‘Everyone is forgiven,’ says Taliban

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Biden stands by withdrawal

ISLAMABAD, Aug 17, (Agencies): The Taliban said on Tuesday that “everyone is forgiven,” just days after they took control of Afghanistan. In the first press conference televised live in Kabul after the takeover of the Afghan capital, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the group sought no revenge. His words come at a time when many Afghans were fearing that the Taliban could extract revenge after their rise to power. Following a lightning offensive across Afghanistan that saw many cities fall to the insurgents without a fight, the Taliban have sought to portray themselves as more moderate than when they imposed a brutal rule in the late 1990s. But many Afghans remain skeptical — and thousands raced to the airport on Monday, desperate to flee the country. Older generations remember the Taliban’s ultraconservative Islamic views, which included severe restrictions on women as well as public stonings and amputations before they were ousted by the US-led invasion following the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks. As others have in recent days, spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid addressed these concerns head on in his first news conference Tuesday. Mujahid, who had been a shadowy figure for years, promised the Taliban would honor women’s rights, but within the norms of Islamic law, though he gave few details. He said the group wanted private media to “remain independent,” but stressed journalists “should not work against national values.” And he promised the insurgents would secure Afghanistan — but seek no revenge against those who worked with the former government or with foreign governments or forces. “We assure you that nobody will go to their doors to ask why they helped,” he said.

Earlier, Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, made similar promises, saying the Taliban would extend an “amnesty” without giving details and encouraging women to join the government. The capital of Kabul remained quiet for another day as the Taliban patrolled its streets and many residents stayed home, fearful after the insurgents’ takeover saw prisons emptied and armories looted. Many women have expressed dread that the two-decade Western experiment to expand their rights and remake Afghanistan would not survive the resurgent Taliban. Germany, meanwhile, halted development aid to Afghanistan over the Taliban takeover. Such aid is a crucial source of funding for the country — and the Taliban’s efforts to project a milder version of themselves may be aimed at ensuring that money continues to flow. While the Taliban pledged not to go after their enemies, some in Kabul allege the fighters have lists of people who cooperated with the government and are seeking them out. A broadcaster in Afghanistan said she was hiding at a relative’s house, too frightened to return home much less return to work following reports that the insurgents are also looking for journalists. She said she and other women didn’t believe the Taliban had changed their ways. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety.

Troops
Samangani addressed the concerns of women, saying Taliban were ready to “provide women with environment to work and study, and the presence of women in different (government) structures according to Islamic law and in accordance with our cultural values.” That would be a marked departure from the last time the Taliban were in power, when women were largely confined to their homes. In another sign of the Taliban’s efforts to portray a new image, a female television anchor on the private broadcaster Tolo interviewed a Taliban official on camera Tuesday in a studio — an interaction that once would have been unthinkable.

Meanwhile, women in hijabs demonstrated briefly in Kabul, holding signs demanding the Taliban not “eliminate women” from public life. The US military is coordinating with the Taliban while accelerating the airlift of Americans and Afghan allies from the Kabul airport, and also bringing in additional US troops in a scramble to complete the evacuation in two weeks, Pentagon officials said Tuesday. Overnight at the airport, nine Air Force C-17 transport planes arrived with equipment and about 1,000 troops, and seven C-17s took off with 700-800 civilian evacuees, including 165 Americans, Army Maj Gen William Taylor told a Pentagon news conference. The total included Afghans who have applied for Special Immigrant Visas and third-country nationals, he said. The goal, Taylor said, is to ramp up to one evacuation flight per hour by Wednesday, Taylor said. On Monday the airlift had been temporarily suspended when Afghans desperate to escape the country breeched security and rushed onto the tarmac. Seven people died in several incidents.

The chief Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said US commanders at the airport are in direct communication with Taliban commanders outside the airport to avoid security incidents. He would not provide details but indicated this communication was in line with an arrangement made on Sunday by the head of US Central Command, Gen Frank McKenzie, when he met with Taliban leaders in Qatar and won agreement to “deconflict” forces and allow a safe US evacuation. Kirby said there have been no hostile actions by the Taliban, and that several hundred members of the now-defeated Afghan army are at the airport assisting in the evacuation. He said US forces plan to wrap up their oversight of the evacuation by Aug. 31, also the date President Joe Biden has set for officially ending the US combat role in Afghanistan. A defiant President Joe Biden rejected blame for chaotic scenes of Afghans clinging to US military planes in Kabul in a desperate bid to flee their home country after the Taliban’s easy victory over an Afghan military that America and NATO allies had spent two decades trying to build. At the White House, Biden on Monday called the anguish of trapped Afghan civilians “gut-wrenching” and conceded the Taliban had achieved a much faster takeover of the country than his administration had expected. The US rushed in troops to protect its own evacuating diplomats and others at the Kabul airport. But the president expressed no second thoughts about his decision to stick by the US commitment, formulated during the Trump administration, to end America’s longest war, no matter what. “I stand squarely behind my decision” to finally withdraw US combat forces, Biden said, while acknowledging the Afghan collapse played out far more quickly than the most pessimistic public forecasts of his administration. “This did unfold more quickly than we anticipated,” he said. Despite declaring “the buck stops with me,” Biden placed almost all blame on Afghans for the shockingly rapid Taliban conquest. His grim comments were his first in person to the world since the biggest foreign policy crisis of his still-young presidency.

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