Al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri
8am: The United Nations has recently reported that relations between al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders have recently become closer. According to the report, al-Qaeda has gained more freedom with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has renewed his allegiance to Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, according to a 25-page report recently released by the United Nations. Click here to read more (external link).
Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada
8am: The title of Amir al-mu’minin has no jurisprudential justification and the Taliban do not have the required knowledge to justify their supreme leader’s title. Amir al-mu’minin means the ruler of all believers on earth. Political terminology for Muslims developed during the first three to four centuries of Islamic empire expansion. Click here to read more (external link).
Anas Haqqani
Ariana: Speaking in an interview with Indian TV channel CNN-News18, Haqqani said that India can open up with its policy of peace and development as it had with the previous government, and for this, the doors of IEA are open. He said that cricket brings India and Afghanistan together and spreads happiness among the people of both countries. Click here to read more (external link).
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
May 27, 2022
The Taliban has tried to stem the flow of Afghans attempting to escape economic ruin and persecution. But, despite an official ban, the smuggling of undocumented migrants to neighboring Iran and Pakistan continues to rise with the help of Taliban border guards and officials willing to look the other way.
As Afghanistan’s economy collapses, its citizens continue to leave the country en masse in a trend that began to rise with the announced withdrawal of foreign forces in the spring of 2021 and which spiked after the Taliban seized power in August.
Iran, a major destination country, has clamped down by beefing up security along its 900-kilometer border with Afghanistan and deporting tens of thousands of Afghans.
Taliban authorities in the southwestern province of Nimroz, which abuts Afghanistan’s borders with Iran and Pakistan and serves as a major migration hub, have banned human smuggling in an effort to stem the outflow.
But smugglers tell RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi that the hurdles are nothing that cannot be overcome by bribing Taliban guards and officials willing to look the other way to keep business booming.
Mahmud, who provided only his first name, says he makes about $800 a month smuggling up to 150 people per week out of the country by way of an arduous and dangerous journey that starts in Zaranj, the capital of Nimroz, and eventually ends in Iran.
Buses drop off thousands of Afghans a day in Zaranj, where the 36-year-old Mahmud awaits to shuttle them out of the country.
“We fit about 20 people in each vehicle, and the Taliban charges 1,000 afghanis (about $11) per car,” said Mahmud of his operation, which employs several workers and three vans.
From Zaranj, they travel to Pakistan, where more payoffs are made to begin the second leg of the trip.
“We get to the Pakistani border at noon,” where Pakistani drivers are paid the equivalent of around $20 to take the migrants in their cars and another $30 is paid to a business partner to ensure the undocumented migrants are allowed to cross, Mahmud told Radio Azadi.
From there his customers are taken through the deserts of Pakistan’s Balochistan Province to begin their trek through the Mashkel Mountains hugging the border with Iran.
“There are two roads there, one with a seven-hour walk and the other with a seventeen-hour walk,” Mahmud said.
‘Many Are Injured And Killed’
Upon reaching the Iranian border, more danger and bribes await on the other side, as well as a formidable border fence constructed by Iran about 15 years ago and heightened security ordered by Tehran after the Taliban takeover.
“Iranian cars are there, and they take passengers in their cars for 2 million [Iranian tomans, or about $65),” he said of the easiest way to cross into Iran.
“There is another way, over the border wall, but many are injured and killed by border guards,” Mahmud added. “The way over the wall is very dangerous, and costs 7 million ($230).”
The Taliban, which has urged Afghans not to leave the country, has tried to cut off migration routes and authorities in Nimroz have issued bans against the smuggling of people to Iran.
Mawlawi Sardar Mohammad Ayubi, the Taliban’s police chief in Nimroz, recently announced a local ban on illegal immigration in an audiotape released by the province’s Information and Culture Department.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takur, meanwhile, told Radio Azadi that he had officially sent a letter to all provincial police headquarters prohibiting the human-smuggling trade. “Orders have been issued to prevent illegal travel,” he said.
The Taliban authorities did not respond to questions from Radio Azadi asking about reports that members of the Taliban were accepting bribes to circumvent the official orders.
From April 9 to May 6, nearly 230,000 Afghans flowed out of the country, mostly bound for neighboring Iran and Pakistan, according to the latest statistics from the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).
In the past year, more than 1.6 million Afghans crossed into Iran, according to the IOM, the vast majority of them undocumented migrants who seek work there or who intend to use Iran as a jumping-off point to migrate to Turkey and Europe.
Iran, which is mired in its own economic crisis amid skyrocketing inflation and rising food prices, has expressed alarm at the number of undocumented Afghans on its soil, putting the number at some 5 million people.
Shortly after the Taliban took power in Kabul, Iran’s Interior Ministry announced that it would no longer allow entrance to Afghan refugees, citing difficult economic conditions. Since then, Tehran has deported tens of thousands of undocumented Afghans.
According to IOM statistics, the number of Afghans moving from Iran to Afghanistan was only slightly lower than the number of Afghans moving to Iran from May 2021 to April 2022, and has at times exceeded the figure.
In April, for example, more than 91,000 Afghans moved from Iran to Afghanistan compared to 45,000 Afghans moving from Afghanistan to Iran. Of the 6,922 Afghans who returned to Afghanistan from Iran from April 30 to May 6, according to the IOM, 3,910 were deported.
Stark Reality
On May 26, Afghanistan’s Hasht-e Subh daily cited local sources in Nimroz Province as saying that 7,000 migrants had been deported from Iran in the past week, including 257 families.
Ahmad Khaledi, a 26-year-old resident of Afghanistan’s northern province of Sar-e Pol, is among those who was successfully smuggled to Iran.
He told Radio Azadi that he paid a small fortune in his quest to work in Iran.
“I had 50,000 afghanis ($590) with me and I wanted to go to Iran,” Khaledi said, adding that when he approached a smuggler he was told that “for Iran you must pay 5 million Iranian tomans ($164).”
He made the payment and began his exodus by car, but was caught by the Taliban along the way and had to pay a bribe to be allowed to continue.
Eventually, he reached the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan, just kilometers from the Pakistani border, and from there he eventually moved on to the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Not everyone is so lucky. Some illegal migrants have been detained, beaten, or even killed along the way by criminal gangs and border guards.
And even if they do reach Iran, they have no legal status and face the stark reality that they may be sent back to the place they were trying to flee at great cost.
Massud, a farmer in the northern province of Kapisa who only gave Radio Azadi his first name, sold his cows and calves to pay smugglers in Nimroz Province for his ticket out of Afghanistan.
He made it to Iran, he said, but “we encountered a lot of problems on the way.” After paying a smuggler in Iran to get him to the central city of Isfahan, he got a factory job through a contact.
But Massud says he returned to Afghanistan empty-handed after he was caught by Iranian police and deported.
8am: The clashes have been escalating in Panjshir province for the last three weeks. Recently, the Taliban’s high-ranking members, including Mullah Baradar and Mullah Yaqoob have traveled to the province in order to lead the fights against the Resistance Front forces. As a result of heavy clashes in Panjshir, the National Resistance Front has claimed of killing 27 Taliban fighters. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
The Diplomat: “They are the largest religious minority in Afghanistan, and an ethnic minority as well. Their history is one of persecution, with the latest attacks coming from ISIS-K [ISK, the Islamic State Khorasan]. The return of the Taliban has been a disaster for them,” Knox Thames, former special envoy on minority issues at the State Department, tells The Diplomat. Click here to read more (external link).
Taliban fighters (file photo)
8am: Contrary to the Taliban’s widespread propaganda of “establishing security”, Kabul and the city of Mazar-e-Sharif witnessed bloody explosions on Wednesday. Such attacks have occurred before. The bombings have been costly, and critics and opponents of the Taliban have speculated that the group has failed to provide security, acting as a “thief partner” and a “comrade-in-arms” simultaneously. There has long been talks of the Taliban’s internal strife, and the allegation that bloody attacks are being carried out by the group’s affiliates has been raised by the National Resistance Front. The National Resistance Front has said that Taliban control over its affiliated suicide squads has slipped out of their control, blaming the Taliban for the bloody attacks. Click here to read more (external link).
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
May 27, 2022
ISLAMABAD — The Afghan Taliban have turned down renewed calls by the United Nations for the Islamist rulers to reverse restrictions on the human rights of women in Afghanistan, saying they are in line with local religious and cultural values.
The hard-line group’s foreign ministry issued a statement Friday rejecting U.N. concerns as “unfounded.” It urged the global community “not to pass verdicts based on malicious and antagonist reporting of some media outlets or propaganda” by Afghan opposition forces.
In consecutive statements this week, the U.N. Security Council and the world body’s special observer on the human rights situation in Afghanistan expressed “deep concern” and sharply criticized the latest Taliban order for women to cover up fully in pubic, including their faces.
The Taliban’s Ministry for Vice and Virtue, tasked with interpreting and enforcing the Taliban’s version of Islam, also bound female presenters on Afghan TV channels to cover their faces when on air.
The male-only interim Taliban government has also suspended girls’ secondary education, prevented most female employees from returning to government jobs, barred women from traveling alone and strongly advised them to stay at home.
Friday’s Taliban statement noted that the “government considers the observance of Islamic hijab to be in line with the religious and cultural practices of society and aspirations of majority of Afghan women.” It went on to stress that “nothing has been imposed on the Afghan people that runs counter to the religious and cultural beliefs of the Islamic society.”
The Taliban urged the international community to “show respect” for Afghan values, insisting it believed in resolving problems through dialogue.
Following meetings with Taliban leaders Thursday, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said the group’s polices were “making women invisible” across the country.
“The de facto authorities have failed to acknowledge the magnitude and gravity of the abuses being committed, many of them in their name and their responsibility to address them and protect the entire population,” Bennett told reporters in the capital, Kabul, at the end of his 11-day trip to the country.
The U.N. expert cautioned that the Taliban “stands at a crossroads” and the Afghan society under their rule will either become more stable and “a place where Afghans enjoy freedom and human rights, or it will become increasingly restrictive.”
On Tuesday, the 15-member U.N. Security Council renewed its call on the Taliban to adhere to their commitments to reopen schools for all female students without further delay and “swiftly reverse” restrictions on Afghan women’s fundamental freedom and access to public life.
The international community has not recognized the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, saying the issue would come under consideration only after the Islamist group adheres to its pledges to protect the human rights of all Afghans, especially those of women.
The Taliban seized power from the Western-backed former government in August when the last U.S.-led international forces withdrew from the country after almost 20 years of war with the Islamist group.
A Kuchi camp in southern Afghanistan. (file photo)
8am: After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, armed nomads from eastern and southern provinces and even Pakistan have entered parts of the Hazarajat. The nomads, who have the full support of the Taliban and are fully armed, claim ownership of the people’s lands and are destroying farms. Residents of some areas in Maidan Wardak and Ghazni provinces report that they have nothing left to harvest this year and that all their crops have been destroyed by nomads. It is also reported that nomads have harassed Uzbek and Turkmen people in the northern city of Jawzjan. Simultaneously with the harassment of the people by nomads, there has been controversy and even armed clashes in several provinces, especially in Parwan province. Click here to read more (external link).