Taliban fighters patrol in Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. (AP)Afghanistan-Taliban crisis: At least three people were killed and a dozen wounded after shots were fired at the protest against the removal of the Afghan flag by the Taliban in the eastern city of Jalalabad, reported Al Jazeera.
Amid efforts by the Taliban to set up a government, a Taliban commander and senior leader of the Haqqani Network militant group, Anas Haqqani, met former Afghan President Hamid Karzai for talks on Wednesday. According to Reuters, Karzai was accompanied by the old government’s main peace envoy, Abdullah Abdullah, in the meeting, said the Taliban official, who declined to be identified.
Meanwhile, at Kabul airport, the evacuation of diplomats and civilians from Afghanistan on military flights gathered momentum today. However, thousands of Afghans continue to race to the airport and borders to flee the country.
The United States said that the Taliban has agreed to allow “safe passage” from Afghanistan for civilians struggling to join a US-directed airlift after reports emerged of some civilians “being turned away or pushed back or even beaten” as they tried to reach the international airport.
People try to get into Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 16, 2021. (Reuters)
Three canines deployed with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) returned from Kabul after being airlifted from the country which has been taken over by the Taliban.
The three dogs — Maya, Bobby and Roobi — were brought to the Air Force Station Jamnagar in Gujarat by the IAF C-17 aircraft that evacuated several Indians.
On Wednesday, the dogs reached ITBP’s Chawala Camp to “familiar smells and sounds” after serving the country for three years in Afghanistan. Read more
Regime changes are capricious events, since there are many variables in play. It explains their mystique. The latest one in Afghanistan, third in the past two decades, is no exception.
The Mujahideen takeover in 1992 was a preordained event choreographed by the United Nations, which slipped out of its hands. The 1996 Taliban takeover was like a slow-motion talkie with Ahmad Shah Massoud simply disappearing from Kabul without a fight. Last Sunday’s dramatic developments lead to a sense of deja vu.
However, there are major differences, too — three, in particular. Unlike previous occasions, the Afghan state structures are largely intact, which was highlighted by the Taliban’s dramatic press conference in a grand setting, with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, within 48 hours of their march into Kabul. Read more
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said her government was coordinating with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to ensure the safe return of 200 people from West Bengal still stranded in Afghanistan.
Banerjee said most of those stuck in Afghanistan were people from Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Terai who were working there.
“The chief secretary will write to the Ministry of External Affairs to bring them back. We must first look after the safety of Indians,” she added. Read more
A top U.S. diplomat said on Wednesday the United States expects the Taliban to allow Afghans who wish to leave Afghanistan to depart safely, following reports that the group now in control of the country was blocking airport access.
The evacuation of thousands of U.S. diplomatic personnel and civilians as well as Afghan citizens who worked with the U.S. government has become more difficult since the Taliban seized power over the past week. (Reuters)
President Ashraf Ghani during his first adress to the nation after fleeing Afghanistan said he is 'in talks to return' home, news agency AFP reported.
Britain is working with the Taliban in Kabul on a "tactical, practical level" to evacuate citizens and eligible Afghans, Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan said on Wednesday, adding that the evacuation programme would last days, not weeks.
Western nations are scrambling to get diplomats, civilians and eligible Afghans out of Kabul as the Taliban make their first efforts to set up a government after their lightning sweep into the capital."It is interesting the Taliban have chosen to support this operation," ambassador Laurie Bristow told reporters in a television clip filmed from Kabul. (Reuters)
In his first address to the nation after fleeing Afghanistan, President Ashraf Ghani, speaking from exile in the United Arab Emirates said on Wednesday that he had left Kabul to prevent bloodshed and denied reports he took large sums of money with him as he departed the presidential palace.
'If I had stayed, I would be witnessing bloodshed in Kabul,' Ghani said in a video streamed on Facebook, his first public comments since it was confirmed he was in the UAE. He left on the advice of government officials, he added.
Ghani has been bitterly criticised by former ministers for leaving the country suddenly as Taliban forces entered Kabul on Sunday. - Reuters
With the Taliban now in control in Kabul, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar today said that New Delhi is "very carefully" following the developments in Afghanistan and India's focus is on ensuring the security and safe return of Indian nationals still in the war-torn country.
Jaishankar, while addressing reporters at the UN Security Council stakeout after chairing an open-debate on peacekeeping under India's current UNSC Presidency, said, "that (situation in Afghanistan) is really what has been very much the focus of my own engagements here, talking to the UN Secretary-General and other colleagues who are here as well as the US Secretary of State."
"At the moment we are, like everybody else, very carefully following developments in Afghanistan. I think our focus is on ensuring the security in Afghanistan and the safe return of Indian nationals who are there," he said in response to a question by PTI.
The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, which carries major political and strategic repercussions for India, will also hit a specific sector of the Indian market — dry fruit trade.
Afghanistan is the only source of jardalu (apricot) and dried fig (anjeer) for India. Traders have warned that if banking channels are not restored soon, Indian markets will feel the absence of these commodities. Click here to read our full report.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and top US. Army General Mark Milley are briefing President Joe Biden on Afghanistan at the White House on Wednesday, news agency Reuters reported citing a White House official.
Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s vice president since February last year, declared on Tuesday that since President Ashraf Ghani has fled the country and his whereabouts are unknown, he is now the country’s ‘legitimate’ caretaker president. Citing the Afghan constitution, Saleh made the announcement on Twitter, in which he said he was “reaching out to all leaders to secure their support & consensus.”
A follower of the slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, Saleh has said he will “never be under one ceiling with Taliban.” The vice president has for years been critical of Pakistan, and in recent tweets has denounced “Pak backed oppression & brutal dictatorship”. Click here to read more about him.
The United Arab Emirates says it has accepted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his family for "humanitarian considerations". Ghani fled Afghanistan just as the Taliban approached Kabul.
The statement carried by the UAE's state-run WAM news agency on Wednesday did not say where Ghani was in the country. It quoted the country's Foreign Ministry in a one-sentence statement.
About 5,000 diplomats, security staff, aid workers and Afghans have been evacuated from the capital Kabul in the last 24 hours, a Western official told Reuters on Wednesday. The evacuations by military flights will continue around the clock, he said, adding that clearing the chaos outside the airport was a challenge.
In Kabul, groups of Taliban fighters carrying long guns patrolled a well-to-do neighborhood that is home to many embassies as well as mansions of the Afghan elite on Wednesday. According to the Associated Press, residents say groups of armed men have been going door to door inquiring about Afghans who worked with the Americans or the deposed government. It is unclear if the gunmen are Taliban or criminals posing as militants.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the Taliban would be judged on their actions, not their words, after they sought to convince the world they would not seek revenge after seizing Afghanistan.
While addressing parliament, which was recalled from its summer break to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, Johnson ruled out any resumption of military action in the country and instead called on the United Nations to lead a humanitarian effort.
"We will judge this regime based on the choices it makes, and by its actions rather than by its words, on its attitude to terrorism, to crime and narcotics, as well as humanitarian access, and the rights of girls to receive an education," Johnson was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Meanwhile, videos from the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, a stronghold of the Northern Alliance militias that allied with the US against the Taliban in 2001, appear to show potential opposition figures gathering there. According to the Associated Press, it is the only province that hasn't yet fallen to the Taliban.
Those figures include members of the deposed government — Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who asserted on Twitter that he is the country’s rightful president and Defense Minister Gen. Bismillah Mohammadi — as well as Ahmad Massoud, the son of the slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. It's unclear if they intend to challenge to the Taliban, who seized most of the country in a matter of days last week.
Dozens of people gathered in the eastern city of Jalalabad to raise the national flag a day before Afghanistan's Independence Day, which commemorates the end of British rule in 1919. They lowered the Taliban flag — a white banner with an Islamic inscription — that the militants have raised in the areas they captured.
Video footage later showed the Taliban firing into the air and attacking people with batons to disperse the crowd. Babrak Amirzada, a reporter for a local news agency, said he and a TV cameraman from another agency were beaten by the Taliban as they tried to cover the unrest. (AP)
Afghanistan's central bank governor says that the country has some $9 billion in reserves abroad and not in physical cash inside the country. Ajmal Ahmady, the head of Afghanistan’s Central Bank, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that the majority of that — some $7 billion — is being held in US Federal Reserve bonds, assets, and gold.
Ahmady says Afghanistan’s holding of physical US dollars “is close to zero” as the country did not receive a planned cash shipment amid the Taliban offensive that swept the country last week. “The next shipment never arrived,” he wrote. “Seems like our partners had good intelligence as to what was going to happen.”
The Afghan embassy in Tajikistan has asked Interpol to detain Ashraf Ghani, Hamdallah Mohib and Fazal Mahmood Fazli on charges of stealing public wealth, TOLO news reported citing sources.
At least two people were killed and a dozen wounded during a shoot-out in Jalalabad. According to Al Jazeera, a 'fairly sizable part' of Jalalabad’s residents were resisting the replacement of Afghanistan’s national flag in the city by the Taliban banner.
“The Islamic Emirate doesn’t want women to be victims,” were the words of Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, Tuesday. Later, in its first presser after entering Kabul in Afghanistan, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said “We are going to allow women to work and study. We have got frameworks, of course. Women are going to be very active in the society but within the framework of Islam.”
But within hours of such sketchy assurances, social media platforms were abuzz with videos showing different women groups holding placards and protesting the Taliban rule. In sheer show of courage, the clips show women shouting slogans and demanding equal rights while being surrounded by armed Taliban fighters. Read the full report here.
Any recognition of the new government in Afghanistan should happen on an "international, not unilateral" basis, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told his Pakistan counterpart Imran Khan, as they discussed the unfolding situation in the crisis-torn country.
As part of a series of phone calls with world leaders to push for a coordinated strategy for the crisis in the region, Johnson spoke to Khan on Tuesday afternoon ahead of a call with US President Joe Biden.
"The Prime Minister stressed his commitment to work with international partners to avoid a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan and the wider region," said the Downing Street read-out of the call. "The Prime Minister underlined that any recognition of the new government in Afghanistan to happen on an international, not unilateral basis," the statement reads. (PTI)
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday it was an "illusion" to believe any nation in the NATO military alliance wanted to restart military action in Afghanistan after the Taliban took power.
"I really think that it is an illusion to believe that there is appetite amongst any of our partners for a continued military presence or for a military solution imposed by NATO in Afghanistan," Johnson told parliament."That idea ended with the combat mission in 2014, and I do not believe ... that deploying tens of thousands of British troops to fight the Taliban is an option." (Reuters)
A Taliban commander and senior leader of the Haqqani Network militant group, Anas Haqqani, has met former Afghan President Hamid Karzai for talks, a Taliban official said on Wednesday, amid efforts by the Taliban to set up a government.
Karzai was accompanied by the old government's main peace envoy, Abdullah Abdullah, in the meeting, said the Taliban official, who declined to be identified. He gave no more details.
The Haqqani Network is an important faction of the Taliban, who captured the capital, Kabul, on Sunday. The network, based on the border with Pakistan, was accused over recent years of some of the most deadly militant attacks in Afghanistan. (Reuters)
As thousands of Afghans attempt to flee Taliban rule following their brutal takeover, videos emerged on social media of a small group of women holding placards and demanding equal rights on the streets of Kabul — reportedly the first agitation of its kind since the militant group seized control of the country.
Four women in black abayas and hijabs were seen holding up signs and shouting slogans even as Taliban fighters patrolled nearby. In another clip, shared by an Al Jazeera correspondent, more women were seen marching through the streets, chanting slogans. The armed men seem to be pointing and speaking to the women, but don’t appear to be getting in the way of their protest. (Read more)
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Communist Party of India have issued the following joint statement.
The United States has suffered a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan. Twenty years after the toppling of the then Taliban regime, the Taliban are back in power. The collapse of the Ashraf Ghani led government and the National Army shows the hollowness of the nature of the State set up by the US and it's NATO allies.
The Afghan policy of the Indian government had been blindly following the Americans and this had resulted in its isolation in the region and is hence left with few options.
The earlier Taliban government of the 1990s was marked by an extreme fundamentalist approach, which was disastrous for women, girl children and suppressed ethnic minorities.
It is imperative that the new set-up controlled by the Taliban give due regard to the rights of women and acknowledge the rights of ethnic minorities.
The international community’s concern that Afghanistan should not become a haven for terrorist groups like the Islamic State and the Al Qaeda was collectively expressed by the United Nations Security Council in its emergency meeting on Afghanistan on August 16.
India must work closely with major regional powers to see that the Afghan people are able to live in a peaceful and stable environment. Indian government should immediately work towards safe evacuation of all stranded Indian citizens in Afghanistan.
The Taliban have blown up the statue of a Shiite militia leader who had fought against them during Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s, according to photos circulating on social media Wednesday. The statue depicted Abdul Ali Mazari, a militia leader killed by the Taliban in 1996, when the Islamic militants seized power from rival warlords.
Mazari was a champion of Afghanistan's ethnic Hazara minority, Shiites who were persecuted under the Sunni Taliban's earlier rule.
The statue stood in the central Bamyan province, where the Taliban infamously blew up two massive 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha carved into a mountain in 2001, shortly before the US-led invasion that drove them from power. The Taliban claimed the Buddhas violated Islam's prohibition on idolatry. (AP)
The world should give the Taliban the space to form a new government in Afghanistan and may discover that the insurgents cast as militants by the West for decades have become more reasonable, the head of the British army said on Wednesday.
Nick Carter, Britain's chief of the defence staff, said he was in contact with former Afghan President Hamid Karzai who Carter said would meet the Taliban on Wednesday. "We have to be patient, we have to hold our nerve and we have to give them the space to form a government and we have to give them the space to show their credentials," Carter told the BBC. "It may be that this Taliban is a different Taliban to the one that people remember from the 1990s."
"We may well discover, if we give them the space, that this Taliban is of course more reasonable but what we absolutely have to remember is that they are not a homogenous organisation - the Taliban is a group of disparate tribal figures that come from all over rural Afghanistan," he said.
"It may well be a Taliban that is more reasonable," Carter said. "It's less repressive. And indeed, if you look at the way it is governing Kabul at the moment, there are some indications that it is more reasonable." (Reuters)
Hours after Pakistan-backed Taliban fighters showed up on the outskirts of Kabul and their chiefs demanded transfer of power to avoid violence, President Ashraf Ghani fled the country to an undisclosed location, and wrote on his Facebook page: “To avoid bloodshed, I thought it would be better to leave”.
In 1992, when the mujahideen closed in on Kabul the last time, another Afghan President had tried to flee the country, but tragically failed, unlike Ghani. That leader was Mohammed Najibullah, Afghanistan’s USSR-backed ruler since 1987, who was intending to escape to friendly India. (Read more)
Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has said the central government will make all efforts, like it did in the 'Vande Bharat Mission', to bring back Indian citizens from Afghanistan, which has witnessed re-emergence of the militant group Taliban.
"The Indian government will bring its citizens back to their homes from Afghanistan, like we did in the Vande Bharat Mission, through Air India and the Indian Air Force (IAF) planes, whichever way is possible," Scindia told reporters late on Tuesday night in Madhya Pradesh's Shajapur, where he reached as part of his 'Jan Ashirwad Yatra'. Scindia said the Union government had started the evacuation from Afghanistan last Friday.
"The evacuation process continued for three days. But, when a flight was about to take off on Sunday, NOTAM (a notice to alert aircraft pilots of potential hazards along a flight route) was received following gunshots fired at the Kabul airport," he said. (PTI)
The Taliban took over Afghanistan with astonishing speed, but it appears unlikely that it will prove equally as fast in gaining control of most of the Afghan central bank’s roughly $10 billion in assets. The country's central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), is thought to hold foreign currency, gold and other treasures in its vaults, though the exact contents are unclear, according to an Afghan official.
Moreover, the vast majority of the assets are held outside Afghanistan, according to another source familiar with the matter, which may leave most of the hoard beyond Taliban's reach.
The bank's governor, Ajmal Ahmady, said in a Twitter thread, he left deputies in charge of the bank on Sunday, later flying out of Kabul airport after President Ashraf Ghani and other key officials had already fled.
The Taliban said in a statement on Saturday that the treasury, public facilities and government offices were the
property of the nation and "should be strictly guarded." (Reuters)
“I have been staying in a room provided by my Afghan friend for four days. Yesterday night also, I saw gun-toting Taliban forces patrolling outside the building where I am staying. I am scared to move out. We are desperately waiting for help,” said one of the Indians stranded in Taliban-governed Afghanistan.
He is among the many Indians, women and children included, waiting to be evacuated from Kabul in the wake of the crisis unravelling in Afghanistan after the Taliban had taken control of the country. (Read more)
The leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban will show themselves to the world, an official of the Islamist movement said on Wednesday, unlike during the past 20 years, when its leaders have lived largely in secret.
"Slowly, gradually, the world will see all our leaders, there will be no shadow of secrecy," the senior Taliban official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.
The official said Taliban members had been ordered not to celebrate their recent sweep of the country, which brought them to the capital, Kabul, on Sunday, and added that civilians should hand over weapons and ammunition. (Reuters)
Canada is the latest of Western powers to announce that they will not recognise the Taliban as Afghanistan's government.
"Canada has no plans to recognise the Taliban as the Government of Afghanistan," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters. "They have taken over and replaced a duly elected democratic government by force." This comes after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson nobody should "bilaterally" recognise Taliban. The EU too has echoed the sentiment.
China, Russia and Pakistan, however, have indicated their willingness to work with Taliban as a legitimate power.
The US has so far evacuated more than 3,200 people from Kabul, including 1,100 on Tuesday alone, the White House said, after the Taliban fighters seized power in Afghanistan.
Over 2,200 diplomats and other civilians have so far been evacuated on military flights out of Kabul, a Western security official in the Afghan capital told Reuters on Wednesday.
There was no clarity yet on when civilian flights will resume from Kabul, the official said. (Reuters)
An influential US Senator has said that America's "failure" to have an effective policy to deal with a "duplicitous" Pakistan is one of the key reasons for the current situation in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is accused of facilitating the Taliban rebellion, which ultimately resulted in the capturing of Afghanistan after being ousted from power about 20 years ago.
Expressing deep concern about the evolving humanitarian crisis in the war-torn nation, Senator Jack Reed, Chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, on Tuesday said, "There are no easy answers to how we got here. I would argue that several factors over the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan have shaped this outcome and must be considered as we move forward and engage in future conflicts."
"These factors," he said, "include a disastrous pivot to a war of choice in Iraq, a failure to have an effective policy to deal with a duplicitous Pakistan, a failure of mission creep from counter-terrorism; and a lack of ability to build an effective Afghan government and security forces." (PTI)
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar discussed the situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power in Kabul in his bilateral meetings in the United Nations, including with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
Jaishankar arrived in New York Monday as the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on the situation in Afghanistan, the second time in just over the 10 days that the powerful UN body met under India's Presidency for the month of August to discuss the unravelling situation in the war-torn country.
Following his meeting with Guterres in the UN headquarters on Tuesday, the minister tweeted, "Good to meet UN Secretary General @antonioguterres. Our discussions focused on Afghanistan, following upon the Security Council meeting yesterday." (PTI)
“Never ever think about coming back to Afghanistan if the Taliban continue to rule, we will try to escape from this place but if that does not happen, we will always be with you,” Sayed Qudrat’s mother told him over the phone.
The 25-year-old law student in Mysore is among many in Karnataka whose lives have turned upside down after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan. “As we speak, they have not harmed anyone in my family but nobody is confident that the Taliban or its law will treat citizens fairly. Even if my family wants to leave, they do not have a way. We request India and other countries to join hands to bring peace in my homeland,” Qadrat said.
While internet and connectivity remained in place allowing students to communicate with their families back in Afghanistan, there is concern that things could change once the Taliban gain complete control at the local level. (Read more)
President Joe Biden does not believe that the country should be "fighting and dying" in a war for the purpose of sustaining American military boots near Tajikistan or Pakistan or Iran, his National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said, defending the president's decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan.
"I would say that the President does not believe that the United States should be fighting and dying in a war for the purpose of sustaining American military boots near Tajikistan or Pakistan or Iran," Sullivan told reporters at a White House news conference on Tuesday.
"We would not agree that it is right to ask American soldiers to risk their lives for the purpose of maintaining a presence near Tajikistan," he said in response to a question.
Responding to a question, Sullivan agreed that some of the US weapons have landed in the hands of the Taliban and the Afghan National Security Forces have basically dismantled them. (PTI)
The Royal Salute was Afghanistan’s first national anthem, an instrumental adopted in 1926 when Amanullah Khan the Amir became King in the seventh year of his rule.
In the 95 years since, the country has had five other anthems, in tune with the change of regimes and rulers. And a 5-year period of no anthem. That soulless period began in 1996 when the Taliban first seized power. With their ban on music, the Qal’a-ye Islam, Qalb-e Asiya (Fortress of Islam, Heart of Asia) disappeared.
A battle song from 1919, it had been the anthem since 1992 when the mujahideen toppled Mohd Najibullah. The anthem returned after the Taliban’s ouster in 2001 following the 9/11 strikes. (Read more)
Members of the U.S. Congress, including many of President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats, said on Tuesday they were increasingly frustrated with events in Afghanistan, vowing to investigate what went wrong.
“The events of recent days have been the culmination of a series of mistakes made by Republican and Democratic administrations over the past 20 years,” Senator Bob Menendez, Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. (Read more)
The European Union has no immediate plans to recognise the Taliban after their sweeping victory in Afghanistan but will talk with the militants to ensure that European citizens and Afghans who have worked with the EU can leave safely, the bloc's top diplomat said Tuesday.
Speaking after leading emergency talks among the EU's foreign ministers, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also underlined the importance of opening talks with the Taliban to help prevent a new exodus of refugees as a humanitarian crisis unfolds in the conflict-ravaged country.
"We have to get in touch with the authorities in Kabul, whatever they are. The Taliban have won the war, so we will have to talk with them," Borrell told reporters. "This dialogue will also have to focus on the means to prevent the return of foreign terrorists."
"It's not a matter of official recognition, it's a matter of dealing with" the Taliban, Borrell said. (AP)
US President Joe Biden stood by his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation, where chaos reigned as Taliban overtook provincial capitals within a matter of days.
The western media, however, is not looking at Biden’s move kindly. US newspapers called it the President’s “cold-eyed view of the debacle”(Washington Post) while publishing images he “would want to avoid” (New York Times). (Read more)
Ezanullah, one of thousands of young Taliban fighters from the countryside who rode into Afghanistan’s capital over the weekend, had never seen anything like it.
The paved streets of Kabul were lined with towering apartment blocks, glass office buildings and shopping malls. The plush furniture inside the Interior Ministry was like “something I thought of in a dream,” said the 22-year-old fighter from the country’s mountainous east.
He said he plans to ask his commander if he can stay. “I don’t want to leave,” he said.
The encounter highlights how much Kabul and other Afghan cities have changed in the 20 years since the Taliban, who mainly hail from rugged rural areas, last ruled the country. An entire generation of Afghans has come of age under a modernizing, Western-backed government flush with development aid. (Read more)
CAPPING 24 hours of uncertainty with the US military taking control of Kabul’s airport following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, India Tuesday evacuated its entire embassy in the country’s capital, including Ambassador Rudrendra Tandon, on a special IAF aircraft.
This is the second time since 1996 that India has evacuated all its diplomats and personnel from the embassy — both times after the Taliban had captured power. Over the past few weeks, India had evacuated its diplomatic staff from consulates in Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif due to the Taliban surge, and earlier from the consulates in Herat and Jalalabad due to Covid. (Read more)
The US Air Force has said that its Office of Special Investigations is reviewing an incident at the Kabul airport on Monday in which multiple people were killed when hundreds of Afghan civilians desperate to leave the country swarmed a C-17 cargo plane as it was attempting to take off.
The Air Force did not say how many people died.
It said human remains were found in the plane's wheel well after it landed at al-Udeid Air Base in the Gulf state of Qatar. Videos of the incident, including images of people falling from the aircraft as it took off, were widely viewed on social media. The images captured the initial chaos of a US-directed evacuation that followed the Taliban's takeover of the country. (Read more)
The Royal Salute was Afghanistan’s first national anthem, an instrumental adopted in 1926 when Amanullah Khan the Amir became King in the seventh year of his rule.
In the 95 years since, the country has had five other anthems, in tune with the change of regimes and rulers. And a 5-year period of no anthem. That soulless period began in 1996 when the Taliban first seized power. With their ban on music, the Qal’a-ye Islam, Qalb-e Asiya (Fortress of Islam, Heart of Asia) disappeared. Read More
The world over, television screens are full of images of the extraordinary takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. This time, the Taliban have done it even faster than in 1996. An unfolding humanitarian tragedy has engulfed the country.
Thousands of Afghan citizens are fleeing in an attempt to put distance between themselves and the Taliban. With neighbouring countries still averse to admitting refugees from Afghanistan through overland routes, air travel out of Kabul seems the only option.
Chilling images of stampedes at Kabul airport, including of people running alongside a US Air Force plane and desperate stowaways plummeting to their deaths have shaken the global conscience. Read more
US intelligence agencies had warned of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and a rapid collapse of the Afghan military, raising questions as to why the Joe Biden administration seemed "ill-prepared to deal with the Taliban's final push into Kabul", according to a leading American daily.
The New York Times said that according to classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer, there was the grim prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
The assessment warned of the "rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly." (PTI)
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas Tuesday said that the west will judge the Taliban "by their actions". His remarks come just hours after the Taliban held their first official press conference, convincing world powers, and a fearful population that they have changed.
Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday told an Afghan delegation, led by former vice president Muhammad Younas Qanooni, that Pakistan was committed to supporting an inclusive government in Afghanistan. The delegation of political leaders from Afghanistan arrived here on Sunday for talks amidst a whirlwind takeover of the country by the Taliban insurgents. Khan's Office said in a statement that he underlined that no other country is more desirous of peace and stability in Afghanistan than Pakistan. (PTI)
According to the Associated Press, the Russian ambassador to Afghanistan said he had a "constructive and positive meeting" with Taliban representatives in Kabul to discuss security for the Russian diplomatic mission. Ambassador Dmitry Zhirnov told Russian state TV Tuesday that the meeting was dedicated exclusively to the security of the embassy and involved senior Taliban representatives in the city.
During the press conference, Taliban spokesman Mujahid assured the international community saying that Afghanistan's soil is not going to be used against any nation.
The Taliban say that they can assure the world that Afghanistan will no longer be a hub for poppy cultivation or for the drug business. Spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid also said that they require the world to support them.
The Taliban say that the security of embassies in Kabul is of 'crucial importance to them. 'We would like to assure all foreign countries that our forces are there to ensure the security of all embassies, missions, international organizations, and aid agencies,' Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said during the press conference.
The Taliban spokesperson says that they want all media outlets to continue their activities. He, however, suggested three things: No broadcast should contradict Islamic values, they should be impartial, no one should broadcast anything that goes against our national interests.
The Taliban has pledged to secure Afghanistan after the insurgents took over the country following a blitz that lasted over a week. In its first press conference, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the insurgents sought no revenge and that "everyone is forgiven".
Taliban spokesperson says women can work in the health sector and other sectors where they are needed, adds there will be no discrimination against women.