Taliban Reportedly Issues Order Requiring Female TV Presenters To Cover Faces

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
May 19, 2022

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have reportedly issued an order saying that female television presenters must cover their faces when appearing on programs.

The privately owned media giant Moby Group, which runs Tolo News, said in a tweet on May 19 that it was informed of the requirement by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

“The Islamic Emirate in a new order demanded all female presenters working in all TV channels to cover their faces while presenting programs,” Tolo News said on Twitter, adding that the ministry “called it a final verdict and not up for discussion.”

There was no immediate confirmation by the Taliban, but Tolo News said that its inquiries revealed that the order has been issued to all media outlets in Afghanistan.

The Taliban took control of the country in August 2021 as international forces withdrew after two decades of fighting.

Most of the world’s countries do not recognize the Taliban-led government amid concerns that the militants are not living up to their promises of respecting human rights.

A May 7 decree from officials of the Taliban-led government calls for women to only show their eyes and recommends they wear the head-to-toe burqa. Head scarves are common for most Afghan women, but in urban areas such as Kabul, many do not cover their faces.

Two months before that, Taliban officials ordered that all secondary girls schools be closed just hours after reopening them for the first time since the Sunni fundamentalist militants swept to power.

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.

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Three Members of Former Anti-taliban Forces Shot Dead by Taliban Fighters While Harvesting Wheat in Takhar

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8am: Local sources say the Taliban have shot dead three members of public uprising forces during the previous government in the Khaja Ghar district of Takhar province. Sources told Hasht-e Subh on Wednesday that the incident took place last night in the Hazar Bagh area of Khaja Ghar district. According to the source, the victims were named Ewaz Khan, Abdul Qasim and Hayatullah. They were not affiliated to any armed group since last August. Click here to read more (external link).

Afghan Political Leaders Meet in Turkey

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Abdul Rashid Dostum

Tolo News: A number of Afghan politicians and former Jihadi leaders met in Turkey, a spokesman for the Hizb-e-Junbish Party said, adding that the meeting focused on the current Afghan situation. “Marshal Dostum hosted the political and influential leaders. The meeting was held to exchange views on how to change the situation in Afghanistan,” said Ihsan Niro, a spokesman for the Hizb-e-Junbish, led by Marshal Abdul Rasheed Dostum. The meeting was attended by Muhammad Mohaqiq, leader of the People’s Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan; Ahmad Zia Masoud, former vice president; a representative of Salahuddin Rabani, former Minister of Foreign Affairs; Mir Rahman Rahmani, former speaker of the parliament; Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal, former Minister of Finance; and a representative of Mohammad Karim Khalili, leader of Hezb-e-Wahdat. Click here to read more (external link).

Afghanistan to tour Ireland in August for 5 T20Is

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Ariana: Afghanistan’s Senior Men’s Team will tour Ireland from August 9 to 17 and matches will take place in Stormont, ACB said in a statement. Afghanistan’s tour was initially scheduled to include a Test match and three ODIs, but the tour was rescheduled to a later date with both sides looking to maximize their T20 cricket exposure in the lead-up to the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022 in October. Click here to read more (external link).

Explosion Injures Three People in Balkh Province

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8am: Three people have been injured after a roadside bomb exploded in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province. The blast occurred at around 9:00 am on Thursday (May 19) in the fourth police district of Mazar-e-Sharif. Sources say the mine was planted in a hand-held van and exploded near a Taliban military vehicle. Nothing has been said about whether the wounded are Taliban fighters or civilians. Click here to read more (external link).

Children Dying from Measles Outbreak in Badakhshan: Officials

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Tolo News: Health officials in Badakhshan province say that due to the outbreak of measles 113 children have become “casualties” of measles in the past three months in the province. According to health officials, during this period more than 3,400 people in the provincial center and districts have been infected with the disease. Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban’s Most Wanted Mostly in Plain Sight

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Sirajuddin Haqqani

VOA News
May 18, 2022

He regularly meets foreign diplomats and speaks in public but is also the FBI’s most wanted man in Afghanistan.

Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting interior minister, even appeared on CNN on Tuesday with a conciliatory message for Americans. “In the future, we would like to have good relations with the United States,” he told CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour, who donned a green headscarf for the rare interview.

Last week, Tomas Niklasson, the European Union’s special envoy for Afghanistan, met Haqqani in Kabul and urged him to reopen secondary schools for girls. Last month, Haqqani spoke with Martin Griffiths, the United Nations’ under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

Haqqani’s public appearances stand at odds with a U.S. call for information about his whereabouts. Reward for Justice, a U.S. Department of State program aimed at combating international terrorism, offers $10 million for information that will lead to Haqqani’s arrest.

“The bounty on Siraj[uddin] Haqqani at this point is meaningless,” Asfandyar Mir, a senior analyst at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), told VOA. “Haqqani is now one of the main — if not the main — interlocutors for the international community in Afghanistan.”

The U.S. government does not recognize the Taliban’s de facto government and has closed the U.S. embassy in Kabul indefinitely. There is no indication U.S. officials have met with Haqqani.

U.S. officials have, however, met with Haqqani’s younger brother, Anas Haqqani — who is not wanted — during talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar. In addition to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the U.S. government is offering a $5 million bounty on Abdul Aziz Haqqani, another younger brother of Sirajuddin, and $3 million for Khalil Haqqani, Sirajuddin’s uncle and a current Taliban cabinet minister.

Heirs to insurgent commander

The three most wanted Haqqanis are heirs to Jaluluddin Haqqani, the late Afghan guerrilla commander who allegedly received U.S., Saudi and Pakistani support to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan in 1980s. Jaluluddin died from an unspecified illness in 2018 at age 78.

While functionally part of the Taliban group, the Haqqanis run a distinct terror, kidnapping and criminal enterprise known as the Haqqani network, or HQN. In 2012, the U.S. government designated the HQN as a foreign terrorist organization, accusing it of perpetuating terrorist attacks against U.S. personnel and Afghan allies in Afghanistan.

“Siraj[huddin] Haqqani is very powerful in the Taliban government,” Graem Smith, a senior analyst at International Crisis Group (ICG), told VOA, adding that under restructuring, the Taliban have brought in the Afghan government and that the administration of all of Afghanistan’s more than 300 districts fall under Haqqani’s writ.

The HQN reportedly enjoys strong backing from Pakistan. In 2011, Michael Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the HQN as “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s” intelligence agency — a charge Pakistani officials dismissed immediately.

Both the Taliban and the Haqqanis have denied the very existence of the HQN as an independent group.

As one of the two deputies to the Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, Siraj Haqqani is in line to be the Taliban’s next top leader.

A political tool?

“The Rewards for Justice program has been very successful,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA. “Since its inception in 1984, the program has paid in excess of $200 million to more than 100 people across the globe who provided actionable information that helped prevent terrorism, bring terrorist leaders to justice, and resolve threats to U.S. national security.”

In 1997, the program paid for information that led to the arrest of Aimal Kansi in Pakistan. Accused of killing two Central Intelligence Agency employees and wounding three others in Virginia in 1993, Kansi was tried in the U.S. in 1997 and subsequently executed in 2002.

Despite other successful prosecutions, some analysts question the validity and overall effectiveness of the program.

“The Rewards for Justice program has long been a way to make a political point against high-value individuals — and not a real law enforcement, intelligence collection or targeting tool against them,” said Mir of USIP.

In addition to setting monetary rewards for their arrest, the U.S. government imposes strict sanctions on designated terrorist individuals and entities.

With the Taliban’s return to power, the U.S. and the U.N. have extended strict financial sanctions over Taliban-controlled Afghan state institutions, and against the designated terrorist groups themselves, including the Taliban and HQN.

But some observers say the sanctions alone don’t do enough to keep the groups in check.

“The stigma of sanctions is not hurting the Haqqanis, who enjoy power in Kabul, but the sanctions continue to affect the Afghan economy,” said the ICG’s Smith.

Afghanistan’s per capita income has fallen by more than one-third since the Taliban seized power last year, prompting one of the worst humanitarian crises the landlocked country has experienced, according to aid agencies.

US Study Blames Rapid Troop Exit for Collapse of Afghan Forces

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US soldiers (file photo)

Ayaz Gul
VOA News
May 18, 2022

ISLAMABAD — An official U.S. agency report has blamed the sudden demise of Afghan security forces in August 2021 mainly on Washington’s decision to rapidly withdraw the American military, leading to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), tasked to monitor events in the war-torn nation, on Wednesday released what it said was the first U.S. government report on how and why the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) fell apart abruptly.

The 300,000-member ANDSF, which had received billions of dollars in U.S. training and equipment over two decades, crumbled without offering any significant resistance in the face of a lightning, 11-day insurgent offensive that brought almost the entire country, including the capital, Kabul, under the Taliban control on August 15.

“(The) SIGAR found that the single most important factor in the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces’ collapse in August 2021 … was the decision by two U.S. presidents to withdraw U.S. military and contractors from Afghanistan, while Afghan forces remained unable to sustain themselves,” the report said.

President Joe Biden and his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, who reached a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 to withdraw U.S. and allied troops and end the longest U.S. war, not only announced deadlines for the troop exit but the U.S. military significantly reduced its battlefield support of Afghan forces, leaving them without the crucial backing of American airstrikes. The SIGAR assessment is based in part on interviews with U.S. and former Afghan government officials and military leaders.

“We built that army to run on contractor support. Without it, it can’t function. Game over … when the contractors pulled out, it was like we pulled all the sticks out of the Jenga pile and expected it to stay up,” a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan told SIGAR.

Former Afghan generals told the agency that most of the U.S.-made UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were grounded shortly after American contractors withdrew in spring 2021, including those who performed maintenance on the helicopters.

“In a matter of months, 60 percent of the Black Hawks were grounded, with no Afghan or U.S. government plan to bring them back to life,” one Afghan general told the U.S. monitor. As a result, Afghan soldiers in isolated bases were running out of ammunition or dying for lack of medical evacuation capabilities, according to the report. It noted that the U.S.-Taliban deal and subsequent withdrawal announcement degraded ANDSF morale, with some Afghan army officials denouncing the pact as “a catalyst for the collapse.”

In 2019, the U.S. military conducted 7,423 airstrikes against insurgents, the most in a decade. In 2020, the U.S. conducted 1,631 airstrikes, with almost half occurring in the two months before the U.S.-Taliban agreement. A former Afghan special operations’ commander told SIGAR that “overnight … 98 percent of U.S. airstrikes had ceased.”

Afghan military officials were quoted as saying that the agreement’s psychological impact was so great that the average soldier switched to “survival mode and became susceptible” to accepting other offers, knowing they were not the winner. The deal also introduced tremendous uncertainty into the U.S.-Afghan relationship, according to SIGAR findings.

Afghans share blame

The report also blamed successive U.S.-backed Afghan governments for not doing their part to address the long-running problems facing ANDSF and affecting their determination to keep fighting. SIGAR identified low salaries, poor logistics that led to food, water and ammunition shortages; and corrupt commanders who colluded with contractors to skim off food and fuel contracts. It was not until Biden’s April 14, 2021, announcement of the final troop and contractor withdrawal date that deposed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s inner circle said they realized that the ANDSF had no supply and logistic capabilities. Although the Afghan authorities had operated in this way for nearly 20 years, their realization came only four months before its collapse, the report said. A former Afghan interior ministry official told SIGAR that Ghani and his aides had been dismissing the impending foreign troop withdrawal as “a U.S. plot” until early that April, believing it was merely intended to pressure the embattled president as opposed to being official U.S. policy.

“The U.S. and Afghan governments share in the blame. Neither side appeared to have the political commitment to doing what it would take to address the challenges, including devoting the time and resources necessary to develop a professional ANDSF, a multigenerational process,” the SIGAR concluded. “In essence, U.S. and Afghan efforts to cultivate an effective and sustainable security assistance sector were likely to fail from the beginning. The February 2020 decision to commit to a rapid U.S. military withdrawal sealed the ANDSF’s fate,” the report said.

The U.S.-led Western military alliance invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to punish the then-Taliban government in Kabul for harboring the al-Qaida leaders who Washington said were behind the deadly terrorist attacks against U.S. cities in September of that year. The Islamist group, however, quickly regrouped in alleged sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan before unleashing a deadly insurgency against international forces and their Afghan allies. U.S. and Afghan officials accused the Pakistani spy agency of covertly helping the Taliban sustain and expand their insurgency.

Islamabad rejected the charges and blamed several million Afghan refugees on its soil for sheltering insurgents. The allegations strained Pakistan’s relationship with the U.S. but did not rupture it, mainly because Pakistani ground and air routes were playing a crucial role in ferrying supplies to the foreign military mission in landlocked Afghanistan for nearly 20 years until the last American and allied troops flew out of Kabul on August 30.

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