Iranian Businessmen Interested in Afghanistan’s Mining Sector, Says Taliban

According to reports, the Pakistani delegation will meet with Amir Khan Muttaqi, the foreign minister of the Taliban, and Mullah Hasan Akhund, the group’s prime minister.

Pakistani authorities have not officially commented on Khar’s visit to Kabul yet. Earlier, some Pakistani media outlets reported that the deputy foreign minister of the country will visit Kabul.

Khar’s last visit of Afghanistan took place in 2012 when she was the Foreign Minister of Pakistan.

Pakistan is known as the main supporter of the Taliban. The country’s embassy has remained open in Kabul even after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021. Islamabad has also received representatives of the Taliban in the Afghan embassy in Islamabad.

The Taliban official said that in the operation, nine people had been killed and four others had been injured.

The Taliban’s interior ministry spokesman added that the group’s security forces had sent two local officials to the area to ask the armed people to put down their weapons. However, the "rebels" had refused to give up their weapons.

Sources said on Friday that the Taliban killed nine civilians by attacking Sewak village in Nili district of Daikundi province.

Local sources said that the Taliban waged the operation and killed these civilians with the cooperation of the local Taliban members.

Local sources said that around 200 Taliban intelligence forces had been involved in the attack.

The spokesperson of the Taliban's Ministry of Interior has claimed that after the "rebels" refused to lay down their weapons, the group’s fighters started an operation in which two Taliban members have also been killed and one has been wounded.

Takor denied that children have been killed in the Taliban’s attack and claimed that the dead people were armed.

Reliable reports, from the region, however, indicate that four of the victims of the attack had been children aged 1 to 14.

UNAMA stressed that the office continues to work with all regional actors to assist efforts for meaningful peace in Afghanistan.

Markus Potzel, the UN Special Representative’s Deputy for Political Affairs, visited the two northern neighbours of Afghanistan in the past week.

Uzbekistan Foreign Minister, Vladimir Norov, said on Friday that he had spoken with Potzel about establishing an international group to negotiate with the Taliban government.

He added that the purpose of creating the international group is to agree on an algorithm for faster implementation of mutual obligations.

Balkhi has also claimed that "this is also true for other democratic governments".

The spokesperson of the Taliban's Foreign Ministry added that Islamic governments are obliged to take measures to protect women from a similar destiny.

The Taliban’s stance comes a day after the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) announced that Afghanistan is among the countries with the highest rate of violence against women.

UNAMA stressed that since last summer, many rights of Afghan women have been revoked or restricted.

After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the group has imposed severe restrictions on Afghan women.

The watchdog group stressed that the group’s hardline practices expose the de-facto authorities’ complete disregard for international human rights law.

Three women and 11 men had been publicly flogged on Wednesday on the orders of a Taliban court on charges of theft and moral crimes in Logar province of Afghanistan.

“The public flogging of women and men is a cruel and shocking return to the hardline practices by the Taliban. It violates the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment under international law and should not be carried out under any circumstances,” said Samira Hamidi, Amnesty International’s South Asia Campaigner.

The rights organisation added that the Taliban continue to ignore widespread criticism as they flagrantly flout basic human rights principles.

Amnesty International called on the Taliban to establish a formal justice mechanism with fair trials and access to legal remedies. It also asked the international community to intensify its efforts to ensure the de-facto authorities in Afghanistan abolish all cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments.

On November 14, the Taliban’s supreme leader, had given an obligatory order for full implementation of sharia law in Afghanistan. Since then, the Taliban have carried out several public floggings on women and men accusing them of adultery, theft, same-sex sexual conduct or kidnapping, in different provinces in Afghanistan.