Afghan women protest Taliban’s all-male government, face violent crackdown

Afghan women took to the streets of Kabul to protest for the second day in a row, angered by the formation of a rigid Taliban government and posing an unfamiliar challenge to a movement that has never faced peaceful demonstrations.

While officials from the Taliban’s newly restored Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan say they support freedom of speech and media, Taliban fighters used violence to disperse Wednesday’s protests. They also detained and beat several Afghan journalists who covered the events and tried to force foreign journalists to remove footage from their cameras and phones.

The new administration, announced Tuesday night, is composed only of men and does not include anyone who was not in leadership positions during the 20-year rebellion. It promised to establish strict Islamic rule, curbing many of the social freedoms that Afghans enjoyed in Kabul and other large cities.

“Their government does not count us as citizens of this country, even though we are half the population. We don’t care if they beat us or even shoot us, we want to defend our rights,” said a woman protesting Wednesday morning in the Karta Char neighborhood of western Kabul. Will continue the protest.” He said Taliban fighters called in American women agents and reprimanded them for not being true Muslims.

The Taliban, which conquered Kabul on August 15, faced no significant armed opposition after capturing the capital of the only holdout province, Panjshir, on Monday. The unrest in Kabul and some other large cities represents a threat of a different kind, especially as Afghanistan’s economic crisis deepens.

Seeking international recognition and the resumption of foreign aid, the Taliban are trying to calibrate their response: they aim to maintain control of the streets of Kabul without international condemnation. In the absence of a trained police force, that is difficult with Taliban fighters who fired in the air as they tried to disperse protesters on Tuesday, hitting foreign journalists at the windows of a hotel.

Taliban officials earlier this week termed the demonstrations as illegitimate, while Enamullah Samangani, a senior official in the newly established information ministry, said the situation had changed since the interim government took office on Wednesday.

“We were in an emergency situation. The protest happened before the right time. From now on this problem will be resolved.” He said, “We always support peaceful demonstrations and will not create problems in this regard.”

He said that a special uniformed security force would soon be deployed in Kabul to maintain order and the fighters without uniform would be removed from the capital. Some of the more violent behavior in recent times was the traditional rural areas wearing Taliban, most of them rural fighters from neighboring provinces who had limited training.

The publisher of the independent Atilatroz newspaper, Zaki Dariabi, said the Taliban, in uniform and plain clothes, interfered with journalists trying to cover up Wednesday’s protests, which erupted in several areas of Kabul. He said three of his journalists were detained in four while covering the protests, as well as two others who went to the police station for the release of their associates, he said. He said that all were released later in the day, but some had to be treated at the hospital after being badly beaten up during custody.

The Taliban’s chief spokesman “declared that they are for the freedom of the press, for the free media, but the fighters on the ground are against this order as we see it,” Mr. Dariabi said.

The new government is made up exclusively of core members of the Islamic movement, with a US-designated global terrorist, Sirajuddin Haqqani, overseeing the police and interior ministry responsible for internal security with a $5 million FBI bounty on its head.

With the exception of two Tajiks and one Uzbek, all positions went to members of the Pashtun ethnic group, Afghanistan’s largest. Women and members of the Shia Hazara community, which constitutes about a fifth of the population, were not represented at all.

The make-up of the government defied the Taliban’s promises to create an inclusive administration to reflect Afghan society. The European Union’s envoy to Afghanistan, Andreas von Brandt, tweeted on Wednesday: “Diversity has room for improvement, take it lightly.” US officials have also expressed concerns about the lack of record and inclusion of members of the new government. .

China took a different tone. “The formation of the government has ended more than three weeks of chaos in Afghanistan and is a necessary step towards the restoration of Afghanistan’s order and post-war reconstruction,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a briefing on Wednesday. step.”

Unlike the US, other Western countries and India, China kept its embassy in Kabul operational after the withdrawal of US forces along with Russia, Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar on 30 August. However, no country has formally recognized the newly restored Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Its previous incarnation was superseded by the US invasion after September 11, 2001, which Osama bin Laden conspired on Afghan soil.

Mr. Samangani said that no opening ceremony was being planned for the new administration of Afghanistan. “It was very important to declare the cabinet as people were confused,” he said. “There are no plans to celebrate. This is a temporary, acting and changing cabinet.”

Now that the Islamic Emirate has a government, it will soon appoint new ambassadors and try to open diplomatic missions around the world, Mr. Samangani said.

“We want to have good relations with the whole world. We want the West to join us as well. We don’t just want to have relations with Russia and China.” Will recognize you soon.