Taliban tamp down on Afghan protests
KABUL, Afghanistan — AntiTaliban protesters defied their new rulers for a second day in several cities Thursday, marking Afghan Independence Day by trying to hoist the red, green and black national banner but often getting beaten down by militant fighters who continue to control the streets of the capital and elsewhere.
Taliban leadership also marked the holiday, which celebrates Afghanistan gaining independence from Britain in 1919, by reveling in what it described as its defeat of the U.S.
“Today we are celebrating the anniversary of independence from Britain,” the Taliban said in a statement. “We at the same time, as a result of our jihadi resistance, forced another arrogant power of the world, the United States, to fail and retreat from our holy territory of Afghanistan.”
But it was clear Thursday that many Afghans already are fighting for their independence from the Taliban.
At one traffic circle in central Kabul, a group of Afghans raised the traditional Afghan flag to replace the white Taliban banner. A group of Taliban fighters approached and pointed their guns at the group.
Los Angeles Times photographer Marcus Yam was trying to photograph the scene when a Taliban fighter emerged out of nowhere and punched him on the side of the head. The fighter continued to beat Yam and another photographer working for a major U.S. newspaper, then demanded they erase the images they had shot.
Yam said that at one point he was on his knees urging the fighter not to shoot him.
After the beatings stopped, Yam and the other photographer were held for some 20 minutes until an English-speaking militant came along and asked the men who they worked for. He then offered the photographers an energy drink and released them.
In Khost province, Taliban authorities reportedly instituted a 24-hour curfew Thursday after violently breaking up another protest. The militants didn’t immediately acknowledge the demonstration or the curfew.
Protesters also took to the streets in Kunar province, according to witnesses and social media videos.
At a rally Wednesday in the eastern city of Jalalabad, demonstrators lowered the Taliban flag and replaced it with Afghanistan’s tricolor. At least one person was killed.
“I predict that we will start seeing all kinds of resistance. Some of it will be peaceful, some of it will be violent,” Candace Rondeaux, former adviser to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a government watchdog agency, said in a teleconference Thursday sponsored by the New America think tank.
In Kabul, artist Basira Shahnawaz, 25, was watching the protests Thursday.
“People protest that they do not accept the Taliban,” she said via WhatsApp. “In the streets, they raise the Afghan flag and chant slogans.”
Shahnawaz was hiding at her home, which is filled with paintings and sculptures, amid reports that Taliban militants are conducting door-to-door searches. She said that as soon as the fighters enter, they’ll know she’s an artist and likely will target her.
“They kill artists,” she said, recalling the past rule of the Taliban,
but “I have no choice.”
Meanwhile, the gridlock crush at the international airport in Kabul surged again as desperate Afghans and others tried to flee the country. In Washington, the Pentagon said it has flown out 12,000 people since July, including U.S. diplomats and Afghans eligible for special visas because of their work on behalf of the U.S. military.
But the numbers fell far short of the 9,000 people a day the Pentagon says it has the capacity to evacuate. The shortfall highlighted the slow bureaucratic process to finish paperwork for Afghans needing to leave and the terrifying difficulty many Americans and others are confronting as they try to make their way to the airport for evacuation flights.
President Joe Biden said he was committed to keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan until every American is evacuated, even if that means maintaining a military presence there beyond his Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawal. In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” that aired Thursday, Biden said he didn’t believe the Taliban had changed.
“I think they’re going through sort of an existential crisis about ‘do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government,’ ” Biden said. “I’m not sure they do.”
Though the Taliban have yet to formally appoint a government, they are about to confront many of the difficulties of actually governing, with shortages of cash and supplies. Other countries and world institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, have warned that they’ll withhold the foreign aid that has sustained much of Afghanistan’s economy for years.
A U.N. official warned of dire food shortages in this nation of 38 million people reliant on imports.
“A humanitarian crisis of incredible proportions is unfolding before our eyes,” Mary Ellen McGroarty, the head of the World Food Program in Afghanistan, warned in a statement.
Drought, she said, has destroyed more than 40 percent of the country’s crops. And many people fleeing the Taliban are living in open spaces in the capital.
“This is really Afghanistan’s hour of greatest need, and we urge the international community to stand by the Afghan people at this time,” she said.