Afghanistan resistance fighters clash with Taliban in Panjshir valley

Both sides claim they inflicted casualties in skirmishes in the last province to resist Taliban takeover

An Afghan resistance movement has clashed with Taliban

 fighters in Panjshir province. 

Photograph: Ahmad Sahel Arman/AFP/Getty Images

Staff and agencies
Fri 3 Sep 2021

Taliban forces and fighters loyal to local leader Ahmad Massoud battled in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley on Thursday, more than two weeks after the Islamist militia seized power, as Taliban leaders in the capital, Kabul, worked to form a government.

Panjshir is the last province resisting rule by the Taliban, who retook control of the country as US and foreign troops withdrew after 20 years of conflict following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Each side made competing claims about territorial gains and inflicting heavy casualties.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said: “We started operations after negotiation with the local armed group failed.” Taliban fighters had entered Panjshir and taken control of some territory, he said. “They [the enemy] suffered heavy losses.”


‘Panjshir stands strong’: Afghanistan’s last holdout against the Taliban

A spokesman for the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA) rebel grouping said it had full control of all passes and entrances and had driven back efforts to take Shotul district.

“The enemy made multiple attempts to enter Shotul from Jabul-Saraj and failed each time,” he said, referring to a town in neighbouring Parwan province.

The Afghan resistance movement takes part in military training in the Dara district of Panjshir province on Thursday. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Panjshir valley, north of Kabul in the Hindu Kush, was a resistance stronghold for decades, first against the Soviets in the 1980s, then against the Taliban in the 1990s. It is still dotted with rusting tanks from the fights of those decades.

The vice-president, Amrullah Saleh, who was born and trained to fight there, vowed it would reprise the role of stronghold, after he declared himself “caretaker” head of state after the Taliban takeover.

Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan, Lt Gen Zahir Aghbar, a former senior security official before becoming an envoy, earlier promised Panjshir would form a base for those who wanted to fight on. “Panjshir stands strong against anyone who wants to enslave people,” he said.

Since the Taliban swept into Kabul on 15 August, several thousand fighters from local militias and remnants of the government’s armed forces have massed in Panjshir under the leadership of Massoud, the son of a former Mujahideen commander.

They have been holding out in the steep valley where attacks from outside are difficult.

Efforts to negotiate a settlement appear to have broken down, with each side blaming the other for the failure.

Mujahid said the announcement of a new government was a few days away, while Taliban official Ahmadullah Muttaqi said a ceremony was being organised at the presidential palace.

The legitimacy of the government in the eyes of international donors and investors will be crucial for the economy as the country battles drought and the ravages of a conflict that killed an estimated 240,000 Afghans.

With Reuters

Taliban says it captured key entrance to Panjshir valley, local resistance denies it – as both claim heavy losses on other side

2 Sep, 2021 

Afghan resistance forces patrol Darband area in Anaba district, Panjshir province, September 1, 2021 © AFP / Ahmad Sahel Arman

The Taliban has claimed its fighters seized a key position at the entrance to the Panjshir valley – the only Afghan province still out of the group’s control. Local resistance has denied the Taliban made any advances.

The Taliban launched a major operation to take the Panjshir valley on Thursday, after the negotiations with the local resistance movement failed, according to spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. He said the Taliban fighters entered the province and captured eleven “important” positions along the main road leading to the eastern province of Badakhshan. Among them was the town of Shattal in the Parwan province, at the southwestern entrance to the valley.

Representatives of the National Resistance Front (NRF) denied the Taliban made any advances into the valley, however, and claimed they were still in full control of all the passes leading into Panjshir. The Taliban’s “multiple” attempts to enter the area were thwarted, the militia claimed.

ALSO ON RT.COM Mujahideen v Taliban: Battle for strategic valley looms as anti-Taliban warlord & remnants of Afghan military refuse to surrender

“They did not succeed in their offensive and they did not advance even a kilometer,” said Fahim Dashti, a NRF spokesman.

Both sides claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on their enemies, but the claims were impossible to verify independently.

The Taliban’s Mujahid said the fighting started after the talks with the Panjshir militia failed. According to some reports, the Taliban was ready to accept any governor the local militias would appoint but demanded that the flag of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” be raised over the valley – something the NRF refused to do.

ALSO ON RT.COM  7 Taliban fighters killed in clashes with Panjshir valley resistance, as challenges remain for new rulers after US exit

According to Amrullah Saleh, who now styles himself the “acting president” of Afghanistan, the flags of the Islamic Republic – the former, US-backed government – are still flying in Panjshir.

Saleh was the deputy to Ashraf Ghani, the NATO-backed president who fled the country on August 14, as the Taliban approached Kabul, triggering the mad scramble of the US-organized airlift.

The standoff between the Taliban and the Panjshir resistance has been shaping up since then. On August 31, Reuters reported that at least eight Taliban fighters were killed as they tried to move on the NRF positions. The Taliban did not comment on the losses at that time, as the group apparently was still seeking a negotiated solution to the conflict with the militias.

Last week it was reported that local militias in the northern Baghlan province had evicted Taliban members from three districts, only for one to be recaptured soon after. The Taliban now claims to have recaptured all three.

Afghanistan's last holdout against Taliban suffers heavy casualties

Following the fall of Kabul on Aug. 15, several thousand fighters from local militias and the remnants of army and special forces units have massed in Panjshir.

By REUTERS
SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 

Taliban fighters march in uniforms on the street in Qalat, Zabul Province, Afghanistan, in this still image taken from social media video uploaded August 19, 2021
(photo credit: REUTERS)
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Taliban forces and fighters loyal to local leader Ahmad Massoud battled in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley on Thursday, more than two weeks after the Islamist militia seized power, as Taliban leaders in the capital, Kabul, worked to form a government.

Panjshir is the last province resisting rule by the Taliban, who retook control of the country as US and foreign troops withdrew after 20 years of conflict following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Each side said it had inflicted heavy casualties.

"We started operations after negotiation with the local armed group failed," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

Taliban fighters had entered Panjshir and taken control of some territory, he said. "They (the enemy) suffered heavy losses."

MEMBERS OF TALIBAN forces sit at a checkpoint in Kabul earlier this month. (credit: REUTERS)

A spokesman for the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA) rebel grouping said it had full control of all passes and entrances and had driven back efforts to take Shotul district.

"The enemy made multiple attempts to enter Shotul from Jabul-Saraj, and failed each time," he said, referring to a town in neighboring Parwan province.

Since the Taliban swept into Kabul on Aug. 15, several thousand fighters from local militias and remnants of the government's armed forces have massed in Panjshir under the leadership of Massoud, son of a former Mujahideen commander.

They have been holding out in the steep valley where attacks from outside are difficult.

Efforts to negotiate a settlement appear to have broken down, with each side blaming the other for the failure.

Mujahid said the announcement of a new government was a few days away, while Taliban official Ahmadullah Muttaqi said a ceremony was being organized at the presidential palace.

HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE

The legitimacy of the government in the eyes of international donors and investors will be crucial for the economy as the country battles drought and the ravages of a conflict that killed an estimated 240,000 Afghans.

Humanitarian organizations have warned of impending catastrophe and the economy - reliant for years on many millions of dollars of foreign aid - is close to collapse.

Many Afghans were struggling to feed their families amid severe drought well before the Taliban militants seized power and millions may now face starvation with the country isolated and the economy unraveling, aid agencies say.

"Since the 15th of August, we have seen the crisis accelerate and magnify with the imminent economic collapse that is coming this country's way," Mary-Ellen McGroarty, World Food Programme country director in Afghanistan, told Reuters from Kabul.

In a positive development, a senior executive of Western Union Co said it was resuming money-transfer services to Afghanistan - a decision he said was in line with a US push to allow humanitarian activity to continue there.

"Much of our business involving Afghanistan is low-value family and support remittances that support basic needs of the people there, so that's the grounding that we have and why we want to reopen our business," said Jean Claude Farah, Western Union's president in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Western Union and MoneyGram International Inc had suspended services in Afghanistan after the Taliban captured Kabul.

RECOGNITION

The Taliban enforced a radical form of sharia, or Islamic law, when it ruled from 1996-2001 but have tried to present a more moderate face to the world this time, promising to protect human rights and refrain from reprisals against old enemies.

The United States, the European Union and others have cast doubt on such assurances, saying formal recognition of the new government - and the economic aid that would flow from that - is contingent on action.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Thursday that Germany was ready to resume a diplomatic presence in Kabul if the Taliban met certain conditions.

"We want to see an inclusive government (in Kabul), the respect for fundamental human and women's rights - and Afghanistan must not again become a breeding ground for international terrorism," Maas told reporters in Slovenia, where he met his EU counterparts to discuss Afghanistan.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told Le Figaro newspaper that Paris had yet to see positive signals the group had changed.

A source with direct knowledge of the move said Afghan diplomats had been asked to stay in overseas posts for the time being. The Taliban wanted to maintain a sense of continuity, the source said.

The Taliban have promised safe passage out of the country for any foreigners or Afghans left behind by the huge airlift that ended when US troops withdrew on Monday. But with Kabul airport still closed, many were seeking to flee over land.

Thousands of Afghans - some with no documentation or pending US visa applications, others in families with mixed immigration statuses - are also waiting in "transit hubs" in third countries following the chaotic scramble to evacuate.

Afghan resistance fighters hold out against Taliban in Panjshir

Issued on: 03/09/2021 - 

An anti-Taliban resistance fighter in a military training exercise in the Malimah area of Dara district in Panjshir province on September 2, 2021. © Ahmad Sahel Arman, AFP

Text by: FRANCE 24
Video by: FRANCE 24

Anti-Taliban resistance fighters loyal to local leader Ahmad Massoud claimed they have full control of the passes into their stronghod Panjshir Valley following clashes against the Taliban on Thursday, more than two weeks after the Islamist militia swept into the captial, Kabul. But the Taliban claimed they inflicted heavy casualties in the battle.

A spokesman for the National Resistance Front (NRF) comprising anti-Taliban militia fighters and former Afghan security forces said the movement had full control of all the passes and entrances into the Panjshir Valley and had driven back Taliban efforts to take Shotul district.

"The enemy made multiple attempts to enter Shotul from Jabul-Saraj, and failed each time," he said, referring to a town in neighbouring Parwan province.

Surrounded by towering snow-capped mountains, the rugged Panjshir Valley, which begins around 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the capital Kabul, is a stronghold of resistance after the Taliban swept into Kabul on August 15 and seized power.

But the Taliban also said it had inflicted heavy casualties on the NRF.

"We started operations after negotiation with the local armed group failed," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Thursday.

Since August 15, several thousand fighters from local militias and remnants of the government's armed forces have massed in Panjshir under the leadership of Massoud, son of the Afghan resistance hero, Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Efforts to negotiate a settlement appear to have broken down, with each side blaming the other for the failure.

Anti-Taliban leader Massoud wants to talk but ready to fight

01:40

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

Taliban claim capture of district in Panjshir, resistance forces deny

By Sadaf Shinwari / in Afghanistan / on Friday, 03 Sep 2021 1



Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan claims to have captured the Shutul district of Panjshir province but resistance forces have denied the claim.

Acting minister of culture and information and spokesperson of the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid said that eleven outposts have also been taken and over 30 resistance forces have been killed.

Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports by the Taliban read that the districts of Paryan and Onaba districts of the province have also been taken.

It has been the fourth day since the heavy conflicts erupted in Panjshir province between the resistance forces of the province and the Taliban.

A spokesperson of resistance forces Fahim Dashti in a voice clip denied the capture of Shutul district and claimed to have driven back the Taliban fighters in the district.

Dashti claimed that tens of dead bodies of the Taliban fighters are left on the ground and the latter asked tribal elders of Parwan province to mediate and let them take their dead bodies.

Pictures leaked from the Panjshir province show that the fighters in Panjshir province are using rocket launchers, missiles, and other weapons from the era of the Soviet Union.

The resistance forces also claim to have killed 350 Taliban fighters and wounded 290 more.

The heavy and deadly fight between the warring sides erupted after peace negotiations between the two sides failed.

Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban resistance is growing. Is it enough to retake the country?


The anti-Taliban resistance movement is growing in Afghanistan, but experts aren't convinced they can retake the country

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© Provided by Global News Afghan resistance movement and anti-Taliban uprising forces take rest as they patrol on a hilltop in Darband area in Anaba district, Panjshir province on September 1,2021. - Panjshir -- famous for its natural defences never penetrated by Soviet forces or the Taliban in earlier conflicts -- remains the last major holdout of anti-Taliban forces led by Ahmad Massoud, son of the famed Mujahideen leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. (Photo by Ahmad SAHEL ARMAN / AFP) (Photo by AHMAD SAHEL ARMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, also known as the Panjshir resistance, has been making waves after seven Taliban fighters were killed attempting to enter the Panjshir valley earlier this week.

The military group, comprised of former Northern Alliance and anti-Taliban fighters, was formed in August after the Taliban overtook Afghanistan in a stunning week-long rout that saw seven people die rushing to the tarmac of Kabul's international airport in a desperate bid to escape.

The NRF is run by Ahmad Massoud, son of a former Mujahideen commander and former Afghanistan vice-president Amrullah Saleh.

Read more: ‘We need your solidarity’: What the Taliban takeover means for Afghanistan’s women and girls

On Wednesday, the Taliban said it had the group surrounded and called on them to negotiate a settlement. According to experts, no resistance movement inside the country stands much of a chance.

"I don't think there will be successful anti-Taliban resistance movement at all," said, Erika Simpson, president of the Canadian Peace Research Association.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced he would begin withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan in April. The U.S. flew its last soldier out on Aug. 30, ending the country's longest war that spanned two decades.

When the U.S. began withdrawing its troops, Simpson said the U.S. withdrew equipment that helped support the Afghan National Defence Forces, which helped prevent the resistance from fighting a high technology war.

But Simpson, who is also an associate professor of international relations with Western University, said this could have actually given the Taliban, which are typically a low-technology group, an edge.

If an anti-Taliban resistance movement is to pick up speed, Simpson debated whether they would have enough arms to topple the Taliban.

"Who would arm them?" she said. "Who would risk it?"

Video: Learn how UNICEF is helping women and children in Afghanistan

She added that any real resistance would likely come from the hundreds of thousands of refugees who will eventually fight to return to their homes and dismantle the organization that displaced them.

Simpson said it would be smarter to "forget" about trying to arm resistance movements in Afghanistan, and focus on the "resistance movement" happening outside.

Adding to that, Aurel Braun, an international relations and political science professor at the University of Toronto, said even if the NRF have some equipment, they would be desperately short of food, medicine and weapons — "and I don't see how that would be provided to them."

Afghanistan is a landlocked country, meaning it is surrounded by land but no oceans, making it difficult to trade. The country also shares borders with Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which Braun said would make airlifting supplies "a very difficult task" for Afghanistan.

Even resistance in the form of ongoing protest in Afghanistan may be futile, Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver.

Read more: Hunger crisis looms in Afghanistan under new Taliban regime

"The Taliban is not known for its toleration and moderation," Hashemi said.

He added Afghan women, who have been at the centre of protests demanding gender equality rights throughout the country, will likely be "repressed very severely, in the way that the Taliban have done in the past."
The Taliban are in power. What's next?

What comes next for Afghanistan appears to be a series of hardships, in-fighting and financial woes.

Politically, the Taliban may have to deal with challengers such as ISIS-K, who claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing last week that killed 182 people including 13 U.S. service members at Kabul's international airport.

ISIS-K is an extremist organization at war with the Taliban, comprised mainly of disgruntled Taliban members, radical extremists from neighbouring countries and leftover remnants of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

It's much more extreme, much more radical," Hashemi said.

"If (the Taliban) wants the type of diplomatic recognition and engagement with the international community that it's been talking about over the last couple of weeks, it will be dependent on them being able to control the territory of Afghanistan, including controlling and preventing ISIS-K from manifesting itself, from attacking other targets, whether they're in Afghanistan or a part of Afghanistan."

Shortly after the Taliban took control of Kabul on Aug. 15, Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani fled the country to the United Arab Emirates. Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan has since accused Ghani of stealing $169 million from state coffers, while the Russian Embassy claimed he'd escaped with four cars and a helicopter full of cash.

But Simpson said his return is unlikely.

"Ashraf Ghani has no legitimacy or credibility to organize a government in waiting outside Afghanistan. No legitimacy or credibility. People will spit on his grave," she said.

Simpson also noted that anyone hoping to see the formation of a coalition government may be waiting a long time.

The National Coalition of Afghanistan party is led by Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan's former foreign minister, while former Afghan president Hamid Karzai is also angling for a political role. Simpson said the pair could try to form a coalition with the Taliban but "they don't have any leverage. They don't have any bargaining power."

In the meantime, the Taliban are pushing for international recognition as the country's official government from the West. Braun said this is to secure aid from the U.S., which the Taliban will need if they hope to stabilize Afghanistan's economy without significantly increasing taxes.

Read more: With Kabul airport closed, Afghans fearful of Taliban reprisals rush for borders

According to the World Bank, Afghanistan is one of the world's top receivers per country of financial aid, rivalled only by Syria, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Yemen. In 2019, the World Bank said Afghanistan received more than $4.2 billion in international aid, while the country's GDP remained just over $19.2 billion.

"Foreign aid was crucial in keeping the Afghan economy alive and so they would like to maintain that," he said.

But for residents who remain in Afghanistan -- particularly women and girls -- Braun predicted "desperation."

Braun pointed to emerging reports of residents taking dangerous routes to leave Afghanistan now that Kabul's airports have closed. There has also been an increase in food insecurity with more people being prohibited from going to work and school, particularly in households where women are the breadwinners.

"Women have been forced to stay at home (from work)," he said. "Once they run out of supplies -- ordinary things, household goods and so on, that's going to be a huge, huge problem."

The Taliban so far has publicly promised "amnesty" for anyone who fought against them and have said they would allow women to return to work.

But Hashemi said he is "deeply skeptical," given the Taliban's prior track record, which saw women barred from working or attending school, forced marriages and banned women from leaving their homes without a male escort.

In addition to this, Hashemi said the country is expected to suffer a massive "brain drain" as educated women, along with interpreters and Western administration staff and their families flee the country in droves.

As a result of U.S. military intervention, Hashemi said a "civil society" was formed. "Millions of Afghan girls and women were able to go to school."

"There was an intellectual class that emerged," he said. "Unfortunately, most of that international class has now fled."

— with files from the Associated Press

PAKISTAN
UN report finds ‘strong and symbiotic’ links between Afghan Taliban, TTP

Tahir Khan Published June 11, 2023 

The link between the Afghan Taliban and proscribed militant outfits Al-Qaeda and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) remains “strong and symbiotic”, a report published by the United Nations (UN) said.

The fourteenth report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the UN Security Council’s 1988 Taliban Sanctions Committee — released on Friday — noted that a “range of terrorist groups has greater freedom of manoeuvre under the Taliban de facto authorities”.

“They are making good use of this, and the threat of terrorism is rising in both Afghanistan and the region,” the report read, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com.

“While they have sought to reduce the profile of these groups and conducted maintaining links to numerous terrorist entities, the Taliban have lobbied member states for counter-terrorism assistance in its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIL-K), which it perceives as its principal rival.”

The report said that the Taliban forces have conducted operations against ISIL-K, in general, but they have not delivered on the counter-terrorism provisions under the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the United States of America and the Taliban.

“There are indications that Al-Qaeda is rebuilding operational capability, that TTP is launching attacks into Pakistan with support from the Taliban, that groups of foreign terrorist fighters are projecting threat across Afghanistan’s borders and that the operations of ISIL-K are becoming more sophisticated and lethal (if not more numerous),” it added.

However, the Afghan Taliban dismissed the report and called it “full of prejudice”.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan considers the continuation of UN Security Council sanctions and such reports as full of prejudice and in conflict with the principles of independence and non-interference, and calls for an end to it,” Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement today.



Mujahid called the accusations “baseless” and a result of “obvious hostility” with the people of Afghanistan as well as repetition of the “baseless propaganda” of the past 20 years.

“We strongly reject the assessment of this report that the Islamic Emirate is helping the opponents of neighbouring and regional countries or using the territory of Afghanistan against other countries, from the content of this report”.

The Taliban spokesman said it seemed that either the UNSC’s authors did not have access to the information or they “deliberately distorted” the facts or the source of their information was the Islamic Emirate’s fugitive opponents.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan insists on its commitments and assures that there is no threat from the territory of Afghanistan to the region, neighbours and countries of the world and it does not allow anyone to use its territory against others,” Mujahid added.
Pakistan’s stance

Pakistani security officials have long been saying that the TTP and other anti-Pakistan armed groups operate from Afghan soil.

The Taliban government hosted peace talks between the TTP and Pakistani security officials to put an end to the violence in Pakistan. However, the talks collapsed last year over tough conditions from both sides.

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif led a high-powered delegation in talks with senior Taliban leaders in Kabul in February with a single-point agenda to take action against the TTP.

There have been no cross-border attacks from the Afghan side for months, however, there has been a spike in the TTP attacks since the group ended a ceasefire in November.

The government has also stopped talks with the TTP and launched intelligence-based operations against the group, mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Explained | Taliban have put Afghan clock back to 1990s’ autocracy: UN report

New Delhi

Edited By: Mukul Sharma

Updated: Jun 11, 2023


An armed Talib guarding a security checkpoint in Kabul | Representative Photograph:(Reuters)

The United Nation Security Council's Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted its 14th annual report about the Taliban’s impact on the security situation in Afghanistan this month, in which it accused the regime of reverting to its "autocratic" policies of the late 1990s.

The connection between the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) remains strong and mutually beneficial for all the parties involved with the Taliban as current rulers of Afghanistan acting as the nucleus of the entire set-up harbouring terror activities, a latest UN report has indicated.

The report highlights that terrorist groups are now able to freely operate under the Taliban's authority in Afghanistan, posing a significant threat of terrorism in the country and the wider region.

The report further describes that the Taliban's relationship with Al-Qaeda and TTP remains robust and symbiotic, enabling other terrorist groups to operate more freely under the Taliban's rule except for the ones that it sees as its rival.

The UNSC’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted its 14th annual report about the Taliban’s impact on the security situation in Afghanistan this month, in which it accused the regime of reverting to its "autocratic" policies of the late 1990s.

Taliban is allowing Afghanistan to be used for attack against other nations

Contrary to the Taliban's promises and subsequent claims of not allowing Afghan soil to be used for attacks against other countries, the report reveals that they have been harboring and actively supporting the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

In another contradiction, while the Taliban maintains ties with various terrorist entities, it has sought counter-terrorism assistance from member states in its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIL-K), which it considers its primary rival.

“The Taliban leadership shows no signs of bending to pressure for reform or compromise, in the hope of earning international political recognition,” the report said, adding that Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada has been “proudly resistant” to external pressure to moderate his policies.
Taliban is not honoring Doha agreement: UN report

The Taliban has failed to fulfill its counter-terrorism obligations as outlined in the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the United States and the Taliban, the UN report said.

What does the Taliban in Afghanistan mean for Pakistan?

Unlike the popular optics of August 201 showing Pakistani establishment mingling with Taliban as an apparent mark of US’ departure from the region, the snakes Islamabad has fed for decades have come to bite Pakistan itself.

The report underscores that the tight bond between the Afghan Taliban and TTP, similar to their relationship with Al-Qaeda, is unlikely to dissipate. This situation puts Pakistan to the test and raises the risk of heightened violence on both sides of the border.
Taliban shows no signs of reform

The report, the first to cover the entirety of the Taliban's period in power, indicates that the Taliban leadership shows no intention of reform or compromise to gain international political recognition. With no significant political opposition, the Taliban's unchecked authority has allowed foreign terrorist fighters sheltered by the group to become an increasingly significant security threat to neighboring countries.

Taliban, Al-Qaeda ties: Afghanistan a safe haven for terror

While the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Aiman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul house connected to Taliban's acting Interior Minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, did lead to a sense of distrust among its members, according to the latest UN report, Afghanistan continues to be a safe haven for Al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda aims to strengthen its position in Afghanistan and has been collaborating with the Taliban, supporting the regime, and safeguarding senior Taliban figures.

Al-Qaeda maintains a low profile, utilising the country as an ideological and logistical hub for mobilisation, recruitment, and covertly rebuilding external operational capabilities. Al-Qaeda finances its activities through core funding and donations, including the use of hawala services and cryptocurrencies.

ISIL-K 'most serious terrorist threat'

ISIL-K has been identified as the most serious current terrorist threat in Afghanistan, neighboring countries, and Central Asia, according to member states.

Also read | Exclusive: 'Why is the world neglecting Afghan women?'

The group has enhanced its operational capabilities and freedom of movement within Afghanistan, aiming to sustain a high pace of mostly low-impact attacks while sporadically executing high-impact actions to incite sectarian conflicts and destabilise the region in the medium to long term.

Over the past year, ISIL-K has claimed responsibility for more than 190 suicide bomb attacks targeting major cities, resulting in the death or injury of approximately 1,300 people.
Taliban rule in Afghanistan so far

Barely a month after coming to power, the Taliban banned girls from secondary education in September 2021.

On December 21, 2022, the Taliban banned women from attending universities.

WION first reported in January 2023 when the Taliban-ruled in Balkh province that male doctors can no longer treat female patients.

The Taliban stormed to power virtually unchallenged after the withdrawal of US-led forces from the country in the first week of August 2021. The regime has not received international recognition especially due to its imposition of anti-women decrees.

Afghan opposition ‘very weak’ despite mounting public anger against Taliban

One year after the fall of Kabul, many of the opposition commanders famous for their stand in Panjshir Valley remain exiled in Tajikistan. Analysts paint a picture of a weakened armed resistance against the Taliban and an Afghan population that increasingly abhors the Islamic fundamentalist group – but is too exhausted to oppose it.

© Ali Khara, Reuters

Tom WHEELDON - 13h ago

When Afghanistan captured the world’s attention shortly after the Taliban’s precipitous takeover on August 15, 2021, the media focused on the Panjshir Valley – where late Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Massoud held off both the Soviets in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s. As the Taliban closed in, the lionised commander’s son, Ahmad Massoud, vowed to fight the Taliban from Panjshir once again.

But by September, Massoud had fled to neighbouring Tajikistan along with other resistance commanders after the Taliban claimed victory in Panjshir. The apparent plan was to use Tajikistan as a staging ground to take on the Taliban. At the time, analysts lamented that it was a “non-viable prospect”.

Since then, the few journalists with access to Panjshir have reported on resistance attacks on Taliban positions. Washington Post journalists who visited Panjshir wrote in June that “residents say assaults on Taliban positions are a regular occurrence and dozens of civilians have been killed, with some civilians imprisoned in sweeping arrests”.
Resistance in the mountains

This situation makes a stark contrast to the state of play in Panjshir under Ahmad Shad Massoud – when the valley was the one holdout against the Taliban during its first reign over Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

“It’s substantially different this time around,” said Omar Sadr, formerly an assistant professor of politics at the American University of Afghanistan, now a senior research scholar at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Panjshir is occupied,” Sadr went on. “At least Ahmad Shah Massoud could maintain a stronghold from which to resist the Taliban. Now the resistance is in the mountains; they don’t control the villages or the highways. That makes the task much more difficult in terms of the supply chains needed for fighting; it impacts upon the quality of the resistance.”

Looking at Afghanistan as a whole, the opposition is “very weak”, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Security, Strategy and Technology. “In fact, it has turned out to be more feeble than many analysts expected.”

The opposition has struggled to mobilise tribal support as well as to mount any significant operations,” Felbab-Brown continued. “There was quite a bit of expectation that this spring they would engage in attacks – but the Taliban has been able to effectively neuter them.”

In this already difficult context, it was a strategic error for Ahmad Massoud and other resistance commanders to base themselves across the border, Sadr suggested. “The high-level leadership is in Tajikistan while the mid-level fighters are in Panjshir. Ahmad Massoud is a political leader, not much of a military leader – and it would have been much better if he and other senior figures could have joined the troops on the ground. It would have increased their legitimacy and boosted morale.”
‘More radical and more repressive’

When the Taliban seized Kabul last year they tried to present themselves as a reformed, more moderate successor to the outfit that brutally ruled Afghanistan two decades ago.

But the Islamic fundamentalists soon revealed that the “Taliban 2.0” they promised was nothing but a propaganda tool. In doing so, they alienated swaths of Afghan society and ensured that vehement anti-Taliban sentiment is by no means confined to the Panjshir Valley, according to Sadr.

“You can see this Taliban 2.0 business is not true – look at the way they’ve put in place political and economic discrimination of non-Pashtuns. They’ve banned girls’ education. They carry out extrajudicial killings,” Sadr said.

“Everybody wanted to finally end the conflict, so the Taliban had the chance to adopt a pathway to a political settlement that could have persuaded communities to accept them,” he continued.

“But the Taliban are fundamentalists – they’ve never believed in peace settlements. They’ve only become more radical and more repressive. So people feel misled.”
‘The Afghan people are very, very tired’

Nevertheless, there is a difference between feeling antipathy towards the Taliban regime and taking up arms against it.

An uprising against the Taliban would renew a chain of wars lasting two generations. Conflict has wracked Afghanistan since the USSR invaded in 1979 to prop up their puppet communist government. At least 1.8 million Afghans were killed before the Soviets pulled out in 1989.

Civil war broke out in Afghanistan upon the USSR’s withdrawal, leading to the downfall of Soviet-backed president Mohammad Najibullah in 1992. Four years of renewed civil war followed as mujahideen factions battled for power. The Taliban’s ascent to power, starting in 1996, sparked five years of resistance from Ahmad Shah Massoud’s Northern Alliance. Following Massoud’s death on September 9, 2001, and the September 11 attacks two days later, Afghanistan subsequently became the locus of the longest war in US history.

“Although they’re suffering under intensifying Taliban repression and the terrible economic situation, the Afghan people are just tired of war,” Felbab-Brown said. “Very, very tired.”

Afghanistan’s northeastern provinces provided the backbone of its army between 2004 and 2021. The Northern Alliance also drew on these regions in its fight against the Taliban in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

But after that recent history of gruelling campaigns against the Taliban, renewed fighting is an unattractive prospect for many people in northeastern Afghanistan, Sadr said. “Look at Baghlan province, Badakhshan province – they contributed the highest number of soldiers to the republic’s army and they suffered the highest casualties. Every day there were corpses going back."

“It’s been more than forty years of war,” he went on. “This could be the third generation constantly giving sacrifices. So there are plenty of people saying, 'Irrespective of the type of government, maybe we should just accept it'.”
Pakistan will ‘never’ topple the Taliban

Throughout four decades of conflict, outside actors have used Afghanistan as a venue to project power by supporting proxies. Most significantly, Afghanistan’s neighbour Pakistan was the Taliban’s longstanding patron – keen to ensure the defeat of the US-backed republic in Kabul, which Islamabad deemed too close to its arch-nemesis India.

Yet the Taliban has long been close to the jihadi group Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP or simply the Pakistani Taliban), which wants to overthrow the Pakistani state.

Sections of the Pakistani security apparatus are aware that backing the Taliban risked blowback. The Taliban and the TTP are “two faces of the same coin”, Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI boss Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed acknowledged at an off-the-record briefing in July 2021.

That admission was vindicated in February 2022 when the TTP claimed an attack from across the Afghan border that left five Pakistani soldiers dead. In this context, Islamabad entered into peace talks with the TTP over recent months – held in Kabul, mediated by the Taliban. So far, little progress appears to have been made.

“Pakistan expected the Taliban to help it strike a political deal with the TTP so that the TTP wouldn’t threaten the Pakistani government, and that plan has already failed,” noted Weeda Mehran, co-director of Exeter University’s Centre for Advanced International Studies. A huge concern for the Pakistani authorities is that the Taliban have been giving Afghan passports to TTP members.

Clearly, some elements of the Taliban are “acting more and more independently of Pakistan”, Mehran continued. In light of these factors, she said, Pakistan is “revising its approach to the Taliban”.

However, Pakistan’s disappointment with the Taliban does not mean support for the opposition. So Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban resistance cannot look to Islamabad for the foreign support it needs for any chance of success, many analysts say.

“Pakistan’s end goal is never going to be to topple the Taliban government,” Sadr said. “At the very most, Pakistan will make it more difficult for the Taliban to rule. Like other countries in the region such as China, Pakistan sees the Taliban as anti-US – and, of course, it doesn’t see the Taliban as an Indian ally like it did the republic. So even if Pakistan turns against the Taliban, it’s not going to support the insurgency.”

 

Afghanistan: Over half the population lives in poverty

The hardline Islamist Taliban marked a year in power on August 15 with small scale celebrations as the country struggles with rising poverty, drought and malnutrition that has left over half its population of about 40 million dependent on humanitarian aid to survive. France 24 journalist Hafiz Miakhel tells us more.

Female protesters say they are chased by Taliban

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A number of women protesters in Kabul. Dec. 2022.

A number of Afghan Women Movement protesters in Kabul said that they are wanted by the Taliban and are being searched for by the group’s security institutions.

They stated that the phones of several leading protesters had been switched off and that there has been no information on the whereabouts of these women.

One protester pointed out that the Taliban respond to any sort of protest with threats, repressive orders, beatings and arrests.

Silsila Mohammad, who recently protested against the Taliban’s decision to ban women from universities, said that she is wanted by the Taliban security agencies and that she cannot go out on the streets of the city.

She stated that the Taliban opened fire on female protesters and beat them up during last week’s demonstration in Kabul and, “their whole bodies were bruised but we managed to escape.”

She added that the protesters carried banners and chanted slogans such as “people with dignity, support, support” and “education, work, freedom.”

Mohammadi said that now she is on the Taliban’s wanted list and she has had to change her location four times because of threats.

Mahjoba Habibi, another protester, said that most female protesters have received threats via phone calls. She added that the phones of the leading protesters have been switched off following the threats.

The Taliban-run ministry of higher education on Tuesday suspended university education for Afghan women, which drew worldwide condemnation.

In response, a number of women, including female students from universities, held protests in Kabul, Herat, and Takhar provinces. The Taliban responded to the protests with brute force, and used water cannons, while several protesters, including activist Ruqiya Saee, are still in the Taliban’s custody.

On Thursday, dozens of Afghan women staged a protest in the capital Kabul. At least five women were arrested by the Taliban, two of whom are still in custody.

Herat’s protest on Saturday morning was met with “violence” and many protesters were “beaten up” by the Taliban.

“We had no guns, we were not armed, but many armed people were surrounding us,” one protester said on condition of anonymity.

She said “many women were beaten, harshly, some by whipping and others by guns,” to disperse the protest.

Another woman, who did not want to give her name, said female protesters were chased, even down alleys in the city.

Meanwhile, dozens of male students in southern Kandahar province boycotted exams in protest against the Taliban’s decision to ban their female classmates from universities.

A university official, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the students refused to sit the exam at five o’clock on Saturday at the university in protest over the Taliban’s decision. He said the Taliban responded by opening fire and beating up several students.

According to the source, the Taliban opened fire after the students had walked out of the exam venue.

“Brother! Our students were not protesting, but they just left the exam venue in response to the suspension of girls’ education and wanted to go back home, but the intelligence [forces] of the Taliban began beating up the students,” he added.

Female students on the streets after Taliban close down private hostels

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Kabul Education University.

Following the Taliban’s ban on women attending universities, the group has now also barred Afghan women from living in private hostels – leaving thousands of female students with nowhere to go.

Zahra is one of many women who have been deprived of their basic right to education; she came to Kabul from Badakhshan province and was living at a private hostel in the capital. The Taliban’s ban on women at hostels forced her to stay at a mosque overnight.

She stated that female students have been under tremendous pressure since the Taliban takeover; “we accepted all the restrictions so that the university remained open to us, so we could pursue our studies. Unfortunately, the Taliban took away our hopes.”

Zahra said that she was scared when the Taliban announced the suspension of women’s education; “the next day, the Taliban came and told all the girls to evacuate the dormitory. Some of the girls went to their relatives’ homes and some others went to rent rooms. Most of us had no money and spent the night in the mosque.”

A female student from the Engineering Faculty of the Polytechnic University, who wished to remain anonymous, told Amu TV: “Our house is in one of the remote villages of Ghazni province, and I was staying in a private hostel in Kabul city. When the public dormitory was closed, my friends and I were forced to stay on the street in this cold weather and we didn’t have money to return to our province.”

Currently, all public and private hostels have been closed to female students. Many students have returned to their provinces while others have stayed in Kabul as they do not have the money to get home.

The Taliban on Tuesday closed one private hostel, Fanous, in the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Kabul, leaving dozens of female students on the streets in the bitterly cold weather.

Students said the Taliban has proven that they have not changed their approach to women’s rights following their takeover in August last year.

After taking control of the country, the group dissolved the ministry of women’s affairs and replaced it with the ministry for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice; they forced Afghan women to wear a burqa and barred them from traveling without a male guardian.

In the months that followed these early restrictions, many more have been imposed – including the latest move, which bans women from working for NGOs.

These Afghan women are risking their lives to protest against the Taliban's university ban

By South Asia Correspondent Avani Dias and Som Patidar

Posted Yesterday 

The Taliban has extended its crackdown on women in public life, banning them from universities.(ABC News)

When the Taliban announced that women could no longer go to university, Basira responded the way she has every time another right gets stripped away from her: she started protesting on the streets of Kabul.

A small group of young women marched with Basira while chanting: "We will beat the oppression, we will prevail."

Most have their faces covered in keeping with Taliban rules, so they can't be identified, while others are just wearing a headscarf — defiant and ready for their voices to be heard.

But it doesn't take long for sirens to start blaring from a Taliban car following the women.

"Our protest plan was for the Taliban to open the university, but the Taliban were against this protest and arrested the girls and tortured most of them with handcuffs and whips," Basira told the ABC.

"I managed to escape with some of the women, but our mental and physical condition is not good.

"Currently, the majority of protesters are in safe places and most have disappeared."

Basira and other women protesting against the Taliban's university ban risk beatings and arrest if they are caught.(Supplied)

Across Kabul, other women took to safe houses and secret schools to stage similar protests, inviting select media to spread their message across the world.

Those who took to the streets were reportedly detained by the Taliban and later released, but one protester's family has told local media that she is still missing.

Protesters risk beatings and arrest, so many are forced to do it in hiding, while others have stopped demonstrating altogether.

Afghanistan's secret schools

In Afghanistan, a whisper network of teachers, parents and community leaders is funnelling girls to secret schools.

When the Taliban returned to power last year, it made a promise in a bid to keep up relations with the international community to allow women to exercise their rights under Sharia law, including attending work and study.

Since then, women and girls have been progressively restricted from public life. They are banned from high schools, parks, gyms, and most jobs outside their homes, and they must cover their faces outside.

Last Tuesday, in the middle of the semester, the Taliban's higher education minister announced that women would also be banned from universities.

The ban came into action so immediately that some medical students were sitting their exams when they were told to leave the campus.

Agencies lobby for Taliban to reverse Afghan female worker ban

The Taliban has said it will evaluate the university curriculum and suspend attendance until "a suitable environment" is provided, while the minister said women were banned because they didn't follow the dress code or have a legitimate companion in their dormitories.

The Taliban has also banned girls from middle school and high school.

(AP: Ebrahim Noroozi)

"I have a question for [the Taliban] saying that schools and university is against Islam and Afghan values — what is your argument or reason for announcing that girls shouldn't get an education?" second-year literature student Azada said.

"Because Islam says education is mandatory for men and women, Islam encourages men and women to do education, so we want to know which Islamic centre the Taliban are getting orders from."

Protesters say the Taliban's interpretation of Sharia law is deliberately skewed to "impose a fake religion on Afghan women".


"The only goal of the Taliban is to wipe out women from this earth. Every day the cage becomes narrower and life becomes more difficult," Basira said.
Women fear more restrictions

The head of the US mission in Afghanistan has called on the country's men to protest with the women.

"Calling on Afghan men to stand up with Afghan women. Now is the time. What are you waiting for?" Charge d'Affaires Karen Decker tweeted this week.

The Taliban claimed female students were not adhering to its interpretation of the Islamic dress code.(ABC News)

Some men have acted in solidarity – dozens of male professors have resigned, while other male students have refused to sit their exams in protest against the ban.

The international community has broadly condemned restrictions on women, having previously cut off aid and refused to formally recognise the Taliban as a legitimate government, but these measures appear to have had little effect on the militant group's decisions.

Can the West help Afghans without helping the Taliban?

A magnitude-6.1 earthquake in remote Afghanistan exacerbates a tricky ethical dilemma for Australia and other like-minded nations.


Afghanistan has been crippled by the loss of foreign aid, with the economy now verging on collapse.

The banking system has been largely unable to operate since the Taliban takeover, with photos circulating earlier this month appearing to show piles of cash amounting to millions of dollars arriving at Kabul airport.

The economic collapse has plunged the nation into one of the world's most urgent humanitarian crises.

People are unable to receive funds from family outside Afghanistan, and it is difficult to access money from ATMs or banks, with long wait times and withdrawal limits.

There are also fears of a looming mental health catastrophe as girls and women are cut off from their communities at school and work.

Women say their worst fears are being realised, and they expect things will only get worse.

Women — already banned from education, parks, gyms and most jobs outside their homes — fear for their future.(ABC News)

"It is difficult for someone who has lost everything to express their feelings, I am sad and shocked," second year Kabul university medical student Sytara said.

"I don't know how many more restrictions they will impose on us, they have already imposed all the possible inhuman restrictions on us.


"I am afraid one day the Taliban might announce that due to a lack of oxygen in Afghanistan, [only] men should breathe, and women should not."

Human rights groups are again urging countries to increase their refugee intake from Afghanistan, arguing the latest university ban for women is evidence the Taliban will not change.

In March, the Australian government announced it would provide 31,500 places for Afghan nationals through the humanitarian and family visa programs.

But officials are still processing applications due to overwhelming demand.

In a joint statement with a series of governments, including Canada, France, and Germany, Australia's Foreign Minister Penny Wong condemned the university ban.

"We stand with all Afghans in their demand to exercise their human rights consistent with Afghanistan's obligations under international law," the statement says.

"With these moves, the Taliban are further isolating themselves from the Afghan population and the international community.

"We urge the Taliban to immediately abandon the new oppressive measures with respect to university education for women and girls and to, without delay".

Gender apartheid in Afghanistan: Lessons from Taliban's women ban - analysis

Story by By SETH J. FRANTZMAN • 

The Taliban banned women from universities last week, and this week, they banned women from working at foreign and local NGOs. This is part of a creeping gender apartheid in Afghanistan, which was accelerated after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.


Afghan female students walk near Kabul University in Kabul, Afghanistan, December 21, 2022.

 (photo credit: REUTERS/ALI KHARA)

The news of the new attacks on women’s rights came in the wake of the end of the World Cup in Qatar. This should come as no surprise, because Qatar played a key role in hosting the Taliban for many years and also hosting negotiations that helped bring them back to power.

When the Taliban returned to power, they appeared to give assurances that their old brand of religious genocidal extremism – which had included not only attacks on women, executions and public beating of women, but also massacres of Shi’ite minority Hazaras and attempts to destroy all evidence of the non-Islamic past of Afghanistan, such as blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas – was a thing of the past. The new “moderate” Taliban posed as a possible ally against ISIS.

The Taliban had been on a jet-set kind of ride prior to returning to power. They had been visiting countries such as Russia, they lived a lavish lifestyle while in “exile,” and they could come and go from Doha and other countries. They had backing from Iran, Pakistan and were welcomed in China and other places.


Afghan women chant slogans in protest against the closure of universities to women by the Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan, December 22, 2022. (credit: REUTERS/STRINGER)© Provided by The Jerusalem PostAfghan women chant slogans in protest against the closure of universities to women by the Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan, December 22, 2022.

 (credit: REUTERS/STRINGER)

Reasons behind Taliban's return to power

It was clear that the engineering of their return came about due to a number of factors. One factor was that the US wanted to save face in Afghanistan and leave. US President Joe Biden had wanted to leave Afghanistan for many years. When he returned to power, he inherited an agreement from the Trump administration. All he had to do was say, “Yes.”

The Taliban were groomed for the return. In the 1990s, they were a group that had clawed their way to power amid civil war. Brutality was the norm, and they were merely one brutal end of the spectrum that had been set in motion years before. They were part of the wave of Islamic groups that had attempted to come to power. They were also backed by al-Qaeda and extremists from abroad.

Afghanistan in the 1990s was an attempt to put into practice all of the awful things they believed in – a new theocracy. This was like the early stages of Communism in the Soviet Union, or the first years of Nazism. It was brutal, but it was also chaotic. They faced opposition in the Northern Alliance.

WHEN THE Taliban returned to power 20 years after having been pushed out by the US in the wake of 9/11, they came back to power as older men. They were no longer young zealots fresh from the refugee camps in Pakistan.

These men had lived a good life in exile. They returned with much more power to a more stable Afghanistan. The US had helped rebuild parts of Afghanistan – when money wasn’t being siphoned off to contractors or moved abroad. So, the Taliban got a kind of new present made partly by the US and also by Qatar, Pakistan, Russia, China, Iran and other countries.

They also had good public-relations people. They gave interviews to CNN, including to women journalists. In fact, they probably purposely choose women journalists as part of their fake messaging of reform.

“A senior Taliban official has repeated the group’s as-yet-unfulfilled pledge to allow girls back into high school, saying there would be ‘good news soon,’ but suggested that women who protested the regime’s restrictions on women rights should stay home,” CNN reported in May 2022. “Sirajuddin Haqqani, Afghanistan’s acting interior minister and the Taliban’s co-deputy leader since 2016, made the comments in an exclusive, first on-camera interview showing his face with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in Kabul.”

They also spoke to Clarissa Ward.

“On the one-year anniversary of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, CNN’s Clarissa Ward sits down with Taliban spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi to discuss the killing of former al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri by a US drone strike and the Taliban’s claims they were unaware of al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul,” CNN reported.

The 'new' Taliban paints itself as moderate

The Taliban pitched themselves as moderates who would be friendly to women’s rights. They would give interviews to women, and they would host women journalists. This was the new Taliban.

Media outlets even reported stories that seemed to present them in a positive light. “A pregnant New Zealand journalist says she turned to the Taliban for help and is now stranded in Afghanistan after her home country has prevented her from returning due to a bottleneck of people in its coronavirus quarantine system,” EuroNews reported in January.

Now, the Taliban have revealed what we always knew: that they aren’t nice, moderate women’s-rights-activists progressives; they are what they always were. They want to ban women entirely from the public eye, as they did in the past.

Theirs is a full gender apartheid, but it happens slowly and with grinding bureaucracy. Apartheid, as it was practiced in South Africa, also took on this form.

LET’S RECALL how The New York Times described it in 1985: “South Africa’s policy of apartheid – separation of the races – consists of two parts. One is petty apartheid and the other grand apartheid. Petty apartheid is the practice of segregation in the routine of daily life – in lavatories, restaurants, railway cars, buses, swimming pools and other public facilities. It is true that there has been some relaxation of this type of segregation in recent years. But ‘separate and unequal’ treatment remains legally accepted and widely practiced. In contrast to petty apartheid, grand apartheid is the wholly unique system of racially biased laws that limit the personal freedom of all South African blacks and prohibit them from any significant political voice in their Government – a Government that controls nearly every facet of their existence.”

Indeed, the Taliban are putting in place both petty and grand apartheid aimed at women. They had always done this.

The Taliban sent all-male delegations to meetings. It was clear what the regime would look like. However, we were quietly walked into their charade of the “new” Taliban by Western media and leadership who wanted to make it possible for them to return and end the war quietly. After all, the West, and particularly the US, wasted billions of dollars.

No one wants to admit that the US spent billions of dollars and sacrificed many lives – all so the Taliban could get a red carpet back to power. In essence, the US hollowed out Afghanistan and produced nothing in two decades. It then gave it back to the Taliban in better shape than it was. This has enabled the Taliban to have even more control today.

Not all the blame rests with the US. It should rest obviously with the Western-backed failed leadership that fled Kabul. It rests with many people, not least of which are countries such as Qatar that hosted the Taliban and prepared the way for their return.

A whole generation in Afghanistan was raised, at least in Kabul, with some promises of human rights and women’s rights. That generation failed. A person born when the US invaded the country in late 2001 became 20 years old and saw the US leave. Whatever promises they had were ripped away like a carpet.

The West demonstrates that it can’t keep its promises and that it pays lip service to “capacity building” and a lot of other words that don’t go anywhere. With the push of a button now, whole swaths of Afghan people can be prevented from having work or education. It’s entirely plausible that universities built with money from democracies in Afghanistan will now play the key role in banning women and enforcing the new regime’s laws.

WHAT CAN we learn from this? First, the Taliban story is like the story of the Iran deal. The West and the US were deceived about “moderates” by a narrative often crafted in the West. We were “sold” the Taliban and “sold” the Iran regime, as one sells a new truck or cologne.

Public-relations people “sell” these regimes, and that is how we were lured into believing the Taliban had changed. They even flew on a jet to Norway this past January and were received as if they were a normal government. They literally landed in Norway with an all-male delegation to talk about “human rights.” This is how they were whitewashed. Today, Norway has strongly condemned the ban on female employees of NGOs. But it’s too late.

The second thing we can learn is that groups such as the Taliban return to power not by chance. They are midwifed back to power. Qatar hosted the Taliban and hosted talks with the US. Doha’s guiding hand was behind support for the Taliban, however, and it had its hand on the scales at the talks. Doha played the same role of hosting other extremists in the past, such as Hamas.

Anyone thinking about the future of the West Bank should pay careful attention to the fall of Kabul and how groups such as the Taliban are brought back to power through the quiet backing of other countries with interests. China, Russia, Iran, Qatar, Turkey – these are the countries to watch when authoritarian extremist groups want to return to power or grow their role in places such as Gaza, Kabul and Idlib.

Lastly, the West should have introspection about self-deception. The West enabled the largesse and failure of the Kabul government prior to its demise. The fact that Ashraf Ghani gave TED talks and was able to influence the West shows that no one truly held the Afghan government to account. Instead, it was allowed to rot from within until it was just an empty house waiting for the return of the Taliban.

The opposition, for instance, is weaker today than in 2001. At least the Northern Alliance had real armed forces and a backing in 2001. The Taliban were gifted a state in whole – ready for them, the new owners. The victims of all this are women and minorities in Afghanistan.

Hazara Shi’ites are being massacred again. Women are being expelled bit by bit from every part of society. Moreover, all this was made possible by self-deception and a well-oiled PR machine that enabled the Taliban to return.