Free Republic

With all of the other drama playing out between Russia, China and everywhere else, the media’s focus has once again largely shifted away from the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan. In addition to famine sweeping large parts of the country and western citizens and Afghan helpers still being trapped there, the women’s rights situation in the country has continued to deteriorate under the rule of the Taliban. Families are selling off their daughters just to survive, but even the girls who manage to remain with their families are largely not back to school. Despite the promises that the incoming terrorist government...

There are so many ridiculous things being taught in American colleges and universities these days that a professor who defends the Taliban may seem staid and conservative compared to some of his colleagues, but that’s just a sign of how far American academia has fallen. Christopher Cook, a professor in the Department of International Politics at Pennsylvania State University – World Campus, is teaching a class called “Politics of Terrorism,” in which he has given the students an essay assignment: “Explain why the Taliban are not terrorists.” Imagine a professor in 1944 making his students write about how the Nazis...

Not too long ago a video emerged out of Afghanistan showing the country’s new rulers – the Taliban – parading a number of “suicide bombers” at an undisclosed location. In the video, which was aired on Afghan National Television, masked men were seen carrying the Taliban flag and were referred to as “martyrdom-seekers squadron”. The parade showcased everything from suicide vests, explosives, guns, rockets, mines, car bombs and yellow barrels. In the video, the Taliban claimed the weapons were to be used “against invaders and their puppets in defense of independence and dear country”. They then went on to explain...

The Taliban has ordered clothes shop mannequins to be beheaded because they are “idols” as the brutes continue to wage war on women’s freedoms. Shopkeepers in the western province of Herat in Afghanistan have been told to chop the heads off their mannequins after officials ruled the dummies were sinful “idols”. The worshipping of idols is considered a sin in Islam, which bans the worship of anyone or thing other than Allah – considered to be the only God

SHEDAI CAMP, Afghanistan (AP) — In a sprawling settlement of mud brick huts in western Afghanistan housing people displaced by drought and war, a woman is fighting to save her daughter. Aziz Gul’s husband sold their 10-year-old into marriage without telling his wife, taking a down-payment so he could feed his family of five children. Otherwise, he told her, they would all starve. He had to sacrifice one to save the rest. Many of Afghanistan’s growing number of destitute people are making such desperate decisions as their nation spirals into a vortex of poverty. Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy was already teetering...

It's a culture thing. The current difficulties in Afghanistan have structural causes that are more serious than cyclical ones such as sanctions. The recent measures taken by the United Nations at the suggestion of the Biden administration may not be enough for a country that has been dependent on foreign aid for decades. Since the Taliban took control of Kabul last August, their regime has reduced the already limited freedoms available to Afghan citizens. On December 26, the Taliban's Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice declared that women could not travel more than 45 miles without being...

A U.S. intelligence report for the first time links China’s largest telecommunications company to Beijing’s KGB-like intelligence service and says the company recently received nearly a quarter-billion dollars from the Chinese government. The disclosures are a setback for Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.’s efforts to break into the U.S. telecommunications market. The company has been blocked from doing so three times by the U.S. government because of concerns about its links to the Chinese government. The report by the CIA-based Open Source Center states that Huawei’s chairwoman, Sun Yafang, worked for the Ministry of State Security (MSS) Communications Department before joining...

Saudi Arabia has started building its own ballistic missiles with China's help at a top secret base, US intelligence and satellite images have revealed. It is the first time the Gulf state has managed to manufacture its own weapons of the class, though it has purchased ballistic missiles from China in the past. The development is likely to threaten the balance of power in the Middle East cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran and could derail negotiations to revive Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with the US. New satellite images dated between October 26 and November 6, 2021 show a...

The Taliban want to use the flights to send their own people abroad to earn desperately needed money. The Afghan economy is in tatters. The Taliban have halted all flights of Afghan evacuees for the past two weeks in a dispute about how the airport in Kabul is run and who is allowed on the evacuation flights, according to a congressional source, two refugee advocates and a source familiar with the matter. A State Department official involved in relocation efforts confirmed that flights have stopped.... ...The Taliban’s argument is that they run the country and that it is their airspace...

The Biden administration is taking new actions in an attempt to facilitate humanitarian aid to people in Afghanistan, with the Department of Treasury allowing some financial transactions with the Taliban. "The United States is the largest single provider of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan," Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in a statement Wednesday.... ...While the Treasury's new general licenses put certain conditions in place on transactions with the Taliban, critics warn that it could serve to legitimize and assist Taliban rule. House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, was critical of the move....

The UN Security Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted a US-proposed resolution to help humanitarian aid reach desperate Afghans, while seeking to keep funds out of Taliban hands. Advertising The resolution – a first step by the UN after months of wrangling over how to avert a humanitarian catastrophe amid economic meltdown in Afghanistan – was welcomed by the Islamists as a "good step." Since the Taliban swept back to power in August, billions of dollars in aid and assets have been frozen by the West in what the UN has described as an "unprecedented fiscal shock" to the aid-dependent Afghan...

Discourteous remarks about Afghanistan made by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan at the recent Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting were an insult to the Afghan nation reeling from the Taliban takeover. In his remarks, Khan described the non-monolithic Taliban group as a predominately ethnic Pashtun movement, implicitly casting millions of Pashtuns as the Taliban’s adherents.... But perceptions matter.... ...To be sure, it is difficult to determine whether the Taliban will ever be able to run a non-ideological Afghan state. But by casting it as a Pashtun movement, Pakistan risks sparking Pashtun nationalism in more than 40 million Pashtuns who...

The Afghan news agency Khaama Press, citing the BBC, reported on Tuesday that the administration of President Joe Biden may soon unfreeze Afghan government assets, allowing the Taliban to access them, in the name of helping the impoverished people of the country. The Taliban does not currently have access to Afghan government assets in American banks. Global institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Funds (IMF) have also barred the jihadist terrorists from accessing funds that belong to the government of Afghanistan. The formal government of Afghanistan collapsed in August, however, leaving Taliban terror leaders in charge of the...

In a letter to both Yellen and President Biden, the group of lawmakers said that failure to relax international restrictions on Afghanistan’s banking system risks creating “economic pain and humanitarian collapse,” as fears mount that a crumbling economy will spur a new refugee and hunger crisis. The Biden administration in August froze the majority of the Afghan central government’s $9.4 billion in assets — most of which is held in U.S. bank accounts — after the Taliban took control of Kabul and the country. The Biden administration has said recognition, and release of funds, will not come until the Taliban...

Rev. Jesse Jackson has compared the UK to the Taliban over the presence of ‘white male supremacy’ within the country. Left-wing activist Reverend Jesse Jackson has compared the UK to the Taliban over elements of “white male supremacy” within the country. Jackson had previously referred to Britain as the “mother of racism” after a government report found that the country was not “deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities”. “Women and people of colour are still facing the shadow of white male supremacy both here and in the US,” Jackson, who was visiting the United Kingdom, told The Guardian on Monday.

One explanation may be her long fascination with Edith Wilson. She admired and apparently coveted the role that Mrs. Wilson filled after President Woodrow had a stroke. Many Biden watchers have long observed Jill Biden’s grasping obsession with becoming the First Lady. Throughout the campaign as Joe Biden’s failing mental abilities became more and more obvious, did she love him enough to end it? Oh no, not Jill. She continued on with her elder abuse. One explanation may be her long fascination with Edith Wilson. She admired and apparently coveted the role that Mrs. Wilson filled after President Woodrow had...

OANN reporter Jack Pesobiec has dropped a scoop from a highly reliable White House source that is quite chilling. Joe Biden, according to the sauce, was unsure about keeping the August 31 timetable for leaving Afghanistan. The Taliban “red-lined” it and told him he had to leave, but Joe could have escalated things and brought in the big guns and told the Taliban what was up… and that’s exactly what our European allies wanted him to do, because we couldn’t possibly get all of these innocent people out of Afghanistan in seven days. It’s simply not conceivable, and no one...

The Iranian Navy's bad luck is continuing when it comes to warship accidents.An Iranian naval vessel known as the Talayieh, which was still under construction, capsized in dry dock.This happened at the Bandar Abbas port in southern Iran.Videos posted on social media seem to show the naval vessel on its side and people could be seen hanging onto railings along the side of the ship tipped upwards.According to some reports, at least one person was killed in the incident.Iran's Talayieh warship has capsized in dry dock | December 7, 2021 | Defense Updates

Breaking: VIDEO - Two explosions in Kabul Reports of explosion and gunfire at #Hazara dominated area of Kabul right now. Amidst escalating Taliban infighting, ISIS-K has been expanding its attacks targeting vulnerable communities whom the Taliban’s de facto regime refuses to protect.

Yeah so that absolute catastrophe that was the Biden administration's immediate and complete pull-out of Afghanistan -- turning our backs on many Americans, as well as any and all Afghans who have helped us for the past who-even-remembers-how-many years, and handing the country of Afghanistan as well as $85 billion in U.S. weapons and vehicles over to the Taliban terror group -- continues to pay off in spades.Afghanistan is now on the brink of a mass starvation event that will be especially brutal on children:Nearly four months since the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan is on the brink of a mass...