A young woman cries and pleads for her life. In a 19-minute video published by Afghan media on August 30, a former medical student named Elaha showed images she says came from being beaten, raped and tortured by Saeed Khosty, a former Taliban official, during the past six months. She says Khosty threatened her family and forced her to marry him.
Afghanistan
Taliban say they’ve not found body of al Qaeda leader
KABUL, Aug 25 (Reuters) – The Taliban have not found the body of Ayman al-Zawahiri and are continuing investigations, group spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said on Thursday, after the United States said they killed the al Qaeda leader in an airstrike in Kabul last month.
Canada’s spy agency concerned Afghanistan will increase the risk of religiously motivated extremism in Canada: docs
Canada’s domestic spy agency warned the government in October that the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan could increase the risk of religiously motivated extremism in Canada, documents reviewed by Global News suggest.
Additional newly released documents also suggest Canadian government officials were caught off guard by the speed of the Taliban’s takeover last summer, although the terrorist organization’s resurgence was seen as a foregone conclusion by Canadian intelligence officials as early as May 2021.
Freeing of terrorist who killed Australian soldiers shows how the US gave Taliban leverage despite allies’ objections
Many of the Taliban freed under the Doha Agreement took up arms, providing a deadly illustration of how the US-Taliban deal undermined the viability of the Afghan republic.
Hekmatullah, a Taliban infiltrator serving as a sergeant in the Afghan National Army, was involved in a so-called “green on blue” turncoat attack that killed three Australian soldiers in Uruzgan in 2012.
Afghanistan and the Collapse of Normals’ Faith in the System
I don’t want to hear any more about how there is a two-track justice system in America, or about how the media consists of lying regime toe-suckers, or about how our institutions are garbage entities run by garbage people producing garbage results. I know all that, and so do you. We’re based, conservative woke, and we know what time it is. It’s Backlash O’clock and it is time to party.
So it’s actually getting to be a cliché to point out the utter incompetence, corruption, and unsupported self-regard of our would-be betters.
A year after the fall of Kabul, Canadian veterans urge Ottawa not to abandon Afghans trying to flee
It’s been one year since Kabul fell to the Taliban after American and allied troops — including Canadians — left the country.
Video footage showed Afghans streaming onto the tarmac at the Kabul airport, desperate to escape, as a U.S. air force plane took off. Some fell to their death trying to hold on.
“We watched that terrible situation unfold … we saw that tremendous catastrophe that happened in Kabul,” said Brian Macdonald.
While Canada certainly shoulders some of the blame for the Afghan debacle the deal was only to assist those who helped our efforts directly i.e. Interpreters and not massive numbers of refugees ill-suited to our culture.
US kept Britain in dark over deal that led Taliban back to power
The white flag with its black Arabic lettering flies everywhere in Kabul. The symbol of the Taliban’s triumph flutters on the American Humvees in which long-haired fighters cruise around sporting purloined Oakley sunglasses and M16 rifles; above Aimuddin’s ice-cream shop in the bazaar; atop Wazir Akbar Khan hill.
One year after the takeover it is hard to absorb the fact that 20 years of international efforts to reinvent Afghanistan at a cost of a trillion dollars and tens of thousands of western and Afghan lives lost, led only to the Taliban returning to power.
In and done from now on. No more bothering with “nation building” which seems to be code for plundering the tax payer.
Biden Administration Stonewalls Inspector General on Afghanistan on Terror Cash
In June, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s office (SIGAR), dispatched letters to Secretary of State Blinken and Samantha Power complaining that the State Department and USAID were stonewalling its investigation of waste, corruption and terror cash.
“Two SIGAR audits are also being hindered by a lack of cooperation from State and USAID. The first evaluates your agencies’ compliance with the laws and regulations prohibiting transfers of funds to members of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network,” the letter to Power complained.
Prefer Hotels: Afghan refugees reject homes in Scotland and Wales because ‘it’s cold and they don’t speak English’
About 9,500 Afghans and their families evacuated from Kabul after the Taliban takeover of the country are still living in hotels a year on
Afghan refugees housed in hotels have refused moves to Scotland and Wales because they believe the countries are too cold and don’t speak English, it has emerged.
Around 9,500 Afghans and their families evacuated from Kabul after the Taliban takeover of the country are still being housed in hotels a year on, at a cost of about £1 million a day.
This comes on top of the £3 million-a-day taxpayers’ bill for hotels for 26,000 asylum seekers including Channel migrants.
‘I will continue killing foreigners’: soldier who shot dead unarmed Australians treated as ‘returning hero’ by Taliban
Hekmatullah, the rogue Afghan soldier who killed three unarmed Australian diggers in Afghanistan a decade ago, is living in a luxury home in the capital Kabul, treated as a “returning hero” by the Taliban who released him from prison.
He has said he does not regret killing Australian soldiers, and has vowed he would again kill Australians, or anyone who opposes the Taliban.
“If I am released I will continue killing foreigners,” Hekmatullah told an official of the former Afghan government when his release was being negotiated.
Taliban under scrutiny as US kills al-Qaida leader in Kabul
ISLAMABAD (AP) — The U.S. drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri on the balcony of a Kabul safe house intensified global scrutiny Tuesday of Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and further undermined their efforts to secure international recognition and desperately needed aid.
The Taliban had promised in the 2020 Doha Agreement on the terms of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that they would not harbor al-Qaida members. Nearly a year after the U.S. military’s chaotic pullout from Afghanistan, al-Zawahri’s killing raises questions about the involvement of Taliban leaders in sheltering a mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks and one of America’s most-wanted fugitives.
Fearless prediction … Biden paid the Taliban for al-Zawahri
Inside the elite Kabul neighbourhood where al-Qaida’s leader died
The leader of al-Qaida spent the last weeks of his life less than 500 metres from the swimming pool and bar where British diplomats relaxed during their Kabul tours.
The gaudy house where Ayman al-Zawahiri was reportedly killed by a drone strike while out on his balcony is nestled at the very heart of the Afghan capital.
By Tuesday morning, sheets of dark green plastic covered shattered windows that were shown in photos shared earlier on social media. But Afghanistan’s new rulers were aggressive about keeping journalists and curious bystanders from taking a closer look at the damaged house.
How the CIA identified and killed Al-Qaeda leader Zawahiri
… This year, officials identified that Zawahiri’s family – his wife, his daughter and her children – had relocated to a safe house in Kabul and subsequently identified Zawahiri at the same location.
* Over several months, intelligence officials grew more confident that they had correctly identified Zawahiri at the Kabul safe house and in early April started briefing senior administration officials. Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, subsequently briefed President Joe Biden.
CIA director ‘proud’ of Afghanistan analysis despite disastrous Taliban takeover
CIA Director William Burns said he is “very proud” of the agency’s analysis in Afghanistan in 2021 despite being blindsided by the swift collapse of the Afghan government and failing to predict how quickly the Taliban would take Kabul.
The Taliban rapidly took over Afghanistan in mid-August amid a chaotic U.S. military withdrawal, and a suicide bombing by ISIS-K late that month killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians as the United States led evacuation operations at the airport, with the Taliban providing security outside.
Taliban force columnist to tweet apology over articles accusing group of sex slavery
A prominent war journalist said she was threatened with jail if she did not tweet an apology to the Taliban over an article that accused Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers of forcing teenage girls into marriage and sex slavery.
“l apologize for 3 or 4 reports written by me accusing the present authorities of forcefully marrying teenage girls and using teenage girls as sexual slaves by Taliban commanders,” tweeted Lynne O’Donnell, an Australian journalist who is currently a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine.