Afghanistan news and discussions

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Yuli Ban
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Taliban Impose New Restrictions on Women, Media In Afghanistan’s North
Many Afghans who hoped the Taliban would reform their extreme views amid ongoing talks with the Afghan government and the U.S. troop withdrawal have been disappointed by the new severe restrictions imposed on the local population in some of the districts that they have recently captured.

Several residents of Balkh, a district in northern Balkh province that is located 20 kilometers north of the provincial capital, Mazar-e Sharif, confirmed to VOA that the Taliban have distributed leaflets, ordering locals to follow strict rules that are similar to those they imposed on Afghans when they last governed the country from 1996 to 2001.

“They want to impose the restrictions that were imposed on women under their rule,” said Nahida, a 34-year-old resident of Balkh district, adding that the restrictions targeting women include “not leaving our houses without a male companion and wearing hijab.”
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weatheriscool
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Yuli Ban wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 8:26 am China a ‘welcome friend’ for reconstruction in Afghanistan: Taliban spokesman
The Taliban sees China as a “friend” to Afghanistan and is hoping to talk to Beijing about investing in reconstruction work “as soon as possible”, the group’s spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Wednesday.
In an exclusive interview with This Week in Asia, Suhail said the Taliban now controlled 85 per cent of the country and that it would guarantee the safety of Chinese investors and workers if they were to return.
“We welcome them. If they have investments of course we ensure their safety. Their safety is very important for us,” he said by phone.


The
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WAS IT ALL FOR
Once again for nothing. America can't win a war and china would probably kick our asses if we ever got into a war with them.
weatheriscool
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Afghanistan: Taliban flag raised above border crossing with Pakistan
Source: BBC
The Taliban are reported to have raised their flag above a key border post between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and claim it is now under their control.

Videos being shared on social media show the white flag fluttering above the Spin Boldak crossing near Kandahar.

Afghan officials have denied the post has fallen, although pictures on social media show the militants chatting to Pakistani border guards.

The BBC has been told the Taliban took the border crossing with no resistance.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57818221
weatheriscool
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To reach a peace deal, Taliban say Afghan president must go
Source: AP

By KATHY GANNON
ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban say they don’t want to monopolize power, but they insist there won’t be peace in Afghanistan until there is a new negotiated government in Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani is removed.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Taliban spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, who is also a member of the group’s negotiating team, laid out the insurgents’ stance on what should come next in a country on the precipice.

The Taliban have swiftly captured territory in recent weeks, seized strategic border crossings and are threatening a number of provincial capitals, as the last U.S. and NATO soldiers leave Afghanistan. This week, the top U.S. military officer, Gen. Mark Milley, told a Pentagon press conference that the Taliban have “strategic momentum,” and he did not rule out a complete Taliban takeover. But he said it is not inevitable. “I don’t think the end game is yet written,” he said.

Memories of the Taliban’s last time in power some 20 years ago, when they enforced a harsh brand of Islam that denied girls an education and barred women from work, have stoked fears of their return among many. Afghans who can afford it are applying by the thousands for visas to leave Afghanistan, fearing a violent descent into chaos. The U.S.-NATO withdrawal is more than 95% complete and due to be finished by Aug. 31.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/middle-east- ... d2d81a0f39
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caltrek
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Taliban to Try Alleged Killers of Afghan Comic
July 29, 2021

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/2 ... comic-zwan

Introduction:
(Al Jazeera) The Taliban armed group has taken responsibility for the killing of a comic this week in Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar, raising the spectre of revenge killings as the US-led foreign forces are about to complete their pullout from the war-torn country.

A video of two men slapping and abusing Nazar Mohammad, better known as Khasha Zwan, spread widely on social media. He was later killed, shot multiple times. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid acknowledged that the two men were Taliban.

The men have been arrested and will be tried, Mujahid said. He alleged that the comic, from the southern part of Kandahar province, was also a member of the Afghan National Police and had been implicated in the torture and killing of Taliban.

Mujahid said the Taliban should have arrested the comic and brought him before a Taliban court, instead of killing him.

Mohammad was not a TV personality but would post his routines on TikTok. He was known for crude jokes, funny songs, poking fun at himself, and often making fun of topics thrown at him from fans
caltrek's comment: One of the advantages of the U.S. pulling out is that it clarifies the issue of responsibility. It is harder to blame the U.S. for everything that goes wrong when there are no Americans in sight.
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Yuli Ban
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Here is an interesting excerpt from Robert Kaplan's book Soldiers of God. This book is a travelogue depicting his time as a foreign correspondent imbedded with various Pathan/Pashto militant groups during the Aghan - Soviet war. He describes their view on women in Chapter 2 - A World of Men:

Women are oppressed in all muslem societies. But among the rural Pathan, women simply don't exist...Here are three Pathan proverbs:
Women have no noses. They will eat shit

One's own mother and sister are disgusting.

Women belong in the house or in the grave
You rarely see women on the Northwest Frontier or in Afghanistan; you see moving tents with narrow holes for eyes. Photographers who walked through minefields and sneaked into Soviet bases were afraid to take close ups of Pathan women unless they were at least a hundred yards away and had a lens the size of a mortar - and provided not a single mujahid was looking. A close up of a Pathan woman was more prized and difficult to get than a photograph of the undercarriage of an MI-24 helicopter gunship

...

A Pathan won't even tell you the names of his wife and mother. To ask him is an insult. It would be like asking him to undress in front of a crowd.

....

It goes on and on like this. One thing to note. The end of the book describes the ascent of the Taliban, who came from the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan that were being 'educated' by extreme wahabi preachers. These exiles made their way back into Afghanistan and became the Taliban. Point is, the men who he is describing in the earlier passages were considered progressive with respect to the Taliban. So read that passage again, and figure the Taliban are even worse.
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Yuli Ban
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Women in Taliban-held areas are reportedly not allowed to leave home 'without a male escort'
As the Taliban continues to quickly conquer swaths of Afghanistan, reports of "harsh" restrictions on the movement of women in recently captured regions have surfaced, including accounts of forced marriage between unmarried women and fighters, writes The Wall Street Journal.

According to local residents, women in many Taliban-held areas are not allowed to leave the house without male relatives or without wearing burqas, reports the Journal. "Hampering a woman's ability to leave home without a male escort also inevitably leads to a cascade of other violations of the woman," added Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In late June, in the Rustaq district of the northern province of Takhar, a senior Taliban figure notified residents that "all girls over the age of 15 and widows younger than 40 should be married to the insurgent fighters," a local man told the Journal. The same man was "later summoned and ordered to hand over his 15-year-old daughter."

Experts note such a conspicuous demand for women illustrates how the militant group has been influenced by the Islamic State — who "enforced sexual slavery on women on a massive scale" — and has thus grown "even more extreme" since their reign in the 1990s. A Taliban spokesman denied the allegations of forced marriages, per the Journal.
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Yuli Ban
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Taliban ‘has not changed,’ say women facing subjugation in areas of Afghanistan under its extremist rule
The Taliban insurgents continue their deadly war to seize control of Afghanistan after the departure of United States and NATO forces. As they close in on major cities that were once government strongholds, like Badakhshan and Kandahar, many Afghans – and the world – fear a total takeover.

Afghan women may have the most to fear from these Islamic militants.

We are academics who interviewed 15 Afghan women activists, community leaders and politicians over the past year as part of an international effort to ensure that women’s human rights are defended and constitutionally protected in Afghanistan. For the safety of our research participants, we use no names or first names only here.

“Reform of the Taliban is not really possible,” one 40-year-old women’s rights activist from Kabul told us. “Their core ideology is fundamentalist, particularly towards women.”
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Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has fled the country, bound for Tajikistan.
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