Abdullah delivers power sharing plan to Extended Troika
A. Abdullah
Ariana: The chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah handed over the government’s plan on resolving the current crisis to representatives attending the Extended Troika meeting in Doha, Qatar. The sources say the plan calls for the formation of a joint government. Click here to read more about (external link).
Young Afghan general takes fight against Taliban to social media
France24: Provincial cities in the north have fallen like dominoes this week – in some cases after government forces retreated or surrendered without a fight – but in Lashkar Gah, a Taliban heartland, the army appears to be providing stiffer resistance. Leading them is Sami Sadat, 36, the highest-ranking army officer in southern Afghanistan, in an intense fight in defence of a provincial capital the Taliban are desperate to seize. Click here to read more (external link).
Taliban Seize Strategic Afghan City of Ghazni
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
August 12, 2021
ISLAMABAD – Taliban insurgents Thursday captured Afghanistan’s strategically important southeastern city of Ghazni, bringing them a step closer to the national capital, Kabul.
Afghan government security forces have struggled to contain stunning weeklong insurgent advances, allowing the Taliban to seize control of at least 10 out of the embattled country’s 34 provincial capitals and threaten others.
Ghazni, the capital of the province of the same name, sits on the major Kabul-Kandahar highway. It links the national capital to southern provinces, traditional Taliban strongholds.
Governor ‘surrendered’
Nasir Faqiri, head of the Provincial Council, tweeted Thursday morning that Ghazni Governor Mohammad Daud Laghmani allegedly struck a surrender deal with the Taliban before abandoning the province and leaving for Kabul with other senior government officials.
An Afghan interior minister later in the day confirmed to reporters that Laghmani and his associates had been arrested while on their way to the capital and were being investigated.
“With the fall of Ghazni without a fight, the military option is out. Taliban are at the door of Kabul. It is imperative we avoid a confrontation in the capital,” said Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan government adviser and analyst.
Prisoners freed
Residents reported Thursday that there was no letup in heavy clashes in the two embattled provincial capital cities of Kandahar and Lashkar Gah in southern Afghanistan.
The Taliban captured the central prison in Kandahar in the process of overnight fighting and freed inmates from the facility, including insurgent detainees.
Major Mohammad Sadiq Esa, a regional military spokesman, told VOA the prison was under a relentless Taliban attack since Wednesday, but he shared no further details and insisted the facility was being adequately guarded.
A security officer told VOA on condition of anonymity that prison guards surrendered to the insurgents, paving the way for them to free around 3,000 prisoners. A large number of high-profile criminals were said to be among the inmates, including members of the Taliban.
Fighting in Kandahar, the second largest Afghan city, and Lashkar Gah have prompted cellphone companies to suspend their operations, adding to the problems facing residents who are trapped there and unable to leave the conflict zone or get in touch with relatives.
The Taliban also launched a major attack on the embattled western Herat city. Sources said insurgents were advancing toward the center of the usually bustling Afghan city on the border with Iran.
The Taliban have intensified attacks since the start of May, when U.S. and NATO allies began pulling their last remaining troops from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of involvement in the war.
The insurgents have since captured dozens of districts, enabling them to besiege and overrun 10 provincial capitals.
Government in crisis
The military setbacks prompted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday to remove his army chief and replace him with General Hibatullah Alizai, commander of the Special Operations forces. But the crisis facing the Afghan government continues to deepen.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Tuesday that its 15 health facilities across Afghanistan had treated more than 4,000 patients with weapon-related injures since August 1, underscoring the intensity of the fighting.
The United Nations reported last month that Afghan civilian deaths and injuries rose by nearly 50% in the first six months of 2021 and warned that the year could see the highest number of civilian casualties since the war began 20 years ago.
Afghan officials cited a lack of U.S. air power support for not being able to stem Taliban advances.
The U.S. military in recent days conducted airstrikes in support of Afghan forces, but that support will be gone after the foreign troop withdrawal is completed by the end of this month.
Future ‘on their shoulders’
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. was “mindful” of the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan.
“Our focus right now remains on supporting the Afghan forces in the field where and when feasible we can from the air, as well as completing our drawdown in a safe and orderly way. We are on track to do that by the end of the month,” Kirby said.
“We’re not prescribing specific methods of defense for him. It’s his country. He’s commander in chief,” Kirby said bluntly while responding to a question about Ghani. “It’s his political leadership, his political will that can make a big difference here.”
The message was echoed by the White House.
“Afghan leaders have to come together. The future of the country is really on their shoulders,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday.
The Taliban have been demanding Ghani’s resignation in order for peace talks to move after the foreign troop withdrawal. The beleaguered president maintains he is the legitimate leader of Afghanistan and will not step down under Taliban military pressure.
“President Ghani should no longer be oblivious to the pain this situation causes the people of Afghanistan. Step aside for the sake of the people, and open the way to a peaceful transition government to take over for two years with international guarantees,” Farhadi said. The “Taliban should also accept this and avoid more bloodshed. The Afghan nation needs to breathe easy.”
US reaction
Separately, the U.S. embassy in Kabul Thursday denounced the Taliban for what it said were “unlawful arrest of several members” of the Afghan government, including both civilians and security officials.
The embassy statement called for the immediate release of all detainees and cited “credible sources” who indicated the arrests have taken place in several locations.
“These actions are unacceptable and contradict the Taliban’s claim to support a negotiated settlement in the ongoing Doha peace process,” the embassy said. “The actions also contrast the Taliban’s own rhetoric providing for the safety of Afghan leaders and troops in areas recently seized by the Taliban.”
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The Taliban may be executing Afghan troops who surrender, U.S. Embassy says
Taliban (file photo)
CBS News: The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said Wednesday that it was hearing reports of the Taliban executing some surrendering Afghan troops, as the extremist group captured its 10th provincial capital in a week. Click here to read more (external link).
Negotiators Hold Third Day Of Talks In Doha Amid Taliban Offensive
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
August 12, 2021
Envoys from the United States, China, Russia, and Pakistan who have been meeting in Doha, Qatar, with Taliban and Afghan government negotiators will hold their third and final day of talks on August 12 in a bid to break a months-long deadlock in peace talks.
The Afghan delegation, led by Abdullah Abdullah, head of the government’s Reconciliation Council, has demanded the Taliban immediately end attacks on cities and begin a dialogue to find a political solution, Hamid Tahzib, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s deputy foreign minister, said in a statement on August 11.
Abdullah said the day before that the Taliban had not taken peace talks seriously in recent months and that no progress had been made.
State Department spokesman Ned Price also lamented the “painfully slow” pace of the talks, noting that U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and his Russian, Chinese, and Pakistani counterparts and officials from other countries and international organizations began the talks on August 10.
“It is our intention to forge consensus and to have the international community speak with one voice” on the need for a peace deal, he said.
The Taliban committed to intra-Afghan talks on a peace accord that lead to a “permanent and comprehensive cease-fire,” Price added, speaking at a briefing on August 11. “All indications at least suggest the Taliban are instead pursuing a battlefield victory.”
Mohammad Naeem, a spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, told Radio Azadi on the second day of the meeting that the government was not committed to the talks and was not interested in peace and therefore the international community should put pressure on the Kabul administration.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad on August 11 that despite the Taliban’s takeover of large areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan would continue its efforts for peace.
Pakistan’s delegation in Doha is in touch with all parties working for peace and stability in Afghanistan, he said.
“We have clear interests in peace and stability in Afghanistan,” he added. “We have done our best and we will continue to do so.”
Earlier on August 11, a delegation led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the militant group, met with Russian envoy to the talks Zamir Kabulov to discuss the current situation in the country and the negotiations. Kabulov expressed readiness to accelerate the Afghan peace talks, TASS reported.
The three-day meeting in the Qatari capital has been taking place amid a Taliban offensive that has seized a number of Afghan provinces and provincial capitals in the past week.
On August 11 the Taliban captured Kunduz airport when most government forces there surrendered, while others retreated to the Aliabad district of Kunduz, sources told Radio Azadi on condition of anonymity.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted that the group had taken control of the airport, and posted a video purportedly showing government soldiers joining the militants’ ranks. The Taliban also captured a prison in the strategic northern city, Mujahid claimed.
In response to the Taliban’s rapid advance across the country, President Ashraf Ghani fired the army chief of staff on August 11. A Defense Ministry spokesman tweeted that General Hibatullah Alizai had been named to replace General Wali Ahmadzai as the country’s top military commander.
He also and traveled to Mazar-e Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province and a key regional hub, to rally local defenses.
The Taliban has waged its offensive across Afghanistan since May 1, when the United States and its allies officially began a pullout slated for completion this month.
At least nine of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals have reportedly been captured by Taliban militants in the past week.
This story includes reporting by Radio Azadi correspondents on the ground in Afghanistan. Their names are being withheld for their protection.
With reporting by Reuters, AFP, 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.
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Dostum says Taliban ‘trapped’ in north and have nowhere to go
Dostum
Ariana: Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum said Wednesday that the Taliban are now trapped in the north and will not be able to flee that part of the country and that security forces will “crackdown” on the militants. Speaking to journalists in Balkh province, Dostum said: “The Taliban have been trapped in the north several times and this time it is not easy to get out from the north.” Click here to read more (external link).
Reporter’s Notebook: Families Fleeing Afghanistan Struggle to Survive in Turkey
Heather Murdoch
VOA News
August 11, 2021
VAN, TURKEY – Afghan clothes and Iranian SIM cards litter fields under the mountains that stand between Turkey and the Iranian border.
A wisp of smoke rises out of what was a small fire, abandoned many hours before.
As the Taliban swept through villages and cities in Afghanistan over the past few months, families have fled in droves, many traveling across Iran and into Turkey.
In the past, this route was flooded with refugees trying to get to Europe to seek safety and freedom. Now it’s packed with people making a last-ditch effort to stay alive in Turkey, where they find no humanitarian aid and run the risk of being arrested and deported.
We meet 16-year-old Abdul Tawab outside the park where he sleeps in central Van, a city famous among tourists for its massive lake and among refugees for its proximity to the Iranian border.
Tawab arrived in Turkey two weeks ago, hoping to go to Istanbul to find a job. But like so many other men and boys in the park, he is now out of money and stuck here in Van.
Tawab says he is afraid he will be arrested if he draws attention to himself outside, so we walk a zigzag path through the markets until he feels safe at a table upstairs in a café.
In Afghanistan, Tawab supported five siblings and his parents on his carpenter’s salary, which was about $1 a day. He left home after the Taliban had stormed into his village and riddled his uncle with bullets, killing the well-loved father of nine.
“He didn’t care if people were rich or poor,” Tawab says. “He liked everyone, and everyone liked him.”
Taliban fighters on motorcycles later wrapped his uncle’s body in barbed wire and deposited it in a field, Tawab says. Refugees say the militants will execute anyone who is associated with the Afghanistan government or foreign organizations, or anyone identified as Hazara, a Shiite ethnic group and the country’s largest religious minority.
Saranwal Nadir, Tawab’s uncle, was a lawyer in a government court.
“We found him in the field,” Tawab says. “His body was lying in puddles of water and blood.”
Crisis beginning
Turkey already hosts 3.7 million refugees, more than any other country in the world. But frustration among the population is growing, and many believe this crisis is only beginning.
Twitter in Turkey is alight with rumors about incoming people from Afghanistan. Some say the refugees are increasing crime rates or depressing wages. Another commonly heard complaint is that they are mostly young men, as evidenced by videos online.
Young men from Afghanistan say the women and children are mostly in safe houses, hidden from cameras by the same smugglers who kicked the men out onto the streets, sometimes to be rounded up and deported.
When the United States fully pulls out of Afghanistan, the borders may be even more packed with people trying to get into Turkey, a relatively safe country that has a history of taking in refugees, says Mahmut Kaçan, a lawyer and the coordinator for the Asylum and Migration Commission of the Van Bar Association.
But once in Turkey, there is no clear path to establishing legal status and no organizations at all to support families in need of food or shelter. The United Nations’ refugee agency no longer processes asylum claims in Turkey, and claims through government offices can take years.
“They are living in limbo in Turkey,” Kaçan says.
Taliban takeover
Up at least four flights of sloping concrete stairs, in a two-bedroom apartment in Van, two families from Afghanistan, 12 people in all, say they are afraid to go outside. Inside, the apartment is barren, with almost no furniture and only a few plastic bags of clothes and bedding.
The adults go out only when they think they may find work. But after a month in Turkey, none of them have had any luck.
The rent here is less than $70 a month, and the families say they already sold all their belongings to pay smugglers $1,000 per person, roughly the minimum cost to get from Kabul to Van. They borrowed rent money last month and do not know how they will manage in the future.
But as soon as the U.S. announced it would be pulling out, says Saeed Sanaye Sadet, one of the apartment residents, he knew he would never be safe at home again, because he used to work for an American company.
We point out that the Taliban have taken over vast swaths of Afghanistan in recent months, but not all of it, and the capital, Kabul, is still held by the government. But Sadet says the fall of the country feels inevitable.
“It’s already happening,” he scoffs, when we ask why he is so sure.
Women and girls
On the edge of a graveyard in Van, rows of shallow graves cover the bodies of people who died attempting to flee to Turkey.
Many were among the 61 refugees killed in a shipwreck on Lake Van last year. Other graves are identified only by the border-area location where the body was found.
As we drive away from the graveyard, Mohammad Mahdi Sultani, a journalist from Afghanistan who is working with us as a guide and translator, says people have been risking their lives for a long time to escape Afghanistan, which has been at war since the 2001 U.S. invasion.
But the reason people are fleeing is shifting as the Taliban gain ground, he says. His uncle fled his village for Iran because he has two daughters, 19 and 21. When the Taliban came in, they demanded that families place flags outside their houses to indicate whether there were any unwed women or girls inside.
“They say (the Taliban) will marry them,” Sultani says, meaning, by force.
In the crowded apartment up the stairs, Leena Sadet, Saeed Sadet’s wife, says she remembers her mom’s blue burqa from her childhood, when Taliban law forced all women to leave their jobs and go outside only fully covered.
“The same thing will happen if they are in power,” Leena Sadet says. “The women won’t work, and the girls will not go to school.”
Mohammad Mahdi Sultani contributed to this report.
Taliban Seizes Kunduz Airport As Ghani Replaces Army Chief
RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
August 11, 2021
The Taliban has captured the airport of the strategic northern provincial capital of Kunduz, where hundreds of members of the Afghan security forces reportedly surrendered to the militants as President Ashraf Ghani replaced the army chief of staff.
Amid a string of rapid advances by the militants across Afghanistan, Defense Ministry deputy spokesman Fawad Aman tweeted that General Hibatullah Alizai has replaced General Wali Ahmadzai as the Afghan Army chief of staff.
The Kunduz airport fell to the militants on August 11 when most government forces there surrendered, while others retreated to the Aliabad district of Kunduz, sources told RFE/RL under the condition of anonymity.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid tweeted that the group had taken control of the airport and posted a video purportedly showing government soldiers joining the militants’ ranks.
Amruddin Wali, a local lawmaker, told AFP that hundreds of Afghan soldiers and police who had retreated to the airport outside Kunduz after the Taliban captured most of the northern city at the weekend have surrendered to the Taliban “with all their military gear.”
The Taliban has been on the offensive across Afghanistan since May 1, when the United States and its allies officially began withdrawing their forces in a pullout that is expected to be completed by the end of this month.
As militants extended their territorial gains to more than a quarter of the country’s provincial capitals in less than a week, Ghani flew to Mazar-e Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province, “to check the general security in the northern zone,” according to a statement released by the presidential office.
Earlier on August 11, the Taliban reportedly captured Faizabad, the capital of the remote northeastern province of Badakhshan, making it the ninth of Afghanistan’s 34 regional capitals to be overrun since August 6.
On August 10, the militant group seized the northern city of Pol-e Khomri, capital of Baghlan Province, and Farah city, the capital of the southwestern Farah Province, and consolidated their grip on Aybak, the capital of the northern Samangan Province which had fallen the previous day.
That added to the five provincial capitals that the militants had overrun since August 6: Kunduz; Sar-e Pol; Taloqan; Zaranj; Sheberghan.
But the loss of Mazar-e Sharif would be a huge drawback for the government and would mean the total loss of control over northern Afghanistan — long a stronghold of anti-Taliban warlords.
Government forces are also battling the militants in Kandahar and Helmand, the southern Pashto-speaking provinces from where the Taliban draw their strength.
In Kandahar, a spokesman said that government forces repelled an attack on the morning of August 11.
“Some 15 Taliban fighters were killed, and eight others were wounded due to the security forces’ resistance to the Taliban attacks,” Sadiq Issa told RFE/RL.
He did not provide details on casualties among Afghan forces.
The head of Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar, Mohammad Daud Farhad, told RFE/RL that two civilians were killed and 14 were wounded, including women and children, in the past 24 hours.
Ghani arrived in Mazar-e Sharif on August 11 and held talks with two longtime local strongmen — Atta Muhammad Noor and Abdul Rashid Dostum — about the defense of the northern city as Taliban fighters inched closer to its outskirts.
Dostum, who flew into Mazar-e Sharif on August 11 with a group of fighters from Kabul, issued a warning to the Taliban after arriving in the city.
“The Taliban never learn from the past,” he told reporters, vowing to kill the militants.
“The Taliban has come to the north several times but they were always trapped. It is not easy for them to get out.”
Dostum stands accused of massacring hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war during the 2001 U.S. invasion that toppled the hard-line Islamists’ rule over the country.
In Faizabad, a local lawmaker told the media that security forces had retreated after days of heavy clashes.
“The Taliban has captured the city now,” said Zabihullah Attiq.
The militants also confirmed in a social-media post that they were in control of the city.
Taliban gains over the past several weeks have been accompanied by widespread reports of revenge killings and other attacks on civilians.
As fighting raged, U.S. diplomats were scrambling to breathe life back into all but dead talks between the Afghan government and Taliban in Doha, where Washington’s special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad was pushing the Taliban to accept a cease-fire and stop its sweeping offensive.
In Washington, U.S. President Joe Biden on August 10 stood firmly by his deadline to withdraw all American troops by August 31, instead urging Afghan leaders to “fight for themselves.”
“I do not regret my decision” to withdraw U.S. troops after two decades of war, he told reporters.
“They have got to want to fight. They have outnumbered the Taliban,” Biden said.
The European Union said on August 10 that it was considering more support for countries neighboring Afghanistan while a handful of EU member states insisted on continuing forced deportations amid fears of an exodus of hundreds of thousands of Afghans as Taliban fighters advance.
EU states reportedly fear a repeat of the migrant crisis that engulfed Europe in 2015 when well over 1 million migrants, including many from war-torn Syria, arrived in the European Union and sparked lasting political divisions in the bloc.
But Germany’s Interior Ministry on August 11 announced that it was halting deportations to Afghanistan for the time being due to the unstable security situation in the country.
The United Nations said there have so far been no “large-scale displacements” across Afghanistan’s borders, although an EU official was quoted as saying the UN estimated that 500,000 Afghans could be pushed toward neighboring Pakistan, Iran, and Tajikistan if the situation continues to deteriorate.
The Afghanistan representative for UNICEF, the UN’s children’s agency, said on August 9 that it was “shocked by the rapid escalation of grave violations against children in Afghanistan,” adding, “The atrocities grow higher by the day.”
The U.S. Central Command has said the troop withdrawal is more than 95 percent complete and will be finished by August 31, ahead of the September 11 anniversary of two decades since the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States that prompted the invasion of Afghanistan.
This story includes reporting by Radio Azadi correspondents on the ground in Afghanistan. Their names are being withheld for their protection.
With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and Tolo 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.
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Taliban ‘going door-to-door dragging out girls as young as 12 to make them fighters’ sex slaves’ in terrifying rampage
Taliban militants (file photo)
The Sun: The Taliban are “going to door to door” to round up young girls to be “sex slaves” to fighters in the terror group, reports claim. An inside source suggests that Taliban leaders are attempting to kidnap and forcedly marry women after after local leaders in Afghanistan were asked to present a list of those aged 12 to 45 last month. Click here to read more (external link).