Afghanistan Under Taliban Unacceptable, Says German President
Frank Walter Steinmeier, the German President, asked Kyrgyzstan to use its influence to improve the situation in Afghanistan.
Frank Walter Steinmeier, the German President, asked Kyrgyzstan to use its influence to improve the situation in Afghanistan.
During a visit to Kyrgyzstan, Steinmeier said that the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban is unacceptable and women and girls are being systematically oppressed.
In a joint press conference with Sadyr Japarov, the Kyrgyz president on Thursday, he also expressed concern about the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.
Kyrgyzstan, like other countries, does not recognise the Taliban, but over the last two years, the representatives of Bishkek have visited Afghanistan and engaged with Taliban officials.
Sources told Afghanistan International that the Taliban have killed Hamidullah Bahloul, a former employee of a multinational organisation, after he had returned to Kabul.
According to sources, Bahloul had been relocated to Germany, but when the Taliban arrested his family members, he returned to Afghanistan.
According to the sources, Bahloul was killed on June 17 at his home in Kabul.
Sources said that from 2010 until the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, Bahloul had worked for a German organisation, GIZ, as an engineer for reconstruction projects in the provinces of Kunduz, Balkh, Jawzjan, Baghlan, and Samangan provinces.
According to the sources, about six months after the return of the Taliban, Bahloul fled Afghanistan to Pakistan with his family, and from there he had been relocated through the evacuation programme of the German government.
Relatives of the Afghan citizen said that the Taliban later arrested Bahloul's son and his two brothers who were residents of Kabul. According to the sources, after the arrest of these people, Hamidullah Bahloul had been forced to return to Kabul. The sources said that the Taliban had asked him to return to Kabul to talk to the Taliban.
According to Bahloul's relatives, in the past few days, the Taliban attacked his house in District 5 of Kabul city and shot the man dead.
The sources said that currently, Bahloul's two brothers are also imprisoned in Paktia province, and there is no information about his son who had also been detained by the group. The Taliban claimed to have released Bahloul's son, but he "hasn't come home" in about eight months, the sources said.
The Taliban authorities and the GIZ have not responded to the reports of the killing of Bahloul.
The Afghanistan National Liberation Party, led by Rahmatullah Nabil, former Afghan spymaster, said that the goal of the “relocation of terrorists” from the south to north of Afghanistan is to turn the area into a “new Waziristan”.
The Party asked anti-Taliban forces to form a united front against the group.
In a statement on Friday, the party said that the relocation of these people is based on a “complex regional and international intelligence project” amid at transfer of terrorist groups to Central Asia to fuel proxy wars and change the ethnic demographic of the region.
Afghanistan National Liberation Party said that the transfer of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) fighters to the north of Afghanistan is against the country’s national interests and causes ethnic rifts and grounds for partition of the country.
Recently, dozens of families were relocated from the border areas of Pakistan and southern Afghanistan to the northern parts of the country. Earlier, the spokesperson of the Taliban confirmed that refugees from the North Waziristan region are being transferred to some parts of Afghanistan.
Abdul Hamid Khorasani, an ethnic Tajik commander of the Taliban who is also from Panjshir, said that he has faced unprecedented humiliation and insult by the Taliban.
In a video clip, the disgruntled Taliban commander, expressed that another commander Malek Khan who was also from Panjshir and had joined the Taliban at the outset of the group’s reign in Afghanistan, joined the National Resistance Front (NRF) due to the "ignorance and stupidity" of the Taliban.
Commander Malik and several of NRF forces were killed in a battle with the Taliban in Dare Abdullah Khel of Panjshir province.
Khorasani, who has been constantly expressing his displeasure with the Taliban, accused the group of bigotry and ethnocentrism in a series of video clips he posted on his Twitter account on Friday.
He said that the Taliban "usurped" his house and properties on the order of senior group’s officials while they threatened and insulted his family members.
Khorasani said that members of the Tajik ethnic group, who are also from Panjshir province, are not slaves and hostages of the Taliban.
Khorasani added that he has been tolerant of all these Taliban insults, and if it was anyone else, they would have "either destroyed himself or taken revenge on you".
He asked the Taliban to stop prejudice, discrimination, and ethnocentrism.
Earlier, Mawlawi Mahdi, a Hazara commander of the Taliban, cut off ties with the group and stood against the group for what he called discrimination and ethnocentric policies of the Taliban.
The Taliban announced last year that Mahdi was arrested and killed while trying to escape Afghanistan at the Iranian borders.
Nikolai Patrushev, Russian Security Council’s Secretary, said that the current economic situation in Afghanistan encourages drug cultivation in the country.
Patrushev warned that Afghanistan’s situation is a threat to the security of Central Asian countries and Russia.
Taliban has banned the production of drugs in Afghanistan, but still the group has been reporting the seizure of drugs in different parts of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's neighbouring countries have also reported the seizure of drug shipments from Afghanistan.
On Friday, at the meeting of the secretaries of the Security Council of Central Asian countries and Russia, which was held in Kazakhstan, Patrushev expressed concerns about the instability in Afghanistan and considered it a threat to Central Asian countries.
In a similar stance to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Patrushev claimed that the United States and Western countries support "terrorists" to destabilise Central Asia.
The British Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) announced on Thursday that the security situation in Afghanistan is extremely volatile and asked UK citizens not to travel to Afghanistan.
The British foreign office stressed that travel across Afghanistan is extremely dangerous.
According to FCDO, there is currently no British consular service in Afghanistan and the ability to provide consular assistance is severely limited.
The UK foreign office has also warned that there is a heightened risk of detention of British nationals in Afghanistan. According to the statement of the FCDO, the British Government may not be notified about such detentions; communications with next of kin may not be guaranteed; and detention may be lengthy.
In March 2023, the Daily Mail had reported that the Taliban had detained three British citizens.
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, this is the second time that the UK has asked its citizens not to travel to Afghanistan.
The British Foreign office had warned British citizens last year to refrain from traveling to Afghanistan due to high security threats.