Month: September 2021

Afghanistan’s Taliban have rejected as “baseless propaganda” American concerns that al-Qaida, or militants linked to the Middle East-based Islamic State terrorist group, maintains a presence in the South Asian country.

 

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid made the assertions at a news conference in Kabul just days after the Islamic State’s regional affiliate, ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for a string of deadly bomb attacks over the weekend targeting Taliban fighters in eastern Nangarhar province.

 

Mujahid’s remarks also follow recent warnings by U.S. intelligence officials that al-Qaida and Islamic State operatives were making their way back to Afghanistan, emboldened by the Islamist Taliban takeover of the conflict-torn nation five weeks ago. 

 

The Taliban spokesman denounced the bombings in Nangarhar. He said his ruling Islamist group was determined to stem the violence and does not see ISIS-K as a significant threat.

 

“You will witness for yourself that these will be the last attacks they have carried out and they will not be able to conduct them in the future.”

 

Mujahid asserted Tuesday that militants operating in Afghanistan in the name of ISIS-K have no ties to those fighting in Syria and Iraq.

 

“Daesh [Islamic State] has no physical presence here, but it is possible some people who may be our own Afghans have adopted Daesh ideology, which is a phenomenon that is neither popular nor is supported by Afghans,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Middle East-based terror outfit. 

 

ISIS-K also claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack at Kabul airport last month that killed 13 U.S. service members and nearly 170 Afghan civilians who had crowded outside the airport gates. 

 

Al-Qaida in Afghanistan 

 

Central Intelligence Agency Deputy Director David Cohen said last week that the U.S. is “already beginning to see some of the indications of some potential movement of al-Qaida to Afghanistan.”

 

“But it’s early days,” Cohen told a panel discussion at an intelligence summit outside of Washington. He warned that al-Qaida could reconstitute in as little as a year. “We will obviously keep a very close eye on that.” 

 

But Mujahid denied those assertions.

 

“These concerns about foreign militants or anyone linked to al-Qaida being present in Afghanistan are misplaced and they are expressed for the sake of propaganda only. We don’t see anyone in Afghanistan who has anything to do with al-Qaida,” said the Taliban spokesman. 

 

“We have given commitment to the world and to America, as well that we will not allow anyone to use Afghan soil to harm or threaten any country. This is a principled position and we strictly stand by it because it is also in the interest of Afghans,” Mujahid added. 

 

Since ousting the U.S.-backed government in Kabul last month, the Taliban have been under pressure to deliver on counterterrorism pledges and renounce ties with al-Qaida, the terrorist group Washington says organized the September 11, 2001, strikes on America from the then -Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. 

 

The attacks provoked the United States and its Western allies to swiftly invade the country and removed the Taliban from power for refusing to hand over the al-Qaida planners.

 

The Taliban regained power in Kabul after all U.S.-led NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan, and the government and its military collapsed in the face of increased attacks by the insurgent group. 

 

Male Taliban Cabinet

 

Mujahid addressed Tuesday’s news conference mainly to announce an expansion in the Taliban’s two-week-old caretaker government, but failed to name any women to the all-male cabinet of about 60 members.

He insisted the Taliban government represented all Afghan ethnicities, saying women will be added to the cabinet at a later stage but did not say when. The spokesman again urged the United Nations, the U.S., the European Union, and other countries, as well as Afghanistan’s neighbors, to recognize the Kabul government. 

 

Also, several key Taliban Cabinet members are blacklisted by the U.S. and U.N., preventing countries from dealing directly with Kabul. 

 

Washington and other countries maintain they will judge the Taliban by their actions, and that recognition of a Taliban-led government would be linked to the treatment of women and minorities, among other concerns. 

 

The demand stems from fears the Taliban may try to reimpose their hardline Islamist rule the group enforced in Afghanistan when it was in control of most of the country from 1996 to 2001. A brutal justice system, the barring of women from work and public life, and girls from receiving an education, marked Taliban rule during that time.

 
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The Taliban announced a list of deputy ministers on Tuesday, failing to name any women, despite an international outcry when they presented their all-male Cabinet ministers earlier this month. 

The list was presented by government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid at a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul. 

The list of deputy ministers signals that the Taliban have not been swayed by the international criticism and that they are doubling down on their current hardline path despite initial promises of inclusivity and upholding women’s rights. 

The international community has warned that it will judge the Taliban by their actions, and that recognition of a Taliban-led government would be linked to the treatment of women and minorities. In their previous rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the Taliban had barred girls and women from schools, work and public life. 

The Taliban have framed their current Cabinet as an interim government, suggesting that change was still possible, but they have not said if there would ever be elections. 

In response to questions, Mujahid defended the expanded Cabinet lineup, saying it included members of ethnic minorities, such as Hazaras, and that women might be added later. 
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China and Pakistan expect the Taliban to fulfill pledges to crack down on foreign extremist groups in Afghanistan, but experts say these groups have already been “energized” by the Taliban’s takeover, posing new challenges for Pakistani and Chinese interests. 

Last week, during the 20th Shanghai Cooperation Conference summit, President Xi Jinping of China and Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan both called on the international community to engage with the Taliban and called on the Taliban to fulfill their pledges to clamp down on terrorist groups.

The Taliban have said that they will not allow any group to use Afghan soil against any country, without laying out specifics. Some experts say the group’s swift takeover of Kabul has already emboldened extremist groups in the region and regional countries should expect more insecurity, not less. 

“There is no evidence that the Taliban will clamp down on these groups,” said Aqil Shah, professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Oklahoma and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, adding that the problem with the Taliban is that “they say one thing and they do quite the opposite.” 

Shah said the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan leading up to the capture of Kabul was “a morale booster” for the terrorist groups, particularly those based in Afghanistan. 

There are approximately 8,000 to 10,000 “foreign terrorist fighters” in Afghanistan, including people from “Central Asia, the north Caucasus region of the Russian Federation, Pakistan and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China” according to a U.N. report released in June 2021. 

A July 2020 U.N. report stated 6,000 to 6,500 of the foreign fighters in Afghanistan are from Pakistan, and majority of these militants are affiliated with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a U.S.-designated terror group that has mostly carried out attacks against Pakistani security forces. 

Threat to Pakistan 

The TTP, which pledges allegiance to the Taliban in Afghanistan, has increased its attacks in Pakistan in recent weeks. 

The group killed seven Pakistani soldiers in a gunfight in South Waziristan, a district in northwest Pakistan near the Afghanistan border on September 15. 

The TTP also claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province, on September 5 that killed at least three Pakistani soldiers. 

 

Shah added that the TTP is “the main threat” to Pakistan’s security as it intends “to destabilize Pakistan” and eventually “overthrow the government in Pakistan.” 

Pakistani officials said the TTP is planning attacks from Afghanistan, and they expect the Taliban to make good on pledges to prevent the group from using Afghan soil to attack Pakistani security forces. But there is little public information so far to indicate that any kind of Taliban crackdown against the group is imminent.

Abdul Basit, a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore, predicts the TTP will continue its attacks. 

“For TTP, it is the same. If you can defeat the US, certainly you can defeat the Pakistani army,” added Basit. 

Pakistani officials blamed TTP militants for a suicide bomb attack on a bus last month that killed 13 people, including nine Chinese workers who were headed to a dam construction project in the north of the country.

Far from promising a crackdown on the TTP, Pakistani officials have made more conciliatory gestures. On September 15, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Islamabad is ready to pardon those members of the TTP who promise not to get involved in terrorist activities which the group rejected. He indicated he hoped the Taliban helps convince TTP members to submit to the Pakistani constitution and drop their armed insurgency.

Qureshi said he remained concerned over reports that hundreds of TTP fighters were released from Afghan prisons as the Taliban took control of the country. 

Basit said the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan will further increase “radicalism” in the region, and “as a result, the recruitment for the groups would increase.” 

He added the TTP has close relations with other extremist groups, including East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). “TTP provided them refuge. They lived together. They fought together.” 

ETIM, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, is a Uighur separatist group that China calls “the most dangerous and extremist terrorist group” in its Xinjiang region. However although ETIM remains a U.N.-designated terrorist group with several hundred fighters reportedly located in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, the U.S. removed the group from its terror list in 2020, citing “no credible evidence” that it continued to exist.

 

Threat to China 

China now faces multiple threats from the region with America’s complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, Basit said.

“The Americans only fought the jihadists in the region. For China, it’s a double blow, because not only the Jihadists, (but) the ethno-nationalists are also against China.” Basit added, “these (terrorist) groups need a big enemy to justify their violence. For the last 20 years, the enemy was the U.S. forces. Now the next big villain is China.”

The Baloch National Freedom Movement, a terrorist organization that seeks the independence of Balochistan province in southwest Pakistan, has made it clear that China is their target. In August 2020, the Baloch National Freedom Movement announced an alliance with the Sindhu Desh Liberation Army, a terrorist organization based in Pakistan’s Sindh province. Together, the two accused China of expansionism and occupying local resources in the region. 

While terrorist attacks inside China remain unlikely because of the tight security there, said Basit, the Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project in Pakistan is “China’s soft underbelly and (a) good opportunity for these (militant) groups to target and (pressure) China to amend its behavior (toward the) Xinjiang Muslim community. Otherwise, attacks would continue.” 

CPEC is a series of infrastructure projects including highways and ports. Prime Minister Khan describes CPEC as the “flagship project” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to expand China’s political and economic influence to Europe.

China hopes the Taliban will prevent the infiltration of ETIM militants into Xinjiang. That scenario is considered “a major threat” for China, said Huping Ling, history professor at Truman State University and visiting fellow of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. 

China and Afghanistan may only share a 75-km border, which is undeveloped and largely impassable during winter months, but Ling said the country has invested resources in securing the border. 

“For China, it is strategically important to secure the border because that is one of the headaches regarding maintaining the stability,” Ling added. 

She said the Taliban is looking to China to build up infrastructure in Afghanistan to extract an estimated $1 trillion to $3 trillion worth of minerals there. “It will be beneficial to both China and the Taliban’s government.” 

The Taliban has repeatedly stated they want close relations with China, particularly as Afghanistan is on the verge of economic collapse since the international community has frozen donors’ funds and billions of dollars in assets. 

“China is our main partner and represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity for us because it is ready to invest and rebuild our country,” Taliban spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on September 2.

Washington says China’s crackdown against ethnic Uighurs amount to a genocide against the majority Muslim group, but so far those repressive policies appear to have had little impact on the Taliban’s view of Beijing.

“They (Taliban) are so anxious to have political and economic assistance from China that they are forgetting the fact that China is one of the greatest abusers of Islamic population on the globe,” said Marvin Weinbaum, the director of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Program at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

“This suggests that when it comes to the practical politics of governing, ideology takes the back seat,” said Weinbaum. 

Human rights organizations accuse Beijing of committing crimes against humanity by arbitrarily detaining more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims in internment camps and forcing others into forced labor. 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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A new report released Monday warned that the human rights gains made by Afghanistan during the last two decades are at risk of collapsing following the Taliban’s takeover of the country more than a month ago. 

The Islamist movement is wasting no time in “steadily dismantling” the progress, Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) said in the report, which documents the Taliban’s alleged wide-ranging crackdown. 

Contrary to the Taliban’s repeated public pledges that they will respect the rights of all Afghans, the report detailed “a litany” of abuses, noting that restrictions have also been placed on women, freedom of expression and civil society. 

“In just over five weeks since assuming control of Afghanistan, the Taliban have clearly demonstrated that they are not serious about protecting or respecting human rights. We have already seen a wave of violations, from reprisal attacks and restrictions on women, to crackdowns on protests, the media and civil society,” said Dinushika Dissanayake, Amnesty International’s deputy director for South Asia.

The report alleges that attacks on human rights defenders have been reported on “a near-daily basis” since August 15, the day when the Taliban marched into the Afghan capital, Kabul, and established their control over almost all of the country. 

“The Taliban are conducting door-to-door searches for human rights defenders, forcing many into hiding,” the report said.

The findings “are likely to represent just a snapshot” of what is happening in Afghanistan, the report said, citing the prevailing climate of fear, lack of mobile connectivity in many areas and internet blackouts enforced by the Taliban. 

“The international community must uphold its moral and political commitments and not fail the people who have dedicated their lives to the defense of human rights, gender equality, the rule of law and democratic freedoms in their country but protect them at all costs,” said Delphine Reculeau, program director at OMCT. 

Taliban officials have not immediately commented on the allegations.

On Monday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed they had closed the government’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs and replaced it with a ministry aimed at promoting morality and preventing wrongdoing. 

Employees of the World Bank’s $100 million Women’s Economic Empowerment and Rural Development Program were escorted out of the building Saturday as part of the change, according to program staffer Sharif Akhtar, who was among those forced out. 

On Twitter, the state-owned Bakhtar News Agency quoted Mujahid as saying the female staff of the ministry will be accommodated in other government departments.

“Now, efforts are being made to create a modern organization in which women’s Islamic rights are introduced and achieved,” he insisted.

Mujahid denied claims that girls would be banned from secondary schools. He said that while boys have resumed education, arrangements are being made for a special transportation system for female students, among other rules, so they can return to schools in a safe environment. 

The denial came just days after the Taliban’s Ministry of Education directed male students and teachers from the 6th to the 12th grade to resume their classes last Saturday. The directive did not mention female students, fueling concerns that girls would once again be barred from receiving an education.

The Taliban had banned women from leaving home without a male relative and girls from schools when they were in power from 1996 to 2001.

The Taliban also have dissolved the official Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), saying an investigation has also been launched into allegations of corruption against members of the commission. 

The move came a day after the AIHRC urged the Taliban in a statement to respect human rights and the independence of the official watchdog, as well as its staff. 

The Taliban have also told female employees in the Kabul city government to stay home, with work only allowed for those who cannot be replaced by men. 

‘One-sided criticism’ 

 

The United States and other countries have demanded that Taliban control of the country involves inclusive government, respect for human rights, and to desist from bringing back their harsh Islamist rule to avoid being internationally isolated.

Mujahid urged the international community Monday to recognize the new Taliban government and stop “one-sided” criticism of Kabul’s human rights record. 

“As long as we are not recognized, and they make criticisms (over rights violations), we think it is a one-sided approach. It would be good for them to treat us responsibly and recognize our current government as a responsible administration,” he told the private Afghan TOLO news channel.

“Afterward, they can share their concerns lawfully with us, and we will address their concerns,” the Taliban spokesman said. 

 
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