Taliban fighters use whips against Afghan women to protest the male interim government

A woman at Wednesday’s protest said: “We have gathered here to protest the government’s recent announcement where there is no representation of women within this government.”

He said some of the protesters were “beaten with whips and told to go home and recognize and accept the Emirate. Why should we accept the Emirate as long as we have not been given any inclusion or rights? ? “

As he spoke, he had a poster that said, “A cabinet without women loser, loser.”

He said several journalists covering the protest had been detained and demanded his release. “All those men who were here to perform their duties as journalists were arrested. Why and for how long should we endure this?”

Another woman in the protest said the Taliban had “shown they can’t change,” adding: “We are asking the international community, especially those who for the past 20 years have tried to provide women with their rights. , where are those women’s rights advocates today? “

The women also said the Taliban had beaten the youths watching the protest. One said a “16-year-old boy who left home to go to school, with his school bag on his back, was captured and beaten, had bruises all over his body, arms. He escaped but two or three Taliban were running after him. “

The editor of the online news medium EtilaatRoz, Elyas Nawandish, posted on Twitter photographs with images of two of his injured journalists.

He wrote: “Taqi Daryabi and Neamat Naqdi, two @Etilaatroz journalists have been severely beaten after being detained by the Taliban. Journalists say they were taken to separate rooms and then beaten by the Taliban. They were taken to hospital by receive treatment. “

Marcus Yam, a Los Angeles Times journalist covering the protest, said on Twitter: “While some were trying to get their hands on me, there was a fighter who kept interfering and at one point murmured ‘foreigner.’ there were others, with whips ready ”.

The protests took place in Dasht-i-Barchi, an area of ​​Kabul inhabited mostly by people of the Hazara Shiite minority ethnic group, a group known to have been a target of the Taliban in the past.

The Taliban have not commented on Wednesday’s protest.

“Threat to stability”

No women, members of religious minorities or members of the ousted leadership in Afghanistan were selected to hold cabinet office or were appointed advisers in the interim government announcement on Tuesday.

This comes despite the Taliban’s promises of an inclusive government and a more moderate form of Islamic government than when they last came to power two decades ago.

“We represent all of Afghanistan and we speak at the level of all of Afghanistan and our struggle was based on all of Afghanistan. We are not people of one tribe or ethnicity nor do we believe in that,” the Taliban spokesman said. Zabihullah Mujahid said at Tuesday’s press conference that he outlined the interim government.

Fawzia Kofi, a former Afghan MP, peace negotiator and women’s rights activist, accused the Taliban of going against what they had promised, referring to a meeting with a senior Taliban figure.

The Afghan National Resistance Front (NRF), an anti-Taliban group that has been fighting the militants’ offensive in the Panjshir Valley, called the Taliban’s interim cabinet “illegal” and “threatening to the stability and security of Afghanistan, the region and the world. “

“NRF believes that the establishment of a democratic, legal and legitimate government can only be achieved through the will and vote of the people in a general election that is also acceptable to the international community,” he said.

Witnesses estimated the crowd at between 300 and 500 people, many of whom were women wearing the hijab. The Taliban responded with gunfire, arrests and beatings.

Human rights group Amnesty International tweeted its “deep concern over reports of the Taliban’s use of violence against peaceful protesters and journalists in Kabul.”

Human Rights Watch tweeted: “In another indication that Afghanistan’s new rulers will not tolerate peaceful dissent, the Taliban again used force to crush a protest of hundreds of #Afghan women demanding their rights today. “.

Concern about the lack of inclusion

Concern over the composition of the caretaker government has been expressed by both Afghanistan’s neighbors and the world powers. The Taliban have given no indication of how long the interim government will hold.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani said “ignoring the need to establish an inclusive government” was a major concern in a tweet on Wednesday, Iranian news agency IRNA reported.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said his country hoped “the political situation would stabilize as soon as possible, which would lead to normalcy.”

Speaking to regional leaders in Islamabad on Wednesday, Qureshi said the priorities of Afghanistan’s neighbors include supporting the Afghan people and accepting the importance of national reconciliation and the country’s multiethnic composition.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said China was willing to keep in touch with the new Afghan leadership, but also indicated that the rights of minorities should be respected.

“We hope that the new Afghan regime, during the interim government, will listen to the views of all ethnic groups and parties and meet the expectations of the Afghan people and the international community,” he told Reuters. . “We realized that the Taliban stressed that all people will benefit from the new regime.”

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Wednesday that the Taliban’s actions were not a cause for optimism, as Germany assesses how to help the people of Afghanistan amid food shortages. aid and the threat of economic collapse.

“We are ready to provide humanitarian aid through the United Nations and we will continue to talk to the Taliban, if only to allow the people for whom we have responsibility to leave the country,” he said.

“However, any other compromise will depend on the behavior of the Taliban. The announcement of a transitional government without the participation of other groups and yesterday’s violence against protesters and journalists in Kabul are not signs of optimism. “.

Maas spoke before a meeting with his US counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at the German air base in Ramstein, where thousands of people fleeing Afghanistan were transferred to the massive transport operation. airline of the United States last month.

The U.S. State Department said Tuesday it was “concerned about the affiliations and background” of some of the interim governments. “We note that the announced list of names consists exclusively of people who are members of the Taliban or their close relatives and have no women,” a spokesman said.

Although presented as an interim government, the spokesman said, “We will judge the Taliban for their actions, not for words. We have made clear our expectation that the Afghan people deserve an inclusive government.”

EU spokesman Peter Stano said in a statement sent to CNN that, from the initial analysis of the appointments, “it does not seem an inclusive and representative formation in terms of Afghanistan’s rich ethnic and religious diversity that we looked forward to seeing and that the Taliban were promising in recent weeks. “

Meanwhile, ousted Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani said on Wednesday that leaving Kabul when the Taliban entered the city on August 15 was “the most difficult decision” of his life. “It was the only way to keep guns quiet and save Kabul and its 6 million citizens,” Ghani said in a statement on his official Twitter account.

In the statement, Ghani also rejected allegations of “baseless” carrying millions of dollars from the Afghan people. “These charges are completely and categorically false,” he said.