Pak Government In Same Situation As Ashraf Ghani's Govt, Claims Media Close To Taliban

Four Chinese citizens and a Tajik citizen were wounded in the attack in the Zarbuz Gorge of the Shamsiddin Shohin district in the Khatlon region.

According to informed sources, the attack took place on November 18. The Chinese nationals who were targeted in the attack were working in a gold mine in the area.

A local source told the news website Yeni Safak, "All the victims have been taken to a hospital in the district. Security forces are present at the scene of the incident and an investigation is underway."

The attackers are said to have come to Tajikistan from Afghanistan and targeted Chinese engineers and workers.

However, it is not yet officially clear whether the attack was carried out by drug traffickers or Islamist militant groups.

The Tajik government has not yet officially commented on the incident.

The incident could raise concerns about the infiltration of armed and militant groups into Central Asian countries. Previously, Baloch militants in Pakistan have carried out bloody attacks on Chinese engineers and workers.

Tajikistan has always expressed concern about the security situation on the Afghan border and has asked the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation to strengthen security measures on the border.

In the past three years, there have been numerous reports of drug traffickers and extremist groups attempting to cross the Tajik border. After the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan, Tajikistan has stepped up border security measures and deployed more troops in these areas.

One of the most serious threats to Tajikistan is the Ansarullah group, which is based in northern and northeastern Afghanistan, especially in Badakhshan. The group, which is allied with the Taliban, is an Islamist opponent of Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.

On August 6 last year, Tajikistan's State National Security Committee announced that it had eliminated three members of the Ansarullah group. In the past, they had transported large shipments of weapons, ammunition, explosives, communications equipment and financial resources to Tajikistan, it said.

The filmmakers said that the production of the documentary began in 2020 at the same time as the peace talks between the United States and the Taliban had been finalised.

A number of diplomats and members of the European Parliament sat at the body's headquarters in Brussels to watch the film.

The film is a visual and inspiring narrative of the struggles of Afghan women.

The documentary's authors called it a "powerful illustrated document" that "confronts the viewer with hidden and overt realities surrounding the peace talks".

"The Sharp Edge of Peace" was also introduced by Hollywood actress Meryl Streep at a meeting at the United Nations.

The film is directed by Roya Sadat and produced by Leslie Thomas, and is a co-production of Roya Film House and Mira Studios.

"The Sharp Edge of Peace" has previously been screened at festivals in Canada and India.

In early November, sources told Afghanistan International that Germany had asked Afghan diplomats to either engage with the Taliban or end their work.

In a statement published on the official Facebook page of the Afghan Consulate General in Bonn, Sadat said, "In view of some political considerations and restrictions of the host country and their request, and in order to prevent the closure or suspension of the consular activities of this mission, I resign from my responsibility as the Consul General of Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany."

Sadat wrote that after nearly two decades of working in the Afghan Foreign Ministry, he is resigning from the job. So far, the German Foreign Ministry has not commented on the matter.

Earlier, the ambassadors of the former Afghan government to some Western countries had announced an increase in pressure from host countries to encourage their interaction with the Taliban.

According to a report published by Afghanistan International on October 26, diplomatic sources had confirmed that in the latest case, Germany had asked the former Afghan ambassador in Berlin and the consul general in Bonn to end their work soon.

These sources had said that the ambassador and the consul general had been discussing with German officials for the past two months and justifying the continuation of their mission within the framework of the credentials of the republican government. However, according to reliable sources, Germany had said that their presence without relations with Kabul is useless.

The sources also confirmed that other countries have also increased pressure on Afghan ambassadors over the past month, sending a message to "engage with the Taliban, or end your diplomatic mission”.

In a report prepared in cooperation with four Afghan news organisations, it has been stated that large areas in mainly Hazara and Tajik-populated areas have been completely cleared.

According to the report, the Taliban's renovation programme in Kabul has left thousands of people homeless and an area of about 385 hectares has been destroyed.

When the Taliban seized power three years ago, the Taliban began a sweeping expansion programme in Kabul, with the justification that Afghanistan's historic capital needed to be modernised. However, a new study shows that the Taliban's reconstruction programme has left thousands of people homeless and has had horrific impacts on the most vulnerable communities.

Using satellite imagery, social media imagery, and testimonies from local residents, these findings provide the first comprehensive picture of the Taliban's ambitious reconstruction in Kabul, as well as its true cost.

Satellite analysis shows that 1.56 square kilometres (385 hectares) of Kabul city, equivalent to more than 220 football fields, were cleared between August 2021 and August 2024.

The British newspaper The Guardian, the Centre for Information Resilience’s Afghan Witness project, Lighthouse Reports and the Afghan news outlets Zan Times and Etilaat Roz media outlets that carried out the research said that the evidence showed that the destruction was partly "ethnically related".

The satellite analysis, carried out by Afghan Witness, showed that of the six most-affected districts – where at least 50,000 sq metres (12 acres) of residential properties were demolished – three were areas populated by the minority Hazara community and two were populated by the minority Tajiks.

According to the findings of this study, the most damages are related to District 13 or Dasht-e-Barchi of Kabul, which is a predominantly Hazara area.

‘Horrific destruction of informal settlements’

The study also analysed the widespread destruction of "informal residential neighbourhoods”.

The findings of the study show that in some cases, the destruction of slums that usually house poorer communities displaced by war or climate change has been "so brutal" that residents said some were injured and killed.

Residents of at least two residential neighbourhoods claim that the houses were demolished while family members were still inside. In a large slum in Kabul's District 22, evicted families claimed that a four-year-old child and a 15-year-old teenager died during the demolition.

"Women, children and elderly men were begging them to stop the demolition until we could find shelter, but they didn't listen," said one resident, who spent a decade in the neighbourhood after being displaced from Pakistan.

He claimed that after the demolition, his young niece also died in the summer heat due to a lack of shelter after their home was demolished.

Residents who tried to film such demolitions were reportedly beaten.

‘Challenges of Women Heads of Households’

It is said that many demolition projects are carried out in residential areas to build or enlarge roads.

Fakhrullah Sarwari, an urban planning engineer who worked with the former Afghan government, told the Guardian, "Most of these plans were part of the previous government's plans, but they were not implemented because they could not force people to evacuate the area."

"We need better mobility, but given that the majority of the population lives below the poverty line, demolishing houses to build wider roads will not solve the fundamental issues," Sarwari added.

Human rights groups also say women are particularly vulnerable after being evicted from their homes, warning that this could increase gender-based violence.

A woman who spoke to Zan Times revealed the problems of female-headed families.

The woman, who earns between $1 and $3 a day by providing house cleaning services, has struggled to get compensation from the Taliban after her home in a residential area north of Kabul was demolished. However, according to the Taliban's law for the promotion of virtue, she is not allowed to enter the Kabul municipality offices without a male guardian.

Another woman who lost her home in the same area is no longer able to work due to Taliban restrictions. Her family, who have been deprived of compensation, must rely only on her husband's meagre income, who is a shoemaker.

Of a dozen people evicted who were interviewed for the investigation, only one has been able to find a permanent home. Residents say fear is deterring them from protesting against the demolition of their homes.

"At first, they told us that they would compensate us and would not make us homeless, but when the houses were demolished, no one listened to us," said a woman whose 40-year-old home was demolished in August 2023.

According to the Guardian, when the woman's family could no longer afford to pay the bus fare, she stopped going to the municipal offices to ask for compensation.

The devastation comes months after the UN warned that Afghanistan's economy had "fundamentally collapsed" due to widespread food insecurity and the displacement of 6.3 million people inside the country.

Officials in the Taliban's municipality in Kabul have not commented on the findings. They have previously justified the demolition of informal settlements as reclaiming stolen land acquired by “opportunists and usurpers”. They also said that residential areas are often demolished for infrastructure projects.

According to the Law of the Promotion of Virtue, the ministry considers it "immoral" for men and women to speak to each other.

The Taliban's Ministry of Promotion of Virtue reported on Monday, November 18, that those arrested in the fifth security district of Kabul city have been handed over to judicial institutions after conducting investigations.

The Taliban's ombudsmen continue to detain men and women across the country under the group's Law of the Promotion of Virtue, and recently arrested five people in Kandahar on charges of extramarital affairs.

The fate of those detained by the Taliban's Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue usually includes harsh punishments. These people are routinely flogged in public or sent to Taliban prisons.

Although the Taliban's Ministry of Promotion of Virtue does not provide exact details on how the punishments will be meted out, the group's Supreme Court flogs people in public almost every day on charges such as moral corruption and extramarital affairs.