Afghanistan after 3 years of Taliban rule: Women silenced and oppressed as ISIS and al Qaeda regroup
The final U.S. troops left Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021. Three years later, the Taliban’s return to energy has allowed al Qaeda and different terrorist teams to regain a presence within the nation, and disadvantaged Afghan girls and women of fundamental freedoms they have been granted throughout twenty years of Western-backed authorities following the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
In a present of pressure to mark their third 12 months in energy, the Taliban held a parade at Bagram Airfield earlier this month. The sprawling base was the first hub for U.S. troops in Afghanistan as they hunted Taliban and al Qaeda militants within the 20 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults on the U.S.
The Taliban used the parade to point out off U.S. and NATO army tools deserted by the international forces once they left in a chaotic withdrawal.
AHMAD SAHEL ARMAN/AFP/Getty
Taliban fighters additionally gathered in a diplomatic district of Kabul, outdoors the now-abandoned U.S. embassy compound, chanting “death to America” as they trampled a U.S. flag that had trailed from the again of a Ford truck beforehand utilized by the U.S.-backed police pressure.
“Intolerable restrictions on the rights of Afghan women”
Afghan girls and women have suffered enormously below the Taliban’s authoritarian rule. The brand new authorities has issued dozens of draconian edicts, systematically excluding girls and women from public life, depriving them of training and employment and subjecting them to detention and even bodily assault for daring to advocate for his or her basic rights.
Beneath the Taliban, Afghanistan has turn into the one nation on the earth the place women and girls are prohibited from pursuing secondary and larger training.
Final week, the Taliban introduced but extra restrictions below the guise of a brand new “vice and virtue” legislation. One of the legislation’s 35 articles declares that ladies’s faces and voices are sources of temptation that should not be heard or seen in public.
“When a mature woman needs to leave her home, she must cover her face, body, and make sure that her voice is not heard,” in response to the legislation.
The measures additionally bar Afghan girls from partaking with “infidel women,” and males from associating with “infidel foreigners,” utilizing a time period that usually refers to non-Muslims. Males will also be imprisoned for listening to music, shaving or trimming their beards or carrying neckties.
“It is a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions,” mentioned Roza Otunbayeva, the Particular Consultant of the United Nations Secretary-Common who additionally heads the U.N.’s mission in Afghanistan, in an announcement on Sunday.
She mentioned the brand new legislation (*3*)
Based on UNESCO, greater than 1.4 million women are being intentionally disadvantaged of education in Afghanistan, placing the longer term of a complete era in jeopardy.
The Taliban has additionally reinstated public flogging of individuals accused of varied crimes, with authorities lashing tons of of individuals over the previous three years.
“The Taliban have created the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis since taking power,” mentioned the New York-based group Human Rights Watch. “Under the Taliban’s abusive rule, Afghan women and girls are living their worst nightmares.”
The return of al Qaeda and the risk of ISIS-Okay
A 12 months after the U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, a U.S. drone strike killed al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul’s diplomatic district, however since then, the terrorist group liable for the 9/11 assaults has reemerged and established new coaching amenities within the nation.
A U.N. Safety Council report revealed in July mentioned al Qaeda had regrouped in Afghanistan and warned that it was aiming to conduct assaults past the nation’s borders.
“Al Qaeda remains strategically patient, cooperating with other terrorist groups in Afghanistan and prioritizing its ongoing relationship with the Taliban,” the U.N. report mentioned, including that it was working “covertly in order to project the image of Taliban adherence to the provisions of the Doha agreement,” which the Taliban negotiated with the U.S. below former President Donald Trump.
That deal noticed the Taliban promise to not let any terrorist group discover secure working house in Afghanistan, however the U.N. report additionally famous the current arrival of new al Qaeda members within the nation, together with a Libyan who it mentioned was working on the Taliban’s Ministry of Inside. The person has “no clear job description and has been issued an Afghan passport,” the report mentioned.
The regional ISIS affiliate, identified as ISIS Khorasan, ISIS-Okay or ISKP, additionally poses a rising risk, with members having efficiently infiltrated Afghanistan’s Taliban-run safety ministries, in response to the U.N.
Regardless of dropping territory for the reason that Taliban takeover, which has restricted ISIS-Okay operations within the nation, the group stays a major risk to the area and past, the report mentioned.
Lethal assaults over the past 12 months in Moscow and Iran, and foiled plots in Europe, all present the group’s capability to plan violence regardless of the Taliban’s safety forces actively looking its members.
“The Taliban have the will to fight against ISKP. They are really committed to do that, but they are lacking in operational capability to conduct really effective counterterrorism against the ISKP,” Arian Sahrifi, a lecturer on the Princeton College of Public and Worldwide Affairs, mentioned throughout a current webinar.
Hafiz Zia Ahmad, a deputy spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban-run Ministry of International Affairs, declared Afghanistan “a safe and stable country” in a social media submit final week, claiming that Taliban forces had “successfully neutralized” ISIS-Okay in Afghanistan.
Dozens of Afghans caught and nonetheless ready for refuge
Dozens of individuals who have been evacuated to 3rd nations as the Taliban got here again to energy are nonetheless ready to be relocated to the U.S. or Canada, together with former authorities officers and Afghan forces. One of them is a person who piloted one of the helicopters utilized by then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to flee to Tajikistan.
Others embody members of the previous Afghan president’s safety providers, former members of the Afghan Particular Forces who labored instantly with U.S. and NATO troops within the combat in opposition to the Taliban, and different high-ranking officers.
“We are in a modern prison,” Qazizada, a former Afghan authorities prosecutor who’s been caught in a humanitarian camp in Abu Dhabi since October 2021, instructed CBS Information.
Qazizada, who declined to present his full first identify for this text to guard members of the family nonetheless in Afghanistan, mentioned greater than 60 individuals, together with 48 girls and kids, have been stranded on the camp with him — all dealing with an unsure future three years after their escape.
He mentioned members of the family of Ghani’s helicopter pilot and private safety element have been nonetheless hiding in Afghanistan.
“Every time their kids ask when you come home, we can’t hold back our tears,” Qazizada mentioned. “The mental situation of women and children in the camp and in Afghanistan is very dire. Some are even contemplating suicide to end their suffering, but we try to give them hope.”
“Almost all of us are taking [anti]depression pills,” he mentioned.
A big quantity of former Afghan safety forces sought refuge in neighboring Pakistan and Iran when the Taliban took again over, however many have been later repatriated by these nations to Afghanistan.
Within the first six months of 2024, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said it had documented a minimum of 9 circumstances of extrajudicial killings of former members of the safety forces and almost 100 situations of arbitrary arrests.
Relation with U.S. adversaries
Whereas no nation has formally acknowledged the Taliban regime as the brand new authorities of Afghanistan since its takeover in 2021, two U.S. adversaries, Russia and China, have granted the regime assist on the worldwide stage.
In a current interview with an area TV community, the Taliban authorities’s deputy prime minister mentioned the group had two allies within the U.N. Safety Council with veto energy. He did not identify them, however of the 5 everlasting Council members which have veto energy, he might solely have been referring to Russia and China. Counting them as allies offers the regime a diplomatic benefit it did not have throughout its earlier interval in energy, doubtlessly shielding it from any Safety Council resolutions in search of motion in opposition to the Taliban over its insurance policies.
Bilal Guler/Anadolu/Getty
China, which shares a border with Afghanistan, is the one nation to have despatched an envoy to Afghanistan, and chief Xi Jinping has accepted the accreditation of a Taliban ambassador to Beijing. The 2 nations have signed a number of mining contracts for the reason that Taliban’s return to energy.
Russia, in the meantime, mentioned in Could that it will quickly take away the Taliban from its record of state sponsors of terrorism, which might result in normalization of relations between the 2 nations. The Taliban welcomed the announcement and despatched a delegation to go to Moscow.
Afghanistan: The New Actuality
Extra
Extra
Ahmad Mukhtar