أرشيف الوسم : Asia

An official with Pakistan's Football Federation said the group, totalling 81 people, would travel from Peshawar to the eastern city of Lahore, where they would be housed at the federation's headquarters. A further 34 people will arrive on Thursday he said.

Afghan universities will be segregated by gender, and a new Islamic dress code will be introduced, the Taliban has said.

The Taliban took over Afghanistan with great ease that few expected. Now that all foreign troops have withdrawn, the group faces the more difficult task of governing the country. Will it be able to cope?

Pashtana Durrani knows that she is on the Taliban’s radar. The 23-year-old teacher has been fiercely advocating for girls’ education since the group started making advances in Afghanistan after the U.S. announced it would withdraw troops from the country by Aug. 31. But despite being told that she is not safe, Durrani is staying put.

While Taliban atrocities are widely understood, those committed by western forces and their allies have been wilfully ignored. As the author and Afghanistan expert Anand Gopal told me, the Taliban all but evaporated in 2001. But Afghan politicians in the new government exploited a US desire to eliminate “bad guys” by falsely claiming their opponents were Taliban supporters.

The Taliban is promising to protect women’s rights and press freedom in the group’s first news conference following its stunning takeover of Afghanistan as the group’s co-founder returned to the country.

Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, held urgent talks with local leaders and international partners on Saturday as Taliban rebels pushed closer to Kabul, capturing a town south of the capital that is one of the gateways to the city.

The Taliban seized the cities of Ghazni and Herat on Thursday, in the most dramatic string of captures since launching their offensive.

As the Afghan government and the Taliban continue their struggle over who will control Kabul, they ignore the fact that they will not wield any legitimacy unless the Afghan people grants it to them. The Afghan people are the sole sovereign over the country and as such, the power is in their hands.

All of greater Sydney, the Central Coast, the Blue Mountains and Wollongong regions will enter a two-week coronavirus lockdown until 9 July and new restrictions will be in place for the remainder of New South Wales.