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Hekmatyar threatens a revolt if govt fails to free prisoners
Leader of the Hezb-e-Islami party Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said on Sunday that if government failed to abide by conditions laid out in the US-Taliban agreement, signed in February last year, there would be a revolt and the Presidential Palace would fall.
Addressing an event to mark the 32nd anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet Union troops from Afghanistan, Hekmatyar said: “The US agreement with the Taliban is a necessity.
“The US has no choice but to leave Afghanistan,” he said adding that the “US has lost one of its most costly wars (Afghanistan),” Hekmatyar said.
He stated that the Afghan government has an obligation to end the war and that Hezb-e-Islami is “not willing to end its hostility towards government.”
Hekmatyar implied he would launch a protest action against government in a bid to “end the crisis” and even, “if necessary end the government.”
Hekmatyar also stated an interim government in Afghanistan was “a necessity.”
“The Afghan government is preparing for a new fighting season and is providing arms to militias,” Hekmatyar said adding that “weapons are distributed to those warlords who previously fought against the Taliban.”
Also addressing the event was former vice president Mohammad Yunus Qanooni who said the Afghanistan political landscape was currently very “sensitive”.
He also said the peace talks in Doha are deadlocked.
According to him, the Taliban leadership believes the crisis can be solved through talks but the “young Taliban members want to continue violence.”
President Ashraf Ghani in turn spoke about the Soviet Union occupation and withdrawal of Russian troops 32 years ago.
He said: “The purpose of the jihad of our people was that after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, a system would emerge at the will of the people and to protect them.”
“But because the withdrawal of Soviet troops was not responsible and no measures were taken for the future of the country, Afghanistan was plunged into a multi-dimensional civil war that resulted in the security forces, national institutions and infrastructure of Afghanistan falling apart,” Ghani added.
“The opportunity for an end to war and peace in the country has now been created and we will achieve peace, we will achieve lasting peace,” he said.
Sunday’s event comes on the heels of confirmation by a number of sources that the peace talks between the Afghan Republic and the Taliban have stalled in Doha.
Talks which started in September last year were a result of the US-Taliban deal. As per the agreement, the US pledged to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by May this year.
The Taliban in turn pledged to reduce violence and cut all ties with al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
However, the Taliban has been accused of not upholding its commitments and the US, under new President Joe Biden, has stated it is reviewing the deal signed by former Trump administration officials.
In line with this, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) on Sunday also addressed the event and urged both sides to return to the negotiating table and to reduce “the unjust human, material and moral costs of the war.”
The organization also stated there was a need for an immediate ceasefire, and the end to the war.
Hekmatyar, who is a veteran Afghan mujahideen leader, last year expressed his willingness to form an alliance with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In October Hekmatyar stated Hezb-e-Islami was ready for direct talks with the Taliban, as well as for a partnership and cooperation.
“We believe that if these two groups join hands, the crisis in Afghanistan will end soon and no force will be able to stand against it,” he said at the time.
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, some sources said that a group of 70 people who were heading to Iran on Wednesday through areas of Kohsan district became stranded amid cold weather and snowfall, resulting in the deaths of two of them.
Sources at the Islam Qala border in Herat also confirmed that in recent days hundreds of people have illegally entered Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district, and that due to severe cold and heavy snowfall, five of them have lost their lives.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
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