[The departures happened just before Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Qatar, which has become a transit point for more than 55,000 people fleeing Afghanistan and resettling in the United States and elsewhere. Top aides to Blinken said the trip is designed to express gratitude for the work U.S. and Qatari officials have done in the evacuation effort but it also comes as the Biden administration faces an array of challenges related to Afghanistan. Shortly after arriving, Blinken joined Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for a dinner with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani.]
By Siobhán O'Grady, Rachel Pannett, Haq
Nawaz Khan and Ezzatullah Mehrdad
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah
Mujahid said in a statement that the Islamist group had “completely conquered”
the Panjshir Valley. “Our last efforts for establishing peace and security in
the country have given results,” he said.
A senior official of the National
Resistance Front of Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to
the sensitivity of the matter, confirmed that the Taliban had taken over. “Yes,
Panjshir has fallen. Taliban took control of government offices. Taliban
fighters entered into the governor’s house,” the person said.
The official added that Amrullah
Saleh, a senior anti-Taliban leader who had served as vice president of the
ousted government, had fled for Tajikistan.
But on Twitter, the NRF said its
forces remained “in all strategic positions across the valley to continue the
fight” and that the “Taliban’s claim of occupying Panjshir is false.” And in a
video recorded on Friday, Saleh said reports at the time that he had fled the
country were “totally baseless,” although he added that the situation was
“difficult.”
Here’s what to know
- A brutal weekend for women in Afghanistan saw a
pregnant policewoman reportedly killed by the Taliban, while the Islamist
group violently suppressed a women’s rights demonstration in Kabul.
- The Taliban said at a Monday news conference
that the announcement of a new Afghan government would come soon and that
its shadowy supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada was slated to appear
publicly in the near future.
- Taliban officials met Sunday with the United
Nations undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, who promised to
maintain assistance, a spokesman for the Islamist group said. On Monday, a
spokesman tweeted that they also met with the head of the International
Committee of the Red Cross.
The Taliban gains followed an
extended period of heavy fighting between resistance guerrillas and
Afghanistan’s new rulers. Resistance fighters set up a base in the Panjshir
Valley days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul last month, determined to
hold a valley that was never conquered by the Taliban in the 1990s nor by the
Soviet Union in its nearly decade-long occupation in the 1980s.
On social media, Taliban officials
shared a photo Monday that purported to show their fighters taking control of
local administrative buildings.
In a voice message posted on his Facebook
page, Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the last pocket of resistance forces in
Panjshir, called for a national uprising against the group. Taliban assaults in
recent days had killed “a record number of people and resistance forces,”
including his own family members, he said. He accused the Taliban of using
foreign fighters and said a country ruled by the group would be “isolated, in
darkness, away from art.”
As he called on Afghans, both home
and abroad, to oppose the Taliban, Massoud decried what he saw as efforts to
repaint the Taliban’s public image. “The Taliban has not changed in any way,”
he said. “It has become even more brutal, radicalized, hateful, and fanatic.”
In a Facebook post, the NRF said
that “the people of Afghanistan should be assured that the resistance will
continue until the freedom and justice is achieved by God’s help.”
Meanwhile, at a news conference in
Kabul, Mujahid said that Afghan troops who had been trained by Western
governments in the past two decades would be asked to rejoin the country’s
security forces alongside Taliban fighters. Some Afghan soldiers are among
those who fled to Panjshir after the Taliban seized Kabul last month.
“The forces that were trained by
the previous government must rejoin,” he said. “In the upcoming system, all the
forces that were previously trained and are professional will be reintegrated
with our forces, because our country needs a strong army.”
Mujahid also said that Haibatullah
Akhundzada, the hard-line cleric who leads the Taliban, “is alive [and] we will
see him soon.” Akhundzada is expected to be named the country’s supreme leader.
Over the weekend, concerns over the
Taliban’s treatment of women were again in the spotlight. A policewoman was
beaten and shot dead by Taliban militants in front of relatives at her home in
central Ghowr province on Saturday, the BBC reported, citing
eyewitnesses. The Taliban denied killing the woman — who, according to reports,
was eight months pregnant — and said it was investigating the incident.
Separately, a Taliban spokesman
told the
Guardian that the group had detained four men who allegedly struck
female protesters during a Saturday demonstration against the Taliban’s extreme
interpretation of Islamic law, which sharply curtails women’s political rights.
As the Taliban swept to power last
month, the group sought to convince skeptics that it wouldn’t return to the
harsh rule it imposed when it last controlled the country, from 1996 to 2001.
The latest developments add to recent reports of reprisal killings across the
country. The array of human rights concerns could make it harder for the
Taliban to convince world leaders to resume the flow of foreign aid that has
largely been frozen since it took over Afghanistan.
Taliban officials met in Kabul on
Sunday with the United Nations undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs,
who promised to maintain assistance for the Afghan people, Taliban spokesman
Suhail Shaheen said.
The head of the International
Committee of the Red Cross also arrived in the country on Sunday to visit aid
operations. In a video message,
Peter Maurer said he would talk to authorities about ensuring that “neutral,
impartial and independent humanitarian action” continues. On Monday, a Taliban
spokesman tweeted that Maurer met with officials in Kabul.
The U.N. has warned of an impending
humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where foreign aid made up much of the
previous Western-backed government’s budget.
On Monday, meanwhile, the State
Department helped four U.S. citizens leave Afghanistan over ground, a senior
State Department official said, marking the first overland evacuation it has
facilitated since the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan last week. The
Taliban was aware of the operation and did not impede their safe passage, said
the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive
mission.
The four Americans were part of the
group that Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) had initially
tried to evacuate from the country, said the official. Ground
evacuations represent a rare option for leaving the country until they can
resume at Kabul’s airport.
The departures happened just before
Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Qatar, which has become a transit
point for more than 55,000 people fleeing Afghanistan and resettling in the
United States and elsewhere. Top aides to Blinken said the trip is designed to
express gratitude for the work U.S. and Qatari officials have done in the
evacuation effort but it also comes as the Biden administration faces an array
of challenges related to Afghanistan. Shortly after arriving, Blinken joined
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for a dinner with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim
Bin Hamad al-Thani.
In Mazar-e Sharif, airplanes with
Americans and interpreters have been waiting on the ground for days amid
conflicting reports that they are being held up either by the Taliban or
awaiting State Department clearance for departure.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) said
on “Fox News Sunday” that the planes were waiting for clearance from the
Taliban in what he described as “a hostage situation.” But Eric Montalvo, a
former Marine Corps officer and attorney heading coordination for three of the
charter planes in Mazar, told The Washington Post it is the U.S. State
Department that must tell the Taliban that the flights are authorized to depart
for Qatar.
A State Department spokeswoman said
the department no longer has personnel on the ground after the U.S.-led
evacuation mission ended last month, and it doesn’t control the airspace
“whether over Afghanistan or elsewhere in the region.”
“Given these constraints, we also
do not have a reliable means to confirm the basic details of charter flights,
including who may be organizing them, the number of U.S. citizens and other
priority groups onboard, the accuracy of the rest of the manifest, and where
they plan to land, among many other issues,” the spokeswoman said.
The United States will, however
“hold the Taliban to its pledge to let people freely depart Afghanistan,” she
added.
Mehrdad reported from Doha, Khan
from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Pannett from Sydney. Susannah George in Kabul,
Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad, John Hudson in Doha and Sammy Westfall in
Washington contributed.
