Afghanistan: demonstrations with national flag | tagesschau.de


Status: 08/19/2021 2:37 p.m.

After the Taliban came to power, there is great uncertainty about what will happen in Afghanistan. There were protests in several places that the UN feared a “humanitarian crisis of unimaginable proportions”. Journalists report repression.

A few days after the takeover of power in Afghanistan, people demonstrated against the Taliban in several cities. In the city of Asadabad in the north-east of the country, several people were killed during the demonstration on Independence Day, reported the Al Jazeera broadcaster. According to this, Taliban fighters are said to have opened fire at a rally whose participants waved the flag of the Afghan Republic. According to media reports, it is unclear whether the people in Asadabad were killed in the protests by the shooting by the Taliban or in the mass panic that followed.

There were apparently isolated protests in the capital, Kabul. Videos circulated on social media of an estimated 100 people walking through a street holding the red-black-green flag high. The protesters shouted “Long live Afghanistan” and “Our flag, our pride”. The recordings and their timing could not be reliably checked.

National flag evolves into a symbol

According to a report by the BBC, the first demonstrations with the flag had already taken place in the east of the country on Wednesday, including in the city of Jalalabad. According to videos, some of these ended with gunfire by the Taliban. According to local journalists, a curfew has also been imposed in the city of Khost. There is no reliable information about the victims in the demonstrations.

In the past few days, the national flag has increasingly developed into a sign of protest against the Islamists. After taking power on Sunday, the Taliban hoisted their white flag with the black inscription of the Shahada, the Islamic creed, over the presidential palace in Kabul.

Taliban: Triumph on Independence Day

Afghanistan gained independence from Great Britain 102 years ago, on August 19, 1919. The Taliban pretended to be triumphant on the anniversary. “Today we are celebrating the anniversary of independence from Great Britain,” they said. “At the same time, through our jihad resistance, we have made another arrogant world power, the United States, fail and forced it to withdraw from our sacred Afghan territory.”

The Taliban took power in Afghanistan at the weekend after the West-backed President Ashraf Ghani had fled. After that they were moderate and announced an amnesty. But most government officials hide in their homes trying to get abroad somehow.

Prominent presenter banned from work

A prominent TV host said today that she had been banned from work. She was not allowed to go to her workplace at the state broadcaster RTA, Shabnam Dawran said in a video. While her male colleagues were allowed to continue working, she was told that it was now a different government. “So there are serious threats against us.” The moderator asked foreign countries and international organizations for help. “Our lives are in grave danger,” she said.

Apparently, Dawran is not the only Afghan journalist hindered from her work by the Taliban. The new spokeswoman for the state broadcaster, Khadija Amin, was replaced by a man by the Taliban on Monday, the New York Times reported. The news chief of the Afghan TV station Tolo News, Miraqa Popal, also said that one of his colleagues had been prevented from entering the station.

Many media workers have gone into hiding, said the Asia coordinator of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ), Steven Butler. Women in particular panic and went underground. There are local reports of house searches of journalists. Many have received threats from the Taliban. In their first press conference, the Taliban said that women were allowed to participate in public life and work if this was compatible with Islamic law.

UN donations for humanitarian aid are missing

More and more people in the country are dependent on international support, but the United Nations lacks donations. As the UN Emergency Aid Office (OCHA) reported, at least another 700 million euros would be needed for this year. The United Nations had put the need for donations even before the triumph of the militant Islamist Taliban at just under 1.3 billion dollars (a good 1.1 billion euros). A little more than a third (37 percent) of the total was collected by Thursday. In the second half of the year, the need will continue to rise due to the drought, warned the emergency aid office.

The son of an opponent of the Taliban is apparently planning resistance

Meanwhile, the son of a symbolic figure of the Afghan fight against the Taliban has sworn to resist the Islamists. Ahmed Massud, son of the former warlord Ahmed Shah Massud, asked the US for support for his resistance group. In a guest post for the Washington Post, he wrote that he was ready to “follow in my father’s footsteps”. He had the necessary strength for an effective resistance, but needed “more weapons, more ammunition and more supplies”.

It is located in the Punjir Valley northeast of Kabul, which was considered a stronghold of resistance against the Taliban in the 1990s and never fell under the control of the Islamists. His “mujahideen fighters” are ready to take on the Taliban again. They were joined by former members of the Afghan armed forces who were “disgusted by the surrender of their commanders”. Online networks showed pictures of Massoud with the country’s former vice president, Amrullah Saleh, who are apparently planning a guerrilla movement against the Taliban.



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