Source: Al Jazeera
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has said the United States government will “sooner or later” have to recognise the Taliban, which now rules Afghanistan.
In a televised interview with the Turkish-state affiliated TRT World, Khan said on Saturday the US is in a state of “shock and confusion” after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on August 15.
Source: France24/AFP
While the economy teeters on the brink of collapse, vendors at an opium market in southern Afghanistan say prices for their goods have skyrocketed since the Taliban takeover.
Plunging his knife into a large plastic bag filled with four kilograms (nine pounds) of what looks like brown mud, Amanullah, who asked to use a fake name, extracts a lump and places it in a small cup suspended over a primus flame.
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate narrowly defeated Republican-backed legislation on Thursday that would have curtailed assistance for thousands of Afghans evacuated last month as U.S. forces withdrew and the militant Islamist Taliban took over Afghanistan.
The measure failed on a 50-50 vote because it needed a simple majority to be included in a spending bill that must pass to keep the government open after midnight.
Source: Al Jazeera
Qatar’s top diplomat says the Taliban’s moves on girls’ education in Afghanistan are “very disappointing” and “a step backwards”, and called on the group’s leadership to look to Doha for how to run an Islamic system.
Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was referring to, among other things, the Taliban’s refusal to allow Afghan female secondary school students to resume their studies, weeks after the group took power.
Source: Guardian
The collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces can be traced to a 2020 agreement between the Taliban and the Trump administration that promised a complete US troop withdrawal, senior Pentagon officials have told Congress.
Gen Frank McKenzie, the head of central command, told the House armed services committee that once the US troop presence was pushed below 2,500 as part of President Joe Biden’s decision in April to complete a total withdrawal by September, the unraveling of the US-backed Afghan government accelerated.
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Source: France24/AFP
The Taliban on Thursday violently cracked down on a small women’s rights demonstration, firing shots into the air and pushing back protesters, AFP journalists witnessed.
A group of six women gathered outside a high school in eastern Kabul demanding the right for girls to return to secondary school, after the hardline Islamist group excluded them from classes earlier this month.
Source: Screen Daily.com
Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat, well known internationally for her Cannes features Wolf & Sheep and The Orphanage, escaped Kabul one month ago with her family to come to Europe.
Speaking at the Zurich Film Festival’s Zurich Summit on Sept 25, she said she hopes to keep her passion for filmmaking going despite the turmoil in her homeland, wanting to show the many “colours” of Afghanistan.
Source: flightglobal.com
Afghanistan’s Taliban-run government is urging airlines to restore services to the Central Asian state, insisting that the main international airport at Kabul is open.
Foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi, through his official social media feed, states that the airport is “fully operational for domestic and international flights”, and problems at the facility “have been resolved”.
Source: France24
An Afghan business leader who employs hundreds of women on her saffron fields has vowed to speak up for the rights of her workers, and “not remain silent” under Taliban rule.
The hardliners have increasingly excluded women from public life since sweeping to power in mid-August, pushing many female entrepreneurs to flee the country or go into hiding.
Source: The Guardian
One of Afghanistan’s most prominent psychiatrists has been abducted on his way home from work by a group of armed men.
Dr Nader Alemi, 66, who opened the country’s first private psychiatric hospital in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, was stopped by seven men in a white car last week, said his family.