Taliban Militant Leadership
Tolo News: The Islamic Emirate hopes the Moscow conference will pave the ground for an improvement of the political and economic relations with other countries and the recognition of the current government. Click here to read more (external link).
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8am: Although the Taliban has announced a general amnesty after seizing power, their armed forces still persecute people in some parts of the country, including Ghor province, a resident of Ghori said. The Taliban has forced these two villages to pay the ransom, he said. So far, the Taliban has collected 1 million and 500 hundred thousand afghanis from the villages, according to the source. “The Taliban enters people’s homes forcibly at night for blood money, and the process of collecting blood money carries on,” according to his information. Click here to read more (external link).
Ariana: The strife-torn nation’s remarkable rise has been cricket’s biggest fairytale story in recent times but Afghanistan risk isolation following the country’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan [IEA] takeover in August. According to the report Cricket Australia (CA) has already threatened to scrap next month’s one-off test in Hobart between the men’s teams if the new government in Kabul did not allow women to play the sport. Click here to read more (external link).
Ashraf Ghani
Ariana: The following is a short list of commitments made by Ghani that were not kept.
1- Ghani promised to create one millions jobs, but instead five million lost their jobs.
2- During a trip to Badghis province, Ghani promised to establish an academic college and a technical school in every district. This never happened.
3- He also pledged to allocate and give land to all teachers. Again this never happened.
4- He made promises to supply all districts in the country with electricity. Less than 9% of the rural population have electricity, while 75% of Afghans live in rural areas.
5-Ghani promised to end the bloodshed in the country countless times. This never happened under his rule.
6-He also vowed to build 6,000 schools. Nothing came of this.
7- Ghani also made numerous promises to make sure that every family had food on their tables – yet most soldiers went without pay for months.
Muttaqi
Tolo News: Acting [Taliban] foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said Sunday that Daesh was not emboldened but there is rhetoric in favor of the group. He made the remarks in an interview with the Turkish news agency Anatolia. “It fortunately doesn’t have the military capacity and it doesn’t have a sanctuary in Afghanistan,” he said. “Of course, there is rhetoric in favor of the group to show the current government of Afghanistan as weak. The pressure is building on the current government from abroad, and the Daesh is taking advantage of this pressure. Click here to read more (external link).
Tolo News: On Sunday, the [Taliban] acting Minister of Public Health said that the under-five mortality rate of children has increased due to microbial disease across the country. Observing the global handwashing day on October 15 in Kabul, the acting minister of MoPH, Qalandar Ebad, expressed concerns over the child mortality rate, declaring that 55 out of the 1000 children are dying before reaching 5 years old due to microbial disease. Click here to read more (external link).
Lisa Schlein
VOA News
October 17, 2021
GENEVA — The United Nations refugee agency says the first of three emergency airlifts of relief supplies for Afghanistan that landed in Termez, Uzbekistan, Friday will be followed by two more flights this week.
With Afghan airports closed to commercial traffic, the U.N. refugee agency has diverted flights to the Uzbekistan border town of Termez, which will act as the epicenter of a massive Afghan relief operation.
UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch said the three planes together are delivering more than 100 metric tons of shelter materials, blankets, plastic sheeting, and other supplies to help Afghans withstand the rigors of winter.
He said the supplies will be trucked from Termez to Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan and distributed to 126,000 people in the country. He said more supplies will be needed, as his agency hopes to aid some half a million Afghans.
“We need Kabul to resume activities as soon as possible. I mean so many things depend on it. And, also, we hope to fly in special flights into Kabul as well with our relief items and bringing in more aid. … So, if supplies are available anywhere, we will be moving them to Afghanistan,” said Baloch.
The United Nations estimates 18 million people, half of Afghanistan’s population, needs humanitarian aid. More than 3.5 million Afghans are internally displaced, including more than half a million newly displaced this year.
Baloch said people are living on a knife’s edge. A few days ago, he said he visited a distribution center 15 to 20 kilometers outside Kabul, where he witnessed the desperation of people lining up for aid.
“When I was standing there, we saw an old mother collapsing in front of our eyes. So, when colleagues attended to her, the reason was she has not eaten for days. And she is the one who is heading the household because of what has happened to her. You have grandfathers, you have children, you have little girls who should be in school, and they are queueing up or they are being in the aid distribution queue,” he said.
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in mid-August, girls have not been allowed to go to school and women have been prohibited from working.
Baloch said it is a race against time to provide aid to millions of Afghans before winter sets in and access to many will be cut off. He warns the blistering cold weather can kill anyone caught out in the cold without any help.
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Patsy Widakuswara
VOA News
October 16, 2021
WHITE HOUSE — U.S. officials and independent analysts reacted skeptically Friday to a Taliban claim that China is ready to invest billions of dollars in Afghanistan.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki indicated the United States is more concerned with helping the Afghan people as the nation’s economy collapses than with countering any future spread of Chinese influence in the country.
“Our focus is on working with the vast majority of the international community on delivering humanitarian assistance and getting it to the right people in Afghanistan to make sure they have what they need,” she said in response to a question from VOA.
In an interview in Kabul earlier this week, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Afghanistan’s new rulers have pledged to ensure the safety of Chinese workers and assets in return for billions of dollars of Chinese investment.
“They are interested in investment in some sectors in Afghanistan and want to negotiate the details,” Mujahid told VOA.
“One of the projects is Mes Aynak (the site of one of Afghanistan’s largest copper mines and ancient Buddhist ruins), which is one of the important areas where they want to invest billions of dollars, and Afghanistan also needs this,” Mujahid said.
‘Wishful thinking’
China has invested in neighboring countries including Pakistan and Iran and has invited Kabul to join the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a flagship project of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative.
But the idea that China is ready to invest in Afghanistan now is “wishful thinking,” said Husain Haqqani, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank focused on U.S. policy. An investment of billions of dollars means an expectation of hundreds of millions of dollars in return annually, and right now the Afghan economy simply does not present that opportunity.
Haqqani notes that the Chinese have so far given the Taliban only $31 million in humanitarian assistance.
“That is certainly not an indication of somebody who’s ready to invest billions,” he said.
Large-scale investment in Afghanistan is also unlikely before the Taliban gain international recognition. No country has recognized the Islamic Emirate — the name proclaimed by the group — as the official government of Afghanistan, including China and Russia, another U.S. rival.
“We are aware that they should be cooperated with, but there is no place for haste,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said to leaders of a group of former Soviet republics at the Commonwealth of Independent States Summit on Friday.
Unstable and dangerous
While the Taliban have pledged to restore peace, Beijing and other potential investors will need to see more political stability and a safer security environment.
“China will be certainly the first country knocking at the door, but there’s no countries knocking at the door right now,” said Erol Yayboke, director of the Project on Fragility and Mobility at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They require a certain level of stability.”
Certainly, the security situation remains unstable, and many fear that other militant groups are getting stronger under Taliban rule.
On Friday, suicide bombers attacked a Shiite mosque in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, killing dozens of people during crowded Friday prayers. Responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, the same group that killed at least 45 people and wounded dozens more in last week’s suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in northern Kunduz province.
Moving on
Beyond providing humanitarian assistance and evacuating Americans and Afghan allies, the Biden administration has signaled it is moving on. Officials have repeatedly said that the military component of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is over.
“The U.S. is no longer in the game in Afghanistan,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center.
He said the U.S. is much more focused on great power rivalries elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, including the South China Sea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. And so far, America’s rivals have not rushed in to fill the vacuum the U.S. left in Afghanistan.
“China and Russia are going to want to be very cautious, at least for the near term, and watch and see what happens in Afghanistan,” Kugelman said.
Beyond security considerations, neither the Chinese Communist Party nor the Kremlin is a natural partner for the Taliban, particularly as the group does not appear willing to become more moderate or inclusive to gain greater international legitimacy.
However, Haqqani warned, the political and security calculus would change should Afghanistan become a haven for international jihadis once again.
“At that point, everybody will recalculate, including the United States,” he predicted.