Mujahid Calls UN Security Council Meeting 'Useless' Without Taliban Representative

The court said in a statement on Thursday that the defendants were sentenced to 19 lashes and one year in prison each.

The Taliban's Supreme Court wrote that the defendants were punished on Thursday, December 12, by the group's Fourth Zone Primary Court in Kabul. Hours earlier, the court also reported that two people had been flogged in Paktia province on charges of buying and selling alcoholic beverages.

In the past week, the Taliban has punished more than 10 people across Afghanistan on various charges.

"I also invite the leaders of other groups opposed to the Taliban," he added.

Burchett had previously invited Amrullah Saleh, the former Vice President of Afghanistan, to Washington.

Saleh responded by saying that he would decide whether to travel to Washington after consulting with other political leaders.

Burchett said that inviting anti-Taliban politicians is an individual invitation and not a congressional one. He asked the US State Department to cooperate in issuing visas for Massoud. The US secretary of state did not make a specific commitment to the request at a congressional hearing, saying that he would "follow up with Burchet's office”.

Burchett did not say when he would invite Massoud and other Afghan political leaders to Washington. He told Afghanistan International that the issue is in its early stages and will provide more information to the media later.

The 40th meeting of the Afghanistan Working Group within the framework of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) was held in Moscow on Wednesday, December 11.

According to a statement from the Kazakh Foreign Ministry, the meeting was attended by representatives of the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Commonwealth of Independent States and other international organisations.

In the past three years, the organisation has always expressed concern about the activities of terrorist groups in Afghanistan, including ISIS, as well as the infiltration of extremists from Afghanistan into the territory of member states.

The Taliban has consistently denied the presence of terrorist groups in Afghanistan and have said that ISIS is not active in Afghanistan and cannot pose a threat to other countries.

However, ISIS continues to claim responsibility for deadly attacks in Afghanistan. In one of the most recent cases, ISIS-K claimed responsibility for an attack on Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani, the Taliban's minister of refugees. The Taliban minister was killed in a suicide attack on Wednesday, December 11.

The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice announced on Thursday that the ministry's ombudsman met with media representatives in Kabul and asked them to refrain from broadcasting music.

Previously, the Taliban had banned media outlets from broadcasting music in other provinces.

This action came as the group forced all media outlets to call the assassination of the Taliban's Minister of Refugees a "martyrdom”.

"The ombudsman of the Kabul Municipal Department, in corrective meetings with some officials of print and audio media, asked them to refrain from broadcasting music and any content that contradicts Islamic rulings and Afghan culture," the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue said on Thursday, December 12.

The Taliban had previously banned the media from broadcasting music and entertainment programmes in Khost and several other provinces.

The ban on music broadcasting in Kabul media came as Khalil-ur-Rehman Haqqani, the Taliban's Minister of Refugee Affairs, was killed in a suicide attack on Wednesday (December 11) and the Taliban's intelligence agency forced the media outlets to use the word "martyr" when publishing news related to the incident.

Previously, the Taliban's Ministry of Promotion of Virtue had banned Afghan media outlets from publishing images of living creatures in television programmes.

Since the Taliban came to power, the group has imposed many restrictions on the media and has severely restricted their freedom by issuing various decrees.

Recently, the Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice announced that it had shut down Arezoo TV in Kabul for "protecting Islamic values".

The reason for the cancellation of their activities was cited as non-compliance with academic principles and the lack of administrative staff "in accordance with principles”.

The Taliban has also accused these educational centres of having "fictitious teachers”.

The Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education announced in a press release on Wednesday, December 11, that the activities of these educational institutions had been cancelled during a meeting of the ministry's leadership council.

The ministry did not explain which “scientific principles” the employees of these centres violated. Previously, the Taliban had asked teachers and employees of educational centres to adjust their beards, hair, and clothing according to the wishes of the group’s rules.

According to this press release, the activities of the educational institution Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi in Ghazni, Abu Nasr in Farah, Hanzalah and Hekmat in Badghis, Fajristan in Takhar, Nimr in Kunduz, Royan and Quds in Baghlan, Sadat in Balkh, Maulana Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi in Samangan, and Al-Ghayyat in Herat have been cancelled.

Problems with exams and the lack of necessary teaching facilities are other reasons that the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education has put forward as justification for cancelling the activities of these educational institutions.

The Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education's press release states, "It was also decided that the officials and leaders of these institutions will be introduced to the judicial institutions."