Live updates Afghanistan to be ruled under sharia law Taliban commander confirms

Afghanistan is likely to be run by the Taliban under a comparable system to the last time the Islamist militant group was in power, with a senior member of the group ruling out a democracy.

Waheedullah Hashimi, a high-ranking Taliban commander, told Reuters that the country would probably be governed by a council under sharia law. (The Taliban has a particularly strict interpretation of the religious code.) The movement’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, is likely to remain in charge, above the head of the council, whose role he likened to a president.

“There will be no democratic system at all because it does not have any base in our country,” Hashimi said. “We will not discuss what type of political system should we apply in Afghanistan because it is clear. It is sharia law and that is it.”

Here’s what to know

President Biden said in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday that U.S. troops will stay in Afghanistan beyond Aug. 31 if necessary to evacuate any remaining Americans who wish to leave the country.

The Taliban now rule a country in economic crisis. Afghanistan’s overseas funds are frozen, many fearful residents are staying home from work and numerous aid agencies have suspended activities because of the security situation.

The United Nations’ food agency says millions in Afghanistan face severe hunger following the Taliban takeover. An extreme drought, combined with the social and economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, has exacerbated the dire situation.

Thousands of U.S. troops have flown into Kabul to protect evacuation efforts. Washington has moved more than 5,000 people out so far, with an additional 2,000 Afghans relocated to the United States as special immigrants. About 11,000 people in Afghanistan have identified themselves as Americans, while more than 80,000 Afghans may need to be evacuated.

Taiwan’s leader addresses the fall of Afghanistan’s governmentLink copied

Taiwan must be wary of relying too heavily on others for protection, President Tsai Ing-wen said Wednesday while addressing the Afghanistan crisis for the first time.

“The only option for Taiwan is to make itself stronger, more united and more determined to defend itself,” Tsai said in a televised speech. It is not an option for the self-governing island, which is claimed by China as its territory, to depend “on the momentary goodwill or charity” of others, she said, adding that Taiwan must “make its presence meaningful” on the international stage by upholding liberal and democratic values.

Amid scenes of chaos from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, state-backed news outlets and pundits in China have attempted to tie American policy in Afghanistan to its alliance with Taiwan. The state-run Global Times said in an editorial that U.S. “abandonment” of Afghanistan could serve as an “omen of Taiwan’s future fate,” even as experts have stressed that the two geopolitical situations are vastly different.

Beijing has recently amplified calls to seize Taiwan and “realize China’s complete reunification,” with incursions into the island’s airspace intensifying in scale and frequency.

Taiwan has had a security relationship with the United States for more than seven decades and is among America’s top trading partners. Unlike Afghanistan, it has a robust and stable government that is widely supported by its citizens and serves as a key partner to Washington in the face of rising competition with China, noted political scientist Kharis Templeman.

Canada to resume military evacuation flights, defense minister saysLink copied

TORONTO â€" Canada’s defense minister said Wednesday that Canadian Armed Forces flights to Kabul would “resume shortly” to evacuate people fleeing the Taliban, though it remained unclear how many evacuees they would carry as militants restrict access to the airport.

Harjit Sajjan said in a tweet that two CC-177 Globemasters â€" aircraft often used in humanitarian and peacekeeping missions â€" had been assigned to Canada’s evacuation efforts and would be “flying regularly” to and from the Afghan capital.

“These flights will continue as long as the security situation on the ground permits,” Sajjan said, adding that they “will focus on evacuating Canadians and Afghan nationals who have an enduring relationship with Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.”

The announcement came the same day that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau again faced questions about what critics charge is red tape hampering efforts to evacuate Afghans who supported Canada’s war effort and who are at risk of Taliban reprisals.

Trudeau defended his government’s response, saying that the “limiting factor” was not Canadian bureaucracy, but the Taliban, which he said was blocking access to Kabul airport.

“We just need people to be able to get to the airport,” Trudeau told reporters in Vancouver, B.C. “Right now, the Taliban are preventing people from doing so, which is why we’ve seen a number of the planes airlifting people out have not been full.”

Ninety-two people arrived in Canada on Tuesday, Trudeau said, adding that all of the Gurkha troops supporting Canada’s mission in Afghanistan have also been evacuated.

Canada has announced it will resettle about 20,000 Afghan refugees, including approximately 6,000 Afghans who aided Canada’s war effort. Most of them, Trudeau said, will be Afghans who have escaped to third countries, rather than people coming directly from Kabul.

Key updateUnder U.S. pressure, IMF withholds hundreds of millions from Taliban-controlled AfghanistanLink copied

The International Monetary Fund will suspend a plan to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to Afghanistan after pressure from the Biden administration to withhold financial resources from the Taliban regime now in power.

The IMF had been set to provide the country with approximately $460 million in Special Drawing Rights next week, as part of a broader program to boost the finances of developing economies suffering from the coronavirus pandemic. The SDRs can be converted into different currencies.

“The IMF is guided by the views of the international community,” Gerry Rice, a spokesman for the IMF, said in a statement. “There is currently a lack of clarity within the international community regarding recognition of a government in Afghanistan.”

No governments have formal diplomatic relations with the new regime in Kabul.

The United States, whose military withdrawal helped speed up the fall of the Western-backed government in Kabul, is the largest cumulative contributor to the IMF. Washington has enough voting power that it can effectively veto major decisions.

The Biden administration is taking numerous measures to ensure that money doesn’t fall into the hands of the Taliban. Washington on Sunday froze billions of dollars worth of Afghan government reserves held in U.S. bank accounts. GOP lawmakers had been urging the administration to tighten the fiscal screws on the Taliban, citing the militant group’s history of supporting acts of terrorism against the United States.

Afghanistan is already one of the poorest countries in the world and is highly dependent on American aid that is now in jeopardy, The Washington Post has reported. The Biden administration will face difficult decisions over how to manage existing sanctions on the Taliban, which may make it difficult to deliver international humanitarian assistance to a population facing ruin, experts say.

Analysis: Democrats offer some harsh reviews of Biden on AfghanistanLink copied

President Biden on Monday detailed a defense of his administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that basically boiled down to this: Withdrawal was still the right thing to do, but it was complicated by others, including President Donald Trump and Afghans who refused to fight the Taliban or take our advice.

But, increasingly, that explanation isn’t satisfying some top Democrats.

Democrats as a whole have largely hued to the Biden administration’s key talking point â€" on the rightness of the withdrawal. But that’s not really what the current debate is about; it’s about whether a long-planned withdrawal with long-standing bipartisan support was executed appropriately. And some Democrats are speaking out about the latter issue â€" including three key Senate committee chairmen and some military veterans in the House.

Share this post