Moezuddin Ahmadi, the director of information and culture of Taliban in Badakhshan, confirmed to Afghanistan International that Safiullah Samim, the former police chief of the group in Baghlan, has been killed in an explosion at the Nabawi mosque in Faizabad city.
The explosion targeted the funeral ceremony of the deputy governor of the Taliban in Badakhshan on Thursday morning.
Meanwhile, sources told Afghanistan International that because of Thursday's explosion, several others have also been killed and wounded.
The Taliban, however, did not provide details about the exact number of casualties.
After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, Safiullah Samim was appointed as the police chief of the group for Baghlan, but he was recently removed from this position and didn’t have any official position in the Taliban government.
Several other senior Taliban officials were present at the funeral ceremony of Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi in Badakhshan.
Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi, Taliban’s deputy governor in Badakhshan, was killed in a car bomb explosion on Tuesday.
Western diplomats and United Nations have started another round of efforts to engage with Afghanistan. In line with these efforts, Thomas West, the US special envoy for Afghanistan, is in London to discuss Afghanistan with British officials.
In New York, Feridun Sinirlioğlu, the UN Special Coordinator for Afghanistan, has started his work and met with several Afghan women leaders. However, compared to the scale of complexity of the situation in Afghanistan, can these efforts pay off, and more importantly, what Afghans want to do for the future of their country?
In London, Thomas West met and spoke with Tariq Ahmad, British Minister of State for Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and the United Nations, and Andrew McCourbrey, Director of Afghanistan, and Pakistan Affairs of the UK Foreign Office. In these meetings, he discussed the shared interests of the two countries in Afghanistan. After London, West will visit the United Arab Emirates during the four-day regional trip to promote Afghanistan talks.
In New York, Feridun Sinirlioğlu met with Asila Wardak and Habiba Sarabi, Afghan women's rights activists, and discussed the scope of his mission. His main mission is to provide a comprehensive report on the situation in Afghanistan and proposed solutions to the existing stalemate within the next five months.
The United Nations and the parties involved in Afghanistan's affairs are trying to hold another meeting to address the political deadlock in Afghanistan, with a focus to bring together the domestic stakeholders of Afghanistan such as the Taliban, Afghan political leaders, women's rights activists, and civil society around a common agenda.
However, these efforts show that there is not much appetite and enthusiasm to resolve the Afghanistan issue, and at least until now, neither the United States nor the United Nations has shown any urgency to create a political consensus among Afghans.
It is evident that the United States has lost its interest in Afghanistan and has no long-term plan for the country. The US’ interests have shifted, and Washington has other priorities than Afghanistan. The US policymakers’ attention has been shifted to the war in Europe to push back Russia's ambitions and prepare for a confrontation with China over global resources.
Although American diplomats, soldiers, and citizens who have served in Afghanistan for more than two decades and people like Thomas West have deep emotional ties with this country, are still trying to keep the Afghanistan issue alive in the US policy circles, terrorism and the threat to America's national security is not so urgent, to drag the time and capital of Washington to Afghanistan at least in the current situation.
That’s why the US has practically entrusted the Afghanistan case to the United Nations so that the organisation, as a neutral actor, manages the situation in Afghanistan with the help of the countries in the region. While the role and influence of the United States in Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban have been gradually declining, the importance of regional powers in the affairs of Afghanistan has been strengthening.
However, in the meantime, another vital piece of the puzzle of Afghanistan is missing. Afghans themselves have not been able to present a plan for the future of their country that would mobilise regional and global actors around it. The democratic and nationalist forces of Afghanistan, scattered inside and outside the country, are highly fragmented. The Taliban, as one of the other main Afghan sides, has not taken any steps to engage with these Afghan professionals.
The parties of the Supreme National Resistance Council for Salvation of Afghanistan, the political groups led by Rahmatullah Nabil and Hanif Atmar, and political leaders who have remained inside Afghanistan under the Taliban including Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, have taken small initiatives, but none of them have been able to form a popular national umbrella, so that the international community utilises that to resolve the Afghanistan issue.
Apparently, both the Afghan politicians and the international community expect one another to come up with a plan, and it is the duty of Feridun Sinirlioğlu to present a plan to the Secretary General of the United Nations to provide a platform for intra-Afghan reconciliation.
The need and dependence of the different political sides of Afghanistan on each other require that all parties show a clear will to interact with one another to address the current situation in Afghanistan. In the meantime, as an undeniable fact, if the Taliban wants to transition from a militant group to a party that forms an internationally recognised government in Afghanistan, they need the support of the international community and Afghan professional forces.
Although there are currently 21 active foreign embassies in Kabul and 16 embassies based in Doha, which regularly engages with the Taliban, no country has recognised the group as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Coupled with the above, even if the Taliban government receives international recognition, Afghanistan will remain challenging, because the Taliban will continue to suffer from the lack of domestic legitimacy and will not have the capacity to provide services to Afghan citizens and eradicate poverty from across Afghanistan.
Therefore, to end the current deadlock and provide political stability in Afghanistan, Afghans need to come up with a roadmap that can gain domestic and international support.
Five months after the detention of Mortaza Behboudi, an Afghan-French journalist by the Taliban, his wife Aleksandra Mostovaja has asked social media users to write virtual postal cards on Twitter and Facebook and ask the Taliban to release him.
Mostovaja, wrote on Twitter, “Today completes 5 months without my husband, Mortaza Behboudi, who has been jailed by the Taliban. To quote the book we both are reading now; ‘There is no wisdom without love. No love without freedom.’ I have been living without my love and hoping for his release.”
The photojournalist has been accused of espionage by the Taliban.
In the past five months, his family, and friends as well as Reporters Without Border, have been campaigning for his release.
In the call to launch the campaign for the release of Behboudi on social media, it has been stated that the journalist has worked hard to deliver the issues of the people whose voices have been taken away from them and stressed that the people raise their voices for him.
After the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban has been cracking down on Afghan and international journalists.
Asif Durrani, Pakistan's special envoy for Afghanistan, claimed that various countries including the United States, have "direct relations" with the Taliban in Kabul and Doha.
He said that the Taliban leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, is the only person who is isolated and denies meeting people.
In an interview with the Center for Research and Security Studies, Durrani said, "21 embassies in Kabul and 16 embassies, including the US embassy in Doha," are in contact with the Taliban.
Regarding global engagement with the Taliban, he said that it's not the world that doesn't want to have ties with the group, rather it's Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada who doesn't see people.
Pakistan’s special envoy stressed that except for Akhundzada, other Taliban leaders are in touch with the international community.
Although Durrani had been sceptical about the reports that Akhundzada had met with the Qatari Prime Minister in Kandahar, he added that if this meeting is true, it is a sign of change in the Taliban leader's interaction with other countries.
No photo of the Taliban leader has been published yet, but the Taliban publishes news of his meeting with the group’s officials.
Regarding the recognition of the Taliban, Pakistan's special representative for Afghanistan said that the decision will be taken by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
Durrani called Pakistan a victim of Afghanistan's developments and said that thousands of people enter Pakistan from Afghanistan without going through legal procedures every day and linked that to instability inside Afghanistan.
Suhail Shaheen, head of Taliban’s political office in Qatar, said that the group has a difference of opinion with the world regarding the right to education and work of Afghan girls and women.
Shaheen said that the Taliban wants to address the issue of women's education based on “Islamic principles”, but stressed that the conditions of the international community are not acceptable to the group.
In an interview with the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan National Radio Television, Shaheen said that during their meetings with foreign envoys, they see that the international community is “slowly accepting the realities of Afghanistan”.
The new statement on the right to education and work of Afghan women and girls comes even though previously the Taliban had said that they would draw a new programme for the education of Afghan girls in secondary or higher education. It has been more than 600 days since schools for girls have been shut down across Afghanistan.
Earlier, Reuters news agency reported that Qatari Prime Minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani had met with Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and discussed the education of girls and women's work during his visit to Kandahar.
The Taliban’s intelligence agency has disarmed and arrested a social media influencer of the group, who introduces himself as "General Mobeen". Sources told Afghanistan International on Tuesday that the agency summoned Mobeen to Kabul and arrested him.
According to our sources, the Taliban’s intelligence agency has seized weapons, a bulletproof vehicle, and phones of this self-proclaimed "general".
Mobeen has previously worked as a spokesperson to the Taliban’s police chief of Kabul and has been considered a controversial figure of the Taliban on social media.
Over the past week, he appeared on Twitter and said that he regretted working with the Taliban as the spokesman.
Mobeen also criticised the Taliban and termed the group’s government as "Mullahcracy”. He insisted that professionals had to take government jobs and serve the people.
Previously, he had also been arrested after criticising Mullah Fazl-ur-Rehman, a political and religious leader in Pakistan, who has close ties with the Afghan Taliban.
After Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi warned the Taliban about Iran’s water rights from the Helmand River, Mobeen filled a yellow barrel, which is considered a symbol of the Taliban’s hand-made bombs, and said that he would send one barrel of water to the Iranian president.
The video clip of Mobeen with the barrel had been circulated on social media among Afghans and Iranians and attracted wide attention in both countries.
Therefore, the news of his arrest has also been reflected in Iranian media as an anti-Iranian figure among the Taliban.
