They work quickly.
As soon as Haji Matiullah Matie arrived in the United States, he became the poster boy for Afghan refugees.
In November 2021, as swarms of unvetted Afghan refugees airlifted by Biden with Taliban permission arrived in the United States, military social media accounts made him the face of Operation Allies Welcome and promoted stories about his reunion with an officer he had known.
Two suspected Islamic State recruits, one of them carrying a British passport, were seized by the Taliban when they tried to slip into Afghanistan last autumn through its northern border, the Guardian can reveal.
The men, who were carrying more than £10,000 in cash, military fatigues and night-vision goggles in their bags, were arrested after a tipoff from Uzbekistan, according to a Taliban source with knowledge of the operation.
“There was one passport from England and one from another country in Europe,” said the source. He discussed the men’s capture at the border crossing of Hairatan on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to journalists.
When the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan last year one of its first pledges was to clean up the country’s drug problem – never mind that they spent years profiting off the very same opium people are now addicted to.
Six months on from the take-over and the Taliban is keeping its promise, after a fashion: By rounding up thousands of homeless drug addicts and locking them in hospitals reminiscent of concentration camps for three months while they detox, cold turkey.
A look inside one such ‘hospital’, in Kabul, reveals inmates wasting away in horrifying conditions: Crammed in three-to-a -bed with little or no food, forced to eat grass to stave off hunger pains – amid rumours they have resorted to eating cats and even cannibalism in order to survive.
It’s not huge news that the Biden administration was a colossal failure on Afghanistan, or that Joe Biden still thinks there’s nothing to apologize for.
What’s news now is the colossal incompetence that went on inside that administration as Afghanistan was collapsing, according to a leaked memo that Axios got hold of…
KABUL, Afghanistan—The Taliban, officially termed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, went from an insurgency to a self-declared state in a matter of moments when they entered the abandoned presidential palace five months ago.
The leadership immediately professed to have changed from their brutal rule of the 1990s in a desperate attempt to obtain recognition and foreign aid. However, it is clear that some unsettling elements are unlikely to change.
LGBTQ people in Afghanistan are facing a rise in attacks and an increasingly desperate situation under Taliban rule, according to a report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch and OutRight Action International.
The report, entitled “‘Even If You Go to the Skies, We’ll Find You’: LGBT People in Afghanistan After the Taliban Takeover” interviewed 60 queer Afghans in late 2021. Most were still living in Afghanistan, while a few had escaped to nearby countries.
An Afghan evacuee was convicted of having sexual contact with a toddler while they resided on a U.S. military base that was providing temporary housing for those who departed Afghanistan at the end of the war.
Mohammad Tariq, 24, was convicted on charges of abusive sexual contact with a 3-year-old girl on Monday, and he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. He will be sentenced on April 26.
The Taliban can threaten with a whisper. After 20 years of violent struggle, and the loss of tens of thousands of civilian lives, they took power here using brutal force.
Even so, Afghan women refuse to be intimidated.
Tamana Zaryabi Paryani is one of those women. It takes raw courage to stand up to armed men who want to take away almost everything you have achieved in life.
Taliban burned musical instrument in front of a musician in Afghanistan’s Paktia province, a video posted by an Afghan journalist shows, in which the musician was seen crying after his instrument was set on fire.
A viral video posted by Abdulhaq Omeri, a senior journalist of Afghanistan also shows that a man with a gun was laughing at him, while another was making a video of his “miserable condition.”
Video : Taliban burn musician's musical instrument as local musicians weeps. This incident happened in #ZazaiArub District #Paktia Province #Afghanistan . pic.twitter.com/zzCp0POeKl
— Abdulhaq Omeri (@AbdulhaqOmeri) January 15, 2022
The Taliban’s defense minister, Maulvi Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, recently responded to news that the U.S. plans to station 2,000 troops at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul by presenting what he considered to be a tit-for-tat: according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the austere diplomat tweeted: “If America wants 2,000 English [i.e., American] troops at its embassy in Afghanistan, we also want 2,000 Fidayeen Mujahideen [i.e., suicide bombers] from the Fateh Force at the embassy of Afghanistan in America.” Two-thousand suicide bombers in Washington! It’ll almost be like Congress, but bigger.
A team of Afghan intelligence agents poured about 3,000 litres of liquor into a canal in Kabul, the country’s spy agency has said, as the new Taliban authorities crack down on the sale of alcohol.
Video footage released by the General Directorate of Intelligence showed its agents pouring alcohol stored in barrels into the canal after seizing it during a raid in the capital.
Hours before Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, the Afghan Air Force was melting down. Instead of unleashing air attacks against advancing insurgents, some airmen were fighting each other.
At the Kabul airport, some Afghan Air Force personnel guarding the airfield tried to force their way onto a military helicopter preparing to lift off, according to the Afghan Air Force pilot flying the craft and two other people familiar with the incident. The chopper’s destination was across town, but the guardsmen were convinced it was leaving the country and were determined not to be left behind, the pilot told Reuters. Another guard, trying to stop them, pointed his gun at the cockpit.
The Biden argument has been that we can and should dispatch over a hundred million dollars of humanitarian aid and that we can safely fund and stock aid efforts in Afghanistan because somehow the Taliban won’t get their hands on it.
Taliban authorities in Afghanistan on Sunday gave new guidance to taxi drivers, advising them against taking fares from women who do not follow a strict Islamic dress code by wearing the hijab, or Islamic headscarf.
The Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice also told drivers they should not take women who wish to travel more than 72 kilometers (45 miles) without a male relative as a chaperone.
Afghan drivers were given written recommendations not to play music in their cars and only take women as passengers if they’re wearing a hijab.
The Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which is in charge of implementing Islamic law in the country, confirmed the new restrictions to a local Kabul news outlet on Saturday.
