NRF Confirms Killing Taliban Member In Baghlan
The National Resistance Front (NRF) announced that one Taliban fighter had been killed and two other members of the group had been wounded in the Nahrin district of Baghlan province.
The National Resistance Front (NRF) announced that one Taliban fighter had been killed and two other members of the group had been wounded in the Nahrin district of Baghlan province.
NRF said that its forces launched a guerilla attack on the Taliban outpost in "Tasadi" area of Nahrin district of Baghlan province on Monday night.
NRF emphasised that its forces follow and attack the Taliban outposts in order "to save the people and the country from terrorists".
In recent days, the front has announced launch of attacks on Taliban positions in Kabul and Kapisa provinces.
Radio Afghanistan International has been nominated for the Social Impact category awards of the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in the Netherlands.
On Monday, IBC announced that Radio Afghanistan International is one of the shortlisted platforms in the category for amplifying the voices of Afghan women.
The Social Impact Award is one of several awards of IBC which will be awarded to international media outlets on September 15 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
BBC and the Spanish State Radio and Television (RTVE) are among the five nominees for this prestigious award.
"We were blown away by the range and ambition of this year’s entries," Ade Rawcliffe, Group Director of Diversity and Inclusion at ITV and Chair of the Social Impact Awards Jury, said in a statement.
He added, "The quality of the finalists from around the globe illustrates just how important making a social impact is to an increasing number of businesses and creative companies."
Afghanistan International is a part of the Volant media company, which was established after the fall of the previous Afghan government in 2021. The nomination for the IBC Award highlights the vital work of the media for Afghan audience.
As an international multimedia network, Afghanistan International has reflected diverse viewpoints and reported on human rights and other current affairs issues and has become a voice for the people of Afghanistan.
As tensions have escalated between the Taliban and Pakistan, Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s special envoy for Afghanistan will visit Kabul on Wednesday.
Durrani's office confirmed to Afghanistan International that he will travel to Kabul for a three-day trip to meet Taliban officials.
This is Asif Durrani's first visit to Afghanistan as Pakistan’s special envoy. Last month, he had been appointed as Pakistan's special representative for Afghanistan affairs.
Tension between Pakistan's military establishment and the Taliban escalated after a group of militants waged a complex attack on a Pakistani military base in Baluchistan province last week. At least 12 Pakistani soldiers were killed in this attack.
After the attack, the Pakistani army expressed its concern in two separate statements about the safe havens of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Afghanistan and the participation of Afghan citizens in "terrorist" activities on Pakistani soil.
In a statement, the Pakistani army announced that it has "serious concerns" about the existence of safe havens and the freedom of action of the Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan.
The statement said that the participation of Afghan citizens in "terrorist activities" inside Pakistan is another important concern of the army.
In another statement on Monday, Pakistan Army stressed that the TTP shelters in Afghanistan are one of the main factors of instability in Pakistan.
The Pakistan army added that TTP has freedom of action in Afghanistan and has access to the "latest weapons".
The Afghan Taliban continues to emphasise, as in the past two years, that foreign militant groups are not present in Afghanistan and the Taliban doesn’t allow any group to attack the territory of neighbouring countries from Afghanistan.
Following these tensions, John Kirby, the spokesperson for the US National Security Council, said that there is no evidence about the involvement of Afghan refugees in Pakistan or its border areas in terrorist activities in Pakistan.
After around two months of absence from office, the Taliban’s Prime Minister Mullah Hasan Akhund returned to office in Kabul.
Taliban deputy spokesperson Bilal Karimi said that Mullah Hasan Akhund returned to work on Monday after "treatment and rest in Kandahar”.
According to Karimi, the Taliban’s Prime Minister returned to office on the orders of Mullah Hibatullah Akhunzada, the group’s leader.
Karimi added that before returning to Kabul, the Taliban’s Prime Minister met Akhundzada in Kandahar and the Taliban leader "ordered" him to return to Kabul to manage the government’s affairs.
The Taliban also released a video clip, which shows Mullah Hasan Akhund at the Kabul airport being received by the Taliban officials.
Earlier, it had been reported that Mohammad Hassan Akhund was called to Kandahar due to "old age" and "illness".
The head of the Taliban cabinet was not present in the meetings of the Taliban over the last two months, and some considered it to be the result of the escalation of differences between the leaders of the Taliban.
Mohammad Hasn Akhund is one of the highly conservative leaders of the group and stands against the right to education and work of Afghan women and girls.
During the past two months and in his absence, the Taliban leader had appointed Mawlawi Abdul Kabir, the deputy prime minister of the group as the acting prime minister.
The Taliban's Ministry of Refugees announced that more than 1,000 Afghan refugees returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan in the past four days.
The ministry stated on Monday that among them, 24 had been imprisoned in Pakistan and were recently released.
Taliban’s border officials in Kandahar said that these refugees have returned to Afghanistan through the Spin Boldak border crossing.
According to the reports, Pakistan and Iran have increased pressure on Afghan refugees these days. Only this week, nearly five thousand Afghan refugees have been deported from Iran.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in a report on the human rights situation in Afghanistan in May and June stated that at least 15 people were killed and 49 wounded as a result of IED attacks, the vast majority of them civilians.
The report stressed that majority of these casualties occurred in two attacks in Faizabad city, Badakhshan province, both claimed by self-identified Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant –Khorasan Province (ISIL-KP).
It also documented 45 civilian casualties (19 killed, 26 wounded) attributed to explosive remnants of war during the period.
According to this report, women are prevented from traveling abroad without a male guardian (sharia mahram), and in one case in June, a woman (a local employee of the United Nations in Afghanistan) was threatened with death by the forces of the Intelligence Directorate of Taliban, and after two days she resigned.
It has also been said that the forces of the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice continue to beat women, and in one case on June 19, a woman was beaten up and ordered her to leave a public park.
UNAMA also reported that the ban on women's work has affected the activities of this organization in Afghanistan, and since April 5, all UNAMA employees, including men and women, continue to work from home with this organization to prevent a discriminatory approach in the workplace.
The UN report still indicates that corporal punishment and execution of death sentences continue, and the second case of qisas punishment (death penalty) was on June 20.
The report emphasised that extra-judicial killings continue all over Afghanistan, and the UNAMA report has documented several cases of such killings, at least two of which were carried out by the Taliban forces in Takhar and Samangan provinces.
It added that arbitrary arrests and detentions of former government and military personnel – often accused of affiliation with the National Resistance Front – are also ongoing, particularly in Kabul and Panjshir provinces.
Apart from this, even killings of individuals accused of affiliation with ISIL-KP were also recorded in May and June in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, the report said.
The report also focused on freedom of media in Afghanistan and stated that the de facto authorities continue to arbitrarily arrest and detain journalists.
In fact, UNAMA stated that Taliban’s Departments of Information and Culture took steps to establish committees aimed at monitoring activities of the media in their respective provinces. UNAMA questioned the presence of such bodies and said that no announcement has been made explaining the exact mandate of these committees.
However, the report added that UNAMA has recorded at least one instance where a committee conducted an unannounced inspection at a private radio station in May and although the committee reportedly did not identify any concerns regarding the station’s activities, the unexpected nature of the visit led journalists to believe these committees may further jeopardise media independence.
The report also touched upon the activities of the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice of the Taliban and said that the ministry continues to both enforce existing instructions and issue new directives, many of which interfere with the fundamental freedoms and daily lives of women and girls.
It said that UNAMA continues to record instances of Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice personnel arbitrarily arresting and ill-treating individuals who they view as not following their decrees, particularly those pertaining to hijab (for women) and beard length (for men).