As demonstrations unfold, Taliban face rising challenges

Protesters took to the streets to rally in opposition to Taliban rule for the second day Thursday, this time marching in Kabul, together with close to the presidential palace. At one demonstration within the metropolis, about 200 individuals had gathered earlier than the Taliban broke it up violently.
The Taliban introduced a curfew within the southeastern metropolis of Khost, additionally on Thursday, after protests there. Authorities didn’t say how lengthy it could be in impact.
And a number of individuals have been killed within the japanese metropolis of Asadabad when Taliban fighters fired on individuals waving the nationwide flag at a rally Thursday, Afghanistan’s annual Independence Day, based on a witness cited by Reuters.
It was not clear whether or not the casualties had come from the gunshots or from a stampede they set off, the witness, Mohammed Salim, was quoted by the information company as saying.
It was a exceptional show of defiance, coming simply at some point after violence broke out at protests in two different cities, with Taliban members taking pictures into crowds and beating demonstrators.
Protesters rally in opposition to Taliban rule in Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)
It was additionally additional proof that whereas tens of 1000’s at the moment are searching for escape, there have been many extra left behind and decided to have a voice within the form of nation by which they dwell.
After sweeping so shortly into energy, the fact of governing a modified nation is proving as troublesome for the Taliban as their navy blitz throughout the nation’s provinces was quick.
Many important employees are hiding of their properties, terrified of retribution regardless of guarantees of amnesty. And companies like electrical energy, sanitation and clear water may quickly be affected, assist companies say.
While the Taliban, for now, have a monopoly on using power, there isn’t a functioning police service in any conventional sense. Instead, former fighters are patrolling checkpoints and — in lots of circumstances, based on witness accounts — administering the legislation as they see match.
Taliban members experience in a truck amidst protesters rallying in opposition to Taliban rule in Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)
The Taliban management’s suggestion this week that the brutality that outlined their rule twenty years in the past was a factor of the previous has not all the time been matched by the actions of the foot troopers on the road.
Taliban members are intensifying a seek for individuals who they imagine labored with U.S. and NATO forces, together with among the many crowds of Afghans exterior Kabul’s airport, and have threatened to kill or arrest their members of the family if they can not discover them, based on a confidential United Nations doc.
Afghans, fleeing the nation, face violence from the Taliban on the harmful highway to the airport, the place the U.S. navy has tried to quell the continued chaos. The sound of fighter jets roaring over Kabul was almost fixed Thursday as extra U.S. and worldwide forces raced to evacuate international nationals, many nonetheless trapped exterior the airport.
Women stroll previous patrolling Taliban members in Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times)
As they wrestle with the instant disaster, the Taliban is dealing with threats to the long-term stability of the state. The new regime is discovering itself frozen out financially.
The International Monetary Fund stated Wednesday that it could block Afghanistan’s entry to about $460 million in emergency reserves, a call that adopted strain from the Biden administration. An settlement reached in November amongst greater than 60 international locations to ship Afghanistan $12 billion over the subsequent 4 years can also be doubtful.

The help is important in a rustic the place the U.N. estimates that many are going hungry.
“That’s 14 million people, including 2 million children who are malnourished,” the World Food Program stated in an announcement.
Some protests turned violent when demonstrators tried to tear down the brand new Taliban flag and change it with the tricolors of the Afghan one.
A Taliban member tries to hit a lady who was ready to get entry to the worldwide airport along with her household and others in Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021, with a purpose to flee the nation. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times)
“Salute those who carry the national flag and thus stand for dignity of the nation and the country,” a high official for the deposed Afghan authorities, Amrullah Saleh, wrote on Twitter.
In the twentieth century, there have been not less than 19 iterations of the flag.
Afghanistan — a nation with a brutal historical past, but in addition dwelling to stunning pure wonders and a quilt of cultures — is now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
The Taliban reasserted its new regime in a tweet on Thursday commemorating the anniversary of independence from British rule greater than a century in the past.
That anniversary was additionally the event for the road protests, with many calling for independence from Taliban rule.
This article initially appeared in The New York Times.