Taliban meet with Iran amid Afghan economic troubles
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders met with Iranian officials in an effort to boost trade relations key to filling the country’s cashstarved coffers as it teeters on the brink of economic collapse, a spokesman said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Taliban said they arrested 11 members of the rival Islamic State group.
The Taliban met Monday with a delegation from neighboring Iran to regulate trade between the countries, Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi said. They agreed to increase trading hours at the Islam Qala border crossing from eight hours per day to 24 and to better regulate the collection of tariffs and improve roadworks. Customs are a key source of domestic revenue for Afghanistan.
The United Kingdom separately sent two envoys to meet with top Taliban officials Tuesday, the U.K. prime minister’s spokesperson said. No additional details were provided.
Afghanistan, an aid-dependent country, is grappling with a liquidity crisis as assets remain frozen in the U.S. and disbursements from international organizations that once accounted for 75% of state spending have been paused.
Taliban officials said Tuesday they arrested 11 members of the Islamic State group, a rival and bitter enemy of the insurgents, in Kabul. The IS affiliate – based in eastern Nangarhar province – has claimed responsibility for a spate of recent attacks targeting Taliban forces in eastern Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Protests against the Taliban’s policies toward women continued, with a demonstration Tuesday in a Kabul private school by female teachers and students who held up signs saying “Education is a right.”
The protest was held indoors to avoid backlash from the Taliban, who have recently outlawed demonstrations held without permission from the government.
The U.N. children’s agency continued to sound the alarm, saying a humanitarian crisis is imminent and warning that half of Afghanistan’s children under age 5 are expected to suffer from severe malnutrition as hunger takes root amid serious food shortages.
“There are millions of people who are going to starve and there is winter coming, COVID raging, and the whole social system collapsed,” said Omar Adbi, UNICEF’S deputy executive director for programs, during a visit to a Kabul children’s hospital.
At the hospital, a woman named Nargis sat with her 3-year-old child who was suffering from severe malnutrition. She had come from Kunar province in northeastern Afghanistan, where fighting between the Taliban and the Islamic State group has deprived communities of accessing basic needs, including food. Nargis declined to give her full name.
Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, referring to the killings in Daykundi, said “these cold-blooded executions (of the Hazaras) are further proof that the Taliban are committing the same horrific abuses they were notorious for during their previous rule of Afghanistan.”
Hazaras make up around 9% of Afghanistan’s 36 million people. They are often targeted because they are Shiite Muslims in a Sunni-majority country.