Ariana: Officials at the Pediatric Ward of Abu Ali Sina Balkhi Regional Hospital in Mazar-e-Sharif city report an increase in seasonal diseases such as diarrhea among children, saying that this disease has claimed the lives of six children over the past two months. Click here to read more (external link).
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Khaama: The UN Children’s agency, UNICEF, said it was discussing with Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan “timelines and practicalities” for a possible required handover of its education programs and that classes would continue. Aid officials said that the Taliban had made it clear that outside organizations could no longer be involved in education programmes, a move denounced by the UN but has not yet been confirmed by Afghan authorities, Reuters reported. Click here to read more (external link).
Alarabiya News: Australia’s most decorated war veteran, found by a civil court to have played a part in the murder of four Afghans while serving in Afghanistan, said he was devastated by what he called an “incorrect” judgement and he would not apologize for his actions. In his first public comments since the court ruling, Ben Roberts-Smith, holder of the Victoria Cross and other top military honors, said he remained proud of his actions in Afghanistan, where he served in the Special Air Service on six tours from 2006 to 2012. Click here to read more (external link).
Destroyed Buddha Statue
WP: In 2001, Taliban founder Mohammad Omar declared the Buddhas false gods and announced plans to destroy them. Ignoring pleas from around the world, Taliban fighters detonated explosives and fired antiaircraft guns to smash the immense sixth-century reliefs to pieces. The attack on the treasured ancient monument stunned the international community and cemented the Taliban’s reputation as uncompromising extremists. Click here to read more (external link).
8am: According to sources on Thursday, June 15, these armed fighters, equipped with light and heavy weapons, were initially stationed near the Kokcha Bridge in the Khaja-Ghar district, at a location known as Kandak since June 7. They were moved under the command of senior Taliban officials. Reports indicate that last week, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the acting Minister of Interior of the Taliban, traveled to Takhar and held secret meetings with Taliban commanders and influential Pashtun leaders. Click here to read more (external link).
This Taliban YouTuber, named Jamil Qaderi, who is now to be tried in Belgium for supporting terrorism and violence (murder) against Taliban opponents, says in this video to his Taliban supporters that he hopes to one day conquer Frankfurt (Europe) with the Mujahideen, and there,… pic.twitter.com/FqjpLa7Lvp
— Natiq Malikzada (@natiqmalikzada) June 13, 2023
Khaama: Authorities in Belgium requested a reassessment of an Afghan refugee’s status who supports the Taliban. Belgium’s Deputy Minister of Immigration, Nicole de Maure, called for a review of the refugee case of Jamil Qaderi, a pro-Taliban YouTuber. In addition, George Delman, a representative of Belgium’s parliament, also said that Jamil Qaderi was promoting a regime that he claimed to have escaped from. Click here to read more (external link).
By Michael Scollon
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
June 15, 2023
Targeted attacks in Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan Province have left residents fearful of leaving their homes and the Taliban scrambling to maintain its authority as the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) extremist group makes clear that it has not gone away.
The region, once a bastion of resistance to the Taliban, has suffered four attacks targeting Taliban security and government officials claimed by IS-K in just over a year.
Two occurred in the provincial capital, Faizabad, last week: the assassination of Deputy Governor Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi in a car bombing on June 6, and a gruesome explosion at his funeral attended by hundreds of locals and several Taliban officials at the Nabawi Mosque two days later.
At least 19 attendees were killed, including the Taliban’s former police chief of northern Baghlan Province, Safiullah Samim, and more than 30 were injured in the mosque attack, which shocked residents and was seen by observers as a “new level” of violence in the region.
“This kind of situation has not been seen in Faizabad in the past 20 years, we have not experienced anything like it,” local resident Mahmud Ghafuri told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “We are afraid that the same type of explosion could go off at another mosque at any minute. We are very worried.”
Urban Warfare Reaches Badakhshan
After its foundation in Afghanistan in 2015, the IS-K controlled territory in the country’s north and east as part of its broader aim of territorial expansion and the formation of a caliphate extending throughout South Asia. But under fire from Afghan and Western forces, as well as the Taliban, the IS-K began withdrawing from its territorial strongholds in 2019 and embarked on a new strategy of urban warfare.
As the Taliban strengthened its hold on the country and advanced on the capital before seizing power, the IS-K carried out one of its most high-profile attacks — the killing of 170 Afghan civilians and 13 members of the U.S. military at Kabul’s international airport in August 2021 as Western forces pulled out of Afghanistan.
Since the Taliban took power that month, the IS-K has targeted Taliban officials, foreign nationals and embassies, Afghanistan’s Shi’ite Hazara community, and others it considers incompatible with its own extremist interpretation of Islam. It has also launched cross-border attacks into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan from Afghanistan’s north.
“In an earlier phase, IS-K was interested in taking territory and expanding geographical control, however, the group has now transitioned into a strategy of guerrilla warfare and urban terrorism for the time being,” Lucas Webber, co-founder and editor of MilitantWire.com, said in written comments. “IS-K’s targeting has simplified since the previous government was overthrown and international forces left, leaving the Taliban [and its allies] as the sole armed enemy in Afghanistan.”
In April 2022, Faizabad entered the spotlight with the killing of Abdul Fattah, who headed the Taliban’s mining department in Badakhshan, and the December assassination of the province’s police chief, Abdulhaq Abu Omar. The IS-K claimed responsibility for both bombings.
The Taliban has claimed success in eliminating IS-K cells around the country, and the decline of IS-K “attacks and propaganda output seems to indicate that the organization has been degraded to some extent” compared to its early years, according to Webber. “Several prominent leadership figures have been killed in recent months and the IS-K’s internal communications show concern over infiltration of IS-K’s online networks and militant cells by the Taliban and foreign intelligence services,” he added.
But in a report this month on “The Growing Threat Of The Islamic State In Afghanistan And South Asia,” the U.S. Institute of Peace says that the IS-K has shown itself to be flexible in its “ambitions, operations, and ties with other militant groups.”
“This flexibility has made it resilient in the face of setbacks both to the Islamic State as a whole and within Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the report said. “Since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, [the IS-K] remains a potent force despite hundreds of members having been arrested or killed by the Taliban.”
The UN Security Council, in a report published on June 1 regarding the situation in Afghanistan, said that the Taliban was failing to combat terrorism on Afghan soil as agreed in the U.S.-Taliban pact signed in 2020.
Noting that “a range of terrorist groups have greater freedom of maneuver” in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the Security Council said that while the Taliban had “sought to reduce the profile of these groups and has conducted operations against [the IS-K], in general the Taliban has not delivered on the counterterrorism provisions.”
The Security Council said the number of IS-K militants in Afghanistan was “estimated to range from 4,000 to 6,000,” including family members. It added that IS-K fighters included Afghans as well as citizens of Pakistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia, the Central Asian countries, and a small number of Arab fighters from Syria who traveled to Afghanistan in the past year.
Fertile Recruiting Ground
The recent attacks in Badakhshan have made clear that the region is a focal point for the IS-K and led to concerns by locals that the Taliban’s counterterrorism efforts in an area where it is still working to impose its full authority are insufficient.
The Taliban army’s chief of staff, Fasihuddin Fitrat, condemned the attacks and called on people to inform security officials about any suspicious activities to help counter the threat posed by IS-K.
Whether the region can be considered a haven for IS-K activities is questionable, but it does offer the group a geographically strategic place to launch operations not only in Afghanistan but in restive areas of neighboring Tajikistan and Pakistan as well.
From Afghanistan’s north the IS-K “can easily spread to other sides of the border,” Arif Sahar, a London-based counterterrorism expert, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. And this, he said, can send a “dangerous signal to Central Asia because these countries are very good centers to boost fundamental Islamic ideologies” like that of the IS-K.
Badakhshan has also emerged as a potentially ripe hub to flip and recruit fighters from militant groups allied with the Afghan Taliban and based in the region, including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Al-Qaeda, the Turkistan Islamic Party, and the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban.
Ted Callahan, a security adviser formerly based in Badakhshan, says support for the Islamic State extremist group, the parent of the IS-K, was prominent as far back as 2014 “among the foreign fighters who had been displaced by a massive military offensive in Pakistan and made their way up north.”
At that time, Callahan told RFE/RL in written comments, the Taliban was “able to brutally suppress any overt displays of affiliation with IS, like raising the IS flag.”
But Callahan suggests that the IS-K may have made inroads in Badakhshan. “Maybe the Taliban has alienated the population so much that some Badakhshanis are willing to join IS-K; or maybe some of the curious foreign fighters have thrown off the Taliban’s shackles and become full-fledged supporters.”
The TTP, which has waged a yearslong insurgency against Islamabad, is an avowed ally of the Taliban in Kabul and is considered to be an enemy of the IS-K. But it previously expressed loyalty to the IS-K and continues to be a source of IS-K recruits.
With the Taliban currently engaged in an effort to remove TTP members from southeastern areas bordering Pakistan, which is keen to eliminate the group’s safe havens in Afghanistan, it leaves open the possibility that some could migrate north and join the IS-K.
“[The IS-K] has a history of attracting TTP fighters and has historically been comparatively less hostile to TTP than the Afghan Taliban,” Webber said. “It is possible that IS-K sees TTP as more hard-line and riper for recruitment.”
Disputed Territory
While not discounting IS-K’s claim of responsibility for last week’s attacks, Callahan also notes that the group “is usually only too happy to claim credit.”
Some in Badakhshan, Callahan says, believe that while the December assassination of police chief Omar was carried out by the IS-K, the most recent attacks that killed Ahmadi and Samim could be the result of internal Taliban disputes.
All three of the Taliban officials were ethnic Tajiks, the predominate group in Badakhshan, Callahan notes. The Taliban, a mostly Pashtun group whose political base is in southern Afghanistan, recruited ethnic Tajik and Uzbek fighters in the country’s north during its insurgency from 2001-2021.
“The narrative among certain Badakhshani Tajiks is that senior Tajik Taliban officials are being targeted by a segment of the Pashtun Taliban, although the evidence that IS-K conducted the three separate attacks seems hard to refute,” Callahan said.
Ahmadi and Samim were from the same town, suggesting the possibility of a local dispute for influence even among Tajik Taliban members.
Other Afghanistan observers have commented about divisions among Badakhshan’s Taliban over control of the region’s mining wealth, smuggling, and support of foreign fighters, while mentioning that Omar and Ahmadi were “on the same side” and opposed current provincial Governor Amanuddin Mansur and his predecessor Fitrat, who now heads the Taliban army.
“It does seem like an unusually large number of senior Tajik Taliban officials are dying in northern Afghanistan,” Callahan said, adding that the governor of the northern Balkh Province was also killed in March. “But whether it’s just IS-K-driven attrition, intra-Taliban feuds, or something else is hard to discern.”
Locals who spoke to Radio Azadi appeared to be little concerned about who was responsible for the attacks — they just want them to stop.
“There is still fear in the city and people cannot go to the mosque for prayers and the shops are closed,” said Samiullah Mubariz, a resident of Faizabad.
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Jeff Seldin
VOA News
June 14, 2023
WASHINGTON — There is mounting, controversial evidence that Afghanistan is rapidly turning into a cauldron for terrorist activity, with both al-Qaida and the Islamic State terror group’s Afghan affiliate growing substantially, in numbers and capabilities, without U.S. or Western forces on the ground.
The dire assessment, shared in a recently released United Nations report based on member state intelligence, concludes the terror groups “have greater freedom of maneuver” under Taliban rule and are making “good use of this.”
The report by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team warns that al-Qaida and the Taliban maintain a symbiotic relationship, “with al-Qaida viewing Taliban-administered Afghanistan a safe haven.”
In contrast, the report finds Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, has used the Taliban’s inability to establish control over remote areas, as well as dissatisfaction with Taliban rule to its advantage.
“Attacks against high-profile Taliban figures raised [IS-Khorasan] morale, prevented defections and boosted recruitment, including from within the Taliban’s ranks,” the U.N. report said.
In each case, the U.N. report contends, the terror groups have significantly grown their footprints.
Al-Qaida, assessed to have had as few as several dozen members in Afghanistan a year ago, is believed to have 30 to 60 senior officials based out of Afghanistan, as well as an additional 400 fighters, 1,600 family members and a series of new training camps.
IS-Khorasan, according to the U.N. data, has grown to between 4,000 to 6,000 members, with strongholds or camps in at least 13 provinces and a network of sleeper cells that can reach Kabul and beyond.
But as alarming as the estimates in the U.N. report may be, multiple U.S. officials told VOA they have seen nothing to support such findings.
“These stats do not align with our intelligence community’s analysis in a number of areas,” one U.S. official told VOA on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence matters.
Another official was even more blunt, calling the estimates for the size of al-Qaida and Islamic State in the U.N. report “wildly out of whack.”
“These numbers are wildly out of whack with the best estimates of the U.S. intelligence community, and indeed the best estimates of our partners and allies,” that senior administration official told VOA, likewise speaking on the condition of anonymity.
According to the senior official, U.S. intelligence assesses there are fewer than a dozen al-Qaida core members currently in Afghanistan and that there has not been a senior al-Qaida core leader in the country since the U.S. killed then al-Qaida core leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in an airstrike in July 2022.
Al-Qaida “simply has not reconstituted a presence in Afghanistan since the U.S. departure in August 2021,” the official said, adding that it is unlikely attempts by al-Qaida to establish training camps in Afghanistan, as the U.N. report claims, would go unnoticed by the U.S. and its allies and partners.
“We are postured to see indications of al-Qaida activity were to be resurgent in various forms, whether it’s a training camp, whether it’s plotting that doesn’t require a training camp,” the official said.
The U.S. also rejected intelligence shared by some U.N. member states that al-Qaida’s de facto leader, Saif al-Adel, left his base in Iran and visited Afghanistan in 2022, with at least one member state asserting al-Adel is now based out of Afghanistan.
“We do not have indications that the likes of Saif al-Adel have traveled to Afghanistan,” the senior official said. “Al-Qaida, as far as we can tell, and we look pretty closely, they do not see Afghanistan right now as a permissive or hospitable environment in which to attempt to operate.”
As for the U.N report’s assertion that IS-Khorasan has grown to between 4,000 and 6,000 fighters, including family members, “that is thousands more than the [U.S.] intelligence community has assessed or assessed there to be,” the senior official told VOA.
And while the U.S. agrees that IS-Khorasan has the desire to attack the United States, “it is clear that the terrorist group’s ability to do so, to actually fulfill that ambition, has faced setbacks in the last two years,” the official said.
“Our view is that ISIS-K has not closed that ambition-capacity gap that it very much hoped to close after the U.S. departure, and indeed has faced some very real setbacks and some very concerted pressure from the Taliban,” the official added.
The U.S. officials who spoke to VOA were unable to explain the divergence between the assessments of al-Qaida and IS-Khorasan as presented in the U.N. report and those of the U.S. intelligence community, noting previous reports by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team have tracked much more closely with Washington’s own findings.
But a source familiar with the production of the report, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told VOA that U.S. officials were aware of the conclusions before it was published and did not raise objections.
The source also said that there appeared to be some disagreement among U.S. agencies, with some falling in line with some of the U.N.’s findings.
Western officials and researchers generally have viewed the U.N. reports as a valuable source of information, especially because they include the viewpoints of multiple countries, some of which sometimes have unique insights into developments on the ground.
And while they admit estimates from member states on how many fighters or members groups such as al-Qaida and IS-Khorasan have can vary significantly, the trends identified in the reports are significant.
“The [U.N.] monitoring team goes to great lengths to try to triangulate information, and it publishes things that it’s reasonably confident of, and that goes through a rigorous editorial process,” Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former senior United Nations counterterrorism official and monitoring team coordinator, told VOA.
Fitton-Brown, now an adviser to the nonprofit Counter Extremism Project, said that even if there are disagreements over the extent to which al-Qaida or IS-Khorasan have grown their footprints in Afghanistan, the larger point remains.
The report “makes it very clear why the Taliban cannot, will not, live up to their responsibilities under the Doha accords,” he said, citing intelligence in the U.N. report that some Afghan Ministry of Defense courses now feature some al-Qaida training manuals.
Some analysts also have raised concerns based on the report’s findings.
“Historically, the U.S. has woefully underestimated al-Qaida’s strength in Afghanistan,” Bill Roggio, senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told VOA.
The U.N. report “is far more realistic than what U.S. intelligence is trying to present as the true estimate of al-Qaida strength in Afghanistan,” he added.
Other analysts highlighted the reported establishment of al-Qaida training camps in various Afghan provinces, as well as the ability of other, smaller terror groups to operate more freely.
“Afghanistan seems eerily reminiscent to pre-9/11 Afghanistan, with the number of groups that are allegedly active,” Colin Clarke, director of research at the global intelligence firm The Soufan Group, told VOA.
“That’s what I think the nightmare scenario was for a long time, that the U.S. would have limited-to-no-presence in the country, and these groups would reconstitute, begin reestablishing training camps and then training these fighters — either Afghans or foreign terrorist fighters — for external operations,” Clarke said. “Terrorist groups thrive and indeed flourish amid instability. And that’s exactly what we have here.”
By Ahmad Takal
Abubakar Siddique
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
June 14, 2023
Zhwandoon TV is one of the few independent media outlets still operating under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
The private Pashto-language station has been forced to comply with severe restrictions imposed on the media, including a ban on broadcasting music and foreign entertainment programs as well as orders for female TV presenters to cover their faces.
Now, the owner of Zhwandoon TV has accused the Taliban of attempting to shut down the Kabul-based station. “They want to annihilate our station,” Mohammad Ismael Yoon told a press conference in Kabul on June 5.
The offices of Zhwandoon TV are located on government land. Then-President Hamid Karzai granted Yoon a 30-year lease for a nominal annual fee, allowing him to launch the station in 2008.
But Yoon said the Taliban has demanded that Zhwandoon TV either vacate the one-hectare of land or sign a new lease agreement that would dramatically increase the rent.
Yoon, a university professor and author, said the Taliban has intensified its efforts to close down the station since he publicly criticized the militants last month.
Yoon told a group of Taliban leaders on May 26 that their severe restrictions on female education were unjust. “No Islamic countries have completely banned women’s education because of their interpretation of Islamic Shari’a law,” he said.
Soon after seizing power in 2021, the Taliban banned girls above the sixth grade from attending school. In December, the hard-line Islamist group banned women from going to university. The decisions triggered international condemnation.
In his press conference on June 5, Yoon doubled down on his criticism of the Taliban, saying its draconian policies had forced thousands of educated Afghans to flee the country.
“They think that they have conquered and enslaved the Afghan people and they can order them to do anything,” he said.
Yoon said that Najibullah Haqqani, the Taliban’s minister of telecommunications and information technology, has demanded that he pay $16,000 per month in rent, an exorbitant figure for a station that has lost much of its advertising revenue. Yoon said Haqqani has also ordered him to pay a lump sum of several million dollars.
“I told the telecommunications minister that he can cancel the contract in light of recognized legal principles but not by force,” Yoon said during his press conference.
In a statement, the Taliban said Yoon’s lease agreement with the previous government was illegal. It also said that Yoon had “challenged the policies of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which was uncalled for and inappropriate,” referring to the official name of the Taliban’s unrecognized government.
Yoon is a self-proclaimed Pashtun nationalist who has been accused in the past of provoking ethnic tensions in Afghanistan. His critics have also labelled him a Taliban sympathizer.
Yoon said the Taliban, a predominately Pashtun group, is attempting to silence secular figures like him because it sees them as ideological competitors. Yoon made Zhwandoon TV a center for Pashtun literary figures and published and promoted their work.
“In the Taliban’s internal deliberations, some have argued that without shutting our station, they cannot defeat the nationalist ideology,” he said.
While not a leading station in Afghanistan, Zhwandoon’s news bulletins, current affairs talk shows, and documentaries have carved out a loyal audience among Pashtun communities inside the country and among the diaspora.
Widening Crackdown
Independent media watchdogs said the Taliban’s pressure on Zhwandoon TV is part of an attempt to stamp out any form of dissent.
“If Zhwandoon TV is closed, similar excuses can be invented to shut others,” said Zia Bumia, the head of the South Asia Free Media Association in Afghanistan. “[It will] force Afghan journalists and media organizations to adopt self-censorship as a new normal.”
The Taliban has intensified its crackdown on independent reporters and media outlets, according to Afghan media watchdogs.
In its annual report issued on May 3, the Afghanistan Journalist Center said cases of arbitrary arrests and detention, threats, and intimidation of journalists rose by around 60 percent in the past year. During that time, one journalist was killed and 21 wounded in attacks targeting media workers.
Afghan media advocacy group NAI said around half of Afghanistan’s estimated 600 media outlets have closed since the Taliban seized power. Around two-thirds of reporters have lost their jobs in that time, according to NAI.
Female media workers have been disproportionately affected. The Taliban’s restrictions on women’s right to work has left many women journalists unable to carry out their jobs.