Michael Hughes: The agenda item during talks between the U.S. and Taliban in Doha this week was widely expected to be about potentially unfreezing Afghan assets for earthquake recovery efforts. Although that topic was discussed, the State Department said a “central focus” of the dialogue was the Taliban’s restrictions on Afghan women. This emphasis was
Akmal Dawi VOA News July 2, 2022 With the collapse of the former Afghan republic in August 2021, Azizullah Jahish suffered two losses. The new Taliban leadership fired him from his job as a civil engineer at the Ministry of Urban Development. Around the same time, he was informed that a U.S. Fulbright scholarship he
Akmal Dawi VOA News June 30, 2022 For Breshna Salaam, the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan last year meant a return to the same extreme poverty she and her mother had experienced under the Taliban’s first time in control of the country. In 1996, the Taliban fired Salaam’s mother from a public service job,
NBC News: John Sopko, who runs the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), said last week that two Biden administration agencies, the State Department and USAID, had told their staffers not to provide information or communicate with SIGAR, which is responsible for tracking waste and corruption. Click here to read more
Ayaz Gul VOA News June 30, 2022 ISLAMABAD — The United States has defended revival of its diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, saying “pure isolation” cannot help Washington achieve its objectives there. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West is leading the U.S. delegation to the first talks being held in person with senior Taliban representatives
Ayaz Gul VOA News June 29, 2022 ISLAMABAD — The United States and the Taliban are scheduled to hold talks in Qatar later this week that are expected to focus on economic and banking sanctions on Afghanistan, where last week’s devastating earthquake has worsened a humanitarian crisis. Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, along with senior
The Hindu: Aziz Amin, former principal secretary to former President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani, said China was wary of the Taliban and its promises and is concerned about the non-State actors in Afghanistan. “All the discussions between China and the Taliban have been as to how to neutralise these threats. But expecting the Taliban to
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty June 28, 2022 The United Nations’ humanitarian coordination organization, the OCHA, has launched an emergency appeal to help hundreds of thousands of people in areas of Afghanistan devastated by last week’s deadly earthquake. The 5.9-magnitude quake on June 22 struck villages in the mountainous regions of Paktika and Khost provinces near the country’s
Ayaz Gul VOA News June 25, 2022 ISLAMABAD — The Taliban renewed their call Saturday for the United States to unfreeze Afghanistan’s foreign funds and lift financial sanctions to help the war-torn country deal with its deadliest earthquake in more than two decades. The United Nations said humanitarian organizations, in coordination with Taliban authorities, are continuing
Ayaz Gul VOA News June 24, 2022 ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s Taliban announced Friday that the United States had freed one of the last two Afghans from the U.S. military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after 15 years. The ruling Islamist group said Asadullah Haroon’s release was the outcome of “direct and positive interaction” between the