afghan police have arrested the former bodyguard of a female member of parliament who was shot to death at her home in Kabul last month, the Taliban administration said on Friday.
The case has raised concern about the security of women and led to calls from diplomats and rights groups for the Taliban to ensure former government officials are protected.
Gunmen killed Mursal Nabizada, a female lawmaker during the previous foreign-backed government, and her bodyguard in an attack on her home in mid-January.
Police said they had arrested a former guard, who had confessed to the crime, but the motive was not clear.
“Further investigations are underway to determine the factors and other aspects of the crime,” Kabul police, who are run by the Taliban administration, said in a statement.
Nabizada had been a lawmaker until the Taliban took over as U.S.-led foreign forces withdrew in 2021, when many politicians fled the country.
The Taliban have said they are focused on making the country secure and encouraging Afghans who had left to return.
Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar; Writing by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Robert Birsel
Former bodyguard arrested over shooting of Afghan female ex-MP
WASHINGTON (AP) — Several Biden Cabinet members, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received a letter Friday from House Republicans as they launched the second investigation into the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent a series of letters to senior leadership at the White House, Department of Defense, State Department and others requesting a tranche of documents related to the end of America’s longest war.
“The Biden Administration was tragically unprepared for the Afghanistan withdrawal and their decisions in the region directly resulted in a national security and humanitarian catastrophe,” Comer said in a statement. “Every relevant department and agency should be prepared to cooperate and provide all requested information.”
Republicans have been vowing to press President Joe Biden’s administration on what went wrong as the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan in August 2021 and the U.S. left scores of Americans and thousands of Afghans who helped them over the years in grave danger. Now with the power of the gavel, GOP lawmakers are elevating that criticism into aggressive congressional oversight, and on a topic that has been met with bipartisan support in the past.
In a statement, the State Department said that while it does not comment on congressional correspondence, the agency is committed to working with congressional committees.
“As of November 2022, the Department has provided more than 150 briefings to bipartisan Members and staff on Afghanistan policy since the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan,” the statement continued. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The letters Friday come nearly one month after Rep. Mike McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, opened his own investigation into the deadly withdrawal, requesting documents from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
McCaul’s letter outlined a request for all communications around the lead-up to pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. He also made it clear that his committee, which has jurisdiction over the matter, also plans to investigate the after-effects of the withdrawal, including on the hundreds of thousands of Afghan allies left behind.
The Trump administration agreed late in its term to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan in May 2021, with the former president saying in 2020, “Now it’s time for somebody else to do that work.” But Republicans are intent on reminding Americans that it was Biden who was in charge when the Taliban took over.
And the criticism over the issue began in a bipartisan manner, with several Democrat-led committees pledging to investigate what went wrong in the days and weeks after the withdrawal.
U.S. officials have said they were surprised by the quick collapse of the military and the government, prompting sharp congressional criticism of the intelligence community for failing to foresee it.
In a congressional hearing last spring, senators questioned whether there is a need to reform how intelligence agencies assess a foreign military’s will to fight. Lawmakers pointed to two key examples: U.S. intelligence believed that the Kabul government would hold on for months against the Taliban, and more recently believed that Ukraine’s forces would quickly fall to Russia’s invasion. Both were wrong.
Military and defense leaders have said the Afghanistan collapse was built on years of missteps, as the U.S. struggled to find a successful way to train and equip Afghan forces.
Last year, a watchdog group concluded it was decisions by Trump and Biden to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan that were key factors in the collapse of that nation’s military.
The report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, mirrors assertions made by senior Pentagon and military leaders in the aftermath of the withdrawal. Military leaders have made it clear that their recommendation was to leave about 2,500 U.S. troops in the country, but that plan was not approved.
In February 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in which the U.S. promised to fully withdraw its troops by May 2021. The Taliban committed to several conditions, including stopping attacks on American and coalition forces. The stated objective was to promote a peace negotiation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but that diplomatic effort never gained traction before Biden took office in January 2022.
Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
GOP opens another investigation of Afghanistan withdrawal
Washington — Tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who were evacuated to the U.S. after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 are at risk of losing their work permits and deportation protections this summer unless Congress acts, unpublished government data show.Fewer than 5,000 of the 77,000 Afghans resettled in the U.S. under a special legal process have secured permanent legal status for themselves and their families, with efforts to make them permanent residents floundering in Congress, according to the Department of Homeland Security figures.
As of Feb. 12, the U.S. had approved just 4,775 applications from Afghan evacuees who requested asylum or a special visa status for those who aided American forces. Those who lack permanent legal status could lose their authorization to work and live in the U.S. legally starting in July without congressional intervention.
Despite significant bipartisan support, a proposal to make evacuated Afghans eligible for permanent U.S. residency, known as the Afghan Adjustment Act, has failed to make its way through Congress, mainly due to concerns from some Republican lawmakers over how the evacuees were vetted.
The evacuees who lack permanent status were initially granted “parole,” a special immigration classification that allows foreign citizens to enter the U.S. without a visa and to stay in the country temporarily on humanitarian or public interest grounds — two years, in the case of the Afghans.
Refugees are led through the departure terminal to a bus at Dulles International Airport after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on Aug. 31, 2021, in Dulles, Virginia.GETTY IMAGES
By using the parole authority, the Biden administration was able to resettle tens of thousands of Afghans in a matter of weeks following the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan without having to go through the traditional refugee or visa processes, which typically take years to complete.
But the reliance on parole to resettle evacuees — who, for practical purposes, were refugees intent on restarting their lives in the U.S. — also meant their future would be dictated by lawmakers’ willingness, or unwillingness, to give them permanent status. Unlike refugee status, parole does not offer a path to U.S. citizenship.
In all, the U.S. used parole to admit more than 77,000 Afghans as part of the massive resettlement effort, dubbed Operation Allies Welcome. The U.S. stopped the practice in late September 2022, when it launched a new phase of the effort under which future Afghan arrivals would come to the U.S. with permanent status.
In similar situations over the past decades, Congress passed laws to give permanent residency to different refugee groups who entered the U.S. via parole, including Hungarians escaping Soviet rule, Cubans fleeing the communist-controlled island and refugees from Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War.
But the Afghan Adjustment Act has been caught up in a broader, decades-long gridlock over immigration policy in Congress that has intensified amid record levels of migrant arrivals along the U.S.-Mexico border.
While the proposal had five Democratic and five Republican co-sponsors in the Senate in the last Congress, some Republicans have expressed opposition to the bill, citing government watchdog reports that raised questions about whether federal officials had adequate policies in place when they screened evacuees.
The Biden administration has insisted it properly vetted all Afghans at overseas military bases before relocating them to the U.S. Proponents of the Afghan Adjustment Act have also said the measure should assuage concerns about vetting since evacuees would need to undergo interviews to receive U.S. residency.
Afghans and their advocates, which include military veterans, said the need to pass the adjustment act is becoming increasingly urgent, with the first Afghan parole expirations set to occur in July. For the majority of evacuees, their parole will expire later in the summer, after the two-year anniversary of the fall of Kabul.
“Those deadlines hang over their heads,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which has helped resettle some 14,000 Afghans. “They don’t know if they will be placed in removal proceedings or if they will be able to support themselves or their families back home.”
Edris Lutfi, who was paroled into the U.S. in October 2021 after fleeing Afghanistan, called it “extremely frustrating” to not know whether he will be able to continue working and living in the U.S. legally later this year. Returning to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, he said, is not an option.
“There are so many killings of civilians,” said Lutfi, who noted he worked for the former U.S.-aligned government in Afghanistan. “The situation there is a lot worse than what we see on the media. People are starving. There’s no work. The Taliban is policing every single aspect of everyone’s life.”
On paper, those who are granted parole can request an extension. But there’s no formal process for Afghans to do so, since they were paroled at airports by Customs and Border Protection, a law enforcement agency that does not adjudicate applications. CBP policy says those seeking parole extensions should “contact the Port of Entry where the parole was granted.”
Amid the inaction in Congress, some Afghans like Lutfi have applied for different immigration programs in hopes of getting permanent status.
As of Feb. 12, more than 14,000 Afghans brought to the U.S. under Operation Allies Welcome had applied for asylum, which the government can grant to foreigners who could be persecuted in their home countries. The U.S. has so far approved 1,175 of these cases, which can include children and spouses of the main applicant.
The U.S. has also received another 14,600 applications from Afghans seeking permanent residency through the Special Immigrant Visa program, which allows translators, interpreters and others who served the American military to stay in the U.S. with their spouses and children. Just over 3,600 cases have been approved so far.
In 2022, the Biden administration made Afghan evacuees eligible for Temporary Protected Status, a program that allows immigrants from crisis-stricken countries to live and work in the U.S. legally for 18 months. But as of early February, just over 1,000 Afghans were enrolled in the program, according to unpublished DHS data. Moreover, like parole, TPS does not give beneficiaries a path to permanent legal status.
Immigration lawyers said it’s unrealistic to expect all Afghans to gain permanent status without an adjustment act. They said some Afghans may not be able to satisfy the strict criteria for asylum or special visas. Many evacuees, they added, may not be able to find lawyers to help them file applications given how overwhelmed legal services providers are. Others may not even know they need to apply for benefits in the first place.
“We have more people calling us than we are able to help, and they’re calling from all around the country,” said Laila Ayub, an attorney at Project ANAR, a Bay Area group with four staff members that has received dozens of inquiries from Afghans seeking counsel. “There are just not enough lawyers to help every single person.”
Lutfi, the Afghan evacuee, was interviewed by an asylum officer last month and is awaiting a decision on his case. He’s currently living in northern Virginia and working as a journalist. Even if he wins asylum, Lutfi said he’s concerned about other evacuees who don’t speak English and lack the means to secure legal help.
“If these bills aren’t passed, at the end of day some of these people may have to be forced to go back. And once they do, I can’t imagine what could happen to them,” Lutfi added, referring to the Afghan Adjustment Act.
Advocates said only the passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act will give all Afghans relocated to the U.S. long-term stability. Lawmakers are expected to re-introduce the bill in the coming weeks, according to people familiar with the plan, but its prospects in an increasingly divided Congress remain unclear.
“It’s a no-brainer,” said Chris Purdy, an Iraq war veteran who oversees the Veterans for American Ideals branch of Human Rights First, a group that advocates for refugees. “We brought them here. We have an obligation to help them resettle properly and efficiently.”
Tens of thousands of Afghans in U.S. could lose deportation protections unless Congress acts
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – In a chilly classroom in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, teenage girls pore over Islamic texts as the disembodied voice of a male scholar emanates from a loud speaker.
Pupils take turns to email questions to the scholar on the class laptop at the Taalum-ul-Islam Girls’ Madrasa, or religious school, where male teachers are forbidden from hearing the voices of female students in person.
The number of students at the institution in Kandahar city has about doubled to around 400 in the past year, driven by the Taliban administration’s decision to bar girls and women from most secular high schools and universities, according to staff members who gave Reuters rare access to the madrasa in December.
Other female religious schools across Afghanistan have also seen marked increases in enrolment, Reuters learned from visits to four madrasas – two in Kandahar and two in the capital Kabul – and interviews with more than 30 students, parents, teachers and officials in 10 provinces spread across the country.
“Due to the closing of schools, the number of students has increased by around 40%,” said Mansour Muslim, who runs a madrasa mainly for teenage girls in north Kabul. “We now have around 150 students.”
One of the students at the school, 17-year-old Mursal, said she had joined three months ago. While she welcomed the religious learning, she said she found her situation limiting.
“I want to finish my schooling,” said Mursal, whose parents asked for her surname to be withheld to protect her privacy. “I wanted to be a doctor in the future, but now I think it’s impossible. If you come to a madrasa you just can be a teacher.”
The Taliban regained power in August 2021 after the sudden withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. The new government has the stated goal of building an Islamic society based on sharia law following 20 years of comparatively liberal Western-backed rule.
Abdul Maten Qanee, the spokesman for the information ministry, told Reuters the government was not opposed to girls having secondary and tertiary education. He said there were several issues to be overcome, though, including the problem of some mixed-gender institutions, girls not meeting some interpretations of Islamic dress, and girls not being accompanied by male guardians.
“We fought for 20 years for our ideology and values,” he said. “We are not against education, we just want rules to be followed and implemented, and the culture, traditions and values of Afghans to be considered. We want females to have a modern education, society needs this,” he said.
Qanee said madrasas were open for girls of all ages. He added that a government committee was looking into adding secular subjects to madrasas alongside religious study, a development that hasn’t been previously reported. He didn’t provide further details on the committee’s work.
Female education lies at the heart of the Taliban administration’s standoff with the West. No foreign nation formally recognises the administration, with Washington citing women’s rights as a major obstacle to normalising ties and unlocking much-needed funds.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment directly on girls’ attendance of madrasas. A spokesperson, referring to the school restrictions, said education was an internationally recognized human right and essential to Afghanistan’s economic growth.
‘ISLAM GIVES US RIGHT’
The rise in mainly teenage girls enrolling in religious schools, a trend whose scale hasn’t been previously detailed, often fills a need for learning, friendships and a reason to get out of the house, according to the people
Yet some students say these institutions, which are devoted to the study of the Koran and Islamic texts, will not help them fulfil their ambitions.
Madrasas, part of Afghan life for centuries, usually don’t offer the secular secondary and tertiary education needed to pursue careers such as law, medicine, engineering and journalism – the kind of education that’s still available to Afghan boys.
“I joined the madrasa because at home we couldn’t study and our schools are closed, so I came to learn the Koran,” said Mahtab, a 15-year-old pupil at Mansour Muslim’s Kabul madrasa. “I wanted to be an engineer in the future. I don’t think I can reach my dream.”
Marzia Noorzai, a 40-year-old women’s rights activist in the southwestern province of Farah, said her nieces, who would have graduated from high school last year, were now attending a local madrasa every day.
“Just to keep them busy,” she said. “Because they were depressed.”
Other students and teachers said Islamic education played an important role in their lives, though they hoped to be able to study secular subjects too.
A senior teacher in her early 20s at the Taalum-ul-Islam madrasa, where Reuters was given access on condition it didn’t identify students or staff to protect their privacy, said religious education gave her a sense of happiness and peace.
“Islam gives us rights as women,” she added. “I want those rights, not the idea of (Western) women’s rights.”
Asked about the trend of girls attending religious schools in greater numbers after the school ban, Taliban official Qanee said the number of madrasas had been expanding under the previous government and would continue to expand under the Taliban because Afghanistan was an Islamic country. He didn’t elaborate on the government’s plans for religious schools.
The previous foreign-backed government said in January 2021 that they had registered about 5,000 madrasas nationwide, with total enrolment of about 380,000 students, of whom around 55,000 were female. About a fifth of the registered schools were operated by the state, it said, adding that there were likely to be many more unregistered institutions.
Reuters was unable to determine the current number of madrasas, and Taliban authorities have not provided figures.
‘OPTIONS ARE EVAPORATING’
Life has changed for many girls and women.
The Taliban administration barred females students from most high schools last March, and from universities in December. Days after the universities decision, it banned most Afghan women from working for NGOs, leaving thousands of educated women unable to do their jobs and forcing many aid groups to partially suspend operations during a humanitarian crisis.
The secondary education ban alone has affected more than 1 million girls, UNICEF said in its Afghanistan annual report for 2022. This has compounded an existing “education crisis”, the U.N. children’s agency added, with an estimated 2.4 million girls already out of school at the beginning of 2022.
Thousands of primary schools, some of them fee-paying, remain open for boys and girls up to the age of about 12, teaching subjects including Dari, Pashto, English, maths and science.
Madrasas themselves vary widely, from big institutions hosting hundreds of pupils in cities to village mosques teaching a handful of children. The schools, which are typically single-sex, also vary in standards, strictness, the number of days and hours they’re open as well as the fees they charge.
The fees charged by the madrasas visited by Reuters ranged from the equivalent of around 50 cents to $2 per month per student. That is a prohibitive cost for many families in Afghanistan, where the U.N. says most people live in poverty, although some village madrasas are free.
Female madrasas usually have female teaching staff, though male religious scholars tend to guide their work in more traditional institutions like the one in Kandahar.
Ashley Jackson, co-director of the Centre on Armed Groups who has researched Taliban policies on education, said while madrasas couldn’t take the place of formal schools, they were one of the final avenues of learning left for girls and women.
“The options for female education are evaporating,” said Jackson, adding that formal schools were seen among some Taliban supporters as a symbol of international occupation. “There’s deep-seated mistrust of the formal education sector, despite the fact that it too incorporates Islamic education.”
Not everyone within the administration agrees with the education restrictions. Four officials, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters they privately backed secondary education for girls and that supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and his close advisers had driven the school ban.
Akhundzada, who is based in Kandahar and rarely appears in public, could not be reached for comment on any tensions within the administration over female education. Requests for comment to Akhundzada and other officials are handled by the Taliban administration spokesman, who didn’t comment on this matter.
Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Pravin Char
Doctor? Engineer? As dreams fade, Afghan girls turn to madrasas
Meanwhile, some women criticized the Islamic Emirate and said that they are concerned about the closing of schools and universities for women.
The acting foreign minister at a ceremony marking the 34th anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet forces said that Islamic Emirate has made some progress and achievements, and currently million students are studying in schools and universities.
“Today 9 million students are studying in schools and universities and it’s a big difference,” said Amir Khan Muttaqi, acting minister of Foreign Affairs.
Meanwhile, some women criticized the Islamic Emirate and said that they are concerned about the closing of schools and universities for women.
“We are disappointed, and we are concerned that universities should not be closed like schools,” said Hassina Raufi, a student.
Meanwhile, some residents of the capital stressed the need for education and called on the Islamic Emirate to open universities for girls.
“We call on the government to take positive steps in this regard,” said Abdulullah, a Kabul resident.
“Education is obligatory for women and men,” said Abdul Hafiz, a Kabul resident.
Earlier, the Islamic Emirate decreed a ban on female students from attending schools and universities.
Muttaqi: 9 Million Students Studying in Schools and Universities
Price made the remarks in response to a question asking about the UN report on al-Qaeda.
A spokesman for the US Department of State, Ned Price, said that the “Taliban” made private and public commitments to not allow the territory of Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for those who would plot against the United States.
Price made the remarks in response to a question asking about the UN report on al-Qaeda.
“When it comes to other al-Qaida members, including those who are in Afghanistan, our message is twofold. One, to the Taliban, the Taliban has a commitment. It has made private commitments, it has made public commitments to uphold that it does not allow Afghanistan’s territory to be used as a safe haven for those who would plot against the United States,” Price said, adding that “Our second point is that we are prepared, willing, and able to take action ourselves if the Taliban is unable or unwilling to fulfill the commitments that it has made.”
But the Islamic Emirate said that they would not allow anyone to use Afghan soil against other countries.
He also said that the al-Qaeda is “just another example of Iran’s wide-ranging support for terrorism,” and “its destabilizing activities in the Middle East and beyond.”
But the Iran President, Ebrahim Raisi in a visit to China accused the US of supporting the Daesh group in the region.
“The US sought to create extremism and militant groups and insecurity in Iran and Islamic countries. It pursued terrorist groups such as Daesh and al-Qaeda,” he said.
The political analysts give various opinions on the matter:
“The sides should be committed to the issues of terrorism both the Islamic Emirate and the ruling government of Islam,” said Mohammad Zalmai Afghan Yar, a political analyst.
Earlier, a United Nations team said that after the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, Saif al Adel has become the new leader of the network.
According to a report in the Washington Examiner, the new leader of al Qaeda is Saif al Adel — a long-time jihadi who has spent years operating in Iran under the protection of the Iranian regime.
US Urges “Taliban” to Uphold Pledge to Not Allow Afghan Soil to Be Used
It said that ISIL-K portrays itself as the “primary rival” to the Taliban de facto administration, with its strategic focus on Afghanistan and beyond in the historical Khorasan region
Afghanistan remains the primary source of terrorist threat for Central and South Asia, with groups such as ISIL-K, Al-Qaeda and Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan enjoying greater freedom of movement in the country owing to the absence of an effective Taliban security strategy, a UN report has said.
The 31st report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team (ISIL, Al-Qaida), was issued here on Tuesday.
The report said that Afghanistan remains the primary source of terrorist threat for Central and South Asia.
“It originates from groups including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant- Khorasan (ISIL-K), Al-Qaeda, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, as well as ETIM/TIP (Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement/Turkistan Islamic Party), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Group, Khatiba Imam al-Bukhari, Khatiba al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, Jamaat Ansarullah and others. These groups enjoy greater freedom of movement in Afghanistan owing to the absence of an effective Taliban security strategy,” the report said.
It said that ISIL-K portrays itself as the “primary rival” to the Taliban de facto administration, with its strategic focus on Afghanistan and beyond in the historical Khorasan region.
“Its main goal is to portray the Taliban as incapable of providing security in the country. By targeting diplomatic missions, ISIL-K seeks to undermine the relationship between the Taliban and neighbouring countries,” it said.
“It also threatened to launch terrorist attacks against Chinese, Indian and Iranian embassies in Afghanistan. Apart from high-profile attacks, ISIL-K conducts low-level attacks nearly daily, causing fear in local communities, targeting Shia minorities to undermine Taliban Pashtun authority and challenging nascent security agencies,” the report said.
The 16th report of the Secretary-General on the threat posed by ISIL (Da’esh) to international peace and security and the range of United Nations efforts in support of Member States in countering the threat, issued last week, had also noted that ISIL-K threatened to launch terrorist attacks against the Embassies of India, Iran and China in Afghanistan and by targeting diplomatic missions, the terror group sought to undermine the relationship between the Taliban and UN Member States in the Central and South Asia region.
The reopening of the embassy had come after an Indian team led by senior Ministry of External Affairs official J.P. Singh had visited Kabul and met acting Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi and some other members of the Taliban dispensation.
“In order to closely monitor and coordinate the efforts of various stakeholders for the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance and in continuation of our engagement with the Afghan people, an Indian technical team has reached Kabul today and has been deployed in our embassy there,” the Ministry of External Affairs had said.
The report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team added that regional Member States estimated current ISIL-K strength at between 1,000 and 3,000 fighters, of whom approximately 200 were of Central Asian origin, but other Member States believed that number could be as much as 6,000.
Core ISIL-K cells are located primarily in the eastern Kunar, Nangarhar and Nuristan Provinces of Afghanistan, with a large cell active in Kabul and its environs. Smaller groups had been detected in the northern and north-eastern Badakhshan, Faryab, Jowzjan, Kunduz, Takhar and Balkh Provinces. Since Balkh is one of the most economically developed provinces in the north, it remained of primary interest to ISIL-K in terms of revenue generation.
“One Member State reported that ISIL-K had started smuggling narcotics, which was a new development,” it said.
Member States also reported no significant change in Al-Qaida’s strength since the previous report. Despite the announcement by the United States of the killing of Al Qaeda leader Aiman Al-Zawahiri, ties between Al-Qaida and the Taliban remain close, as underscored by the regional presence of Al-Qaida core leadership and affiliated groups, such as Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent.
“It was expected that Al-Qaida would remain in Afghanistan for the near future,” the report said. According to one Member State, Al-Qaida-linked Katiba Umer Farooq (Red Unit) was possibly being re-activated in Kunar and Nuristan Provinces following the return of Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, Al-Qaida’s operations commander who had been captured in Kunar Province in 2010. It also reported that he had resumed leadership after his release following the Taliban takeover.
Several Member States reported that the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan had emboldened Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to escalate attacks against Pakistan. In November, TTP announced the end of the May ceasefire with the Government of Pakistan following the killing of two senior TTP commanders in Afghanistan.
According to one Member State, while there had been a decrease in attacks against Pakistani security forces in the early months of the ceasefire, that number had increased gradually as TTP consolidated its presence in Afghanistan.
In August, Abdul Wali Rakhib (alias Omar Khalid Khurasani), a founding member and military commander of TTP, was killed along with two other TTP leaders in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. He was reportedly succeeded by Mukarram Shah (alias Umar Khorasani), it said.
The ISIL-K magazine ‘Voice of Khorasan’ releases propaganda in Pashto, Persian, Tajik, Uzbek and Russian languages; recent outreach in Tajik and Uzbek was “noteworthy” following a man named Rashidov, an Uzbekistan national, joining the ISIL-K media wing.
“With the goal of recruiting from ethnic groups in the region and strengthening the group’s capabilities, ISIL-K had recruited Rashidov online while he was working in Finland as a labour migrant, before moving to Afghanistan, the report said.
It further noted that the propaganda of the Tablighi Jamaat movement in Kyrgyzstan, the only country in Central Asia where it is not banned, was spreading to neighbouring countries.
Afghanistan remains primary source of terrorist threat for Central and South Asia: UN report
ISLAMABAD (AP) — A rare public show of division within the ranks of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban emerged in recent days when Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, a powerful government figure, gave a speech seen as implicit criticism of the movement’s reclusive supreme leader.
The Taliban leadership has been opaque since the former insurgents’ takeover of the country in August 2021, with almost no indication of how decisions are made.
In recent months, the group’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has appeared to take a stronger hand in directing policy. In particular, it was on his orders that the Taliban government banned women and girls from universities and schools after the sixth grade.
The bans raised a fierce international uproar, increasing Afghanistan’s isolation at a time when its economy has collapsed — and worsening a humanitarian crisis. The bans also appeared to contradict previous policies by the Taliban government.
Between the Taliban takeover until the December ban on attending universities, women had been allowed to continue their studies. Taliban officials repeatedly promised that girls would be allowed to attend secondary school, but a decision to allow them back last year was suddenly reversed.
Haqqani made his comments in a speech over the weekend to a graduation ceremony at an Islamic religious school in the eastern province of Khost.
“Monopolizing power and hurting the reputation of the entire system are not to our benefit,” Haqqani said, according to video clips of the speech released on social media by his supporters. “The situation cannot be tolerated,” he added.
Haqqani said now that the Taliban have taken power, “more responsibility has been placed on our shoulders and it requires patience and good behavior and engagement with the people.” He said the Taliban must “soothe the wounds of the people” and act in a way that the people do not come to hate them and religion.
Haqqani did not refer to Akhundzada, but the remarks were seen by many commenting on social media as directed at him. Haqqani also did not mention the issue of women’s education, but he has said publicly in the past that women and girls should be allowed to go to school and universities.
Zabihullah Mujahed, the top spokesman for the Kabul government, said in an apparent reaction to Haqqani’s comments — without naming him — that criticism is best voiced privately.
“If someone criticizes the emir, minister, or any other official, it is better — and Islamic ethics also say — that he should express his criticism directly and secretly to him,” not in public, he said.
Akhundzada, an Islamic scholar, almost never appears in public and hardly ever leaves the Taliban heartland in southern Kandahar province.
He surrounds himself with other religious scholars and tribal leaders who oppose education and work for women. Only one known photo of him, years old, exists. Akhundzada came to Kabul only once since the Taliban takeover to give a speech to an assembly of pro-Taliban clerics, though he was not shown in media coverage at the closed event.
The Taliban have typically dealt with internal differences behind the scenes, and Haqqani’s comments “are a major escalation,” said Michael Kugelman, the deputy director of the Asia program and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center. The Taliban leaders have the same broad vision, but “in Kandahar, they’re hermits, they’re not involved in the day-to-day,” said Kugelman. In Kabul, they have to govern and provide services, he added.
Haqqani leads a faction of the Taliban known as the Haqqani network, built around the family of the same name centered in Khost. The network battled U.S.-led NATO troops and former Afghan government forces for years and was notorious for attacks on civilians and suicide bombings in Kabul. The U.S. government maintains a $10 million bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani for attacks on American troops and Afghan civilians.
His comments pointed to an apparent difference between some senior Taliban, who have had to rapidly adjust to the demands of government after two decades of fighting as insurgents.
When they took power in 2021, Taliban officials said they wanted better ties to the world. They said they would not return to the social restrictions on women or punishments, such as public lashings, that they imposed during their first time in power in the 1990s.
But over the nearly 20 months since, the Taliban have barred women from most jobs, middle school and high school as well as from parks. They’ve also ordered women to wear head-to-toe clothing in public.
The deputy prime minister in the Taliban government, Abdul Salam Hanafi, indirectly criticized the ban on education for women and girls in a speech in Kabul this week.
“If we don’t improve the quality and quantity of the education system and do not update it, we will never succeed,” he said. He added that the duty of Islamic scholars requires more than prohibiting a behavior or practice — they must also offer a solution and a path forward.
Ahmed Rashid, a veteran Lahore-based journalist who wrote several books about the Taliban, said he didn’t expect change from Akhundzada and his Kandahar-based supporters.
Rashid said that unity is a priority for the Taliban in the face of what they see as U.S. and NATO threats, and it’s doubtful there is “any kind of revolt” within the ranks. But those in the Taliban leadership dealing with the burden of government have “realized they can’t continue like this,” he said.
Associated Press writer Riazat Butt contributed to this report.
Ruling Taliban display rare division in public over bans
Walking down its streets a year ago was like wandering into the modern ruins of another empire come and gone from Afghanistan.
Now, the Taliban have adopted the former diplomatic enclave as their own.
Scattered across a neighborhood in central Kabul are the ruins of another empire come and gone from Afghanistan.
Tattered sandbags and piles of discarded barbed wire. Metal hulls of tank traps sitting unused on the side of the road. Red-and-white metal barriers, once lowered to stop vehicles at checkpoints manned 24/7, permanently pointing toward the sky.
Not that long ago, this neighborhood — known as the Green Zone — was a diplomatic enclave, buzzing with the soundtrack of a multibillion-dollar war effort in Afghanistan. Armored vehicles rumbled down the streets, shuttling Western diplomats and high-ranking Afghan officials, while the thud-thud-thud of American helicopters echoed across the sky above.
But these days, there’s another kind of buzzing in the neighborhood: the Taliban moving in and making it their own. Like their American-supplied rifles and Humvees and military fatigues, the Green Zone is becoming the latest vestige of the Western war effort that the Taliban have repurposed as they build up their own military and government.
Well-to-do officials with the Taliban administration and their families have settled into the dwellings abandoned by Western officials since the collapse of the former government in August of 2021 and the flight of most of the Green Zone’s residents.Inside what was a compound of the British embassy, young men dressed in gray-and-black turbans and traditional brown shawls gather each afternoon for classes in a new madrasa, a school for Islamic instruction. Security forces with the new government zip in and out of NATO’s former headquarters.
The neighborhood, and its nearly indestructible blast walls, have become a testamentto the enduring legacy of occupation, a reminder that even when foreign forces depart, the physical imprint they leave on a country’s landscape — and national psyche — often lives on, indefinitely.
“These walls will never be torn down,” said Akbar Rahimi, a shopkeeper inside the Green Zone, summing up the seeming permanence of the infrastructure around him.
One recent afternoon, Mr. Rahimi, 45, sat behind the wooden counter of his corner store, absent-mindedly watching a Bollywood movie on the TV mounted to the wall. On the street outside, a forest green maintenance vehicle with a poster of a young Mullah Omar — the founder of the Taliban movement — plastered on the windshield raced past.
Mr. Rahimi perked up as three young men, former Taliban fighters turned security guards, entered the shop and rummaged through a pile of small, dirt-encrusted lemons by the front door. They handed the lemons to Mr. Rahimi, who weighed them on a rusty scale and tied them into a plastic bag in a single, masterful flip of the wrist.
“We’re buying lemons because some of our friends are fat — they need lemons to get thin and be better prepared for security,” one of the men joked. His friends burst out laughing. Mr. Rahimi, unamused, handed them the lemons and took a tattered bank note in return.
Mr. Rahimi remembers the old Green Zone and its former residents with a sense of nostalgia. Outside the neighborhood, the city was regularly torn apart by suicide blasts and targeted assassinations during the American-led war. But within its roughly one-square-mile radius, there was an intoxicating sense of lawfulness.
White-collar Afghan employees in government offices and foreign embassies used to pour down the street outside his shop at 8 a.m. each morning as they arrived for work and again at 4 p.m. when they headed home. For him, that reliable daily rhythm seemed to offer a sense of control, a predictability that had eluded Afghanistan for decades.
There was “order and discipline,” he said, wistfully.
For most of the two-decade war, the Green Zone occupied a unique place in Kabul’s collective consciousness. Once a leafy green upper-middle class neighborhood with tree-lined streets, elegant villas and a grand boulevard, the area transformed into a dull gray fortress of 16-foot-tall concrete barriers.
To some Afghans who could not enter it, the impenetrable void that sprawled across central Kabul was a source of deep resentment — an alien presence disrupting daily life.
To others, it was a harbinger of the eventual loss of the war, a place where despite Western generals’ assurances about battlefield victories and milestones reached, the steady build up of blast walls and barricades offered a more honest assessment of the West’s failures to curb the Taliban’s reach.
When the Taliban took over Kabul, they initially eyed this concrete slab of the city with suspicion. For months, agents with the intelligence wing of the nascent Taliban administration went building to building, digging through the remains of an enemy whose inner workings had been shrouded in mystery for 20 years. Every home was presumed to have hidden weapons or trip wires. Every surveillance camera was a sign of espionage.
Faizullah Masoom, a 26-year-old former Taliban fighter from Ghazni Province, felt awe-struck when he first saw the Green Zone. Then, a feeling of pride washed over him.
“I said to myself that our enemy with such defenses — blast walls and security cameras, barricaded areas and fortified buildings — were finally defeated by us,” he said. “We were always in the mountains, forests and fields. We only had one gun and a motorcycle.”
Now, Mr. Masoom rarely leaves the Green Zone.
Soon after the Taliban seized power, he assumed a new post as a security guard at a checkpoint outside an office building. One recent afternoon, he sat on a concrete barrier with three other guards at their post near the former Italian embassy.
The men passed around a bag of chewing tobacco as pickup trucks and armored cars carrying officials with the Taliban administration pulled up to the metal barrier. They beckoned for the drivers to lower their blackened windows, looked around the inside of the vehicles and ushered them through the gate.
As I turned to leave, Faizullah asked where I was from. When he heard “America,” his eyes grew wide and mouth dropped.
“She’s from America?” he asked a New York Times colleague who was with me, almost in disbelief. For 20 years, Americans were a faceless enemy. Now one was standing two feet in front of him.
He and his friends looked at each other bewildered for a few seconds — a sense of uncertainty hanging in the air. Then they burst out laughing.
“We have no conflict, war or enmity with anyone anymore,” he said smiling, as if to reassure me.
But the significant presence of security guards here — much like the blast walls that remain in place — reflects the insecurity that threatens the country’s fragile peace since the American-led war ended. While the days of constant airstrikes and night raids are over, suicide attacks from terrorist groups continue to plague the city — even as the guardians charged with keeping them at bay have changed.
Down the road from their post, the words “Long Live the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” — the official name the Taliban have given their government — are inscribed on a blast wall in white paint, one of a number of cosmetic changes the new government has instituted as it remakes the area in its own image.
The most striking example is painted on a wall that buttresses the former U.S. Embassy. The wall bears a mural depicting a vertical American flag, with columns of red stripes holding up white-on-blue stars. Beside the flag, a dozen hands are pushing down the red columns as if toppling a series of dominoes. “Our nation defeated America with the help of God” is scrawled next to it in blue paint.
The embassy itself remains empty and untouched — or mostly untouched.
Affixed to the towering metal and barbed wire gates is a metal plaque painted with the emblem of the United States: a bald eagle, wings outstretched, an olive branch in one talon and 13 arrows in the other. Over two dozen bullet holes have chipped the paint.
Safiullah Padshah contributed translation from Kabul.
Christina Goldbaum is a correspondent in the Kabul, Afghanistan, bureau.
As Taliban Settle In, Kabul’s Green Zone Comes Back to Life
Afghanistan Peace Campaign