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  • Saudi diplomats leave Afghanistan, relocate to Pakistani capital – sources

    Saudi diplomats have left Afghanistan for "training" and will return, the Taliban administration said on Monday, though three sources familiar with the matter said security concerns had contributed to their departure. A diplomatic source and two other sources said Saudi Arabia's diplomats had left by air and relocated to Pakistan late last week due to warnings of heightened risks of attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul. The Taliban said their departure was temporary and not for security reasons. "Some employees of Saudi Arabia's embassy have gone out for a kind of training, and will return," Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the Taliban administration, said.

  • Saudi diplomats leave Afghanistan, relocate to Pakistani capital -sources

    Saudi diplomats have left Afghanistan for "training" and will return, the Taliban administration said on Monday, though three sources familiar with the matter said security concerns had contributed to their departure. A diplomatic source and two other sources said Saudi Arabia's diplomats had left by air and relocated to Pakistan late last week due to warnings of heightened risks of attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul.

  • Saudi diplomats leave Afghanistan, relocate to Pakistani capital – sources

    Saudi diplomats have left Afghanistan for "training" and will return, the Taliban administration said on Monday, though three sources familiar with the matter said security concerns had contributed to their departure. A diplomatic source and two other sources said Saudi Arabia's diplomats had left by air and relocated to Pakistan late last week due to warnings of heightened risks of attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul.

  • Afghanistan: Erdogan calls Taliban ban on women’s education ‘un-Islamic’

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced the Taliban’s order to ban university and primary education for Afghanistan's women as “unIslamic”, promising to follow the issue until it is resolved in a televised speech on Wednesday. “It is inhumane and un-Islamic,” Erdogan said while addressing an international conference on ombudsmanship in Ankara.

  • Saudi Arabia and Qatar are cooperating with the Taliban. But their approaches to Afghanistan are different.

    All GCC states have come to terms with the reality of Taliban rule in Afghanistan since August 2021 and must pragmatically deal with the situation on the ground. Saudi Arabia and Qatar see Afghanistan primarily as a security and humanitarian concern, however, their approaches toward the country differ. Under Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), they have changed to a more humanitarian-based approach, using their sway in major Islamic institutions to funnel aid to the Afghan people.

  • Is Iran’s Quds Force taking over Afghanistan policy?

    Iran has named Hassan Kazemi-Qomi as its new top envoy to Afghanistan, reportedly replacing Ambassador Bahador Aminian. Said to be a veteran of the Quds Force—the expeditionary wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—Kazemi-Qomi’s appointment follows a leak of criticism of the Taliban attributed to Aminian.

  • Fears of widening gender inequality in Afghanistan as Saudi Arabia joins calls to Taliban to keep university doors open to women

    The announcement is only the latest in a series of ever-stricter restrictions on the freedoms of Afghan women, which now include mandatory face coverings and a ban on travel without a male escort. Public frustration with the regime and its oppressive policies appears to be growing, in echoes of the current women-led protest movement in neighboring Iran, according to Afghanistan’s former national security adviser.

  • Charting a Path Forward for Afghanistan

    Over the past year and a half of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the impasse in engagement between the Taliban and the international community has only worsened. Understandably, the brutal nature of the Taliban’s tactics, including the use of young suicide bombers, makes engagement with the group morally questionable and practically futile. However, considering the implications of the the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the total victory the Taliban achieved in their 20-year war, the international community’s hesitancy to militarily intervene in or even engage with the country once again leaves the fate of approximately 35 million Afghans solely in the hands of the Taliban, and the success or failure of their regime.

  • Mapping Anti-Taliban Insurgencies in Afghanistan

    The Afghan Taliban has moved swiftly to consolidate control over Afghanistan and eliminate any opposition to its rule since the August 2021 collapse of the Afghan Republic. The Taliban claim to rule all of Afghanistan for the first time in 40 years. Armed groups opposed to the Taliban remain active in the country, however. Anti-Taliban groups fall into two main categories: Islamic State–aligned groups and non–Salafi-jihadi resistance groups.

  • U.S. Watchdog Sifts Through the Wreckage in Afghanistan

    SIGAR’s latest report found that the stunning collapse of Ashraf Ghani’s U.S.-backed government was influenced by a failure to recognize that U.S. President Joe Biden was serious about withdrawing American troops, his exclusion from diplomatic talks with the Taliban and the unwillingness of the militant group to compromise, and the stacking of loyalists around the presidential palace that made corruption an endemic problem in Kabul.