Tag: Taliban

Al-Qaida’s power base in Afghanistan now ‘worse’ than before 9/11

WND Staff – July 12, 2022

When Joe Biden abruptly withdrew all American troops from Afghanistan last year, he left behind billions of dollars worth of American war machinery for the Taliban – the terror organization then taking over the country – to have and to use.

He also left behind hundreds of Americans, despite his promise that he would see to it that every one got out.

Further, there were thousands of nationals who had worked with the U.S. during its years-long presence there, and who were likely to face the wrath of the terrorists who took control of the nation, and installed themselves as the government.

The U.S., of course, originally had gone in because of the Islamic extremists who were threatening and killing people and destabilizing that part of the world. And carrying out 9/11.

Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of the Long War Journal, said in a report at Just the News that now the Taliban controls all 34 provinces – as opposed to about three-quarters as of the 9/11 date when Muslim extremists commandeered four jets and created terror in Washington and New York, costing nearly 3,000 American residents their lives.

“The State Department’s policy essentially normalizes Taliban control of Afghanistan,” he explained. “This is absolutely insane. If the U.S. is unwilling to support the Afghan resistance, then it’s effectively ceding Taliban control to Afghanistan.”

https://www.wnd.com

Aftershock in Afghanistan as Quake Toll Rises to 1,150 Dead

Ebrahim Nooroozi – June 24, 2022

GAYAN, Afghanistan (AP) — An aftershock took more lives Friday and threatened to pile even more misery on an area of eastern Afghanistan reeling from a powerful earthquake that state media said killed 1,150 people this week.

Wednesday’s magnitude 6 quake struck a remote, mountainous region already grappling with staggering poverty at a time when the country as a whole is spiraling deeper into economic crisis after many countries pulled back critical financing and development aid in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover.

That aid had been keeping the country afloat, and its withdrawal left millions unable to afford food and further strained already struggling medical facilities. Nearly half the population of 38 million cannot meet their basic food needs, while some civil servants, like doctors, nurses, and teachers, weren’t paid for months because the Taliban government is unable to access frozen foreign reserves. Salary delays continue throughout the public sector.

Afghanistan’s international isolation is also complicating relief efforts since fewer aid organizations have a presence in the country, and many governments are wary of putting money in the Taliban’s hands.

Aid groups lament that means they have to pay local staff with bags of cash delivered by hand.

Aid organizations like the local Red Crescent and U.N. agencies like the World Food Program have sent food, tents, sleeping mats, and other essentials to families in Paktika province, the epicenter of the earthquake, and neighboring Khost province.

Still, residents appeared to be largely on their own to deal with the aftermath as their new Taliban-led government and the international aid community struggled to bring in help. The shoddy mountain roads leading to the affected areas were made worse by damage and rain.

Thousands of stone and mud-brick homes crumbled in the quake, which struck at night, often trapping whole families in the rubble. Many of those who survived spent the first night outside in a cold rain. Since then, villagers have been burying their dead and digging through the rubble by hand in search of survivors.

The Taliban director of the state-run Bakhtar News Agency said Friday the death toll from the first quake had risen to 1,150 people. Abdul Wahid Rayan said at least 1,600 people were injured.

https://www1.cbn.com

Desperate Afghan parents, unable to afford food, are selling their young girls

AFP and TOI staff – November 3, 2021

Nine-year-old Parwana dug her heels into the ground as she tried to resist being taken from her family home after she was sold into marriage with a 55-year-old man in northwest Afghanistan last week.

Village and displaced people’s camp leaders say the numbers of young girls getting betrothed started to rise during a 2018 famine and surged this year when the rains failed once more.

Parwana’s family has lived in poverty for years, but life has gotten harder for them since the Taliban takeover of the country earlier this year and as international aid has dried up.

Abdul Malik, Parwana’s father, told CNN ahead of the sale that he was “broken” with guilt and worry, but had no choice as the family is unable to afford food.

Several months ago he sold Parwana’s 12-year-old sister, and he already knows the money from the sale of Parwana won’t last long.

Ahead of the sale, Parwana said that she was sold because the family doesn’t have money for food.

“He has sold me to an old man,” said the girl, who had dreamed of becoming a teacher.

On October 24, a man named Qorban paid 200,000 Afghanis (approximately $2,200) and was given Parwana in a ceremony in the displacement camp on the outskirts of Qala-e-Naw, in Afghanistan’s Badghis province.

“[Parwana] was cheap, and her father was very poor and he needs money,” Qorban told CNN. “She will be working in my home. I won’t beat her. I will treat her like a family member. I will be kind.”

Child marriage has been practiced in Afghanistan for centuries, but war and climate change-related poverty have driven many families to resort to striking deals earlier and earlier in girls’ lives.

Boys’ parents can drive a harder bargain and secure younger girls, spacing out the repayments.

The World Food Program warned last week that more than half the population of Afghanistan, around 22.8 million people, will face acute food insecurity from this month.

https://www.timesofisrael.com

Al-Qaeda Threatens U.S. With Attacks ‘More Painful Than 9/11’

Robert Spencer – October 15, 2021

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse,” Osama bin Laden once famously quipped, “by nature they will like the strong horse.” America during the period in which Old Joe Biden continues to pretend to be president of the United States is decidedly a weak horse, and bin Laden’s old outfit has noticed. Last Wednesday, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released a video crowing over the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and promising to inflict damage on the scale of 9/11 in America once again.

The video, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), featured yet another jihadi who was once held at Guantanamo, Ibrahim Al-Qousi, and was entitled “A Message to the American People: You Have Yet to Understand the Lesson.” Al-Qousi showed that he himself has carefully absorbed the lessons of the recent past. He said that “the greatest loss America suffered, besides its material and human losses, is its reputation and prestige as a superpower and the most powerful country in the world.” Thanks, Joe!

The Taliban, Al-Qousi declared, had won a “magnificent” victory, for they “have understood the essence of this religion and the nature of the conflict … they are men whose hands — by the grace of Allah alone — buried a third empire in the soil of Afghanistan and restored the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to rule by the shari’a of Allah, even if America and its allies hate it.”

If there is anything that the State and Defense Departments did not or would not understand, it was the role that religion played in the conflict. Foreign policy experts for years dismissed statements akin to Al-Qousi’s declaration that victory was won in Afghanistan “by the grace of Allah alone” as mere boilerplate, not realizing that for the Taliban, it was the essence of the entire war. That’s why they’re in power today in Kabul, thumping their chests over having defeated the United States.

https://www.frontpagemag.com

Taliban Going Door To Door Seeking Christians, Searching Through Phones For Bible Apps: Report

Jon Brown – August 19, 2021

Afghan Christians are reportedly fleeing to the mountains in a desperate attempt to escape the Taliban who is going door to door trying to kill them.

An underground church that partners with Frontier Alliance International (FAI) has reported that the Taliban are targeting Christians for death. According to FAI:

The Taliban has a hit list of known Christians they are targeting to pursue and kill. The US Embassy is defunct and there is no longer a safe place for believers to take refuge. All borders to neighboring countries are closed and all flights to and from have been halted, with the exception of private planes. People are fleeing into the mountains looking for asylum. They are fully reliant on God, who is the only One who can and will protect them.

The Taliban are going door-to-door taking women and children. The people must mark their house with an “X” if they have a girl over 12 years old, so that the Taliban can take them. If they find a young girl and the house was not marked they will execute the entire family. If a married woman 25 years or older has been found, the Taliban promptly kill her husband, do whatever they want to her, and then sell her as a sex slave.

Husbands and fathers have given their wives and daughters guns and told them that when the Taliban come, they can choose to kill them or kill themselves—it is their choice.

Taliban are also reportedly rifling through people’s phones to look for any apps that would give them away as Christians.

https://www.dailywire.com

Al-Qaeda Threatens to Wage War Against US ‘on All Fronts’ in Rare Interview With Mainstream Media

– April 30, 2021

The US holds Al-Qaeda responsible for the deadliest act of terror ever and the killing of nearly 3,000 Americans on 11 September 2001. The terror group’s influence declined significantly after 2014 and the rise of Daesh (ISIS), with fighters pledging allegiance to the competing jihadist entities often battling it out in Syria.

Al-Qaeda will continue its war against the United States after Washington’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, two operatives said to be belong to the terrorist organization have told CNN.

Speaking to the network via an intermediary ahead of the ten-year anniversary of the 2011 SEAL team operation to kill Osama bin Laden, and following Joe Biden’s announcement that he would pull troops out of Afghanistan after nearly two decades of war, the terrorist group said that their “war against the US will be continuing on all other fronts unless they are expelled from the rest of the Islamic world.”

One of the spokesmen praised the Taliban for fighting the US over the past 19+ years, and suggested that “thanks to Afghans for the protection of comrades-in-arms, many such jihadi fronts have been successfully operating in different parts of the Islamic world for a long time.”

Sputnik has been unable to independently verify CNN’s claims that it spoke to the terror group, which almost never gives interviews to mainstream Western media and instead typically issues pronouncements via its own guerrilla networks or taped audio or video releases.

CNN took the operatives’ comments to mean that there are continued ties between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, despite the latter’s commitment under the 2020 US-Taliban peace deal to prevent al-Qaeda and other terrorists from using Afghan soil “to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.”

https://sputniknews.com