Tolo News: Following the collapse of the former government, the new caretaker cabinet announced that secondary school classes would remain closed until the next notification. Currently primary and elementary schools are open (6th grade and below). A number of students said they are worried about their future… Click here to read more (external link).
EU Criticized Over Lack Of Support For Afghan Refugees
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 16, 2021
Human rights and refugee groups are urging to the European Union to step up its protection for Afghans trying to flee their country following the Taliban’s takeover last month.
“The EU should be sharing, rather than shirking, the responsibility to offer them protection,” Amnesty International, Caritas Europa, and 22 other organizations said in a joint statement on September 16.
The groups called on the 27 EU member states to “expand safe pathways for people in need of protection, including through an ambitious and additional resettlement programme for Afghan refugees.”
There was no immediate reaction from the EU, whose asylum agency EASO reported on September 16 that applications by Afghans increased for the fifth consecutive month to 7,300 in July — before the Western-backed government in Kabul fell.
Nearly 1,200 were unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan, according to EASO.
More than half of applications by Afghans were rejected in June.
Tens of thousands of Afghans fled the country after the Taliban toppled the Western-backed government in Kabul a month ago.
Thousands more people want to leave the war-torn and drought-stricken country.
In Europe, some governments have raised alarms over a possible repeat of events in 2015, when well over 1 million people poured into the continent from Syria as well as other conflict zones and hardship countries.
“We regret the misleading and alarmist rhetoric expressed by some European leaders in the past weeks,” the groups said in their statement.
They said such talk “may raise barriers to refugees’ integration and inclusion in European societies” and could stoke “fears about a non-existent crisis at Europe’s borders.”
“Iran and Pakistan currently host nearly 90% of displaced Afghans – over two million registered refugees in total – and should not have to bear this responsibility alone,” according to the statement.
With reporting by AP
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.
What’s Next for the US in Afghanistan?
Blinken
Patsy Widakuswara
VOA News
September 15, 2021
WHITE HOUSE — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered to Congress this week an unwavering defense of the Biden administration’s exit from Afghanistan, in which he outlined the administration’s priorities for the country going forward.
Here are those priorities and the challenges in meeting them.
Assisting Americans and at-risk Afghans
Blinken said the administration was continuing “relentless efforts” to help the fewer than 100 remaining Americans as well as potentially thousands of at-risk Afghans to leave the country if they choose.
Citing the “ongoing terrorist threat to operations of this nature,” the State Department declined to provide an official count of Afghans attempting to flee.
A VOA source with knowledge of the evacuation process says that as of Sunday, at least 1,300 at-risk Afghans and U.S.-affiliated individuals are seeking to leave through the Kabul airport or overland transport. Approximately 8,200 are trying to depart from the Mazar-e-Sharif airport, where charter planes have waited for weeks to be cleared for departure.
“The United States has pulled every lever available to us to facilitate the departure of these charter flights from Mazar,” a State Department spokesman said.
But those assisting evacuations are losing patience and accuse the administration of offering “empty promises.”
“As the days go by and the situation becomes more dire for our 704 passengers, it’s hard to have any faith in political promises,” independent humanitarian Hazami Barmada told VOA. In recent weeks, she has been assisting the evacuation of a group that includes nine American citizens, nine lawful permanent residents of the U.S., and 170 Special Immigrant Visa holders and their families. As of Wednesday, the group is still stranded in Mazar-e-Sharif.
Engaging diplomatically with Taliban
The U.S. and other Western nations have moved diplomatic operations from Kabul to Doha, Qatar. Blinken said the U.S. was prepared to engage with the Taliban from the Qatari capital in coordination with allies and partners “on the basis of whether or not it advances our interests.”
With military intervention no longer a point of leverage for the foreseeable future, the challenge is “how to be diplomatic with a terrorist group,” said Brian O’Toole, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Paired with the right leverage, diplomacy may be effective, O’Toole said. This includes the previous Afghan government’s $9.5 billion in assets currently frozen in American banks, U.S. dominance over the global financial market, and threats of United Nations and Western sanctions or trade restrictions. Incentives could include offers of international aid, budgetary assistance and recognition of the Taliban government.
Blinken said the U.S. has organized key countries to leverage their combined influence over the Taliban. Last week, he led a ministerial meeting of 22 countries plus NATO, the EU, and the United Nations to align these efforts.
The effectiveness of the soft power approach also depends on whether the Taliban will continue to behave as an extremist group or move toward governing Afghanistan as part of the international community in some form.
At this point, the signals are mixed, said Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Despite their pledges to build an inclusive government, members of the all-male interim cabinet are Taliban old guard who may care more about maintaining the internal cohesion of the group than about placating the West. On the positive side, the Taliban have been largely cooperative in the U.S.-led evacuation of 124,000 people out of Afghanistan.
So far, the Taliban are calculating that it’s in their best interest to help Washington, O’Hanlon said. “They really don’t want to be in a military fight with the United States, even if they won the previous fight.”
Over-the-horizon capability
A key priority of the administration is ensuring that Afghanistan does not become a breeding ground for terrorists plotting attacks on the homeland. U.S. intelligence, however, can no longer closely monitor terror groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State-Khorasan province.
“There’s just no question, as you pull out, without troops on the ground, without the infrastructure we had, without the Afghan government in the position that it was, our intelligence collection is diminished,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told attendees at a national security summit Monday.
Now the administration is relying on its “over-the-horizon” capacity — its ability to detect and destroy terrorist threats through aerial surveillance and drones launched from outside of country. The same approach has been employed in places around the world where the U.S. does not have military forces on the ground, Blinken said.
But in those countries, the U.S. has at least some intelligence and logistical support, either from a military base or a partner country nearby.
“In Somalia, we’re nearby in Kenya. In Syria, we’re nearby in Iraq or Turkey. In Yemen, we have access to the water right around Yemen and, if necessary, facilities on the Arabian Peninsula as well,” O’Hanlon said. “But here in Afghanistan, the landlocked Hindu Kush, we don’t really have any easy, close by waterway. And we don’t have any countries that are particularly interested in helping us monitor the Taliban.”
There are no American bases in any of the six countries that border Afghanistan. The closest base is more than 1,600 kilometers away, in the United Arab Emirates, and it was used to launch drone strikes against IS-Khorasan during the chaotic last days of evacuations before the August 31 withdrawal.
The best option for Washington is to engage with Pakistan, said James Jeffrey, former special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and current chair of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center.
“We have been at odds with Pakistan because of their support of the Taliban,” Jeffrey said. “But now that de facto the Taliban is no longer an enemy, I see no reason why we can’t, as part of our overall approach, force the Pakistanis to allow us to strike ISIS and al-Qaida from their territory.”
How much support Washington can wrangle out of Islamabad remains to be seen. “There is no way we are going to allow any bases, any sort of action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan,” Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said in June.
Earlier this month, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Willam Burns flew to Pakistan and India to discuss with counterparts the security concerns following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Support humanitarian aid to Afghan people
On Monday, the administration announced it would send nearly $64 million in new humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, for a total of $330 million in assistance to the Afghan people this fiscal year. Blinken said the aid would flow through independent organizations such as nongovernmental organizations and U.N. agencies and not through the Taliban government.
“That may work for $64 million in aid, because you can air-drop things and the Taliban has no air presence,” said O’Toole. But it will be challenging to distribute larger aid packages without the blessing of those in power.
“You’re talking about having real supply convoys and land routes,” O’Toole added. “It may be hard to avoid the Taliban.”
Moving on from Afghanistan
While Afghanistan has been the first major foreign policy crisis for the administration, the focus will continue to be on Biden’s domestic priorities, said Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Within that context, Afghanistan is an issue that they would like to put in the rearview mirror,” Miller said.
Polls show Americans are more focused on issues such as the pandemic and the recent Biden vaccine mandate, the push to renew the nation’s infrastructure, and the upcoming fight on the debt ceiling.
“There are just so many issues out there that I wouldn’t be surprised if Afghanistan receded to some degree,” said Karlyn Bowman, a distinguished senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on American public opinion.
“But clearly as we move ahead toward the 2022 elections, Republicans will remind Americans what happened in Afghanistan,” Bowman added.
Biden’s approval rating has dropped to a new low of 43% with Americans disapproving of his handling of foreign policy (56%) and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan (61%), according to a September 2 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll.
Still, a majority of Americans said they support the decision to withdraw in recent polls from the Pew Research Center and ABC News/Washington Post.
VOA’s Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
Related
U.S. Senators Move to Designate Taliban as Foreign Terrorist Entity
US Senator Rubio
Michael Hughes
AOPNEWS
September 15, 2021
A group of American senators, led by intelligence panel vice chair Marco Rubio, introduced legislation on Wednesday directing the U.S. Secretary of State to designate the Taliban movement as a state sponsor of terrorism as well as an illegitimate regime.
The move comes as the U.S. and international community are hesitant to recognize the new Taliban government, which seized power last month, a pseudo-state actor that still has close ties to groups like al-Qaeda and Pakistani outfits active in Kashmir.
The Taliban have been pressed to implement an inclusive government and protect human rights, but reports have surfaced of violations including suppression of women. The U.S. and its allies have dangled promises of UN sanctions removal and donor funding, but the Taliban have apparently not changed their ways.
The United States currently only has certain individuals within the group designated, but the State Department has never formally added the Taliban, as an entity, to the department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list.
“There is no doubt that a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan poses a direct threat to our national security interests and that of our allies and partners both in the Middle East and in Central Asia,” Rubio said in a statement accompanying the 14-page legislation.
Rubio said that following the Biden Administration’s disastrous military withdrawal, Afghanistan is already becoming a “safe haven for terrorists who hate America.”
“Unfortunately, there is no reason to think President Biden will treat the Taliban like the terrorists they are,” Rubio added. “Congress must take action to deal with this new reality and keep Americans safe.”
Earlier this week, Rubio confronted Secretary of State Antony Blinken during congressional hearings over the Taliban’s ties with al-Qaeda. The top American diplomat confirmed that the Taliban’s links to the terrorist group – responsible for September 11 – have not been severed.
In the same statement Senator Tommy Tuberville said that Americans are disgusted with the way the Biden administration handled the exit from Afghanistan, which he claimed “emboldened” the Taliban.
“The weakness of this administration has been showcased, so now it is imperative that Congress takes action to ensure that the U.S does not legitimize the Taliban and treats them as what they are – a radical terrorist organization,” Tuberville said.
The senator added that America has been secure against terror attacks for 20 years due to the presence of U.S. troops, “but now the Taliban are equipped with taxpayer-funded weapons and equipment that they will only use to further their malicious agenda.”
The proposal, entitled the “Preventing the Recognition of Terrorist States Act of 2021,” calls for viewing the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan as a “coup d’etat and therefore illegitimate.” If passed, the bill will require the United States to continue recognizing the “democratically elected government of the Islamic Republic.”
The document notes that the United States recognizes individuals already designated as terrorists by the United States, such as Sirajuddin Haqqani, will play a key role in the Taliban regime.
In addition to terrorist designations, the senators want to significantly restrict any funding or foreign assistance to Afghanistan unless U.S. development agencies can ensure the money does not flow through terrorist hands in the regime.
“No Federal department or agency may take any action or extend any assistance that states or implies recognition of the Taliban’s claim of sovereignty over Afghanistan,” text of the legislation says.
The financial sanctions would also include typical bans and restrictions on extending commercial licenses, loans, and Export-Import Bank assistance.
The bill would also impose sanctions against any foreign individuals who knowingly provide material support to the Taliban.
And, according to the proposal, the State Department will prepare a report that determines if the Taliban should be designated “as a significant foreign narcotics trafficker under the Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.”
No later than 120 days of enactment, according to the bill document, the administration must submit to Congress a report describing Pakistani government actions to provide safe haven to terrorist organizations.
With respect to other foreign powers, the bill – if passed – would require the State Department to submit regular reports on the Taliban’s relations with Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and China along with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The senators want to understand the likelihood that these countries will seek to invest in Afghanistan’s natural resources and the impact such investments might have on the national security of the United States.
The legislation also proposes assessing whether the importation of rare earth metals extracted in Afghanistan and goods produced from such metals violates forced labor bans.
Biden has come under fire for delaying the Trump administration’s withdrawal plan by four months and leaving Americans and Afghan supporters stranded at the Kabul airport which left them as sitting ducks for an ISIS attack.
However, former President Donald Trump has shown no reason for thinking he would handle the situation any better after proclaiming that civil war general Robert E. Lee could have defeated the Taliban while insinuating that he would flatten Afghanistan.
One Month In Power: Taliban Failing To Transform From Insurgency To Functional Government
Taliban fighters (file photo)
By Ron Synovitz
Abubakar Siddique
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 15, 2021
It has been just a month since Taliban militants seized control of Kabul and declared Afghanistan as an “Islamic emirate” that will uphold the militant movement’s interpretation of “Islamic rules and Shari’a law.”
But already, the new Taliban regime is struggling to deal with a series of political, social, and economic crises that are testing its ability to transform from a guerrilla insurgency into a functional government.
By many accounts, the Taliban is failing the test.
Masato Toriya, a specialist on the region from Tokyo University, says the Taliban-led government’s complete lack of management experience is exacerbating an already dire economy situation — causing living conditions across Afghanistan to deteriorate further.
Compounded by internal rifts that are emerging between rival factions of the Taliban leadership, Toriya says the threat of a civil war reigniting in Afghanistan is now serious. “One cannot deny the prospect of Afghanistan’s new slide into civil war,” Toriya said.
Indeed, independent analysts say the possibility appears greater than ever that the unity of the Taliban insurgency could splinter into regional Taliban fiefdoms now that the task is to actually govern — with the Haqqani network in the east and a Kandahar-based faction of Taliban co-founders in the western half of the country.
“Conquering a country is always the easy part. Ruling it, in Afghanistan’s case, is the difficult bit,” historian William Dalrymple, an expert on Pashtun tribal rivalries, told RFE/RL. “That’s when the tensions and the fault lines become apparent.”
While the dynamics of those internal Taliban rivalries continue to play out, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that Afghanistan now faces a “humanitarian catastrophe” and a complete collapse of basic services.
Some $9 billion in foreign reserves of Afghanistan’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), has been frozen — most of it held in the United States.
Foreign donors have suspended aid to Afghanistan, saying disbursements are contingent on the behavior of the Taliban-led government, which has not been recognized by any country.
That has left ordinary Afghans reeling from rocketing inflation, rising poverty, cash shortages, a plummeting currency, and rising unemployment.
Ajmal Ahmady, the former DAB governor who fled Kabul after the Taliban takeover, told RFE/RL that he expects all of those dire economic indicators to “worsen.”
Meanwhile, despite Taliban claims that the movement is more moderate than it was when it ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, it quickly reintroduced restrictions on women’s rights.
That includes tightened rules on women’s education and outright bans on the right of women to work.
By forcing women in Kabul and many other parts of the country to leave their jobs and stay at home, economic experts say the new Taliban regime is only further damaging the already struggling economy.
The Taliban’s promises of restraint in its dealings with its adversaries also look like empty words.
In several cities that have fallen under Taliban control in recent months, Human Rights Watch has documented grave human rights violations.
Taliban gunmen also have responded violently against those who have dared to protest against their rule — with reports of demonstrators and their leaders being shot dead on the streets or at their homes.
In fact, Human Rights Watch says there has been a pattern of summary executions of former security personnel, former members of the government and their relatives, and civilians in revenge killings.
Meanwhile, instead of focusing on reviving the government institutions that collapsed as U.S.-led foreign military forces were completing their withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, the new Taliban regime has found it difficult to provide even the most basic services.
The Taliban leadership has outlawed peaceful demonstrations by those who oppose their rule. That ban also prohibits journalists from covering protest marches.
Some journalists detained for doing so have been severely beaten in the custody of Taliban authorities.
Amid tightened restrictions on media, many journalists have either stopped working or have simply fled the country. Media rights groups say independent journalism is now at risk of disappearing from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Afghanistan also is facing a mass exodus of people. Tens of thousands of Afghans who fear Taliban reprisals for their work in government or with foreign organizations during the past 20 years have already fled Kabul.
Many more have been left behind, and some have been selling off their possessions on roadsides across the country.
For some, it is about survival and getting enough money to feed their families. But others are using the money to try to flee from Afghanistan into neighboring Iran and Pakistan.
“Many people are selling off whatever valuables they have,” one Kabul shopkeeper told RFE/RL. “People are desperate. There are no jobs and no money. People don’t have any other choice.”
Perhaps the most significant development during the past month are the reports of rifts within the Taliban leadership that have emerged since it announced its version of a “caretaker government” last week.
The dispute surfaced after Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban co-founder who headed the group’s Doha political office, disappeared from public view for several days after he’d been named as deputy prime minister in the Taliban cabinet.
Some Taliban sources say Baradar was involved in a brawl at the Presidential Palace in Kabul with Khalil ur-Rahman Haqqani — a prominent figure in the militant Haqqani network who was named the Taliban’s minister for refugees.
Those reports have highlighted the divisions between the Kandahar-based faction in the Taliban leadership council, the Quetta Shura, and the Haqqani network that controls areas further to the east.
By announcing a cabinet made up exclusively of the movement’s hard-line old guard, the Taliban risked demonstrating that critics were right not to believe Taliban promises of “an all-inclusive government” that would represent Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic and religious communities.
Thirty of the 33 cabinet members are Pashtuns. There are two ethnic Tajik ministers and only one ethnic Uzbek. There are no women, Shi’a, Hazara, Baluch, Turkmen, or members of Afghanistan’s non-Muslim minorities.
“The Taliban’s new government tells us that they only consider themselves entitled to run an Islamic government,” Kabul researcher Ali Adili told RFE/RL. “This is an ethnically homogeneous, ‘mullahcratic’ government.”
One key indicator about the future for women in Afghanistan is that the Taliban has abolished the Department of Women’s Affairs that had been part of the deposed Kabul government.
Kabul residents tell RFE/RL that many Afghan women are now pessimistic about their economic and social situations, as well as their safety and their futures.
Written and reported by Ron Synovitz in Prague with reporting by RFE/RL’s Gandhara website editor Abubakar Siddique and Radio Azadi correspondents in Afghanistan whose names are being withheld for security reasons
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 Envoy, Taliban Blame Ghani for Scuttling Peaceful Transfer of Power Plan
Ashraf Ghani (left) and Zalmay Khalilzad (right)
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
September 15, 2021
ISLAMABAD – The U.S. peace envoy for Afghanistan says he secured a last-minute deal with the Taliban in mid-August to keep the insurgents outside Kabul while they negotiated a political transition. But, he says, President Ashraf Ghani’s decision to flee the country scuttled that plan.
Afghan-born envoy Zalmay Khalilzad made the disclosure in an interview with the Financial Times, saying he had negotiated a two-week grace period hours before the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban on August 15. He said Ghani’s escape left a security vacuum in the city, however, which prompted the Islamist group to march into the city that day.
Khalilzad explained that the deal would have allowed Ghani to remain in his post until a settlement was reached in Doha on a future government, even as the Taliban stood at Kabul’s gates.
Taliban confirmation
A Taliban official Wednesday confirmed details of the understanding they had reached with Khalilzad in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where the insurgents run their political office.
“Yes, there was a gentleman word from our side that our forces will not enter Kabul city, and we will talk about a peaceful transfer of power,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told VOA from Doha.
Khalilzad told the Financial Times he had no clue that Ghani was intending to flee into exile in the United Arab Emirates.
“There were questions of law and order in Kabul after Ghani fled. … The Talibs [then] … say: ‘Are you going to take responsibility for security of Kabul now?’ And then you know what happened, we weren’t going to take responsibility,” the U.S. envoy said.
Khalilzad negotiated an agreement with the Taliban in February 2020, paving the way for the United States to bring home all American troops from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of involvement in the Afghan war.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also has repeatedly stated in recent days he had received assurances from Ghani on the eve of his escape that the Afghan president was on board with Washington’s plan.
“What he [Ghani] told me in that conversation the night before he fled is that, as he put it, he was prepared to ‘fight to the death,’ ” Blinken told Afghan-based Tolo News earlier this month.
Ghani has issued statements in recent days from the UAE apologizing for “abandoning” Afghans and saying he acted on the advice of the presidential palace security. The former president also dismissed allegations of taking off with tens of millions of stolen dollars.
Caretaker government
The Taliban announced a caretaker government last week in Afghanistan, 20 years after they were ousted from power by the U.S.-led international military invasion for harboring al-Qaida leaders.
The Taliban introduced strict Islamic laws when they were previously in control of the country from 1996 to 2001. A brutal justice system, mistreatment of Afghan minorities, the barring of women from public life and banning of girls from receiving an education marked the Taliban rule at the time, leading to Afghanistan’s global isolation.
The U.S. and many other countries now are pressuring the Taliban not to bring back their hardline governance system if they want their country to remain part of the international community and win diplomatic recognition for any Taliban-led government in Kabul.
Taliban say mulling creation of regular army in Afghanistan
Qari Fasihuddin
Press TV
September 15, 2021
The Taliban are considering the creation of regular armed forces in Afghanistan in the near future.
The group’s Chief of Staff Qari Fasihuddin said during a press conference in Kabul on Wednesday that consultations on the matter were ongoing.
The Afghan army reportedly had more than 300,000 service members, in addition to an air force and other US-supplied equipment, before it collapsed.
The Taliban in Afghanistan had seized billions of dollars of US weapons following the quick collapse of security forces.
The United States claims it has spent more than $80 billion on training and equipping Afghan security forces over the past twenty years. All that failed to stop the Taliban from taking over Kabul.
The United States handed over 75,898 vehicles, 599,690 weapons, 162,643 pieces of communications equipment, 208 aircraft, and 16,191 pieces of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment to the Afghan forces between 2003 and 2016, according to a 2017 Government Accountability Office report.
Washington also gave Afghan forces 7,035 machine guns, 4,702 Humvees, 20,040 hand grenades, 2,520 bombs and 1,394 grenade launchers, among other equipment, from 2017 to 2019, according to a report last year from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
Some 46 of those aircraft are now in Uzbekistan after more than 500 Afghan government troops used them to flee Afghanistan following the collapse of the government last week. The rest have been taken over by the Taliban.
The White House has acknowledged that a “fair amount” of weapons have fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
The United States fully withdrew its forces before the Taliban’s August 31 deadline to officially end 20 years of war and occupation.
The government of Afghanistan rapidly collapsed on August 15 with President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country in the face of lightning advances of the Taliban.
The United Nations has recently criticized the Taliban’s interim administration, which is dominated by veteran loyalists, most of them ethnic Pashtuns.
Presenting an oral update on the situation in Afghanistan to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, the UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said she was “dismayed by the lack of inclusivity of the so-called caretaker cabinet, which includes no women and few non-Pashtuns.”
She pointed in particular to “credible allegations of reprisal killings” of former members of the Afghan national security forces.
Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman, however, on Tuesday told Press TV in an exclusive interview that the makeup of the caretaker government was dictated by urgency and that there will be changes in the future.
He also noted that war is over in Afghanistan and the new government is focused on rebuilding the country after the 20-year-long presence of foreign forces.
Tajikistan summons US ambassador over Biden’s offensive remarks
Joe Biden
Press TV
September 15, 2021
Tajikistan has summoned the US ambassador over the offensive remarks President Joe Biden made about Tajik people during his recent visit to Pennsylvania.
The Central Asian country took offense to a jibe Biden used to deflect criticism from his handling of the chaotic US withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan.
In a statement, Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry said Ambassador John Mark Pommersheim was summoned and “a verbal note of protest was conveyed” to him “in connection with the statements by the President.”
“The verbal note stated that such statements do not correspond to the spirit of friendly relations and partnership,” the statement added.
During his visit to Pennsylvania at the 20th anniversary of Sep.11, Biden, who was trying to defend the ill-prepared withdrawal from Afghanistan, said people in Tajikistan would also be “hanging in the well of the wheel” if the US pulled up a C-130 Hercules aircraft from the country.
He was referring to a tragic incident that occurred at the Kabul international airport in the early days of the evacuation operation when Afghans seeking to flee the country tried to climb aboard a cargo jet as it rolled down the runway.
The desperate scene was caught on footage that showed two people falling to their death from the aircraft’s landing gear to the city below, well after takeoff.
“Seventy percent of the American people think it was time to get out of Afghanistan … But the flip of it is, they didn’t like the way we got out,” Biden said.
“But it’s hard to explain to anybody how else could you get out. For example, if we were in Tajikistan, and we pulled up with a C-130 and said, ‘We’re going to let, you know, anybody who was involved with being sympathetic to us to get on the plane,’ you’d have people hanging in the wheel well. Come on,” Biden said.
The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 as part of the so-called war on terror. While the invasion ended the Taliban’s rule in the country back then, it has now come to an end with the return of the group to power.
The unfolding situation in Afghanistan raised concerns over security threats against Tajikistan.
Russia, an ally to Tajikistan, said previously that Washington’s chaotic, hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan had aggravated stability in the Central Asia region.
Last week, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had sent armored vehicles and military equipment to its military base in Tajikistan amid “growing instability” near the southern border.
Tolo News in Dari – September 15, 2021
Passenger Flights Between Iran And Afghanistan Resume
Radio Farda
September 15, 2021
Iran has resumed regular commercial flights to neighboring Afghanistan following a monthlong hiatus.
An Iranian Mahan Air aircraft landed in Kabul on September 15 with 19 passengers onboard after departing from the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, the state-run al-Alam TV channel reported.
“At present, this airliner is returning to Mashhad with passengers,” the semiofficial Fars news agency later reported.
Regular passenger services between the two countries had stopped after the Taliban toppled the Western-backed government in Kabul a month ago, with the Iranian civil aviation agency citing security reasons for the interruption.
Previously, Mahan Air — the second-largest Iranian airline — had operated two flights per week between Mashhad and the Afghan capital.
Iran shares a 945-kilometer border with Afghanistan.
According to the United Nations and affiliated agencies, Iran hosts some 800,000 registered Afghan refugees and more than 2 million undocumented Afghans.
With reporting by AFP and Reuters