Taliban Bars UN Human Rights Monitor From Entering Afghanistan
A Taliban spokesperson blamed Richard Bennett for “spreading propaganda;” he was appointed in April 2022 and had been tasked with documenting human rights violations in the country (TOLONews)
The UN Human Rights Council did not immediately comment; Bennett could not be reached (Reuters)
Taliban: Border Clash Between Pakistani and Afghan Security Forces Kill Three Afghan Civilians
Pakistan’s military did not immediately comment (Reuters)
Religious Freedom Report: Afghanistan Experiencing “Continual and Significant” Drop in Religious Freedom Under Taliban Rule
The U.S. federal watchdog on religious freedom noted corporal and capital punishment have returned, including public executions and flogging; the Taliban did not immediately comment (VOA)
Pakistan Summons Taliban Envoy After Attack on Military Base
Pakistan’s military says the group that claimed responsibility for the Monday attack operates out of Afghanistan; the attack in northwestern Pakistan killed eight Pakistani service members (Reuters)
A Taliban spokesperson did not immediately respond to request for comment (AP)
Taliban Government Will Not Recognize Three Female Afghan Athletes Competing at Summer Olympic Games,
Kabul’s three male and three female athletes due to compete in Paris are doing so under the flag of the previous internationally-backed government that was ousted in 2021; all but one of the athletes lives outside the country (AFP)
Taliban Attends UN Meeting on Afghanistan, Womens’ Groups Left Out of the Conversation
Envoys from some two dozen nations are attending the two-day UN talks ending today in Doha on Afghanistan’s humanitarian and political situation; this is the first such gathering also attended by Taliban representatives since the group took over in 2021 (NYT)
Taliban envoys pressed for deeper access to the international financial system and a lifting of banking sanctions, while other countries voiced concerns about the presence of extremist groups and treatment of women (VOA)
The Taliban rebuffed any talk on women; Afghan womens’ groups were excluded from the meeting and are due to meet with global envoys tomorrow (RFE/RL)
UN Reports Surge in Attacks by Taliban Opposition Groups
Armed opposition to the Taliban carried out twenty-nine confirmed attacks in the past three months, a UN report said; it assessed that the groups “did not pose a significant challenge” to the Taliban’s territorial control of Afghanistan since they regained power in 2021 (VOA)
Taliban Ban on Female Education Reaches One Thousand-Day Milestone
The Taliban’s ban on the education of Afghan girls reached a one thousand-day milestone as demands for the immediate resumption of learning persist (Voice of America)
Germany to Deport Afghan Asylum Seekers Found Guilty of Serious Crimes
Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the policy today, a shift from a previous stance of avoiding deportations to those countries due to security risks there; immigrants who glorified or condoned terrorism would also be deported, Sholz said (FT)
Germany Considering Deporting Afghan Migrants Deemed a Security Threat
Last week, a man originally from Afghanistan killed a German police officer at an anti-Islam event; Germany had ceased deportations to Afghanistan following the 2021 Taliban takeover due to safety risks in the country and does not repatriate migrants to countries that threaten citizens’ lives (Reuters)
Taliban Praises Russian Plan to Remove Its Terrorist Designation
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian media on Monday that the Taliban “hold real power” in Afghanistan and that Moscow is planning to remove them from its list of terrorist organizations; a spokesperson for the Taliban said delegations have attended various meetings and forums inside Russia (TOLOnews)
NYT: U.S.-Backed Security Official in Afghanistan Oversaw Extrajudicial Killings
U.S.-backed Afghan official Abdul Raziq oversaw the forces that carried out hundreds of forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the province of Kandahar during the war in Afghanistan, the New York Times reported.The actions contributed to negative sentiment against U.S. forces more broadly, the journalists found. More than a dozen U.S. officials interviewed by the Times said Raziq was seen as the only partner capable of beating back the Taliban in the region. Many said they did not fully grasp that Raziq was using U.S. military support to carry out personal vendettas that preexisted the war
UN Under-Secretary-General Concludes Four-Day Visit to Afghanistan
UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo held talks with Taliban officials, diplomats, and civil society in preparation for a meeting of special envoys on Afghanistan in late June; the upcoming meeting aims to improve international engagement with Afghanistan (UN News)
Flooding in Afghanistan Kills More Than Three Hundred People
Unusually heavy rainfall in recent days has caused flash flooding in northern Afghanistan as the country is still recovering from a series of earthquakes at the beginning of the year; unseasonably strong rain and flooding in Afghanistan and Pakistan also killed more than one hundred people in April (CNN)
Pakistan Claims Afghan Involvement in Suicide Bombing
A suicide bombing that killed six people in northwestern Pakistan in March was carried out by an Afghan citizen and planned in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s military said yesterday; a Taliban government spokesperson said today that the claim was “irresponsible and far from the reality”(AP)
Taliban Plan Western Afghanistan Logistics Hub With Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan
The hub would aim to process regional trade and ease the movement of oil from Russia to South Asia, Afghanistan’s commerce minister told Reuters; a formal agreement is being drawn up within the next two months after it was reached in principle in talks last week (Reuters)
Taliban Suspends Afghan Television Stations for Violations of ‘National and Islamic Values’
An information official announced the suspension yesterday, saying Barya TV and Noor TV failed to follow journalistic principles and “consider national and Islamic values;” the Afghanistan Journalist Center called the moves illegal and part of an ongoing campaign to restrict the media (AP)
Pentagon: U.S. Troops Did Not See Attacker Before Kabul 2021 Blast
Some U.S. troops who survived the attack at Kabul’s Abbey Gate during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 said publicly that they saw the bomber beforehand and could have prevented the blast, but they were mistaken due to conflated intelligence reporting, the Pentagon said after a new review; it aimed to address lingering questions about the attack after a previous review by U.S. Central Command in 2022 found it could not have been prevented at the tactical level (CNN)
Heavy Rains Kill At Least Thirty-Three People in Afghanistan
An additional thirty-six people have died in Pakistan in the last few days, officials from both countries said (AP)
CPJ Calls on Afghan Authorities to Preserve Access to Facebook
The Committee to Protect Journalists issued the public call after a top Taliban communications official said the group planned to partially or fully block access to social media platform Facebook in Afghanistan; a CPJ official said that social media has helped fill a vacuum left by the decline of traditional media in the country following the Taliban’s 2021 takeover and subsequent crackdown on press freedom (CPJ)
Russia Weighs Removal of Terrorist Designation for Taliban
A Kremlin spokesperson said yesterday that Moscow had important matters to discuss with the Taliban and was moving to remove the group from a list of banned terrorist organizations; he did not specify which issues Russia intends to discuss, but U.S. intelligence agencies have said the Afghan branch of the Islamic State was behind the terrorist attack at a concert hall in Moscow last month (Reuters)
Self-Declared Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Bank Bombing
The group said the attack in southern Afghanistan was intended for Taliban members; the attack killed at least three people (AP)
United States Adds Twelve Thousand New Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans
The White House and U.S. lawmakers reached a compromise to provide visas for Afghans who assisted with the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan to a bill to fund the State Department for the remainder of the fiscal year; advocates for an increase in such visas had originally pushed for twenty thousand more (Reuters)
Afghanistan, Pakistan Exchange Border Fire
Afghanistan’s military struck Pakistani military posts along the countries’ shared border following Pakistani air strikes that killed eight people in eastern Afghanistan; the Afghan strikes are thought to be the first such counterattack since the Taliban took over in 2021 (Bloomberg)
Islamabad has repeatedly claimed that Kabul is allowing Pakistani Taliban militants to shelter in the country, which Afghanistan denies (RFE)
Bipartisan Group of U.S. Senators Call for Quicker Visas for Afghans Who Aided War Effort
More than twelve Democratic and Republican senators called for an increased target for the number of special immigrant visas granted by the end of the fiscal year to include an additional twenty thousand Afghans, according to a letter seen by the Associated Press; some 30 percent of applications for such visas have been processed since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 (AP)