Khaama: The Iranian interior minister has suggested creating a joint commission between Iran and Afghanistan to resolve the dispute over water rights between the two countries by carefully observing water levels in the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan. Ahmad Vahidi, Iran’s interior minister, said that the purpose of this joint team would be to ascertain Iran’s rights and to verify the Taliban’s claims of water shortage. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
Muttaqi
Roshan Noorzai
VOA News
June 26, 2023
WASHINGTON — For more than 15 years, Qari Baryal has been on a special list of Washington’s “most-wanted” Taliban and al-Qaida leaders in Afghanistan, accused of carrying out bombing and suicide attacks across the country.
Baryal and the militants he oversaw were “involved in the supervision of IED [improvised explosive device] production, suicide personnel allocation, and overall attack planning and execution” in Kabul and surrounding provinces, according to U.S. military reports.
In November 2021, two months after U.S. and NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban appointed Baryal as the governor of Kabul province. In March 2022, he became the provincial governor for Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul.
Baryal is among those listed in a recent United Nations report as one of the Taliban’s leaders “affiliated” with al-Qaida. Besides Baryal, Nuristan Governor Hafiz Muhammad Agha Hakeem and Tajmir Jawad, the Taliban’s deputy director of intelligence, are also listed in the report.
“With the patronage of the Taliban, Al-Qaida members have received appointments and advisory roles in the Taliban security and administrative structures,” the U.N. Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team said in the report earlier in June. It called relations between the Taliban and al-Qaida “strong and symbiotic.”
According to the report, an estimated 400 al-Qaida fighters were in Afghanistan, and there are signs that the terrorist group “is rebuilding operational capability.”
The Taliban rejected the report, calling it “biased and far from reality.”
A statement posted on Twitter by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the group “insists on its commitments and assures that there is no threat from the territory of Afghanistan to the region, neighbors and countries of the world and it does not allow anyone to use its territory against others.”
Taliban Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi also rejected the presence of any terrorist groups in Afghanistan.
“There are no terrorist groups in Afghanistan. They cannot operate in the country, and we don’t let them operate in Afghanistan,” he said at an event in May organized by the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad.
U.S. officials have long expressed skepticism over Taliban claims that they have distanced themselves from al-Qaida. When a U.S. drone killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri last July, he was found living in a home in a central neighborhood of the capital, Kabul.
The U.S. said his presence there demonstrated the Taliban had broken the 2020 Doha Agreement signed by the U.S. and the Taiban. By hosting and sheltering the al-Qaida leader, the Taliban violated commitments to not allow terrorists in Afghan territory threaten the security of other countries.
The Taliban “will send a clear message that those who pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies have no place in Afghanistan,” the agreement stated.
Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA that by appointing “double-hatted” al-Qaida and Taliban leaders, including Baryal, who killed American troops, the Taliban “are openly flouting” the so-called peace agreement.
These appointments show that the Taliban “are not concerned about the perception of the international community,” Roggio said.
He said the Taliban “always lied” about their ties with al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, and that the group’s statements cannot be “trusted.”
Roggio said Afghanistan could again become a training hub for the terrorist group.
“This is everything that al-Qaida can hope for. They have safe haven. They have support from the Taliban, who are in full control of the country,” he said.
But some experts do not think the country is becoming a magnet for foreign fighters.
Sami Yousafzai, a journalist who covered Afghanistan for years, told VOA he believes al-Qaida members now in Afghanistan are mainly Arabs, with just a few Afghan Taliban members who joined “out of necessity.”
“They had contacts with al-Qaida since they were living there, and they were protecting al-Qaida as they paid them,” he said.
Other regional experts say the region’s long military conflict between the Taliban and U.S.-led forces created loose alliances among regional militia groups.
Rahmatullah Andar, the former spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Security Council, told VOA that the Taliban groups in the districts have been hosting al-Qaida members for more than 20 years.
“Therefore, it is difficult to separate them. Not only with al-Qaida but also with the Pakistani Taliban,” he said.
Andar added that some Afghans were working with al-Qaida, but there were also some who were group members.
“They have the same worldview, the same goals and the same approach,” he said.
Back in Afghanistan’s Kapisa province, Baryal now posts Facebook videos showing his outreach to the local community as the Taliban government’s official representative.
This story originated in VOA’s Afghan Service.
8am: With the collapse of the republican government in Afghanistan, the Taliban have once again revived the concept of sexual jihad, known as Jihad-ul-Nikah. Over the past two decades, in areas under Taliban control, this group engaged in Jihad al-Nikah, although it was less prevalent and confined to specific regions. However, with their return to power, this practice has spread throughout the entire country. Consequently, most families have married off their daughters, fearing that they may fall into the clutches of the Taliban. Click here to read more (external link).
8am: Residents in the Dasht-e-Qala and Khwaja Bahauddin districts of Takhar province have expressed complaints regarding the relocation of numerous families associated with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to their districts. He [Professor Shaharani] views the relocation of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) members as a deliberate strategy to promote the dominance of the Pashtun ethnic group and grant them extensive privileges in the long run. He emphasizes that this process, aided by the British, has been ongoing in various forms since the time of Abdul Rahman Khan, and the Taliban is now seeking to alter the demographic composition of northern Afghanistan. Mr. Shaharani highlights that the current circumstances make it challenging for the people to resist the Taliban, and there is a possibility of regional countries supporting the fight against the Taliban’s agenda. Nevertheless, regardless of the outcome, the local inhabitants of these regions bear the brunt of the consequences. Click here to read more (external link).
Zabihullah Mujahid
Ariana: The Islamic Emirate’s [Taliban] spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says the IEA values its ties with Pakistan and hopes that relations and cooperation between the two countries will expand. In response to recent statements by Pakistan’s foreign minister, Mujahid emphasized Islamabad’s support for peace and stability in Afghanistan and said that both countries have many commercial, cultural and religious commonalities that need to be strengthened and relations between the two countries should be expanded. However, experts believe that Pakistan is playing a two-face policy towards Afghanistan. “Pakistan’s policies in Afghanistan always have two sides, one is its very soft talk, the other is behind its destruction,” said Rahmatullah Hassan, a political analyst. “Pakistan is a country that always wants Afghanistan to have no government, no system, no economy, and no foreign policy,” he stressed. Click here to read more (external link).
Khaama: On Monday, an earthquake of 4.2 magnitudes jolted the 35 Km Badakhshan province of Afghanistan. The Earthquake of magnitude 4.2 occurred around 11:16 am local time, 35 Km south of Ishkashim, Tajikistan, with a depth of 31 km, according to the Indian National Center for Seismology reported on Monday. No causalities have been reported from the province as of now. Click here to read more (external link).
Ariana: Doctors from a cancer treatment facility in Herat province say they have seen a 30% increase in the number of patients seeking treatment for cancer in the western region of Afghanistan. They said in the past 12 months, 4,000 people with cancer sought help – of which 50% were women. Click here to read more (external link).
Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
June 25, 2023
ISLAMABAD — The supreme leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban declared Sunday that their campaign against illicit drug production in the country had eradicated the cultivation of opium poppies, which are used to make morphine or heroin.
Hibatullah Akhundzada’s declaration follows recent media reports and satellite images backed by the United Nations and the United States, concluding that annual poppy cultivation has “significantly” decreased in the world’s biggest opium producer.
The reduction is credited to a decree issued by the reclusive Taliban chief in April 2022, which strictly prohibited the cultivation, production, usage, transportation, trade, export, and import of all illicit drugs in Afghanistan. The ban allowed anti-narcotics Taliban units to eradicate poppy farming across the impoverished war-ravaged country, which accounted for 85% of global opium production until last year, according to United Nations estimates.
“As a result of continued efforts of the Islamic Emirate, the cultivation of poppy has been eradicated in the country,” the Taliban chief said in his statement in connection with the annual Islamic Eid al-Adha festival later this week. He used the official name of the Taliban government.
“Farmers are looking for alternatives as legal cultivation continues to grow. Many citizens, especially the [Afghan] youth, are now saved from being exposed to harm,” Akhundzada stated.
Last week, the head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan told a U.N. Security Council meeting that there was “growing evidence” the Taliban’s opium poppy ban had been “effectively enforced,” decreasing the cultivation “significantly” in many parts of the country.
“At the same time, the opium economy has helped sustain parts of the rural economy in Afghanistan. Donors should consider allocating funding to alternative livelihood programs that address the specific needs of farmers affected by the ban,” Roza Otunbayeva told Wednesday’s meeting in New York.
Thomas West, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, in a June 7 tweet, also hailed the reduction in poppy cultivation.
“Reports that the Taliban have implemented policies to significantly decrease opium poppy production this year are credible and important. Every country in the region and beyond has a shared interest in an Afghanistan free of drugs,” West wrote.
The international recognition of counter-drug efforts by the Taliban stemmed from new research and analysis published earlier this month by a geospatial analytics firm Alcis.
The studies noted that recent satellite images show an “unprecedented” decrease in the cultivation of opium poppy in the country, with cultivation in the largest-producing southern provinces down by at least 80% compared with last year.
“The Taliban have successfully reduced poppy cultivation by more than 99% in Helmand province, which previously produced more than 50% of the country’s opium,” the report said.
Women’s rights
Otunbayeva, briefing the U.N. Security Council members on Wednesday, said, however, that the Taliban’s sweeping restrictions on women’s access to work, education, and public life at large “obscure” their “positive achievements” such as countering narcotics and “the welcome reduction of high-level corruption” in Afghanistan.
She renewed the U.N. call for the fundamentalist authorities to rescind the curbs immediately.
Akhundzada has rejected calls for removing restrictions on women as interference in internal Afghan matters, saying their policies are aligned with local culture and Islamic law, or Sharia.
The Taliban chief reiterated his defiance in Sunday’s Eid message, asserting that his decrees have restored “the status of women as free and dignified human beings.” Akhundzada added that he had instructed all government institutions to help women secure marriage, inheritance, and other rights.
“Under the rule of the Islamic Emirate, concrete measures have been taken to save women from many traditional oppressions, including forced marriages and their Sharia rights have been protected. … The negative aspects of the past 20-year occupation related to women’s Hijab and misguidance will end soon,” Akhundzada said without elaborating.
The Taliban regained power in August 2021 after waging a deadly insurgency for almost 20 years against the U.S.-led NATO troops protecting the internationally backed former Afghan government in Kabul.
No foreign government or global organization has recognized the Taliban as a legitimate government over restrictions on women and girls, among other human rights concerns.
“I am blunt about the obstacles they have created for themselves by the decrees and restrictions they have enacted, in particular against women and girls,” said Otunbayeva on Wednesday. “We have conveyed to them that as long as these decrees are in place, it is nearly impossible that their government will be recognized by members of the international community,” she added.
Related