As the Taliban prepares to unveil Afghanistan’s new regime, it faces remnants of resistance

  

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As the Taliban prepares to unveil Afghanistan’s new regime, it faces remnants of resistance

Rachel Pannett  1 hr ago

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The Taliban is moving to announce a new government for Afghanistan, even as it faces a number of challenges to its power, including restive pockets in the country’s north and public demonstrations against the likely return to its extreme interpretation of Islamic law.

© -/AFP/Getty Images Defiant Afghan women held a rare protest on Thursday in western Afghanistan.

Numerous reports had indicated that the new regime’s leaders would be announced Friday, though Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told The Washington Post that a time had not been fixed. Negotiations between the militant group’s different factions were still ongoing Thursday, according to Omar Zakhilwal, a former finance minister who recently met with Taliban leaders.

Heavy fighting erupted in pockets of northern Afghanistan this week in clashes between the Taliban and resistance fighters. Meanwhile, on Thursday, dozens of Afghan women took to the streets in western Afghanistan to protest Taliban restrictions on their right to work and seek education.

Here’s what to know

• President Biden made an unscheduled trip Thursday evening to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, where members of the Marine Corps injured in the attack at Kabul airport last week are receiving treatment.
• The United Nations Humanitarian Air Service is set to resume flights in Afghanistan, allowing 160 humanitarian organizations to continue their work in the country. Flights will link Islamabad, Pakistan, with Mazar-e Sharif and Kandahar.
• The British foreign secretary said in Qatar that Kabul airport could soon reopen. Several countries have offered technical and security support to facilitate the resumption of military and civilian flights.

The 2021 version of the Taliban is a stronger and more cohesive organization than when it was last in power. It has also captured many millions, perhaps billions, of dollars worth of U.S. military equipment that had once belonged to Afghan forces.

But it now faces the challenge of governing a country where ministries have been closed for weeks and an humanitarian crisis looms. Haibatullah Akhundzada, an ultraconservative cleric, is expected to become the country’s supreme leader, with a president below him, Taliban officials have said, suggesting the new government could be structured much like Iran’s theocracy.

Other senior leaders, such as Abdul Ghani Baradar, who spent years in a Pakistani prison; Sirajuddin Haqqani, chief of the brutal Haqqani network; and Mawlawi Muhammad Yaqoub, a son of the Taliban’s late leader, are also expected to hold influential posts.

Much less clear is the role women will play in public life. In the days since the Taliban seized Kabul on Aug. 15, many women have stayed home amid concerns that the group will resume the brutal treatment of women that marked its last rule, between 1996 and 2001. Many women in high-profile positions, fled the country during the U.S.-led evacuation effort.

Publicly, the Taliban has promised a more inclusive society, including being more tolerant toward women, although many remain deeply skeptical of those claims.

“There isn’t a unified view among the Taliban on women’s activities in society and politics,” Nooria Nazhat, a former Afghan government official, told Tolo News. “This is concerning.”

Despite the dangers, dozens of female demonstrators marched toward the office of the governor of Herat, the largest city by population in western Afghanistan, on Thursday to demand the inclusion of women in the upcoming government. There they faced off with Taliban members standing guard. “No government is stable without the support of women,” read one banner held up by participants.

For several days, Taliban fighters have targeted the holdout of Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, attacking from several directions and engaging in fierce clashes with resistance forces led by the son of a storied late military commander who fought the Soviet Union and, later, the Taliban. It is the most serious military challenge the Taliban has faced since Kabul and 33 provincial capitals fell in 10 days.

The Taliban also has inherited a fragile, aid-dependent economy where about 90 percent of the people live below the poverty line. Foreign aid made up much of the Western-backed government’s budget — and that has largely been frozen since the Taliban’s takeover.

The new regime is hoping to reopen Kabul airport, which will be a significant artery for aid delivery. Western countries are also keen for the airport to resume operations so that vulnerable Afghans can flee.

Several countries have offered technical and security support to help reopen Kabul airport, and a team of Qatari and Turkish technicians flew to Kabul on Wednesday to help restart the facility, the Associated Press reported.

Qatar’s top diplomat said Thursday, however, there was “no clear indication” when that would happen.

Afghanistan’s economy is forecast to contract by 9.7 percent this fiscal year, according to Fitch Solutions, and the United Nations has warned the country is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis as a severe drought and the coronavirus compound the fallout from nearly two decades of conflict.

Sudarsan Raghavan, Ezzatullah Mehrdad and Haq Nawaz Khan contributed to this article