August 17, 2021, Afghanistan-Taliban news

Facebook has reiterated its ban on accounts praising, supporting or representing the Taliban.

In a statement Tuesday, Facebook underscored its Dangerous Organizations policies, which block accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban.

“The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under US law, and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organization policies,” Facebook stated.

The ban also covers Facebook’s WhatsApp and Instagram platforms.

The company said it employs a “dedicated team of Afghanistan experts, who are native Dari and Pashto speakers, and have knowledge of local context.” This team is tasked with removing contravening material.

“Regardless of who holds power, we will take the appropriate action against accounts and content that breaks our rules,” Facebook stated. 

The Taliban have not been officially designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US. However, the group was placed on a US Treasury Department list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists and a Specially Designated Nationals list.

Chaos unfolded at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport yesterday, with scores of people rushing the runway in an attempt to flee the country.

Here's how things currently stand:

Who controls what: The Taliban controls access roads to Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport, meaning that anyone wishing to gain entry to the airport’s main gates will have to pass their checks. Taliban forces are continuing to try to control crowds trying to enter.

The US still controls the military side of the airport, which was fenced off yesterday afternoon with a layer of razor wire, guarded by US military personnel after scenes of pandemonium ensued. 

On Monday afternoon, crowds of people ran onto the tarmac in desperation, including some who climbed onto US military aircraft as it was preparing to take off. 

US forces at Kabul airport killed 2 armed men on Monday after they fired on US troops, one witness told CNN. The witness also said a third fighter was injured in the confrontation.

Commercial flights aren't operating: Commercial flights were canceled out the airport on Monday, and remain so. Evacuation flights organized by foreign governments however are still taking off.

US President Joe Biden said on Monday that he knows that there are “concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghan civilians sooner.”

“Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country. And part of it because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a crisis of confidence,” he said.

Biden added that US troops will continue to undertake their mission and that the Taliban will be met with “devastating force if necessary," if they seek to disrupt it.

On Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that the UK had sent in 600 extra personnel to assist with stability on the ground, especially around the evacuation efforts. He added that over the next 24 hours, 350 British and Afghan nationals who worked for the UK are expected to be evacuated from Afghanistan. 

Meanwhile, the German military has come under criticism for only rescuing seven people from Kabul on its first evacuation flight from Afghanistan. A German army spokesperson said that there were not any more people around to evacuate when they landed, given that they had arrived at night and that the US was already in control of the airport.

Disruption at the airport is delaying vital health supplies: WHO spokesperson Tarik Jašarević said on Tuesday that Afghanistan's health system has already been facing shortages of essential medical supplies and equipment in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The current situation at the airport is compounding that crisis, he said, with the disruption delaying urgently needed health supplies, including Covid-19 and polio vaccines.

Chaos and disruption at the Kabul airport is "delaying urgently-needed essential health supplies," and impacting the already "fragile health system" of Afghanistan, World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jašarević said in a statement.

Afghanistan's health system has been facing shortages of essential medical supplies and equipment in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Jašarević pointed out, adding that the vaccination campaign has also been significantly affected due to the fighting.

On Monday, photos and videos showed desperate crowds on the tarmac of Kabul's international airport, seeking a way out of the country.

Crowding at health facilities and internally displaced people's camps will hamper infection prevention measures, increasing the risk of Covid-19 transmission and other disease outbreaks.

Afghanistan is also one of two polio-endemic countries in the world. Any delays and disruptions to the polio vaccine campaign "will directly jeopardize the health of Afghan children," warned Jašarević.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed on the need for global cooperation on Afghanistan during a phone call on Tuesday morning.

Johnson also stressed that "any future Taliban government in Afghanistan" should agree to the shared international human rights standards held by the international community.

“The Prime Minister outlined his intention to convene G7 leaders for a virtual meeting to discuss this at the earliest opportunity,” the spokesperson added.

The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu says his country is maintaining dialogue with all parties in Afghanistan, including the Taliban.

"We continue our dialogue with all parties, including Taliban,” he said on Tuesday, in a joint press conference with Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi in Amman, Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported.

“We would like to say that we have welcomed the messages given by the Taliban so far. We will continue to support Afghanistan's economic development, stability, peace and tranquillity,” Çavuşoğlu added.

The Pakistani Taliban, the TTP, has congratulated the Afghan Taliban on taking control of Afghanistan.

"It is a victory for the whole Islamic world," the official statement issued by the TTP and released to CNN, read.

In the statement, TTP spokesperson Mohammad Khorasani reiterated the group's "allegiance to the Afghan Taliban leadership," and pledged to "support and strengthen the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan."

The Pakistani Taliban’s main leadership has long operated out of Afghanistan and has been behind some of the worst terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

In a statement released by Pakistan’s national security committee on Monday night, a request was made that “Afghan soil is not used by any terrorist organization/group against any country.”

"We would not hesitate to sacrifice at any level as we consider it our religious responsibility," the statement said.

The Taliban must honor its promise to allow women to work and girls to go to school, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Rupert Colville urged in a statement Tuesday. 

"Such promises will need to be honored, and for the time being — again understandably, given past history — these declarations have been greeted with some skepticism," he said, adding that whether or not the promises are "honored or broken will be closely scrutinized."

The "desperate scenes" at Kabul airport on Monday, which saw crowds of people scrambling to get on evacuation flights, "underlined the gravity of the situation" after the Taliban seized all the major population centers in Afghanistan, Colville said.

He added:

As scores of Afghans are desperate to flee the country, a photo shows a massive military cargo plane carrying about 640 Afghan people from Kabul to Qatar Sunday.

The US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft has been operated by the United States and its allies for nearly three decades.

The German military has come under criticism for only rescuing seven people from Kabul on its first evacuation flight from Afghanistan.

The seven passengers included five German nationals, one European national and one Afghan, according to a German Army spokesperson.

After hours of circling in the air due to a chaotic situation on the ground, the A400M could just land briefly, take some guests, and fly in direction of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the spokesperson explained.

The spokesperson also said that there were not any more people around to evacuate when they landed, given that they had arrived at night and that the US was already in control of Hamid Karzai International Airport.

The US fenced off the military side of the airport yesterday after thousands of Afghans gathered on the runway in a bid to leave the country, while the Taliban controls who can actually gain entry to the airport itself. The commercial side of the airport is currently not operational.

The plane unloaded the German troops traveling to assist with the evacuation effort in the coming days, and quickly departed, the spokesperson added.

The German Army is waiting in Tashkent for the next slot to send the next waiting plane to Kabul.