A surge of American troops restored order and evacuation flights resumed from Afghanistan’s main international airport Tuesday. At the same time, Taliban representatives in Kabul began a publicity blitz to plead for calm and convince the world that the militant group has changed its ways since ruling with an iron Islamist fist two decades ago.
A top Taliban leader issued a statement ordering the group’s fighters not to enter the homes of ordinary Afghans. Spokesmen said they would honor women’s rights as long as those rights fit within the group’s definition of Islamic law. The assurance fell largely on deaf ears as men, women and children tied to the fallen U.S.-backed government continued to scramble for the exits in Kabul.
The scene at Hamid Karzai International Airport was, however, notably calmer. On Monday, chaos reigned as throngs of people rushed the tarmac and seven Afghans were killed, including some who fell from the wheel well of a U.S. military transport plane after it left the runway.
Biden administration officials said Tuesday that more than 4,000 U.S. troops were at the airport. They arrived via waves of C-17 transport planes, several of which were later used to ferry U.S. citizens home. Thousands of Afghans were housed in third countries or in temporary holding facilities at American military bases.
Pentagon officials said the goal is to move as many as 9,000 passengers a day out of Kabul. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the Biden administration set a deadline of Aug. 31 to complete the evacuation because of uncertainty about the extent to which the Taliban might try to violently halt the operation.
The U.S. and other governments reached out to Afghanistan‘s new rulers, but fears remained high that the Taliban fighters who swept into the Afghan capital Sunday were no different from the forces holding power there two decades ago. The regime gave a haven to al Qaeda and imposed a harsh brand of Shariah law, which was notorious for public displays of brutality, including the regular stoning of young women accused of adultery.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid held a press conference in Kabul on Tuesday to assert that the group would now honor women’s rights, albeit within the norms of Islamic law.
Although Mr. Mujahid provided few specific details, he said the Taliban also hope to allow private media to “remain independent” as long as they don’t “work against national values.”
The Associated Press cited Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban‘s cultural commission, as saying the group would extend an “amnesty” for Afghans and encourage women to join the government.
Kabul-based freelance journalist Bilal Sarwary said the Afghan capital showed signs of life but things remained uncertain for Afghans and the Taliban.
“Shops are opening up, some restaurants are also open, but this is still a city, you know, that does not have its old traffic jams and the hustle and bustle of life,” Mr. Sarwary told the France 24 network.
“For the Taliban, this is also a very new Afghanistan,” he said. “There are social and cultural changes, people have access to social media searches [and] journalism is a big thing, and the Taliban have a generation of their own that were on social media, in cultural departments in other departments, so they know the changes.”
It remains to be seen, Mr. Sarwary said, whether the Taliban promises are short-term or indicate a “new Afghanistan.”
Deep distrust
Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, a man appointed by the former U.S.-backed government and whose status is now uncertain, has warned that the Taliban cannot be trusted and that action must be taken to “prevent Afghanistan descending into a civil war and becoming a pariah state.”
Ghulam Isaczai told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Monday that he was “speaking on behalf of millions of people in Afghanistan whose fate hangs in the balance and are faced with an extremely uncertain future.” He said they included “millions of Afghan girls and women who are about to lose their freedom to go to school, to work and to participate in the political, economic and social life of the country.”
“We have [already] seen gruesome images of Taliban’s mass executions of military personnel and target killing of civilians in Kandahar and other big cities,” Mr. Isaczai said. “Kabul residents are reporting the Taliban have already started house-to-house searches in some neighborhoods, registering names and looking for people in their target list. There are already reports of target killings and looting in the city.
“Kabul residents are living in absolute fear right now,” he said.
That report put international governments on edge, sparking debate over whether to cancel security, humanitarian and development aid slated to go to the Afghan government.
U.S. adversaries, including China, have sent positive messages signaling a desire to work with the Taliban and increase development lending for Afghanistan now that the U.S.-aligned government has fallen.
U.S. allies are circumspect. Germany on Tuesday suspended more than $290 million in development aid to Afghanistan for 2021. Sweden indicated that it would slow aid to the country, but Britain committed to an increase.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said humanitarian aid could rise by 10%. He said the aid budget would be reconfigured for development and humanitarian purposes and that the Taliban would not get any money previously earmarked for security.
Turkey, a Muslim country and one of the biggest NATO allies, issued a hopeful but cautious message. “We view positively the messages that the Taliban has given so far, whether to foreigners, to diplomatic individuals or its own people,” said Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. “We hope to see these in action as well.”
At the militant group’s press conference, Mr. Mujahid promised that the Taliban would seek no revenge against those who worked with the former U.S.-backed government or with foreign governments or forces. “We assure you that nobody will go to their doors to ask why they helped,” he said.
The message was backed in a statement by Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, a son of Taliban co-founder Mullah Mohammad Omar. Mullah Yaqoob said Taliban fighters are barred from entering people’s homes and should not be confiscating weapons or vehicles of people who worked for the former government.
Taliban leaders reportedly moved to keep much of the Afghan capital’s local government in place. They asked Mayor Muhammad Dawood Sultanzoy to remain in his post for the time being and asked the country’s acting health minister not to resign.
Not in a hurry
Whether the more tolerant approach will last is anybody’s guess.
The Taliban “are not in a hurry to replace everybody,” one adviser to former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who asked not to be identified to avoid any reprisals, told the Los Angeles Times. “Once you get into these technical matters — projects, construction, dams, roads, the civil service — it’s a more complicated system and operation than they have ever been involved in, and they’ll be held accountable and will have scrutiny.”
The Taliban’s publicity blitz stands in sharp contrast with the exodus from Kabul. Mistrust stems from what older generations of Afghans remember of the Taliban‘s ultraconservative Islamist views, which included severe restrictions on women and public amputations as punishments for alleged crimes. A U.S-led invasion after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks ousted them from power.
Many fear the Taliban will soon be carrying out abuses and targeting anyone who does not conform to the group’s hard-line strictures. As Taliban fighters patrolled Kabul’s streets, many residents stayed home, fearful after the insurgents emptied prisons and looted armories in their march to power.
Some in Kabul said the fighters had lists of people who cooperated with the government and were seeking them out.
Many women expressed dread that the two-decade Western experiment to expand their rights and remake Afghanistan would not survive the resurgent Taliban.
A female broadcaster in Afghanistan said she was hiding at a relative’s house. She said she was too frightened to return home, much less to work, after reports that the insurgents were looking for journalists. She said she and other women didn’t believe the Taliban had changed their ways. She spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety.
The Associated Press cited Mr. Samangani as saying the Taliban were ready to “provide women with [an] environment to work and study, and the presence of women in different [government] structures according to Islamic law and in accordance with our cultural values.”
That would be a marked departure from the last time the Taliban were in power, when women were largely confined to their homes.
In another sign of the Taliban‘s efforts to portray a new image, a female television anchor on the private broadcaster Tolo interviewed a Taliban official on camera Tuesday in a studio. Such an interaction once would have been unthinkable. Meanwhile, women in hijabs demonstrated briefly in Kabul, holding signs demanding that the Taliban not “eliminate women” from public life.
Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, noted the Taliban’s promises and the fears of everyday Afghans.
“Such promises will need to be honored, and for the time being — again understandably, given past history — these declarations have been greeted with some skepticism,” he said in a statement. “There have been many hard-won advances in human rights over the past two decades. The rights of all Afghans must be defended.”
• Mike Glenn contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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