Video of Young Man Shot Dead in Panjshir Sparks Reactions

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Tolo News: A video showing what appears to be Islamic Emirate force members shooting and killing a young man in Rukha district of Panjshir has sparked reactions among Afghans on social media. “He was working with me as a teacher in Hisarak secondary school. He left five children behind. He had no military background,” said Abdullah, a relative of Ahmad Bilal. Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban says US agreed not to give Afghan funds to charity organizations

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Ariana: After Washington announced its plan to use half of $7 billion in frozen Afghan assets for humanitarian aid, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan said on Friday the US has agreed not to give it to charity organizations. The agreement came during a meeting between IEA’s Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and US special envoy for Afghanistan, Thomas West, in Turkey. Click here to read more (external link).

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Women who served in the Afghan military are pleading for help, as Taliban fighters are hunting them down

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The Atlantic: … Talib fighters began going house to house in Kabul in pursuit of the regime’s supposed enemies. The targets of these ongoing searches are Afghans who served in the former government or military, especially members of the Hazara and Tajik ethnic minorities. The hunt is spreading around the country, putting the lives of thousands of Afghans in danger. Click here to read more (external link).

Pakistan Confronts Growing Threat From Islamic State-Khorasan

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By Abubakar Siddique
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
March 11, 2022

Since it first emerged in 2015, Islamic State’s local affiliate in Afghanistan has focused its violent campaign within that country, fighting against Afghan and foreign forces as well as the Taliban, a rival militant group.

But experts say Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) is now shifting its war to neighboring Pakistan as it comes under mounting pressure from the Taliban, which has waged a fierce war against IS-K militants in Afghanistan since seizing power in August.

IS-K has claimed responsibility for a string of high-profile attacks in Pakistan, underscoring the growing threat it poses to the predominately Muslim nation of some 220 million people.

In the deadliest attack, an IS-K suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Shi’ite mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar on March 4, killing at least 64 people and wounding scores of others. It was the most lethal attack in Pakistan in nearly four years.

Experts believe IS-K militants have moved from their bases in Afghanistan and established cells in major Pakistani cities.

“IS-K has no political agenda, which pushes it to rely on violence as its only instrument,” Sami Yousafzai, a veteran journalist and commentator, told RFE/RL.

“Their mounting attacks inside Pakistan are a sign that they want to use violence to stay relevant,” he said, adding that small IS-K cells can survive better in Pakistan’s populous cities compared to the sparsely populated mountains in eastern Afghanistan.

‘Bigger Threat’

The IS-K assaults have provoked fear and alarm in Pakistan, which has also witnessed a dramatic surge in attacks by the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a rival extremist group that has close ties with the Afghan Taliban.

Abdul Sayed, a Sweden-based researcher who tracks IS-K, says the TTP claimed responsibility for 257 attacks in Pakistan last year compared to 19 attacks by IS-K. Both groups have focused their attacks on the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan.

But the target of IS-K’s attacks, he says, are more worrying for Pakistanis.

“The TTP has restricted its attacks to the security forces while [IS-K] is choosing soft targets in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where ordinary civilians are the victims,” Sayed said.

IS-K has already carried out five attacks this year. On March 8, IS-K claimed responsibility for a roadside bomb that killed five members of the security forces and wounded 28 people others in southwestern Pakistan.

The growing attacks prompted Moazzam Jah Ansari, the police chief in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to declare IS-K a “bigger threat to peace and security in the province compared to the TTP.”

Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, a think tank based in Islamabad, says despite its smaller numbers IS-K is a growing danger to Islamabad’s security.

“They lack the manpower the TTP possesses, which is why we do not see a continuity in their attacks,” he told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal.

Militant Rivalry

Sayed says IS-K’s rising number of attacks in Pakistan is part of its rivalry with the TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban.

“The main strategy appears to be that [IS-K] wants to undermine the value of the TTP’s terror in its main target area,” Sayed said.

Many IS-K fighters are former members of the TTP, which was thrown into disarray and driven out of its bases in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt by a massive military offensive in 2014. Disgruntled members of the TTP founded the IS-K in eastern Afghanistan in early 2015, according to Sayed.

But the TTP soon found itself fighting turf wars with the Afghan Taliban. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the rivalry has intensified.

The Afghan militants have waged a nationwide hunt for IS-K members and even targeted the country’s small Salafi minority to curb alleged support for the group from among its members.

“There is information suggesting [IS-K] members have fled Afghanistan for Pakistan because of their fear for the Taliban,” Sayed said.

Underscoring the rivalry, the Afghan Taliban condemned IS-K’s deadly attack in Peshawar. The TTP, meanwhile, said that such attacks do not align with its jihad, or holy war, in Pakistan.

Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist and TV presenter, says the growing threat of IS-K showcases Islamabad’s failure to tackle terrorist groups despite repeatedly claiming to have defeated them.

“We claim that we have broken the backbone of terrorists. Yet the terrorists continue to launch almost daily attacks,” he told Radio Mashaal.

Radio Mashaal correspondent Majeed Babar contributed to this story.

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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Local Sources: Taliban Forces Open Fires and Kill a Resident of Balkh

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8am: Local sources in Balkh confirm that a resident, named Haji Esmat was shot by Taliban forces at a checkpoint on Thursday evening while he was returning home from work. “He died in the hospital later that evening,” the victim’s relatives told Hasht-e Subh by confirming his death. Click here to read more (external link).

Former Mayor’s Return to Kabul Sparks Controversy

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Zarifa Gharifi

VOA News
March 10, 2022

WASHINGTON — After making a dramatic escape from Kabul last August, Zarifa Ghafari, once Afghanistan’s youngest female mayor, vowed to return to her native country.

“Leaving [Afghanistan] doesn’t mean I’ve left forever,” she told VOA after evacuating to Germany. “I’m optimistic that I’ll return to my country very soon.”

Last week, she made good on her word. But no sooner had she announced her arrival in Kabul on Twitter and Facebook — “I’ve come to my people!” — than her return set off a social media quarrel among Taliban critics and boosters.

While many praised her courage to return to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to deliver badly needed humanitarian aid, others accused her of coddling the militant group.

“The Taliban will leave you alone because you’re a Talib,” one Twitter user wrote.

Added another commentator, “So what was the reason for your departure [in August]? Aren’t [today’s] Taliban the same as yesterday’s Taliban?”

In an interview with VOA, Ghafari responded to her critics.

“Unfortunately, critics who have moved from Afghanistan to the West have an unstable view,” she said. “I’m sure most of their families are living in extreme poverty, and if helping the desperate nation amounts to solidarity with the Taliban, this is a good thing.”

Ghafari is one of only a handful of public figures known to have returned to Afghanistan in recent months following the U.S.-led evacuation of more than 124,000 people in August.

In November, popular TV comedian Ibrahim Abed went back. In February, the Taliban welcomed Abdul Salam Rahimi, a peace minister in former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government.

Their “homecoming” has added to a raging debate over just how much the Taliban have changed since their last repressive rule in the 1990s. While Taliban officials claim they’ve moderated their ways, critics remain skeptical, citing, among other things, the group’s crackdown on rights activists and others.

Ghafari, 30, finds herself in the eye of the controversy in part because she was once among the Taliban’s fiercest critics. In 2018, she became Afghanistan’s youngest mayor when she was put in charge of Maidan Shahr, a small town 46 kilometers southeast of Kabul.

Opposition to her appointment in the conservative province was swift and severe. But despite death threats and assassination attempts, she remained on the job for three years, winning international recognition for her defiance of the Taliban.

In late 2020, Ghafari’s father, an army special forces commander, was gunned down in Kabul, and she later blamed the Taliban for his death. With Taliban forces closing in on her city, Ghani appointed her as a senior Defense Ministry official in early 2021.

After the Taliban seized power, Ghafari and her family evacuated to Germany. She later told VOA she feared for her family’s safety and vowed to “raise the unspoken voice of Afghan women throughout the world.”

As she made the rounds in recent months criticizing the Taliban, Afghanistan descended into the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

“As an Afghan, I couldn’t just sit and watch it from abroad and not do anything about it,” she told VOA’s Afghan Service.

Former co-workers, she said, warned her about the risks of returning.

“Their advice was that the risk is extremely high but sacrificing for public service is a victory for history,” she said. “As in the past, I’ve chosen the path of sacrifice.”

But Ghafari said whatever apprehension she had disappeared as she flew into Kabul on a flight full of women in late February.

“What gave me reassurance was these women. When I landed, I was apprehensive. But no one said anything to me. Nothing happened [to me],” she said.

Despite imposing many restrictions, the Taliban allowed women to work in media and attend university. But Ghafari said she has no interest in working for them. She has forsworn politics and instead wants to carry out humanitarian work through her NGO, Assistance and Promotion for Afghan Women.

“I just want to work for the people without any political, personal … or foreign goals,” she said.

Ghafari is circumspect about her plans to stay in Afghanistan. “Contrary to expectations, I have a long-term plan to travel both at home and abroad to draw the world’s attention to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan,”she told VOA.

On Monday, she traveled to Abu Dhabi where she and a former Afghan member of parliament received Forbes magazine’s Changemaker Award.

At the award ceremony, she said the Taliban are “capable of changing.”

“The Taliban do not stone women in public … as they did in the past. They do not torture women without a male companion, but instead are opening the doors of schools and universities to them,” she said. “If someone tries to reform himself, the world has a responsibility to help him.”

On social media, the comments prompted charges that she’s normalizing the Taliban.

“You’ve sold out,” one commenter wrote in response to her speech. “You’re a big part of the Taliban normalization project.”

But others came to her defense.

“Thank you for presenting the real picture of Afghans to the world,” a Facebook user named Saifullah Samim wrote. “Also invite other activists to serve their country.”

This story originated in VOA’s Afghanistan Service.

Mazar Municipality prepares for Nowruz festival

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Ariana: Afghans have meanwhile called on the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) to allow Nowruz celebrations to go ahead. We “urge the government of Islamic Emirate to mark the Nowruz festival as it was marked in the past years,” said Mohammad Asif, a resident of Mazar. IEA officials meanwhile said that there are two Eids for Muslims, and that Nowruz celebrations are not necessary.  Click here to read more (external link).

Local Sources: Taliban Intelligence Arrest the Head of Baloch Tribal Council in Nimruz Province

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8am: Local sources in Nimruz confirm that Taliban intelligence forces have arrested Abdul Raziq Kirgech, the Head and Chairman of Baloch Tribal Council on Thursday morning, March 10. Taliban’s security authority, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed his arrest to Hasht-e Subh. Click here to read more (external link).