Free Republic

The ongoing tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have boiled over into what looks like a full-fledged war. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, in a carefully crafted statement, took the Taliban to task for violating "the rights that Islam grants women" (can we guffaw at this point?); he reminded the Taliban that the Pakistani Army will not go away; and, in a final dramatic flourish, decalred that "open war” existed between the two countries.In a clearly worded post on X, Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Asif has made the following statement:After NATO forces withdrew, it was expected that peace would prevail...

Pakistan carried out airstrikes on Afghanistan’s two largest cities on Friday, including the capital, Kabul, according to officials from both nations, escalating months of tension and border skirmishes into an open conflict. Beyond Kabul, home to six million people, the strikes hit the southern city of Kandahar — where the Taliban’s supreme leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, lives — and the border province of Paktia, according to Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban government. Pakistan launched the strikes hours after Afghan troops had attacked Pakistani border positions, according to Afghan and Pakistani officials. The Afghan attacks were described as retaliation...

Mohammed was the original feminist. The moderate Islamic terrorist state of Talibanastan (they must be moderate, after all we did a deal with them and we’re still negotiating with them) has explained that in its moderate approach to Islamic law, beating women is encouraged, but they draw the line at breaking bones. Truly, Islamists in America have told us that Mohammed was the original feminist. The Taliban has passed a law that allows men to beat their wives as long as it does not cause “broken bones or open wounds”. The Telegraph obtained the 60-page penal code – signed by...

Taliban “supreme leader” Hibatullah Akhundzada recently approved a novel criminal code, multiple outlets reported this week, that dramatically expands the legal ability for men to physically abuse women and children and provides for the creation of a formal “slave” class in the country. The Taliban is a radical Islamist terror organization that currently operates as the uncontested government of Afghanistan. The Taliban returned to power on August 15, 2021, following former President Joe Biden’s decision to extend the 20-year-old Afghan War beyond the deadline of May 15 of that year that President Donald Trump had previously agreed to. The Taliban’s...

In stop-start efforts since November, Taliban officials have cracked down on women and girls in the western city of Herat who have been ignoring the hardline group's rules by showing their faces. Enforcement agents are preventing them from entering hospitals and seminaries and pulling them out of public transport. Initially, women and girls were punished for not wearing a burka — the Afghan burka is typically blue, has a netted opening for the eyes and drapes down around the body, largely constraining the woman wearing it. Later, after what residents described as pushback, officials enforcing the rules relented and allowed...

THE separatist militancy, which has gripped Balochistan for the past two decades, now seems to have escalated into a full-blown insurgency. Last week, hundreds of armed terrorists launched simultaneous attacks reportedly in 12 locations, including the provincial capital Quetta. They stormed security installations, set government buildings on fire and looted banks. Highly trained terrorists engaged the security forces in gun battles for hours, revealing their capacity to challenge the state. While the government claims to have killed 145 terrorists and restored order, such large-scale attacks, which breach even high security zones such as the provincial capital and cause many casualties...

The House of Representatives has passed a bill which seeks to eradicate blasphemy against Islam. The bill, H.R. 5665, is truly remarkable as it amounts to Congress making a law respecting the establishment of Islam and reducing the United States government into a tool of the world’s ayatollahs. The actual text of the bill not only seeks to eradicate blasphemy against Islam around the world – and solely against Islam at that – but even requires the federal government to reorganize some portions of the State Department along the lines of an Islamic religious institution which will be responsible for...

Rahmanullah Lakawal, the Afghan national who shot two National Guardsmen in Washington DC, killing one of them, shared a close tie with an Afghan “suicide bomber” arrested in Texas the day before the shooting. The New York Post has revealed that Lakanwal and Mohammad Dawood Alokozay, who was arrested for making terroristic threats, both worked at the same US military base in Afghanistan for years. It’s not yet known if the two men interacted with each other at the base. “Alokozay used to be in this unit for six years. He was guarding the towers inside the base,” Gen. Haibatullah...

The Taliban forced a 13-year-old boy to carry out a public execution, with 80,000 people packing a sports stadium to watch the young teen shoot the man who murdered 13 members of his family. Video shared online shows thousands of cheering people packing into the stadium in the eastern city of Khost on Tuesday for the sick spectacle that the United Nations condemned as “inhumane” and “contrary to international law.” The young boy was made to shoot the murderer, named Mangal, in a Sharia-law “retaliation punishment” known as Qisas, which is akin to an “eye for an eye.”

A Taliban policeman looks on as a crowd heads toward a stadium to attend the public execution carried out by Taliban authorities. The man executed had shot to death 13 members of the boy's family, including nine children (Image: AP) The Taliban in Afghanistan have conducted another large-scale public execution before a stadium filled with tens of thousands of spectators, but this time they compelled a 13 year old boy to execute the man accused of murdering more than a dozen of his relatives. The public killing took place at a stadium in the eastern city of Khost on Tuesday,...

Taliban in Afghanistan said be as crazy as us. Pakistan said to Taliban, you fill us with disgust. But the Taliban had new allies, China, Iran and some others So they attacked poor Pakistan, their dear Islamic brothers. Transcript linked below video.

Firefights broke out along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border late on Saturday, with the Afghan Taliban attacking Pakistani posts, according to security officials from both countries, following a Pakistani airstrike in Kabul this week. Pakistani security officials said that they were responding "with full force" to what they called unprovoked firing from Afghanistan. The exchange of fire took place at more than six locations along the border, they said.

Fahima Noori had big dreams when she graduated from university in Afghanistan. She had studied law, graduated from a midwifery programme and even worked in a mental health clinic. But all that was taken away when the Taliban swept into power in 2021. They banned girls over the age of 12 from getting an education, severely restricted job options for women and recently removed books written by women from universities. For Fahima, the internet was her last lifeline to the outside world. "I recently enrolled in an online university [and] I had hoped to finish my studies and find an...

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban released another US citizen from custody on Sunday (Sep 28) after a visit by Washington’s hostage envoy Adam Boehler, the US government said. Amir Amiri, who had been detained in Afghanistan since December 2024, was freed through Qatari mediation and was on his way to Doha on Sunday evening, a source told Reuters. Boehler’s trip came a week after US President Donald Trump urged the Taliban to hand back control of Bagram air base to Washington, warning that “bad things” would happen to Afghanistan if it refused. Amiri is the fifth American released by the Taliban this...

The Taliban government on Sunday rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to retake Bagram Air Base, four years after America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan left the sprawling military facility in the Taliban hands. The chief Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, rejected Trump’s assertions and urged the U.S. to adopt a policy of “realism and rationality.” Afghanistan had an economy-oriented foreign policy and sought constructive relations with all states on the basis of mutual and shared interests, Mujahid posted on X. It had been consistently communicated to the U.S. in all bilateral negotiations that Afghanistan’s independence and territorial integrity were of the...

Donald Trump Jr. rebuked the transgender community during the anniversary of 9/11 by comparing them to Al-Qaeda terrorists. The president’s son made his remarks during a Thursday interview on the 'Megyn Kelly Show.' Trump Jr. also claimed transgender individuals are probably responsible for other ‘mass killings’ that the public is not aware of ‘because you’re not allowed to talk about the truth.’ ‘I can’t name, including probably like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, a group that is more violent per capita than the radical trans moment,’ Trump Jr. told Megyn Kelly. ‘I’m sure people are totally sane after jacking themselves up...

In his first major interview since his release, Viktor Bout, whom the US has labelled as an arms dealer, spoke to RT on Saturday. Bout was returned to Russia in a high-profile prisoner swap for basketball player Brittney Griner on Thursday. During the conversation, the businessman revealed the techniques he used to stay sane while behind bars, spoke about the conflict in Ukraine and on whether he believed the US might be on the verge of an uprising. Arming the Taliban Bout served 12 years in American prisons on arms-trafficking charges that he denies. Despite evading Taliban captivity in the...

Hamas-backing Qatar has bankrolled film and stage projects by socialist Zohran Mamdani’s Israel-bashing movie-director mom — and one of its royals is now pushing her son’s mayoral bid, The Post has found. Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani, sister to the ruling emir, and the state-funded cultural institutions she controls, have supported Mira Nair and her creative projects since at least 2009, even extending a personal invitation to participate in the cultural program the country organized as part of the festivities around hosting the 2022 World Cup. Since mid-June, Sheikha Al-Thani has taken to promoting Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy on social media,...

Revelations of all kinds are upon us. Here's one that just caught my eye. It's about Zohran Mamdani's film-maker mother, Mira Nair, whose films I've reviewed over the years. Guess who funded Mira Nair's propaganda filmmaking? According to Will Bredderman at the New York Post, (August 31st), none other than Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani, sister to the ruling Emir of Qatar. Qatar! The banker for Iran's terrorist proxy, Hamas, and for Afghanistan's Taliban; the safe haven for terrorist leaders and for antisemitic psychologists such as Lara Sheehi; the owners of Al-Jazeera, which was founded in 1996. Al Jazeera? An...

Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada marked the fourth anniversary of their return to power by warning Afghans of "divine punishment" if they are ungrateful for the group's rule. Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada warned Friday that God would severely punish Afghans who are ungrateful for Islamic rule, marking the fourth anniversary of the group's return to power with threats against those who oppose their governance. Akhundzada, who is seldom seen in public, said in a statement that Afghans had endured hardships and made sacrifices for almost 50 years so that their interpretation of the Islamic law, known as Sharia, could be established....