Chaos Afghanistan, the Taliban start firing on the crowd and destroy statue of a Shiite leader

by Marzio Pelù

KABUL – August 18, 2021, the third day of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. After yesterday’s proclamations, with openness to women “in compliance with Sharia law” and the assurance that “no one will be harmed”, the Taliban have already started shooting. 

Shooting at Kabul airport, where insurgents tried to disperse the crowd that still flocks in an attempt to flee Afghanistan (17 injured according to a source close to NATO, while other sources also speak of beaten and whipped women and children) . Shooting in Jalalabad, where the Taliban are dealing with the first protests: “hundreds”, according to the New York Times, of demonstrators took to the streets with huge Afghan flags and  Taliban responded with fire (as testified some videos, including the one released by Pajhwok Afghan News on Twitter – here below) causing at least three deaths and ten injuries.

Even in Khost, the capital of the province of the same name, many people took to the streets, writes the NYT, and the news agency Khaama Press reports that even here the protest has degenerated and the Taliban have opened fire “indiscriminately” . The same site also reports about ten young people who gathered in the province of Kunar and videos arriving from the capital Asadabad where the Afghan flag was hoisted on a minaret.

Meanwhile, the statue of Abdul Ali Mazari, a Shiite leader who fought the Taliban during the civil war in the 1990s, was destroyed in the province of Bamiyan, as reported by al-Jazeera and the Associated Press (in the pic below) As the Italian newspaper La Repubblica recalls, Mazara, a charismatic exponent of the Hazara, was vennetoed by the Taliban in 1996, when the group – led by Mullah Omar – took power in. The province of Bamiyan is infamous for having also hosted the huge statues of the Buddhas which were dynamically destroyed by the Taliban shortly before the US military intervention in 2001.

On the political front, today in Kabul there was a meeting between the former Afghan president Hamid Karzai (who led the country from 2001 to 2014), the former ‘ chief executive ‘and representative for peace negotiations Abdullah Abdullah and Anas Haqqani, as reported by the Afghan broadcaster Tolo News which publishes some images (here). The news is also reported by Pajhwok Afghan News which speaks of the arrival in Kabul of a Taliban delegation led by Anas Haqqani, brother of Sirajuhddin Haqqani, leader of the homonymous jihadist network (founded by his father Jalaluddin) and among the spokesmen of the Taliban.

Ashraf Ghani, on the other hand, who left the Afghan presidency on Sunday with the arrival of the Taliban in Kabul, is in the United Arab Emirates, as reported by CNN, which received confirmation with a note from the Emirati Foreign Ministry. The ministry specifies that “the Emirates have welcomed Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country for humanitarian reasons”. And the BBC also reported this morning that Ghani had been seen in Abu Dhabi.

Meanwhile, international reactions to the takeover of Afghanistan continue. Today it was the UK’s turn to “undertake to do everything possible to prevent a humanitarian crisis” and to “support” the fleeing Afghans who have collaborated with the West in recent years, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. opening an extraordinary debate in the House of Commons, recalled for a day from the summer holidays. The British Prime Minister then added: “We will judge this regime based on the choices it makes and its actions rather than its words, its attitudes towards terrorism, crime and drugs, as well as humanitarian access and the law. of girls to get an education “. But what we saw today does not bode well.