Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
Burqa not mandatory for women
Mullah Baradar back in Afghanistan
UK plans to resettle 20,000 Afghans
Thousands Afghanis enter Pakistan
18-08-2021
By SJA Jafri
KARACHI/ QUETTA/ ISLAMABAD/ KABUL/ WASHINGTON/ LONDON/ PARIS/ CANBERRA: Finally, after taking the control of Kabul by Taliban on 15th August 2021, the global hypocrisy, fraud and lie have not only been exposed but all the claims and predictions highlighted in this connection directly and through other corners indirectly during last three decades that have been flashing and publishing by Press Media of India (PMI) and Karachi-based Pakistani newspaper “Daily Messenger” have now been proved as 100 percent true, correct and perfect word by word while roughly all the assertions, reporting and forecasting of nearly all local, national and international media, “news and views, remarks and decisions and arguments and sayings of rulers, leaders, journalists, critics, analysts, pundits, intellectuals and ‘establishment’ particularly the “so-called immigration authorities, immature and illiterate case officers” of the world have proved obsolete, incorrect, inappropriate, irrelevant, baseless, bogus, inhuman and completely failed more than the personalities of involved ‘characters’ they do have.
Along with the above revelations, the sources, victims and aggrieved persons, impartial experts and neutral critics disclosed that millions of Shia-Muslims in Pakistan particularly in Karachi and Quetta and all over the world become at high risk of anti-Shia elements, terrorists and organizations like Taliban, Daesh, ISIS, ISIL, al-Qaeda, Sipah-e-Sahaba, and dozens of other national and international groups and chapters because a large number of Taliban and other defunct parties’ flags have been vacillated in Karachi and other influenced areas of Pakistan during last 72 hours while a move of anti-Shia wall-chalking, distribution of hand-bills, pamphlets and hanging of banners is also reported as part of next plan of Taliban to capture of Karachi like Kabul.
Thousands of Afghans have entered Pakistan through the Spin Boldak/ Chaman border crossing in Afghanistan’s southeast after the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of the country earlier this week, including patients seeking medical attention and freed Afghan Taliban prisoners.
On Tuesday, the border remained open for all Afghans carrying valid Afghan identity documents or proof of being a registered Afghan refugee resident in Pakistan, Afghan travelers and authorities told media.
Among those crossing into Pakistan, there appeared to be a visible sense of relief at the end of hostilities in a war that has lasted almost 20 years, claiming an estimated more than 47,000 Afghan civilian lives since 2001, according to UN data and research conducted by the US-based Brown University.
“There is currently no area where there is violence, because all of Afghanistan is now in the hands of the Taliban,” said Abdullah, a resident of the city of Kandahar, who crossed into Pakistan on Tuesday.
“It’s peaceful now, and people are opening their shops, doing their business and going to their jobs, as well. There are no difficulties now.”
Abdullah, who only uses one name, said that his hometown of Kandahar, a key conquest for the Taliban in its lightning offensive to retake control of the country from Afghan government forces during the last two months, was “under siege” several days ago.
“Things were very bad there, about four or five days ago there was a battle between the Taliban and [Afghan government] forces, and the whole city was under siege. But things are better now.”
Thousands crowded through a newly installed passage for Afghan travelers into Pakistan at Chaman, with people directed through a wire-link fence topped with barbed wire from the international border to a transportation hub located less than a kilometre away.
Many travelled with elderly relatives or others needing immediate medical attention, complaining of a lack of health facilities on the Afghan side of the border.
Sher Ahmad was one of those people, travelling from the city of Herat, more than 550km west of Chaman, with his younger brother, who suffers from a neurological condition.
“Recently many people are coming (to Pakistan) because there are no doctors there, they’ve all left since the war (ended),” Ahmad told media. “We have brought a patient with us to Pakistan who is in very bad condition.”
Of his native Herat, Ahmad said the Afghan Taliban were in complete control and that there were no further hostilities there.
“The whole area is completely under Taliban control and there are no issues,” he said.
Many of those gathered at the border told media that they were there to receive relatives who had been released from Afghan prisons by the Taliban.
White Afghan Taliban flags fluttered in the breeze, as relatives garlanded the returning fighters.
“Now the Islamic Emirate is in government and there is no war any longer,” said Sanaullah, an Afghan Taliban fighter who returned to Pakistan on Tuesday. “The government of the Taliban is a lot better in Afghanistan.”
Sanaullah, who hails from the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, about 90km southeast of Chaman, said he was captured in 2013 by Afghan security forces and imprisoned at the infamous Bagram prison, the same year US forces handed it over to the Afghan government.
Afghan Taliban fighters seized the prison and its attached airbase in July, days after US forces withdrew from the facility which had been the epicenter of the US and NATO military presence in Afghanistan.
“The Taliban came and freed us from prison, there were close to around 7,000 prisoners, and we were freed in about two hours by the Afghan Taliban,” Sanaullah said.
On Monday, Pakistani authorities said roughly 20,000 people used the Chaman border crossing, which is approximately double the regular daily traffic. Those people included about 13,000 Afghans who crossed into Pakistan, provincial official Zia Langove told media.
Pakistan is home to more than 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees, according to UN data, many of whom crossed into the country more than 30 years ago, after the Soviet invasion of the country, and others who entered in 2001 after the US invasion.
It is also home to an estimated two million more unregistered Afghan refugees, according to government estimates.
In July, Pakistan’s information minister said that Pakistan would not allow any new Afghan refugees to enter Pakistan’s heartland, with the government instead planning on establishing refugee camps near the border.
“In the past, Pakistan had an open 2,700km border with Afghanistan, which has now been fenced, and in case of new refugees, appropriate steps would be initiated to handle them in a systematic manner,” Fawad Chaudhry, the minister, said.
Speaking to media, Langove, the provincial home minister in Balochistan province where Chaman is located, reiterated that stance.
“Our plan will be that whoever comes from there, those who do not feel safe, and are coming here hoping to be safe, we will absolutely let them into our country,” he said.
“Right now, our aim will be that whoever comes across the border, we establish camps near the border itself and we keep them restricted to those camps. Our meetings on this subject are ongoing, and hopefully, we will make a decision in one or two days.”
Chaman is one of two main border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the second crossing present in the north at Torkham.
On Monday, Torkham was reopened for trade traffic, after a brief suspension when the Afghan Taliban captured it a day earlier, officials told media.
Pedestrian traffic at Torkham remained mostly suspended, however, as part of continuing COVID-19 related restrictions on the entry of Afghan nationals.
“There is a huge line of trucks on the Pakistani side, there was so much rush, it was much more than normal,” said Muhammad Fidah, a resident of the nearby town of Landi Kotal.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom (UK) says it will welcome as many as 20,000 Afghans under a new resettlement program that will give priority to women, girls and religious and other minorities, according to reports in British news outlets.
The scheme aimed at those seen “most at risk of human rights abuses and dehumanizing treatment by the Taliban” will offer a safe and legal route to Britain, the Times newspaper reported on Tuesday. About 5,000 people are expected to arrive in the UK in its first year.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Britain owed a “debt of gratitude to all those who have worked with us to make Afghanistan a better place over the last 20 years and many of them, particularly women, are now in urgent need of our help,” British media said.
The UK parliament is due to sit on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.
“I want to ensure that as a nation we do everything possible to provide support to the most vulnerable fleeing Afghanistan so they can start a new life in safety in the UK,” said Home Secretary Priti Patel.
“The Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme will save lives.”
The international community is working out how to respond following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. The group has said it will respect women, but many fear a swift unraveling of 
women’s rights, despite the reassurances.
Britain already plans to relocate 5,000 people as part of an Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, designed to help present and past employees of the UK government. More than 2,000 former Afghan staff and their families have travelled to Britain under the scheme since late June.
The Conservative government has faced pressure from opposition parties and charities to set out the specifics of how it will help Afghans.
The new scheme is modeled closely on the Syrian resettlement program drawn up by former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2014, under which more than 20,000 refugees had moved to Britain up to February this year, the Times said. The program for Afghanistan does not have an end date but is expected to involve a similar number of people over the same timeframe, the paper added.
In an article published by Patel in the right-wing Daily Telegraph newspaper, she called on other nations to help take in Afghan refugees.
“The UK is also doing all it can to encourage other countries to help. Not only do we want to 
lead by example, we cannot do this alone,” she wrote.
The Taliban takeover triggered chaos at the international airport in Kabul on Monday as thousands of Afghans tried to leave some crowded the runway, running alongside aircraft and jumping on the fuselage.
The situation has since calmed in the capital and evacuations have resumed.
The UK has flown out 520 people on military flights since Saturday, including British citizens, diplomats and Afghan staff.
“The complex picture on the ground means there will be significant challenges delivering the scheme, but the government is working at speed to address these obstacles,” the Home Office said in a statement.
Earlier, the Taliban’s co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar returned to Afghanistan Tuesday following the group’s stunning takeover of the country, as a top spokesman declared a general amnesty and insisted the insurgents would not seek “revenge”.
Earlier in the day, the insurgents told government staff to return to work, though residents reacted cautiously and few women took to the streets.
Mullah Baradar’s arrival from Qatar, where he has spent months leading talks with the United States and the Afghan peace negotiators, crowns a stunning comeback for the Taliban after being ousted 20 years ago.
Tens of thousands of people have tried to flee the country to escape the rule expected under the Taliban or fearing direct retribution for siding with the US-backed government that ruled for the past two decades but Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters the new government would be “positively different” from their 1996-2001 regime, infamous for deaths by stoning and barring women from working in contact with men.
“If the question is based on ideology, and beliefs, there is no difference… but if we calculate it based on experience, maturity, and insight, no doubt there are many differences,” Mujahid told reporters.
“All those in the opposite side are pardoned from A to Z,” he said. “We will not seek revenge.”
Mujahid said a government would soon be formed but offered few details other than to say the Taliban would “connect with all sides”.
He also said they were “committed to letting women work in accordance with the principles of Islam”, without offering specifics.
A spokesman for the group’s political office in Doha, Suhail Shaheen, told Britain’s Sky News that women would not be required to wear the all-covering burqa, but did not say what attire would be deemed acceptable.
Triumphant return
Baradar, now deputy leader of the Taliban, chose to touch down in Afghanistan’s second-biggest city Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual birthplace and capital during their first time in power.
He landed hours after evacuation flights from Kabul’s airport resumed Tuesday.
On Monday, chaos erupted when huge crowds mobbed the tarmac, with some people so desperate they clung to the fuselage of a US military plane as it rolled down the runway for take-off.
The United States has authorized the deployment of 6,000 troops to ensure the safe evacuation of embassy staff, as well as Afghans who worked as interpreters or in other support roles.
More than half of those numbers were already in place, a White House official said Tuesday.
Other governments, including France, Germany and Australia, have also organized charter flights but Washington has come under sharp criticism for its handling of the evacuations.
“The images of desperation at Kabul airport are shameful for the political West,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.
Furthermore, the Taliban gave the first indication on Tuesday since coming to power that they would not make the full burqa compulsory for women as they did when they last ruled Afghanistan.
Under their 1996-2001 rule, girls’ schools were closed, women were prevented from travelling and working, and women were forced to wear an all-covering burqa in public.
“The burqa is not the only hijab (headscarf) that (can) be observed, there are different types of hijab not limited to the burqa,” Suhail Shaheen, spokesman for the group’s political office in Doha, told Britain’s Sky News.
The burqa is a one-piece over-garment that covers the entire head and body, with a mesh panel to see through.
Shaheen did not specify other types of hijab that would be deemed acceptable by the Taliban.
Alongside concerns centering on clothing, numerous countries and rights groups have raised 
the alarm for the fate of women’s education in Afghanistan now that it is in the hands of the Taliban who entered the capital Kabul on Sunday but Shaheen also sought to provide reassurance on this topic.
Women “can get education from primary to higher education that means university. We have announced this policy at international conferences, the Moscow conference and here at the Doha conference (on Afghanistan),” Shaheen said.
Thousands of schools in areas captured by the Taliban were still operational, he added.
The previous Taliban government imposed the strictest interpretations of shariah, establishing religious police for the suppression of “vice”.
Taliban courts handed out extreme punishments including chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning to death women accused of adultery.
