The militant group that stormed Kabul at the weekend said they wanted peaceful relations with other countries and would respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law
A Taliban leader and co-founder was seen returning to Afghanistan after more than 10 years in a triumphalist video posted on social media.
The militant group that stormed Kabul at the weekend said they wanted peaceful relations with other countries and would respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law.
The announcement, short on details but claiming a softer line than during their rule 20 years ago, came as frantic evacuation efforts continued out of Kabul.
In footage posted online one of the Taliban’s co-founders was seen being given a hero’s welcome in Kandahar as locals cheered his motorcade.
The video appears to show Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar returning to the jubilant crowds in Afghanistan on Tuesday.
Baradar was arrested in 2010, but released from prison in 2018 at the request of former US President Donald Trump’s administration so he could participate in peace talks.
The 53-year-old was deputy leader under ex-chief Mullah Mohammed Omar, whose support for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden led to the invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.
He has now been tipped to become president of a Taliban government.
He is known as Mullah Baradar, meaning brother, due to close ties with the late Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar, his friend and brother-in-law.
Baradar became battle-hardened while fighting Soviet troops in the 1980s alongside Omar.
Baradar later helped his former commander found the Taliban in 1994 and establish its previous rule over Afghanistan. Omar went into hiding after the US invasion and is reported to have died from tuberculosis in 2013.
During Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, Baradar was said to have served as governor of two provinces, a top army commander and deputy minister of defence.
“We don’t want any internal or external enemies,” the movement’s main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said this week.
Women would be allowed to work and study and “will be very active in society but within the framework of Islam,” he added.
As they rushed to evacuate, western powers assessed how to respond after Afghan forces melted away in just days, with what many had predicted as the likely fast unravelling of women’s rights.
“If (the Taliban) want any respect, if they want any recognition by the international community, they have to be very conscious of the fact that we will be watching how women and girls and, more broadly, the civilian community is treated by them as they try to form a government,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told MSNBC on Tuesday.
US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said they had agreed to hold a virtual meeting of Group of Seven leaders next week to discuss a common strategy and approach to Afghanistan.
During their 1996-2001 rule, also guided by Islamic sharia law, the Taliban stopped women from working.
Girls were not allowed to go to school and women had to wear all-enveloping burqas to go out and then only when accompanied by a male relative.
The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold a special session in Geneva next week to address “serious human rights concerns” after the Taliban takeover, a U.N. statement said.
Ramiz Alakbarov, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, said in an interview the Taliban had assured the United Nations it can pursue humanitarian work in Afghanistan, which is suffering from a drought.