South East Asia

Americans have been shocked by videos of thousands of Afghans risking their lives to flee the Taliban’s return to power in their country – and then by an Islamic State suicide bombing and ensuing massacre by U.S. forces that together killed at least 170 people, including 13 U.S. troops.

Even as UN agencies warn of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury has frozen nearly all of the Afghan Central Bank’s $9.4 billion in foreign currency reserves, depriving the new government of funds that it will desperately need in the coming months to feed its people and provide basic services.

In the wake of intense fighting and the rapid transfer of power to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (also known as the Taliban), people are facing widespread instability, mass displacement, and the disruption of basic services, including health care. Despite the challenges, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams continue to provide essential medical care across all five of our projects in Afghanistan—in Herat, Helmand, Kandahar, Khost, and Kunduz provinces. Here, two medical staff members working in Lashkar Gah (Helmand province) and Khost city describe the recent changes they have witnessed, and how they have affected patients and health care providers alike.

Afghanistan does not have the necessary means to ensure the security of Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport and requires the support of a foreign country in this regard, Afghanistan’s former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said Tuesday, underlining that Turkey is the best and most reliable candidate for the mission, considering the deep relations between the two countries.

In an exclusive interview in Kabul, the veteran Afghan leader said that he and his party, the Hezb-e-Islami party, discussed the security and management of the Kabul airport with the Taliban.

The calamitous scenes at Kabul’s airport, where thousands of people are scrambling to escape the Taliban before an August 31 deadline, prove the US is not concerned with the fate of ordinary Afghans, Islamist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar told The National.

With days before the US ends its 20-year presence in Afghanistan and with tens of thousands of Afghans soon to be left stranded, Mr Hekmatyer said the facts speak for themselves.

Taliban forces and fighters loyal to local leader Ahmad Massoud fought in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley on Thursday, with each side saying it had inflicted heavy casualties in the last province resisting Taliban rule.

After the fall of Kabul on August 15, several thousand fighters from local militias and the remnants of army and special forces units have massed in Panjshir.

The leader of Afghanistan’s only region not to have fallen to the Taliban has said he would be willing to join a Taliban government, but only if the group proved itself to be inclusive and respect the rights of all Afghans.

Ahmad Massoud, 32, leads forces in the Panjshir Valley and said that war was on the cards if the group attempted an attack on his region.

In his first interview since the fall of Kabul last week, he told The National he had seen little evidence the group had changed over the past two decades.

Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s rise to power there, religious scholar Dr. Attia ‘Adlan, a former Egyptian MP and current member of the International Union Of Muslims Scholars (IUMS), which is supported by Qatar and Turkey, published an article on the IUMS website in which he defended the Taliban against its detractors. Forcefully rejecting the fears expressed by many in the Muslim world regarding the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan, ‘Adlan claimed its members are “admirable people,” graduates of excellent shari’a schools who adhere to the tradition and avoid sin, and who are renowned for their jihad and steadfastness.

Recent attacks on Kabul’s international airport by the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate raise multiple questions as well as the spectre of paradigm shifts in the drivers and expanding geography of political violence.

The attacks have called into question the Taliban’s ability to maintain security and keep a lid on the activities of multiple militant groups in Afghanistan. Long at war with the Islamic State (IS), the Taliban have promised to ensure that neither IS nor groups with which it maintains good relations will be allowed to use the Central Asian state for cross border attacks in the region.

The Afghan Taliban 2.0 Regime which zoomed into power in Kabul on August 15 2021 by American default of what I have earlier termed as a geopolitical suicide is perceptionaly a “China-Pakistan-Russia Franchise” facilitated into power in Kabul by this Trilateral and that Afghan Taliban captured power not on the strengths of astounding military victories over US Military Forces or supported by an upsurge of popular Afghan masses support.

After 20 years, the Taliban regained control of Kabul on August 15 and became Afghanistan’s top authority with the fleeing of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Following the capture of Kabul, the Taliban appear to be ostensibly adhering to international norms and seeking good relations with their neighbors. Afghanistan’s neighbors, such as China, India, Iran, Russia, and the Gulf states, are pursuing ties with the Taliban in their own self-interest. But of all Afghanistan’s neighbors, Qatar is the main winner following recent developments.