In interview, a Taliban chief says group needs to ‘forget the past’

In his first sit-down interview with a Western media outlet because the Taliban took full management of Afghanistan, one of many group’s leaders on Wednesday supplied a portrait of a bunch intent on rebuilding a rustic shattered by many years of warfare.
“We want to build the future, and forget what happened in the past,” the spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, stated in an interview with The New York Times. He rejected widespread fears that the Taliban are already exacting vengeance on those that opposed them and need to reimpose the tough controls on girls that made them infamous after they dominated the nation 20 years in the past.
The interview got here only a day after Mujahid warned the ladies of Afghanistan that it could be most secure for them to stay dwelling till extra rank-and-file Taliban fighters have been educated in how to not mistreat them.
It was a notable acknowledgment of the various adjustments to Afghan society that greeted the Taliban after they re-entered a metropolis they’d not managed for 20 years.
Many of these adjustments contain girls. Not solely have they been free to go away dwelling unaccompanied — dressed as they see match — they’ve additionally returned to high school and jobs, and their pictures might be seen on every little thing from billboards to TV screens.
On Wednesday, Mujahid steered that longer-term, girls can be free to renew their day by day routines.
An armed Taliban member watches over a Taliban information convention in Kabul, Afghanistan on Aug. 24, 2021. (Image/The New York Times)
Concerns that the Taliban would as soon as once more pressure them to remain of their houses or cowl their faces are baseless, he stated. He added that the requirement they be accompanied by a male guardian, often called a mahram, was misunderstood. It applies solely to journeys of three days or longer, he stated.
“If they go to school, the office, university, or the hospital, they don’t need a mahram,” stated Mujahid, who additionally serves because the Taliban’s chief spokesman.
He additionally supplied assurances to Afghans attempting to go away the nation, saying — opposite to information studies based mostly on his information convention on Tuesday, together with in The Times — that these with legitimate journey paperwork wouldn’t be prevented from coming into the airport.
“We said that people who don’t have proper documents aren’t allowed to go,” Mujahid stated. “They need passports and visas for the countries they’re going to, and then they can leave by air. If their documents are valid, then we’re not going to ask what they were doing before.”

He additionally denied allegations that the Taliban have been looking for former interpreters and others who labored for the American navy, and claimed that they’d be secure in their very own nation. And he expressed frustration on the Western evacuation efforts.
“They shouldn’t interfere in our country and take out our human resources: doctors, professors and other people we need here,” Mujahid stated. “In America, they might become dishwashers or cooks. It’s inhuman.”
For the previous decade, Mujahid had been a key hyperlink between the militants and the information media, however remained faceless. On Wednesday, he granted the interview on the Ministry of Information and Culture as Taliban leaders and different Afghan energy brokers had been participating in protracted discussions concerning the future form of the nation.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, throughout a Taliban information convention in Kabul, Afghanistan on Aug. 24, 2021. (Image/The New York Times)
Mujahid is seen as more likely to be the longer term minister of knowledge and tradition. Fluent in each Pashto and Dari, the nation’s principal languages, Mujahid, 43, described himself as a local of Paktia province and a graduate in Islamic jurisprudence from the well-known Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa in Pakistan.
Despite the tense scenario on the airport on Wednesday, the place hundreds of individuals had been nonetheless crowded round most entrance gates, Mujahid expressed hope that the Taliban would construct good relations with the worldwide group, stating areas of cooperation round counterterrorism, opium eradication and the discount of refugees to the West.
Although he sought to convey a way more tolerant picture of the Taliban, Mujahid did affirm one report: Music is not going to be allowed in public.
“Music is forbidden in Islam,” he stated, “but we’re hoping that we can persuade people not to do such things, instead of pressuring them.”