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When the Taliban marched into Kabul on August 15, 2021, marking the end of forty years of conflict, I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, I thought, the bloodshed has ended. With the entire country now decisively in the hands of one central power for the first time since that brief period in the early 2000s, the international community would be in a position to support the new authorities in providing stable governance for the people of Afghanistan.

But that didnt happen. Instead, Western militaries immediately airlifted the vast majority of Kabuls middle class out of the countryless a brain drain than a cerebral durchfalland deprived Afghanistan of vital economic stakeholders. The situation was compounded by the wholesale shuttering of Western embassies which sent a strong message to the Taliban that the international community (and here I refer primarily to Western governments, as a number of international aid organizations remained in the country) was turning its back on Afghanistan once again. The World Bank immediately cut its funding to the healthcare sector, which rapidly began to collapse, and it was left to international aid agencies to fill the void, supporting hospitals and paying salaries to medical staff. As a final farewell, the United States slammed further sanctions on the Taliban and seized $10 billion of Afghanistans assets.

The tone for diplomatic interaction between the international community and the new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was set.

There has been much debate in recent years over whether the Taliban have really changed. A new term has emerged: Taliban 2.0, representing a kinder, more moderate face to the world. Many Afghans rejected this concept, claiming that the idea that the Taliban had changed was no more than dangerous propaganda. The simple fact is, however, that the Taliban have changed.

In the 1990s, the Taliban banned cameras, music, and televisions. Women were forced to wear the chadari (burqa) and men were compelled to grow long beards and wear turbans. Female education was banned. Criminals were punished according to the Islamic hudood, through amputations of limbs and public executions. The Taliban of 2021 arrived in Kabul with its foot soldiers taking selfies in amusement parks. While a recent edict imposed Islamic hijab on women, it stopped short of mandating the chadari (though, notably, several international media outlets erroneously reported otherwise). Men do not have to grow beards or wear turbans. And although the majority of girls secondary schools are closed, some in the north are open and primary schools and universities are open for female attendance throughout the country. The hudood has not been reintroduced.

In the 1990s, the Taliban was essentially an ethnic Pashtun phenomenon. In 1999, the Taliban massacred the ethnic Hazaras in their heartland of Bamyan. In 2021, however, the Taliban government includes an ethnic Uzbek, Abdul Salam Hanafi, as deputy prime minister. The chief of staff of the armed forces, Qari Fasihuddin, is an ethnic Tajik. Though no Hazara holds high office, a deputy health minister, Muhammad Hassan Ghyasi, is a Hazara, and there are Hazara Taliban on duty in Bamyan.

This is all evidence of a change in the Taliban. Small as these changes may be, they are significant and demonstrateabove all elsethat the Talibans ideology can adapt and evolve. Taliban 2.0 is real.

However, there seems to be a determination in the West to dismiss all of these changes and portray them as nothing more than cosmetic. Composed solely of Taliban, the government is hardly inclusive; the issue of secondary schooling for girls remains unresolved; and the edict on female dress caused international uproar hugely disproportionate to its effect on the ground, where Afghan women already comply with Islamic dress codes on a daily basis.

There is a fundamental problem in the interaction between the international community and the Taliban, amounting to a dialogue de sourdsa dialogue of the deaf. The international community makes demands of the Taliban: inclusive government; respect for womens rights; and the full reopening of girls schools. The Taliban makes requests of the international community: recognition of the Islamic Emirate; official diplomatic relations; and a seat at the United Nations (UN). The Taliban have banned the cultivation of opium poppy whichbearing in mind that 90 percent of the worlds heroin originates in Afghanistanshould be an internationally welcomed move. The policy was greeted by cynicism in the West. Neither party is getting what it wants.

More critically, the failure of what might be termed the internationalized wing of the Talibanpersonified by characters such as the former political leader Mullah Baradar and current Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqito gain any concessions from the West whatsoever is in serious danger of undermining their position. While Taliban 2.0 is real, Taliban 1.0 never went away. The former minister of justice, the one-eyed and one-legged Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, responsible for the enforcement of the hudood during the 1990s, has not been given a seat in the government, despite leading various Taliban commissions throughout the past two decades. Instead, he has been sidelined to the distinctly tame position of vice president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society. Turabi is just one of many waiting in the wings for a position more commensurate with his commitment and experience.

It is an open secret that the Taliban is a conglomerate of different factions and fault lines run horizontally and vertically through the movement. In simple terms, it is ideologically divided between Taliban 1.0 and Taliban 2.0, a fact picked up by the UN 1988 Taliban sanctions committee in its latest report. This largely accounts for the reversal of the decision in March to reopen girls secondary schools. I was personally wrong-footed when I read that the schools were to reopen since I could not see that the Taliban had gained anything from the West in order to predicate such a move. I even began to wonder if my understanding of the Taliban was fundamentally flawed. It was therefore more logical when, given the outraged shock of the international community, the decision was reversed.

The West is placing heavy emphasis on the importance of womens rights and girls education. These issues are used as a stick to beat the Taliban at (seemingly) every meeting they have with international diplomats. The continued emphasis on these two points inflates their importance on the negotiating table. To the Taliban, these issues appear to be High-Value Items for the international community, to be bargained carefully and only in exchange for High-Value Items the Taliban themselves desire. On more than one occasion, international diplomats have accused the Taliban of untrustworthiness and reneging on commitments. The implication is that while the West negotiates in good faith, the Taliban have a hidden agenda. The problem is that the Taliban think the same of the international community. It is no secret that the West would like the Taliban to change and much of the debate around the existence or otherwise of Taliban 2.0 revolves around the limited change that has been seen in the Talibans ideology. But how can the Taliban negotiate with a party whose explicit agenda is to change the nature of their rule? There is a Pashto proverb: Beating a donkey does not make it into a horse. Having fought for twenty years to regain power and once again assert their rule, the Taliban view the international communitys approach as an attempt to transform their stallion into a mule.

By placing such high value on certain issues, the Taliban suspect that the international community has a hidden agenda and that the veil (no pun intended) of womens rights is a Trojan horse for nefarious political intentions. The Taliban fear being outwitted by the very adversary they believe they defeated on the battlefield. There is, therefore, an appalling lack of trust between the parties. Negotiations devoid of any trust are unlikely to succeed.

Through continued and public berating and denunciation of the Taliban, the international community is undermining the very people it needs to empower: the Mullah Baradars and Amir Khan Muttaqis of Taliban 2.0. The unintended consequence of this is, equally, to empower the conservative hardliners of Taliban 1.0. Ultimately, one has to ask: is this the best the international community can do?

Having failed to effect real change for Afghans as a whole, Western governments tend to lapse back into their comfortable rhetoric by claiming that the Taliban havent changed, while maintaining blissful ignorance of their own role in bringing about that self-fulfilling prophecy. When I left Afghanistan in December 2021, I tweeted If you extend a hand to the Taliban, they will meet you half way. If you pressure them, their position will harden. I added that the window of opportunity is closing fast for the international community to effect positive change in the country.

Two weeks ago, the Taliban announced a new national budgetthe first in two decades funded solely by Afghanistan itself. Previous governments relied on international aid for up to 70 percent of the national budget, a vast amount of which notoriously ended up in the mansions and penthouses of Dubai. The ability of Afghanistan to fund itself should be applauded. Instead, the international community denounced the abolishing of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, without considering that Afghanistan, deprived of international aid and with a population on the verge of starvation, cannot afford to sustain the human rights body.

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The West Is Getting Afghanistan Wrong, Again - The National Interest Online

An image is being shared on social media claiming it is a picture of a burqa-clad Qatari news anchor who was expressing her concern over religious freedom in India. This post mentioned the news anchors name as Fatima Sheikh. Lets verify the claim made in the post.

Claim: Photo of a burqa-clad Qatari news anchor expressing concern over religious freedom in India.

Fact: The photo shared in the post shows a picture of Khatereh Ahmadi, an Afghanistan TV anchor working at the TOLO News channel in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Taliban government in Afghanistan had enforced an order mandating all-female TV news anchors in the country to cover their faces while on-air. Following the Taliban orders, on 22 May 2022, Khatereh Ahmadi was seen covering her face while reading the news on the TOLOnews. The image does not show a Qatari news anchor. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.

On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, the same photo was found published by the Associated Press news agency on 22 May 2022. The description of the photo states, TV anchor Khatereh Ahmadi bows her head while wearing a face covering as she reads the news on TOLO NEWS, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 22, 2022.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan enforced an order mandating all-female TV news anchors in the country to cover their faces while on-air. Following the Taliban orders, on 22 May 2022, Khatereh Ahmadi was seen covering her face while reading the news on the TOLOnews. Reporting the same, several other news websites have also published articles. A few of them can be seen here and here.

On 09 June 2022, a Twitter user named Advisor Zaidu had tweeted this photo with a similar claim that was made in the post. In the bio section of this Twitter handle, it is stated that all the tweets made from the Twitter handle are fake and any resemblance to any person dead or alive is purely coincidental. The photo shared in the post does not show a journalist in Qatar.

To sum it up, an Afghanistan journalists photo is shared as picture of burqa-clad Qatari news anchor expressing her concern over religious freedom in India.

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Afghanistan journalist's photo shared as burqa-clad Qatari news anchor expressing concern over religious freedom in India - Factly

Barely seven months into his administration, President Joe Biden stood at a lectern before cameras and journalists, defending what appeared to be one of the most chaotic foreign policy decisions in decades.

Remember why we went to Afghanistan in the first place? Biden said on August 31, 2021, a day after the final U.S. troops departed Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Because we were attacked by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, and they were based in Afghanistan. We delivered justice to bin Laden on May 2, 2011over a decade ago. Al-Qaeda was decimated. We succeeded in what we set out to do in Afghanistan over a decade ago.

While the speed of the Afghan governments collapse had taken the U.S. by surprise, the president conceded, its rout had been the fault of the inept and unmotivated Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Though the Taliban, the same group offering refuge to al-Qaeda operatives, had retaken the country, the terror threat emanating from Afghanistan had been sufficiently degraded and could be managed from abroad, Biden argued.

The administrations hasty pullout was never popular with wide swaths of Americans, but two new investigations by U.S. government watchdogs call both of Bidens rationalizations into question.

On Tuesday, the Defense Department (DOD) inspector generals office released an 86-page report detailing the challenges the U.S. faces in conducting remote counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. Despite the persistent threat posed by jihadist fighters seeking to use Afghanistan as a staging ground for global attacks, including al-Qaeda, the U.S. military has not conducted a single strike against terrorism targets since Augusts withdrawal.

On Wednesday, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR)an oversight agency tasked with compiling periodic, congressionally mandated auditsdetermined that the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan had been the single most important factor in the Afghan forces collapse. From the Trump administrations February 2020 deal with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, to Bidens final reduction in forces, the U.S. retreat dashed morale and endedlargely without warningcritical air and maintenance support.

Neither of the reports conclusions came as much of a surprise to Afghanistan watchers, who have long warned about the limitations of continued U.S. influence in the countrys security environment post-withdrawal.

The Biden administrations new reliance on over-the-horizon military and surveillance missions, for example, has been plagued with intelligence limitations and logistical issues. According to the Pentagon watchdogs assessment, an unmanned aircraft carrying out such an operation spends roughly two-thirds of its available flight time just getting from the launch point in Qatar to Afghanistan and back. The remote counterterrorism effortknown as Operation Enduring Sentinelis expected to cost $19.5 billion in 2022 alone. Given the missions surveillance and kinetic limitations, the return on investment is unclear.

Testifying before Congress in February, then-Lt. Gen. Michael KurillaBidens pick for CENTCOM commanderdescribed the strategy as extremely difficult, but not impossible. Kurilla, who in his role oversees all U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia,signaled his willingness to share intelligence with the Taliban on a case-by-case basis.

The DOD audit also outlined the renewed sense of impunity among extremist groups based in Afghanistan, listing the local branch of the Islamic State as the countrys top terrorist threat. As it swept through Afghanistan last year, the Talibans release of an estimated 1,000 Islamic State fighters from prisons reportedly brought the groups ranks up to around 2,000. The Islamic State claimed to have carried out more than 40 attacks in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan between January and March of this year, and retains a desire to attack the U.S. homeland, per the watchdogs report.

But some experts think that the governments fixation on the Islamic State in Afghanistan misses the larger, more pressing threat: al-Qaeda, which remains closely aligned with the Taliban.

The Islamic State is isolated in Afghanistan. They dont control territory, they dont have state sponsors, they dont have allies in the region, they dont play well with others, they have limited numbers, Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of its Long War Journal, told The Dispatch. The Taliban control the whole country. They have $7.1 billion in U.S. weaponry. They have their Islamic Emiratethey have a propaganda victory there, both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda played a role in that takeover and they have safe haven again.

According to the Defense Department watchdogs report, al-Qaeda has largely refrained from large-scale attacks this year to spare the Taliban international backlash, but is unlikely to halt operations for long: [CENTCOM] assessed that the Taliban will likely loosen these restrictions over the next 12 to 24 months, allowing al-Qaeda greater freedom of movement and the ability to train, travel, and potentially re-establish an external operations capability.

This on-the-ground reality violates the Trump-era Doha Agreement, which required the Taliban to relinquish ties to its longtime partners in al-Qaeda. But, as experts warned at the time of its finalization, the conditions-based deal largely lacked the enforcement mechanisms necessary to ensure that the Taliban held up its end of the bargain.

In its latest report, SIGAR detailed another major shortcoming of the agreement: Washingtons perceived abandonment of the Afghan government, military, and people writ large. Many Afghans thought the U.S.-Taliban agreement was an act of bad faith and a signal that the U.S. was handing over Afghanistan to the enemy as it rushed to exit the country; its immediate effect was a dramatic loss in ANDSF morale, the watchdog found.

Secrecy surrounding the deals contents further contributed to the sense of U.S. retreat. SIGAR concluded that it likely contained secret written and verbal agreements, though the provisions were withheld from the oversight group during its investigation.

There were certain stipulations that we have been told that may have been included in that agreement, in which the Afghans were not provided access to at any time, a U.S. government official with special knowledge of the report said in an interview with The Dispatch. The Taliban, at the tactical level, exploited that kind of gray area to their advantage by communicatingcorrectly or incorrectlyto the Afghan security forces: The Americans are not going to help And its just better for you to surrender now.

Experts and ex-Afghan government officials agree. The moment the United States opened talks with the Taliban, it telegraphed to the average Afghan villager that we are about to leave your country and abandon it, and the guys who are going to be in charge are the ones we are talking to, Husain Haqqani, former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. and current director for South & Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, told The Dispatch. That had a psychological effect that nobody had anticipated.

The very act of negotiating with the Taliban signaled to the people of Afghanistan, as well as people within the Afghan government, that the United States was reconciled to a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the future, Haqqani added. People could not understand why the withdrawal had to be negotiated with the Taliban. After all, the U.S. government also withdrew from Iraq, and that withdrawal was negotiated with the Iraqi government, not with ISIS.

According to Naheed Farida former member of Afghanistans parliamentthe deal endowed the Taliban with a sense of pride, a sense of confidence.

The U.S. could have played a much more constructive role in the peace process by not sidelining Afghanistans government, she told The Dispatch in an interview last year. Afghanistans government tried to play a role, but unfortunately because the U.S. already signed a deal with the Taliban, Afghanistans government did not have any choice.

At the same time that the State Department finalized the deal, the U.S. military dramatically reduced its airstrikes on Taliban targets from nearly 7,500 in 2019 to less than 1,600 in 2020, crippling the ANDSFs battlefield advantage. It also began to pull out American contractors filling crucial maintenance roles, reducing the number of usable aircraft available to the Afghan Air Force to conduct strikes themselves. According to the U.S. government official, Afghan maintenance workers were forced to hold Zoom calls with American contractors abroad.

We built that army to run on contractor support, retired Gen. David Barno said in an interview with SIGAR. Without it, it cant function. Game over When the contractors pulled out, it was like we pulled all the sticks out of the Jenga pile and expected it to stay up.

Ultimately, experts argue, negotiating and cooperating with the Taliban while expecting it to change its behavior proved to be a major miscalculation of both the Trump and Biden administrations.

They convinced themselves that the Taliban was a partner in peacethat it would have an inclusive government, would be an effective counter-terrorism partner, that it would respect womens rights, Roggio said. All of that was a lie, but that was the lie they needed to tell themselves in order to withdraw from Afghanistan.

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Pinpointing What Went Wrong in the Collapse of Afghanistan - The Dispatch

A crisis relief charity is being drafted in to ease the suffering of lorry drivers in post-Brexit queues. RE:ACT Disaster Response usually respond to help after earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.

The charity also works in war-torn Afghanistan and Ukraine. Now it has signed a deal with Kent County Council to help with the gridlock at the Port of Dover.

Drivers have been stuck in extremely long queues, often waiting for several hours because of the mountain of red tape post-Brexit. Truckers have been left without access to toilets, food or drink on the M20 and M2, The Independent reports.

READ MORE:Driver stopped on M20 with doors open and two sofas rammed inside

KCC has signed a 158,000 six-month contract with RE:ACT, which was set up by a former army commander. A Kent County Council (KCC) spokesperson said: Kent is a key gateway to Europe and a county with many tourist attractions so our roads can get very busy.

As a responsible local authority and key member of the Kent Resilience Forum (KRF) we have long had plans in place for delivering aid to drivers caught in significant disruption, where it is safe and practical to do so.

To do this we routinely work with organisations experienced at working in emergency situations, and on live motorways, including South East 4x4, British Red Cross, Kent Search and Rescue and the Coastguard and most recently RE:ACT.

A spokesperson for the charity said it would help in the rare times traffic is held so long the occupants need additional food and water.

The Road Haulage Association has raised concerns that it will be "dangerous" to approach traffic while it is slow-moving.

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Crisis charity called in to help post-Brexit lorry queues - Kent Live

Taliban's senior leader Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai came out in support of women's education rights and said that it is the responsibility of the government to provide a safe education to them in the country.

Addressing a gathering to mark the death anniversary of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a former Islamic Emirate leader, Stanikzai said that women should be provided with their rights based on Afghan culture and Islamic values, Tolo News reported.

"Women can't even ask for their inheritance. They are deprived of the right to education. Where will women learn Shariah's lessons? Women make up half of Afghanistan's population," he said.

Stanikzai was critical of the small budget for development in economic sectors and also said that due to the economic challenges, people were forced to leave the country.

"We don't have a chair in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), we don't have a chair in the United Nations and we don't have a political office in Europe," he said.

Speaking at the same gathering, another Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Yaqub criticized the economic sanctions on Afghanistan, reported Tolo News.

"They imposed economic sanctions on Afghanistan and made a plot against us in Afghanistan," he said.

The Taliban's decision to ban female students above grade six from going to school has drawn widespread criticism at the national and international levels.

Further, the Taliban regime which took over Kabul in August last year has curtailed women's rights and freedoms, with women largely excluded from the workforce due to the economic crisis and restrictions.

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Taliban leader says women must have their rights based on Islamic values - Hindustan Times