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August 19, 2021

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Taliban pledge no revenge, 鈥榙ifferent鈥 Afghan rule

The Taliban have offered a pledge of reconciliation, vowing no revenge against opponents and to respect women’s rights in a “different” rule of Afghanistan from two decades ago.

The announcements came on Tuesday night shortly after the return to Afghanistan of their co-founder, crowning the group’s astonishing comeback after being ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001.

With huge concerns globally about the Taliban’s brutal human rights record — and tens of thousands of Afghans still trying to flee the country — they held their first press conference from Kabul.

“All those in the opposite side are pardoned from A to Z,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told foreign and local reporters.

“We will not seek revenge.”

Mujahid said the new regime would be “positively different” from their 1996-2001 stint, which was infamous for deaths by stoning, girls being banned from school and women from working in contact with men.

As the Taliban boasted of being a changed movement, residents in Bamiyan city reported that a statue of Hazara leader Abdul Ali Mazari, killed by the group in the 1990s, had been decapitated.

Hazaras have long been persecuted for their largely Shiite faith and were massacred in the thousands by the Taliban earlier. “We are not sure who has blown up the statue, but there are different groups of Taliban present here, including some ... who are known for their brutality,” a resident said.

In eastern Jalalabad city, the Taliban fired shots as residents protested over the removal of Afghan flags that were replaced with those of the hardline movement, local media reported.

At least three people were killed and more than a dozen injured in the anti-Taliban protests, witnesses said.

Elsewhere, videos from the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, a stronghold of the Northern Alliance militias that allied with the United States against the Taliban in 2001, appear to show potential opposition figures gathering there. It’s in the only province that hasn’t yet fallen to the Taliban.

Those figures include members of the deposed government — Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who asserted on Twitter that he is the country’s rightful president and Defense Minister General Bismillah Mohammadi — as well as Ahmad Massoud, the son of the slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. It’s unclear if they aim to challenge to the Taliban.

President Ashraf Ghani, meanwhile, is in the United Arab Emirates, the Gulf state’s foreign ministry said yesterday, after he fled Afghanistan.

“The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds,” it said.


 

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