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Tag: Taliban afghanistan

  • From India to Israel, US weapons getting used to assault its allies

    After Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, butchered its residents and took a whole bunch as hostages, movies captured the horror and the celebration in Gaza. What was identified by consultants was the flashing of American weapons, particularly what they mentioned had been M14 assault rifles, within the celebratory movies.

    A outstanding American politician has questioned if US-made weapons had been utilized by the Palestinian terrorist outfit Hamas and sought a probe to search out out if the supply of the weapons was Afghanistan or Ukraine.

    India, too, has been reporting the usage of US-made arms and ammunition by terrorists in Kashmir.

    What is paradoxical right here is that each India and Israel are allies of the United States.

    But how are weapons manufactured within the US discovering their means into the palms of terrorist organizations just like the Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan and Hamas within the Palestinian territory?

    Click right here for the Israel-Hamas battle dwell updates

    US DUMPED WEAPONS IN AFGHANISTAN

    War is a giant enterprise, however it’s a bloody enterprise leading to 1000’s of deaths the world over. The largest producer and exporter of arms and defence tools, the United States, is on the centre of that huge enterprise.

    Arms exports by the US elevated by 14 per cent between 2013–17 and 2018–22 and it accounted for 40 per cent of the worldwide arms exports within the 2018–22 interval, in keeping with a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) in March 2023.

    As it has been supplying weapons to Ukraine amid the nation’s battle with Russia, the US has all through its historical past been offering weapons to varied theatres of battle.

    The US battle in Afghanistan in opposition to the Taliban after the 9/11 assaults was one other such navy theatre the place it poured in arms and defence tools price billions of {dollars}.

    But Afghanistan has by no means been a straightforward territory for any overseas power. Like the Soviet Russia assault in 1988, the US-led Nato marketing campaign too turned untenable.

    In February 2020, then US President Donald Trump signed a peace cope with the Taliban and that included a deadline of May 2021 by when all overseas troops can be withdrawn from Afghanistan. President Joe Biden, Trump’s successor, additionally dedicated to the withdrawal of troops however prolonged the deadline to August 31.

    The withdrawal of overseas troops was chaotic, to say the least. The Taliban militia had taken management of most components of Afghanistan by then and within the rush to go away the war-battered nation, US troops left behind weapons and defence tools of over $7 billion. Those later discovered their means into the palms of the Taliban.

    “US-funded equipment valued at $7.12 billion was in the inventory of the former Afghan government when it collapsed, much of which has since been seized by the Taliban,” the US Department of Defence mentioned in its report in August 2022. The trove included navy plane, floor automobiles, weapons, and different navy tools, the report mentioned.

    Among the defence tools had been Black Hawks and different helicopters, US Humvees and ScanEagle navy drones.

    Then there have been refined weapons like M16 assault rifles and M4 carbines, which had landed with anti-India and anti-Israel forces. These are what’s now being turned in opposition to the 2 nations.

    AMERICAN WEAPONS IN KASHMIR

    During final 12 months’s Raisina Dialogue, then Army Chief General MM Naravane mentioned India was seeing an increase within the variety of weapons and different navy tools from Afghanistan being seized in Kashmir.

    Pakistan-backed terrorists working within the Kashmir Valley had been discovered to be utilizing steel-core bullets and night-vision glasses left behind by the US-led Nato troops in Afghanistan. American armour-piercing bullets have been utilized in encounters with Indian safety forces and so they breached the bulletproof jackets of troopers.

    In January, NBC News reported quoting Indian officers that Pakistan-backed terrorists had been armed with M4s, M16s and different US-made arms and ammunition. The officers informed NBC News that it may very well be due to the US-funded weapons that fell into the palms of the Taliban after the rushed American exit from Afghanistan.

    It was in 2020 that US-made refined M-series carbine rifles started surfacing in Kashmir.

    It got here as a priority for the Indian safety institution as these are extra refined than the AK-series rifles, which have been the mainstay of the terrorists.

    Experts have hinted at Pakistan supplying the M4 carbines, that are utilized by its troops.

    There are thriving weapons bazars in Pakistan, together with the one in Darra Adam Khel, close to Peshawar.

    And it isn’t that Frankenstein’s Monster has spared Pakistan. In September this 12 months, Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister, Anwaar ul Haq Kakar, mentioned that US navy tools, from firearms to night-vision goggles, had reached the Pakistani Taliban or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has not too long ago overrun a number of villages in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and seized the military headquarters in Chitral.

    The seizure of US-made weapons in Kashmir elevated after what consultants trace on the Taliban buying and selling the weapons on the black market, a cost the Islamic militia has denied.

    Most of the weapons recovered in Kashmir are from Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the NBC News report mentioned.

    DID HAMAS USE AMERICAN GUNS IN ISRAEL ATTACK?

    Is it the identical that occurred in Israel as Hamas terrorists went on a massacre? It appears probably and a number of other consultants are asking for an in depth investigation.

    US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in a publish on X recommended that Hamas could have used American weapons for its assault on Israel. The Republican member of the House of Representatives sought an intensive investigation into the supply of the weapons utilized by Hamas.

    Jim Ferguson, a British politician, too tweeted a photograph of Taliban militants with American weapons and linked it to the Hamas assault on Israel.

    “A high-ranking Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commander said US weapons left in Afghanistan by the Biden administration were found in the hands of Palestinian groups active in the Gaza Strip,” posted Ferguson.

    The Israel Defence Forces on October 5, simply two days forward of the Hamas assault that killed over 500 Israelis, tweeted a photograph of an M-16 rifle that they had recovered from two terrorists who attacked an Israeli safety forces car.

    The M-16 is a classy assault rifle manufactured within the US, which was equipped to Afghanistan.

    The fear has been persisting for months now.

    In May this 12 months, Newsweek quoted an unnamed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commander saying the nation was involved that weapons equipped to Ukraine by the US and different western nations might find yourself with Israel’s enemies within the Middle East.

    The Israeli commander was significantly nervous about Iran and informed Newsweek, “â€æWe are very worried that some of these capabilities are going to fall to Hezbollah and Hamas’ hands.”

    The Israeli commander mentioned among the US-made small arms seized in Afghanistan have already been seen with Palestinian terrorist teams working within the Gaza Strip.

    Several movies on social media platforms present individuals within the Gaza Strip celebrating the assault on Israel with weapons, which consultants recognized as American weapons, together with M16 and M4 rifles.

    The use of American weapons in opposition to US allies is a grave concern. It stays to be seen how the US will tackle this situation. The incidents additionally function a stark reminder of the widespread and unpredictable penalties of arms proliferation.

    Published On:

    Oct 10, 2023

  • UN chief Guterres says he will not refuse the potential for meeting Afghanistan’s Taliban

    By Press Trust of India: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres acknowledged on Tuesday he’ll “obviously not refuse” the potential for meeting the Afghan de-facto authority, the Taliban, “when it is the right moment to do so”.

    Guterres arrived in Doha Monday to host a two-day meeting of Special Envoys on Afghanistan to attain elements of commonality on key factors, resembling human rights, notably girls’s and girls’ rights, inclusive governance, countering terrorism and drug trafficking.

    The meeting is supposed to achieve a typical understanding all through the worldwide group on tips about tips on how to interact with the Taliban on these factors.

    “When it is the right moment to do so, I will obviously not refuse that possibility. Today, is not the right moment to do so,” Guterres acknowledged in Doha at a press conference.

    ALSO READ | Security Council condemns Taliban’s ban on Afghan girls working for UN

    He was responding to a question on whether or not or not there are any circumstances beneath which he would meet the Taliban.

    India is among the many many countries and organisations who participated inside the Doha meeting.

    “The meeting was about developing a common international approach, not about recognition of the de facto Taliban authorities,” Guterres acknowledged.

    The totally different contributors inside the meeting are from China, France, Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Norway, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, T¼rkiye, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, European Union and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

    Guterres added that it is powerful to overestimate the gravity of the state of affairs in Afghanistan, describing it as a very powerful humanitarian catastrophe on the earth proper now.

    He well-known that 97 per cent of Afghans dwell in poverty, two-thirds of the inhabitants – 28 million – will need humanitarian assist this yr to survive and 6 million Afghan youngsters, girls, and males are one step away from famine-like circumstances.

    He moreover voiced concerns that “funding is evaporating” and said the UN Humanitarian Response Plan, seeking USD 4.6 billion, has received a mere USD 294 million – 6.4 per cent of the total funding required.

    ALSO READ | Israel kills Syrian soldier, puts Aleppo airport out of service, claims state media

    Guterres added that the current ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations and national and international NGOs is “unacceptable and puts lives in jeopardy.”

    He asserted that the UN will never be silent in the face of unprecedented, systemic attacks on women and girls’ rights.

    “We will on a regular basis talk out when tens of thousands and thousands of girls and girls are being silenced and erased from sight. This is a grave violation of elementary human rights,” he acknowledged.

    He added that it violates Afghanistan’s obligations beneath worldwide regulation, particularly, human rights regulation, and infringes on the principle of non-discrimination, which is a core tenet underpinning the United Nations Charter.

    “And it deliberately undermines the development of a country that desperately needs the contributions of all, in order to achieve sustainable peace and contribute to regional stability.”

    The Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021 and have restricted Afghan girls and girls from collaborating in most areas of public and daily life.

    Afghan girls have been barred from working with the UN in a country the place nearly 29 million people depend on humanitarian assist.

    Last week, the UN Security Council unanimously condemned a selection by the Taliban to ban Afghan girls from working for the United Nations in Afghanistan, calling on the de facto authorities to “swiftly reverse” insurance coverage insurance policies and practices that restrict girls and girls from exercising their human rights.

    The determination moreover known as for the whole, equal, vital and guarded participation of girls and girls in Afghanistan.

    It moreover calls upon the Taliban to “swiftly reverse the insurance coverage insurance policies and practices that restrict the enjoyment by girls and girls of their human rights and elementary freedoms along with related to their entry to education, employment, freedom of movement, and ladies’s full, equal and vital participation in public life.

    ALSO READ | Taliban ban girls from consuming locations and inexperienced areas in Afghanistan’s Herat

  • UN chief Guterres says he will not refuse the potential for meeting Afghanistan’s Taliban

    By Press Trust of India: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres acknowledged on Tuesday he’ll “obviously not refuse” the potential for meeting the Afghan de-facto authority, the Taliban, “when it is the right moment to do so”.

    Guterres arrived in Doha Monday to host a two-day meeting of Special Envoys on Afghanistan to attain components of commonality on key factors, resembling human rights, significantly girls’s and girls’ rights, inclusive governance, countering terrorism and drug trafficking.

    The meeting is supposed to realize a normal understanding all through the worldwide group on tips about the best way to interact with the Taliban on these factors.

    “When it is the right moment to do so, I will obviously not refuse that possibility. Today, is not the right moment to do so,” Guterres acknowledged in Doha at a press conference.

    ALSO READ | Security Council condemns Taliban’s ban on Afghan girls working for UN

    He was responding to a question on whether or not or not there are any circumstances beneath which he would meet the Taliban.

    India is among the many many countries and organisations who participated inside the Doha meeting.

    “The meeting was about developing a common international approach, not about recognition of the de facto Taliban authorities,” Guterres acknowledged.

    The completely different contributors inside the meeting are from China, France, Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Norway, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, T¼rkiye, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, European Union and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

    Guterres added that it is robust to overestimate the gravity of the state of affairs in Afghanistan, describing it as a very powerful humanitarian catastrophe on the earth proper now.

    He well-known that 97 per cent of Afghans dwell in poverty, two-thirds of the inhabitants – 28 million – will need humanitarian assist this yr to survive and 6 million Afghan children, girls, and males are one step away from famine-like circumstances.

    He moreover voiced issues that “funding is evaporating” and said the UN Humanitarian Response Plan, seeking USD 4.6 billion, has received a mere USD 294 million – 6.4 per cent of the total funding required.

    ALSO READ | Israel kills Syrian soldier, puts Aleppo airport out of service, claims state media

    Guterres added that the current ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations and national and international NGOs is “unacceptable and puts lives in jeopardy.”

    He asserted that the UN will never be silent in the face of unprecedented, systemic attacks on women and girls’ rights.

    “We will on a regular basis talk out when tens of thousands and thousands of girls and girls are being silenced and erased from sight. This is a grave violation of elementary human rights,” he acknowledged.

    He added that it violates Afghanistan’s obligations beneath worldwide regulation, particularly, human rights regulation, and infringes on the principle of non-discrimination, which is a core tenet underpinning the United Nations Charter.

    “And it deliberately undermines the development of a country that desperately needs the contributions of all, in order to achieve sustainable peace and contribute to regional stability.”

    The Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021 and have restricted Afghan girls and girls from collaborating in most areas of public and day by day life.

    Afghan girls have been barred from working with the UN in a country the place nearly 29 million people depend on humanitarian assist.

    Last week, the UN Security Council unanimously condemned a selection by the Taliban to ban Afghan girls from working for the United Nations in Afghanistan, calling on the de facto authorities to “swiftly reverse” insurance coverage insurance policies and practices that restrict girls and girls from exercising their human rights.

    The determination moreover known as for the whole, equal, vital and guarded participation of girls and girls in Afghanistan.

    It moreover calls upon the Taliban to “swiftly reverse the insurance coverage insurance policies and practices that restrict the enjoyment by girls and girls of their human rights and elementary freedoms along with related to their entry to education, employment, freedom of movement, and ladies’s full, equal and vital participation in public life.

    ALSO READ | Taliban ban girls from consuming locations and inexperienced areas in Afghanistan’s Herat

  • 3 British nationals detained by Taliban’s secret police unit

    The United Kingdom’s officers have been making an attempt to safe contact with the trio diplomatically and have reportedly been extending help to their households too. 

    New Delhi,UPDATED: Apr 2, 2023 12:19 IST

    Ousting the Ashraf Ghani-led authorities, the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021. (Representative Image)

    By India Today World Desk: Three British males, together with a charity employee and a “danger tourist”, have been held below the custody of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The United Kingdom’s officers have been making an attempt to safe contact with the trio diplomatically and have reportedly been extending help to their households too.

    As per experiences, the Taliban’s secret police unit detained 53-year-old Kevin Cornwell, and one other British man who labored for help employees in Kabul, was detained by Taliban police in January.

    The third British nationwide, recognized as Miles Routledge, who travelled to Afghanistan for a “holiday” has been detained.

    He was earlier evacuated by UK armed forces lower than two years in the past, on the time of Ashraf Ghani’s ouster and the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. He had returned to the nation to pay a go to.

    UK GOVERNMENT ACTION

    The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) confirmed it has been making an attempt consular contact with British nationals.

    ” We are working hard to secure consular contact with British nationals detained in Afghanistan and we are supporting families,” The Guardian quoted an FCDO official as saying.

    As per a report by the Mail, Cornwell was arrested throughout a raid by Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) officers on January 11. He was accused of possessing unlawful firearms in his rented room at Darya Village Hotel. The lodge’s British nationwide was additionally arrested on this account.

    It is claimed that each males have been held in a safe unit for overseas nationals operated by the GDI. The costs for his or her arrests haven’t been introduced up and they’re denied any authorized illustration both.

    Also, their households are being supported by a British nonprofit organisation.

    NGO OFFICIAL SAID

    Scott Richards, the negotiator with the British NGO, has stated that the Taliban’s GDI may need been appearing on a tip. He additionally talked about that Kevin’s room was saved with the license issued by the Taliban itself and that the weapon was by no means taken out of the secure nor had it been carried.

    Richards additionally said there was no readability on the authorized course of in Afghanistan, together with one’s proper to illustration and costs too.

    (With Agencies Input)

    Published On:

    Apr 2, 2023

  • ‘Save the Children’, different worldwide support companies droop humanitarian programmes in Afghanistan

    International support companies in Afghanistan, together with ‘Save the Children’, have introduced they’re suspending efforts, in response to the Taliban-run administration’s order to cease feminine workers from working.

    Kabul,UPDATED: Dec 26, 2022 09:43 IST

    Afghan girls chant slogans in protest in opposition to the closure of universities to girls by the Taliban in Kabul (Reuters)

    By Reuters: Four worldwide support companies together with Save the Children mentioned on Sunday they had been suspending their humanitarian programmes in Afghanistan in response to the Taliban-run administration’s order to cease feminine workers from working.

    The administration on Saturday ordered all native and overseas non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to not let feminine employees work till additional discover. It mentioned the transfer, which was condemned globally, was justified as a result of some girls had not adhered to the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic gown code for ladies.

    Three NGOs – Save the Children, Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE International – mentioned in a joint assertion that they had been suspending their programmes as they awaited readability on the administration’s order.

    “We cannot effectively reach children, women and men in desperate need in Afghanistan without our female staff,” the assertion mentioned, including that, with out girls driving the hassle, they might not have reached hundreds of thousands of Afghans in want since August final 12 months.

    ALSO READ | Taliban orders NGOs to ship feminine employees house days after college ban on Afghan girls

    Separately, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) mentioned in an announcement that it was suspending its companies within the nation, citing comparable causes. IRC mentioned it employs greater than 8,000 folks in Afghanistan, over 3,000 of whom are girls.

    The suspension of some support programmes that hundreds of thousands of Afghans entry comes at a time when greater than half the inhabitants depends on humanitarian support, in accordance with support companies, and through the mountainous nation’s coldest season.

    Save the Children, Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE International additionally highlighted the impact of the ban on feminine employees on 1000’s extra jobs within the midst of an financial disaster.

    Earlier, worldwide support company AfghanAssist mentioned it was instantly suspending operations whereas it consulted with different organisations, and that different NGOs had been taking comparable actions.

    The International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan additionally on Sunday expressed concern on the transfer and an earlier bar on girls from attending college, warning of “catastrophic humanitarian consequences in the short to long term”.

    ‘OBLIGED TO COMPLY’

    A spokesman for the Taliban administration, Zabihullah Mujahid, hit again on the criticism, saying all establishments eager to function in Afghanistan are obliged to adjust to the foundations of the nation.

    “We do not allow anyone to talk rubbish or make threats regarding the decisions of our leaders under the title of humanitarian aid,” Mujahid mentioned in a put up on Twitter, referring to an announcement by the pinnacle of U.S. Mission to Afghanistan.

    Chargé d’Affaires Karen Decker had taken to Twitter to query how the Taliban deliberate to stop starvation amongst girls and kids following the ban. She identified that the United States was the biggest humanitarian support donor to the nation.

    ALSO READ | Afghan girls converse out on college ban: “Beheading would’ve been better”

    Published On:

    Dec 26, 2022

  • Activists urge world neighborhood to demand rollback of Taliban’s resolution to ban girls from universities

    Human Rights Watch known as it a “shameful” resolution that violates the appropriate to schooling of girls and ladies in Afghanistan.

    New Delhi,UPDATED: Dec 24, 2022 23:21 IST

    Representational Image (AFP/File)

    By Press Trust of India: Human rights activists and teams have appealed to the worldwide neighborhood to urgently intervene and demand the quick rollback of the Taliban authorities’s “misogynist decree” of banning girls from universities in Afghanistan.

    Several international locations together with the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom have strongly condemned the Taliban’s newest step in its brutal crackdown on the liberty of Afghan girls and ladies.

    In March, the Taliban barred ladies from going to secondary colleges.

    ALSO READ | Taliban orders NGOs to ban feminine staff from coming to work

    Human Rights Watch known as it a “shameful” resolution that violates the appropriate to schooling of girls and ladies in Afghanistan.

    “The Taliban is making it clear every day that they don’t respect the fundamental rights of Afghans, especially women,” the HRW stated in a tweet.

    The Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy additionally condemned the “blatantly misogynist decree” of Taliban that for all sensible functions has successfully banned girls’s schooling in Afghanistan.

    “Since the Taliban have taken over in 2021, girls have not been able to access schools. Although they promised to open girls’ schools from March 23, the same day they revoked the order. Going by what they have done with schools, the ban appears to be a permanent one,” IMSD stated in a press release.

    ALSO READ | Bannu hostage disaster ends after navy kills 33 Pakistani Taliban militants | 5 Points

    “We welcome the fact that the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have condemned the Taliban’s regressive step and appeal to the international community to urgently intervene and demand that this grossly violative decision be taken back immediately” it stated.

    Child rights activist and nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi stated denying schooling to women is totally unacceptable.

    “Every act of discrimination, suppression and abuse of women and girls is an act of crime against humanity. But how long can darkness hold light in captivity? Light of freedom will prevail,” Satyarthi tweeted.

    Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani feminine schooling activist and the 2014 Nobel peace prize laureate, tweeted, “The Taliban may lock all the classrooms and university gates in the country — but they can never lock up women’s minds. They cannot stop girls from seeking knowledge. They cannot kill the quest to learn”.

    Yousafzai was herself shot by a Taliban gunman in an assassination try in retaliation for her activism.

    ALSO READ | Increased safety however little hope as Taliban mark 12 months in energy in Afghanistan

    India on Thursday joined a number of different main international locations in criticising the Taliban’s resolution, and renewed its name for establishing of an inclusive authorities in Kabul that ensures equal rights of girls in all facets of the Afghan society.

    Published On:

    Dec 24, 2022

  • Taliban free of Guantanamo, claims exchanged for American 

    A senior Taliban detainee held for years at Guantanamo Bay stated Monday he was launched and handed over earlier within the day to the Taliban in Kabul, in change for an American prisoner held in Afghanistan.

    Bashir Noorzai, a infamous drug lord and member of the Taliban, advised reporters in Kabul that he spent 17 years and 6 months within the U.S. detention middle at Guantanamo Bay, and that he was the final Taliban prisoner there.

    The Taliban-appointed overseas minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, additionally spoke on the press convention alongside Noorzai and welcomed the change, saying it marked the beginning of a “new era” in U.S.-Taliban relations.

    Muttaqi stated the launched American was Mark Frerichs, a Navy veteran and civilian contractor kidnapped in Afghanistan on Jan. 31, 2020.

    Frerichs was final seen in a video distributed earlier this yr, pleading for his launch in order that he might be reunited together with his household, in accordance with a recording posted by The New Yorker journal on the time.

    There was no impartial affirmation or phrase from Washington on Frerichs’ launch.

    “This can be a new chapter between Afghanistan and the United States, this can open a new door for talks between both countries,” Muttaqi stated on the Kabul presser.

    “This act shows us that all problems can be solved through talks and I thank both sides’ teams who worked so hard for this to happen,” Muttaqi added.

    Frerichs, of Lombard, Illinois, was believed to be held by the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani community, and U.S. officers throughout two presidential administrations had tried unsuccessfully to get him house.

    In the video, which marked the primary time Frerichs was seen since his abduction, he says it was filmed final November.

    Videos of hostages are generally launched to point out proof that they’re alive and to facilitate negotiations for a launch, although it was not instantly clear if that was the case right here.

    The New Yorker stated it obtained the clip from an unidentified particular person in Afghanistan.

    At the time, the FBI declined to touch upon the video’s authenticity, however a sister of Frerichs, Charlene Cakora, issued a press release thanking the Taliban for releasing the video and describing it as “public confirmation of our family’s long-held belief that he is alive after more than two years in captivity.”

    Since their takeover of Afghanistan in August final yr, the Taliban have demanded the United States launch Noorzai in change for Frerichs amid expectations of such exchanges for U.S. residents held in Afghanistan.

    However, there was no public signal of Washington shifting ahead on any type of prisoner commerce or change.

    The Taliban additionally posted a quick video Monday on social media displaying Noorzai’s arrival on the Kabul airport the place he was welcomed by prime Taliban officers, together with Muttaqi. At the press convention, Noorzai expressed thankfulness at seeing his “mujahedeen brothers” — a reference to the Taliban — in Kabul.

    “I pray for more success of the Taliban,” he added. “I hope this exchange can lead to peace between Afghanistan and America, because an American was released and I am also free now.”

    Noorzai made no point out of his therapy at Guantanamo Bay, the detention middle used to deal with Muslim militants, together with al-Qaida fighters, the Taliban and suspects captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere following the September 11, 2001 terrorist assaults within the U.S.

    The facility grew to become the main focus of worldwide controversy over alleged violations of the authorized rights of detainees underneath the Geneva Conventions and accusations of torture or abusive therapy of detainees by U.S. authorities.

    After 9/11, a U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban who had harbored al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and his followers. Bin Laden was killed in a U.S. raid in Pakistan in 2011.

  • Final, non-negotiable: Taliban forcing feminine TV anchors to cowl faces on air

    Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Sunday started implementing an order requiring all feminine TV information anchors within the nation to cowl their faces whereas on-air. The transfer is a part of a hard-line shift drawing condemnation from rights activists.

    After the order was introduced Thursday, solely a handful of stories shops complied with the order. But on Sunday, most feminine anchors had been seen with their faces coated after the Taliban’s vice and advantage ministry started implementing the order.

    The Information and Culture Ministry beforehand introduced that the coverage was “final and non-negotiable.”

    “It is just an outside culture, imposed on us, forcing us to wear a mask and that can create a problem for us while presenting our programs,” mentioned Sonia Niazi, a TV anchor with TOLOnews.

    A neighborhood media official confirmed his station had acquired the order final week however on Sunday it was compelled to implement the order and hewas informed it was not up for dialogue. He spoke on situation he and his station stay nameless for concern of retribution from Taliban authorities.

    ALSO READ | Afghanistan’s Taliban order ladies to cowl up head to toe

    During the Taliban’s final time in energy in Afghanistan from 1996-2001, they imposed overwhelming restrictions on ladies, requiring them to put on the all-encompassing burqa and barring them from public life. and training.

    After they seized energy once more in August, the Taliban initially appeared to have moderated their restrictions by some means, asserting no costume code for girls. But in latest weeks, they’ve made a pointy, hard-line pivot that has confirmed the worst fears of rights activists and additional sophisticated Taliban dealings with an already distrustful worldwide neighborhood.

    Earlier this month, the Taliban ordered all ladies in public to put on head-to-toe clothes that leaves solely their eyes seen. The decree mentioned ladies ought to go away the house solely when essential and that male kin would face punishment for girls’s costume code violations, beginning with a summons and escalating to courtroom hearings and jail time.

    The Taliban management has additionally barred women from attending faculty after the sixth grade, reversing earlier guarantees by Taliban officers that women of all ages can be allowed an training.

    ALSO READ | As Taliban battles Massoud-led resistance in Afghanistan’s Panjshir, civilians within the line of fireside

  • A bomb crater as enterprise associate for a pit cease on an Afghan freeway

    The Bomb Crater Stop ’N’ Go will not be the precise title of this store alongside a desolate stretch of freeway in rural Afghanistan. But that’s what it’s: a small shed that sells gas and snacks to passing travellers, proper beside a scar within the earth the place highway and sand meet after an explosion there someday within the final 20 years of the nation’s violent historical past.

    Hafiz Qadim, 32, the shopkeeper, occasional gasoline attendant and snack dispenser, has no formal title for his enterprise enterprise. It sits like a lone beacon of important provisions among the many sand dunes, rock outcroppings and occasional grape fields on the border of Kandahar and Zabul provinces in Afghanistan’s south, the place the encircling mountains lower by the sky just like the backs of sleeping dinosaurs.

    It is the one retailer for miles.

    “I opened this shop after Kabul fell,” Qadim defined, gesturing towards his new metal curler door and the mud bricks that regarded like they had been nonetheless drying within the solar.

    That was in August, when the capital was seized by the Taliban, consolidating their management of the nation.

    While Qadim is the only proprietor, the crater is his de facto silent associate: Its very dimension forces automobiles, vans and buses to decelerate sufficient for his or her drivers and passengers to note by their smudged home windows what’s on the market. Some preserve going, however loads seize the prospect to interrupt for a gas top-up or a collection of rainbow-coloured power drinks, bottles of shampoo, pairs of black loafers, assorted biscuits, canned meals, chips or a soda.

    The odd pairing — Qadim’s store and this propitious, outsized pothole — are bodily manifestations of each Afghanistan’s very lengthy conflict and its finish.

    There is peace now, or at the least some model of it that features the specter of the Islamic State group and the fledgling resistance forces arrayed in opposition to the Taliban. The freeway is quiet sufficient for brand spanking new outlets like Qadim’s and for farmers’ fields that may be hoed all the way in which as much as the freeway’s edge with out concern of being shelled or shot.

    Hafiz Qadim sells gasoline to a motorist who stopped beside a bomb crater subsequent to his store, which sells gasoline, water and snacks, alongside Highway 1 on the border of Kandahar and Zabul provinces in Afghanistan, December 9, 2021. (David Guttenfelder/The New York Times)

    But at what price, this opportunity for commerce the place there had been none for many years?

    Qadim is aware of the reply as a result of he’s surrounded by the worth he and so many others have paid. He is reminded of it day by day when he involves work early within the morning and walks throughout the freeway to his dwelling each evening. A half mile to the south — the place, within the afternoon, rays of solar lower by its looted fortifications — is the deserted hilltop police outpost the place a firefight killed three members of his household.

    Thirteen years in the past, when Qadim was nonetheless an adolescent, the Western-backed forces of Afghanistan’s authorities and the Taliban fought bitterly for the highway his store sits beside. In a type of gunbattles close to the police outpost, his mom, father and considered one of his sisters had been killed.

    “About 200 people living along on this road were martyred during the war,” Qadim stated bitterly.

    Farmers take a tea break whereas hoeing a discipline alongside Highway 1 within the Zabul province of Afghanistan, December 9, 2021. (David Guttenfelder/The New York Times)

    He left his household dwelling quickly after, one of many hundreds of thousands of the lengthy conflict’s internally displaced individuals who had been uprooted by the violence in rural areas and compelled into the safer cities. Zabul province, the place Qadim lives, was as soon as some of the violent of all the battle.

    From there he constructed a life in Kabul, with stays additionally within the cities of Kandahar and Herat, bastions of security because the conflict ebbed and flowed throughout the nation.

    He finally turned a truck driver for seven years, shuttling livestock, fruit and wooden numerous instances down the identical freeway that he now works beside: the 300-mile stretch of highway, as soon as deemed essentially the most harmful within the nation, that connects its two largest cities, Kandahar and Kabul.

    Others are additionally discovering new work by the highway, now that site visitors accidents pose a higher threat than being caught in a crossfire.

    Just a few miles north of the shop, Nur Ahmad, 18, and different grape farmers are planting their crops on the fringe of the freeway, as soon as too harmful for any agriculture.

    Planting proper up in opposition to a busy highway will not be supreme, however in Afghanistan there’s solely a lot arable land. Every sq. foot counts, particularly with the nation hampered by one of many worst droughts in many years, leaving many fields parched and their wells dry.

    “I was jobless so I came here,” Ahmad stated, his shovel placing the grime between sentences.

    A half-day’s drive from the younger grape farmer, amongst snow-capped mountains and the potato fields of Wardak province, Wahdat, 12, and his youthful brother sifted by the ruins of one other previous army outpost alongside the identical freeway. Their household of 5 is reeling from the 12 months’s poor harvest. More than half of Afghanistan’s inhabitants is at present not consuming sufficient, in line with the World Food Program.

    “We are hungry,” Wahdat stated.

    Snacks and drinks on the market at Hafiz Qadim’s store alongside Highway 1 on the border of Kandahar and Zabul provinces in Afghanistan, December 9, 2021. (David Guttenfelder/The New York Times)

    With his arms soiled and the shovel virtually greater than him, he had set out on that day’s quest to peel the metallic netting from a number of remaining barricades on the outpost to make use of to construct a rooster coop for his household’s eight chickens.

    Wahdat doesn’t bear in mind when the outpost he was disassembling was constructed, who occupied it or when it was deserted. He simply knew that at one level in his brief life he was advised to not go close to it. And now he might.

    The reminders of violence and the conflict are all over the place alongside the freeway: shell-raked buildings, destroyed bridges, the twisted hulks of automobiles and the deserted stays of these outposts that had provoked hourslong firefights and retaliatory airstrikes. But by far, the most typical cues that conflict had raged right here for years are the bomb craters.

    Some are deep. Some are shallow. Some you’ll be able to drive by and a few you must veer into oncoming site visitors and even pull right into a ditch to keep away from. They snap axles and pop tires. Sometimes youngsters will attempt to fill them with grime, incomes donations from passing drivers, solely to take the grime out and repeat the money seize scheme the subsequent day.

    The Bomb Crater Stop ’N’ Go depends upon its adjoining crater as a lot as a retailer elsewhere on the earth may want handy parking or inflatable promoting.

    “I can build a shop anywhere on this land,” Qadim stated, gesturing on the expanse of freeway in both route. “But if it is close to this plot,” he stated, pointing to the outlet, “it is good.”

    A moped pulled up, blasting music (closely discouraged by the Taliban), and the driving force paid him again for a number of liters of gas that he had taken the opposite day.

    Qadim doesn’t bear in mind when the bomb went off that made his gap within the highway. Or, moderately, bombs: Several blasts occurred at this spot, subsequent to a culvert.

    Road culverts and roadside bombs went hand in hand in the course of the conflict as a result of the shallow ditches and drainage pipes made hiding the explosives there simpler for the Taliban. And the close by outpost solely elevated the attractiveness of this goal.

    But now the culvert was only a culvert, the bomb crater only a pothole, and in contrast to so lots of his fellow countrymen who’re grappling with an financial disaster, Qadim was making more cash than he had in his total life: roughly $100 a month.

    Thanks to that mile marker of violence, the Bomb Crater Stop N’ Go has discovered a distinct segment market in the course of nowhere: some gasoline, some victuals and possibly a number of bars of soaps for individuals who travelled alongside a highway that was slowly coming again to life.

    “I don’t know what the future will be,” Qadim stated. “But I am happy.”

  • Taliban detain journalists over report on TV present censoring

    Taliban intelligence males got here within the night time to arrest three workers of TOLO TV, considered one of Afghanistan’s largest tv stations, a channel govt mentioned on Friday.

    The nation’s new rulers apparently didn’t like a narrative the broadcaster aired on their determination to ban overseas drama collection from native tv, mentioned Khpalwak Sapai, head of TOLONews, who was among the many three arrested.

    Sapai, and Nafay Khaleeq, the station’s authorized adviser, had been launched inside hours, however the station presenter, Bahram Aman was nonetheless in custody Friday, Sapai advised The Associated Press.

    The intelligence officers from the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) got here shortly after 8 pm Thursday to arrest the three. Sapai mentioned the station was nonetheless in search of the discharge of Aman.

    Moby Group, the media firm that owns TOLO TV, mentioned the detentions had been “for publishing Tolo news about banning of the foreign drama series,” a choice made by the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

    The Afghan-owned media firm has pursuits in South and Central Asia in addition to the Middle East and Africa.

    The arrests had been met with worldwide outcry, together with broader calls for from the UN and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) for the nation’s rulers to cease harassing native journalists and stifling free expression by way of threats, arrests and intimidation.

    “The Taliban must immediately release journalist Bahram Aman, a news presenter at independent broadcaster TOLOnews, and stop detaining and intimidating members of the Afghanistan press corps,” an announcement from the US-based CPJ mentioned.

    The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) urged the identical.

    “UNAMA expresses its deep concern about the detentions of journalists and the ever increasing restrictions being placed on media in Afghanistan,” it mentioned on Twitter. “Time for the Taliban to stop gagging & banning. Time for a constructive dialogue with the Afghan media community.”

    Neither the Taliban’s info and tradition ministry nor its intelligence company responded to requests from the AP for remark.

    The CPJ assertion mentioned the Taliban’s intelligence service denied the arrests.

    Since sweeping again to energy final August, the Taliban have despatched erratic indicators about what the media panorama will appear like beneath their rule, with worldwide journalists generally welcomed and Afghan media usually attacked.

    The ranks of journalists in Afghanistan thinned dramatically in the course of the chaotic days of the US withdrawal final August when tens of 1000’s of Afghans fled or had been evacuated by overseas governments and organisations.

    Many who stayed, and even those that haven’t had run-ins with the brand new Taliban rulers, say they’re afraid of what tomorrow would possibly deliver.

    The majority of TOLONews reporters and producers are girls as a result of Sapai, who was briefly detained, mentioned he made a particular effort to recruit and practice Afghan girls journalists.

    In December Reporters Without Borders and the Afghan Independent Journalist Association discovered that 231 out of 543 media retailers had closed, whereas greater than 6,400 journalists misplaced their jobs after the Taliban takeover.

    The retailers closed for lack of funds or as a result of journalists had left the nation, based on the report.