Taliban took action under the leadership of women in Kabuli

Tuesday’s protest began in Kabul with the presence of Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, which is involved in talks towards the formation of a new Taliban-led administration. Pakistan has supported the Afghan Taliban since the birth of the Islamic movement in the 1990s.

Organized mostly by women, Tuesday’s protest began peacefully, with several hundred taking to the streets of Kabul and chanting, “Pakistan’s death.” He also expressed support for anti-Taliban resistance in Panjshir province, whose capital was seized by Taliban forces. on Monday.

At first, the more disciplined Taliban units did not intervene along the way. But as the march reached the city’s central Shahr-e-Nau neighborhood, Taliban fighters began beating the demonstrators with sticks and whips and opened fire in the air.

Several windows on the upper floors of a nearby hotel were blown up as some Taliban gunmen failed to control their muzzles as they fired shots. Several dozen protest organizers were taken to the basement of a nearby bank, and several others were detained. There was no report of any casualties.

“We must continue our protest against dirty Pakistan, which is interfering in Afghanistan. Why is Pakistan not being banned? We will never recognize this government, which is a puppet of Pakistan and attacks our people and violates the rights and dignity of women,” one of the organisers, a women’s-rights activist in her 30s, told the bank. Said on reaching the phone in the basement.

With progress in Panjshir, the Taliban have essentially ended the only remaining armed opposition to their regime. Tuesday’s demonstrations, however, suggest they face growing discontent within broader Afghan society, particularly within Kabul, a modern metropolis where many oppose the Taliban’s puritanical methods. The country is cut off from the international financial system and most foreign aid, with long lines daily at bank branches in Kabul as Afghans try to withdraw at least part of their savings.

Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi, mocking Tuesday’s protesters, indicated on Twitter that all leaders of the so-called anti-Taliban insurgency, including those from Panjshir, had fled abroad. “All the Facebook and Twitter instigators live in the West, while their sheeplike followers have come to Kabul to disrupt security and order,” he wrote. Other Taliban officials said the protesters were trying to make cases for asylum to enable them to immigrate to the West.

The leaders of the ousted Afghan Republic have long portrayed the Taliban as a puppet of Pakistan, trying to tap into the widespread popular outrage of the Pakistani state. No Afghan government has recognized the British-drawn Durand Line between the two countries as an international border, and Afghan nationalists have maintained for decades that Pakistan’s Pashtun-speaking regions should belong to Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s General Hameed is seen at the Serena Hotel in Kabul as the Taliban prepare to unveil their new government in the coming days. While the movement’s supreme leader, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, is certain to have the final word on key decisions, day-to-day governance is likely to be in the hands of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the head of the Taliban’s political office.

Mr Baradar met with international dignitaries on Monday, including Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. In a sign of access to wider political forces, he sat next to the fallen Afghan Republic’s tricolor flag instead of the white banner of the Islamic Emirate of the Taliban during that meeting.

Immediately after the August 15 fall of Kabul, representatives of the Taliban visited prominent figures of the former republic who had been left behind in the Afghan capital, such as former President Hamid Karzai and former chief peace negotiator Abdullah Abdullah. Recently, however, Taliban officials have said that key members of the old regime are unlikely to be allowed to participate in the new administration.

In Kabul, opinion was divided about Tuesday’s protests. On the way to the march, a shopkeeper said that he agreed with the protesters. “The Taliban government, we don’t know who is doing what, and whether it is Pakistan that is pulling all the strings,” he said. “Banks don’t have money, business is in trouble, everyone is talking about an alliance. Against the Taliban.”

The next shopkeeper took the opposite view. “The previous government was a government of corruption. They are all protesting there because they can’t steal anymore,” he said. “The Islamic Emirate gave us security and a true Islamic order.”

Across the street, a bearded Taliban officer released from Bagram prison in mid-August expressed his ignorance of the protests that had passed through the area shortly before. Several pickup trucks with Taliban fighters, white bandanas with Islamic professions on their foreheads, stood nearby as they spoke.

“All over Afghanistan, everyone is happy, and the situation is getting better day by day. All the people of Afghanistan want this government,” said officer Mohammad Jindani.

This story has been published without modification to the text from a wire agency feed