WSJ: Two decades ago, Iran helped the U.S. topple the Taliban regime to remove what it saw as a threat to its national security and fellow Shia Muslims in Afghanistan. Now, four months after the Taliban seized power in Kabul, Iran and Afghanistan are both struggling under crippling U.S. sanctions—a predicament that is pushing them to put longstanding ideological and political differences aside as they seek to fill the vacuum left behind by American troops. Click here to read more (external link).
Parents Selling Children Shows Desperation of Afghanistan
AP: Arranging marriages for very young girls is common in the region. The groom’s family pays money to seal the deal, and the child usually stays with her parents until she is at least around 15. Yet with many unable to afford even basic food, some say they’d allow prospective grooms to take very young girls or are even trying to sell their sons. Click here to read more (external link).
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Former President Ghani Say He Had No Choice But To Flee Kabul Or Witness Its Destruction
Ghani
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
December 30, 2021
Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has again defended his sudden departure from Kabul in August, saying he had no choice but to leave the country as Taliban militants bore down on the capital after an agreement with the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump paved the way for their return.
Speaking in an interview with the BBC, Ghani said he fled Afghanistan on August 15 to avoid bloodshed and the destruction of Kabul as rival factions of militants bore down on the city, a claim not backed up by any evidence.
He also denied claims by another former Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, that a deal on a peaceful transfer of power was being hammered out and said the rumors that he left the country with millions of dollars in stolen funds were false.
“Two different factions of the Taliban were closing in from two different directions. And the possibility of a massive conflict between them that would destroy the city of 5 million and bring havoc to the people was enormous,” he said in the interview, broadcast on December 30.
“I did not know where we will go. Only when we took off, it became clear that we were leaving [Afghanistan]. So this really was sudden,” he added of his departure, which left a power vacuum filled within hours by the Taliban.
Ghani eventually flew to the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), where he received political asylum.
Ghani’s comments on his departure, which left Kabul rudderless as international armed forces made their final preparations to withdraw from the country after two decades, echoed a statement he made on September 8.
In the BBC interview, the former president said the downfall of the government was precipitated by the agreement Trump made with Taliban leaders.
“Instead of a peace process, we got a withdrawal process,” Ghani said, adding that the way the deal was done “erased us.”
A former World Bank employee and Kabul University dean, the 72-year-old Ghani became president after a deeply contentious election in 2014 that required Western mediation to settle.
His government participated in mostly stalled intra-Afghan peace talks in Doha with Taliban representatives that began in late 2020, although the Taliban kept up its campaign of violence throughout much of the process.
Western officials and analysts were stunned at the rapid Taliban advance capturing Afghan territory once the U.S.-led military withdrawal officially began in May.
After the withdrawal of international forces was declared complete on August 30, U.S. President Joe Biden said he had expected the Afghan government “to hold on for a period of time beyond military drawdown [but that] turned out not to be accurate.”
Ghani told the BBC that he shares part of the blame for the fall of Kabul for trusting “in our international partnership” and that in the end, what unfolded was “a violent coup, not a political agreement, or a political process where the people have been involved.”
Based on reporting by the BBC
Copyright (c) 2021. 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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Tolo News in Dari – December 30, 2021
Pakistan Sends Humanitarian Aid to Afghanistan
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
December 30, 2021
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan has begun dispatching thousands of metric tons of wheat to Afghanistan as relief assistance, saying the humanitarian and economic situation in the neighboring country requires the urgent attention of the international community.
Islamabad has pledged about $28 million worth of humanitarian aid to Kabul, including 50,000 metric tons of wheat, winter shelter and emergency medical supplies.
While scores of trucks have transported food and medical supplies to Afghanistan in recent weeks, a Pakistani Foreign Ministry statement said Thursday the first consignment of 1,800 metric tons of wheat was handed over to Afghan authorities at the northwestern Torkham border crossing between the countries.
“It is critical that the world community upscale its efforts to reach out to the Afghan people on an urgent basis to help address the humanitarian crisis and stabilize the economic situation,” the statement emphasized.
Pakistani leaders maintain that worsening humanitarian and economic conditions could force Afghans to take shelter in neighboring countries and the world at large unless urgent aid arrives in Afghanistan.
Pakistan already hosts about 3 million Afghan refugees, as well as economic migrants, and it has refused to accept a new influx of refugees citing its own economic difficulties.
The United Nations estimates nearly 23 million people, about 55% of the population in Afghanistan, face extreme levels of hunger, and nearly 9 million of them are at risk of famine in the wake of years of war and international sanctions.
The humanitarian situation has deteriorated following the Taliban military takeover of the country and the withdrawal of the U.S.-led coalition in August. The development prompted Washington to immediately suspend its cash flow to the Afghan economy, which mostly depended on foreign financial assistance over the past 20 years.
The Biden administration also has seized Afghanistan’s roughly $9.5 billion worth of assets and imposed financial sanctions on the Taliban, plunging the economy into unprecedented upheaval and making it difficult for people to get enough to eat.
The Taliban have been seeking global legitimacy for their interim government in Kabul and release of the frozen funds.
Pakistan, which is known for its close contacts with the Islamist group, has been urging the United States and other nations to engage with the new rulers in Afghanistan to prevent the looming humanitarian and economic disaster there.
The U.S. Treasury Department acted last week to ease sanctions against Kabul, saying it would issue licenses to ensure some international aid could flow to Afghanistan, as long as it did not reach Taliban leaders sanctioned by Washington. The licenses also would allow Afghans living abroad to send money to their families.
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Herat Malls Ordered to Remove Heads of Mannequins
Tolo News: The department of vice and virtue in the western province of Herat ordered shopping malls to remove the heads of mannequins. The department in a statement said that the mannequins are similar to statues and must not be allowed in the markets. Click here to read more (external link).
Pakistan Taliban Claims Responsibility For Attack That Killed Four Soldiers
By Radio Mashaal
December 30, 2021
Four Pakistani soldiers have been killed in an attack in the North Waziristan tribal district.
The banned Islamist group Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the December 30 attack in the Karkanra area of the Mir Ali subdistrict.
There were no immediate reports of other casualties.
Attacks on police and security forces in both North and South Waziristan and surrounding areas have been on the rise since a monthlong cease-fire between the government and the TTP expired earlier this month.
On December 29, one police officer was killed in the Mir Ali subdistrict by armed militants on motorcycles who managed to escape. On December 24, one soldier was killed and seven injured in another attack in North Waziristan.
According to an unofficial tally, as many as 63 attacks were carried out on Pakistani security forces, police, and civilians in North Waziristan in 2021.
Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
The Taliban Wages War Against Its Dead Rivals
Abubakar Siddique
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
December 29, 2021
The Taliban toppled the Western-backed Afghan government in August following a brutal, nearly 20-year insurgency.
But the militant group’s war against its former enemy is not over. The Taliban has been accused of killing, torturing, or forcibly disappearing hundreds of members of the former government and its armed forces.
Even the dead have not been immune from Taliban violence.
Since seizing power in August, the militants have been accused of vandalizing or destroying the graves of fallen Afghan Army and police commanders. The Taliban has also allegedly defiled monuments dedicated to figures who fought the group during its first stint in power in the 1990s.
The Taliban has denied responsibility for many of the incidents.
But allegations against the hard-line group have mounted, with Afghans accusing the militants of violating Islamic traditions that advocate respect for the dead.
Anti-Taliban Commanders
In the latest incident, Taliban fighters were accused of bombing the tomb of former police commander Daraya Khan Talash in the southeastern province of Paktika on December 26.
Talash was killed by a roadside bomb planted by the Taliban in Paktika’s Sarobi district in 2020. He had reportedly lost four of his brothers in the war against the Taliban.
Taliban fighters have also been accused of defiling the tomb of Mohammad Daud Daud, a former governor and an ex-police chief of northern Afghanistan, in the province of Takhar on December 17.
Daud was killed in a Taliban suicide attack in Takhar’s capital, Taloqan, in 2011. Following the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, Daud oversaw the surrender of thousands of Taliban fighters in the northern city of Kunduz. He was a commander in Jamiat-e Islami, a political-military Islamist group that opposed Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001.
Bilal Sarwary, an exiled Afghan journalist, said Daud’s family confirmed that his grave was vandalized. But that claim was rejected by the Taliban. RFE/RL was unable to independently verify the claims.
Meanwhile, the Taliban was accused of destroying the tomb of Colonel Azizullah Karwan in a bomb blast in the southeastern province of Paktika on October 31.
The Taliban assassinated Karwan in June 2018. He was a colonel in the special forces unit of the Afghan National Police. He had survived dozens of Taliban assassination attempts.
In September, videos emerged that appeared to show damage to the mausoleum of resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud in the Panjshir Valley, just north of Kabul.
The footage emerged soon after the Taliban captured the mountainous valley, the scene of a short-lived resistance to the militants, in early September.
The vandalism coincided with the 20th anniversary of Massoud’s death. Massoud, who fought against the Taliban in the 1990s and occupying Soviet forces in the 1980s, was killed by Al-Qaeda militants posing as journalists just days before the September 11 attacks in the United States.
The Taliban repaired Massoud’s mausoleum after a public uproar.
‘Personal Revenge’
Sarwary said the Taliban’s destruction of graves is part of a “growing trend.”
“Seizing homes, vehicles, property, and the destruction of tombs in several places shows how the younger generation of Taliban [fighters] are constantly taking part in these actions,” he says.
“Such actions have embarrassed Taliban leaders who have constantly assured everyone that the Taliban is a changed force and a responsible government,” he added.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban deputy minister and spokesman for the regime, said claims about Taliban fighters destroying graves were simply “not true.”
But Anas Haqqani, the younger brother of Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, urged Taliban fighters to “get rid of your personal revenge and envy.”
In a December 27 speech marking the 42nd anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Haqqani warned that the Taliban regime will collapse if it tries to rule through brute force.
“An infidel government is likely to last, but an oppressive regime will not survive,” he said.
But on the same day, another Taliban official boasted about the group bombing the tomb of former leftist President Babrak Karmal, who assumed power after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan and killed his predecessor, Hafizullah Amin, in late 1979.
“After capturing Mazar-e Sharif, the Taliban bombed Babrak’s tomb,” tweeted Nazar Mohammad Mutmaeen, head of the Taliban’s Olympic Committee. He was alluding to the destruction of the late president’s tomb in 1997, when the Taliban briefly seized the northern Afghan city.
Copyright (c) 2021. 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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1TV Afghanistan Dari News – December 29, 2021
Transgender Person Attacked by Unknown Individuals in Herat
Tolo News: Abdul Sabor Husseini, a transgender person, was tortured by a group of unknown individuals in the western province of Herat. Husseini, 65, said that the individuals started torturing him after he refused to have relations with them. According to Husseini, the attackers burned his feet. Click here to read more (external link).