8am: Locals provided information to Hasht-e Subh, indicating that clashes among Taliban fighters and NRF Forces in the Khost district of Baghlan province have taken place. According to independent sources, the Taliban’s Acting Deputy Defense Minister, Mullah Fazel Mazlum has gathered Taliban’s reserved forces from northern Badakhshan and Takhar provinces and has deployed them to Baghlan in order to fight the NRF forces. Click here to read more (external link).
RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
April 14, 2022
Wali Jan, a farmer in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, is expected to soon harvest poppies from his half-hectare farm.
Standing in his blooming poppy field in Garni, an impoverished village on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Tarin Kowt, Jan is upset by the Taliban’s decision this month to ban poppy cultivation. He says he will be unable to feed his wife and their eight children if the Taliban prevents him from planting a poppy crop this fall.
“If they impose a harsh ban, it will be devastating for us,” he told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “How will I feed my children?”
Jan says the Taliban should have issued their comprehensive ban only after providing tens of thousands of impoverished farmers like him with an alternative crop first. “If they [the Taliban-led government] can provide us with an alternative, we will not need to plant this,” he says.
Asadullah, a farmer in the neighboring province of Kandahar, agrees. He says the only way to survive in Pashmul, an agricultural village in the Panjwai district on the outskirts of Kandahar city, the provincial capital, is to plant poppies. He says poppies, which require little water and care, typically bring in twice the money they can get from wheat or other cash crops.
“We are very disappointed with this ban,” he told Radio Azadi. “[The Taliban-led government] should either help us find an alternative or get us aid.”
But experts say the Taliban-led government, which is still not recognized by any country eight months after seizing power in August, will not be able to help Afghan farmers by attracting development assistance because the ban will not help in winning international recognition.
The Taliban-led government faced almost universal condemnation internationally and from Afghans after going back on its promises to reopen schools for girls last month.
Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent think tank, says most farmers grow poppies to stay out of poverty.
“This ban might push them back into poverty, which might have consequences,” he told RFE/RL.
He says the Taliban won the support of the farmers in southern Afghanistan by acting as a protector of their poppy fields during their two-decade insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government.
Ruttig says many Afghan farmers will try to circumvent the ban by “using connections to the local Taliban leaders or just plant the poppy somewhere they hope they won’t patrol.”
He saw the Taliban implemented a similar ban in late 2000, which reduced raw opium production from more than 6,000 metric tons to under 100 in 2001.
“Then and now, the Taliban leadership is serious in implementing what they say is based on Islamic Shari’a law but, as individuals, they often do other things,” he says.
A Bid For International Recognition
Mohammad Ehsan Zia, a former Afghan minister for rural development, says the Taliban ban primarily aims to cultivate a positive international image after the hard-line government faced harsh criticism over its ban on girls’ education.
“It is more for international consumption than actual misery in Afghanistan,” he told RFE/RL. “They wanted to do something positive to show another side of the Taliban government to gain international recognition.”
Zia, now a senior fellow at the Doha Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, says the ban will neither win the Taliban international recognition nor help obtain much-needed international development aid, which remains suspended after the Taliban seized power.
“Respect for human rights and women’s rights, inclusive governance, and counterterror are the basic criteria for recognition,” he said of the international community’s key prerequisites for recognizing the Taliban-led government. “A ban on poppy cultivation was not a condition because the international community has lived with poppy cultivation for over two decades.”
He says that without gaining international recognition, billions of dollars in international aid are unlikely to return to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. “Development aid can make a real difference in the lives of ordinary Afghans,” he says.
Impoverished farmers in war-ravaged Afghanistan, particularly in the southern provinces of Uruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand, have for decades been shackled to poppy cultivation by drug traffickers who often put peasants into debt.
As the Afghan state crumbled during the civil war in the 1990s, Afghan farmers turned to poppies to survive. Since then, Afghanistan has produced most of the world’s illicit opium. After being processed into heroin and other narcotics, it is smuggled globally.
But Afghanistan itself and two of its neighbors, Iran and Pakistan, also suffered soaring drug-addiction rates for decades.
Lal Mohammad, a farmer in Kandahar, is happy with his bumper poppy harvest.
The Taliban is not yet confiscating opium from farmers to avoid creating widespread resentment in a region that provided fighters for the militants’ 20-year insurgency.
Mohammad had planted the narcotic crop on his three-hectare field in Kandahar’s Zhari district in hopes of making more money than any other cash crop can get him.
“The amount of opium previously sold for 20,000 afghanis (about $200) last year is now being sold for more than 100,000 afghanis (about $1,000),” he told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi in reference to the rapid rise in opium prices per kilogram since the beginning of this year.
But Zia argues that poppies keep Afghan farmers in an oppressive cycle.
“The farmers became poorer and poorer and became dependent on the money they received from drug traffickers,” Zia noted.
Asmatullah, another farmer in Pashmul, says time is running out for the Taliban to pay attention to the plight of Afghan farmers.
“Before they enforce the ban ahead of the next crop, they need to find an alternative crop [for farmers to plant],” he told Radio Azadi, adding that wheat, corn, vegetables, and other cash crops are not a viable alternative to poppies because they need irrigation and are labor- and time-intensive.
In Garni, the village in Uruzgan, 60-year-old farmer Yar Mohammad has been growing poppies since he began farming as a teenager.
Looking at his ripe poppy field, he adds that the narcotic crop helped him survive wars and droughts.
“This has been the only crop that can grow in these parched lands.”
8am: The Taliban has reportedly tortured a Hazara Shiite traveler in the city of Firuzkuh, the capital of Ghor province, for not fasting during Ramadan. According to locals and eyewitnesses, the Taliban rebels arrested the man, while having lunch at a restaurant. He was humiliated in the public in the center of Feruzkuh Bazar. In Shiite Islam, a person can break his/her fast while traveling a certain distance during Ramadan. Taliban fighters apparently do not understand the differences in Islamic jurisprudences, or maybe they are intentionally persecuting minorities. Click here to read more (external link).
The Huffington Post: The AUAF was established in 2006 as the country’s first private institution to educate Afghans with high-quality, American-style liberal arts education, and is funded by the United States. It became a target of the Taliban. In August 2016, Taliban terrorists stormed the campus, killing at least 13 students and staff members and injuring another 30. That same year, an American professor and an Australian professor from the university were kidnapped and detained for three years. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
8am: Credible sources have confirmed that ethnic disputes between Taliban commanders and their fighters have also escalated recently in Takhar province. Therefore, Mullah Fazil has gone to Takhar to solve the disputes among the Taliban ranks in the province. Click here to read more (external link).
Washington Post: Child marriage has long been prevalent in many Afghan communities. But the Taliban takeover, the subsequent plunge of the economy and banking system, and other stresses have “exacerbated the problem,” Williams said. The age of girls sold into marriage is dropping, a trend that could persist as long as the Taliban prevents girls from secondary school education in most areas. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
8am: No matter if they can read or write, Taliban affiliates will receive school certificates and university degrees (Bachelor’s and Master’s). Afghanistan is the only country on the earth where illiterates with affiliation to a particular ethnic has been ruling on the educated population segment of the society. Click here to read more (external link).
VOA Afghan Service
April 13, 2022
WASHINGTON — Local media watchdogs in Afghanistan and the United Nations have called on the Taliban to stop the arbitrary detention of local journalists in Afghanistan.
Afghan Journalists Safety Committee, in a statement on Thursday, said that the Taliban arrested its provincial representative in central Ghor province along with another local journalist on Wednesday.
According to the statement, the local journalist was released two hours later but AJSC’s provincial representative, Ghulam Rabani Hadafmand, was still in the Taliban’s detention.
“Although it has been more than 24 hours from the incident, the provincial representative of AJSC in Ghor is still under arrest,” said the statement, which called on the Taliban to release Hadafmand and “provide the necessary explanations based on the provisions of law.”
In a tweet on Thursday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said that the “arbitrary & incommunicado detentions of journalists & media workers by the Taliban show no sign of abating.”
UNAMA has called on the Taliban to stop the “intimidation of media.”
UNAMA has said that Afghan journalist Bismillah Watandost was released after being held in detention by the Taliban for 10 days.
Watandost was arrested along with five other journalists in the southern city of Kandahar after four radio stations were raided on March 28.
Zahir Shah Angar, an Afghan journalist and managing editor of Da Sule Paigham radio in the southern Khost province, said that the detentions and continuing violence against journalists are making a challenging environment for journalists even more difficult.
“For sure, it has an impact on journalists’ work. Because it created fear among journalists,” he said.
Angar added that in the meetings with media support organizations, the Taliban’s spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, “repeatedly” said that they are “committed to the freedom of expression and in future journalists would not be arrested.”
He added, “We hope that the interim government [of the Taliban] will stand by their word. Otherwise, independent media would not be able to operate in the country.”
The International Federation of Journalists, in a statement on March 31, said the media crackdown has increased in Afghanistan.
IFJ said that from March 26 to 28, at least eight media workers in Afghanistan were arrested and two radio stations were closed.
In its statement, IFJ called on the Taliban for the “immediate release of all detained media personnel and the reinstatement of all broadcasters and media organizations affected by the Taliban’s new media restrictions.”
According to the Afghanistan Federation of Journalists and Media, 21 journalists were detained across Afghanistan in March.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), in a statement on Feb. 4, reported an increase in “threats, summonses for interrogation and arbitrary arrests” of journalists in Afghanistan.
RSF said that the Taliban’s intelligence and Ministry of Promoting Virtue and Suppressing Vice are “directly implicated in this harassment, which violates Afghanistan’s press law.”
The Taliban did not respond to VOA’s inquiries about the recent detention of journalists.
Abdul Subhan Misbah, former deputy head of Afghanistan’s Lawyers Union, told VOA that the detention of journalists is “unlawful.”
“There is a media commission to deal with the media offenses in case of violations by journalists. If a case is not addressed by the commission, then it is referred to the court. These detentions are a violation of the laws,” Misbah said.
Misbah added “without doubt, it will put an end to the freedom of expression in the country, one of the main gains of the past two decades.”
In a conference in January, local radio owners in Afghanistan called on the Taliban to guarantee freedom and clarify their stance on the media law of Afghanistan.
After seizing power in Afghanistan in August 2021 the Taliban promised that media would be “free and independent,” but they have increased their crackdown on independent media in Afghanistan.
In a press release issued in November, IFJ said that at least seven journalists were killed in Afghanistan in the first three months of the Taliban’s takeover. It said there were “many more suffering intensifying threats, harassment, intimidation and violence.”
According to a survey by RSF in December 2021, about 40% of Afghan media have closed since Aug. 15 and 60% of Afghan journalists and media employees are no longer able to work, including more than 80 percent of female journalists.
The Taliban have also banned international broadcasters, including Voice of America, BBC and Deutsche Welle.
IFJ has called the Taliban’s ban on the international outlets “a major blow for press freedom and public access to information in Afghanistan.”
Related
8am: In a letter, the Taliban’s Acting Ministry of Education has banned the use of ties by teachers and students in public and private schools. The letter is sent to the public and private schools on Sunday, April 10. The Taliban has made a hell out of the country by imposing certain baseless restrictions on the basis of vague religious arguments, which are already rejected by the Islamic States’ Councils. They have called on the Taliban several times to cope with the realities of time and avoid miss interpreting the religion. Click here to read more (external link).