Witnesses: Taliban Fire Warning Shots on Afghan Female Protesters

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Ayaz Gul
VOA News
December 28, 2021

ISLAMABAD  — Witnesses say Taliban security forces in Afghanistan fired warning shots Tuesday to disperse a group of female activists in Kabul protesting restrictions placed on women in the country.

The women marched through the streets of the Afghan capital toward the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which enforces Islamic law as interpreted by the Taliban. Protesters held banners reading, “We are tired of discrimination” along with, “We are the voice of hungry people.”

Other banners read, “We women wake up and hate discrimination,” and “Why have you closed schools?” Protesters demanded work, food and education.

One participant, Hoda Khamush, told VOA that Taliban forces resorted to firing in the air to disperse the participants who tried to enter the building, which had housed the Women’s Affairs Ministry under the deposed Western-backed Afghan government

Khamush alleged the violence injured some protesters but VOA could not independently verify the claim. Taliban officials did not immediately offer any comment on the incident.

Afghan television channels aired images from the rally.

The protest comes two days after the ministry issued travel curbs on women across Afghanistan, further curtailing their rights. The new rules limit a woman’s ability to travel farther than 72 kilometers unless accompanied by a close male relative. They also require taxi drivers to offer rides only to women wearing an Islamic hijab or a headscarf and to refrain from playing music in their vehicles.

The government has allowed schoolboys to return to classes but girls across many Afghan provinces are still waiting for permission to do so and most women have been prevented from returning to work.

Last month, the Taliban’s ministry ordered Afghan channels to stop showing dramas and soap operas featuring actresses, and female news anchors to wear hijabs while on the air.

The ultraconservative group regained power in August and named an all-male interim Cabinet to govern the conflict-torn country in line with the group’s strict interpretation of Islam, despite pledging not to bring back the harsh polices of their previous regime from 1996 to 2001.

When the Taliban were last in power, girls were not allowed to attend school and women were barred from work as well as education. The then-Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or the morals police, had been accused of serious human rights abuses, leading to Afghanistan’s isolation from the world.

The United States and the global community at large have not recognized the new Taliban government. They are refusing to open direct political engagement with the Islamist group until it ensures respect for human rights, especially those of women, runs the country inclusively and cuts ties with transnational terrorists.

The lack of government legitimacy has hampered the flow of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, where years of war, drought and poverty have left nearly 23 million people with acute food shortages and in need of urgent relief.

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Resettlement Of Afghanistan’s Ethnic Kazakhs To Kazakhstan Hampered By Taliban Takeover

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By Farangis Najibullah
RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service
December 28, 2021

Abdul Kabir Wakil Khan traveled from Kazakhstan to the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif in July to help his family members — all ethnic Kazakhs — relocate to their ancestral homeland.

Instead, Wakil Khan became stranded in Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power in the war-torn country in August.

Wakil Khan’s parents and several of his relatives were in the process of being cleared for resettlement by the Kazakh Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

They were among scores of Afghan nationals seeking to relocate through a special Kazakh government program that helps ethnic Kazakhs from abroad to immigrate to the Central Asian nation.

But the Taliban takeover put those relocation plans on hold. The Kazakh Embassy in Kabul has restricted its operations, passports applications have been disrupted, and most international flights have been suspended.

Unable to leave Afghanistan, Wakil Khan has been trying to secure visas for his family members to travel to Kazakhstan. The 58-year-old, himself born in Afghanistan, moved to Kazakhstan some 15 years ago.

“There is a group of people who gather in front of the embassy these days,” Wakil Khan told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service. “Like me, many of them traveled from Kazakhstan to obtain visas for their relatives.”

Kazakh authorities claim there are only around 200 ethnic Kazakhs remaining in Afghanistan. But ethnic Kazakhs in Afghanistan estimate the number is much higher.

Many members of the ethnic Kazakh community are believed to be the relatives of those who arrived in northern Afghanistan from Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s.

Many of them speak Dari or Uzbek and live among ethnic Uzbek communities in northern Afghanistan. Most of them reside in rural areas and are engaged in livestock farming.

According to official figures, some 13,000 ethnic Kazakhs from Afghanistan have immigrated to Kazakhstan since the early 1990s.

Kazakhstan offers citizenship to ethnic Kazakhs who emigrate to their ancestral homeland from abroad.

About 1 million ethnic Kazakhs from Uzbekistan, China, and other neighboring countries have moved to the oil-rich Central Asian country since the 1990s.

The Kazakh government offers financial incentives, subsidized housing, and other benefits for them. But those state benefits come with a precondition. They must move to sparsely populated northern regions of Kazakhstan where there is a shortage of workers.

Not everyone wants to move to the north, which is notorious for harsh winters. Those who stay elsewhere in Kazakhstan do not receive support from the government.

‘Documentation Issues’

Kazakh authorities have said they are committed to helping ethnic Kazakhs in Afghanistan.

Shortly after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev ordered his government to organize the evacuation of ethnic Kazakh Afghan nationals from Kabul.

On September 9, Kazakhstan evacuated 35 ethnic Kazakh onboard a special flight from Kabul to Almaty.

But the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said last week that the evacuation of ethnic Kazakhs from Afghanistan had been “suspended,” citing the “political situation as well as documentation issues in Afghanistan.”

When the Taliban seized power, dozens of Afghans claiming to be ethnic Kazakhs pleaded the Kazakh Embassy for help to resettle in Kazakhstan.

The Kazakh Foreign Ministry said in late August that it had established a special commission at the embassy to investigate each case.

But Kazakh officials have said many Afghan applicants have difficulty proving their Kazakh roots.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Aibek Smadiyarov said many applicants were “unable to provide any documents” to prove their Kazakh ethnicity or reveal when their relatives first moved to Afghanistan.

“Some of them don’t even have basic knowledge of the Kazakh language,” Smadiyarov told reporters in late August.

Amanullah Nazari, an Afghan who resettled in Kazakhstan in 2019, said many ethnic Kazakhs in Afghanistan are illiterate and often live in remote rural areas. He said that many members of the community are probably not even aware of the resettlement program.

The lack of travel documents has also hampered the resettlement of ethnic Kazakhs in Afghanistan, from where hundreds of thousands of people have fled in recent months due to Taliban repression and a devastating humanitarian and economic crisis.

Passport offices across Afghanistan have frequently suspended their operations since August.

But even those who obtain passports and foreign visas find it difficult to leave Afghanistan. International flights have come to a near-complete halt since the Taliban takeover.

A family of Afghan Kazakhs living in the southern Kazakh city of Shymkent told RFE/RL that their relatives — a total of 38 people — were set to relocate from the Afghan province of Faryab to Kazakhstan in July.

After their resettlements documents were approved, they were making travel plans when the Taliban seized power.

“We sent them money [for their flights], but it won’t be enough anymore,” said Hangama Abdul Karim, a Kazakh citizen who has relatives in Afghanistan. “We can’t afford to pay for their travel with connecting flights [through other countries].”

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.

Video of Former Govt Officer’s Torture Sparks Reaction

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Tolo News: In the past few days, a video showing a military officer of the former government who was arrested being tortured by two men has sparked sharp reactions from social media users. A large number of people on social media platforms have said such actions are clearly in contradiction to the general amnesty announced by the Islamic Emirate in the first days of its coming into power. Click here to read more (external link).

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Taliban Release Head of Private TV Network

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VOA News
December 28, 2021

The Taliban on Tuesday released a prominent Afghan TV station owner who was detained for two days, according to the independent media monitoring group Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC).

The Taliban did not say why Mohammad Arif Noori, the founder and owner of Noorin TV, was detained.

AFJC in a statement said it “condemns the arbitrary detention of Mr. Noori”, calling it an “infringement of press freedom.”

Noori was taken from his home in Kabul on Sunday afternoon, according to his son Roman Noori.

The younger Noori accused Taliban forces of “raiding” and searching his family’s house without a warrant before taking his father to an unknown location.

The motive for the elder Noori’s arrest remains uncertain. But Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA) that the arrest was not related to Noori’s media activities, AIJA said in a statement sent to VOA.

The Committee to Project Journalists had called for Mohammad Arif Noori’s immediate and unconditional release.

In a statement, CPJ said dozens of armed men who identified themselves as members of a militia affiliated with Taliban-controlled police district in Kabul stormed Noori’s house and detained him.

“The detention of media owner Aref Noori by a Taliban-affiliated militia marks a serious attack on the independent media in Afghanistan,” CPJ Asia Coordinator Steven Butler said in a statement, referring to Mohammad Arif Noori.

Citing Kashif Noori, another son of the TV executive, CPJ said Noorin TV had operated for the past decade but paused programming this week due to technical issues.

Mohammad Arif Noori is a known supporter of an anti-Taliban group headed by Ahmad Massoud, who fought off Taliban forces in his native Panjshir valley north of Kabul before being overrun in early September.

At least 31 journalists have been detained or arrested by the Taliban since they took over in mid-August, according to the journalists association.

Photojournalist Mortaza Samadi was arrested in September while covering a women’s protest in the western city of Heart and spent several weeks in Taliban detention.

Last week, Jawed Yusufi, a reporter for the independent outlet Ufuq News, was stabbed and badly wounded by three unidentified men in western Kabul, according to his employer and local media advocates.

The Taliban takeover has decimated Afghanistan’s media. A joint survey by AIJA and Reporters Without Borders released last week found that at least 40% of the country’s media outlets have disappeared and more than 80% of Afghan women journalists have lost their jobs over the last four months.

Ayaz Gul contributed to this report from Islamabad.

Taliban Appoints Mullah Baradar as Head of Natural Disaster Management

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Baradar

8am: The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s cabinet meeting has appointed Mullah Baradar Akhund as head of the High Commission for Disasters Management. The cabinet meeting of the (IEA) ordered the establishment of a High Commission for Natural Disasters, headed by Mullah Baradar, the Taliban’s first deputy prime minister on (Monday, December 27th).  The High Commission for Disasters Management is supposed to take over the management of the natural crisis in the country.  Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban Arrests Owner Of Afghan TV Network

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By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
December 27, 2021

Aref Nouri, the head of Afghanistan’s private Nourin television network, has been arrested by the Taliban authorities for unspecified reasons.

Nouri’s son, Roman Nouri, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi on December 27 that Taliban security forces arrived at the family’s home in Kabul the day earlier and took his father away.

The younger Nouri said no arrest warrant was presented when officers wearing national security service uniforms surrounded and entered the home and that they refused to say where his father was being taken.

“We have no idea where he is being held,” Roman Nouri said, adding that the Taliban later confirmed it had carried out the arrest.

The Association of Free Journalists cited a Taliban government spokesman as saying the arrest was not related to Nouri’s media activities.

Hojjatullah Mujaddidi, the association’s executive director, said it has thus far failed to determine where Nouri is being held and has requested information from the authorities.

Four journalists have been arrested or beaten by the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan in recent days, according to the association, and the fate of two of them is unknown.

The Taliban, which employed a strict interpretation of Islamic Shari’a law during its last stint in power from 1996 to 2001, retook power in Kabul in mid-August, prompting concerns about the future of free media and human rights in the country.

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.