Tag Archives: Taliban

Exclusive-Cash airlifts planned to bypass Taliban and help Afghans – sources

By Robin Emmott, John O’Donnell and Jonathan Landay

BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As desperate Afghans resort to selling their belongings to buy food, international officials are preparing to fly in cash for the needy while avoiding financing the Taliban government, according to people familiar with the confidential plans.

Planning for the cash airlifts is going ahead against the background of a rapidly collapsing economy where money is short, although diplomats are still debating whether Western powers can demand that the Taliban make concessions in return, according to internal policy documents seen by Reuters.

The emergency funding, aimed at averting a humanitarian crisis in the face of drought and political upheaval, could see U.S. dollar bills flown into Kabul for distribution via banks in payments of less than $200 directly to the poor – with the Taliban’s blessing but without their involvement.

As well as flying in cash to stem the immediate crisis, donor countries want to set up a “humanitarian-plus” trust fund that would pay salaries and keep schools and hospitals open, two senior officials said.

Many Afghans have started selling their possessions to pay for ever scarcer food. The departure of U.S.-led forces and many international donors robbed the country of grants that financed 75% of public spending, according to the World Bank.

The West’s unorthodox strategy reflects the dilemma it faces. Still eager to help Afghanistan after two decades of war, and to prevent mass migration, it is also loathe to give money to the Taliban, who seized power in August and have yet to show significant change from the harsh way they ruled the country between 1996-2001.

CASH DROPS

The United Nations has warned that 14 million Afghans face hunger. Mary-Ellen McGroarty, U.N. World Food Program Afghanistan director, said the economy could collapse in the face of the cash crisis.

“Many parents are foregoing food so that their children can eat,” she has said.

In recent days, Western diplomats and officials have stepped up efforts to establish a cash lifeline.

The United Nations World Food Program has distributed about 10 million Afghanis ($110,000) in cash via a local bank and intends to disburse more soon, said one person with knowledge of the situation.

The cash runs are a trial for larger air deliveries of dollars from Pakistan, the person said.

A senior diplomat said two approaches are under consideration that would inject cash into the Afghan economy. Both are in the planning stages.

Under the first plan, the World Food Program would fly in cash and distribute it directly to people to buy food, expanding on something the agency already has been doing on a smaller scale.

The second approach would see cash flown in to be held by banks on behalf of the United Nations. That would be used to pay salaries to the staff of U.N. agencies and non-governmental organizations, the diplomat said.

A third person said U.N. officials had talked with Afghan banks about opening up cash distribution channels.

“If the country collapses, we will all pay the consequences,” said a senior European Union official. “No one wants to rush into a recognition of the Taliban, but we need to deal with them. The question is not if … but how.”

A spokesperson for the World Food Program said it had helped almost 4 million people in September, nearly triple the August number, chiefly with food, and some cash assistance had been given out in Kabul. The spokesperson said the cash shortage was also affecting the millers and truckers it worked with.

NINE-BILLION-DOLLAR LEVERAGE

Separately, the European Union, Britain and the United States have discussed setting up an international trust fund to bypass the Afghan government and help finance local services, according to two officials with knowledge of the matter.

The Taliban did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the cash airlift plans.

A U.S. Treasury spokesperson said it would allow humanitarian assistance through independent international and non-governmental organizations while “denying assets” to the Taliban and sanctioning its leaders.

The Kabul government has little to fall back on. The central bank, with assets of $9 billion frozen offshore, has burnt through much of its reserves at home.

Shah Mehrabi, an official who helped oversee the bank before the Taliban took over and is still in his post, recently appealed for a release of the overseas reserves.

“If reserves remain frozen, Afghan importers will not be able to pay for their shipments, banks will start to collapse, food will be become scarce,” he said.

But there is also a debate about whether strings should be attached to cash releases.

In a paper written last month and seen by Reuters, French and German officials outline their aim of using money as a “lever” to pressure the Taliban.

“Countries could condition recognition of the political … legitimacy of the Taliban to the commitments they would be ready to take,” officials said in the two-page report.

“Economic and trade levers are among the strongest we have,” the note said, raising the prospect of releasing the Afghan reserves held abroad.

In a separate diplomatic note, French and German officials outline five demands that could be made of the Taliban.

Those include allowing Afghans who want to leave the country to do so, “breaking ties with … terrorist organizations,” allowing access to humanitarian aid, respect for human rights and establishing an “inclusive government.”

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Michelle Nichols and Rupam Jain; Writing by John O’Donnell; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Hundreds throng passport office in Afghan capital

By Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam and Jorge Silva

KABUL (Reuters) – Hundreds of Afghans flocked to the passport office in Kabul on Wednesday, just a day after news that it would re-open this week to issue the documents, while Taliban security men had to beat back some in the crowd in efforts to maintain order.

Taliban officials have said the service will resume from Saturday, after being suspended since their takeover and the fall of the previous government in August, which stranded many of those desperate to flee the country.

“I have come to get a passport but, as you can see here, there are lots of problems, the system is not working,” one applicant, Mahir Rasooli, told Reuters outside the office.

“There is no official to answer our questions here to tell us when to come. People are confused.”

A spokesman for the Taliban officials running the passport department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Poverty and hunger have worsened since the Islamist movement took over Afghanistan, which already suffered from drought and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Half a million people have been displaced in recent months, the United Nations says, and the number will only grow if health services, schools and the economy break down.

The hundreds who descended on the passport office came despite advice that distribution of passports would only begin on Saturday, and initially only for those who had already applied.

The crowd pressed against a large concrete barrier, trying to hand documents to an official who stood atop it, in a scene reminiscent of the chaos at Kabul airport in the last stages of evacuation after the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The official urged them to return home and come back on Saturday.

“I am here to receive a passport, but unfortunately I couldn’t,” said a man in the crowd, Ahmad Shakib Sidiqi. “I don’t know what we should do in this condition.”

The bleak economic outlook drives their desire to leave, said Sidiqi and Rasooli.

“There is no job and the economic situation is not too good, so I want to have a good future for my kids,” said Rasooli.

Sidiqi said he wanted a passport to accompany a member of his family to neighboring Pakistan to seek medical treatment, but added they had no choice except to leave.

“We have to leave Afghanistan,” he said. “It is a bad situation in Afghanistan – no job, no work. It is not a good condition for us to live.”

The Taliban have said they welcome international aid, though many donors froze their assistance after they took power.

(Additional reporting by Islamabad newsroom; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Taliban say forces destroy Islamic State cell hours after Kabul blast

By Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam

KABUL (Reuters) -Taliban government forces destroyed an Islamic State cell in the north of Kabul late on Sunday in a prolonged assault that broke the calm of a normally quiet area of the capital with hours of explosions and gunfire, officials and local residents said.

With Afghanistan’s economy close to collapse and large areas of the country in danger of famine, the presence of an apparently well-armed militant cell in Kabul underlined the daunting scale of the challenge facing the new government.

The Taliban operation came after a bomb attack near a mosque in Kabul earlier on Sunday that was later claimed by Islamic State. That blast killed and wounded a number of civilians in what appeared to be the worst attack in the Afghan capital since the withdrawal of U.S. forces at the end of August.

The local affiliate of Islamic State, known as ISIS-Khorasan after an ancient name for the region, has already claimed to have carried out attacks on Taliban targets and remains unreconciled to the Afghan Islamist movement.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said a special Taliban unit carried out an operation against ISIS elements in Kabul’s 17th district, in the city’s north, destroying their base and killing all those in it.

Local residents said the Taliban forces cordoned off the area before beginning their assault at around 7.30 p.m., before a firefight that lasted several hours, interrupted by at least two blasts as the suspected ISIS fighters detonated explosives.

“For about three hours the clashes were very intense and several powerful explosions also took place,” said Hashmatullah, a local shopkeeper.

One local resident, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said a final blast occurred at around 11.30 p.m. when an explosives-packed car blew up, apparently killing all the ISIS fighters in the building where they were holed up.

He said sporadic gunfire could be heard late into the night and early morning near the compound.

As pickup trucks carried furniture and other items out of the partially destroyed compound on Monday, Taliban soldiers sealed off the area, ushering away bystanders.

LINGERING SECURITY THREATS

The Taliban, who are also fighting the remnants of forces loyal to Ahmad Massoud, an opposition leader from the Panjshir region north of Kabul, have said they have almost complete control of the country.

But Sunday’s violence, and a string of smaller incidents in recent days in areas including Nangarhar on the border with Pakistan and Parwan north of Kabul, have shown that security threats have not disappeared.

Islamic State’s Amaq news agency said on Telegram the group carried out the mosque bombing.

IS has also claimed responsibility for bomb attacks in the eastern city of Jalalabad as well as a suicide attack in late August that killed 13 U.S. soldiers and scores of Afghan civilians who were crowded outside the Kabul airport gates, desperate to secure seats on evacuation flights.

Samiullah, a resident of Kabul who runs a street vendor cart near the mosque, said that, initially, even if the economic situation had worsened since the Taliban takeover, the improved security situation was a consolation.

“We regret that the situation has gone from bad to worse,” he told Reuters close to the mosque premises after being ordered to move away from his usual spot. “The situation is not normal yet. No one is allowed in this area except for the Taliban.”

(Editing by James Mackenzie and Mark Heinrich)

Afghan girls stuck at home, waiting for Taliban plan to re-open schools

(Reuters) – As the weeks pass in Afghanistan, the new Taliban administration has yet to announce when it will re-open secondary schools for girls, leaving them stuck at home while their brothers return to class.

Two weeks since boys in classes above the sixth grade were told to go back to school, the government says it is working on making it possible for girls to do the same.

“My request to the Islamic Emirate is that girls be allowed to go to school,” said Marwa, a Kabul schoolgirl, using the term the Taliban use to describe their government. “Also (female) teachers should be allowed to go to school and teach girls.

“I dreamt of becoming a top doctor to serve my people, my country, and my family and work in the community, but now it’s not clear what my future will be,” she added.

The issue has become increasingly important as the rest of the world, whose aid money Afghanistan desperately needs, tries to gauge whether the new Taliban government will give women and girls greater freedoms than the last time it was in power.

“The Ministry of Education is working hard to provide the ground for the education of high school girls as soon as possible,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a news conference on Sept. 21.

The ministry put a statement on its Facebook page on Sept. 24 saying no decision had been reached on when girls would be able to go to school, but that work on the issue was continuing and information would be shared as soon as possible.

Girls’ education and literacy rates, while still relatively low by world standards and well below the rates for boys, have risen sharply since the last Taliban government was ousted by a U.S.-led campaign in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

But increasingly, foreign officials and rights activists including U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai have warned that one of the biggest social gains of the past 20 years may be under threat.

Facing a potentially catastrophic economic crisis that will require large amounts of foreign aid, the movement has tried to present a conciliatory face as it seeks to gain international recognition for its government.

Officials say they will not repeat the harsh rule of the previous Taliban government toppled in 2001, which banned most girls’ education and forbade women from going out in public without a male guardian.

They say all rights for women and girls will be guaranteed in accordance with Islamic law. But they have not said when and under what conditions girls’ schools will be allowed to re-open.

“If our Taliban brothers want their government to be stable and the international community to recognize it, according to sharia, they should allow girls to study,” said Shaima Samih, a 57 year-old math teacher from Kabul.

(Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Afghan central bank drained dollar stockpile before Kabul fell

By John O’Donnell and Rupam Jain

FRANKFURT/MUMBAI (Reuters) – The Afghan central bank ran down most of its U.S. dollar cash reserves in the weeks before the Taliban took control of the country, according to an assessment prepared for Afghanistan’s international donors, exacerbating the current economic crisis.

The confidential, two-page brief, written early this month by senior international economic officials for institutions including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, said the country’s severe cash shortage began before the Taliban took control of Kabul.

It criticized how the central bank’s former leadership handled the crisis in the months before the Taliban’s conquest, including decisions to auction unusually large amounts of U.S. dollars and move money from Kabul to provincial branches.

“FX (foreign exchange) reserves in CB’s (central bank) vaults in Kabul have depleted, the CB cannot meet … cash requests,” the report, seen by Reuters, said.

“The biggest source of the problem is the mismanagement at the central bank prior to the Taliban takeover,” it added.

Shah Mehrabi, chairman of the central bank’s audit committee who helped oversee the bank before the Taliban took over and is still in his post, defended the central bank’s actions, saying it was trying to prevent a run on the local Afghani currency.

The extent of the cash shortage can be seen on the streets of Afghan cities, where people have been queuing for hours to withdraw dollar savings amid strict limits on how much they can take out.

Even before the shock of the Western-backed government’s collapse, the economy was struggling, but the return of the Taliban and abrupt end of billions of dollars in foreign aid has left it in deep crisis.

Prices for staples like flour have spiraled while work has dried up, leaving millions facing hunger as winter approaches.

AID DRIES UP

Under the previous government, the central bank relied on cash shipments of $249 million, delivered roughly every three months in boxes of bound $100 notes and stored in the vaults of the central bank and presidential palace, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

That money has dried up as foreign powers shy away from dealing directly with the Taliban, which fought against foreign troops and the ousted government. Thousands of people – many of them civilians – died.

The central bank, which plays a key role in Afghanistan because it distributes aid from countries like the United States, said on Wednesday it had finalized a plan to meet the country’s foreign currency needs. It gave no details.

The hard currency crunch is making it difficult for the Taliban to meet basic needs, including paying for power or dispersing salaries to government employees, many of whom have not been paid in months.

Afghanistan’s roughly $9 billion of offshore reserves were frozen as soon as the Taliban captured Kabul, leaving the central bank with just the cash in its vaults.

According to the report, the central bank auctioned off $1.5 billion between June 1 and Aug. 15 to local foreign exchange dealers, which it said was “strikingly high”.

“By August 15, the Central Bank had an outstanding liability of $700 million and 50 billion Afghanis ($569 million) towards the commercial banks,” it said, adding that this had been a major factor in emptying its coffers.

Afghan central bank official Mehrabi said, however, that although almost $1.5 billion of auctions had been announced, the actual amount sold was $714 million.

He said the central bank had “continued its foreign exchange auction to reduce the depreciation and inflation.”

MONEY MISSING?

The report also questioned a decision by the central bank to shift some of its reserves to provincial branches, putting it at risk as Taliban militants made advances across the country from late 2020 in the runup to their victory.

It said around $202 million was kept in these branches at the end of 2020, compared with $12.9 million in 2019, and that the cash was not moved as provinces started to fall to the insurgents.

“Some money is reportedly lost (stolen) from ‘some’ of the provincial branches,” the report said, without specifying how much.

Mehrabi said the central bank was investigating money “stolen” from three of its branches, although not by the Taliban. He gave no further details.

Former central bank governor Ajmal Ahmady, who left the country the day after Kabul fell, did not respond to emails and other messages requesting comment on his and the bank’s actions in the months before the Taliban returned to power.

Ahmady has said on Twitter in recent weeks that he did his best to manage the situation, and blamed any cash shortfall on the freezing of central bank assets abroad.

In his statements, he also said the central bank had managed the economy well prior to the fall of Kabul and that he felt bad about leaving staff behind but feared for his safety. He has said no money was stolen from any reserve account.

($1 = 87.8700 Afghanis)

(Additional reporting by James Mackenzie; writing By John O’Donnell; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Afghan army collapse ‘took us all by surprise,’ U.S. defense secretary

By Phil Stewart and Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Congress on Tuesday that the Afghan army’s sudden collapse caught the Pentagon off-guard as he acknowledged miscalculations in America’s longest war including corruption and damaged morale in Afghan ranks.

“The fact that the Afghan army we and our partners trained simply melted away – in many cases without firing a shot – took us all by surprise,” Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“It would be dishonest to claim otherwise.”

Austin was speaking at the start of two days of what are expected to be some of the most contentious hearings in memory over the chaotic end to the war in Afghanistan, which cost the lives of U.S. troops and civilians and left the Taliban back in power.

The Senate and House committees overseeing the U.S. military are holding hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, where Republicans are hoping to zero in on what they see as mistakes that President Joe Biden’s administration made toward the end of the two-decade-old war.

It follows similar questioning two weeks ago that saw U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken staunchly defending the administration, even as he faced calls for his resignation.

Austin praised American personnel who helped airlift 124,000 Afghans out of the country, an operation that also cost the lives of 13 U.S. troops and scores of Afghans in a suicide bombing outside the Kabul airport.

“Was it perfect? Of course not,” Austin said, noting the desperate Afghans who killed trying to climb the side of a U.S. military aircraft or the civilians killed in the last U.S. drone strike of the war.

Senator James Inhofe, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, squarely blamed the Biden administration for what critics say was a shameful end to a 20-year endeavor. Inhofe said Biden ignored the recommendations of his military leaders and left many Americans behind after the U.S. withdrawal.

“We all witnessed the horror of the president’s own making,” Inhofe said of Afghanistan.

Many of the hardest questions may fall to the two senior U.S. military commanders testifying: Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Marine General Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Giles Elgood)

About 100 U.S. citizens, permanent residents still waiting to leave Afghanistan -official

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States is aware of about 100 American citizens and legal permanent residents (LPRs) who remain in Afghanistan and are ready to leave the country, a senior State Department official said on Monday.

The State Department was working to get those people on flights out of Afghanistan, said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

“Our highest priority in Afghanistan, of course, remains helping those American citizens who wish to leave the country now to do so,” the official said.

About 124,000 people were airlifted out of Kabul after the U.S.-backed government there collapsed last month and the Taliban took control.

Since U.S. forces departed and handed over the airport on Aug. 31, 85 American citizens and 79 LPRs have left Afghanistan on sporadic flights, according to the official.

However, some American citizens did not want to leave Afghanistan without family members who did not have the required travel documents to enter the United States, the official said.

The United States would soon intensify efforts to help the immediate family members of American citizens who did not have the needed documentation, the official said, but would not do so for their “extended” families, which could include a large number of people.

“I entirely understand how painful that choice may be for them, but for matters of law and policy, up to this point, we have not extended support for expedited departure and resettlement in the U.S. for extended family members of U.S. citizens,” the official said.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Humeyra Pamuk and Jonathan Landay; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

U.S. grants licenses for more aid flow to Afghanistan despite sanctions

By Daphne Psaledakis

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States on Friday further paved the way for aid to flow to Afghanistan despite U.S. sanctions on the Taliban, who seized control of the country last month, issuing general licenses amid concern that Washington’s punitive measures could compound an unfolding humanitarian crisis.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it issued two general licenses, one allowing the U.S. government, NGOs and certain international organizations, including the United Nations, to engage in transactions with the Taliban or Haqqani Network – both under sanctions – that are necessary to provide humanitarian assistance.

The second license authorizes certain transactions related to the export and re-export of food, medicine and medical devices.

“Treasury is committed to facilitating the flow of humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan and other activities that support their basic human needs,” Andrea Gacki, director of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in the statement.

She added that Washington will continue to work with financial institutions, NGOs and international organizations to ease the flow of agricultural goods, medicine and other resources while upholding sanctions on the Taliban, Haqqani Network and others.

The United Nations said that at the start of the year more than 18 million people – about half of Afghanistan’s population – require aid amid the second drought in four years.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week that Afghanistan is on “the verge of a dramatic humanitarian disaster” and has decided to engage the Taliban in order to help the country’s people.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has said it is committed to allowing humanitarian work in Afghanistan to continue despite Washington listing the Taliban as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.

The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of the Islamist militant group and bar Americans from dealing with them, including the contribution of funds, goods or services.

Reuters reported last month that Washington issued a license authorizing the U.S. government and its partners to continue to facilitate humanitarian aid in Afghanistan.

Friday’s move expands on that specific license, allowing international organizations and NGOs to pay taxes, fees, import duties or permits, licenses or other necessary transactions for assistance to reach the people of Afghanistan.

A Taliban offensive as foreign forces withdrew from Afghanistan after a 20-year war culminated in the capture of the capital Kabul on Aug. 15, two decades after they were driven from power by a U.S.-led campaign in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool)

Islamic State uses Taliban’s own tactics to attack Afghanistan’s new rulers

By Alasdair Pal and Jibran Ahmed

(Reuters) – A little more than a month after toppling the Western-backed government in Kabul, Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers are facing internal enemies who have adopted many of the tactics of urban warfare that marked their own successful guerrilla campaign.

A deadly attack on Kabul airport last month and a series of bomb blasts in the eastern city of Jalalabad, all claimed by the local affiliate of Islamic State, have underlined the threat to stability from violent militant groups who remain unreconciled to the Taliban.

While the movement’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has downplayed the threat, saying this week that Islamic State had no effective presence in Afghanistan, commanders on the ground do not dismiss the threat so lightly.

Two members of the movement’s intelligence services who investigated some of the recent attacks in Jalalabad said the tactics showed the group remained a danger, even if it did not have enough fighters and resources to seize territory.

Using sticky bombs – magnetic bombs usually stuck to the underside of cars – the attacks targeted Taliban members in exactly the same way the Taliban itself used to hit officials and civil society figures to destabilize the former government.

“We are worried about these sticky bombs that once we used to apply to target our enemies in Kabul. We are concerned about our leadership as they could target them if not controlled them successfully,” said one of the Taliban intelligence officials.

Islamic State in Khorasan, the name taken from the ancient name for the region that includes modern Afghanistan, first emerged in late 2014 but has declined from its peak around 2018 following a series of heavy losses inflicted by both the Taliban and U.S. forces.

Taliban security forces in Nangarhar said they had killed three members of the movement on Wednesday night and the intelligence officials said the movement still retains the ability to cause trouble through small-scale attacks.

“Their main structure is broken and they are now divided in small groups to carry out attacks,” one of them said.

FUNDING DRIED UP

The Taliban have said repeatedly that they will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a base for attacks on other countries. But some Western analysts believe the return of the Islamist group to power has invigorated groups like ISIS-K and al Qaeda, which had made Afghanistan their base when the Taliban last ruled the country.

“In Afghanistan, the return of Taliban is a huge victory for the Islamists,” said Rohan Gunaratna, professor of security studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. “They have celebrated the return of the Taliban, so I think that Afghanistan is the new theatre.”

ISIS-K is believed to draw many of its fighters from the ranks of the Taliban or the Pakistani version of the Taliban, known as the TTP, but much of the way it operates remains little understood.

It has fought the Taliban over smuggling routes and other economic interests but it also supports a global Caliphate under Islamic law, in contrast with the Taliban which insists it has no interest in anywhere outside Afghanistan.

Most analysts, as well as the United Nations, peg ISIS-K’s strength at under 2,000 fighters, compared to as many as 100,000 at the Taliban’s disposal. The ranks of ISIS-K were swollen with prisoners released when Afghanistan’s jails were opened by the Taliban as they swept through the country.

According to a June report by the UN security council, ISIS-K’s financial and logistic ties to its parent organization in Syria have weakened, though it does retain some channels of communication.

“Funding support to the Khorasan branch from the core is believed to have effectively dried up,” the report said.

However, the report said signs of divisions within the Taliban, which have already started to emerge, could encourage more fighters to defect as the wartime insurgency tries to reshape itself into a peacetime administration.

“It remains active and dangerous, particularly if it is able, by positioning itself as the sole pure rejectionist group in Afghanistan, to recruit disaffected Taliban and other militants to swell its ranks,” the UN said.

(Reporting by Jibran Ahmed, Alasdair Pal and James Mackenzie; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

World wary of Taliban government, Afghans urge action on rights and economy

(Reuters) – Foreign countries greeted the makeup of the new government in Afghanistan with caution and dismay on Wednesday after the Taliban appointed hardline veteran figures to top positions, including several with a U.S. bounty on their head.

Small protests persisted in Afghanistan, with dozens of women taking to the streets of Kabul to demand representation in the new administration and for their rights to be protected.

More broadly, people urged the new leaders to revive the Afghan economy, which is facing steep inflation, food shortages exacerbated by drought and the prospect of overseas investment disappearing as the outside world eyes the Taliban warily.

The Islamist militant movement swept to power nearly four weeks ago in a stunning victory hastened by the withdrawal of U.S. military support to Afghan government forces.

It has taken time to form a government, and although the posts are acting rather than final, the appointment of a cabinet of hardline veterans has been seen by other nations as a signal that the Taliban are not looking to broaden their base and present a more tolerant face to the world.

The group has promised to respect people’s rights and not seek vendettas, but it has been criticized for its heavy-handed response to protests and its part in a chaotic evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Kabul airport.

“The announcement of a transitional government without the participation of other groups and yesterday’s violence against demonstrators and journalists in Kabul are not signals that give cause for optimism,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said.

The European Union voiced its disapproval at the appointments, announced late on Tuesday in Kabul, but said it was ready to continue humanitarian assistance. Longer term aid would depend on the Taliban upholding basic freedoms.

The U.S. State Department said it was concerned about the “affiliations and track records” of some of the people named by the Taliban to fill top posts.

“The world is watching closely,” a spokesperson said.

The new acting cabinet includes former detainees of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, while the interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is wanted by the United States on terrorism charges and carries a reward of $10 million.

His uncle, with a bounty of $5 million, is the minister for refugees and repatriation.

The Taliban’s sudden victory, which took even its leadership by surprise, has presented the rest of the world with a dilemma.

They want to keep aid flowing and to help those with the appropriate paperwork who want to leave, but they may have to engage with a movement that, until a few weeks ago, was an insurgency blamed for thousands of civilian deaths.

MORE PROTESTS

The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, women were banned from work and girls from school. The group carried out public executions and its religious police enforced a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Taliban leaders have vowed to respect people’s rights, including those of women, in accordance with sharia, but those who have won greater freedoms over the last two decades are worried about losing them.

In Kabul, a group of women bearing signs reading “A cabinet without women is a failure” held another protest in the Pul-e Surkh area of the city. Larger demonstrations on Tuesday were broken up when Taliban gunmen fired warning shots into the air.

“The cabinet was announced and there were no women in the cabinet. And some journalists who came to cover the protest were all arrested and taken to the police station,” said a woman in a video shared on social media.

Zaki Daryabi, head of the daily newspaper Etilaatroz, said some of his reporters had been beaten while covering Tuesday’s protests, which came hours before the new government was revealed.

Taliban officials have said that protests would be allowed, but that they must be announced in advance and authorized.

For many Afghans, more pressing than the composition of the cabinet was the economic fallout of the chaos triggered by the Taliban’s conquest, including its impact on healthcare.

Shukrullah Khan, manager of a restaurant at Qargha Lake, a popular local resort near Kabul, said business had slumped to next to nothing.

“The business and bazaars compared to the previous government, has been decreased by 98%,” he said.

“The banks are closed, there’s no jobs, people no longer spend money. Where does the money come from so that people can have fun here?”

Aid flights have begun to arrive at Kabul airport, but many more will be needed over the coming months.

The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) appealed to other humanitarian organizations to return to Afghanistan and for the World Bank to unlock funds to support the tottering healthcare system.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Angus MacSwan)