Taliban violently disperse rare protest days after takeover

Many have expressed dread that the two-decade Western experiment to remake Afghanistan will not survive the resurgent Taliban, who took control of the country in a blitz that took just days.

Taliban leaders talked on Wednesday with senior Afghan officials about a future government.

‘In a potential complication to any effort to stabilise the country, the Central Bank chief warned that American sanctions over the Taliban’s terror designations threatened Afghanistan’s economy, which already is dangerously low on hard foreign currency.

One figure who was not at the talks talking place in Kabul: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled as the Taliban closed in on the capital. The United Arab Emirates acknowledged Wednesday that they have taken him and his family in.

In an early sign of protest to the Taliban’s rule, dozens gathered in the eastern city of Jalalabad and a nearby market town to raise the tricolor national flag, a day before Afghanistan’s Independence Day, which commemorates the 1919 treaty that ended British rule. They lowered the Taliban flag — a white banner with an Islamic inscription — that the militants have raised in the areas they captured.

Video footage later showed the Taliban firing into the air and attacking people with batons to disperse the crowd. 

Babrak Amirzada, a reporter for a local news agency, said he and a TV cameraman from another agency were beaten by the Taliban as they tried to cover the unrest.

A local health official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorised to brief journalists, said the violence killed at least one person and wounded six.

The Taliban did not acknowledge the protest or the violence.

It was a rare resistance to their rule. In the days since the Taliban seized Kabul on Sunday, the militants only faced one other protest by a few women in the capital.

Still, there’s been no armed opposition to the Taliban. However, videos from the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, a stronghold of the Northern Alliance militias that allied with the US against the Taliban in 2001, appear to show potential opposition figures gathering there. 

That area is 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 Defence Minister General Bismillah Mohammadi — as well as Ahmad Massoud, the son of the slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. 

It remained unclear what they’re next steps would be.

The Taliban, meanwhile, pressed ahead with their efforts to form an “inclusive, Islamic government.” 

They have been holding talks with former President Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, a senior official in the ousted government.

Mohammad Yusof Saha, a spokesman for Mr Karzai, said preliminary meetings with Taliban officials would facilitate eventual negotiations with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the top Taliban political leader, who who just returned to the country from Qatar.

Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah met on Wednesday with Anas Haqqani, a senior leader in a powerful Taliban faction. 

The US branded the Haqqani network a terrorist group in 2012, and its involvement in a future government could trigger international sanctions. 

Hundreds of people were outside the airport early on Wednesday. The Taliban demanded to see documents before allowing the rare passenger inside. 

Many of the people outside did not appear to have passports, and each time the gate opened even an inch, dozens tried to push through. The Taliban fired occasional warning shots to disperse them.

Even those who made it inside the airport faced problems, however. Sam Lerman, an Afghan who formerly worked with the US military, said American troops turned him away even after the State Department told him to come for a flight — saying he needed a green card.

“People are going to die,” Mr Lerman warned.

In Kabul, groups of Taliban fighters carrying long guns patrolled a well-to-do neighbourhood that is home to many embassies as well as mansions of the Afghan elite.

The Taliban have promised to maintain security, but residents say groups of armed men have been going door to door inquiring about Afghans who worked with the Americans or the deposed government. It’s unclear if the gunmen are Taliban or criminals posing as militants.

Another Taliban promise being closely watched is their vow to prevent Afghanistan from again being used as a base for planning terrorist attacks. 

That was enshrined in a 2020 peace deal with the Trump administration that paved the way for the drawdown of American troops, the last of whom are supposed to leave at the end of the month.

When the Taliban were last in power they sheltered Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group, which carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks. US officials fear al-Qaeda and other groups could reconstitute themselves in Afghanistan now that the Taliban are back in power.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, the Taliban blew up a statue depicting Abdul Ali Mazari, a militia leader killed by the Taliban in 1996, when the Islamic militants seized power from rival warlords. 

Mr Mazari was a champion of Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazara minority, Shiites who were persecuted under the Sunni Taliban’s earlier rule. 

That further raised concerns about whether they would make good on their promises, including not seeking revenge on those who have opposed them.

Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates acknowledged that Mr Ghani and his family were in the Gulf country in a terse, one-sentence statement.

Mr Ghani, in theory, remains the president of Afghanistan though many in the country blame him for the collapse of the country’s security forces.

The US Embassy in Abu Dhabi did not respond to questions about the presence of Mr Ghani, who faced allegations from Russian diplomats of carrying out millions of dollars when he fled.

In a sign of the difficulties any future Afghan government will face, the head of Afghanistan’s Central Bank said the country’s supply of physical US dollars is “close to zero.” 

Afghanistan has some US$9 billion ($12.4 billion) in reserves, Ajmal Ahmady tweeted, but most is held outside the country, with some US$7 billion ($9.7 billion) held in US Federal Reserve bonds, assets and gold.

Mr Ahmady said the country did not receive a planned cash shipment amid the Taliban offensive.

“The next shipment never arrived,” he wrote. 

“Seems like our partners had good intelligence as to what was going to happen.”

He said the lack of US dollars would likely lead to a depreciation of the local currency, the afghani, hurting the country’s poor. 

Afghans have been lining up outside ATM machines for days, with many pulling out their life savings.

Ahmady said the Taliban will struggle to access the country’s reserves because of international sanctions.

The “Taliban won militarily — but now have to govern,” he wrote.