The Taliban-controlled Central Bank of Afghanistan announced on Monday that the banking system in Afghanistan has normalised. In a statement, the Central Bank has also asked Afghan citizens for more cooperation in the development of banking activities.
After the fall of the previous government in 2021, Afghanistan’s banking system remained in a crisis. The United States froze around nine billion dollars in foreign currency reserves of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, due to the Taliban’s takeover of the country.
However, American and Taliban officials have held many rounds of negotiations in Qatar to release these frozen funds.
Coupled with other developments, in recent months, the Central Bank, under the control of the Taliban, has announced receiving at least a 40-million-dollar aid package every week.
Thomas West, US Special Representative, and Abdullah Abdullah, Afghan political leader, discussed the reopening of girls' schools and intra-Afghan dialogue during a phone conversation. Abdullah said that West assured him of the continued US support to the Afghan people.
During their phone call, Abdullah and West considered the reopening of girls' schools as a necessity and the desire of Afghans and stressed that intra-Afghan dialogue is needed to resolve the problems and ensure national stability in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the US special representative for Afghanistan, in a conversation with former president Hamid Karzai on Thursday, also emphasised that real talks must be initiated among Afghans about the future of Afghanistan.
The United States and some European countries and political figures have repeatedly urged the Taliban to negotiate with other parties inside Afghanistan and form an inclusive government based on the Doha Agreement. However, the Taliban clearly have not responded to such international demands.
Several women, who participated in a demonstration in Kabul, on Monday said that Taliban members tore up their educational documents and detained the journalists who were covering the protest. These protesters had used their documents instead of placards during the protest.
One of the participants of the protest said that a Taliban commander said that they did not have the right to hold protests.
The women stressed that they had gathered in Share Naw area to hold a peaceful and non-violent demonstration.
The protesters said that Afghan women have raised their voices hundreds of times over the past year since the Taliban has taken over Afghanistan, but the international community has been silent about their situation.
In Afghanistan, it has been more than a year since secondary and high schools have been closed to Afghan girls. Taliban have also deprived women of work and political participation.
After the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, they immediately began rolling back the rights of women and girls. Women began to protest on the streets since Taliban’s first week in power, despite the grave risks they faced in doing so. Women and girls have protested the Taliban’s restrictive policies and have demanded the right to education, work, and justice.
These protests have always been met with violence. The Taliban response was brutal from the beginning, beating protesters, disrupting protests, and detaining and torturing journalists covering the demonstrations.
Dozens of women have been arrested and tortured for holding peaceful protests demanding their rights, amid mounting restrictions that have stripped away their freedoms.
Earlier too, women from all communities came together in Kabul and protested, chanting slogans against the Taliban regime, however, the Taliban violently supressed them.
Oleg Syromolotov and Vepa Hajiyev, Deputy Foreign Ministers of Russia and Turkmenistan, discussed cooperation against terrorism and other threats from Afghanistan. Syromolotov had previously said that 20 terrorist groups with about 10,000 fighters are active in Afghanistan.
The two senior foreign policy officials of Russia and Turkmenistan met in Moscow on Friday.
Both countries have close relations with the Taliban and have accepted diplomats of the group. However, they believe that the Taliban does not have the ability to fight against terrorist groups.
In the statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia stated that during the consultations between Syromolotov and Hajiyev, special attention was paid to cooperation in countering terrorism, extremism, and terrorist threats emanating from Afghan soil.
Both officials have emphasised on the continuation of joint efforts to curb terrorists, terrorists' financial resources, and drug trafficking.
The Russian and Turkmen officials have also discussed the role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation to support stability in Central Asia.
Afghan women protesters gathered in front of several schools in different areas of Kabul city and protested against the closures of secondary and high schools for girls. The women protesters held placards with the slogan “education without fear”.
It has been reported that, among others, the Afghan women held these protests in front of Al Fath school in Macroriyan area and Maleka Sorraya school in the Taimani area of Kabul city.
In Afghanistan, with the return of the Taliban, it has been more than a year since secondary and high schools have been closed to Afghan girls. Taliban have also deprived women of work and political participation.
After the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, they immediately began rolling back the rights of women and girls. Women began to protest on the streets since Taliban’s first week in power, despite the grave risks they faced in doing so. Women and girls have protested the Taliban’s restrictive policies and have demanded the right to education, work, and justice.
These protests have always been met with violence. The Taliban response was brutal from the beginning, beating protesters, disrupting protests, and detaining and torturing journalists covering the demonstrations.
Dozens of women have been arrested and tortured for holding peaceful protests demanding their rights, amid mounting restrictions that have stripped away their freedoms.
Earlier too, women from all communities came together in Kabul and protested, chanting slogans against the Taliban regime, however, the Taliban violently supressed them. Then, female university students in provinces of Herat and Bamiyan followed suit and held protests, where they were similarly beaten up and dispersed. Next, women in Balkh province took to the street to protest the regime.
The United States Institute for Peace in a new report has stated that Taliban is escalating restrictions against women, sending armed men into girls’ classrooms and forcing staff to inspect girls’ bodies for signs of puberty to disqualify them from further schooling.
The report stated that Taliban are intensifying these assaults in response to women’s rights campaigns in Afghanistan and Iran, and amid their own struggle to consolidate power. The report added that the Taliban’s intensifying violations against women risk mass atrocities and may presage greater violent extremism and threats to international security.
It stated that governments that engage with the Taliban or shelter Afghan refugees should appoint special envoys for Afghan human and women’s rights to press the case for reform in diplomatic engagements with the Taliban.
The report referred to U.N. Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett’s report of his 12-day visit to Afghanistan and said that he deserves more resources and a more robust mandate to investigate the myriad abuses of women’s rights that are being reported and, if warranted, refer crimes to the International Criminal Court.
In the report, it has been stated that the Taliban previously forced their restrictions on women through their official “morality police.” But now, Taliban leaders’ more strident directives to control women have emboldened, or compelled, countless other men into abusive roles as “enforcers.” Taliban have forced shopkeepers, teachers and other ordinary citizens into enforcement roles.
“Increasingly, Afghan women said, abuses are committed by gunmen dressed in ordinary street clothes, whom women could not identify. These armed squads entered women’s classrooms in universities and private schools across Kabul, demanding to inspect female students’ clothing,” the report said.
It also highlighted that in public elementary schools, the Taliban have been appointing women, trained in the regime’s approved madrassas, as teachers and principals. The Taliban order them to enforce the regime’s requirements for women and girls to wear all-concealing clothing.
The report also mentioned that on October 11, Taliban’s rule enforcers expelled about 60 female students, most from the ethnic Hazara minority, from dormitories of Kabul University. Female students who earned high school diplomas before the Taliban takeover, and who this month sat for university entrance examinations, report that Taliban officials prohibited them from registering for studies in fields including engineering, economics, veterinary science and journalism.
Soon after re-taking power last year, the Taliban scrapped the 20-year-old Women’s Affairs Ministry and re-established the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which the 1990s Taliban regime used to repress women’s rights and their roles in public life.