ME Eye: “Turkey and Qatar were supposed to establish a joint venture to run Kabul and three other airports,” one Turkish source familiar with the talks said. “However, the Taliban demanded that the bank accounts that would be opened by the venture must be under its control.” The source added that the Taliban made some other unexpected changes to the deal, such as upping the airport fees and taxes. Click here to read more (external link).
Three Taliban Members Killed in Baghlan’s Tala Wa Barfak District
8am: Local sources in the Tala Wa Barfak district of Baghlan province say that around 8:00 am on Friday (August 26th), two factions of the Taliban fought each other. A local source, who did not want to be named for security reasons, says that following this gun fighting, three Taliban members affiliated with the Pashtun community were killed by local Taliban members. Click here to read more (external link).
Travel ban waiver necessary for engagement with IEA: China
Ariana: Extending travel ban exemptions for leaders of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) [Taliban] is necessary for world’s engagement with the government, China’s ambassador to the United Nations has said. A UN Security Council waiver allowing 13 IEA leaders, including Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, to travel abroad expired last Friday, after member states failed to agree on a possible extension in the exemptions. Click here to read more (external link).
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200,000 Afghans Face Moderate to Severe Malnutrition in Past Month
Starving Afghan Child (file photo)
Tolo News: The Ministry of Public Health said that 200,000 Afghans, including women and children, have been suffering from malnutrition in the last month in the country. “Malnutrition cases here are not due just to economic challenges, but they are suffering because their mothers are uneducated and do not know how to feed their children,” said Samsor Zarin, a doctor. But patients’ families said it is because of economic challenges that they cannot feed their children. Click here to read more (external link).
Taliban Whip a Woman and a Man in Takhar
8am: The Taliban have whipped a man and a woman in Takhar province in northern Afghanistan for having alleged relations. Sources say that the Taliban whipped the man and woman 50 times on Thursday afternoon (August 25th) at the central intersection of Darqad city. Local residents say that there is no evidence that these people have committed such an act. Click here to read more (external link).
‘We Don’t Know Where To Go’: Afghan Refugees Forcibly Deported From Tajikistan
By RFE/RL’s Tajik Service
August 25, 2022
DUSHANBE — An ominous message was sent to Afghan refugees in Tajikistan this week, warning members of the some 10,000-strong community that they risk being forcibly sent back to face the persecution and violence they fled.
“They [the Tajik authorities] told us that they would take us to Dushanbe, but they took us directly to the border,” an Afghan woman who claimed she had been expelled to Afghanistan said in a voice recording obtained by RFE/RL’s Tajik Service this week. “Everyone, if someone from your family is working, don’t let him go to work. Do not walk around Dushanbe,” she added in a stark warning to fellow refugees in the Tajik capital.
RFE/RL was unable to independently verify the claims made in the anonymous recording. But since the warning emerged on a WhatsApp channel dedicated to Afghan nationals living in Tajikistan on August 22, well-placed sources and relatives of refugees have said that at least nine Afghans were forcibly sent back to Afghanistan in the past week.
It was unclear why the Afghan nationals were deported. But it is part of a trend that has been criticized by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).
The deportations come despite longstanding calls by the UN body to halt the expulsions of Afghan nationals from Tajikistan and to offer them protection and give them access to a fair asylum process.
The woman who issued the warning on WhatsApp said she had been deported along with two other Afghan nationals, one of whom, she said, held official UN refugee documents. This claim was also made by other sources who spoke to RFE/RL’s Tajik Service about the recent deportations.
“My husband’s residency documents were correct. He had a UN refugee card, but he was expelled from Tajikistan,” the wife of one of the deportees said on condition of anonymity. “My husband is now on the other side of the border, and I am in Tajikistan with my three children. We don’t know where to go.”
A source who helps provide legal services to Afghan refugees in Tajikistan said members of the country’s security services forcibly took the refugees to the border.
“We still do not know why this happened,” the source said on condition of anonymity out of concerns of retribution. “Some of the Afghan immigrants were called in to check their documents and were taken to the border by car and transferred to that side. Some were taken away from their homes.”
In an August 25 statement, the UNHCR raised “grave concerns over the continued detention and deportations of Afghan refugees in Tajikistan, warning once again that forcing people fleeing persecution back to their country against their will is illegal and puts lives at risk.”
The UN body said that five Afghan nationals, including a mother and her three children, were sent across the border in northeastern Tajikistan to Afghanistan on August 23.
“Tajikistan must stop detaining and deporting refugees, an action that clearly puts lives at risk,” said Elizabeth Tan, UNHCR’s director of international protection. “Forced return of refugees is against the law and runs contrary to the principle of non-refoulement, a cornerstone of international refugee law.”
The statement did not mention the other four refugees that are believed to have been deported since August 19 but said that “since 2021, UNHCR has recorded multiple incidents of refugee detentions, forced returns, and non-admission to territory for individuals in need of international protection” in Tajikistan.
The UNHCR did not respond to questions related to allegations that some of the deportees held UN refugee documents.
Tajikistan, which shares a 1,360-kilometer border with Afghanistan, has long been a temporary haven for Afghans fleeing persecution, economic hardship, and unrest in their home country. The numbers of Afghan refugees in Tajikistan have fluctuated greatly over the past two decades, from a peak of more than 15,300 in 2001, when U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban regime, to more than 8,000 at the beginning of this year.
In the four months after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, approximately 1,300 Afghans sought refugee status in Tajikistan. Thousands of Afghans have been transferred from Tajikistan to third countries.
Less than a week after the Taliban took over Kabul, the UNHCR issued a “global non-return advisory” to countries hosting Afghan refugees. The advisory calls for a ban on the forced returns of Afghan nationals, saying that “forced returns will place asylum-seekers at risk of persecution upon return and accordingly, constitute a serious breach of international law.”
A devastating humanitarian and economic crisis as well as the Taliban’s brutal rule has forced more than 1 million Afghans to flee their homeland in the past year.
In the UNHCR’s August 25 statement, Tan added: “We have continuously urged the authorities in Tajikistan to allow access to territory for those fleeing conflict and persecution in Afghanistan and halt any further deportations.”
Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security declined to respond to questions by RFE/RL’s Tajik Service about the claims that at least nine Afghan nationals have been deported in the past week.
The Interior Ministry’s press service told RFE/RL that 32 Afghan nationals had been fined for unidentified violations of their stay in Tajikistan, but that “they were not expelled.”
Copyright (c) 2022. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
Taliban says it has not found body of al Qaeda terrorist hit by US drone strike in Kabul
Al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri
Fox News: The Taliban says it has not been able to find the body of al Qaeda terrorist leader Ayman al Zawahiri after a U.S. air strike hit the home he was staying at in Afghanistan. The U.S. said it killed al Zawahiri with a drone strike in the Afghan capital of Kabul in July. The al Qaeda leader was standing on the balcony of a home owned by an aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, top deputy of the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Haibatallah Akhundzada. He had reportedly been in the house for months at the time of the strike. The Taliban continues to deny knowledge that al Zawahiri was sheltering in the city. Click here to read more (external link).
Taliban Say Travel Ban Hurts Diplomacy and Dialogue With World
Taliban Sohail Shaheen
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
August 25, 2022
ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s Taliban on Thursday called for ending the travel ban on some of their leaders to help advance diplomacy, as the U.N. Security Council remains divided over whether to grant the exemption.
A Security Council waiver allowing 13 Taliban leaders, including Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, to travel abroad expired last Friday, after member states failed to agree on a possible extension in the exemptions.
“[The] travel ban is tantamount to the closing of the door of engagement and talks. It is a hurdle in the way of resolving issues through peaceful means,” Suhail Shaheen, who heads the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, told VOA.
A total of 135 Taliban officials are subject to sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, under a 2011 Security Council resolution. The 13, though, were granted exemptions from the travel ban to allow them to conduct peace talks with officials from other countries, including the United States, and the Security Council regularly renewed the exemptions.
The waiver ended last Friday, though, after objections from Western nations to its automatic renewal, citing the Taliban’s failure to uphold their commitments that they would respect human rights of all Afghans, including women, form an inclusive government, and fight terrorism.
The United States and allied nations have proposed granting the travel waiver to a lower number of Taliban officials and limiting their travel only to Qatar, where U.S. officials have routinely held talks with Muttaqi-led Taliban delegates in recent months.
China and Russia, however, advocated allowing all 13 officials of the Islamist group, which seized power in Afghanistan a year ago, to continue to travel. Chinese officials have argued against linking human rights to travel issues, deeming it “counterproductive.”
“In this critical time, I hope it is dawned on all that it is a need for diplomacy and dialogue. It is worth mentioning that we greatly appreciate the efforts of all those who are supporting the travel ban waiver,” Shaheen told VOA.
Until Security Council members reach a deal, none of the Taliban officials on the sanctions list can travel abroad.
Despite the split over whether to extend the travel ban waiver, a U.S. State Department spokesperson in Washington stressed the need for engagements with the Taliban.
“The exemption expired on August 19, and discussions on whether to grant an exemption remain ongoing, and a decision requires consensus among other members of the Security Council,” said Vedant Patel.
“Generally, we see the need to continue limited engagement with the Taliban to help the Afghan people, and have found that face-to-face discussions in third countries have proven to be useful to advance our interests, to advance our national security interests,” Patel added.
In June, the Security Coucil’s Afghanistan Sanctions Committee had removed two Taliban education ministers from the exemption list to protest the continued ban on secondary school education for girls across most of the country.
Late last month, the United States announced the killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike against his safe house in the heart of Kabul. The presence of one of Washington’s most wanted men in the Afghan capital called into question the Taliban’s counterterrorism pledges.
Analysts say the Taliban’s reneging on their pledges is making it difficult for the U.S. and allied nations to push for an early release of billions of dollars in frozen Afghan central bank assets, held internationally.
“Unfortunately, the Taliban have not done anything to make it politically easier for the U.S. to unfreeze the assets, given the facts that they are still banning girls from going to secondary schools, that the leader of al-Qaida was found right in the middle of central Kabul,” said Barnet Rubin, a former senior advisor at the U.S. State Department.
“All of those things indicate that improving their relations with the outside world is not important priority for them,” Rubin told an online discussion this week on how to deal with the Afghan humanitarian crisis. China’s state television organized the event in partnership with an Afghan news channel.
Meanwhile, chief Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid reiterated Thursday they had not found the body of al-Zawahiri and investigations into the U.S. claims of the slain al-Qaida leader’s presence in Kabul were continuing.
Speaking at a news conference, Mujahid also demanded the U.S. stop flying drones over Afghanistan’s airspace in breach of their country’s sovereignty, saying the Taliban had taken up the issue with U.S. officials. “If they the U.S. government has any concerns they should share them with us,” the spokesman insisted.
The Taliban reaction came in response to reports that U.S. drones had been seen flying over southern Kandahar province and surrounding areas Wednesday.
VOA’s State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching contributed to this report.
For Tehran, Afghanistan is a problem not an opportunity
ME Eye: Tehran seems to be supporting the NRF in a limited fashion. Massoud is reportedly close to senior figures in the Iranian leadership, including Qods Force commander Esmail Qaani, and his group is said to receive funding from the government. In backing Massoud, Iran is continuing its old hedging strategy in Afghanistan. The Taliban has so far not proven to be a reliable partner for Tehran, so it makes sense to keep another option in its back pocket. For now there is little appetite in any foreign capital to patronise Massoud and foment resistance against the regime, given the chaos that might ensue. But if the Taliban’s grip on power weakens, Iran will want to get behind the winning horse. Tehran’s ties to the NRF are about more than Afghan politics, though. They are also a consequence of popular feeling in Iran, which is strongly supportive of Massoud and his late father. Click here to read more (external link).
Afghanistan Shuts 16 Crypto Exchanges, Arrests Staff: Report
Blockworks: Crypto became critical for some in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover last year, but authorities are now coming down hard on the local scene, reportedly shuttering at least 16 crypto exchanges in the country’s western Herat province. The move comes three months after Afghanistan banned crypto trading in the country, noted local independent outlet Ariana on Wednesday. It didn’t mention which crypto exchanges were affected by the closures. Google trends data shows web searches for “bitcoin” and “crypto” had risen just before the takeover. Afghanistan even entered the top 20 countries in Chainalysis’ Global Crypto Adoption Index in 2021, which maps the prevalence of digital assets across the world. Click here to read more (external link).