Families of Many Taliban Leaders Live In Pakistan, Says Former Pak Ambassador

Haqqani added that effective steps have been taken to prevent the sale of illegal and unregistered SIM cards too.

Haqqani stated that currently 23 million telephone SIM cards are active in Afghanistan.

The previous government of Afghanistan had declared the sale of unregistered SIM cards illegal and considered it one of the factors for the instability in the country.

The Minister of Communications of the Taliban said during a press conference on Wednesday, that for the first time in Afghanistan, mobile quality measuring devices have been active to determine the quality of telecommunication services.

Officials of the Taliban Ministry of Communications claimed that the price of internet services has decreased by 40-60 percent and the price of telephone calls has decreased by 30 percent.

According to these officials, in order to improve the quality of Internet services, the services of 641 Internet sites have been upgraded from 2 GB to 3 GB.

Hidayatullah Badri, Taliban’s governor of the Central Bank, said on Wednesday that the inflation rate this year is 2.4 percent, while this figure reached 15.4 percent in 2021.

Recently, the World Bank reported that the annual inflation rate in Afghanistan was 2.83 percent until May 2023.

Taliban officials also claimed that there are currently no restrictions on newly opened bank accounts and that customers can withdraw their money without any limitation.

However, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported to the US Congress on Tuesday that the evaluations show that the Central Bank of Afghanistan is not independent of the Taliban and does not have the ability to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.

Vehicles carrying Afghan refugees were shot at by unidentified armed men and Islamic Republic’s forces on Sunday.

The news agency stated that armed men shot at the refugees for extortion purposes, however, the Iranian border forces prevented the shooting.

The Islamic Republic authorities have not yet commented on the shooting issue.

Earlier, Tasnim news agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported quoting Parviz Qasimzadeh, the commander of the Zabul border regiment in Iran, that 156 "illegal citizens" were arrested from the border areas of Sistan and Baluchistan.

Aminzadeh told Ham-Mihan Daily that currently Iran's influence in Afghanistan has been impacted highly despite all the cultural ties between the two countries.

Following the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Islamic Republic improved its political relations with the group and granted some privileges to the Taliban, including handing over the Afghan embassy in Tehran to the Taliban.

However, after a brief period of good relations, the tensions between Tehran and the Taliban escalated over the water rights issue from Helmand River to a level that the President of Iran issued a warning against the Taliban.

Looking at the relations between Tehran and the Taliban over the past two years, Aminzadeh said that "the era of Iran's influence” in Afghanistan has been over.

On Tuesday, Aminzadeh stressed, "Now the Taliban is the ruling regime in Iran's neighbouring country, and coexistence with any geographical neighbour and observing neighbourly customs in Iran-Afghanistan relations is fundamental and a definite necessity."

According to him, the Islamic Republic is not seeking to overthrow the Taliban government, because "it does not matter who is ruling in Afghanistan and whether they like him or not”.

The former senior foreign policy official of Iran said, "Taliban talks about an Islam, which is not compatible with the culture of Iranians."

Moreover, contrary to the expectations of the Taliban, the Islamic Republic, along with other neighbouring countries, has not recognised the Taliban government.

AFF stated that this operation had been carried out on Tuesday night.

AFF has published a video clip of the operation at Faizabad airport on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

The Taliban have not yet commented on the attack of the Afghanistan Freedom Front.