U.S. Will Not Release $3.5 Billion in Frozen Afghan Funds for Now, Citing Terror Fears

August 16, 2022 Current News Articles

The New York Times

Published Aug. 16, 2022

The Biden administration on Monday ruled out releasing $3.5 billion in funds held in the United States back to Afghanistan’s central bank anytime soon, citing the discovery that Al Qaeda’s leader had taken refuge in the heart of Kabul apparently with the protection of the Taliban government.

The position on the funds was outlined on the one-year anniversary of the takeover of Afghanistan by the extremist Taliban militia and just over two weeks after an American drone strike killed Ayman al-Zawahri, the Qaeda leader, on the balcony of a house tied to a faction of the Taliban coalition in an exclusive enclave of the Afghan capital.

“We do not see recapitalization of the D.A.B. as a near-term option,” said Thomas West, the American government’s special representative for Afghanistan, referring to the initials for the central bank. He noted that American officials have engaged for months with the central bank about how to shore up Afghanistan’s economy but have not secured persuasive guarantees that the money would not fall into terrorist hands.

“We do not have confidence that that institution has the safeguards and monitoring in place to manage assets responsibly,” Mr. West said in a statement, previously reported by The Wall Street Journal. “And needless to say, the Taliban’s sheltering of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri reinforces deep concerns we have regarding diversion of funds to terrorist groups.”

Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said the administration was searching for alternative ways to use the money to help Afghans at a time when millions are afflicted by a growing hunger crisis.

“Right now, we’re looking at mechanisms that could be put in place to see to it that these $3.5 billion in preserved assets make their way efficiently and effectively to the people of Afghanistan in a way that doesn’t make them ripe for diversion to terrorist groups or elsewhere,” Mr. Price said.

The issue of the frozen money remains one of the most sensitive questions a year after President Biden’s decision to withdraw the last American troops from Afghanistan, leading to the fall of the Western-backed government and the Taliban’s return to power. The White House has been acutely sensitive to the approach of the anniversary, anticipating that it would renew criticism of the chaotic American withdrawal and the restoration of a draconian regime of repression, especially targeting women and girls.

The operation that found and killed al-Zawahri has only accentuated the debate in recent days. Mr. Biden and his allies have argued that the success in hunting al-Zawahri down showed that the United States can still fight terrorists without a large deployment of ground troops. His critics have pointed to the operation as evidence of the fecklessness of Mr. Biden’s decision to leave Afghanistan since it showed that the Taliban is once again sheltering Qaeda figures as it did in the months and years before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has said that al-Zawahri’s presence showed that the Taliban had “grossly violated” the withdrawal agreement first negotiated by President Donald J. Trump and carried out by Mr. Biden. But the administration has not explained what if any consequences it would impose on the Taliban as a result. The Taliban has denied knowing that al-Zawahri was living in Kabul with his family, even though the Haqqani clan, a terrorist faction of the government, appeared to be sheltering him.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded since the drone strike that while a handful of longtime members of Al Qaeda remain in Afghanistan, the group has not reconstituted a major presence there since the American withdrawal. But some counterterrorism experts said the judgment may be too optimistic.

The funds at issue on Monday are part of a total of $7 billion deposited at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York by the Afghan central bank at the time of the Taliban takeover. Mr. Biden froze the money and decided to split it in half, with one share available to the relatives of Sept. 11 victims to pursue legally and the other to be used to support the needs of the Afghan people, like for humanitarian relief.

The United States is working with allies around the world to establish an international trust fund with the $3.5 billion meant to help the Afghan people. Officials said they have made considerable progress in setting up such a trust fund but have not said when it will be created and how it will work.

The Afghan economy has collapsed in the year since the Taliban takeover, leading to mass starvation and a wave of refugees. In recent days, the United States announced that it would send $80 million to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to help combat hunger in Afghanistan, as well as $40 million to UNICEF to support educating Afghan children, particularly girls, and $30 million to U.N. Women to aid Afghan women and girls seeking social protection services and running civil society organizations.

As West puts Taliban on hold, Kabul eyes future in China, Russia

August 16, 2022 Current News Articles

By Giorgio Cafiero

Al Jazeera

The killing of al-Qaeda leader in Kabul will add to mistrust between the Taliban and the West, prolonging the group’s diplomatic isolation.

Monday marks a year since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan after almost 20 years of US occupation.

But the Taliban rulers have much work left to do as they struggle to revive the country’s lifeless economy and address the dire humanitarian situation.

Meanwhile, the Taliban’s international isolation has not helped its cause.

Despite repeated appeals and efforts by Taliban leaders, no country in the world has recognised the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), as the country is officially known under Taliban rule.

The West has demanded that the Taliban ease curbs on women’s rights and make the government more representative as a condition for recognition. The Taliban says the United States is violating the 2020 Doha Agreement by not recognising its government.

Last month’s killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a US drone strike in Kabul has led to Western governments accusing the Taliban government of failing to live up to its commitments under the Doha Agreement, which required the Taliban to deny safe haven to al-Qaeda and other armed groups in Afghanistan in exchange for the US withdrawal.

Several deadly attacks attributed to the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) have further raised concerns in the Western capitals about post-US Afghanistan’s security landscape.

Washington will find it hard to trust the Taliban in the wake of al-Zawahiri’s killing, with the West likely taking a hardened stance towards the Taliban government amid growing support for sanctions imposed on it.

The US’s dwindling trust in the Taliban could prove disastrous from a humanitarian standpoint as the negotiations held between the two sides in Doha, the Qatari capital, for the release of funds to Afghanistan have come to a screeching halt.

Nathan Sales, the former US ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism, said after al-Zawahiri’s killing that “the risk is substantial that money released to [the Taliban] would find their way inevitably and directly into al-Qaeda’s pockets”.

“Al-Qaeda is not a key consideration for many of the regional countries and it is possible they may continue their engagement despite this development.”

Non-Western countries’ approach

It is important to examine how non-Western countries approach the Taliban government. Several of Afghanistan’s neighbours, including China, Pakistan, and Iran, have accepted Taliban diplomats, along with Malaysia, Qatar (which hosts the Taliban office in Doha), Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Turkmenistan. In fact, Ashgabat, Beijing, Islamabad, and Moscow have even formally accredited Taliban-appointed diplomats, underscoring how the Taliban’s international isolation is relative.

Given how China, Russia, and Iran see ISIS-K as a far graver threat than al-Qaeda, these countries will “have at least some sympathy” for the IEA “as long as the Taliban continues to fight against [ISIS-K]”, Anatol Lieven, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera.

“Hostility to [ISIS-K] helps explain why Russia and China reached out to the Taliban in the years before their victory [in August 2021]. However, these links stop well short of the kind of financial support that the Taliban urgently needs. Russia does not have it to give, and China has always been extremely cautious about this kind of handout,” Lieven said.

Although Tehran has carefully engaged the rulers in Kabul, the exclusion of the Hazara Shia minority from governance has not impressed Iran, which has also experienced border clashes and disputes over water rights with the Taliban since August 2021.

Pakistan, a long-term Taliban ally which was one of only three governments to recognise the Taliban government in the 1990s, has also had major problems with post-occupation Afghanistan. Taliban rule has emboldened Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, in its attacks against Islamabad, which has responded by carrying out cross-border air attacks.

For China’s government, a primary concern pertains to questions about how the Taliban will deal with armed Uighur groups which have a history of being based in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

China worries that the Taliban might give such organisations the freedom to operate against China. Beijing has offered the Taliban economic and development support on the condition that Afghanistan cooperates with China vis-à-vis such armed factions and avoids targeting Chinese interests, particularly the Belt and Road Initiative – a global infrastructure project funded by Beijing.

“While Moscow and Beijing do have more contacts with the Taliban than do Western countries, they are nevertheless also weary of the leaders in Kabul,” Claude Rakisits, an honorary associate professor in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University, told Al Jazeera.

“The confirmation that the Taliban was protecting the al-Qaeda leader, will further strengthen these sentiments.

“Accordingly, despite the Taliban’s promises that they would not allow their territory to be used by non-state actors to attack other countries, the Russian and Chinese leaders would be worried that, indeed, the Taliban would do nothing to prevent various non-state actors, such as the Uighurs’ [East Turkestan Islamic Movement or ETIM] and other central Asian militant groups from launching terrorist attacks into China and Central Asian countries – Russia’s soft strategic underbelly,” Rakisits said.

Human rights

Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan last year, it has taken draconian actions that lead observers to see its approach to women and minorities being as extreme as it was during its first stint in power during 1996-2001.

Such human rights violations drastically decrease the chances of any Western government recognising the Taliban or easing sanctions. Yet the Taliban believes that time is on its side and that the West and the rest of the international community will eventually come to terms with its rule irrespective of its governance.

“The Taliban are principally about the Taliban rights, not human rights, and they generally perceive the concept of ‘rights’ as less about being equitable and more about redemption,” Javid Ahmad, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Al Jazeera. “And so, they frankly are unconcerned about the world community and believe the world will eventually bow.”

Moreover, Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours and other countries throughout the region are far less likely to make decisions about how to engage the Taliban based on human rights-related issues.

“Many of the neighbouring countries and regional powers appear to be continuing their engagement and in some rare cases, even offering cover for the Taliban’s actions by framing these matters as Afghanistan’s sovereign prerogative,” Bahiss, the analyst from the International Crisis Group said.

Emerging anti-hegemonic axis

As great power competition intensifies while East-West bifurcation increases in the wake of the Ukraine-Russia war, Afghanistan could become more important to China and Russia’s strategies for challenging the US.

Moscow and Beijing seem to have embraced a mostly wait-and-see approach to the Taliban government for now, before they embrace Kabul.

But if the Taliban rulers successfully convince Moscow and Beijing of their commitment to fighting ISIS-K and denying ETIM a haven in Afghanistan, these capitals could help the Taliban circumvent Western sanctions.

For example, Chinese companies investing in Afghanistan could decrease the harm caused by the West’s financial warfare, which in turn would benefit China in terms of its ability to access the war-torn country’s prized rare-earth mineral reserves, copper, lithium, iron ore, and other natural resources.

As China, Russia, and Iran grow increasingly cooperative in their efforts to challenge US hegemony, these powers might come around to viewing the Taliban as a partner through which they can expand their influence in Greater Central Asia.

Within this emerging anti-hegemonic axis, China is probably the power that can do the most for the Taliban as it continues grappling with major domestic, regional, and global challenges. Although foreign companies are unlikely to quickly reap rewards in Afghanistan given the extent to which the country lacks stability, Chinese firms are known for their patience and long-term vision.

“Afghanistan has long been considered a graveyard for conquerors – Alexander the Great, the British Empire, the Soviet Union and now the United States,” wrote Zhou Bo, an expert on global security who previously served as a senior colonel in China’s People’s Liberation Army, five days after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last year.

“Now China enters – armed not with bombs but construction blueprints, and a chance to prove the curse can be broken.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Beneath Kabul’s surprising veneer of normalcy, a precarious balancing act

August 13, 2022 Current News Articles

Pamela Constable

The Washington Post

August 11, 2022 at 9:35 a.m. EDT

Terrorist attacks, mixed signals on girls’ education disrupt Afghans’ detente with Taliban regime

Kabul – An uneasy calm has settled over the Afghan capital this summer, a wary detente between the country’s stern religious rulers and a deflated, worried populace that is struggling to survive but also relieved that the punishing 20-year war involving foreign troops is over.

Both sides have been trying to maintain a precarious balancing act. The Taliban regime, hoping not to further alienate foreign donors, has been sending out muddled signals rather than ironclad orders on controversial topics, especially women’s rights. The citizenry, hoping to get through another hard day without crossing an unpredictable red line, is mostly lying low.

But as the first anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power approaches next week, the balancing act has become harder to sustain. A series of violent attacks in the capital have belied the regime’s assertions that it can keep the public safe, while the Taliban’s shifting explanations for keeping teenage girls out of school have left thousands of families frustrated and angry.

In poor city neighborhoods, life seems to go on as normal. The summer nights are hot, and the power fails often. Men sit on concrete stoops and stroll toward corner mosques when the evening call to prayer wafts through the muggy air. Children chase one another in the streets. Burqa-covered women huddle beneath bakery windows, begging for a piece of bread.

But gradually, the capital that had swelled to 4 million just two years ago is hollowing out. Downtown, choice parking spots sit empty and clusters of drug addicts are taking over the sidewalks. Gone are the traffic jams that once inched ahead while small boys darted among cars like fish, attempting to wash windshields for pennies.

The illusion of postwar security has collapsed. First, on July 31, an American drone missile struck a house in central Kabul, its tremor felt for several miles. Soon afterward, President Biden announced that the strike had killed the leader of al-Qaeda, which the Taliban had agreed to ban in its 2020 peace deal with U.S. officials.

Then, over the next several days, a spate of terrorist attacks in Kabul’s Shiite Muslim community — including a bomb hidden in a flowerpot and gunfire from an apartment building — shattered hopes that after years of persecution, Shiites could gather without fear to observe Muharram, a month of mourning for Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad.

“We used to think of the Taliban as a faraway monster. Now the monster is here, in charge of the government, so it is their responsibility to protect us. People feel more confident,” Safar Baqri, 32, said two weeks ago as he hung up colorful banners to sell during Muharram.

But by last weekend, scores of people in the area had been killed or wounded. Thousands of banners were taken down by the police, traffic was banned and the streets were empty except for Taliban forces in armored trucks. Community leaders angrily accused the authorities of “canceling” their sacred rite instead of safeguarding it.

“We took many victims to hospitals, some missing legs or arms, some with shrapnel in their stomachs, some with burned faces,” an ambulance driver named Syed Ali, 55, recounted after a bomb exploded Aug. 6 near a major intersection. “We tried to get all their names, but some were too injured to speak.”

The drone strike, in contrast, harmed no local residents, damaged a single house and targeted a foreign-born militant — Ayman al-Zawahiri — who was little-known to many Afghans. But it sparked a surge of public anger at the United States that had receded since the withdrawal of foreign troops last August.

There were defiant tweets on the internet, mocking the Taliban regime for failing to retaliate. There was an anti-American rally in Kabul, with Taliban security escorts and marchers holding up perfectly lettered placards in English saying “Down with America.”

For the most part, though, the capital soon settled back into a familiar, glum routine of making do with far too little. In conversations over the past several weeks, people from all walks of life said they were mostly trying to get through each day — and avoid thinking too far ahead into an uncertain future.

In central Kabul, a line of haggard-looking men formed outside a World Food Program depot and stretched along several city blocks. Nearby, other men waited with battered wheelbarrows, hoping to earn a few pennies lugging supplies of wheat, sugar and cooking oil to people’s homes.

“This is my third time here,” confided a dignified man in his 60s named Khalid Aziz, who said he had spent 25 years teaching Persian literature to high school students. “This country has suffered a tragedy, and we are all just trying to survive it,” he said. “We are afraid for the future of our children, and we have no hope for tomorrow.”

A few blocks away, a glittering bridal shop sat empty. The carpeted showroom featured shapely mannequins in sequined, imported gowns, but their faces had been covered by masks or wigs, in obedience to Taliban instructions. The owner, Sayed Hussain, said he had few customers now, because most brides could afford only simple dresses stitched by local tailors.

“I am worried and upset all the time. Everyone in this country is upset,” Hussain said, fingering prayer beads nonstop. “We have no idea what will happen next, or what our future will look like. When I see the hundreds of messages on Facebook, so many people trying to leave the country, it makes me think I should take my family and go.”

As with the partly covered mannequins, Taliban officials have taken other half-steps to implement their strict Islamic code without turning the public against them. Weddings, the social glue of Afghan society, were already divided into separate rooms for males and females. The regime has allowed weddings to continue but banned live bands, known for earsplitting, amplified vocals and drums.

The Taliban administration has also been working to modernize its bureaucracy and soften its international image. Government ministries now include trimly dressed professionals and spokesmen. Many are Talibs, but they bear little resemblance to the scowling figures with bristling beards and Kalashnikov rifles who ran the country in the late 1990s.

At the international airport, arriving passengers are whisked through once cumbersome immigration lines, and uniformed female officers stamp passports in booths adjacent to their male counterparts — even as the regime has banned women from most public jobs except at hospitals and detention centers for women.

Inside a gleaming bank, foreign cash transfer services, until recently blocked by international sanctions, are processed efficiently by technicians sitting behind computer screens. The premises are spotless and the scene far more orderly than the scrums of pre-Taliban days.

Outside, many women shop with their faces exposed, seemingly without fear of punishment, even though the regime has instructed those of childbearing age to veil themselves in public or, preferably, not leave home at all. New rules also forbid women to travel long distances without a male chaperone.

Officials refer to these orders as mere “guidance,” and there have been no reports of women in the capital being beaten for dressing immodestly. But in rural areas, religious officials have begun meting out severe punishments to both criminals and moral offenders. In Zabul province, authorities recently announced the public whippings of two thieves and an adulterous couple.

Such mixed signals have roiled public opinion on the most sensitive issue of the day: whether and when the Taliban will allow girls above sixth grade to attend school. Since May, when the regime abruptly reneged on its pledge to let older girls back in class, officials have offered various explanations: The curriculum needs to be revised; religious scholars are divided; some rural men do not want their daughters to leave home.

The wait has been a growing source of anguish and frustration for families in Kabul, whose teenage daughters have sat home for months — and whose younger ones dread what will happen when they finish sixth grade.

“I feel so sad for my daughter,” said Ghulam Haider, 38, an engineer who lost his job with a foreign construction company when the Taliban took over. As the family gathered in their parlor one recent evening, 13-year-old Samia sat shyly on a sofa, looking downcast.

“She loves school, and she is so bright,” Haider said. Although many of their friends have left the country, the family had been planning to remain. “We wanted to see Afghanistan become peaceful and begin to prosper,” he said. “But now, for the sake of her future, we are thinking about leaving, too.”

Save The Children: Hungry, Laboring Afghan Kids ‘Wasting Away’

August 11, 2022 Current News Articles

TOLOnews

TV Network

11 August 2022

SIGAR Report Says Cash Taken by Ghani ‘Did Not Exceed $1M’

August 11, 2022 Current News Articles

TOLOnews

TV Network

11 August 2022

SIGAR began its investigations after Ashraf Ghani was accused by the Russian embassy of transferring millions dollars as he fled Afghanistan.

The final report on the transfer of funds by Ashraf Ghani, the former president of Afghanistan, while he was fleeing the country, has been made public by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

According to the report, this number did not exceed $1 million and may have been closer in value to $500,000.

“Although SIGAR found that some cash was taken from the grounds of the palace and loaded onto President Ghani’s evacuation helicopters, evidence indicates that this number did not exceed $1 million and may have been closer in value to $500,000. Most of this money was believed to have come from several Afghan government operating budgets normally managed at the palace,” the report reads.

SIGAR’s report says that a lot of money was left in government buildings, including those of the president and national security, and has disappeared.

“SIGAR also identified suspicious circumstances in which approximately $5 million in cash was accidentally left behind at the presidential palace. Some or all of this money likely belonged to President Ghani or the government of the United Arab Emirates. Some or all of it was also supposedly divided by members of the Presidential Protective Service after the helicopters departed but before the Taliban captured the palace,” the report reads.

SIGAR further added that former president Ashraf Ghani refused to be interviewed, and his attorney answered only 6 questions out of 56.

“On March 14, 2022, SIGAR sent 56 written questions to President Ghani through his attorney concerning these theft allegations and other matters related to SIGAR’s congressionally mandated examination of the Afghan government’s collapse. On July 28, 2022, through his attorney, President Ghani provided answers to only six of those 56 questions,” according to the report.

The Islamic Emirate commented on the issue:

“Regarding the country’s assets, whether it be money or equipment and facilities, all the items and materials associated to “Baitul-Mal” are all under the jurisdiction of the Islamic Emirate and are maintained in the government’s treasury,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman of the Islamic Emirate.

“We hope that such cases will be investigated by the international organizations so that these funds will be returned to the national treasury,” said political analyst Mujtaba Kakar.

SIGAR began its investigations after Ashraf Ghani was accused by the Russian embassy of transferring millions dollars as he fled Afghanistan.

Prominent Taliban scholar killed in Kabul attack

August 11, 2022 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

11 August 2022

Taliban officials say an investigation is under way after Rahimullah Haqqani was killed in a bombing at a seminary.

A prominent Taliban religious leader, Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani, has been killed in a bombing attack at a seminary in Kabul, Taliban officials have said.

“Very sadly informed that respected cleric [Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani] was martyred in a cowardly attack by enemies,” said Bilal Karimi, a spokesperson for the Taliban administration, on Thursday.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast. The Reuters news agency, citing four Taliban sources, said the attacker was someone who had previously lost his leg and had hidden the explosives in a plastic artificial leg.

“We are investigating who this … person was and who had brought him to this important place to enter the personal office of Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani. It’s a very huge loss for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” said a senior Taliban official of the interior ministry, referring to the group’s name for its administration.

Haqqani was a prominent scholar in the Taliban who had survived previous attacks, including a large blast in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar in 2020 claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) group that killed at least seven people.

Many Taliban officials took to social media to express their condolences.

A US-led invasion toppled the Taliban government following the September 11, 2001, attacks. Since coming back into power a year ago, the Taliban have said that they have restored security.

However, regular attacks by armed groups, many of them claimed by an ISIL affiliate known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), have taken place in recent months.

Lately, the group has increased attacks on mosques and minorities across Afghanistan. In June, ISKP claimed responsibility for the attack on a Sikh temple in Kabul, killing two people.

The ISIL affiliate, which has been operating in Afghanistan since 2014, is seen as the greatest security challenge facing the country’s Taliban government.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

A year after Taliban’s return, some women fight for lost freedoms

August 9, 2022 Current News Articles

By Mohammad Yunus Yawar

Reuters

9 Aug 2022

Summary

Taliban mark their first year in power on Aug. 15
Women absent from senior government positions
High schools are closed to girls, frustrating ambitions
Many women have lost jobs, some strive to sustain protests

KABUL, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Monesa Mubarez is not going to give up the rights she and other Afghan women won during 20 years of Western-backed rule easily.

Before the hardline Islamist Taliban movement swept back to power a year ago, the 31-year-old served as a director of policy monitoring at the finance ministry.

She was one of many women, mostly in big cities, who won freedoms that a former generation could not have dreamed of under the Taliban’s previous rule in the late 1990s.

Now Mubarez has no job, after the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic law severely limited women’s ability to work, required them to dress and act conservatively and closed secondary schools to girls across the country.

Under the new government, there are no women in the cabinet and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs was shut down.

“One war ended, but the battle to find a rightful place for Afghan women has started … we will raise our voice against every injustice until the last breath,” said Mubarez, who is among the most prominent campaigners in the capital Kabul.

Despite the risk of beatings and detention by Taliban members patrolling the streets in the weeks after the Western-backed government was toppled, she took part in several protests that broke out, determined to protect her hard-fought rights.

Those demonstrations have died down – the last one Mubarez took part in was on May 10.

But she and others meet in homes in private acts of defiance, discussing women’s rights and encouraging people to join the cause. Such gatherings would have been virtually unthinkable the last time the Taliban governed Afghanistan.

During one such meeting at her home in July, Mubarez and a group of women sat in a circle on the floor, spoke about their experiences and chanted words including “food”, “work” and “freedom” as if they were at an outdoor rally.

“We fight for our own freedom, we fight for our rights and status, we work for no country, organisation or spy agency. This is our country, this is our homeland, and we have every right to live here,” she told Reuters.

The country representative for UN Women in Afghanistan, Alison Davidian, said stories like Mubarez’s are being repeated across the country.

“For many women across the world, walking outside the front door of your home is an ordinary part of life,” she said. “For many Afghan women, it is extraordinary. It is an act of defiance.”

While rules on women’s behaviour in public are not always clear cut, in relatively liberal urban centres like Kabul they often travel without a male chaperone. That is less common in more conservative regions, largely in the south and east.

All women are required to have a male chaperone when they travel more than 78 km (48 miles).

STICKING POINT

The Taliban’s treatment of girls and women is one of the main reasons why the international community refuses to recognise Afghanistan’s new rulers, cutting off billions of dollars in aid and exacerbating an economic crisis.

Senior officials at several ministries said that policies regarding women were set by top leaders and declined to comment further. The Taliban leadership has said all Afghans’ rights will be protected within their interpretation of sharia.

Rights groups and foreign governments have also blamed the group for abuses and thousands of civilian deaths while fighting an insurgency against U.S.-led foreign troops and Afghan forces between 2001 and 2021.

The Taliban said they were resisting foreign occupation, and since returning to power have vowed not to pursue vendettas against former enemies. In cases where reprisals were reported, officials said last year they would investigate. read more

Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls are banned from going to high school.

In March, the group announced that female secondary schools would reopen, only to reverse its decision on the very morning that many girls had turned up excitedly for school. read more

Some have managed to enrol for private tutorials or online classes to continue their education.

“We are hopeful about schools reopening,” said Kerishma Rasheedi, 16, who started private tuition as a temporary measure. She wants to leave the country with her parents so that she can return to school if they remain shut in Afghanistan.

“I will never stop studying,” said Rasheedi. She moved to Kabul with her family from the northeastern province of Kunduz after their house there was hit by rockets during clashes in 2020.

The international community continues to advocate for female rights and leadership roles for women in public and political life. Some women said they have had to accept the new norms in order to make ends meet.

Gulestan Safari, a former female police officer, was forced to change her career after the Taliban stopped her from entering the police department.

Safari, 45, now carries out domestic chores for other families in Kabul.

“I loved my job … we could afford to buy everything we wanted; we could buy meat, fruit.”

Writing by Rupam Jain; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Susan Fenton

Accused Men, Women Publically Whipped in Zabul

August 9, 2022 Current News Articles

Asma Saayin

Tolo News

07 AUGUST 2022

Dozens of locals gathered to watch the public punishment.

Information and Culture department head Rahmatullah Hamad said that in Zabul two women and one man were publically whipped for committing adultery and another two men were whipped for robbery.

Earlier, the leader of the Islamic Emirate, Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada, said that all previous laws will be considered null, and Sharia law will be implemented in the country.

Dozens of locals gathered to watch the public punishment.

“The Taliban succeeded. They said in their initial speech that the constitution and other laws of the former government are demolished and Sharia law will be implemented,” said Shir Hassan Hassan, a political analyst.

“First of all, Hudud has its own conditions which require an actual witness and a confession that is not forced. I am sure that these two issues have not been observed,” said Munisa Mubariz, a human rights activist.

The local officials in Zabul did not allow the press to cover the scene of the punishment, but the Information and Culture Dept head Rahmatullah Hamad said that two men were arrested on charges of robbery and they were given 20 lashes and one month in prison.

“One man and one woman were punished on charges of adultery, the man named (…) was hit 39 times and was sentenced to six years in jail. The woman named (…) was whipped 39 times and sentenced to two years in prison, and a woman named (…) who facilitated the illegitimate relations between the two of them was whipped 20 times and sentenced to six years in prison,” he told TOLOnews in a voice message.

“The decision made based on Sharia, it is natural that it will come into effect in Islamic governments,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate.

Earlier, the Provincial Governor of Parwan, Obaidullah Ameenzada, said that the leader of the Islamic Emirate, Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada, ordered to cancel all laws and implement Sharia law in the country.

“He (Islamic Emirate’s Supreme Leader) said no, there is no difference between the law of Ashraf Ghani and Zahir Shan. We don’t accept the law of Zahir Shah and Ashraf Ghani, we want Sharia law,” he said.

This is the first time that the individuals are being punished based on Sharia law in public under the current government.