Dozens of women made a rare show of defiance against the brutal Taliban regime in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul on Wednesday, marching against the ban on beauty salons issued early this month by the extremist government.
A power struggle looks to be brewing in the junta ruling Afghanistan, as Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani – an FBI Most Wanted terrorist, New York Times published commentator, and leader of the Haqqani Network – lodged a bit of veiled public criticism against Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada over the weekend.
Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada held a meeting of some 3,000 tribal and regional officials in Kandahar on Thursday, during which he said foreign affairs would be conducted in accordance with the Taliban’s notion of Islamic sharia law. In other words, he was pledging to ignore international human rights concerns, including objections to the Taliban’s barbaric treatment of women.
The Taliban shutdown of girls’ education shows the hardline Islamists’ are not listening to the Afghan people, an EU official said Thursday.
The Taliban regime, which styles itself as the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” or IEA, on Sunday announced it has appointed 44 of its members as provincial governors and police chiefs. The international community has expressed unease with the Taliban’s practice of suppressing political opposition by reserving most high government offices for its own members.
Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, nominal Supreme Leader of the Taliban and its “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” regime, made his first public appearance since the fall of Kabul on Sunday.
A Taliban spokesman on Tuesday denied rumors that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, recently named deputy prime minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, has been killed in a gun battle with a rival Taliban faction.
Senior Taliban leader Waheedullah Hashimi said on Thursday the group would not implement democracy in Afghanistan because Afghan culture and Islamic sharia law do not support such a political system.
In his address for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada – supreme leader of the Taliban as well as one of its top clerics – promised equal rights for men and women under fundamentalist Taliban rule after the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan. He also offered a general amnesty to the Taliban’s enemies, provided they “end their opposition” to the “establishment of an Islamic government.”
The Afghan Taliban chief, Hibatullah Akhundzada, renewed calls this week for direct discussions with the United States to end the nearly 17-year-old war — this time in a statement personally signed by the leader stressing that the withdrawal of “occupying forces” is the “only path” towards peace.
