Taliban Asks UN To Lift Travel Sanctions on Leaders of Group

Taliban said that the addicts are being gathered by the order of the group’s leader.

Earlier, it had been reported that Taliban officials are gathering addicts with force and flogging them.

A while after Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, a US-based human rights organisation had reported that the Taliban had burned four addicts alive in Daikundi province.

The Taliban deputy prime minister talked about humanitarian assistance with Madlin Sadler, Chief Operating Officer of the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

According to the Taliban-controlled Bakhtar News Agency, IRC also asked for the Taliban’s cooperation so that they are able to continue assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

In response to the Taliban’s ban on right to work of women, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) had recently stopped its operations in Afghanistan.

IRC has now announced the resumption of its activities in Afghanistan and said that they will continue to provide humanitarian aid.

According to Bakhtar news agency, around 8,700 people, including men and women, work for IRC in Afghanistan.

The Taliban has not shared more details about how these Afghans have returned to Afghanistan. However earlier, mostly Afghan citizens had been expelled from Iran.

According to the Taliban, 26 families are also among the Afghans who have returned to the country.

Last week, the Taliban also announced the return of more than a thousand Afghan citizens from Iran. After the fall of the previous government, many Afghan citizens had migrated to Iran.

Karzai also asked the United Nations to increase its humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.

The UN announced on Tuesday that a high-ranking UN delegation had arrived in Kabul.

The delegation consists of Amina Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General; Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, and Khaled Khiari, Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs.

According to the UN, the delegation has so far travelled to several neighbouring countries, including the Gulf countries to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

Senior representatives of the United Nations have met with some Afghan women in Ankara and Islamabad, representatives of the Taliban in Doha, the leadership of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), and representatives of the Islamic Development Bank.

The UN stressed that it is important to find an immediate solution to the Afghan crisis.

The Taliban’s Ministry of Interior announced that the representatives of the Ministries of Interior and Defense and General Directorate of Intelligence of the group held talks with Chief Executive of the TAPI project in the presence of the Ambassador of Turkmenistan in Kabul.

The Taliban interior ministry stressed that the group will provide security to the TAPI project with all means.

The project passes through the provinces of Kandahar, Farah, Helmand, and Herat, which in the past had been unstable and mostly under control of the Taliban fighters.

Security had been the major concern of involved stakeholders in the project.

Taliban being in power in Afghanistan emphasises that the group will provide security for the TAPI project. However, other security challenges, including from groups like ISIS, continue to pose a threat to the project in Afghanistan.