Afghanistan International: Anwar Zeb Khan, a representative of Bajaur in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provincial Assembly of Pakistan, has revealed that hundreds of insurgents from Afghanistan have entered the Bajaur region and seized control of five checkpoints. According to Khan, the insurgents have raised the flag of the Afghan Taliban in the area. Click here to read more (external link).
UK Special Forces face War Crime allegations in Syria and Afghanistan
Khaama: The UK Ministry of Defence has recently announced that ten special forces soldiers may face legal action for committing war crimes in Syria and Afghanistan. According to British media reports citing the Ministry of Defence, these soldiers could be prosecuted for actions such as the killing of civilians or the excessive use of force during operations. Click here to read more (external link).
Activists urge England to forfeit cricket match against Afghanistan
Amu: Women’s rights activists have called for England’s men’s cricket team to forfeit its scheduled match against Afghanistan in the ICC Champions Trophy group stage on February 26. The demand comes in response to the Taliban’s “systematic oppression” of women since taking control of Afghanistan in August 2021. The Women’s Rights Network (WRN) issued a statement on Monday urging England not only to forgo the February match but also to boycott all sporting competitions against Afghanistan’s national teams. Click here to read more (external link).
NRF Claims Attack on Taliban Minister’s Convoy in Kabul
Afghanistan International: The National Resistance Front (NRF) announced on Tuesday that it had targeted the convoy of Abdul Latif Mansour, the Taliban’s Minister of Energy and Water, in the Khair Khana area of northern Kabul. According to an NRF statement, the attack resulted in the death of one of the minister’s guards and injuries to two others. Click here to read more (external link).
Amid Rising Tensions with Taliban, Pakistan’s ISI Chief Meets Tajik President
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon
Afghanistan International: Emomali Rahmon, the President of Tajikistan, met with General Asim Munir, the Director-General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in Dushanbe. It is not yet clear whether the ISI chief met with the leaders of the National Resistance Front during his visit. Previously, some Pakistani diplomats had warned that if the Taliban failed to curb attacks by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Pakistan might consider forging ties with groups opposed to the Taliban. Click here to read more (external link).
Taliban denies rumors of Pakistani military presence in Wakhan, Badakhshan
Khaama: Amid increasing rumors about the presence of Pakistani military forces in Wakhan, Badakhshan province of Afghanistan, a spokesperson for the Taliban police command in Badakhshan addressed the issue. Following clashes between the Taliban and Pakistani military forces, some activists and users close to the Pakistani army claimed that if the conflict between the Taliban border forces and Pakistan continues, Pakistani forces will capture Wakhan. Click here to read more (external link).
Tolo News in Dari – December 31, 2024
Health center closes in Kandahar after WHO halts funding: Sources
Amu: The World Health Organization (WHO) has suspended funding for a 30-bed trauma center in Spin Boldak, Kandahar Province, citing repeated interference and pressure from Taliban health officials, two sources said. The facility has since been shut down, the sources added. The closure, confirmed on Tuesday, comes after the Taliban’s health director for Kandahar made multiple attempts to relocate the facility to an older, less-equipped building in the district, the sources said. Click here to read more (external link).
Traffic Accidents in Afghanistan: The Taliban’s Inability to Establish Road Order and Security
Taliban Militants in Kabul (file photo)
8am: The Taliban have no traffic control stations or patrol units to regulate traffic flow on any of Afghanistan’s highways. All Taliban traffic police structures are concentrated in cities and focus not on regulating traffic but on extorting money from people and harassing them. Numerous images shared by citizens show that the Taliban when inspecting vehicles, pay no attention to mechanical defects or driver health. Instead, they look for issues such as women traveling without a male guardian, passengers without beards, or individuals not wearing hats. The Taliban have often punished drivers for transporting women without Mahram (male guardians) or for playing music but have not penalized speeding overloading, or technical faults. Click here to read more (external link).
Islamabad, Afghan Taliban Locked In Stalemate Over Pakistani Militants
By Abubakar Siddique
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
December 30, 2024
The latest Pakistani air strikes inside Afghanistan have rekindled tensions between Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and Islamabad, who were once former allies.
While Pakistan has said it was targeting militant hideouts, Taliban officials said the December 24 attacks killed some 50 civilians. The Afghan Defense Ministry vowed that it “will not leave this despicable act unanswered.”
Taliban officials said most of the victims were ethnic Pashtun refugees from Pakistan’s Waziristan region and were targeted just across the border in Barmal, a district in the southeastern Afghan province of Paktika.
Pakistan defended the air strikes, saying its security forces acted along its western border with Afghanistan to “protect Pakistani people from terrorists.”
Pakistani authorities have repeatedly blamed the Taliban, the militant group that claimed power again in Afghanistan in August 2021, for providing “hideouts and sanctuaries” to the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an Islamist militant group designated a terrorist organization by the United States. The TTP is banned in Pakistan and seeks to overthrow the government in Islamabad.
Experts say the latest tensions are indicative of the deadlock between the two neighbors, despite Islamabad’s past support for Taliban militants.
“The Taliban and Pakistan are in a bind over the TTP,” says Sami Yousafzai, a veteran Afghan journalist and commentator. “Both have no good options and face dilemmas.”
Following the militant group’s return to power in 2021, the Taliban government facilitated peace talks between Islamabad and the TTP.
But the truce it brokered failed in November 2022.
Since then, the Taliban has resisted Pakistani demands to go after its longtime ideological and organizational ally, the TTP, by expelling it from Afghanistan or pressuring it to surrender to Islamabad. Pakistan has accused the Taliban of supporting terrorism by backing the TTP.
In Pakistan, the TTP has waged a violent campaign to reestablish control in the country’s western border regions abutting Afghanistan. For the last two decades, TTP militants have controlled parts of this region, fighting an ongoing battle against the Pakistani military.
Hundreds of Pakistani security forces have been killed in the TTP attacks, while local civilians have suffered under the militant group’s draconian rule. On December 21, the TTP claimed credit for killing 16 soldiers in South Waziristan.
The Taliban government is reluctant to move against the TTP, Yousafzai says, because the militant group’s presence in Afghanistan is “just one part of a very complicated problem.”
Yousafzai says Islamabad’s demand that the Afghan Taliban solve the TTP issue “is not practical” because of the high anti-Pakistan sentiment among Afghans. “The Taliban is keen on ridding itself of the label that it once served Islamabad’s interests,” he says.
Islamabad partnered with Washington in its war on terror after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. But Pakistan also provided clandestine support to the Taliban insurgency that ultimately toppled the pro-Western Afghan republic.
This has won Pakistan few friends among Afghans, who blame Islamabad for their country’s troubles.
Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, news director at the Khorasan Diary, a website tracking militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, says there is now little convergence of interests between the Taliban and Pakistan.
“Islamabad has exhausted all of its options to pressure the Taliban,” he says.
The December 24 strikes were the fourth time Pakistani jets have bombed targets inside Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Since October 2023, Islamabad has expelled nearly 1 million undocumented Afghans. Pakistan has said those Afghans were living in the country illegally. Some of those expelled went to their ancestral villages, including in Paktika.
Pakistan has repeatedly closed its seaport and border crossings for trade with landlocked Afghanistan, further squeezing the country’s struggling economy under the Taliban.
“None of these tactics has worked in the past, and it is unlikely to pressure the Taliban to abandon the TTP now,” he said.
Mehsud says many in the Taliban feel “strongly obliged” to help the TTP, because it fought against the Pakistani military in the past to protect the Taliban and hosted their leaders and members while they were in exile in the country. “They are brothers in arms because of the ideological and ethnic relations,” he says.
Successive TTP leaders have pledged religious allegiance to the Taliban leaders, who preach an ultra-conservative form of Islam. Leaders of both groups are ethnic Pashtuns and have deep personal ties. Islamabad has also claimed a growing number of Afghans are fighting for the TTP.
There is little hope that the impasse between the two sides can be solved anytime soon. “The Afghan Taliban is likely to push for gaining something major for the TTP, such as a formal recognition of its control over some region in Pakistan,” Mehsud says.
But he sees Islamabad as unwilling to make such sweeping concessions.
Residents of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, where the TTP is most active, have held demonstrations against the militant group’s return.
“Pakistan is likely to continue diplomatic engagement with the Taliban and kinetic actions against the TTP simultaneously,” he said.
On December 24, Pakistan’s special representative to Afghanistan, Mohammad Sadiq, held talks with senior Taliban officials as his country’s military bombed alleged TTP hideouts inside the country.
Carrying out air strikes while diplomatic efforts are ongoing demonstrates Islamabad’s “complete disregard for another nation’s prestige and sovereignty,” says Obaidullah Baheer, visiting fellow at the South Asia Center at the London School of Economics.
He says Islamabad needs a “very clear strategy” for dealing with the TTP, because it cannot expect the Afghan Taliban to make an enemy out of its ally.
Another consideration, Baheer says, is that the Taliban fears pushing the TTP into the arms of Islamic State-Khorasan. The ultraradical group, a Taliban archenemy, claimed responsibility for killing a Taliban minister on December 11.
“The TTP is probably the only leverage the Taliban has over Pakistan,” Baheer says.