Washington DC, US
Reuters
A UN report seen by Reuters says the Taliban and its allies are believed to have killed scores of former Afghan officials, security force members and people who worked with the international military contingent since the US-led pullout.
Afghans walk past a Humvee with a Taliban fighter on it guarding the road in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 27th January. PICTURE: Reuters/Ali Khara
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ report to the UN Security Council paints a picture of worsening living conditions for Afghanistan’s 39 million people despite an end of combat with the Taliban’s takeover in August.
“An entire complex social and economic system is shutting down,” Guterres said.
BIDEN CALLS ON TALIBAN TO RELEASE AMERICAN HOSTAGE
US President Joe Biden on Sunday called on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to release a US civil engineer who was abducted two years ago and is believed to be the last American hostage held by the Taliban.
Mark Frerichs, a 59-year-old US Navy veteran from Lombard, Illinois, who worked in Afghanistan for a decade on development projects. He was kidnapped a month before the February, 2020, US troop pullout deal was signed and was transferred to the Haqqani network , a brutal Taliban faction accused of some of the deadliest attacks of the war.
Monday marks his second year in captivity.
“Threatening the safety of Americans or any innocent civilians is always unacceptable, and hostage-taking is an act of particular cruelty and cowardice,” Biden said in a statement. “The Taliban must immediately release Mark before it can expect any consideration of its aspirations for legitimacy. This is not negotiable.”
Biden pulled US troops out of Afghanistan in August in a chaotic withdrawal that drew sharp criticism from Republicans and his own Democrats as well as foreign allies and punctured his approval ratings.
Frerichs’ family has criticised the US Government for not pressing harder to secure his release. Last week, his sister, Charlene Cakora, made a personal plea to Biden in a Washington Post opinion piece titled, “President Biden, please bring home my brother, the last American held hostage in Afghanistan”.
The United States has raised Frerich’s case in every meeting with the Taliban, the State Department said in a statement.
“We call on the Taliban to release him. We will continue working to bring him home,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken added in a Twitter post.
US and Taliban officials met for the first time since the pullout in October in Doha, Qatar, which had hosted talks on Afghanistan that led to the troop withdrawal.
The Qatari emir was due to visit the White House on Monday on a range of issues that will include global energy security, the White House said last week. Qatar represents US interests in Kabul.
– DOINA CHIACU, Washington DC, US/Reuters
The report sounds the latest in a series of warnings the UN chief has issued in recent months about the humanitarian and economic crises that accelerated after the Taliban seized Kabul as the last US-led foreign troops left and international donors cut critical financial aid.
Guterres recommended the council approve a restructuring of the UN mission to deal with the situation, including the creation of a new human rights monitoring unit.
The UN mission “continues to receive credible allegations of killings, enforced disappearances and other violations” against former officials, security force members and people who worked for the US-led international military contingent despite a general amnesty announced by the Taliban, the report said.
The mission has determined as credible reports that more than 100 of those individuals have been killed – more than two-thirds of them allegedly by the Taliban or their affiliates – since 15th August, it said.
There also are credible allegations of the extra-judicial killings of at least 50 people suspected of belonging to the local branch of the Islamic State militant group, according to the report.
“Human rights defenders and media workers continue to come under attack, intimidation, harassment, arbitrary arrest, ill-treatment and killings,” it said.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s public universities, closed since the Taliban seized power in August, will reopen in February, the Taliban acting higher education minister said on Sunday, without specifying whether female students would be able to return.
Universities in warmer provinces will reopen from 2nd February, while those in colder areas would reopen on 26th February, the minister, Shaikh Abdul Baqi Haqqani, told a news conference in Kabul.
He did not say what arrangements if any would be made for female students. In the past, Taliban officials have suggested that women could be taught in separate classes.
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So far, the Taliban government has reopened high schools for boys only in most parts of the country. Some private universities have reopened, but in many cases female students have not been able to return to class.
Western governments have made education for female students a part of their demands as the Taliban seek more foreign aid and the unfreezing of overseas assets.
– With Reuters Kabul bureau.
