A former Royal Marine who has been campaigning to have dozens of people and hundreds of animals at his sanctuary evacuated from Afghanistan has been offered a glimmer of hope after the defence secretary said UK officials would help.
Paul Farthing, known as Pen, had already been given authorisation to get his people out but continued working with supporters to secure safe passage for 140 dogs and 60 cats they were caring for at the Nowzad shelter he founded in Kabul after serving with the British army in Afghanistan.
As thousands flee Afghanistan, some refugees want to go back, AFP reports.
From trucks stuffed with carpets, bedding, clothes and even goats, around 200 Afghan refugees look beyond the horizon toward Spin Boldak in their country’s south, waiting to return home from Pakistan.
Dreading another period of harsh rule after the Taliban’s rapid takeover following the US troop withdrawal, thousands have been desperately trying to flee Afghanistan, with chaotic images emerging from the Kabul airport.
But some families want to repatriate to their homeland, saying the Taliban will bring stability to the war-torn nation.
“We emigrated from Afghanistan during bombing and hardships, when Muslims were in trouble, now, praise be to Allah, the situation is normal, so we are returning to Afghanistan,” Molavi Shaib told AFP while waiting at the border.
Divided by a 10-foot-deep trench filled with barbed wire, the mountainous boundary separating Spin Boldak from Chaman in Pakistan’s southwest sees thousands crossing the trade route every day.
As scores try to escape Taliban rule, Pakistan has ramped up security at the border, making the process more stringent.
Muhammad Nabi said:
People want to return but they are not allowed to cross, we request the Pakistani government to allow us to cross the border because there’s no war, and peace has been established.
We have our household with women and kids waiting – we want them to cross the border.
Pakistan has housed over two million Afghan refugees since the first wave of war broke out in Afghanistan over 40 years ago, with numbers fluctuating based on the conflict’s intensity, but the country has said it is not in a position to take in any more.
Displaced Afghans have long complained about feeling unwelcome with little access to employment and citizenship rights.
Many have become pawns in a diplomatic blame-game between the countries, which have accused each other of aiding militant groups. Islamabad has long been seen as protecting the Taliban and could be one of the few governments with close ties to the new regime in Kabul.
With dust blowing over their belongings and children squeezed in between the furniture, dozens of trucks are parked in Chaman’s barren fields, as returnees complete document checks and wait for their crossing to be approved.
On the back of one truck, a teenage boy holds a baby, surrounded by a hodgepodge of household goods including a bucket, a bed and a bicycle. Another boy sits next to him on a yellow cushion while a white goat can be seen milling about between them.
The returnees say they will have better lives in Afghanistan.
Wali Ur Rahman told AFP:
I am returning to Ghazni, now peace has been established and we are happy that we are returning back to our home. It’s much better to go back and settle there.
His words are a jarring contrast to the images from Kabul airport where people have clung to the exterior of planes and at least one person has fallen to their death off a departing jet.
Many of those trying to get out of Afghanistan fear reprisals from the Taliban after working for foreign governments that fought the militants during the 20-year war.
But Nabi said he was confident the end of the conflict would bring a brighter future.
“We migrated here to Pakistan because of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, now peace has been established,” he said.
The Taliban’s return to power threatens Afghan women’s hard-won property rights, with thousands who fled their homes during the militants’ takeover at particular risk of losing their land and houses for good, rights groups and researchers said.
The Taliban imposed a strict Islamic law that largely denied women property rights during its 1996-2001 rule, but since then local authorities have been granting property titles to widows, divorced women and other female-led households.
Taliban leaders have sought to present a more moderate face since seizing power, saying women’s rights will be protected under the framework of Islam, but campaigners fear the fragile progress on property titles will be set back, Reuters reports.
Heather Barr, interim co-director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, said:
Women already faced many challenges in exercising their property rights, but with the return of the Taliban they have become even more vulnerable.
It’s very difficult to imagine the Taliban respecting women’s property rights, and this will have devastating impacts on women who are struggling to protect themselves and their families.
Control of land and natural resources has long been a contentious issue in Afghanistan, where only about 12% of land is arable, according to the World Bank, and 40 years of conflict have left warlords and powerful landlords in control.
Dysfunctional legal systems, corruption, a lack of transparency and accountability, and the loss of records and legal documents made it hard to resolve land disputes even during recent years of relatively better governance.
Now, there will likely be an increase in land disputes as families abandon their homes, and the Taliban seeks to settle scores and restrict women’s rights, said Jon Unruh, an associate professor at McGill University in Montreal.
There will almost certainly be significant confiscations of lands and properties by the Taliban as they seek to punish some, reward others and make money by trafficking in confiscated housing.
While Afghanistan’s civil laws give women equal rights to own land and property, security of tenure is usually tied to men, and cultural norms and customary practices often deny women these rights, particularly those who are widowed or divorced.
There are an estimated 2 million widows in Afghanistan.
Less than 5% of land ownership documents in the country include the name of a female owner, according to some estimates.
Under a new legal framework of the previous government, co-titling of state land was made mandatory, with men required to add their wives’ names on certificates.
Thousands of such certificates have been issued, according to the World Bank.
The fate of these titles “will be an issue, with probably a robust effort on the part of the Taliban to destroy, falsify or sell them to others”, said Unruh, who studies land rights in conflict situations.
Properties of women “will be a particular problem. This is likely to be an area where the Taliban feel especially justified in confiscating them”, he added, citing the group’s strict view on girls and women being educated or working.
The Taliban has said it was “not interested in anyone’s private property, rather it considers protection of lives and properties its primary responsibility”.
More than half a million people have already been displaced by the violence in Afghanistan so far this year, according to the United Nations, with women and children making up some 80% of those forced to flee since the end of May.
For these women – and for those trying to save their homes by staying behind – it would be very difficult to insist on their property rights, said Bilquees Daud, a lecturer at the Jindal School of International Affairs in India.
Daud, who is Afghan, said:
Particularly for widows and female-headed households who need a male companion to even step outside now, it will be very difficult to exercise their property rights.
Under the Taliban’s fundamentalist view of Sharia law, the denial of property rights to women will mean they’re left destitute, or forced into marriage simply to put a roof over their heads.
Robyn Vinter here.
For years the Taliban’s top spokesman shunned the public eye, even as he amassed hundreds of thousands of followers online where he live-tweeted the insurgency.
But days after the Taliban captured Kabul following the collapse of the US-backed government, Zabihullah Mujahid presented himself to the public for the first time in a surprise press conference in the Afghan capital, AFP reports.
At first glance, there was little that distinguished the Taliban spokesman from its other leaders – the middle-aged jihadist sported a black turban and full black beard framing a stony demeanour carved from decades of war.
“We have expelled the foreigners,” he proclaimed in his opening remarks.
Just days earlier, Mujahid announced via social media the assassination of leading government spokesman Dawa Khan Menapal, boasting that the killing had been orchestrated “in a special attack” carried out by the Taliban.
The spokesman is now sitting in Menapal’s old seat, seeking to allay concern about how the Taliban will rule.
“All those on the opposite side are pardoned from A to Z,” said Mujahid as he fielded questions from the remnants of the Afghan press corps.
“We will not seek revenge.”
For years, there was a debate as to whether Mujahid was even a single person – his moniker serving as cover for the Taliban’s sprawling information wing.
But Mujahid was real and relaxed in his public debut, delivering assurances in a live broadcast on behalf of a group that once banned television.
When asked if the Taliban expected to be forgiven following their brutal campaign of violence that brought death and destruction to Afghan cities, Mujahid did not sidestep.
The losses, however devastating, were worth it, he argued.
“A huge occupying force was defeated,” he explained.
Notorious for banning TV and radio under their iron-fisted rule in the 1990s, the Taliban have adapted to the ever-changing nature of modern media and deftly used it to their advantage.
Richard Stengel – a former under secretary of state for the Obama administration – wrote in a New York Times editorial:
The Taliban understand that the information war is modern warfare.
They are not trying to build a new platform; they’re trying to integrate into and dominate the existing landscape.
Mujahid is believed to oversee a vast public relations operation that has coordinated countless press releases, interview requests and questions from journalists in recent years.
Outside of his social media presence, Mujahid and his team also managed an impressive network of WhatsApp groups, where they delivered real time updates directly to journalists.
Little is known about the spokesman’s past roles in the movement, but his impact on their string of victories has been monumental even as other spokesmen emerged and took on more public roles from the Taliban’s political office in Doha.
Under Mujahid’s leadership, the Taliban effectively owned the battlefield narrative during the group’s final offensive this summer, providing detailed sketches of its fighters’ movements as the Afghan government stayed largely silent.
The Taliban’s victory appeared all but inevitable, according to the narrative presented by the Taliban press office, as government forces surrendered en masse often without a shot fired.
During the last 10 days of the war, Mujahid would announce the fall of every new city to the Taliban with a tweet, becoming the de-facto minister of information of the conflict that his group was winning rapidly.
Now in power, Mujahid will be faced with a new task – convincing Afghans and the international community that the Taliban are able to transition from fighting to governing.
“All issues can be resolved with talks,” Mujahid told reporters Tuesday.
“We give our brothers reassurances. We have the same country and the same goals.”
Everyone is to blame for the catastrophe in Afghanistan, except the people who started it. Yes, Joe Biden screwed up by rushing out so chaotically. Yes, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab failed to make adequate and timely provisions for the evacuation of vulnerable people.
But there is a frantic determination in the media to ensure that none of the blame is attached to those who began this open-ended war without realistic aims or an exit plan, then waged it with little concern for the lives and rights of the Afghan people: the then US president, George W Bush, the British prime minister Tony Blair and their entourages:
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