Mohammad Nader Alemi
Tolo News: Mohammad Nader Alemi, a psychiatrist and head of the mental health department of Mazar-e-Sharif hospital, was killed after being abducted and held for two months. Balkh doctors said Alemi had worked as a psychiatrist for 40 years and was the founder of the first private psychiatric hospital in Balkh. Click here to read more (external link).
Other Crime News
Taliban Militants in Kabul
8am: Although people expected to see no more explosions under Taliban rule, this has increased contrary to expectations. However, residents of Kabul are deeply concerned about the escalation of the bombings, saying that the security forces of the Taliban-led government are not successful in securing the people. Click here to read more (external link).
8am: Sakhi Murad and Abdul Khaliq came to Herat from Ghor and Badghis provinces. Due to poverty, the two fathers have decided to sell their children for money. Sakhi Murad moved to Herat two years ago due to war and insecurity in the village of Chehelgazi in the Dolina district of Ghor province. He now lives without shelter in the Jalilabad area of Karkh district of Herat province. The United Nations has previously warned of widespread poverty and hunger in Afghanistan; A challenge that has never been taken seriously by the Taliban. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
Ariana: Local officials and residents of Kunduz province said Thursday that the number of drug addicts in the province has risen sharply in the past few months, largely due to poverty. Kunduz hospital officials said in the past three months, 91 addicts have been treated at the hospital. Click here to read more (external link).
1/5 The Taliban’s letter to Congress earlier this week misconstrued the facts re Afghanistan’s economic & humanitarian crisis. Afghanistan was unfortunately already suffering a terrible humanitarian crisis before mid-August, made worse by war, years of drought, & the pandemic.
— U.S. Special Representative Thomas West (@US4AfghanPeace) November 19, 2021
Tolo News: In a series of tweets, West said the US officials had made it clear to the Taliban years ago that taking power by force would result in non-humanitarian aid cut. “US officials made clear to the Taliban for years that if they pursued a military takeover rather than a negotiated settlement with fellow Afghans then critical non-humanitarian aid provided by the international community – in an economy enormously dependent on aid, including for basic services – would all but cease. That is what occurred,” he said. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
AP: More than 28,000 Afghans have applied for temporary admission into the U.S. for humanitarian reasons since shortly before the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan and sparked a chaotic U.S. withdrawal, but only about 100 of them have been approved, according to federal officials. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
By RFE/RL Gandhara
November 19, 2021
Germany has sent high-ranking diplomats to Kabul to meet with the Taliban for the first time since the militia group took power in Afghanistan.
The German Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country’s special representative for Afghanistan, Jasper Wieck, and ambassador-designate Markus Potzel met on November 18 with high-ranking officials from the Taliban government. The delegation was accompanied by Dutch special representative Emiel de Bont.
“Both sides highlighted the importance of continued operational contacts on issues where practical cooperation is both necessary and possible, in particular to address the humanitarian plight of the Afghan people,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Western governments are looking for ways to engage the Taliban and address the country’s dire humanitarian situation but want to avoid direct support for the new government, which is not internationally recognized.
Similar to other countries, the German Embassy in Kabul was evacuated in mid-August as the Taliban took control of the capital.
The Foreign Ministry said Taliban officials committed to providing humanitarian workers safe and unhindered access to people in need, while Germany and the Netherlands reaffirmed their readiness to provide the Afghan people with extensive aid as winter approaches.
The diplomats also brought up the issue of women’s rights and education, including additional support for the education and health sectors. Under the Taliban, most girls in grades seven through 12 are banned from attending school and most women in civil service are prohibited from working.
The Taliban government “expressed their understanding that equal access for girls and boys to education is a national necessity for Afghanistan,” the Foreign Ministry said.
The diplomats told the Taliban that Germany and the Netherlands were ready to find ways for the salaries of employees in the health and education sectors to be paid directly through international organizations. Since coming to power, the Taliban has struggled to pay the salaries of civil servants.
The Taliban also committed to a previously announced general amnesty for anyone affiliated with the toppled internationally backed government and former security forces. They also repeated a pledge for free passage for all Afghans who want to leave the country.
“We have taken note of the pledges. Further engagement depends on their implementation,” the Foreign Ministry said.
With reporting by dpa
Related
Taliban leader Mullah Baradar with Pakistan’s ISI Chief Faiz Hameed
Dawn: US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Wednesday redesignated Pakistan as a country of particular concern (CPC) for violating religious freedom and also rebranded the Taliban as an entity of particular concern. Click here to read more (external link).
By Bruce Pannier
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
November 18, 2021
When the Taliban seized control of most of Afghanistan in mid-August, one of the inevitable ripple effects was going to be a crackdown on suspect Islamic groups in the Central Asian states north of Afghanistan.
Uzbekistan has emerged as the Central Asian country most actively engaging with the Taliban government, in no small part because Tashkent wants to keep trade routes through Afghanistan open.
But Uzbek officials are also taking measures to ensure that no one in Uzbekistan finds inspiration in the Taliban conquest and wants to try changing the Uzbek government.
RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, known locally as Ozodlik, reported on September 10 that 29 women were detained in the capital and districts in Tashkent Province for spreading Hizb ut-Tahrir propaganda among the population. On September 17, a group of 12 men were detained, also in Tashkent, for spreading Hizb ut-Tahrir propaganda on the Internet.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global organization based in London whose ultimate goal is to unite all Muslim countries into an Islamic caliphate, though it says it uses peaceful methods to pursue that goal.
Six people described as “leaders” of a Hizb ut-Tahrir group were detained in the southern Kyrgyz town of Kyzyl-Kiya in early October and, on November 4, another Hizb ut-Tahrir leader who was an Uzbek citizen was also detained in southern Kyrgyzstan.
In early October, Ozodlik spoke with an official in the Uzbek Interior Ministry who said, under condition of anonymity, that while many suspected Islamic radicals have been under observation in recent years, there have not been any raids or special operations against such groups since Shavkat Mirziyoev became Uzbek president in 2016.
The same source indicated there has been a policy change, claiming that some 200 people were detained in September as part of Operation Safety Zone, most of them from the banned group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
But in Uzbekistan it is not only Hizb ut-Tahrir members who are being detained.
On November 9, the State Security Service (MHH) detained a group of “jihadists” in Syrdarya Province.
Reports did not identify any specific group or say how many people were in the “jihadist cell” that was uncovered, only that the leader’s initials were “B.T.,” he lived in the Havast district, he and his associates regularly posted material online calling for jihad, and that B.T. was planning to go to Syria to join an unspecified terrorist group.
On November 8, the MHH brought a suspect back from an unnamed neighboring Central Asian state who was trying to make his way to Syria.
The man, identified only as S.S., was a member of Katibat al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad, an Uzbek jihadist group that was active in northwestern Syria and was allied with Jabhat al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda wing in Syria.
S.S. was arrested and jailed in 2018 when he was identified as part of a group on Telegram posting and discussing sermons by extremist clerics and calling for jihad.
There were reports on October 30 that the MHH “returned” an Uzbek citizen identified as I.O. from an unnamed country.
I.O. was accused of being a member of the Islamic State militant group who fought in Iraq and Syria from 2015 to 2021.
The MHH said the man returned to Central Asia with the intention of carrying out a terrorist attack in a Central Asian state in September, though no details were given about which country it was.
In a sign that the Uzbek authorities’ search for terrorists is never-ending, in September the MHH announced it had detained a suspect in the deadly February 1999 bombings in Tashkent.
The MHH identified a man as Y.J. and said he had trained in Chechnya and was a member of the “Islamic Movement of Turkestan.”
Uzbek authorities were praised for freeing many Muslims who were wrongly imprisoned under authoritarian President Islam Karimov.
But many of those who were freed were under observation, a fact the Uzbek government confirmed and has confirmed again since the Interior Ministry source who spoke with Ozodlik said: ”Most of [those recently detained] were previously included on the [blacklists and had] previously served in prisons.”
The Uzbek government has reasons to be nice to the Taliban, but Tashkent does not want Taliban influence or inspiration inside its country. The more concerned Uzbek officials are about such possibilities, the more frequent the detentions and possible imprisonment of members of “suspect” Islamic groups.