Don’t Recognise Taliban As It Is Part of Afghan Reality, Says Iranian FM

However, Saleh has not confirmed if there had been any casualties due to the airport attack.

The Afghan Vice-President wrote on Twitter on Thursday that following the attack, the Taliban searched through the smartphones of several people and deleted the images and videos regarding the attack to prevent the information from getting leaked to the public.

Saleh added that following the incident, the Taliban had claimed that such an attack had not taken place.

Saleh, on Monday, attributed the crash of the Taliban’s helicopter in Samangan province to the “Special Unit” too.

However, it is not clear whether the "Special Unit" is part of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan or acts as an independent group.

At a press conference in Geneva, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights strongly criticised the Taliban and said that he could not understand how the group “can trample so cruelly upon the spirit of girls and women”.

The Taliban has rejected what the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner described as discrimination and oppression of Afghan women and called these statements as interference in the domestic affairs of Afghanistan.

Mawlawi Neda Mohmmad Nadim, the Taliban’s Minister of Higher Education, said in a meeting with the chief of the Pakistani mission in Kabul that international organisations and countries have been interfering in Afghanistan's internal affairs in the name of concerns about human rights situation of Afghanistan.

Justifying the Taliban's discriminatory policies, he said that "Afghans live in a traditional and intellectual society" and portrayed that the Taliban’s policies preserve Afghanistan’s people’s beliefs and culture.

However, Turk pointed out that policies that oppress women must end in Afghanistan and the region. He stressed that such policies while having human effects impacts, also hinder the economic growth of countries.

These protesters chanted the slogan "Women can’t be removed”.

It is the first time, since a long time, that the women have held a demonstration in the northern Takhar province.

No further details have been provided regarding the demonstration.

In an exclusive interview with Afghanistan International, the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister, however, said, "Taliban will provide Iran's water rights according to 1973 water treaty."

On Thursday, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi warned the Taliban officials to allocate the share of water for Sistan and Baluchistan from the Helmand River. He said that the Taliban should take his warning seriously and "not complain later that we weren't told”.

The Taliban reacted to Raisi’s statement and said that there is not enough water in the Helmand River.

However, the Islamic Republic does not accept the Taliban’s claim of lack of water in the Helmand River and said that the Taliban should allow Iranian experts to visit the dams and confirm the Taliban’s claims.

The Taliban Supreme Court has not provided details of the punishment for these Afghan citizens, but has stressed that these people have confessed to their “crimes”.

After taking control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban has publicly punished hundreds of citizens on various charges.

Earlier, Abdul Malik Haqqani, the deputy chief justice in the Taliban’s Supreme Court, announced that since taking power in Afghanistan, the group had sentenced hundreds of people to “Qisas [retribution] and stoning”.

Haqqani said that the Taliban has ordered the execution of 175 people and the stoning of 37 people throughout Afghanistan since taking power in the country.

He emphasised that the courts of this group have ordered four people to be buried alive and Sharia laws have been implemented on 103 other people.

Human rights groups have repeatedly called on the Taliban to stop the public punishment of Afghan citizens and have stressed that those accused by the Taliban don’t have access to due procedures and justice.