Month: June 2024

Islamabad — A senior Taliban leader in Afghanistan, wanted by the United States for terrorism, has concluded a rare visit to the United Arab Emirates, where he met with the host country’s leadership, an Afghan official said Wednesday.

Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani traveled abroad for the first time since the Taliban took over the war-torn South Asian nation nearly three years ago. Reward for Justice, a U.S. Department of State program aimed at combating international terrorism, offers $10 million for information that will lead to Haqqani’s arrest.

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan received Haqqani in Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital, on Tuesday. The state-run WAM news agency reported the meeting and included a picture of them shaking hands.

“The two sides discussed strengthening the bonds of cooperation between the two countries and ways to enhance ties to serve mutual interests and contribute to regional stability,” WAM reported. It added that the discussions “focused on economic and development fields, as well as support for reconstruction and development in Afghanistan.”

There was no immediate U.S. response to Haqqani’s visit and meeting with the UAE president.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief spokesman of the Taliban government in Kabul, also confirmed the meeting. In a statement Wednesday, he said the Taliban’s spy chief, Abdul Haq Wasiq, accompanied Haqqani in the talks.

Mujahid said that their delegation discussed strengthening bilateral ties with Emirati officials and solicited UAE cooperation in developing the Afghan healthcare and infrastructure sectors for the Kabul government’s security organization.

He said both sides agreed to help maintain “the current security and stability in Afghanistan, with a focus on regional stability.” The UAE government promised to participate in Afghanistan’s reconstruction and encourage Emirati companies to invest in the country, Mujahid added.   

Wasiq was held for years in the U.S. military’s Guantanamo Bay detention center before being released with four other Taliban insurgents in 2014 in exchange for American soldier Bowe Bergdahl.

The Haqqani network of militants led by the Afghan interior minister captured Bergdahl after he left his post in 2009.

The network staged high-profile suicide and road bombings as well as guerrilla attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces during their nearly two-decades-long presence in Afghanistan until the then-insurgent Taliban returned to power in August 2021 as foreign militaries exited the country.

The U.S. FBI’s list of most wanted men identifies Haqqani as a specially designated global terrorist who maintains close ties to al-Qaida. It says the militant leader is wanted for questioning in connection with the January 2008 attack on a Kabul hotel that killed six people, including an American citizen.

While in Kabul, Haqqani regularly meets foreign diplomats and speaks in public. Regional diplomats say the interior minister meets visitors in secrecy and keeps changing venues, fearing a U.S. drone strike.

Haqqani appeared on CNN in 2022 with a conciliatory message for Americans. “In the future, we would like to have good relations with the United States,” he told the U.S. media outlet.

A U.S. drone strike in a posh neighborhood in the Afghan capital killed fugitive al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022. U.S. officials said the slain terror leader was residing in a three-story safe house that was linked to Haqqani.

The Taliban protested the strike, saying it was a breach of the 2020 Doha agreement they signed with Washington, which paved the way for the U.S. to withdraw from the longest U.S. war in history.

The Taliban also pledged in line with the terms of the agreement not to harbor al-Qaida and other transnational militant groups seeking to attack America and its allies.

No country has recognized the Taliban government, citing human rights concerns and bans on Afghan women’s access to education and work.

While the U.S. and other Western nations moved their diplomatic missions out of Afghanistan, mostly to Qatar after the Taliban takeover, neighboring and regional countries, including China and Russia, have retained their diplomatic posts in Kabul and allowed Taliban envoys to run Afghan embassies.

U.S. officials have since held several meetings with Taliban representatives in Qatar’s capital, Doha, but they have had no interaction with Haqqani.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and neighboring Pakistan were the only countries that had recognized the previous Taliban government until it was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion for sheltering al-Qaida planners of the September 2001 terror strikes on America.

Haqqani’s visit to the UAE comes as the United Nations prepares to convene another international gathering in Doha of special envoys for Afghanistan later this month.

The Doha meeting on June 30 aims to increase, facilitate, and coordinate the world’s engagement with the country facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world amid deepening economic and financial troubles stemming from the Taliban takeover.

The Taliban were invited to two previous huddles but refused to join the Doha process of consultations. Kabul, however, has said it is conducting internal consultations after receiving a U.N. invitation to decide whether to attend the coming meeting.

De facto Afghan rulers had previously linked their participation to their acceptance as the sole official representatives of the country, meaning that Afghan civil society activists and members of opposition groups would not be present. The U.N. rejected those conditions, and it was not known if the world body would review its stance to ensure the Taliban’s participation.
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Peshawar, Pakistan — As the United Nations and the Taliban prepare to discuss Afghanistan in Doha, Qatar, on June 30, a New York-based global women’s rights advocacy nongovernmental organization has urged the U.N. to demand the Taliban ensure full and equal participation of Afghan women, peacebuilders and human rights defenders in all discussions about Afghanistan’s future. 

During forthcoming meetings, the U.N. Security Council should demand that “the Taliban immediately reverse all policies and practices that restrict the full enjoyment of women’s human rights, in accordance with Afghanistan’s international obligations, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), as well as relevant Security Council resolutions,” the group, the Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, said in a communication posted May 30 on its website. 

Since taking power nearly three years ago, the Taliban have systematically violated women’s human rights in both policy and practice by codifying gender-based discrimination across nearly every aspect of public and private life, including the recent announcement that the Taliban intend to resume public stoning of women as punishment for adultery, the group said in the digital communication “Monthly Action Points for the Security Council June 2024.” 

Afghan rights activists say the upcoming Doha meeting is an opportunity for the United Nations to raise the issue of restrictions on Afghan women with the Taliban. 

Shinkai Karokhail, an Afghan women’s rights activist based in Canada, told VOA that the call for inclusion of Afghan women in conversations about their future is of critical significance.  

“Afghan women inclusion is important given their significant sufferings and exclusion from societal, economic and political life due to political changes in Afghanistan,” said Karokhail, who added the Doha meeting agenda should prioritize the concerns of the Afghan community.  

Azizuddin Maarij, a London-based Afghan rights activist, said women must be part of the upcoming Doha meeting.  

“The meeting should invite women, men and civil activists who have actively worked for Afghan women’s rights,” Maarij told VOA via Skype.  

Adela Behram, an Afghan women’s rights activist and former Afghan presidential adviser, told VOA the international community should put pressure on the Taliban to change their ban on the education of women.  

The Doha meeting scheduled for June 30 will be the third gathering on Afghanistan in Qatar’s capital since U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres initiated the process in May 2023, in a bid to increase interaction with Afghan Taliban “in a structured manner.” 

The Taliban have not officially announced that they will participate in the Doha meeting. A Taliban foreign ministry spokesperson cited Taliban senior official Zakir Jalali in a May 29 post on the social media platform X, that “representatives of the Islamic emirate will take part in the main discussions” in Doha.  

Jalali said the Taliban foreign ministry was waiting for the U.N. to share the latest details about the Doha huddle to enable Kabul to send its delegation there. 

The U.N. has not issued an agenda for the planned meeting in Doha but the global agency’s under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, visited Afghanistan from May 18 to 21, where her discussions, apart from other issues, with Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi were focused on the Doha meetings. 

DiCarlo, in her May 28 address to a U.N. Security Council meeting, cited Afghanistan as a “crying example” where women and girls are systematically denied rights and dignity, particularly in education. 

This story originated in VOA’s Deewa Service. 
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Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is in China this week. Islamabad is hoping to accelerate the multibillion-dollar transportation network known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. But Beijing is deeply concerned about the safety of its workers. VOA Pakistan bureau chief Sarah Zaman reports from Islamabad. Videographer: Wajid Asad; Video Editor: Malik Waqar Ahmed           
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Islamabad — The Taliban’s supreme court announced Tuesday that more than 63 people, including 14 women, were publicly flogged in northern Afghanistan after being convicted of crimes such as homosexuality, adultery, and other “immoral relations.”

This is the first time the fundamentalist Taliban rulers flogged such a large group of Afghans in public since returning to power in Kabul nearly three years ago. 

The announcement stated that Tuesday’s punishments were executed in the central sports stadium of Sar-e Pul, the capital of the Afghan province of the same name. The provincial governor, judges, security officials, area elders, and members of the public were among the onlookers.

The Taliban have publicly flogged hundreds of men and women in sports stadiums across the country since retaking control of Afghanistan in August 2021. At least five Afghans convicted of murder have also been executed publicly by gunfire. 

The United Nations and global human rights groups have decried judicial corporal punishment and executions in public under Taliban rule, saying they are prohibited under international human rights law and demanding they must cease immediately. 

The reclusive Taliban leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has disregarded international criticism and calls to stop the implementation of the Islamic criminal justice system in line with his harsh interpretation of Islam. 

Akhundzada has vowed to enforce the public stoning of women for adultery, though no such punishment has been reported so far. The U.N. decried his announcement as disturbing.

International rights groups have consistently criticized worsening human rights conditions, particularly those of Afghan women, after the Taliban takeover, demanding that they reverse their restrictions on women and civil liberty. 

De facto Afghan authorities have barred girls from attending schools beyond the sixth grade and many women from public and private workplaces, deterring the world from granting diplomatic recognition to the men-only Taliban government.
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