My name is Muzhgan Samarqandi and I am from Baghlan, Afghanistan, but living in New Zealand with my Kiwi husband and our son. Like Charlotte Bellis, I too was a broadcaster in Afghanistan, back when this was possible for a woman without being a foreigner.

As a mother, my heart goes out to Charlotte, and I sincerely hope she and her partner get to New Zealand so she can give birth at home surrounded by her family.

As someone who has travelled for study and work and love, and who does not share the same passport as their significant other, my heart goes out to everyone stranded overseas, and I sincerely hope they can all get home and be reunited with their loved ones.

But as an Afghanistani woman, who has only recently emigrated from Afghanistan to New Zealand, I have to speak up.

I almost did so when Charlotte interviewed Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the Taliban spokesperson with the Kiwi accent. She went easy on him. For example, at the end of the interview, she asked what he had to say to those who called the Taliban “terrorists”.

He said people didn’t really believe they were terrorists, but this was just a word the US used for anyone who didn’t fall in line with their agenda. There were no further questions.

This was a man who claimed responsibility on behalf of the Taliban for attacks on innocent civilians. A man who has admitted to crimes against humanity. It made me so upset to see him get away with answers like that. But then my energy was taken up just coping with the reality of what was happening to my friends and family in Afghanistan.

Social media responses
But now, when I read Charlotte’s letter in the New Zealand Herald and see the media and social media responses, I see the situation in my country being trivialised, and it makes me angry.

Charlotte refers to herself asking the Taliban in a press conference what they would do for women and girls, and says she is now asking the same question of the New Zealand government.

I understand there are problems with MIQ. And I understand the value in provoking change with controversy. But what I don’t understand is how someone who has lived and worked in Afghanistan, and seen the impact of the Taliban’s regime on women and girls, can seriously compare that situation to New Zealand.

Afghanistani women who resist or protest the regime are being arrested, tortured, raped and killed. Young girls are being married off to Talibs (a member of the Taliban). Education and employment are no longer available to them.

A 19-year-old girl I know from my village, who was in her first year of law last year is now, instead, a housewife to a Talib.

There are so many stories like this.

The Taliban distort Islam
Charlotte says the Taliban have given her a safe haven when she is not welcome in her own country. This is obviously a good headline and good way to make a point. But it is an inaccurate and unhelpful representation of the situation.

One commentary on Instagram, re-posted by Charlotte, suggested her story represents the truly Muslim acts of the Taliban, which the Western media have not shown. This makes me angry.

If a person in power extends privileges to someone who doesn’t threaten their power, it doesn’t mean they are not oppressive or extremist or dangerous.

The Taliban distort Islam and manipulate Muslims for their political gain. They violate the rights of women and girls, and it is offensive to compare them to the New Zealand government in this regard.

New Zealand is no paradise, I have experienced my fair share of racism here, and I am sure the MIQ situation can be improved.

But relying on the protection of a regime that is violently oppressive, and then using that to try to shame the New Zealand government into action, is not the way to achieve that improvement.

It exploits and trivialises the situation in Afghanistan, at a time when the rights of Afghanistani women and girls desperately need to be taken seriously.

Muzhgan Samarqandi works for an international aid agency in New Zealand. Her article was first published on the TV One News website and is republished here with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says it is very disturbed by the “11 journalism rules” that the Taliban announced at a meeting with news media on September 19.

The rules that Afghan journalists will now have to implement are vaguely worded, dangerous and liable to be used to persecute them, the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog said.

Working as a journalist will now mean complying strictly with the 11 rules unveiled by Qari Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi, the interim director of the Government Media and Information Centre (GMIC).

At first blush, some of them might seem reasonable, as they include an obligation to respect “the truth” and not “distort the content of the information”, said RSF.

But in reality they were “extremely dangerous” because they opened the way to censorship and persecution.

“Decreed without any consultation with journalists, these new rules are spine-chilling because of the coercive use that can be made of them, and they bode ill for the future of journalistic independence and pluralism in Afghanistan,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

“They establish a regulatory framework based on principles and methods that contradict the practice of journalism and leave room for oppressive interpretation, instead of providing a protective framework allowing journalists — including women — to go back to work in acceptable conditions.

‘Tyranny and persecution’
“These rules open the way to tyranny and persecution.”

The first three rules, which forbid journalists to broadcast or publish stories that are “contrary to Islam,” “insult national figures” or violate “privacy,” are loosely based on Afghanistan’s existing national media law, which also incorporated a requirement to comply with international norms, including Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The absence of this requirement in the new rules opens the door to censorship and repression, because there is no indication as to who determines, or on what basis it is determined, that a comment or a report is contrary to Islam or disrespectful to a national figure.

Three of the rules tell journalists to conform to what are understood to be ethical principles:

• They must “not try to distort news content”;
• They must “respect journalistic principles”; and
• They “must ensure that their reporting is balanced”.

But the absence of reference to recognised international norms means that these rules can also be misused or interpreted arbitrarily.

Rules 7 and 8 facilitate a return to news control or even prior censorship, which has not existed in Afghanistan for the past 20 years.

‘Handled carefully’
They state that, “matters that have not been confirmed by officials at the time of broadcasting or publication should be treated with care” and that “matters that could have a negative impact on the public’s attitude or affect morale should be handled carefully when being broadcast or published”.

The danger of a return to news control or prior censorship is enhanced by the last two rules (10 and 11), which reveal that the GMIC has “designed a specific form to make it easier for media outlets and journalists to prepare their reports in accordance with the regulations,” and that from now on, media outlets must “prepare detailed reports in coordination with the GMIC”.

The nature of these “detailed reports” has yet to be revealed.

The ninth rule, requiring media outlets to “adhere to the principle of neutrality in what they disseminate” and “only publish the truth,” could be open to a wide range of interpretations and further exposes journalists to arbitrary reprisals.

Afghanistan was ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index that RSF published in April.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks prompted the US to invade Afghanistan, the Taliban announced they have taken the whole country again last week.

Journalists who remain there are at risk in spite of assurances media freedom will be respected.

Will proper journalism be possible under the Taliban? We ask a former foreign correspondent there who was once jailed by another repressive regime.

Anyone filling their lockdown downtime binge-watching the final series of US spy show Homeland might have found its fictionalised account of the US trying to get out of Afghanistan in a hurry pretty prescient.

“It’ll be Saigon all over again,” the gravelly-voiced Afghan president says as he warns the US that making peace with the Taliban will end in tears.

When the US troops left this month, it was indeed a case of “choppers at the embassy compound” once more.

And after that, getting other people out who feared the Taliban became a story all of its own.

RNZAF and NZDF forces dispatched to get out New Zealand citizens and visa holders provided the media with dramatic stories of improvised rescues.

One  exclusive in the New Zealand Herald described a grandmother in a wheelchair hauled out from the crowd via a sewage filled ditch, illustrated with NZDF images and footage.

But while the government said it got about 390 people out of the country, Scoop’s Gordon Campbell pointed out authorities here have not said how many were already New Zealand citizens — or Afghan citizens or contractors whose service put them and their family members in danger.

Afghan translator Bashir Ahmad — who worked for the NZDF in Bamiyan province and came to New Zealand subsequently — told RNZ’s Morning Report he knew of 36 more people still stuck there.

Sticking around

The end of 20 years of US occupation was witnessed by BBC’s veteran correspondent Lyse Doucet. She was also there in 1989 reporting for Canada’s CBC when the Soviet Union’s forces pulled out after its occupation that lasted almost a decade.

Back then she pondered how she would work when power changed hands to the Mujaheddin. Thirty-two years on, herself and others in Afghanistan — including New Zealander Charlotte Bellis who reports from Kabul for global channel Al Jazeera — are also wondering what the Taliban has in store for them.

The last time the Taliban were in charge — 1996 to 2001 — the media were heavily controlled and independent journalism was almost impossible.

Local and international media have flourished in Afghanistan after the US ousted the Taliban 20 years ago – but now their future is far from clear.

The Taliban have offered reassurances it will respect press freedoms. On August 21 they announced a committee including journalists would be created to “address the problems of the media in Kabul.”

But some have already reported harassment and confiscation of equipment. Five journalists from Etilaatroz, a daily newspaper in Kabul, were arrested and beaten by Taliban, the editor-in-chief said on Wednesday.

The #Taliban has arrested and badly beaten two journalists from @Etilaatroz . They journalists were covering demonstration in #Kabul. #Taliban_has_not_changed pic.twitter.com/gGZgWeXSFa

— Abdul Farid Ahmad (@FaridAhmad1919) September 8, 2021

Other local journalists got out while they could.

The day before the suicide attack outside Kabul airport the BBC’s Lyse Doucet found pioneering journalist Wahida Faizi — head of the women’s section of the Afghanistan Journalists Safety Committee — on the tarmac trying to get out. (Faizi has reportedly reached Denmark safely since then through the assistance of Copenhagen-based group  International Media Support.)

In the meantime, the Taliban have been getting to know reporters who are still there.

Charlotte Bellis told RNZ’s Sunday Morning she was sticking around to cover what happens next in Afghanistan and build relationships  with the Taliban — and even give them advice.

“I told them … if you’re going to run the country you need to build trust and you need to be transparent and authentic – and do as much media as you can to try and reassure people that they don’t need to be scared of you,” she said.

It helps that Al Jazeera is based in Qatar where the Taliban have a political office.

Earlier this month, the Taliban’s slick spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi told Charlotte Bellis they were grateful for New Zealand offering financial aid to Afghanistan.

But that money is for the UN agencies and the Red Cross and Red Crescent operations — and not an endorsement of the Taliban takeover.

That prompted the former chief of the UN Development Programme – Helen Clark – to call in to Newstalk ZB to say the media had been spun.

“They’ve cottoned on to the fact they can use social media for propaganda,” she told Newstalk ZB.

“When journalists run these stories it implies that governments are supporting the Taliban when nothing could be further from the truth,” Clark said.

How should the media deal with an outfit which turfed the recognised government out of power — and whose real intentions are not yet known?

The Taliban’s governing cabinet named last week has several hardliners — and no women.

Will reporters really be able to report under the Taliban from now on?

Peter Greste was the BBC’s correspondent in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s when the Taliban was poised to take over the first time — and he is now the UNESCO chair in journalism at the University of Queensland.

“We need to make it abundantly clear to the Taliban that they need to stick to their promises to protect journalists and media workers — and let them continue to work. The Taliban‘s words and actions don’t always align but at the very least we need to start with that,” Greste said.

“And we need to give refuge and visas to media workers who want to get out,” he said.

“Watching the way they treat journalists is going to be an important barometer of the way they plan to operate,” said Greste, who is working with the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom to monitor abuses and to create an online “Afghan media freedom tracker”.

“There’s been an obvious gap between the spokespeople who say they are prepared to let journalists operate and women continue to work — and the troubling reports of attacks by Taliban fighters on the ground, going door-to-door looking for journalists and their families,” he said.

“We need to maintain communications with them. We need to use all the tools we can to make sure we are across where all the people are. Afghanistan’s borders are like Swiss cheese. It’s not always easy to get across — but it is possible,” he said.

Peter Greste said the translators and fixers the international journalists rely on are absolutely critical to international media.

“Good translators don’t just translate the words– but help you understand the context. To simply give refuge just to the people who have their faces in their stories and names on bylines is not fair,” Greste said.

Greste was jailed for months in Egypt on trumped-up charges in 2014 along with local colleagues when the regime there decided it didn’t like their reporting for Al Jazeera.

It triggered a remarkable campaign in which rival media outlets banded together to demand their release under the slogan “Journalism is not a crime”.

Does he fear for journalists if the Taliban resort to old ways of handling the media?

Will we even know if they make life impossible for media and journalists outside the capital in the future?

“The country has mobile phone networks now it has social media networks. It is possible to find out what’s going on in those regions and it’s going to be difficult for the Taliban to uphold that mirage – if that’s what it is,” he said.

“I’m not prepared at this point to write them off as an workable and we need to acknowledge the realities of what just happened in Afghanistan,” he said.

When Greste first arrived in Afghanistan for the BBC in 1994 there was no reliable electricity supply even in the capital city — let alone local television like TOLO news.

“One of the great successes of the last decade or two has been the flowering of local media. Western organisations and donors and Afghans have understood that having a free media is one of the most important aspects of having a functioning society,” he said.

Afghans have really taken to that with real enthusiasm. The number of outlets and journalists has been phenomenal. You can’t put that genie back in his bottle without some serious consequences,” Greste told Mediawatch.

The regime in Egypt wasn’t afraid to imprison him and his colleagues back in 2014. Does he fear for international reporters like Charlotte Bellis and her colleagues?

“Al Jazeera will have a lot of security in place to make sure the operation is protected,” Greste said.

“But of course I worry for Charlotte — and also the staff at work with her. As a foreign correspondent though, I think you enjoy more protection than most other journos locally,” Greste said.

“If my name had been Mohammed and not Peter and if I’d been Egyptian and not Australian or a foreigner there wouldn’t have been anywhere near the kind of outrage and consequences for the government,” Greste said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest country by population with 270 million, has not yet determined its stance towards the Taliban leadership after seizing power in Afghanistan.

It is also the most populous Muslim country.

The Director-General for Asia Pacific and Africa at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdul Kadir Jailani, said the same attitude was also being shown by other countries.

“Why haven’t many countries taken a definitive stance, because the situation is still fluid and (the Taliban) have not yet formed a legitimate government,” said Abdul Kadir in the webinar ‘Post-Conflict Afghanistan: Fall or Rise?’ this week.

According to Jailani, Taliban officials are negotiating with a number of figures in Afghanistan in a bid to form a new government.

In addition to the formation of government, Indonesia is also still waiting for the status of the Taliban in the international community.

Jailani said a common view was needed about the status of the Taliban.

“This understanding is very important, so we can get faster information to determine our attitude towards the Taliban and its government later,” he added.

He said the Indonesian government was also careful in determining its stance because the Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan received a “quite warm” and mixed reaction from within Indonesia.

Jailani stressed that Indonesia’s definitive stance would only be conveyed when the situation in Afghanistan became clearer.

The Taliban seized control of the civilian government in Afghanistan on August 15 without any resistance. A few days ago, the Taliban claimed to have pocketed a number of names of figures who would later fill the new government.

Unlike in the 1996-2001 era, the Taliban claimed to be forming an inclusive government that involved all elements and ethnicities in Afghanistan.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

To cover up the humiliating defeat for the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, the Anglo-American media is spinning tales of a great “humanitarian” airlift to save Afghani women from assumed brutality when the Taliban consolidate their power across Afghanistan.

But, at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, last week the Chinese changed the narrative, calling for the US, UK, Australia and other NATO countries to be held accountable for alleged violations of human rights committed during the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.

“Under the banner of democracy and human rights the US and other countries carry out military interventions in other sovereign states and impose their own model on countries with vastly different history, culture and national conditions [which has] brought severe disasters to their people,” China’s ambassador in Geneva Cheng Xu told the council.

“United States, the United Kingdom and Australia must be held accountable for their violations of human rights in Afghanistan, and the resolution of this Special Session should cover this issue,” he added.

Amnesty International and a host of other civil society speakers have also called for the creation of a robust investigative mechanism that would allow for monitoring and reporting on human rights violations and abuses, including grave crimes under international law.

They have also asked for the mechanism to assist in holding those suspected of criminal responsibility to justice in fair trials.

However, they were looking at the future rather than the past.

Adopted by consensus
The UNHRC member states adopted by consensus a resolution which merely requests further reports and an update by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in March 2022.

China was extraordinarily critical of Australia in May this year when the so-called Brereton Report was released by the Australian government into a four-year investigation of possible war crimes in Afghanistan by Australian forces.

The findings revealed that some of Australia’s most elite soldiers in the SAS (Special Air Services) had been involved in unlawful killing, blood lust, a warrior culture and cover-up of their alleged atrocities.

It came as a surprise to an Australian public, which believes that Australian military engagement in Afghanistan was designed to keep the world safe from terrorists.

Today, Australians and the rest of the world are fed by a news narrative that the West saved Afghani women from the brutality of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime, and now they need to be airlifted by Western forces to save them from falling into the hands of the Taliban again.

Rather than airlifting Afghans out of the country, China’s ambassador Xu told UNHRC: “We  will continue developing a good neighbourly, friendly and cooperative relationship with Afghanistan and continue our constructive role in its process of peace and reconstruction.”

Reporting this, Yahoo Australia pointed out that Afghanistan was sitting on precious mineral deposits estimated to be worth US$1 trillion and the country also had vast supplies of iron ore, copper and gold. Is believed to be home to one of the world’s largest deposits of lithium.

The report suggested that China was eyeing these resources.

Accountability for the West
However, such suspicions should not come in the way of calling for the West to be accountable for its war crimes in Afghanistan, which have been well documented even by such organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The UNHRC has not taken up these issues so far, fearing US retaliation.

Speaking on Sri Lankan Sirasa TV’s Pathikade programme, Professor Prathiba Mahanamahewa, a former member of the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission who went to Afghanistan on a fact-finding mission on the invitation of the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission in 2014, argued that Western nations had been instrumental in creating terrorist groups around the world like the Taliban to destabilise governing systems in countries.

“At the core of the Taliban is the idea of spreading Islamic fundamentalism and they have inspired similar movements in the region; thus, it is a big threat to countries in Asia, especially in South Asia,” argued Professor Mahanamahewa.

“There are parties that pump a lot of funds to the Taliban.”

He said that in 2018, Sri Lanka (with several other countries) fought at the UNHRC to come up with a treaty to stop these financial flows to terrorist groups.

“Until today, nothing has been done,” said Professor Mahanamahewa.

Producer of opium and hashish
He added that Afghanistan was a large producer of opium and hashish, and the West was a big market for it, thus “Talibans would obviously like to have some form of relations with the West”.

In April 2019, the International Criminal Court (ICC) rejected its prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s November 2017 request to open an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity during Afghanistan’s brutal armed conflict.

Such an investigation would have investigated war crimes and brutality of both the Taliban and the US-led forces and activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The panel of judges concluded that since the countries concerned had not taken any action over the perpetrators of possible “war crimes”, ICC could not act because it was a court of last resort.

In March 2011, the Rolling Stones magazine carried a lengthy investigative report on how war crimes by US forces were covered up by the Pentagon.

After extensive interviews with members of a group within the US forces called Bravo Company, they described how they were focused on killings Afghan civilians like going to the forests to hunt animals, and how these killings of innocent villages who were sometimes working in the fields were camouflaged as a terror attack by Taliban.

The soldiers involved were not disciplined or punished and US army aggressively moved to frame the incidents as the work of a “rogue unit”. The Pentagon clamped down on information about these killings, and soldiers in the Bravo Company were barred from speaking to the media.

Documented incidents
While the US occupation continued, many human rights organisations have documented incidents like these and called for independent international investigations, which have met with lukewarm response.

Only a few were punished with light sentences that did not reflect the gravity of the crime.

After losing the elections, in November 2020 President Trump pardoned two US army officials who were accused and jailed for war crimes in Afghanistan. While some Pentagon leaders expressed concern that this action would damage military discipline, Trump tweeted “we train our boys to be killing machines, then persecute them when they kill”.

It is perhaps now time that the US indulged in some soul-searching about their culture of killing, rather than using a narrative of “saving Afghani women” to cover up barbaric killing when the US-led forces were involved in Afghanistan.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of one of India’s top think-tanks, the Centre Policy Research, argued in an Indian Express article that terrorist groups like the Taliban or ISIS were “products of modern imperial politics” that was unsettling local societies, encouraging violence, supported fundamentalism, thus breaking up state structures.

He listed 7 sins of the US Empire that contributed to the debacle in Afghanistan. These included corruption that drives war; self-deception like what happened in Vietnam and now Afghanistan; lack of morality where the empire drives lawlessness; and hypocrisy, a cult of violence and racism.

It is interesting that the Rolling Stones feature reflected the last two points in the way the Bravo Company went about picking up innocent villages for killing. But Mehta argued that “the modality of US withdrawal exuded the fundamental sin of empire. Its reinforcement of race and hierarchy”.

‘Common humanity’
He noted: “Suddenly, the pretext of common humanity, and universal liberation, which was the pretext of empire, turned into the worst kind of cultural essentialism. It is their culture, these medieval tribalists who are incapable of liberty”.

Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University, writing on the Al Jazeera website asked: “What can the Taliban do to Afghanistan that it and the US, and their European allies have already not done to it?”

He described the Doha deal between the US and the Taliban as a deal to hand Afghanistan back to the Taliban.

“As for Afghan women and girls, they are far better off fighting the fanaticism and stupidity of the Taliban on their own and not under the shadow of US military barracks,” argued Professor Dabashi.

“Iranian, Pakistani, Turkish and Arab women have been fighting similar, if not identical, patriarchal thuggery right in their neighbourhood, so will Afghan women.”

Republished under Creative Commons partnership with IDN – In-Depth News.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Publicly, the Taliban have undertaken to protect journalists and respect press freedom but the reality in Afghanistan is completely different, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The new authorities are already imposing very harsh constraints on the news media even if they are not yet official, reports RSF on its website.

The list of new obligations for journalists is getting longer by the day. Less than a week after their spokesman pledged to respect freedom of the press “because media reporting will be useful to society,” the Taliban are subjecting journalists to harassment, threats and sometimes violence.

“Officially, the new Afghan authorities have not issued any regulations, but the media and reporters are being treated in an arbitrary manner,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

“Are the Taliban already dropping their masks? We ask them to guarantee conditions for journalism worthy of the name.”

Privately-owned Afghan TV channels that are still broadcasting in the capital are now being subjected to threats on a daily basis.

Reporters branded ‘takfiri’
A producer* working for one privately-owned national channel said: “In the past week, the Taliban have beaten five of our channel’s reporters and camera operators and have called them ‘takfiri’ [tantamount to calling them ‘unbelievers’, in this context].

“They control everything we broadcast. In the field, the Taliban commanders systematically take the numbers of our reporters and tell them: ‘When you prepare this story, you will say this and say that.’

“If they say something else, they are threatened.”

Many broadcasters have been forced to suspend part of their programming because Kabul’s new masters have ordered them to respect the Sharia — Islamic law.

“Series and broadcasts about society have been stopped and instead we are just broadcasting short news bulletins and documentaries from the archives,” said a commercial TV channel representative, who has started to let his beard grow as a precaution and now wears traditional dress.

The owner of a privately-owned radio station north of Kabul confirmed that the Taliban are progressively and quickly extending their control over news coverage.

‘They began “guiding” us’
“A week ago, they told us: ‘You can work freely as long as you respect Islamic rules’ [no music and no women], but then they began ‘guiding’ us about the news that we could or could not broadcast and what they regard as ‘fair’ reporting,” said the owner, who ended up closing his radio station and going into hiding.

Two journalists working for the privately-owned TV channel Shamshad were prevented by a Taliban guard from doing a report outside the French embassy because they lacked a permit signed by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

But when they asked the guard where they should go or who they should ask for such a permit, he said, “I don’t know.”

In the past few days, the Taliban have ordered the most influential Afghan broadcast media to broadcast Taliban propaganda video and audio clips.

When media outlets object, “the Taliban say it is just publicity and they are ready to pay for it to be broadcast, and then they insist, referring to our national or Islamic duty,” a journalist said.

Incidents are meanwhile being reported in the field, and at least 10 journalists have been subjected to violence or threats while working in the streets of Kabul and Jalalabad in the past week.

The Taliban spokesman announced on Twitter on August 21 that a tripartite committee would be created to “reassure the media”. Consisting of representatives of the Cultural Commission and journalists’ associations, and a senior Kabul police officer, the committee’s official purpose will be to “address the problems of the media in Kabul.”

What will its real purpose be?

100 private media outlets suspend operations
The pressure is even greater in the provinces, far from the capital. Around 100 privately-owned local media outlets have suspended operations since the Taliban takeover.

All privately-owned Tolonews TV’s local bureaus have closed.

In Mazar-i-Sharif, the fourth largest city, journalists have been forced to stop working and the situation is very tense.

One national radio station’s terrified correspondent said: “Here in the south, I have to work all the time under threat from the Taliban, who comment on everything I do. ‘Why did you do that story? And why didn’t you ask us for our opinion?’ they say. They want comment on all the stories.”

The head of a radio station in Herat province that had many listeners before the Taliban takeover said the same.

He also reported that, at meeting with media representatives on August 17, the province’s new governor told them he was not their enemy and that they would define the new way of working together.

While all the journalists remained silent, the governor then quoted a phrase from the Sharia that that sums up Islam’s basic practices. He said: “The Sharia defines everything: ‘Command what is good, forbid what is evil.’ You just have to apply it.”

The radio station director added: “After that, most of my colleagues left the city and those of us who stayed must constantly prove that what we broadcast commands what is good and forbids what is evil.”

Foreign correspondents work ‘normally‘
Foreign correspondents still in Kabul have not yet been subjected to these dictates and are managing to work in an almost normal manner. But for how much longer?

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s Youth and Information Department issued this message to foreign journalists on August 21: “Before going into the field and recording interviews with IEA fighters and the local population, they should coordinate with the IEA or otherwise face arrest.”

“There are no clear rules at the moment and we have no idea what will happen in the future,” said a Swiss freelancer who has stayed in Kabul.

Another foreign reporter said: “The honeymoon is not yet over. We are benefitting from the fact that the Taliban are still seeking some legitimacy, and the arrival of the big international TV stations in the past few days is protecting us.

“The real problems will start when we are on our own again.”

*The anonymity of all Afghan and foreign journalists quoted in this RSF news release has been preserved at their request and for security reasons, given the climate of fear currently reigning in Afghanistan. Many of the journalists contacted by RSF said they did not want to be quoted at all, because they have no way of leaving Afghanistan.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

An International Criminal Court official in the Pacific is calling on all parties in the Afghanistan conflict to respect humanitarian law.

Thousands of foreign nationals, including Afghanis who worked for international agencies, are fleeing the conflict as Taliban forces seized control of the country.

Suicide bombers struck the crowded gates of Kabul airport with at least two explosions on Thursday, causing a bloodbath among civilians, shutting down the Western airlift of Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban regime.

The death toll from the attack is at least 175, including 13 US soldiers, according to media reports.

The attacks came amid ongoing chaos around the airport amid the American withdrawal after 20 years in the region.

Fijian lawyer Ana Tuiketei-Bolabiu has reiterated the Hague Court’s call for all parties to the hostilities to fully respect their obligations under international humanitarian law, including by ensuring the protection of civilians.

She said the ICC may exercise jurisdiction over any genocide, crime against humanity or war crime committed in Afghanistan since the country joined the court in 2003.

First woman counsel
Tuiketei-Bolabiu became the first woman counsel appointed to the Hague Court in April last year. In September, she was elected to the Defence and Membership Committee of the ICC’s Bar Association.

She told RNZ Pacific she is concerned about reports of revenge killings and persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan.

“It’s just an evolving and deteriorating situation in Afghanistan,” she said.

“The UN Security met in New York to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and what was interesting to hear from the Afghani UN ambassador Ghulam Isaczai confirming his concerns on human rights violations for girls, women and human rights defenders, and journalists, including the internally displaced people.

“He also elaborated on the fear of the Kabul residents from the house-to-house search carried out by the Taliban, registering of names and the hunt for people.

“The UN meeting also discussed safety, security, dignity and peace but also trying to protect the lives and the movement of women and children, the international community, displaced people and even the food and all the other humanitarian care that is supposed to be given to the people there.

“We’re hoping that the international human rights laws will actually be observed.”

UN chief Antonio Guterres has also called for an end to the fighting in Afghanistan.

Challenges for prosecutor
Tuiketei-Bolabiu said challenges lay ahead for the Hague Court’s new prosecutor, Karim Khan, who replaced Fatou Bensouda in June this year.

Khan inherits the long-running investigation by his predecessor into possible crimes committed in Afghanistan since 2003.

Those included alleged killings of civilians by the Taliban, as well as the alleged torture of prisoners by Afghan authorities, and by American forces and the CIA in 2003-2004.

Tuiketei-Bolabiu said the ICC only approved a formal investigation in March 2020, which prompted then US President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on Bensouda.

“In May, Afghanistan pleaded with Bensouda for a deferral of the ICC prosecution investigation, arguing that the government was already conducting its own inquiries, mostly focusing on alleged Taliban crimes,” she said.

“Under ICC rules, the court only has power to prosecute crimes committed on the territory of member states when they are unwilling or unable to do so themselves.”

It is not yet clear how the ICC will proceed with the current investigation.

Interests of justice
But Tuiketei-Bolabiu is adamant justice will prevail.

“In March last year, the ICC appeals chamber judges found that in the interest of justice investigations should proceed by the prosecution on war crimes since 2003 including armed conflicts and other serious crimes that fall within the jurisdiction of the courts and that includes the Taliban, Afghan national police, other security forces and the CIA,” she said.

“What’s interesting now is the ICC does not have a police force so it solely relies on member states for arrests and investigations. Now the political landscape in Afghanistan has extremely changed.

“The cooperation with the ICC prosecutions office to support the court’s independence will become a bigger challenge in the future.”

UN Human Rights Council meets
The UN Human Rights Council held a special session this week to address the serious human rights concerns and the situatiation in Afghanistan.

The meeting was called by the council’s Afghanistan and Pakistan members.

Discussions were centred on the appointment of a committee to investigate crimes against humanity.

Tuiketei-Bolabiu said any evidence from the human rights council would help the court’s investigations.

But Amnesty International said the UN council has failed the people of Afghanistan.

In a statement, Amnesty said the meeting neglected to establish an independent mechanism to monitor ongoing crimes under international law and human rights violations and abuses in Afghanistan.

“Such a mechanism would allow for monitoring and reporting on human rights violations and abuses, including grave crimes under international law, and to assist in holding those suspected of criminal responsibility to justice in fair trials.”

However, the calls were ignored by UNHRC member states, who adopted by consensus a weak resolution which merely requests further reports and an update by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in March 2022, which adds little to the oversight process already in place.

“The UN Human Rights Council special session has failed to deliver a credible response to the escalating human rights crisis in Afghanistan. Member states have ignored clear and consistent calls by civil society and UN actors for a robust monitoring mechanism,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general.

“Many people in Afghanistan are already at grave risk of reprisal attacks. The international community must not betray them, and must urgently increase efforts to ensure the safe evacuation of those wishing to leave,” she said.

Amnesty International said member states must now move beyond handwringing, and take meaningful action to protect those feeling the conflict in Afghanistan.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A suicide bombing near Kabul airport on Thursday added another dimension to the chaos in Afghanistan as Western forces rush to complete their evacuation.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blasts that killed at least 175 people, including 13 US soldiers, challenging the Taliban’s hold on the capital.

Either group is bad news for Afghan women and girls, and anyone with links to the former government or exiting armies.

Taliban officials are on a charm offensive in international media, with one suggesting to Newsweek the group could contribute to fighting climate change if formally recognised by other governments.

Don’t expect the Taliban to consign coal to history any time soon, though. The militant group gets a surprisingly large share of its revenue from mining — more than from the opium trade — and could scale up coal exports to pay salaries as it seeks to govern.

Afghan people could certainly use support to cope with the impacts of climate change. The UN estimates more than 10 million are at risk of hunger due to the interplay of conflict and drought.

Water scarcity
Water scarcity has compounded instability in the country for decades, arguably helping the Taliban to recruit desperate farmers.

There was not enough investment in irrigation and water management during periods of relative peace.

One adaptation tactic was to switch crops from thirsty wheat to drought-resistant opium poppies — but that brought its own problems.

The question for the international community is: who gets to represent Afghans’ climate interests?

If the Taliban is serious about climate engagement as a route to legitimacy, Cop26 will be an early test.

Megan Darby is editor of Climate Change News.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Five Fijians who are based in Afghanistan say they are safe and well.

Speaking to FBC News, one of them who is living in the capital Kabul, said they kept tabs on each other and shared information on the Taliban takeover.

They say that they will only leave Afghanistan if the situation worsens.

The Fijian national spoke under the condition of anonymity and said he and three others were in Kabul while the others were in Mazar and Khandahar.

They said the situation was calm in the the three cities.

The man said he has been out and about in Kabul conducting assessment and supporting the UN evacuation flights in the last couple of days.

He had noticed that the usual traffic congestion had decreased significantly as most people were staying home.

Every five minutes
He said there was an evacuation flight almost every five minutes. However, movement within the country was challenging at times.

One other Fijian in Kabul was expected to relocate to Almaty in Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, RNZ News reports that the first group of New Zealand citizens, their families and other visa holders evacuated arrived yesterday in New Zealand.

New Zealand lawyer Claudia Elliott has worked across Afghanistan with the United Nations and is now trying to get visas to get at risk Afghani professionals to also be evacuated to New Zealand.

She says seeing the Taliban’s takeover has been traumatising – she is worried about how those who are given visas to New Zealand will actually be able to get out of Afghanistan.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on the Taliban to immediately cease harassing and attacking journalists for their work, allow women journalists to broadcast the news, and permit the media to operate freely and independently.

Since August 15, members of the Taliban have barred at least two female journalists from their jobs at the public broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan, and have attacked at least two members of the press while they covered a protest in the eastern Nangarhar province, according to news reports and journalists who spoke with New York-based CPJ.

“Stripping public media of prominent women news presenters is an ominous sign that Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have no intention of living up their promise of respecting women’s rights, in the media or elsewhere,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia programme coordinator, in a statement.

“The Taliban should let women news anchors return to work, and allow all journalists to work safely and without interference.”

On August 15, the day the Taliban entered Kabul, members of the group arrived at Radio Television Afghanistan’s station and a male Taliban official took the place of Khadija Amin, an anchor with the network, according to news reports and Amin, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app.

When Amin returned to the station yesterday, a Taliban member who took over leadership of the station told her to “stay at home for a few more days”.

He added that the group would inform her when she could return to work, she said.

‘Regime has changed’
Taliban members also denied Shabnam Dawran, a news presenter with Radio Television Afghanistan, entry to the outlet, saying that “the regime has changed” and she should “go home”, according to news reports and Dawran, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Male employees were permitted entry into the station, but she was denied, according to those sources.

Taliban claims it will respect women’s rights, media freedom at first media conference in Kabul. Video: Al Jazeera

On August 17, a Taliban-appointed newscaster took her place and relayed statements from the group’s leadership, according to those reports.

Separately, Taliban militants yesterday beat Babrak Amirzada, a video reporter with the privately owned news agency Pajhwok Afghan News, and Mahmood Naeemi, a camera operator with the privately owned news and entertainment broadcaster Ariana News, while they covered a protest in the city of Jalalabad, in eastern Nangarhar province, according to news reports and both journalists, who spoke with CPJ via phone and messaging app.

At about 10 am, a group of Taliban militants arrived at a demonstration of people gathering in support of the Afghan national flag, which Amirzada and Naeemi were covering, and beat up protesters and fired gunshots into the air to disperse the crowd, the journalists told CPJ.

Amirzada and Naeemi said that Taliban fighters shoved them both to the ground, beat Amirzada on his head, hands, chest, feet, and legs, and hit Naeemi on his legs and feet with the bottoms of their rifles.

CPJ could not immediately determine the extent of the journalists’ injuries.

Zabihullah Mujahid did not respond
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment via messaging app.

CPJ is also investigating a report today by German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle that Taliban militants searched the home of one of the outlet’s editors in western Afghanistan, shot and killed one of their family members, and seriously injured another.

The militants were searching for the journalist, who has escaped to Germany, according to that report.

Taliban militants have also raided the homes of at least four media workers since taking power in the country earlier this week, according to CPJ reporting.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

After the fall of Kabul, the obvious question for New Zealanders is whether we should ever have joined the American war in Afghanistan. Labour and National politicians, who sent our Special Forces there, will say yes.

The Greens, who opposed the war from the start, will say no.

Back in 2001, we were the only party to vote against a parliamentary motion to send an SAS contingent to Afghanistan. As Green foreign affairs spokesperson during the first decade of the war I was often accused by Labour and National MPs of helping the Taliban.

By their reasoning you either supported the American war effort, or you were on the side of the Taliban.

To the contrary, I said, New Zealand was helping the Taliban by sending troops. It was handing the Taliban a major recruiting tool, that of Afghans fighting for their national honour against a foreign military force.

And so it has proved to be. The Taliban didn’t win because of the popularity of its repressive theocracy. Its ideology is deeply unpopular, particularly in the Afghan cities.

But what about the rampant corruption in the Afghan political system? Wasn’t that a big factor in the Taliban rise to power? Yes, but that corruption was enhanced by the presence of the Western forces and all the largess they were spreading around.

Both sides committed war crimes
Then there was the conduct of the war. Both sides committed war crimes, and it has been documented that our SAS handed over prisoners to probable torture by the Afghan National Directorate of Security.

Western air power helped the government side, but it was also counterproductive, as more innocent villagers were killed or wounded by air strikes.

In the end all the most sophisticated American warfighting gear couldn’t uproot a lightly armed insurgent force.

Taliban claims it will respect women’s rights, press freedom. Reported by New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis for Al Jazeera. Video: AJ English

There was another course America (and New Zealand) could have taken. Back in 2001 the Greens (and others in the international community) were pushing for a peaceful resolution whereby the Taliban would hand over Osama bin Laden to justice. The Taliban were not ruling that out.

But America was bent on revenge for the attack on the World Trade Centre, and quickly went to war. Ostensibly it was a war against terrorism, but Osama bin Laden quickly decamped to Pakistan, so it became simply a war to overthrow the Taliban government and then to stop it returning to power.

The war had this exclusively anti-Taliban character when New Zealand’s SAS force arrived in December 2001. The war would grind on for 20 years causing so much death and destruction for the Afghan people.

The peaceful way of putting pressure on the Taliban, which could have been adopted back in 2001, is similar to how the world community is likely to relate to the new Taliban government.

Pressure on the Taliban
That is, there will be considerable diplomatic and economic pressure on the Taliban to give Afghan people (particularly Afghan women) more freedom than it has to date. How successful this will be is yet to be determined.

It depends on the strength and unity of the international community. Even without much unity, international pressure is having some (if limited) effect on another strongly anti-women regime, namely Saudi Arabia.

The Labour and National governments that sent our SAS to Afghanistan cannot escape responsibility for the casualties and post-traumatic stress suffered by our soldiers. Their line of defence may be that they didn’t know it would turn out this way.

However, that is not a good argument when you look at the repeated failure of Western interventions in nearby Middle Eastern countries.

America has intervened militarily (or supported foreign intervention) in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, Somalia and Libya. All of these peoples are now worse off than they were before those interventions.

“Civilising missions”, spearheaded by the American military, are not the answer, and New Zealand shouldn’t get involved. We should have learnt that 50 years ago in Vietnam, but perhaps we’ll learn it now.

Former Green MP Keith Locke was the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson. He writes occasional pieces for Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

EDITOR’S NOTE: Najib Hedayat came to New Zealand as an Afghan teenage refugee, and later graduated with a master’s commerce degree at the University of Canterbury. He completed much of his postgraduate thesis in Kabul, Afghanistan.

According to special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), a unit created by the US Congress for overseeing Afghanistan’s reconstruction effort, about $US144.98 billion was channelled to Afghanistan.

This was from the US, since 2002, to fund Afghan security forces, promote good governance and engage in counter-narcotics and anti-corruption effort. However, they did not build the capacity in Afghanistan to monitor and control those funds. Because the US officials directly benefited from corruption in the system.

Divisions within the government, lack of accountability in spending vast international assistance funds, caused widespread corruption in the system.

Only the elite came from Europe and the US and the warlords, within the previous government benefited from this corruption. This created distance between the ordinary Afghans and the government, opening doors for Taliban recruitment.

What is the problem for people in Kabul/Afghanistan now?

The Taliban government has announced national amnesty but there are numerous reports that armed men enter people houses at night-time and people are taken out and being assassinated.

The Taliban have announced that all previous government employees and students can go back to their jobs and schools. Considering Taliban’s previous records, it is too early to judge if the situation will get back to normal again

What are some solutions?

There is no immediate solution, unless the international community hold Taliban accountable and make sure that pressures stay, until the Taliban show in action that they serve everyone in the country regardless of their previous affiliations, and ethnic backgrounds.

Why is the Taliban bad / good for Afghanistan?

After more than 40 years, Afghanistan might become peaceful, corruption might drop drastically as only one function with an iron fist controlling the country. However, Afghans also need democracy, diversity and freedom of speech and action. Life without freedom is meaningless.

If Taliban are involved in night-time assassinations and if they don’t stop these crimes, Afghanistan will become a doomed nation and life in the country for liberal and educated people will become impossible, as it is now.

What are some likely outcomes?

If the Taliban follow through their promise of national amnesty, provide equal rights to all ethnic groups, allow people from all walks of life to participate equally in the government, education and business then the country can head to peace.

If the promise of national amnesty remains only on microphones of national and international media and on TV screens, and these night-time assassinations continue, the country might head back to another civil war and the country will become a depressive state to live in.

What should NZ / the government / Kiwis do?

It is fantastic that the New Zealand government has announced that they are bringing to New Zealand those who have been involved in supporting New Zealand armed forces in Afghanistan. The government should extend this fantastic humanitarian gesture to those Afghans whose family members are in grave danger.

Afghan-Kiwis and our communities in New Zealand are generous people, we can help in terms of travel costs and towards their re-settlement in New Zealand.

Note: Najib Hedayat, a University of Canterbury business postgraduate, former university business lecturer and advisor to the Ministry of Public Works, Kabul, Afghanistan. He is now settled near Christchurch with his family.

His life changed in the early 1990s when the warlords broke into Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. During the factional fighting that followed many atrocities were committed and about 60,000 Kabulis were killed.

His civil service parents sent him to New Zealand, became an asylum seeker and was eventually accepted as a refugee in his new home.

“I chose to live with a Kiwi family to better understand the New Zealand culture. I learnt the New Zealand way of life and how to support myself in a country thousands of kilometres away from the protective arms of my parents,” he says.

With the help of his host family and their family lawyer he succeeded in bringing bring his parents, brother and sister to Christchurch as well.

Doing his master’s thesis in Kabul, with his wife and two young children he  became part of a movement which assisted the nation in taking on democracy.

He was advisor to the director-general and the chief executive of the Afghanistan Railway Authority and project manager of a $20 million project for the management, operation, maintenance and training of people involved in the Afghanistan rail line.

“During my stay in Kabul and in the course of my University of Canterbury research analysis I faced many problems such as no electricity. Billions of dollars of aid poured into Afghanistan but because of widespread corruption, Afghanistan still does not have good electricity generating plants.

“They import electricity from the neighbouring counties. Security was another challenge, suicide bombings and kidnappings were major worries.

“Every morning when I was leaving home, I was not sure if I would get back home alive. So, the above factors had put me under enormous mental pressure, but when I was thinking why I was in that country it was worth it.”

A View from Afar: Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan will present this week’s podcast, A View from Afar, LIVE at midday Thursday where they will analyse the crisis, the tragedy, unfolding in Afghanistan, including an apparent intelligence failure.

Unanswered questions, to be considered, include:

• Why were United States intelligence unable to predict how poised and ready the Taliban were?
• How did the Taliban prepare to take every province, every city in Afghanistan, and keep their readiness a secret while they waited for the final phase of the US-led withdrawal to begin?
• What should we make of the Taliban leadership? Should we be reassured or concerned at the Taliban’s words of transition?
• And, has United States president Joe Biden damaged his reputation beyond repair, in justifying the method of the US’s withdrawal in a speech laced with a cold indifference toward the human carnage that unfolded at Kabul airport?

WE INVITE YOU TO PARTICIPATE WHILE WE ARE LIVE WITH COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS IN THE RECORDING OF THIS PODCAST:

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

Immigration Secretary Yogesh Karan has confirmed that 13 Fijians who are currently stuck in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover last Sunday are safe and officials are working to repatriate them as soon as possible.

Karan said two worked for private contractors and the other 11 were with international organisations.

He said they had had a discussion with the Australian High Commission which gave an assurance that they would make every effort to “include our people in the evacuation flight”.

Karan said it was very difficult to contact them because Fiji did not have a mission in Afghanistan and they are trying to contact them via New Delhi.

He added Fiji was also working with UN agencies and the Indian government to get them out of there as quickly as possible.

Karan was also requesting anyone who had contacts with anyone in Afghanistan to let the ministry know so they could note their details.

NZ promises repatriation
RNZ News reports that people promised help in getting out of Afghanistan were desperate for information, saying they did not know where they should be or who to contact.

New Zealand citizens and at least 200 Afghans who helped New Zealand’s efforts in the country were expected to be repatriated.

Diamond Kazimi, a former interpreter for the NZ Defence Force in Afghanistan, who now lives in New Zealand, has been getting calls from those who helped the military and wanted to know when help is coming.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to 104 New Zealanders in Afghanistan but would not say where they were, what advice they were being given, or how they planned to make sure they were on the repatriation flight.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As the Taliban has taken control of the country, Afghanistan has again become an extremely dangerous place to be a woman.

Even before the fall of Kabul on Sunday, the situation was rapidly deteriorating, exacerbated by the planned withdrawal of all foreign military personnel and declining international aid.

In the past few weeks alone, there have been many reports of casualties and violence. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes.

The United Nations Refugee Agency says about 80 percent of those who have fled since the end of May are women and children.

What does the return of the Taliban mean for women and girls?

The history of the Taliban
The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996, enforcing harsh conditions and rules following their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Under their rule, women had to cover themselves and only leave the house in the company of a male relative. The Taliban also banned girls from attending school, and women from working outside the home. They were also banned from voting.

Women were subject to cruel punishments for disobeying these rules, including being beaten and flogged, and stoned to death if found guilty of adultery. Afghanistan had the highest maternal mortality rate in the world.

The past 20 years
With the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the situation for women and girls vastly improved, although these gains were partial and fragile.

Women now hold positions as ambassadors, ministers, governors, and police and security force members. In 2003, the new government ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which requires states to incorporate gender equality into their domestic law.

The 2004 Afghan Constitution holds that “citizens of Afghanistan, man and woman, have equal rights and duties before the law”. Meanwhile, a 2009 law was introduced to protect women from forced and under-age marriage, and violence.

According to Human Rights Watch, the law saw a rise in the reporting, investigation and, to a lesser extent, conviction, of violent crimes against women and girls.

While the country has gone from having almost no girls at school to tens of thousands at university, the progress has been slow and unstable. UNICEF reports of the 3.7 million Afghan children out of school some 60 percent are girls.

A return to dark days
Officially, Taliban leaders have said they want to grant women’s rights “according to Islam”. But this has been met with great scepticism, including by women leaders in Afghanistan.

Indeed, the Taliban has given every indication they will reimpose their repressive regime.

In July, the United Nations reported the number of women and girls killed and injured in the first six months of the year nearly doubled compared to the same period the year before.

In the areas again under Taliban control, girls have been banned from school and their freedom of movement restricted. There have also been reports of forced marriages.

Women are putting burqas back on and speak of destroying evidence of their education and life outside the home to protect themselves from the Taliban.

As one anonymous Afghan woman writes in The Guardian:

“I did not expect that we would be deprived of all our basic rights again and travel back to 20 years ago. That after 20 years of fighting for our rights and freedom, we should be hunting for burqas and hiding our identity.”

Many Afghans are angered by the return of the Taliban and what they see as their abandonment by the international community. There have been protests in the streets. Women have even taken up guns in a rare show of defiance.

But this alone will not be enough to protect women and girls.

The world looks the other way
Currently, the US and its allies are engaged in frantic rescue operations to get their citizens and staff out of Afghanistan. But what of Afghan citizens and their future?

US President Joe Biden remained largely unmoved by the Taliban’s advance and the worsening humanitarian crisis. In an August 14 statement, he said:

“an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”

And yet, the US and its allies — including Australia — went to Afghanistan 20 years ago on the premise of removing the Taliban and protecting women’s rights. However, most Afghans do not believe they have experienced peace in their lifetimes.

Now that the Taliban has reasserted complete control over the country, the achievements of the past 20 years, especially those made to protect women’s rights and equality, are at risk if the international community once again abandons Afghanistan.

Women and girls are pleading for help. We hope the world will listen.

Azadah Raz Mohammad, PhD student, The University of Melbourne and Dr Jenna Sapiano, Australia Research Council postdoctoral research associate and lecturer, Monash Gender Peace & Security Centre, Monash University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz