The Taliban-controlled Bakhtar News Agency reported on Saturday that a passenger bus caught fire on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. According to Bakhtar, the incident took place on the route between Damaan district of Kandahar and Shahr-e Safa district of Zabul province.
No further information has been provided about the casualties and reasons behind this incident.
While the United Nations Human Rights Council deliberates on the situation in Afghanistan, Amnesty International has called on the UN to investigate crimes against women and girls in Taliban’s regressive rules.
The rights watchdog called for an independent strategy and stated that tangible measures are needed to make the Taliban accountable.
The organisation added that this independent investigative special mission can even help the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan with his work.
Amnesty stated that it is required to follow the facts and circumstances of crimes and human rights violations and identify the perpetrators.
While highlighting the blatant human rights abuses such as systematic violations of the rights of Afghan women and girls and the continuation of Taliban crimes in Panjshir, it added that the Taliban has often signalled that it is unwilling to hold impartial investigation into human right abuses by it.
The statement also documented cases of arbitrary arrests, executions, torture and kidnappings by the Taliban, stressing that since the Taliban's dominance, the human rights of at-risk populations, including women, girls and religious and ethnic minorities, have been widely violated.
On the issue of minority, Amnesty stated that it has independently conducted investigation into the Hazara massacre in Afghanistan without any help from the Taliban and hence, the perpetrators are yet to be brought to justice.
Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, said that banning women from work has impacted the delivery of food, medicine, and other needs of Afghan women and girls. Blinken has condemned the Taliban's order to ban the right to education and work of Afghan women.
In his recorded speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Blinken described the Taliban's order to ban girls from entering secondary schools and universities as part of the Taliban-controlled severe repression of women and girls in Afghanistan.
The US Secretary of State referred to the Taliban's order to ban women's work in non-governmental organisations and said that 29 million people depend on humanitarian aid for their survival in Afghanistan.
The Taliban imposed severe restrictions on girls and women after they have taken control of Afghanistan in August 2021. According to these Taliban orders, girls do not have the right to education in schools or universities.
Hekmat Karzai, former Afghan deputy foreign minister, said that former president Ashraf Ghani had conceived wrong priorities when the country had been falling part. Karzai said that while the provinces had been falling, Ghani would hold National Procurement Council’s meeting.
In an interview with the Special Inspector General for Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR), Karzai said that Ashraf Ghani refused to pay attention to big strategic issues that Afghanistan faced.
Criticising the performance of the former president, he said, "In the last four years, 45,000 security forces had been martyred. Imagine these numbers. I mean, these are not just simple numbers, these are huge numbers. How can you relate to that?”
Karzai’s remarks on the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban have been included in a SIGAR report released on February 28.
The report stated that along with corruption and dependence on the US military, ethnocentric appointments by Ashraf Ghani had reduced the morale and capabilities of the former security forces of Afghanistan.
According to SIGAR, while corruption had weakened the Afghan army, there was no political will to combat it.
Michael McCaul, Chairman of US House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee, called the White House’s response to Taliban’s actions against Afghan women, as weak. In a letter to the US Secretary of State he also said that the Taliban have heinously treated Afghan women.
McCaul also urged the US administration to impose wider visa restriction sanctions against Taliban officials.
In his letter, McCaul stressed that under the Taliban’s rule, Afghan women and girls have been forced to hide away inside their homes, have been prevented from working, left out of humanitarian aid deliveries, barred from seeking healthcare without a male escort, banned from receiving an education above the 6th grade, tortured, forced to marry, and blocked from leaving the country.
He also said that women’s rights defenders in Afghanistan are persecuted, jailed, and murdered by the Taliban.
Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, announced that the group’s interior and defense ministers have met Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundaza. The meeting has taken place in Kandahar city and several religious scholars had been present too.
The Taliban leader meets the two powerful ministers while there have been reports of differences among the group’s leadership regarding recent restrictions against Afghan women.
This is the first meeting of senior Taliban officials with the leader of the group after the recent public differences among the Taliban leadership.
The Taliban spokesperson has not given details of the meeting and talking points of the Taliban leaders and the two ministers.
The Taliban spokesperson, however, has said that the scholars present during the meeting expressed their views about the problems in the government to the Taliban leader.
The Taliban leader has told the meeting that they have to obey Sharia and serve the Islamic system.
The Taliban spokesperson has stressed that these religious scholars have promised to carry out the orders of the Taliban leader.
Recently, Taliban defense minister, Mullah Yaqoob and interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, have criticised the Taliban leadership in an unprecedented manner.
In the latest case last week, Mullah Yaqoob told the Taliban members in Kabul that they should not obey anyone's orders blindly.