Live updates Afghanistan to be ruled under sharia law Taliban commander says

A senior Taliban commander has said that Afghanistan will probably be governed by sharia law now that the group is back in power. In an interview with Reuters, the commander ruled out democracy and instead outlined a system that bears striking similarities to the Taliban’s previous rule.

Waheedullah Hashimi, who Reuters says has access to the group’s decision-making, said in the interview Wednesday that a governing council may rule the country and that the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, will also probably remain in charge.

“There will be no democratic system at all because it does not have any base in our country,” Hashimi said. “We will not discuss what type of political system should we apply in Afghanistan because it is clear. It is sharia law, and that is it.”

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President Biden said in an interview with ABC News that U.S. troops will stay in Afghanistan beyond Aug. 31 if necessary to evacuate any remaining Americans who wish to leave the country.

Twelve people have been killed in and around Kabul airport since the Taliban took control of the capital on Sunday, NATO and Taliban officials said. U.S. forces have evacuated more than 5,000 people so far, with an additional 2,000 Afghans relocated to the United States as special immigrants.

The Taliban now rules a country in economic crisis. The United Nations’ food agency says millions in Afghanistan face severe hunger amid an extreme drought, the country’s overseas funds are frozen, many fearful residents are staying home from work, and numerous aid agencies have suspended activities because of the security situation.

Afghan reporter makes heartfelt plea during exchange with NATO chief: ‘Please don’t recognize the Taliban’Link copied

During a news conference with NATO’s top leader on Tuesday, Afghan journalist Lailuma Sadid broke down in tears.

She questioned NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg about the coalition’s rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years, which allowed the Taliban to seize control of the country in a matter of days.

“Thousands of women already don’t know … what is going on and what should happen for them, and they are always asking, ‘What does it mean?’ ” she said in impassioned comments that were also posed as questions. After 20 years, she added, “we are going back [to Taliban rule] again?”

Appearing to sympathize, Stoltenberg told Sadid it was an “extremely difficult” decision to make.

“And it was difficult because I share your pain, I understand your frustration,” he said.

Sadid pleaded with Stoltenberg: “Please don’t recognize the Taliban and don’t put us again in the same situation.”

Pentagon defends against accusations it wasn’t ready for Kabul’s fallLink copied

The Pentagon’s top leaders on Wednesday sought to defend the military’s planning ahead of a Taliban assault that led to the fall of Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government, saying they are focused for now on securing the Kabul airport and evacuating all American citizens and as many Afghan allies “as possible.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared the airport “secure” and said evacuation flights were ongoing, but they repeatedly declined to address what will be done for Americans who cannot reach the airport safely. They were even more evasive on the question of how they planned to aid Afghan allies whom the United States had pledged to evacuate, but who were being stopped at Taliban checkpoints.

Communities in U.S., Britain prepare to welcome fleeing AfghansLink copied

LONDON â€" As governments around the world outlined plans to take in those fleeing Taliban-held Afghanistan, some communities began preparing to warmly welcome Afghans. Some sifted through donated clothes, while others created signs that said: Refugees welcome.

In Britain, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a program that will allow 20,000 Afghans to settle over five years, charities received donations of toys, shoes and toiletries along with thousands of pounds in funds.

“This morning we’ve had 200 bags of donations,” Sally Depee, who runs a children’s charity in England’s Peak District, told the Guardian newspaper. She had appealed for help on social media and was inundated with supplies from locals eager to contribute, she said.

“They are somebody’s daughter; they are somebody’s son,” Depee said, explaining her belief that small gestures of goodwill could go a long way.

In the United States, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) wrote a letter to President Biden offering assistance to those seeking safety on American soil.

“Utah was settled by refugees fleeing religious persecution. We understand the pain caused by forced migration and appreciate the contributions of refugees in our communities,” the letter read. “Please advise us in the coming days and weeks how we can assist.”

People in other states also moved to help Afghans resettle, with Refugee Services of Texas saying it was preparing to accommodate more than 300 Afghans. The nonprofit asked for support from the community.

“We have an obligation as Americans to support those who gave everything to help our nation,” the group said in a statement released earlier this week.

Afghanistan’s robotics team broke barriers. Now, it’s desperate to escape the Taliban. Link copied

Four years ago, they touched down at Dulles International Airport, met with bouquets and placards. Six members of the “Afghan Dreamers,” an all-girl robotics team, went to Washington to demonstrate their talents and creativity at an international competition. Now, amid the rapid advance of the Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan government, the team is trying to escape.

“There’s a lot of people who are really scared, a lot of girls who are really scared,” said Kimberly Motley, an international human rights attorney who is trying to help the crew, formally known as the Afghan Girls Robotics Team.

Under Taliban control, women and girls have faced repression of education and expression in Afghanistan.

Trump’s pledge to pull out of Afghanistan was a ‘play,’ says his last defense secretaryLink copied

President Donald Trump didn’t intend to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, according to his former acting defense secretary.

Christopher C. Miller told Defense One that Trump’s promise to pull out troops by May 1 was a “play.” Instead, the administration purportedly intended to convince Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to resign or accept a power-sharing deal with the Taliban. The United States would also have kept a counterterrorism presence in the country, he said.

Miller said that war games he oversaw in 2019 while serving as a top counterterrorism official suggested the United States could conduct such missions with just 800 military personnel in the country. At least one other former senior Trump administration official questioned Miller’s version of events, Defense One reported.

Another Trump defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, has blamed both President Biden and Trump for the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan.

During an interview with CNN late Tuesday, Esper faulted Biden for the chaotic execution of the U.S. withdrawal. Biden could have postponed the Sept. 11 deadline he had set for the pullout of all American forces, or pressured the Taliban to better adhere to a pact that obliged the militants to pursue peace talks with the U.S.-backed Afghan government, Esper said.

Esper also said Trump’s attempts to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan helped embolden the Taliban.

In an abrupt tweet in October 2020, Trump expressed hope for bringing back by Christmas the 5,000 or so American troops in Afghanistan at the time. The announcement â€" made a month before he was voted out of office â€" drew criticism from Esper and senior military officers. They feared that such a move would precipitate the events unfolding now.

Esper was fired shortly after the November election, and Miller, who replaced him, announced a drawdown of American forces that cut the troop level to 2,500 by mid-January.

Key updateAfghanistan under the Taliban could look much like the last timeLink copied

Afghanistan is likely to be run by the Taliban under a comparable system to the last time the Islamist militant group was in power, with a senior commander ruling out a democracy and saying that Islamic scholars will decide on the rights of women.

Waheedullah Hashimi, a high-ranking Taliban commander, told Reuters that the country would probably be governed by a council of the group’s leaders. The Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, is likely to remain in charge, above the head of the council, whose role he likened to a president.

“There will be no democratic system at all because it does not have any base in our country,” Hashimi said. “We will not discuss what type of political system should we apply in Afghanistan because it is clear. It is sharia law, and that is it.”

The last time the Taliban was in power from 1996 to 2001, a council made operational decisions, with then-Supreme Leader Mohammad Omar overseeing its directives.

Hashimi, in the Reuters interview, hinted at a regime that could be as oppressive toward women as when the militants last ran Afghanistan. He said the right of women to education and work, and how they dress, would be decided by a council of Islamic scholars. It wasn’t immediately clear if this council was the same group that could be appointed to run the country.

In a news conference earlier this week, a Taliban spokesman pledged the militant group would refrain from retaliatory violence and respect women’s rights. But many world leaders and analysts are skeptical about whether the group will stick to those promises once international troops withdraw. Afghans are already being physically attacked at Taliban checkpoints as they attempt to make it to the Kabul airport to board evacuation flights, according to numerous reports and an eyewitness account. Women have begun retreating from public life.

“Our [scholars] will decide whether girls are allowed to go to school or not,” he said. “They will decide whether they should wear hijab, burqa, or only [a] veil plus abaya or something, or not. That is up to them.”

Aid groups warn of possible refugee crisis in Afghanistan far beyond Western evacuation plans Link copied

As the Biden administration surges more evacuation personnel to Kabul’s international airport, aid groups are warning that a much larger refugee crisis looms because of the displacement of half a million Afghans in the past eight months of fighting between the Taliban and Afghan National Army.

Analysts say the size of the refugee outflow of those and potentially tens of thousands more will depend heavily on how the Taliban governs and whether an insurgency emerges to challenge its rule, resulting in further bloodshed and displacement.

Just as millions of Afghans fled their country when the Taliban first took power in 1996, the reemergence of the militants on the streets of Kabul and other cities has already sent thousands fleeing to the closest border they can find.

Taiwan’s leader addresses the fall of Afghanistan’s governmentLink copied

Taiwan must be wary of relying too heavily on others for protection, President Tsai Ing-wen said Wednesday while addressing the Afghanistan crisis for the first time.

“The only option for Taiwan is to make itself stronger, more united and more determined to defend itself,” Tsai said in a televised speech. It is not an option for the self-governing island, which is claimed by China as its territory, to depend “on the momentary goodwill or charity” of others, she said, adding that Taiwan must “make its presence meaningful” on the international stage by upholding liberal and democratic values.

Amid scenes of chaos from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, state-backed news outlets and pundits in China have attempted to tie American policy in Afghanistan to its alliance with Taiwan. The state-run Global Times said in an editorial that U.S. “abandonment” of Afghanistan could serve as an “omen of Taiwan’s future fate,” even as experts have stressed that the two geopolitical situations are vastly different.

Beijing has recently amplified calls to seize Taiwan and “realize China’s complete reunification,” with incursions into the island’s airspace intensifying in scale and frequency.

Taiwan has had a security relationship with the United States for more than seven decades and is among America’s top trading partners. Unlike Afghanistan, it has a robust and stable government that is widely supported by its citizens and serves as a key partner to Washington in the face of rising competition with China, noted political scientist Kharis Templeman.

Canada to resume military evacuation flights, defense minister saysLink copied

TORONTO â€" Canada’s defense minister said Wednesday that Canadian Armed Forces flights to Kabul would “resume shortly” to evacuate people fleeing the Taliban, though it remained unclear how many evacuees they would carry as militants restrict access to the airport.

Harjit Sajjan said in a tweet that two CC-177 Globemasters â€" aircraft often used in humanitarian and peacekeeping missions â€" had been assigned to Canada’s evacuation efforts and would be “flying regularly” to and from the Afghan capital.

“These flights will continue as long as the security situation on the ground permits,” Sajjan said, adding that they “will focus on evacuating Canadians and Afghan nationals who have an enduring relationship with Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.”

The announcement came the same day that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau again faced questions about what critics charge is red tape hampering efforts to evacuate Afghans who supported Canada’s war effort and who are at risk of Taliban reprisals.

Trudeau defended his government’s response, saying that the “limiting factor” was not Canadian bureaucracy, but the Taliban, which he said was blocking access to Kabul airport.

“We just need people to be able to get to the airport,” Trudeau told reporters in Vancouver, B.C. “Right now, the Taliban are preventing people from doing so, which is why we’ve seen a number of the planes airlifting people out have not been full.”

Ninety-two people arrived in Canada on Tuesday, Trudeau said, adding that all of the Gurkha troops supporting Canada’s mission in Afghanistan have also been evacuated.

Canada has announced it will resettle about 20,000 Afghan refugees, including approximately 6,000 Afghans who aided Canada’s war effort. Most of them, Trudeau said, will be Afghans who have escaped to third countries, rather than people coming directly from Kabul.

Under U.S. pressure, IMF withholds hundreds of millions from Taliban-controlled AfghanistanLink copied

The International Monetary Fund will suspend a plan to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to Afghanistan after pressure from the Biden administration to withhold financial resources from the Taliban regime now in power.

The IMF had been set to provide the country with approximately $460 million in Special Drawing Rights next week, as part of a broader program to boost the finances of developing economies suffering from the coronavirus pandemic. The SDRs can be converted into different currencies.

“The IMF is guided by the views of the international community,” Gerry Rice, a spokesman for the IMF, said in a statement. “There is currently a lack of clarity within the international community regarding recognition of a government in Afghanistan.”

No governments have formal diplomatic relations with the new regime in Kabul.

The United States, whose military withdrawal helped speed up the fall of the Western-backed government in Kabul, is the largest cumulative contributor to the IMF. Washington has enough voting power that it can effectively veto major decisions.

The Biden administration is taking numerous measures to ensure that money doesn’t fall into the hands of the Taliban. Washington on Sunday froze billions of dollars worth of Afghan government reserves held in U.S. bank accounts. GOP lawmakers had been urging the administration to tighten the fiscal screws on the Taliban, citing the militant group’s history of supporting acts of terrorism against the United States.

Afghanistan is already one of the poorest countries in the world and is highly dependent on American aid that is now in jeopardy, The Washington Post has reported. The Biden administration will face difficult decisions over how to manage existing sanctions on the Taliban, which may make it difficult to deliver international humanitarian assistance to a population facing ruin, experts say.

Analysis: Democrats offer some harsh reviews of Biden on AfghanistanLink copied

President Biden on Monday detailed a defense of his administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that basically boiled down to this: Withdrawal was still the right thing to do, but it was complicated by others, including President Donald Trump and Afghans who refused to fight the Taliban or take U.S. advice.

But, increasingly, that explanation isn’t satisfying some top Democrats.

Democrats as a whole have largely hewed to the Biden administration’s key talking point â€" on the rightness of the withdrawal. But that’s not really what the current debate is about; it’s about whether a long-planned withdrawal with long-standing bipartisan support was executed appropriately. And some Democrats are speaking out about the latter issue â€" including three key Senate committee chairmen and some military veterans in the House.

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