August 15, 2023

An explosion ripped through a hotel in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Khost on Monday, killing at least three people and wounding seven others, police said. The blast occurred at a city hotel frequented by Afghan people and refugees from Pakistan’s former militant stronghold of North Waziristan bordering Afghanistan, said Mustaghfir Gurbaz, a police spokesperson in Khost. He said officers were investigating to determine what caused the blast and who was behind it. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, though Afghanistan’s Taliban government has blamed the regional affiliate of the Islamic State group — known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province — for previous attacks. Gurbaz provided no information about the Pakistani refugees staying at the hotel. Authorities in Pakistan have said members of the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, are hiding in Khost and elsewhere in Afghanistan. TTP is a separate group but is a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, which seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war. Pakistani officials say many TTP leaders and fighters have found sanctuaries in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, which also emboldened the Pakistani Taliban. Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/afghanistan-ap-pakistani-islamabad-islamic-state-b2392778.html

The death of a Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee has sparked outrage among the masses with protesters taking to the streets chanting anti-government slogans. 83-year-old Sayedee, the vice president of Bangladesh’s opposition party Jamaat-e-Islami, passed away in a prison hospital on Monday evening. The prominent leader’s demise comes over a decade after his conviction by a war crimes court, an event that triggered some of the deadliest political unrest in the country. Following Delwar Hossain Sayedee’s death, mourners and supporters gathered outside the hospital premises, raising their voices with chants of “Allahu akbar.” Significant police personnel were deployed to manage the crowds. Supporters, grieving the loss of Sayedee, voiced their resolve not to let his bloodshed be in vain. Many pointed fingers at the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, accusing it of contributing to the circumstances that led to the leader’s demise. These sentiments are deepened by the upcoming general elections scheduled for January, adding a layer of political complexity to the crisis. Delwar Hossain Sayedee’s health had been a concern for some time, as he was admitted to the hospital after experiencing a heart attack while incarcerated in Kashimpur Prison, located outside the capital, Dhaka. “He faced another heart attack today (Monday) at 6.45 pm (1245 GMT) and died at 8.40 pm,” hospital director Brigadier General Rezaur Rahman told AFP, adding he had had five stents inserted into his arteries. Jamaat-e-Islami announced Sayedee´s death on its Facebook page, where it accused the authorities of “slowly turning him into a martyr without treatment in the prison”. He was sentenced to death in 2013 by a war-crimes tribunal on eight charges of murder, rape, and persecution of Hindus, triggering deadly protests by thousands of supporters nationwide, leaving more than 100 people dead. The party said tens of thousands of its supporters were arrested in a subsequent crackdown, and the party was only this year able to hold public protests again. In 2014, Bangladesh´s Supreme Court said Sayedee should spend “the rest of his natural life” in jail for crimes during the 1971 liberation war with Pakistan. Delwar Hossain Sayedee shot to prominence in the 1980s after he started preaching in some of the Muslim-majority nation´s top mosques. In his heyday he would draw hundreds of thousands to his sessions and CDs of his speeches were top sellers. Even people who were not supporters of Jamaat attended his preachings. Jamaat-e-Islami was banned for much of the 1970s for its support of Pakistan during the war, but by the 1990s it had become the country´s third-largest party and the biggest religious outfit. Political analysts credit Delwar Hossain Sayedee´s preaching for transforming the party into a major force. Source: https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1100441-death-of-jamat-e-islamis-delwar-hossein-sayedee-in-jail-ignites-protests-in-bangladesh

The Afghan Taliban is marking the second anniversary of its return to power with a public holiday, celebrating the takeover of Kabul and the establishment of what it described as security across the country under an “Islamic system”. “On the second anniversary of the conquest of Kabul, we would like to congratulate the mujahid [holy warrior] nation of Afghanistan and ask them to thank Almighty Allah for this great victory,” the spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Now that overall security is ensured in the country, the entire territory of the country is managed under a single leadership, an Islamic system is in place and everything is explained from the angle of Sharia [Islamic law],” Mujahid said. Security was tight in the capital, Kabul, on Tuesday as soldiers stepped up checks. Convoys of Taliban members gathered at Massoud Square near the abandoned US embassy building. Some of the men carried their weapons, while others snapped selfies as anthems blared and boys sold the movement’s white flag inscribed with the Islamic declaration of faith. In Herat in the west, a crowd of Taliban supporters chanted: “Death to the Europeans, death to the Westerners, long live the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, death to the Americans.” A military parade was cancelled in Kandahar, the cradle of the Taliban movement, from where its reclusive supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhunzada, rules by decree. Akhunzada called off the parade himself so as not to disturb the public, provincial officials told journalists. A poster of Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada is seen along a road in Kabul A poster of Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhunzada, is seen along a road in Kabul [Wakil Kohsar/AFP] The Taliban government is still not formally recognised by any country. The international community continues to grapple with how, and if, to engage with the Taliban authorities. After a lightning offensive as US-led foreign forces were withdrawing after 20 years of inconclusive war, the Taliban entered the capital on August 15, 2021, as the US-backed president, Ashraf Ghani, fled and the Afghan security forces, set up with years of Western support, disintegrated. Afghanistan is enjoying peace not seen in decades, but the United Nations says there have been dozens of attacks on civilians, some claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) armed group. The Taliban, which says it respects rights in line with its interpretation of Islamic law, has also stopped most Afghan female staff from working with aid agencies, closed beauty salons, barred women from parks and curtailed their travel in the absence of any male guardian. Taliban Palace: The second year of Taliban rule in Afghanistan | Witness Girls aged above 12 years have been mostly excluded from classes since the Taliban returned to power. For many Western governments, the ban is a major obstacle to any hope of formal recognition of the Taliban administration. But most Muslim-majority countries and Islamic scholars have rejected Taliban’s stand on women’s rights. Some Taliban leaders back education for women, with a senior leader saying that Islam grants women right to education and work. The Taliban hopes that progress will help bring foreign recognition and the lifting of sanctions, and the release of about $7bn in central bank assets frozen in the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 2021 after the Taliban took control, half of which was later transferred to a Swiss trust. According to the UN special representative, the corruption that exploded as Western money poured in for years after the Taliban was toppled in 2001, has been reduced. There are also signs that a Taliban ban on narcotics cultivation has dramatically reduced poppy production in what has for years been the world’s biggest source of opium. But a group of UN experts hit out on Monday at pledges by Taliban authorities of a softer rule than during its first stint in power from 1996 to 2001. “Despite reassurances by the Taliban de facto authorities that any restrictions, particularly in terms of access to education would be temporary, the facts on the ground have demonstrated an accelerated, systematic, and all-engulfing system of segregation, marginalisation and persecution,” the experts said in a statement. “The gap between promises and practices by Afghanistan’s de facto authorities has widened, and the idea of a “reformed” Taliban has been exposed as mistaken,” they added. Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/15/taliban-marks-two-years-since-return-to-power-in-afghanistan