Zahra Joya: the Afghan reporter who fled the Taliban – and kept telling the truth about women

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Zahra Joya

The Guardian (UK): Just over a month ago, Zahra Joya left her house in Kabul to walk to her office, as she had been doing every day. From this small office, Joya, a journalist, ran Rukhshana Media, the news agency she founded last year to report on the stories of women and girls across Afghanistan. By the time she returned home in the afternoon, however, men with guns were on street corners and her sisters were shut inside their house, shaking with fear. In just a few hours, normal life had been obliterated. Click here to read more (external link).

Under Taliban, thriving Afghan music scene heads to silence

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Seattle Times: The last time that the militant group ruled the country, in the late 1990s, it outright banned music. So far this time, the government set up by the Taliban hasn’t taken that step officially. But already, musicians are afraid a ban will come, and some Taliban fighters on the ground have started enforcing rules on their own, harassing musicians and music venues. Click here to read more (external link).

Afghan Female Tae Kwon Do Athletes Settle In Australia After Escape

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 22, 2021

Seven female tae kwon do athletes are resettling in Australia after fleeing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan last month.

Australian Taekwondo said on September 22 that the seven women are completing quarantine this week following what it described as a high-risk evacuation via Pakistan after the Taliban seized power in mid-August.

The group is expected to settle in the city of Melbourne in the southeastern part of mainland Australia, where they plan to study, work, and continue to compete in tae kwon do.

The athletes are in Australia on humanitarian visas.

Australian Taekwondo said that it is working to evacuate an eighth female tae kwon do athlete who remains in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Players from Afghanistan’s women’s soccer team are among dozens of athletes reportedly given visas to live in Australia as tens of thousands of Afghans, fearing reprisal attacks and repression, fled the country last month after the Taliban toppled the Western-backed government in Kabul.

When the Taliban imposed its brutal rule on Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, girls were not allowed to attend school and women were banned from work, education, and sports.

The hard-line Islamist group has suggested it is now more moderate, but the Taliban-led, all-male government has rolled back the rights of girls and women in recent days.

Australian Taekwondo’s chief executive Heather Garriock said former Australia national soccer captain and humanitarian advocate Craig Foster worked with the Australian government, Australian Taekwondo, and Oceania Taekwondo on the evacuation of the seven female tae kwon do athletes.

“The lives of these women were in danger,” Garriock said, adding that they “will be welcomed with open arms” in Australia.

One of the athletes, Fatima Ahmadi, said she was grateful for the help of everyone who helped her and her teammates escape.

“I feel so good about arriving in Australia,” said Ahmadi. “We are safe here without any danger.”

Afghanistan’s new rulers have indicated that women and girls will face restrictions in playing sports, with a senior Taliban official saying earlier this month it was “not necessary” for women to play sports.

A sports official in the Taliban-led administration later said top-level leaders of the group were still deciding.

According to human rights groups, many women in Afghanistan are now dressed in burqas covering their whole bodies and leave their homes only with a male guardian. Most have stopped other activities to avoid violence and reprisals.

With reporting by AP and ABC NEWS

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.

Other Sports News

So Far, Taliban Coming Up Empty on Counterterrorism Commitments

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ISIS trainees

Jeff Seldin
VOA News
September 22, 2021

WASHINGTON — Those watching the Taliban establish a government and assert control over Afghanistan are growing ever more wary of pledges by the group’s leaders to make sure no terrorist organization can ever again use the country as a base for attacks against the United States.

The Taliban’s counterterrorism commitment was a key part of the 2020 Doha Agreement that paved the way for the U.S. exit and eventual military evacuation from Afghanistan. Yet despite some praise for the businesslike way the Taliban cooperated with Washington’s withdrawal, there have been few signs of any real action.

“Now is the time for the Taliban to show their commitment to not allow Afghan soil to be used by ISIS-K or any other terrorist group that threatens the security of the United States or its allies, and certainly not innocent Afghans for that matter,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the sensitive subject.

“We are closely watching the Taliban’s actions across the country,” the spokesperson added. “We’ll hold them accountable.”

Top U.S. military and intelligence officials have been even more blunt.

“I don’t know that they’re doing anything at all for us right now,” General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, said Friday when pressed by VOA on whether the Taliban were making good on their counterterrorism promise.

Threat to US

The director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) told lawmakers Tuesday that with the Taliban now in control of Afghanistan, terror groups like al-Qaida, long intertwined with the Taliban, and the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, could try to target the U.S. homeland in as little as a year.

“We’ve got to monitor and assess whether that’s going to happen faster,” Christine Abizaid said.

Taliban leaders have repeatedly pushed back against accusations that they will allow groups like al-Qaida and IS-Khorasan to flourish.

Taliban denial

On Tuesday, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid went even further, denying that either of the groups had a foothold in the country.

“We do not see anyone in Afghanistan who has anything to do with al-Qaida,” Mujahid told a news conference in Kabul.

“The ISIS that exists in Iraq and Syria does not exist here,” he added. “We are committed to the fact that, from Afghanistan, there will not be any danger to any country.”

U.S. and international intelligence officials, however, say the evidence shows otherwise.

According to a United Nations assessment from June, al-Qaida, and its affiliate, al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), have as many as 500 members in Afghanistan. AQIS, it said, “operates under the Taliban umbrella from Kandahar, Helmand (notably Baramcha) and Nimruz provinces.”

Rise in terror fighters

More recent U.S. assessments concluded that since the Taliban takeover, there are at least “2,000 hardcore ISIS fighters” roaming in the country. Previous U.N. assessments indicated the number might be even higher.

In written testimony submitted to Congress on Tuesday, the NCTC’s Abizaid further warned that IS-Khorasan “maintains a steady operational tempo in Afghanistan and retains the ability to execute attacks in cities like Kabul.”

And both IS-Khorasan and al-Qaida could soon see their numbers start to grow.

“We are already beginning to see some of the indications of some potential movement of al-Qaida to Afghanistan,” Central Intelligence Agency Deputy Director David Cohen said last week during an intelligence and security conference just outside of Washington.

Western counterterrorism officials and aid workers on the ground in the region have further warned that both al-Qaida and IS-Khorasan have been laying the groundwork for a sure but steady expansion once U.S. troops finally left the country.

Furthermore, despite a string of recent attacks against the Taliban across Afghanistan claimed by IS-Khorasan, officials and analysts say they have seen few signs of a serious or concerted crackdown by Taliban forces since they took power.

Moves like giving a leading role to Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior leader of the Haqqani Network which has maintained close ties to both al-Qaida and IS-Khorasan, have also gotten their attention.

“[It] certainly concerns me,” Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday at a Senate hearing on threats to the U.S. homeland, calling the Taliban itself a “terrorist organization.”

“We are concerned about what the future holds, whether it’s the possibility of another safe haven, whether it’s the possibility of ISIS-K being able to operate more freely in a less secure environment,” Wray added.

Still, there are some who see hope that the Taliban will keep both al-Qaida and IS-Khorasan in check.

“They know that the last time they harbored al-Qaida and it engaged in an outwardly directed attack, an attack on our homeland, certain things followed, which I believe the Taliban would have an interest in not seeing repeated,” the State Department spokesperson told VOA. “So, whatever their views on al-Qaida, there is a strong disincentive built in to allow it to engage in outwardly directed attacks.”

Natural enemies

The Taliban’s long-standing ties with al-Qaida also make it a natural enemy of IS-Khorasan.

As recently as March of last year, U.S. officials credited the Taliban with helping oust IS-Khorasan from its Afghan strongholds.

But some more recent intelligence assessments, not from the U.S., reported the Taliban had been using IS-Khorasan, through the Haqqani Network, to attack the now defunct U.S.-backed Afghan government.

And even if the Taliban want to crack down on IS-Khorasan cells, they may not have the right capabilities.

“I don’t think what we’ll see from the Taliban will be traditional [counterterrorism], as we think of it,” Colin Clarke, director of policy and research at the global intelligence firm The Soufan Group, told VOA.

“It’s much easier to play a spoiler role than to perform effectively in the role of counterinsurgent,” he said. “I think the Taliban could be effective in clearing an area, but it will struggle more with holding it.”

“At the end of the day, it’s insurgent fratricide, and we’ll see guerrilla-on-guerrilla engagements between the Taliban and ISIS-K … assassinations, hit-and-run attacks, the use of IEDs, and other classic insurgent tactics.”

Ayaz Gul in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Related

WHO chief warns that Afghanistan’s health system could collapse

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Ariana: World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned that the Afghanistan health sector is on the verge of collapse but that the organization would help as much as it could. Ghebreyesus, who visited hospitals in Kabul this week, said it was heartbreaking to hear from overworked nurses that they have not been paid in months. Click here to read more (external link).

‘The challenge for us now is drought, not war’: livelihoods of millions of Afghans at risk

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The Guardian (UK): The war in Afghanistan might be over but farmers in Kandahar’s Arghandab valley face a new enemy: drought. It has hardly rained for two years, a drought so severe that some farmers are questioning how much longer they can live off the land. Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban Official Says Acting PM Meets With Russian, Chinese, And Pakistani Envoys In Kabul

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Mullah Hassan Akhund

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 21, 2021

The acting head of Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government, Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund, has met in Kabul with representatives from Russia, China, and Pakistan, Taliban official Ahmadullah Muttaqi tweeted on September 21.

Muttaqi also uploaded photos purportedly showing Russian envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov, Pakistan’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq Khan, and China’s special envoy to Afghanistan Yue Xiaoyong.

Muttaqi also said the Taliban was represented by acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and Acting Minister of Finance Hedayatullah Badri. No details of the meeting were immediately available.

Moscow and Beijing have shown a united front on Afghanistan in the run-up to last month’s hasty completion of the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from the war-wracked country, with the Russian and Chinese leaders holding consultations on the situation following the power vacuum that resulted from the fall of the foreign-backed government and the Taliban’s subsequent seizure of Kabul.

In the latest such contact, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on August 25.

Chinese media said after the call that Putin told Xi he shares China’s positions and interests in Afghanistan and he is willing to work with China to “prevent foreign forces from interfering and destroying” Afghanistan.

With reporting by Reuters and TASS

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.