The Taliban announced that the group’s defense minister, Mullah Yaqoob, has met with the "newly recruited forces from Panjshir province”. Yaqoob, while addressing these forces, said, "The enemies work to create rifts on ethnic and political lines.”
The Taliban defense minister’s meeting with the new recruits took place on Thursday at the group’s Joint Training Command.
Yaqoob emphasised that the group’s government doesn't believe in ethnic discrimination, including the Tajik, Pashtun, and Hazara.
Yaqoob’s stance comes at a time when many Taliban critics and citizens of Afghanistan accuse the group of "ethnic cleansing".
The group has focused on new recruits in their military from Panjshir as the National Resistance Front (NRF) forces have been fighting against the Taliban in various northern provinces.
Hamdullah Mohib, the former Afghan government’s National Security Advisor, and Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), discussed the future of Afghanistan and the resistance against the Taliban.
Sources close to Mohib and Massoud confirmed to Afghanistan International that the discussion had taken place and it was the first conversation between the two sides after the fall of the Afghan government in August 15, 2021.
In February 2022, Mohib had told the BBC that he was not in contact with the resistance forces, including the NRF led by Ahmad Massoud. Mohib had emphasised that he was talking to his friends to learn "lessons" from the issues that happened in the past.
However, recently the former NSA, warned that the Taliban will be overthrown if they continue to suppress the Afghan citizens.
In an interview with Arab News, he had stressed that the question about the future of Afghanistan was ambiguous after the fall of the Taliban as he didn’t know if the country will head into a civil war.
Along with former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Mohib fled Afghanistan on August 15, 2021.
As Ashraf Ghani escaped from Kabul, Ahmad Massoud went to Panjshir province and formed the National Resistance Front against the Taliban.
The National Resistance Front (NRF) is one of the main political-military groups that has fought the Taliban for more than a year in a number of northern provinces, especially in Panjshir and Baghan.
Mawlawi Ahmad Taqi, the Taliban’s higher education ministry spokesperson, confirmed that they have expelled female Hazara students. Ahmad Taqi told Afghanistan International that to maintain discipline, regulations have been implemented for all students without discrimination.
Ahmad Taqi emphasised that these regulations apply to all violators of order and discipline. However, he did not cite the offenses the students had committed and why a large group of students had been expelled.
He also did not reveal how many students have been expelled in the past year since the Taliban has taken control of Afghanistan.
However, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban rejected "discriminatory" factors in the expulsion of the Hazara girls’ students.
In the past, reliable sources informed Afghanistan International that the Taliban have expelled dozens of female students, mostly Hazaras, from the Kabul University and its dormitory. It is not clear how many girls have been dismissed from the University.
These students had been dismissed last week for what the Taliban has called disorder and revelation of the poisoning incident of the dormitory of Kabul University.
Among the expelled students are several Hazara girls who had participated in a demonstration against Hazara killings and the suicide attack at the Kaj educational center in Western Kabul.
After the demonstrations in a couple of universities across Afghanistan, several girls had been poisoned in the dormitory of Kabul University. Sources had said that the Taliban members served poisoned food to the dormitory students to prevent the protest of Kabul University female students.
Taliban officials had denied that the girls had food poisoning and had said that they were sick.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that the group needs more time to transition from an interim cabinet. Mujahid told TOLONews that the formation of an official government will be delayed until more stability comes in and the constitution and parliament has been formed.
Earlier, the Taliban’s Ministry of Justice had said that Afghanistan does not need a constitution. The Taliban spokesperson, however, said, “Formation of the official cabinet needs time, the constitution has not been settled, the parliament has not been formed, Afghans who live outside the country have not returned until now. These are the pillars of the system, whenever they are settled, the interim government will end."
Taliban officials have usually said that they need more time to decide on some issues that they have opposed in the past. Among other things, the reopening of secondary and high schools for girls has been constantly postponed during the first year of the group’s reign in Afghanistan.
During their rule in Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban had banned education for girls across Afghanistan.
Mujahid did not explain more about the formation of the new constitution and parliament. Previously, however, the Taliban officials were less willing to express their opinion on important issues such as holding elections and forming the parliament.
Abdul Karim Haidar, the deputy minister of justice of the Taliban, had said in a press conference that Afghanistan does not need a constitution. He had also denied the grounds for political parties under the Taliban regime.
At the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, said that Afghanistan has been forgotten. Mirziyoyev suggested forming an international negotiations group on Afghanistan.
The sixth conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) which kicked off in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday, will last for two days and is being attended by heads of state of member countries.
Mirzayev added, "In order to achieve a broad consensus on Afghanistan and take practical measures at the global level, we suggest the United Nations to form a high-level international negotiating group to prepare and agree with the Taliban authorities.”
He said that a coordinated and joint approach is needed to engage with the Taliban.
The President of Uzbekistan stressed, "We cannot allow the repeat of the sad experience of the past when Afghanistan had become an international terrorist center."
CICA is an organisation that has 27 countries as members and eight other countries with five organisations as observer members. Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, South Korea, Russia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam are permanent members of CICA.
However, Afghanistan’s representative was not present at the sixth summit of CICA.
CICA observer member countries are Indonesia, Ukraine, the United States, Belarus, Japan, Philippines, Laos, and Malaysia.
The United Nations, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the International Organisation for Migration, the Arab League, and the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic-speaking countries are the observers’ organisations in CICA.
US President Joe Biden said that Afghanistan will never be as a safe haven for terrorist attacks against the US and its allies in the new US National Security Strategy document. Biden stressed that the US would hold Taliban accountable for its commitments on counterterrorism.
The US National Security Strategy document, which was published on Wednesday, stated that since the threats have evolved, the US counterterrorism approaches have transformed too. The document states that this is the reason why the US ended its longest war in Afghanistan, while the country had long ago achieved its objective of delivering justice to the 9/11 victim families by assassinating Osama Bin Laden and other key leadership of the al-Qaeda.
The strategy document stressed that the US is confident in its ability to maintain the fight against al-Qaeda, ISIS, and associated forces from over the horizon, a strategy that the US utilised to eliminate al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawhiri in Kabul.
The new strategy suggested that the terrorist threat today is more ideologically diverse and geographically dispersed than it was two decades ago when Washington started the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.
The US believes that al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other affiliated forces have spread from Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
According to the new US National Security Strategy document, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia are havens for terrorists, and their local affiliates have become entrenched actors in regional conflicts.