CPJ: Afghanistan’s ‘Culture Of Impunity’ For Crimes Against Journalists To Worsen Under Taliban

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
October 28, 2021

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says justice for 17 Afghan journalists murdered over the past decade is likely to remain elusive after the Taliban’s takeover and the collapse of state institutions.

“Taliban leaders appear even less likely than Afghanistan’s previous government to respond to local and international calls to end the country’s culture of impunity for crimes against journalists,” the New York-based media rights group said on October 28 with the release of its 2021 Impunity Index.

As in the past two years, Afghanistan ranked fifth on the index designed to spotlight countries where journalists are murdered and their killers go unpunished.

But the situation for journalists has deteriorated since the Taliban took control in mid-August as U.S.-led international forces withdrew from Afghanistan, with hundreds of media workers fleeing the country out of fear of the fundamentalist group’s harsh record against the media.

“Promises made by the Taliban’s leadership to protect press freedom rang hollow within days of the takeover as its fighters carried out scores of violations against media workers, including beatings and arbitrary detentions,” the CPJ said.

Overall, over the past decade, 226 of the 278 journalists targeted around the globe have been murdered with impunity, according to the index.

Somalia topped the list for a seventh straight year, followed by Syria, Iraq, and South Sudan.

Mexico, the Philippines, Brazil, Pakistan, and Russia rounded out the top 10 countries on the index, which calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population to determine a ranking. This index does not include cases of journalists killed in combat or while on dangerous assignments.

In Afghanistan, 17 local journalists were murdered over the past 10 years — including five in 2020 alone — and their killers walked free.

At least two of those killed last year — RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi reporter Elyas Dayee and freelancer Rahmatullah Nikzad — had received threats from the Taliban prior to their deaths, leading CPJ to conclude that there “seems little chance that Afghanistan’s new Taliban government will seek out the killers.”

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s judicial system is collapsing, signaling that impunity for killers may now become further entrenched.

The CPJ said that Afghan journalists also remain at risk of being targeted by the local affiliate of the Islamic State extremist group, which claimed responsibility for an April 2018 suicide bomb attack that killed at least nine journalists as well as the retaliatory murder of journalist Malalai Maiwand in late 2020.

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.

Why the Hazara people fear genocide in Afghanistan

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Al Jazeera: As one of the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan, the Hazara people have endured various forms of oppression from Pashtun rulers and governments, including slavery, systematic expulsion from ancestral homes and lands, and massacres. These experiences have led some to consider Hazaras to be one of the “most persecuted people in the world”. Click here to read more (external link).

U.S. Senator Wants Independent Commission To Do Comprehensive Study Of Afghan War

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A file photo of American soldiers at an unknown location in Afghanistan.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
October 28, 2021

A U.S. senator and veteran of the war in Iraq has proposed the creation of a nonpartisan commission to examine every aspect of the war in Afghanistan.

Senator Tammy Duckworth (Democrat-Illinois) on October 27 touted the Afghanistan War Commission Act, which would establish an independent commission to look at the 20-year U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

“We need to learn what we did wrong, that after 20 years and trillions of dollars in taxpayer money, within a week of us leaving, pulling out of Afghanistan, the country collapsed,” Duckworth said. “We did not truly do any nation building.”

Duckworth, a former Army helicopter pilot who was injured in combat in Iraq in 2004 and had both legs amputated, said the military successfully accomplished its initial task of incapacitating Al-Qaeda and removing the Taliban from power.

But the rebuilding mission was never fully turned over to the State Department, she said.

The commission should examine how political and strategic decisions “transformed a focused military mission into vast, nation-building campaign that became the longest war in our nation’s history,” Duckworth said in a news release on September 30 announcing the bill.

“I think we kind of looked away,” she said on October 27 as she promoted the bill at an event hosted by the magazine Foreign Policy. “The military’s job and expertise is not in nation building, it’s not in teaching and establishing a judiciary, a system of law and order. So they never did any of that.”

Duckworth said the panel would study not only the history of the military conflict but also the role of all government agencies involved — not just the Department of the Defense — to “understand the root causes of our failures.”

The panel should make forward-looking recommendations to prevent future generations from repeating past mistakes, she said.

With reporting by dpa

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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Khalilzad: Ghani’s ‘Intransigence,’ Afghan Elite’s ‘Selfishness’ Led to Collapse

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Ashraf Ghani (left) and Zalmay Khalilzad (right)

Ayesha Tanzeem
VOA News
October 27, 2021

ISLAMABAD — Zalmay Khalilzad, the senior U.S. official who led the negotiations with the Taliban, blamed, for the most part, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s “intransigence,” the Afghan elite’s “selfishness” and Afghan soldiers’ lack of will to fight for the rapid Taliban military takeover of the country in August.

“We were all surprised by the intransigence of President Ghani in insisting on staying in power till his term ended, despite the fact that he had come out re-elected in a fraudulent election that very few Afghans participated in,” Khalilzad said Wednesday during a webinar organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank.

He acknowledged for the first time publicly that the U.S. had discouraged Afghans from holding the presidential elections that led to Ghani’s winning a second term in office. Instead, Khalilzad said, the U.S. wanted to establish an interim setup that was acceptable to both sides while Afghan politicians and civil society negotiated a political settlement with the Taliban.

Ghani’s “grand miscalculation,” according to Khalilzad, was that he did not believe the U.S. would withdraw from a region that he thought gave the U.S. forces and its intelligence agencies physical proximity to strategically important countries like China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan.

“I tried to persuade him that President [Donald] Trump was very serious, and he said, ‘No, the intelligence and military told me otherwise,’ ” Khalilzad said.

Troops’ mettle

Ghani also widely miscalculated his own military’s will to fight.

Once the U.S. announced its decision to withdraw, he told Khalilzad, “now I am free to fight the war the Afghan way. In six months now I will defeat the Taliban because you were fighting it poorly.”

The fact that the more than 300,000-strong Afghan army, trained and armed by the U.S., melted away in front of 60,000 Taliban, was, according to Khalilzad, the result of a lack of morale, corruption and poor treatment of the soldiers on the front lines.

“[T]hat may have had much more to do with the politics of Afghanistan — that people didn’t believe in it, the soldiers, in the cause — [but] the Taliban believed in their cause,” he said.

Khalilzad also lamented what he called the Afghan elite’s “selfish, self-centered, corrupt” behavior that led to a failure of peace talks with the Taliban.

“I am disappointed that the elite that we worked with, they didn’t rise to the occasion, this golden opportunity that the American engagement provided,” he said.

Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan, was criticized for negotiating a deal with the Taliban that many called a surrender. His American and Afghan critics accused him of giving too many concessions to the Taliban in return for very little. The U.S. and Taliban signed the agreement in February 2020 that defined a timeline for foreign forces to withdraw in return for counterterrorism guarantees from the Taliban.

However, the agreement also called for the Taliban to negotiate with the Afghan government and others for a political settlement to end the war. Those negotiations started in September 2020 but never picked up steam until the Taliban took over the country militarily without significant resistance from the Afghan army.

They entered capital Kabul on August 15, 2021, without firing a single shot.

Defending his agreement, Khalilzad said the mechanism allowed flexibility to delay the withdrawal date if the Taliban did not fulfil their pledges, or if the political engagement between Afghans did not progress, but President Joe Biden decided to stick close to the original timeline.

What’s next?

Going forward, Khalilzad advocated a robust diplomatic engagement with the Taliban that includes agreement on a “road map that takes into account the trust or mistrust of each other and the behavior that needs to take place over a time period.”

He said policy toward Afghanistan in Washington has become hostage to an “ill-informed debate” that could be detrimental to U.S. interests.

Many in America wanted the Taliban to suffer and their government to collapse, he said, because “we did not succeed in defeating them, and that has left a bad taste in people’s mouths.”

He warned that a collapse of government in Afghanistan would lead to a civil war and a humanitarian catastrophe that would provide space for terrorist groups to flourish.

He said the Taliban had shown, in the 18 months after the signing of the agreement, that they could keep their word by not killing a single American even though U.S. air attacks in defense of Afghan forces killed hundreds or even thousands of Taliban during that period.

Khalilzad also said the Taliban could benefit from outside help on how to deal with the Islamic State extremist group in Afghanistan.

Afghans Accuse The Taliban Of Misappropriating Foreign Aid

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By Abubakar Siddique
RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
October 27, 2021

With Afghanistan in the grips of economic collapse and a devastating humanitarian crisis, many Afghans are pinning their hopes on international aid to stave off soaring hunger and poverty.

But Afghans say the limited assistance that is arriving in the war-torn country is being misappropriated by the Taliban, the militant Islamist group that forcibly seized power in Afghanistan in August.

“The only people who have received any aid are those who belong to the Taliban, particularly relatives of those Taliban members who were killed or injured while fighting for them,” Wali Mohammad, who lives in the southern province of Kandahar, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

“The poor, widows, orphans, and those who worked or fought for the previous government can’t access aid,” Mohammad added.

Observers say the Taliban’s actions threaten to deprive tens of thousands of Afghans of life-saving assistance. Afghans are suffering from the combined impacts of drought, war, the coronavirus pandemic, and an economic crisis exacerbated by turmoil after the Taliban takeover.

We’re ‘Left Out’

When the Taliban seized control of Kabul on August 15, Western donors immediately suspended aid to Afghanistan, wary of giving hundreds of millions of dollars to a militant group that is notorious for oppressing women, targeting ethnic and religious minorities, and implementing an extremist form of Islamic Shari’a law.

The Taliban has also been deprived of some $9 billion in Afghanistan’s foreign assets. The holdings, most of it kept in the United States, were frozen after the militants’ takeover.

Earlier this month, the international community pledged more than $1.2 billion in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. But it is unclear how and when the assistance will be delivered to the millions of Afghans who are in urgent need of help.

The Taliban has received direct humanitarian aid, including cash, basic food items, and medicine, from only some countries. The biggest donors have been China and Pakistan, the Taliban’s main foreign ally.

But Afghans say the modest levels of aid reaching the country are not going to the neediest.

“Only people with influence and access are getting aid while the rest of us are being left out,” says Abdullah, a resident of the southern province of Helmand.

Abdullah, speaking to RFE/RL, says the Taliban is funneling aid to powerful tribal leaders who contributed to their 20-year war effort against international and Afghan government forces.

Risk Of Mass Starvation

Afghanistan faced drought, displacement, and a humanitarian crisis even before the Taliban toppled the Western-backed government in Kabul in mid-August, with half the population dependent on aid, according to the United Nations.

The loss of international funding and assistance has exacerbated the dire situation in the country, observers say.

Almost 23 million Afghans, or two-thirds of the population of some 35 million, will suffer “acute food insecurity” this winter, the World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned in a joint statement on October 25.

Last month, a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) study warned that as much as 97 percent of Afghanistan’s population was at risk of sinking below the poverty line “unless a response to the country’s political and economic crises is urgently launched.”

In recent weeks, reports have emerged of children dying from hunger on the streets or being sold by desperate parents.

‘Completely Impossible’

Despite pledging hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Afghanistan, Western donors face a difficult task of delivering assistance to ordinary Afghans.

Many international organizations and foreign governments evacuated their staff after the Taliban takeover and subsequent withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. Foreign aid projects, which were run through Afghan government ministries, have collapsed.

“It is completely impossible for United Nations agencies and NGOs to fill the vacuum of a collapsing state infrastructure,” says Anders Fange, a veteran aid worker and board member of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA), which leads one of the largest international aid operations in the country.

Fange says UN and U.S. sanctions against Taliban leaders and the reluctance of the international community to deal with the Taliban-led government are creating hurdles for the delivery of aid.

“You can talk to [the Taliban], but you can’t channel money through them because you will be violating the sanctions regime from the UN itself and from the United States,” he said.

At least half of the Taliban’s cabinet members are on UN sanctions lists. Some prominent Taliban ministers are U.S.-designated terrorists.

Even Afghans who are trying to help their local communities have come up against Taliban bureaucracy. Locals say charities or individuals trying to help must get prior approval from the Taliban.

“The Taliban are distributing aid to those who contributed to their war effort, are part of their organization, or who now support their government,” says a Kabul resident who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of Taliban reprisals.

“They are in no mood to support those who fought against them or have remained neutral during the past two decades,” he adds.

‘Deserving People’

Only a few countries have given the Taliban direct foreign aid.

China and Pakistan have pledged more than $60 million, in total, in cash to the Taliban government. They have also donated coronavirus vaccines, food, and medicines.

Neighbors Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, collectively, have donated some 6,400 metric tons of wheat flour to Afghanistan since September.

The Taliban has denied claims that it is only distributing aid to its supporters. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told RFE/RL that the group is distributing medical aid and food through relevant government ministries and departments.

“These government organs distribute all the aid, and they have established procedures to distribute aid to deserving people,” he said.

But that is rejected by Afghans who accuse the Taliban of misusing foreign aid.

Alizai, a resident of Helmand Province, says the Taliban is only distributing aid to the families of slain or living Taliban fighters.

“They got everything,” says Alizai. “How long will this continue?”

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.

US involved in Afghanistan’s insecurity, responsible for Daesh formation: Raeisi

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Raeisi

Press TV
October 27, 2021

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi has expressed grief over the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, saying the United States is certainly involved in the ongoing insecurity in the war-torn country.

Raeisi made the remarks during separate meetings with the visiting foreign ministers of Pakistan and Tajikistan in Tehran on Tuesday, as high-ranking officials from Afghanistan’s six neighboring states plus Russia are set to meet in the Iranian capital on Wednesday.

“There must be an inclusive government in Afghanistan that can ensure the country’s security and end war, bloodshed and fratricide,” Raeisi said.

The Iranian president expressed concern over the current situation in Afghanistan and said the US is to blame for the country’s instability as it is responsible for the formation of the Daesh terrorist group.

“Terrorist incidents in Afghanistan hurt every human being, and there is no doubt that the Americans are involved in such incidents and do not want the Afghan people to achieve peace and security,” he added.

Raeisi also said he hopes that the meeting of the foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s neighboring countries can lead to coordination and joint dialogue in the formation of an inclusive government in Afghanistan.

Earlier in the day, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reaffirmed the need for the establishment of an inclusive government in Afghanistan, saying Tehran remains in contact with all sides in the neighboring country, including the interim government in Kabul.

Amir-Abdollahian said Afghanistan’s Taliban-controlled interim government should be encouraged to fulfill and informed of its responsibility to promote peace, stability and security in the war-ravaged country.

The talks hosted by Iran on Wednesday aim to assess the situation in Afghanistan and explore ways to assist people in the Central Asian country

The United States and its NATO allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext that the Taliban militants were harboring al-Qaeda. The invasion removed the Taliban from power but it worsened the security situation in the country.

The government of Afghanistan rapidly collapsed on August 15 in the face of the lightning advances of the Taliban that followed US President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw American troops. The Taliban announced the formation of a caretaker government on September 7.

The Takfiri Daesh terrorist group has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in Afghanistan.

The ongoing violence after the Taliban takeover has plunged Afghanistan into a dire situation, with international aid agencies calling for urgent action to support millions of struggling Afghans.

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Taliban Must Reopen Girls’ Schools, Say Education Activists

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8am: A number of education activists demanded the reopening of girls’ schools, and creating job opportunities for female teachers while maintaining their respect and legal privileges. According to education activists, girls’ schools are closed for high school in 30 provinces. Click here to read more (external link).

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Afghan MMA Fighter Wins UFC Contract

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Javid Basharat

Tolo News: Afghan Mixed Martial Arts MMA Fighter Javid Basharat choked out his Israeli opponent Oron Kahlon and succeeded to win the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) contract. After Seyar Bahadorzada and Nasrat Haqparast, Basharat is the third Afghan athlete to receive a UFC contract. Click here to read more (external link).

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EU Considers Reopening Mission To Afghanistan, But No Taliban Recognition

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Mustafa Sarwar
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
October 27, 2021

The European Union is considering reopening its diplomatic mission to Afghanistan, but it has no plans of officially recognizing the Taliban administration, an EU spokeswoman told RFE/RL.

“The idea is, and what the EU is working for right now, is to establish a minimal presence on the ground,” Nabila Massrali, a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, told RFE/RL on October 26.

The Financial Times reported on October 24 that the EU intends to reopen its diplomatic representation in Afghanistan within a month amid international efforts to find ways to deal with the country’s new Taliban rulers.

Massrali did not give a precise time frame, but reiterated that re-establishing a presence in Afghanistan would not amount to official recognition by the 27-member bloc of the new Taliban administration that seized power in August amid the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces from the war-torn country

“For security reasons, of course, we cannot enter into details about when. What’s important though is to remind you that as we have repeatedly said, this is not a sign of recognition,” Massrali said.

Massrali added that establishing an EU presence on the ground would allow better assistance to Afghans in need and would also provide assistance to EU and Afghan nationals who want to leave the country.

“We want to be able to better assist the Afghan people who need our help by being close, and inevitably we need to engage with the Taliban to facilitate the safe passage of the EU citizens and Afghans at risk or to ensure the continued access of humanitarian aid,” Massrali said.

At a G20 summit on October 12, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU has pledged 1 billion euros in aid for Afghanistan “to avert a major humanitarian and socio-economic collapse.”

But disbursing the aid is conditional on the Taliban respecting five benchmarks set by the bloc in September for further operational engagement: preventing Afghanistan from again becoming a breeding ground for terrorism; respect for human rights, rule of law, and guarantees for media freedom; allowing other political forces into a transitional government; granting free access to humanitarian aid respecting EU procedures and conditions for delivery; and granting free passage to those who want to leave the country.

Massrali told RFE/RL that those five conditions must be met before resuming regular development aid.

“It’s very important to say that regular EU development aid to Afghanistan remains frozen,” Massrali said.

“The five agreed engagements by the EU foreign affairs remain valid. They must be met before regular development cooperation can resume,” she said, adding that the 1 billion euros in aid will not go to the Taliban.

“It goes through international organizations and NGOs on the ground but not through the Taliban,” Massrali said, adding that the EU and its international partners, including the United Nations, are discussing “the best way forward for the humanitarian approach” while making sure there would be no diversion of funds to the Taliban.

“The details will be worked out in the coming weeks and months,” Massrali said.

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.