Taliban in Oslo Equal To Participation in Violation of Women & Human Rights, Says Afghans

The rights organisation has stressed on the immediate release of all those detained by the Taliban for their “peaceful expression”.

Ma Thida, Chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee, said, “In a country with such a rich literary tradition, where poets are cherished by Afghans of all ages, Ahrari’s arrest is a tragic example of how the Taliban’s rule by repression threatens to undermine Afghanistan’s cultural heritage.”

According to Pen International, Ahrari was born in the Panjshir Province and is known for his poems on social media, which often centre on themes of freedom and patriotism.

The organisation stressed that the poet had returned from Iran and planned to publish a collection of his poems.

Earlier, reliable sources told Afghanistan International that the Taliban had arrested Ahrari from his home in the Khair Khana neighbourhood in district 11 of Kabul.

The Taliban has not yet commented on the reports of the detention of this Afghan poet.

Sources close to Ahrari's family said that he has no political affiliation, and they do not know the reason behind the arrest of this young poet.

After taking control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban has widely arrested civil activists, journalists, writers, and human rights activists.

In an interview with Russian media outlets, he stressed that the Russians must only visit Afghanistan for necessary work purposes.

According to him, Russian businessmen have travelled to Afghanistan with security guarantees.

Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, also discussed the activities of ISIS in Afghanistan during a press conference on Thursday and called the security situation of this country worrisome.

Russia is one of the few countries whose embassy continued to operate after the Taliban came to power in August 2021. The country’s embassy was attacked in 2022 and two of its diplomats were killed in the attack. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack on the Russian embassy.

In a statement, AFF said that the Taliban is changing the demographic structure of northern Afghanistan and facilitating long-lasting extremism and terrorism in the geography.

On June 12, reliable sources in the Taliban government confirmed for the first time that the group has reached an agreement with Pakistan to relocate members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in parts of Afghanistan, including in the north of the country.

A source told Afghanistan International that this decision has been taken by the Taliban and Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI).

On Thursday, Afghanistan Freedom Front stressed that to serve Pakistan, the Taliban in Kabul are destroying the ground for compatibility and peaceful living of different ethnicities in Afghanistan.

TTP is an insurgent and militant group in Pakistan that mobilises thousands of fighters from tribal areas to carry out attacks against the Pakistani government. TTP and the Taliban in Afghanistan have a close relationship.

Recently, Pakistan’s Institute of Peace in a report wrote that terrorist attacks increased 73 percent in Pakistan after the takeover of power by Taliban in Afghanistan. TTP and Baluchistan Liberation Army have taken responsibility for most of the attacks.

AFF warned that transferring Pakistani Taliban members to the north of Afghanistan is not only dangerous and catastrophic for the country and region, but also for the peace and security of the world.

This front said that the Taliban have not cut their structural ties with Al-Qaeda and parts of ISIS-K and even with the relocation of groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement, Jamaat-e- Ansarullah and other terrorist groups in the north, northeast, and northwest of Afghanistan, they have practically started a new phase of hosting its like-minded terror groups.

Earlier, the Council of National Resistance for the Salvation of Afghanistan too reacted to the reports of the relocation of TTP militias in the north of Afghanistan, saying that this would make Afghanistan face deep risks of internal and external crisis that could slide to the partition of the country.

According to RTL News, De Moor said that the process of seeking asylum is for protecting people from war and torture, not for those who promote violence.

Jamil Qaderi, an Afghan youtuber who has been living in Belgium since 2010 and had been granted asylum in the country two years ago, produces content that praises the Taliban.

He argues that the Taliban’s government is good for the people of Afghanistan because it provided security for the country.

Belgian officials reacted to this Afghan youtuber after around 8,000 people demanded Jamil Qaderi's deportation from Belgium in an online petition.

Those who signed the petition accused Qaderi of publicly supporting a terrorist group.

He said that in addition to religious studies, modern sciences should also be added to the seminary curriculum so that graduates of jihadi madrassas are able to work in such offices.

Mawlawi Abdul Kabir admitted to the shortcoming of seminaries in Afghanistan even though the Taliban has appointed mullahs with religious education to senior executive and technical positions of the group’s government.

According to the office of the Taliban’s prime minister, on Wednesday, Mawlawi Abdul Kabir met with Abdul Wahid Tariq, director of the jihadi seminaries. Tariq presented the programmes for establishing “jihadi madrassas in every province of Afghanistan” to the Taliban prime minister.

Tariq stressed that his directorate has been able to establish “jihadi madrassas in five provinces of Afghanistan and enrolled Taliban [members] as students of these seminaries”.

Abdul Kabir considered that the Taliban must pay attention to jihadi madrassas and said that seminaries are the “need of the day” in Afghanistan.

After the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban on August 2021, the group started establishing religious madrassas extensively across Afghanistan.

To expand their madrassas, the group has converted educational and historical places into jihadi madrassas too. In one of their latest moves, the Taliban established a jihadi school in the historic building and museum of Siraj-ul-Emarat.

Earlier, the Taliban changed buildings of the teacher training center of Samangan, the technical and vocational institute of Takhar, Mitra TV in Mazar-e-Sharif, Abdul Hai high school of Khost province, technical high school of Kandahar, Babrak Khan Zadran high school in Gardiz city and many other such centers to jihadi madrassas.