Taliban commit ‘house-to-house executions’ in Kabul after US exit as chilling audio demonstrates Afghans’ fear

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Fox News: President Biden did not deny a Politico report, confirmed by Fox News, that U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies in an effort to grant them entry to the airport which resulted in outrage from military officials behind the scenes. The president said “there may have been” such a list. “Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” one defense official told Politico. Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban Takes Control Of Kabul Airport, Celebrates ‘Full Independence’ After U.S. Pullout

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Taliban fighters (file photo)

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 31, 2021

The Taliban, now in full control of Kabul’s airport with the final departure of foreign forces, has clashed with resistance fighters in the northeast as the rest of the world watches to see if the militants live up to their promises of a more tolerant and open brand of rule compared with their first stint in power.

The last U.S. military aircraft left the airport’s runway overnight, marking the end of a 20-year presence in Afghanistan and the United States’ longest war, following a chaotic final evacuation that left behind thousands of Afghans looking to escape Taliban rule.

The Taliban said Afghanistan had “gained full independence” with the U.S. withdrawal, while also warning that the Taliban’s victory was a “lesson for other invaders.”

Just hours after the last U.S. military plane took off, reports of fighting emerged on August 31 from the one part of Afghanistan not under Taliban control: Panjshir Province 100 kilometers northeast of the capital, long a pocket of resistance to the militants.

At least seven people were killed in the fighting, according to local media reports and sources quoted by international news agencies.

The resistance, led by Ahmad Masud, the son of a revered Afghan resistance fighter, has said it would prefer negotiations with the Taliban, though it also has gathered thousands of armed men “ready to fight.”

The violence is a stark reminder of the precarious situation in the country.

Celebratory gunfire could be heard as the militants cheered what a spokesman called the regaining of “full independence.

Zabihullah Mujahid also said that the hard-line Islamist group wished to have “good relations with the U.S. and the world.”

The group has urged foreign diplomatic missions to stay in the country, but most countries have closed their embassies.

The militants have said they will allow normal travel after assuming control of Kabul airport.

While the United States suspended its diplomatic presence in Kabul, transferring operations to the Qatari capital, Doha, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington would continue its “relentless efforts” to help Americans — and Afghans with U.S. passports — to leave Afghanistan if they want to.

He said the Taliban needed to earn its legitimacy and would be judged on the extent to which it fulfilled its commitments to not carry out violent reprisals in Afghanistan, respect human and women’s rights, and not allow the country to become a base for international terrorism.

U.S. President Joe Biden will address the nation on August 31 in Washington after earlier noting his decision to stick to an August 31 deadline for withdrawal was the “unanimous recommendation” of military commanders.

Since the Western-backed government and Afghan army collapsed under a lightning Taliban offensive, thousands of Afghans have fled their homes fearing a repeat of the Taliban’s brutal rule between 1996 and 2001.

The Taliban has said it was in talks with “all factions” to reach an agreement on a future government, and repeatedly promised a more tolerant and open brand of rule compared with their first stint in power.

However, many reports have said summary executions and house to house searches for those who worked with international groups or the previous government are occurring across the country.

Speaking under the condition of anonymity, a member of Afghanistan’s tiny Sikh minority in Kabul told RFE/RL that Sikhs and Hindus “haven’t left their homes” since the Taliban seized power.

“Currently, we feel very uncertain and do not know what will happen after this. We want the international community and the U.S. to not leave us alone.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that the Taliban was discussing the management of Kabul’s international airport with Qatar and Turkey.

He insisted that the Islamist group secure the facility quickly so that people who want to leave Afghanistan can do so using commercial flights.

During a visit to Islamabad, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that Berlin was closely watching whether the Taliban delivers on its pledges to form an inclusive government and to allow people to leave the country if they choose.

Maas said Germany was coordinating with Pakistan for the evacuation of its citizens from Afghanistan and also “preparing in close cooperation with others to organize charter flights as soon as Kabul airport is operable again.”

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, said he expected that a new “consensus government will be formed in the coming days.”

Qureshi also urged the international community to act to prevent an ‘economic collapse” in Afghanistan, which he said would create more instability and a further exodus of Afghans.

Amid anxiety about their future and what the new government will look like, Afghans woke up with no international troop presence in their country for the first time in two decades.

“The city is quiet,” Lotfullah, a central Kabul resident, told the dpa news agency.

Most shops in the Shahr-e Nau district were open, but only have a few customers, he said.

In the western district of the Dasht-e Barchi, another resident said private and public schools had reopened for the first time since the Taliban takeover.

The BBC reported that huge queues have been forming outside shuttered banks, ATMs, and money transfer services in Afghanistan.

With reporting by AFP, AP, dpa, the BBC, and Reuters

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

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US Says Its Military Presence in Afghanistan is Over

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Jeff Seldin
VOA News
August 30, 2021

The United States’ two-decadeslong presence in Afghanistan is over.

The last planes left the Kabul airport at 3:29 p.m. EST, one minute before midnight in Kabul, said Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command.

A senior Taliban official told VOA, “All foreign occupation forces withdrew from the country moments ago.”

Word of the final U.S. flights came even as the White House and the Pentagon promised they would continue to help evacuate Americans and vulnerable Afghans from Kabul up until “the very end,” describing the evacuation as the largest airlift in U.S. military history.

“We continue to have the capability to evacuate and fly out those until the very end,” Army Major General William “Hank” Taylor, deputy director for regional operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.

The White House and the Pentagon said that as of early Monday, a total of 116,700 people have been evacuated following the Taliban’s takeover earlier in August of Afghanistan, including 1,200 or so people flown out on 26 U.S. military flights and two coalition flights from Sunday into Monday.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday that some 6,000 Americans have left Afghanistan during that time but “there are still a small number” who had yet to make it out.

“We are continuing to work to evacuate American citizens,” Psaki added. “Our commitment is enduring, and our commitment does not waiver, even as we bring our men and women from the military home.”

Psaki also denied reports that the U.S. evacuation of Afghan partners, specifically Special Immigrant Visa applicants, stopped following last Thursday’s suicide bombing, claimed by Islamic State’s Khorasan province, which killed at least 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members.

“The president has made clear to his commanders that they should stop at nothing to make sure that ISIS pays for the death of those American service members at the Kabul airport,” Psaki said, using another acronym for the group. “They have the authorities necessary.”

Still, both the White House and the Pentagon described the conditions on the ground during the final hours of the U.S. military-led evacuation as both fluid and dangerous, highlighted by an overnight rocket attack on the Kabul airport, also claimed by IS-Khorasan.

Defense officials said the attackers fired as many as five rockets at the airport. Three of them missed the airfield entirely, while a fourth landed at the airport without causing any significant damage.

A fifth rocket was taken out by U.S. defense systems at the airport, officials said.

“The threat stream is still real, it’s still active and in many cases, it’s still specific,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters, adding, “We have to try to be as quick and as nimble as they are.”

In the meantime, the U.S. is also coming under increased criticism for some of its security efforts, including a drone strike Sunday in Kabul.

U.S. military officials say the strike killed IS-Khorasan operatives who were loading explosives into a vehicle with the intent of carrying out an attack on the airport, but media reports, including one by The New York Times, said the strike or secondary explosions killed as many as nine civilians, among them children.

Kirby on Monday stood by the initial assessment of an imminent threat but added the military is “not in a position to dispute” accounts that bystanders, including children, were killed.

“No military on the face of the Earth works harder to avoid civilian casualties than the United States military, and nobody wants to see innocent life taken,” he said. “We take it very, very seriously.”

Airlift winds down     

As the U.S. deadline neared, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Monday the Afghan people need governments, humanitarians and ordinary people “to stay with them and stay the course.”

“As people across the world welcome Afghans into their communities and homes, we cannot forget those who have been left behind,” Grandi said in a statement. “We must meet the critical humanitarian needs in Afghanistan and in countries around the region, and our response must be robust and urgent. Standing by the people of Afghanistan means standing by all of them, whether they have sought safety abroad or are picking up the pieces of their lives at home.”

VOA White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara  and VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report.

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Dramatic Power Shift in Afghanistan Seen as Strategic Setback for India

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Anjana Pasricha
VOA News
August 30, 2021

NEW DELHI – Less than six years ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated Afghanistan’s Parliament building in Kabul — a landmark symbol of the fledgling democracy that New Delhi hoped would become a hedge against its rival, Pakistan.

But with the dramatic power shift after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, India faces a strategic setback in a region where it confronts Pakistan and its other rival, China, along tense borders.

Analysts say with Pakistan once again in a dominant position in Afghanistan and China seeking to boost its clout in the South Asian region, India could see testing times.

“The changing equations in Afghanistan present a challenge for India,” Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said Sunday, addressing the Defense Services Staff Colleges.

Key concerns

One of India’s key concerns is that Afghanistan will become a haven for militants from Pakistan and that the Taliban victory will embolden anti-India terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which have been at the forefront of a three-decade-long violent separatist insurgency in Indian Kashmir.

“There is no doubt that the Taliban victory in Afghanistan is going to have an inspirational effect on Islamist opposition everywhere, including Kashmir,” said Gautam Mukhopadhaya, the former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan. “India will have to be on guard not only in Kashmir but the rest of India, too, where an Islamist victory in the neighborhood could fire up fringe elements.”

For India, the huge gains it made by building “soft power” in Afghanistan in the wake of the 2001 U.S. invasion of the country could be in jeopardy.

New Delhi has invested $3 billion in development projects that included schools, roads, dams and hospitals in all of Afghanistan’s 34 districts in the last two decades.

India gave scholarships to thousands of Afghans to study in India and established close links with ousted Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani. India also helped organize trade routes to the landlocked country.

“No matter how you slice it, New Delhi has been dealt a strategic blow. Not only will the Taliban be in control, but India’s rivals, Pakistan and China, will be poised to step up their role in Afghanistan,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Wilson Center in Washington. “It’s a pretty major change for India. Once Afghanistan’s closest partner in South Asia, India may well not even have a formal relationship with Kabul.”

Analysts say China could step in to fill the gap in providing much-needed economic assistance as it seeks to expand its influence deeper into Central Asia.

Meanwhile, India has no option but to wait and watch and keep channels of communication open to the Taliban.

Domestic media reports say the country opened a line to the group in June, but New Delhi has been criticized for doing it too late. India has evacuated its embassy in Kabul and is still trying to bring back citizens left behind.

Much of India’s hopes on continuing to play a role in Afghanistan will depend on the policies that the Taliban, which have been projecting a moderate public face, put in place, analysts say.

The Taliban, long an anti-India group, have made an outreach saying they would like New Delhi to continue its development work in Afghanistan. In a statement on the group’s social media platforms, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, deputy head of the Taliban’s office in Doha, said Sunday the group gives due importance to political, economic and trade ties with India and wants these to continue.

Some analysts say such statements show that the “game is far from over.”

“There are windows open, and let us see if they can be converted into doors,” South Asia expert Sukh Deo Muni said in New Delhi. “All is certainly not lost. Let us see what kind of Taliban regime emerges. I would not rush to this conclusion that India has lost. It’s a fluid situation.”

Indian officials have made no comments, and New Delhi will remain cautious.

“It is to be seen if Pakistan tries to prevent such overtures or sabotages them,” Mukhopadhaya pointed out. “Pakistan seems to want to bring in China to reinforce its control over Afghanistan by economic means.”

How ties shape up between India and Afghanistan will hinge on the Taliban, experts say.

“India can have leverage if the Taliban feels that a relationship with India is something worth pursuing,” according to Kugelman. “The Taliban may conclude it’s better off engaging commercially with countries it’s more comfortable with, like China, Pakistan and Turkey.”

Skepticism on whether the Taliban will change runs deep in India, which has bitter memories of the group that in 1999 gave safe passage to Pakistan to the hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane that had landed in Kandahar. New Delhi also remains deeply wary of the Taliban’s close links to Pakistan’s military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.

“It is hard for a leopard to change its spots. The true nature of the Taliban and its control by Pakistan will show up, especially down the rank and file,” said Mukhopadhaya.

But as equations change in South Asia, where Beijing has long been challenging its predominant position, New Delhi has indicated it will continue to firm up strategic alliances with the United States and other countries that have been working together to counter a rising China.

“We are changing our strategy, and the formation of Quad underlines this,” Defense Minister Singh said Sunday.

The Quad is an informal grouping of India, the United States, Japan and Australia.

Taliban Militants Said To Have Arrested Prominent Afghan Cleric

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By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
August 30, 2021

The family of influential Afghan cleric Maulvi Mohammad says he has been arrested by the Taliban.

The hard-line Islamist group took control of Afghanistan more than two weeks ago, triggering concerns that it will return the war-torn country to the repressive rule it imposed when last in power from 1996-2001.

Sardar Zadran’s son Samiullah told RFE/RL on August 30 that Taliban fighters in a car drove his father away from his home in the eastern province of Khost the previous day.

A photo was later released appearing to show Sardar Zadran, the former head of the Khost council of religious scholars, blindfolded and seated.

Samiullah said he didn’t know the reason for the arrest.

Earlier, the family of an Afghan folk singer and musician, Fawad Andarabi, said he had been shot dead by a Taliban fighter late last week.

In reaction to Andarabi’s alleged killing, Agnes Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, cited “mounting evidence that the Taliban of 2021 is the same as the intolerant, violent, repressive Taliban of 2001.”

“20 years later. Nothing has changed on that front,” Callamard tweeted.

This story is based on reporting by Radio Azadi correspondents on the ground in Afghanistan. Their names are being withheld for their protection.

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

First WHO Health Supplies Land in Taliban-Held Afghanistan

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Ayaz Gul
VOA News
August 30, 2021

ISLAMABAD – The World Health Organization says an aircraft provided by Pakistan Monday delivered the first shipment of much-needed medicine and health supplies to Afghanistan since the country came under control of the Taliban.

The humanitarian assistance was loaded in Dubai and flown directly to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, said a WHO statement. The supplies will be immediately delivered to 40 health facilities in 29 provinces across Afghanistan.

The Taliban marched into Kabul on August 15 after their weeklong stunning battlefield advances overran 33 of the country’s 34 provinces without facing any significant resistance from security forces of the ousted Afghan government.

The WHO said Monday that a reliable humanitarian air bridge is urgently required to scale up the collective humanitarian effort.

“After days of non-stop work to find a solution, I am very pleased to say that we have now been able to partially replenish stocks of health facilities in Afghanistan and ensure that — for now – WHO-supported health services can continue,” said Dr. Ahmed Al Mandhari, WHO regional director for the eastern Mediterranean.

The 12.5 metric ton supplies delivered consist of trauma kits and interagency emergency health kits, and are enough to cover the basic health needs of more than 200,000 people, as well as provide 3,500 surgical procedures and treat 6,500 trauma patients.

The WHO noted that Monday’s flight was the first of three planned with Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to fill urgent shortages in medicine and medical supplies in Afghanistan.

Al-Mandhari thanked the Pakistani government for its efforts to support the WHO and the people of Afghanistan.

“Humanitarian agencies such as WHO have faced enormous challenges in sending life-saving supplies to Afghanistan in recent weeks due to security and logistics constraints. The support of the Pakistani people has been timely and life-saving,” he added.

The security crisis stemming from the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and ensuing efforts by the U.S.-led Western nations to evacuate their personnel along with Afghan allies through the beleaguered Kabul airport had disrupted crucial humanitarian supplies into the conflict-torn country.

The WHO called for the world to remain focused on meeting the needs of the people of Afghanistan at this critical time.

“The world’s attention over the past two weeks has been focused on the air evacuation from Kabul airport. But the demanding humanitarian work of meeting the needs of tens of millions of vulnerable Afghans who remain in the country is now beginning,” the world body said.

On Sunday, UNICEF said in a statement that children were particularly bearing the brunt of the increased conflict and insecurity in the past weeks. The agency noted that children are “at greater risk than ever” in the wake of a security crisis, skyrocketing food prices, a severe drought, the spread of the coronavirus, and upcoming harsh winter conditions.

“If the current trend continues, UNICEF predicts that one million children under 5 in Afghanistan will suffer from severe acute malnutrition — a life-threatening disease.”

More than 4 million children, including 2.2 million girls, are out of school while around 300,000 children have been forced out of their homes due to the conflict, according to UNICEF.

The agency warned partners against cutting aid to Afghanistan. “The needs of the children of Afghanistan have never been greater. We cannot abandon them now.”

China Sees Opportunity After America’s Withdrawal From Afghanistan. But Can Beijing Do Any Better?

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Time: Today, in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal, Chinese strategists are thinking bigger, and eyeing deals to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral deposits. An Afghan parallel to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor—the $50 billion development of factories, power plants and pipelines from Kashgar in Xinjiang province to the Pakistani port of Gwadar in the Persian Gulf—might even be on the cards. Click here to read more (external link).