Kabul: Amid renewed efforts by the government in Kabul to seek international recognition, the Taliban have said they are open to receiving Indian diplomats and providing security to them. As winter fast approaches, threatening to further worsen the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, Taliban spokesperson and ambassador-designate to UN Suhail Shaheen also said that Taliban will welcome aid at this critical juncture.
“We are open to receiving all diplomats and committed to providing security for their routine diplomatic functions,” said Shaheen, responding to a query on whether or not Indian diplomats can return to Afghanistan. India has supported aid for Afghanistan but prefers it being routed through the UN. “Similarly, we welcome humanitarian aid in this critical time as the winter is around the corner,” he added, when asked about India’s aid offer to Afghanistan on the margins of the recent ‘Moscow Format’ talks.
Taliban foot soldiers unleash terror
Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership has been silent on the reign of terror unleashed by their foot soldiers on the people across the country even as recent videos of extrajudicial killings in public prove that the uncontrolled Talibs from a rural and tribal Pashtun background are targeting people on mere suspicion or for no reason at all. In one such video, a terror suspect was killed with a rocket launcher. In the latest instance of unchecked brutality, Saeed, a local Afghan who wanted to flee the country, was killed in broad daylight in the presence of local people. Last week, another barbaric video was shared on social media in which Taliban fighters had publicly killed a person with a rocket launcher on suspicion that he was an Islamic State-Khurasan (IS-K) member.
Taliban chief makes public appearance
Kabul: Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, made a rare public appearance in the southern city of Kandahar, Taliban sources said, belying widespread rumours of his death. Akhundzada, known as the leader of the faithful or Amir ul Momineen, had not been seen in public even after the Taliban’s August takeover of the country, giving rise to the speculation.
A senior Taliban leader who was present with Akhundzada during the appearance said the supreme leader had visited Jamia Darul Aloom Hakimia, a religious school in Kandahar on Saturday. He visited the madrassa to “speak to his brave soldiers and disciples”, according to the introduction to an audio recording circulated by Taliban social media accounts.
Some girls allowed to return to schools
In Mazar-e-Sharif, a commercial hub in Afghanistan’s north, the Taliban have allowed middle- and high school-aged girls back into the classrooms, even as in the rest of the country most have been forced to stay home. Under pressure from foreign governments and international aid groups, Taliban officials insist that things will be different for girls and women from the last time the militants were in power, and that some form of education for them will be permitted, including graduate and postgraduate programmes. Some middle and high schools have already been allowed to reopen their doors to girls in the north, where women have long played a more prominent role in society than in the Taliban’s southern heartland.
