The Taliban-led government is pushing forward with the ambitious Qosh Tepa canal project despite concerns over its impact. The waterway taps the Amu Darya River, a key water source that runs through Afghanistan and Central Asia. While Afghan farmers await a potential agricultural boon, neighboring states Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have expressed concern over possible damage to water security and farming in the area.
Reuters: Sanaullah Ghafari, the 29-year-old leader of the Afghan branch of Islamic State, has overseen its transformation into one of the most fearsome branches of the global Islamist network, capable of operations far from its bases in the borderlands of Afghanistan. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Friday’s mass shooting at a concert hall near Moscow that killed at least 137 people. U.S. officials have said they have intelligence indicating it was the Afghan branch, Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), that was responsible. Click here to read more (external link).
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US soldiers (file photo)
The Hill: When the United States finally left Afghanistan amid the chaos that claimed the lives of 170 civilians and 13 U.S. service personnel on Aug. 30, 2021, at Hamid Karzai International Airport, it was not the most disastrous retreat from Kabul ever suffered. In January 1842, nearly 16,000 souls, mostly civilian men, women and children, escaped from Kabul under the command of British Major General William Elphinstone headed for Jalalabad 90 miles away. Only one survived — the surgeon William Brydon. Click here to read more (external link).
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Khaama: According to media reports, Taliban forces have reportedly surrounded the house of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of Hizb-e-Islami, in Kabul. It has been said that the controversy revolves around the land of Hekmatyar’s house; according to the Taliban, it belongs to the Ministry of Defense of Afghanistan. Habib al-Rahman, Hekmatyar’s son, wrote in a post on his social media platform X that their house is not surrounded, but they are changing their residence in Kabul. According to him, the leader of Hizb-e-Islami lived in a house provided by the previous government after the peace agreement, while the Taliban have not accepted this agreement. Click here to read more (external link).
Lavrov
Ariana: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed that American forces, during their 20 years presence in Afghanistan, were not fighting terrorism, adding they created organizations which later became al-Qaeda. “They created agencies and organisations there, which later became al-Qaeda. Then they began to use it to punish and provoke undesirable regimes in the Middle East and other regions,” he added. The remarks come two days after an attack on a concert hall near Moscow left 137 people dead and 182 others injured. Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack. Click here to read more (external link).
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Khaama: The Ministry of Public Health of Afghanistan says that nearly 50,000 positive cases of tuberculosis (TB) were recorded in the country last year. Sharafat Zaman, the Ministry of Public Health spokesperson, said on Monday, citing a video clip, that 49,533 positive TB cases were recorded in Afghanistan in 2023. Click here to read more (external link).
Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
March 24, 2024
ISLAMABAD — The leader of Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Taliban government has said it is determined to enforce the Islamic criminal justice system, including the public stoning of women for adultery.
“Our mission is to enforce sharia and Allah’s Hudud [law],” said Hibatullah Akhundzada in an audio clip Taliban officials said was from his latest speech. They did not say where the reclusive leader spoke, but Akhundzada lives in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and rarely leaves what is known as the Taliban’s historical birthplace and political headquarters.
He primarily addressed Western critics of the Taliban government, which Akhundzada is effectively controlling from Kandahar, through edicts based on his strict interpretation of Islam.
“You may call it a violation of women’s rights when we publicly stone or flog them for committing adultery because they conflict with your democratic principles,” said the Taliban chief.
“Just as you claim to be striving for the freedom of entire humanity, so do I. I represent Allah, and you represent Satan,” Akhundzada said.
He criticized Western human rights values and women’s freedoms, saying Taliban religious scholars would persistently resist the West and its form of democracy in Afghanistan. “Thanks to these scholars, such a democracy was evicted from this land,” the Taliban leader said.
The Taliban returned to power in August 2021, when the then-internationally backed government collapsed, and U.S.-led Western nations withdrew all their troops after nearly 20 years of involvement in the Afghan war.
Taliban authorities have since publicly flogged hundreds of Afghans, including women, for theft, robbery, and committing “moral crimes” in sports stadiums in the presence of thousands of onlookers. At least four men have also been publicly executed after having been convicted of murder by Taliban courts.
Akhundzada has suspended girls’ education in Afghanistan beyond the sixth grade and prohibited many women from public and private workplaces, including the United Nations and other aid organizations.
Women are not allowed to undertake long road and air trips unless accompanied by a male relative, and cannot visit public places, such as parks, gyms, and bathhouses.
The Taliban leader defends his governance, saying it is aligned with Afghan culture and Islam.
The new academic year started in Afghanistan last week, but girls above 12 were excluded for the third consecutive year.
The United Nations and the world at large have been urging the Taliban to reverse all sanctions on women and halt corporal punishments and public executions of convicts.
“It is heartbreaking to mark another year where school doors open without the participation of Afghan girls above the age of 12,” Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women and human rights, said Saturday on X, formerly known as Twitter.
She reiterated the U.S. call for the Taliban to reverse their “destructive decrees,” saying they are destroying the potential of more than 50% of Afghanistan’s population.
“The Taliban’s relentless, discriminatory edicts against women & girls are keeping Afghanistan poor & aid-dependent, & forcing Afghan families to leave. There is no substitute for all Afghans participating in the formal education system, which has existed for over 100 years,” Amiri wrote.
The international community has not granted formal recognition to the de facto Afghan authorities, citing human rights concerns, especially the harsh treatment of women.
Jeff Seldin
VOA News
March 24, 2024
The United States is assigning responsibility for Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 130 people on the Islamic State terror group’s Afghan affiliate, known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or IS-Khorasan.
A State Department official confirmed to VOA that the U.S. gathered intelligence suggesting IS-Khorasan was planning an “imminent” attack in the Russian capital, leading to a warning earlier this month from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
The official said U.S. intelligence indicates Friday’s deadly attack is the result of that plotting.
So far, the claims of responsibility for the Moscow attack have come from IS news agencies or from other IS core outlets, with one statement saying the attack was carried out by an IS network in Russia itself.
But U.S. and Western officials have warned repeatedly about IS-Khorasan’s intent to carry out strikes beyond Afghanistan’s borders.
“ISIS-Khorasan continues to harbor intent to conduct external operations and maintains English‑language media releases that aim to globalize the group’s local grievances among Western audiences,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned this past October, using another acronym for the group.
Last May, the U.S. director of national intelligence told U.S. lawmakers IS-Khorasan “remains intent on looking to do external attacks,” while other intelligence officials cautioned such attacks could take place within a year.
U.S. officials also have blamed IS-Khorasan for carrying out the deadly terror attack in Kerman, Iran, this past January. That attack involved twin bombings that killed almost 100 people.
“Regardless of whether ISIS’s branch in Afghanistan is responsible for coordinating this attack, the attack demonstrates ISIS remains a potent global threat,” said Michael S. Smith II, a terrorism analyst who specializes in jihadi influence operations.
“This further demonstrates there has been inadequate investments made in efforts to deny the group capabilities to orchestrate and otherwise mobilize mass-casualty attacks, including those perpetrated by supporters who have not undergone formal terrorist training,” Smith told VOA.
IS-Khorasan origins
One of the most active and violent regional affiliates of the Islamic State militant group, IS-Khorasan emerged in Afghanistan in late 2014. The group is named after an old term for the region that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
IS-Khorasan was founded by disgruntled members of the Pakistani Taliban, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and other groups who pledged allegiance to IS. The terrorist group’s membership has dropped since peaking in about 2018, partly because of efforts by the Taliban and the United States to dismantle it.
U.S. officials have in the past put the number of IS-Khorasan fighters at several hundred. But intelligence shared by United Nations member states suggests the tally may be much higher, with a core group of 1,500 to 2,200 fighters in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Nangarhar provinces.
Additionally, observers in the region have warned that IS-Khorasan also has begun looking beyond Afghanistan itself and is attempting to gain footholds in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and parts of Tajikistan.
Surging peril
Ian McCary, the U.S. State Department deputy special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, said Thursday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “We are clear-eyed about the continuing threat ISIS poses.”
“We see the emergence of ISIS affiliates — the so-called ISIS-Khorasan inside Afghanistan, which poses an external threat,” McCary said.
“ISIS-Khorasan doesn’t only want to blow up maternity hospitals and schools, and kill women and children,” McCary said, adding that the group is looking to create “mayhem outside of Afghanistan, as well … They have a very nihilistic vision.”
U.S. officials expressed concern about the growing threat posed by IS-Khorasan back in 2022.
IS-Khorasan has carried out numerous attacks inside and outside of Afghanistan since its founding.
In 2021, the group carried out an attack at Kabul’s international airport, killing 13 U.S. troops and 170 Afghans during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Taliban affiliation
IS-Khorasan has significant disagreements with the Taliban, which it views as having abandoned jihad. IS-Khorasan continues to pose a threat to the Taliban’s authority in Afghanistan.
The brutal attack in Moscow isn’t the first time IS-Khorasan has targeted Russia. In 2022, IS-Khorasan militants claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing at the Russian Embassy in Kabul.
Some analysts say they believe IS-Khorasan has targeted Russia over what the terrorist group views as the Russian government’s oppression of Muslims, including in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria, according to reports.
Since Friday’s attack in Moscow, Russian authorities have detained 11 people, including four suspects directly involved in the assault, according to media reports.
VOA’s Liam Scott contributed to this story. Some information in this story was provided by Reuters.
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