Ghani
New York Post: The Ghani family likes to live in style. Just a week after Ashraf Ghani cowardly abandoned his country for the luxury confines of Dubai (reportedly with $169 million in cash shoved in a helicopter), it turns out both of his kids live in luxury while women in their homeland live in terror about the return of the Taliban’s oppressive rule. Click here to read more (external link).
Putin
New York Post: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that his country won’t accept Afghan refugees because he doesn’t want to deal with “militants” masquerading as asylum-seekers. The Russian strongman slammed Western nations for placing Afghan refugees in countries even near his border while their US and European visas are being processed. Click here to read more (external link).
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 22, 2021
Tens of thousands of Afghans again jammed the roads leading to Kabul’s airport, as Taliban fighters fired weapons in the air and sought to control the crowds trying to flee the country.
As the Taliban tried to consolidate its control over Kabul and establish law and order, the group faced a challenge in a northern district from fighters who refuse to recognize the Taliban’s claim to power.
The Al-Arabiya TV channel on August 22 cited the son of Ahmad Shah Massud, who was one of the main leaders of the country’s anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s, as saying he will not surrender areas under his control to the Taliban.
Ahmad Massud also called on the formation of a comprehensive government to rule the country with the participation of the Taliban. And he warned that war will be “unavoidable” if the insurgents refuse dialogue, the TV channel reported.
The chaos outside the Kabul airport has resulted in the deaths of seven Afghans, the British military said August 22 — a figure that is believed to be a major undercount. The British statement did not specify when or how exactly the deaths occurred.
A NATO official said that at least 20 people have died in the past seven days in and around the airport. Some were shot and others died in stampedes.
Thousands of U.S. Marines have secured part of the airport, and struggled to keep crowds at bay and away from the tarmac as military and civilian aircraft take off carrying foreigners and Afghans alike.
Jake Sullivan, the White House national-security adviser, told CNN on August 22 that 3,900 people had been flown out of Kabul on U.S. flights over the previous 24 hours. According to the U.S. Defense Department, U.S. planes have ferried 17,000 people out of the country since the evacuation effort began a week ago.
The British Defense Ministry said nearly 4,000 people had been evacuated on U.K. flights from Afghanistan since August 13.
The Afghan Civil Aviation Authority asked people not to travel to the facility.
“There [are] no civilian and commercial flights in Hamid Karzai International Airport,” it advised on its Facebook account August 21.
Britain, the United States, and other countries have struggled to expand evacuation efforts of their own citizens, as well as Afghans who have worked for foreign embassies, NGOs, NATO forces, or other organizations that might put them at risk of retribution by Taliban fighters.
Growing security threats have prompted U.S. military planes to do rapid, diving, combat landings at the Kabul airport and other aircraft have been seen shooting off flares on takeoff, apparently in an attempt to confuse possible heat-seeking missiles.
The U.S. Embassy issued a new security alert, warning citizens not to travel to the Kabul airport without individual instruction from a U.S. government representative.
The Pentagon said it was formally seeking airlift help from commercial airlines to relocate evacuees from Afghanistan once they have gotten out of their country.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the commercial aircraft will not fly into the Kabul airport, but rather will be used to move passengers from way stations once they leave Kabul, allowing the U.S. military to focus on the Afghanistan portion of the evacuation.
The Spanish government announced that the United States and Spain have agreed to use two military bases in Spain to receive Afghans who worked for the U.S. government.
Under the agreement, the bases — one near Seville, the other near Cadiz — will be used to process refugees from Afghanistan until their travel to other countries is arranged.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the EU has “complained” to U.S. officials that their security at Kabul airport was overly strict and was hampering attempts by Afghans who worked for the Europeans to enter.
Bahrain has said it will open up its airports to flights evacuating people from Afghanistan, and the United Arab Emirates announced it would temporarily host Afghan refugees as the United States faced overcrowding at facilities processing evacuees in Qatar.
Afghan officials familiar with talks held in the capital say the Taliban will not make announcements on their government until the August 31 deadline for the U.S. troop withdrawal passes.
With reporting by Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, dpa, AP, and AFP
Related
Taliban militants are seen after seizing Zaranj, the capital of Afghanistan’s Nimroz Province, on August 6, 2021. (Photo via RT)
Press TV
August 22, 2021
Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has said that the administration of President Joe Biden has surrendered Bagram Air Force Base, and $85 billion worth of equipment and weapons to the Taliban.
In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Haley slammed the Biden administration for its execution in withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, saying it “completely surrendered to the Taliban.”
When asked how the US administration is negotiating with the Taliban, she said, “They’re not negotiating with the Taliban. They’ve completely surrendered to the Taliban. They surrendered Bagram Air Force Base, which was a major NATO hub. They surrendered $85 billion worth of equipment and weapons that we should have gotten out of there.”
“They have surrendered the American people and actually withdrew our troops before they withdrew the American people. And they’ve abandoned our Afghan allies who kept people like my husband safe,” Haley added.
The Taliban have seized billions of dollars of US weapons following the quick collapse of Afghan security forces that were armed with the American military equipment.
Black Hawk helicopters and A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft are among the items captured by the Taliban, according to the reports published this week.
Taliban fights were seen in photos circulating on media clutching American-made M4 carbines and M16 rifles instead of their iconic AK-47s. And the militants have been spotted with American Humvees and mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles.
However, Haley also acknowledged that the Biden administration must now do “whatever it takes to get our Americans out.”
“This is an unbelievable scenario where literally the Taliban has our Americans held hostage,” she added.
The United States claims it has spent up to $89 billion on training and equipping Afghan security forces over the last twenty years that failed to stop the Taliban onslaught on Kabul. Rather, according to reports, a significant percentage of the US-trained Afghan security forces have joined the Taliban force.
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 Biden administration has acknowledged a “fair amount” of weapons have fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
On Saturday, Trump called Biden’s handling of the retreat of US forces from Afghanistan “the greatest foreign policy humiliation” in American history.
Trump, a Republican who is considering running again for president in 2024, has repeatedly blamed Biden for Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban.
“Biden’s botched exit from Afghanistan is the most astonishing display of gross incompetence by a nation’s leader, perhaps at any time,” Trump said at a boisterous rally packed with his supporters near Cullman, Alabama.
“This is not a withdrawal. This was a total surrender,” he said.
The Taliban are poised to run Afghanistan again 20 years after they were removed from power by American forces following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and removed the Taliban from power. American forces occupied the country for about 20 years on the pretext of fighting against the Taliban. But as the US forces left Afghanistan, the Taliban stormed into Kabul, weakened by foreign occupation.
Taliban Militant Leadership
Rob Garver
VOA News
August 22, 2021
WASHINGTON – As the Taliban take power in Afghanistan for the first time in 20 years, Afghans face not only a humanitarian crisis but also an economic crisis that threatens to make an already dire situation considerably worse. But just how bad things can get, and how much potential leverage the economic situation gives the U.S. and its allies over the Taliban, is far from certain.
Asked about the future of the Afghan economy, Alex Zerden, who served as the top U.S. Treasury Department official in Afghanistan in 2018 and 2019, said, “I don’t think there is a definitive answer, and anybody who does doesn’t know the problem set very well, because there are a lot of different ways that this can shake out.”
Even before the Taliban took control, the economic situation in Afghanistan was tenuous at best. In March, the World Bank described it as “shaped by fragility and aid dependence,” with 75% of public spending funded not by the government’s own revenue generation, but from grants from international institutions and individual countries such as the United States.
Donors suspend aid
After the Taliban captured Kabul on Sunday, those donors began announcing that they would be turning off the financial spigots, at least for the near term. The U.S. announced that it would freeze billions of dollars in emergency reserves that Afghanistan’s central bank kept on deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The International Monetary Fund said that a tranche of funding worth $450 million, set to be delivered to the Afghan government next week, would be suspended, and Germany announced that $300 million in scheduled aid would not be delivered.
President Joe Biden promised that humanitarian assistance would continue to flow to the country despite the Taliban takeover, saying, “We will continue to support the Afghan people. We will lead with our diplomacy, our international influence and our humanitarian aid.”
However, the total withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from the country makes it unclear whether and how international aid organizations, major go-betweens for foreign aid spending, will be able to operate in the country moving forward.
Governing ‘is not easy’
Ajmal Ahmady, who served as the governor of Afghanistan’s central bank from 2019 until he fled the country last weekend, has been using his Twitter account to explain the country’s dire economic straits. Not only has the bank lost access to its reserves, he said, but shipments of physical U.S. currency, which the country’s banking system relied on to satisfy customers’ desire for a medium of exchange more stable than the government-issued afghani, have now been cut off.
A scarcity of dollars will likely make the relative value of the afghani plunge, driving up prices for goods and services that may become more scarce themselves as international aid and trade flows are disrupted.
“(The) Taliban won militarily — but now have to govern,” Ahmady wrote. “It is not easy.”
Changed economy
The economy the Taliban have taken over is vastly changed from the one they presided over from 1996 through the end of 2001. Despite its manifold problems, Afghanistan’s economy is far larger and more urbanized than it was two decades ago.
In 2002, the first full year after the Taliban’s ouster, Afghanistan’s official gross domestic product was just $4 trillion. In 2020, according to World Bank figures, the country’s GDP had nearly quintupled, to $19.8 billion. In major cities, infrastructure projects brought modern technology, such as smartphones, to ordinary Afghans.
But that enlarged economy was driven, for the most part, by foreign aid and a massive trade deficit exacerbated by the fact that 44% of the country’s workforce was occupied in low-yield agriculture and 60% of households relied on agriculture for at least some of their income.
Leverage over the Taliban
The United States still considers the Taliban a terrorist organization, and it remains on a sanctions list maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Under current U.S. policy, that makes it virtually impossible for a financial institution under Taliban control to have any meaningful participation in the global financial markets.
The Biden administration appears to believe that this may be a point of leverage that the United States can use to influence the group’s actions now that it is in power.
“I think they’re going through sort of an existential crisis. … Do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government?” Biden said in an exclusive interview with ABC news on Thursday. “I’m not sure they do.”
He continued: “But they also care about whether they have food to eat, whether they have an income … that they can make any money and run an economy.”
Hunger in Afghanistan
Afghans are already suffering from widespread hunger, exacerbated by a severe drought that devastated wheat production. The United Nations World Food Program estimates that 1 in 3 Afghans is currently at risk of severe or acute hunger. Half of all Afghan children under five already suffer from acute malnutrition, according to the U.N.
U.N. officials say the Taliban have assured them that they will be allowed to continue food aid deliveries in the country.
Endgame not obvious
Even given the financial challenges they are facing, said Zerden, the former Treasury official, it isn’t clear how much leverage the Taliban are subject to from foreign governments.
For example, he said, Western governments may be overestimating the amount of money the Taliban actually need to keep Afghanistan running. The group, for all its human rights abuses, has traditionally been far less corrupt than the government it overthrew, meaning that less of the money it does collect will end up being siphoned off into the personal accounts of government officials.
And the Taliban are not without the ability to raise revenues internally. Zerden, who now runs Capitol Peak Strategies in Washington, said the Taliban have operated a shadow government for two decades, effectively taxing large swaths of the country by taking a share of money from opium sales, illegal mining and smuggling and using those funds to supply services to the people under their control and to fund and supply military operations.
Now, with official control of all border crossings, the group is in a position to begin extracting customs fees on exports and imports.
Economy vs. Ideology
Those trade routes are vitally important to the group’s future, said Graeme Smith, a consultant researcher for the Overseas Development Institute who has spent years studying Afghanistan. So long as regional powers such as Pakistan, China and Iran continue to trade with Afghanistan, they will provide a steady and lucrative source of revenue.
Additionally, Smith said he is deeply dubious about predictions that the Taliban will be swayed by promises of increased inclusion in the modern economy if it means abandoning their core ideology.
“I’m hearing informally from folks in D.C. that there are a lot of hopes being placed on the ability to curb Taliban behavior by applying financial leverage,” he said.
While that leverage will be important, he said, “Those expectations are wildly out of whack. We think we have more power than we do.”
Related
Joe Biden
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 21, 2021
The administration of President Joe Biden has alerted U.S. civilian airlines that they could be utilized to help transport people who have been evacuated from Afghanistan, U.S. media are reporting.
Reuters on August 21 quoted a U.S. government official speaking on condition of anonymity as saying a “warning order” has been issued to carriers telling them they could be used but that no decision had been made.
According to the official, civilian aircraft would not fly into Afghanistan but would instead transport evacuees from air bases in other locations, including the Middle East and Germany.
The reports come as tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan waited nervously to see whether the United States would deliver on Biden’s new pledge to evacuate all Americans and all Afghans who aided the war effort amid deteriorating security conditions.
As of early August 22, thousands of people were besieging entrances to Kabul’s airport, the main route of escape for foreign citizens and Afghans seeking to flee the country following the Taliban takeover of the government.
Shots were being heard almost continuously outside the heavily armed airport compound, a witness told dpa news agency.
The agency reported that there have been numerous armed confrontations at the gates to compound.
The Afghan Civil Aviation Authority issued a statement on August 21 asking people not to travel to the facility.
“There [are] no civilian and commercial flights in Hamid Karzai International Airport,” it advised on its Facebook account.
Earlier, the U.S. Embassy told citizens not to travel to the Kabul airport without “individual instructions from a U.S. government representative.” The warning cited potential security threats outside its gates of the airport.
Footage from Britain’s Sky News showed soldiers covering three bodies with white tarpaulins outside of Kabul airport. It was not clear how they died.
A reporter for Sky News at the scene said people in the crowd were being “crushed” and that medics were rushing from casualty to casualty amid “dehydrated and terrified” Afghans who were desperate to leave the country.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on August 21 that is “mathematically impossible” for the United States and its allies to evacuate the tens of thousands of Afghan personnel and their families by an August 31 deadline Biden has set for the last U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan.
Borrell said the EU has “complained” to U.S. officials that their security at Kabul airport was overly strict and was hampering attempts by Afghans who worked for the Europeans to enter.
Bahrain has said it will open up its airports to flights evacuating people from Afghanistan, and the United Arab Emirates announced it would temporarily host Afghan refugees as the United States faced overcrowding at facilities processing evacuees in Qatar.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby acknowledged the sense of urgency as the military attempts to complete the evacuations by August 31.
“We know that we’re fighting against both time and space,” he said.
Meanwhile, AP reports that U.S. authorities are concerned the Islamic State (IS) militant group could disrupt efforts to evacuate foreign citizens and Afghan allies.
A senior U.S. official said on August 21 that potential IS threats in Afghanistan are forcing the U.S. military to develop new ways to get evacuees to the Kabul airport in Kabul.
AP quoted the official as saying that small groups of Americans and possibly other civilians will be given specific instructions on what steps to take, including a list of transit points where they can be gathered by the military.
In the first known case of U.S. forces exiting Kabul’s airport to rescue Americans since the Taliban takeover, the Pentagon said it had deployed three Chinook transport helicopters to rescue 169 Americans at a hotel who were unable to reach the Kabul airport gates.
At least 12 people have been killed in and around Kabul’s airport since the Taliban retook the city on August 15, NATO and Taliban officials have said.
“The evacuation process is slow, as it is risky, for we don’t want any form of clashes with Taliban members or civilians outside the airport,” a NATO official told Reuters on August 20 on condition of anonymity.
The Taliban’s senior leadership gathered in Kabul on August 21 to map out its plans for a future government following the hard-line Islamist group’s seizure of the Afghan capital.
The gathering was taking place as the Taliban attempts to present a more moderate image after regaining control over most of the country as U.S.-led forces evacuate.
A senior Taliban figure told AFP on condition of anonymity that Taliban cofounder and political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar would meet in Kabul with Taliban military “leaders and politicians for an inclusive government set-up.”
Reuters, meanwhile, quoted an unidentified Taliban source as saying that Baradar was in Afghanistan to “delegate responsibility to commanders, meet former government leaders, local militia commanders, policymakers, and religious scholars.”
With reporting by Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, dpa, AP, and AFP
Related
Anthee Carassava
VOA News
August 21, 2021
Greece has erected a 25-mile fence and installed a new surveillance system on its border with Turkey as fears mount of a surge in Afghan refugees trying to reach Europe. Greece has faced recurring refugee crises since 2015, when more than a million mainly Syrian refugees swarmed through its land and sea borders to escape conflict in their homeland.
Speaking from Checkpoint One, Greece’s key border post along the country’s rugged land frontiers with Turkey, Public Order Minister Michalis Chryssochoidis sounded what he called a clear and fair warning.
Our borders, he said, will remain safe and inviolable. And we will not allow any indiscriminate inflow of refugees.
The minister’s warning sounded as he toured the checkpoint and a soaring, 25-mile, steel fence completed in recent days amid fears of a deluge of Afghan refugees fleeing for their lives after the Taliban takeover.
Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said the Greek fence along the shallow Evros river that separates the country from Turkey is just part of a bigger plan pieced together by authorities to further shield the country against a new migration crisis.
We are on alert, but Greece, he said, will continue to protect itself from any threat.
The defense minister said special surveillance systems, including a fleet of drones and night cameras, had been installed across the new fence to watch for illegal crossings. Army bulldozers were also seen plowing across stretches of the country’s northern frontier with Bulgaria, where military trucks were unloading barbed wired to erect more fences.
Greece has been on the front line of Europe’s migration woes since about 1.2 million refugees from Syria streamed through in 2015, sparking the biggest migration push to the European continent since the Second World War.
Greece has repeatedly complained to the European Union about doing too little to support hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees trapped in the country for six years, as neighboring states and other European nations, including Germany, turned a blind eye, sealing their borders to keep them away.
The United Nations is now making appeals for countries in the region to not do the same to fleeing Afghanis. But the government in Athens says it won’t sit passively.
In fact, in a surprise move. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis placed an urgent telephone call to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday trying to drum up support and a common strategy on how to deal with a potential migration crisis in the region.
Details of the meeting or any decision between the two men were not released. But no sooner had the call ended than Erdogan warned Europe he too would not allow Turkey to become what he called a refugee warehouse.
Turkey is already hosting 3.6 million Syrian refugees and more than 300,000 Afghans.
In Greece, meanwhile, humanitarian groups, Afghan refugees and leftist parties are now up in arms about the border fence and the government’s controversial plan of deterrence. Those groups say the plan completely disregards human rights and the right to asylum to those fleeing danger and bloodshed.
Related
Taliban Militants in Kabul
Press TV
August 21, 2021
The Taliban have barred employees from entering government buildings in Kabul, one week after the militant group took over the capital.
Government buildings, banks, passport offices, schools and universities have been largely closed since the Taliban seized Kabul on August 15.
A government employee, identified as Hamdullah, told AFP, “I went to the office this morning, but the Taliban who were at the gate told us they have not received any orders to reopen government offices.”
“They told us to watch TV or listen to the radio for an announcement about when to resume work.”
According to a foreign ministry employee, roads leading to the ministry in central Kabul were closed.
“They aren’t allowing anyone to enter the ministry building,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity. “One of them even told me to wait until the new minister and directors are appointed.”
Workers at the offices of the ministry of rural rehabilitation, however, said they were allowed to enter after showing identification.
Over the past week, the capital has been largely calm, but daily chaos in and around Kabul’s airport has left at least 12 people dead, NATO and Taliban officials said.
Thousands of people are still attempting to board flights in a chaotic and dangerous situation at the airport. The daily mayhem there has stoked criticism that NATO and US President Joe Biden’s administration are slow in trying to get Americans and their allies out of the country.
As chaos continued to unfold on the streets of Kabul, Washington advised Americans in Afghanistan to avoid traveling to the airport on Saturday.
“Because of potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul airport, we are advising US citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a US government representative to do so,” said an alert, posted on the website of the US Embassy in Afghanistan.
Citing an official, AFP reported that the US military sent helicopters to rescue over 150 Americans unable to reach the airport gates.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) criticized Washington for being concerned only with the evacuation “of its own citizens and former employees.”
“This is blocking the evacuation of those on the lists of sensitive persons who are in danger.”
The organization called on the US president on Saturday to make “a special plan for evacuating endangered Afghan journalists” from Afghanistan’s capital city.
The RSF chief Christophe Deloire said they “are receiving dozens and dozens of urgent evacuation requests.”
“Our problem today is not getting visas or seats on planes, it is making it possible for these people to access planes.”
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also said it had received “hundreds of requests for help” from Afghan journalists, mostly women, who are “in panic and fear,” after the Taliban takeover.
The US administration is under fire for being overly bureaucratic and not having enough staff to process thousands of Afghans seeking to leave their country for the United States.
Biden has pledged to help any US citizen in Afghanistan seeking to evacuate. But he has acknowledged that the presence of thousands of US soldiers at the airport does not guarantee safe passage to that vast compound.
The Taliban, however, take the US and its Western allies responsible for carrying out a messy troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has significantly aggravated the situation in the country after two decades of war.
CNBC: For many Afghans, this week has laid bare the worst-case scenario for a country running on legacy financial rails: A nationwide cash shortage, closed borders, a plunging currency, and rapidly rising prices of basic goods. In some ways, it’s a perfect test case for the usefulness of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. CNBC spoke with several Afghans who are using crypto to learn how they got into it, how it’s helping them, and barriers to further adoption. Click here to read more (external link).
Baradar
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 21, 2021
The Taliban’s senior leadership is reportedly gathering in Kabul to map out a future government following the hard-line Islamist group’s return to the Afghan capital.
The August 21 gathering will take place as the Taliban attempts to present a more moderate image after regaining control over most of the country as U.S.-led forces evacuate following nearly two decades of war.
A senior Taliban official told AFP on condition of anonymity that Taliban co-founder and political-office head Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar would meet in Kabul with “jihadi leaders and politicians for an inclusive government set-up.”
Reuters, meanwhile, quoted an unidentified Taliban official as saying that Baradar was in Afghanistan to “delegate responsibility to commanders, meet former government leaders, local militia commanders, policymakers, and religious scholars.”
The official told the news agency that the Taliban planned to set up separate teams to deal with internal security and the country’s financial crisis.
The meeting of Taliban leadership is expected to include a top official of the Haqqani network, which has ties to the Taliban and has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States.
The Taliban have promised “positively different” rule compared to its last stint in power in Afghanistan from 1996-2001, when it ruled with a strict, fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law.
With the militant group’s return to power concerns have been expressed about a return to harsh conditions for religious minorities and women, who were excluded from public life.
The Taliban has promised a general amnesty for anyone who worked with the U.S.-backed government, but there have been worrying reports of the militants hunting down journalists as well as former Afghan troops and government officials.
The international rights watchdog Amnesty International has said that Taliban fighters last month “massacred” and brutally tortured several members of Afghanistan’s mainly Shi’ite Hazara minority, in what the watchdog called a “horrifying indicator” of the hard-line Sunni militant group’s rule.
The Taliban official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity on August 21 said that the group plans to present a new model for governing Afghanistan in the next few weeks.
The official said the new framework worked out by legal, religious, and foreign-policy experts would not be a democracy, but would “protect everyone’s rights.”
The Taliban would investigate reports of violence carried out by its members, according to the official.
“We have heard of some cases of atrocities and crimes against civilians,” he told Reuters. “If Talibs [members] are doing these law and order problems, they will be investigated.”
Based on AFP, Reuters, and TASS