That morning, Tawakol’s Taliban unit arrived on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, hoping to camp there for possibly weeks, while a formal handover was negotiated. But will wait a bit. President Ashraf Ghani And many other senior officers were running away, dodging everyone.
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“That afternoon, our leadership ordered us to enter the city to stop the looting,” he said. Taliban intelligence chief Haji Najibullah asked him and his men to go to the headquarters of the Afghan spy agency, the National Directorate of Security, to secure equipment and documents. Prison cells, offices, security checkpoints – all were abandoned.
“There was no one there except a deputy director who handed over the building to us,” Tawakol said. “All the prisoners had already escaped.”
Two weeks later, the Taliban is expected to formally announce its new government early Thursday, including naming the insurgency’s top religious figure, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, as Afghanistan’s supreme leader. But there is still a significant gap between naming a government and carrying out its functions as a whole, as Tawakol and other Taliban officials have found.
In Kabul, as in most parts of the country, most important government departments are not functioning except for road-level security.
The Taliban have urged former government officials to remain in their roles, and some have. But in the face of an imminent economic crisis, including a growing cash crunch that has hit the availability of fuel, food and other staples, the Taliban have spent the past two weeks establishing themselves in the public eye and in practice. As the new governor of the country. Given the rigidity of the previous Taliban government, the majority of the Afghan public remains deeply distrustful.
Although surprised by the rapid surrender of afghan governmentThe Taliban movement has been preparing to take power for more than a decade, constantly waiting to expand its shadow government. Over the years, they have set up national commissions for areas such as health care and education, which appoint officers at the district level across the country.
Mawlawi Bakhtar Sharafat, who served as an official during the previous Taliban regime, has been in charge of things, including repair and maintenance of roads and bridges, since the establishment of the Taliban’s Public Works Commission three years ago.
On 16 August, a day after the fall of Kabul, Sharafat was in Kandahar, on his way to inspect newly acquired infrastructure in western Afghanistan. But that night, he received an urgent message from Mawlawi Muhammad Yacoub, a senior Taliban leader who currently serves as the executive authority.
In an interview with The New York Times, Sharafat said, “I was told please go to Kabul and take control of your ministry.” He was accompanied by some employees of the previous administration.
When he arrived in Kabul at the Public Works Office, whose former ministers had fled, he met with the remaining staff and assured them of agitation, along with a general apology, which was intended to inspire cooperation from civil servants, security officials and was part of the campaign. General public.
He said, ‘People should not be afraid. “We should be together.”
While most of Kabul’s elite fled the country ahead of the Taliban, some senior officials chose to remain in their positions. Afghanistan’s Public Health Minister Wahid Majrooh said he had turned down an offer to run away with Ghani.
“I stayed in the office and took risks,” he said in a recent interview. “If I leave, my directors and advisors will be gone.”
In the morning after the terrorists entered Kabul, Majrooh went to his office, where he was met by the Taliban’s provincial health commissioner in neighboring Logar province. “He was surprised to see me,” he said. “His behavior was respectful, but he didn’t have a clear message.”
Majrooh, concerned about the outbreak of violence or mass casualties, wanted to ensure that his hospital network remained open. He suggested that he and Taliban officials rally staff at two hospitals in a Hazara Shia neighborhood of western Kabul, where residents would most fear the arrival of the Taliban. “He said, ‘Great idea, let’s go!'” Majrooh recalled.
For the past two weeks, Majrooh has shared his office with Mawlawi Abdullah Khan, the head of the Taliban’s health commission, whose cooperation he credits with helping workers return to work.
“Most ministries are closed, their services are disrupted,” he said, adding that to health services, “90% of our staff are back.”
Yet the Ministry of Public Health now faces the same imminent financial crisis as the rest of the government, and Afghanistan’s bank funds and other financing by the US and Western governments are frozen. The health care sector is particularly reliant on donor support; According to Majrooh, most of the organizations he works with have already suspended operations and put contracts on hold.
“We weren’t expecting them to stop funding all of a sudden,” he said. “I get calls from hospitals that they are running out of fuel, oxygen and electricity.”
Even as the Taliban have gained control of Afghanistan’s formal institutions, their leadership has followed more traditional methods, including outreach by a powerful invitation and guidance commission led by Amir Khan Muttaki. The commission’s events included a gathering of religious scholars last week at Kabul’s Loya Jirga Hall, where the tricolor flags of the Afghan Republic are displayed on the wall behind the stage.
At the Ministry of Peace in Kabul city, Khalil Haqqani, uncle of Taliban deputy leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, has held several meetings with tribal elders, former government officials and military pilots, urging them to support the new Taliban government. Last Thursday, accompanied by guards in uniform carrying American M4 carbines, Haqqani presided over a gathering attended by former Kabul parliament member Allah Gul Mujahid, who asked the audience to cooperate with the Taliban.
Haqqani said, “Those who accept this great law, which is the Holy Quran, raise your hand.”
As the special representative of the movement’s supreme leader, Haqqani asked participants to take the Oath of Baya, an Islamic oath of allegiance. Over the past two weeks, Afghan power brokers have sworn in in his presence, including former Kandahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai and the former president’s brother Hashmat Ghani.
Taliban’s chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the new government would be established on the basis of its religious legitimacy.
“The people of Afghanistan have fought hard for 20 years to establish an Islamic order,” he said in an interview with The Times in his office in Kabul last week. “We had five elections and they were all corrupt. Each time an American minister had to come and decide the outcome. In Islam, we have the principle of Shura to represent the people.”
The Mujahid and his press team have tried to present a cooperative face to the world and to the Afghan public, which has been the harsh treatment of women and minorities during the 1990s by the previous Taliban government, as well as the insurgents against civilian targets. There is doubt after the violence. Warning.
“We have several points of common interest,” Mujahid said, listing terrorism, opium production and refugee flows as potential areas of cooperation with the West.
He said that although the Taliban would ensure strict separation between genders in schools and workplaces, women would be free to study and work as well as move out of the home.
“In the previous government, we saw that there was not only financial corruption, but also moral corruption,” he said. “If we separate men and women, people will feel free to send their wives and daughters.”
On Wednesday, Taliban officials said Afghanistan’s new Islamic government would be announced soon, with Akhundzada as the supreme authority.
The role of a leadership shura, or council, was still unclear, and whether its membership would fulfill the Taliban’s promise of forming an inclusive government. The question is whether leaders of previous governments, such as Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, who have been in Kabul for talks, will be included.
In the interview, Mujahid emphasized, however, that the new government envisioned by the Taliban would not be a democracy.
“Some of the principles of democracy are contrary to the principles of Islam,” the Mujahid said. “For example, in a democracy, the people are sovereign. But in Islam, God is sovereign. The Quran is sovereign.”
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