China Seeks Regional Consensus on Afghanistan at Samarkand Meet

This is the second time that the university professor has been detained by the Taliban.

According to the sources, the Taliban officials stormed Sangin’s room in 2022 during which they searched his room, beat him up, and confiscated his mobile phone and computer.

The sources also added that the Taliban has access to information about Sangin through his electronic devices.

It has been said that the Taliban has access to Sangin's mobile phone and use his social media accounts to contact his friends.

People close to Sangin's family said that the Taliban first filed a case against Sangin using information from his phone and computer, based on which he had been questioned by the Ministry of Higher Education.

However, on Sunday, Taliban intelligence arrested this university professor when he was on his way home. Sangin's relatives said that his family did not know about his fate for 72 hours and during this time, the Taliban tortured the university professor.

Sakhidad Sangin is an Ismaili Hazara and a resident of Baghlan province. The university professor has been a critic of the Taliban’s ban on the education of girls and women in Afghanistan.

It states that the review will be done under the supervision of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA Roza Otunbayeva.

During the review period, the UN in Afghanistan will conduct the necessary consultations, make required operational adjustments, and accelerate contingency planning for all possible outcomes.

UNAMA added that it will, however, try to maintain principled and constructive engagement with all possible levels of the Taliban even during this review period.

Employees working at UN offices, both men and women, have been instructed not to report to work, except for some emergency tasks.

The UN mission in Afghanistan emphasised that even though it is reviewing its actions, it will continue to go on with the time-critical humanitarian activities and assess the scope, parameters and consequences of the ban, and pause activities where impeded.

The United Nations in Afghanistan stressed that the ban by the Taliban on Afghan women from working is discriminatory and severely restricts women and girls’ participation in most areas of public and daily life in Afghanistan.

It added that the ban is unlawful under international law and any negative consequences of this crisis for the Afghan people will be the responsibility of the Taliban.

In a statement on Monday, Jamiat-e-Islami too supported the demands of the Coalition of Women Protest Movements, which has asked for the closure of UNAMA offices in Afghanistan.

On Monday, the Coalition of Women Protest Movements in a statement called for the closure of UNAMA in Afghanistan. The coalition argued that UNAMA had failed even to defend the human rights of its own employees.

The Jamiat-e-Islami party called UNAMA "incompetent" and stressed that a "new practical approach" must replace the current operational mechanisms of the UN offices in Afghanistan.

After the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, UNAMA’s mandate in Afghanistan has been extended so that the UN office should monitor human rights, support civil society organisations, and facilitate political dialogues.

Critics have said that UNAMA has not taken a bold stance to put pressure on the Taliban.

In a letter to the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, the US Congress members referred to the findings of a study that shows that in the last five years, Iran has organised at least 33 cases of conspiracy to kidnap and assassinate EU citizens in Europe or to spy on them.

The letter of the Democratic and Republican members of the US House of Representatives stated that "Iran is still a country that supports terrorism. For decades, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has freely and openly plotted to target citizens of countries across the European Union”.

The United States designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organisation on April 15, 2019, and recently the European Parliament voted for a proposal that asks the European Union to add the IRGC and its affiliates to the EU's terrorist list.

Israeli soldiers recently attacked the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem and clashed with dozens of Palestinian worshipers. Israel has accused the worshipers of causing chaos.

However, Israeli police announced that they have arrested 350 people after the recent chaos.

Palestinians said that Israeli soldiers used plastic bullets to drive out the worshipers, which injured several worshipers inside the mosque.

Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians intensify, especially during the month of Ramadan.

In Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, the former supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, had named the last Friday of Ramadan the Quds Day, to show solidarity with the Palestinians and had asked Muslims to come to the streets on this day to express solidarity with the Palestinians.

In Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, recently, the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, seemingly in coordination with the Taliban, installed billboards stating "Our Iftar in Quds" across the city, which has been met with widespread reactions from Afghan social media users.