One of the founders of the Taliban and the chief enforcer of its harsh interpretation of Islamic law when they last ruled Afghanistan said the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Mullah Nooruddin Turabi dismissed outrage over the Taliban's past executions, which sometimes took place in front of crowds at a stadium, and he warned the world against interfering with Afghanistan's new rulers.

"Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments," Turabi told The Associated Press, speaking in Kabul. "No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam, and we will make our laws on the Quran."

Since the Taliban overran Kabul on Aug. 15 and seized control of the country, Afghans and the world have been watching to see whether they will re-create their harsh rule of the late 1990s. Turabi's comments pointed to how the group's leaders remain entrenched in a deeply conservative, hard-line worldview, even if they are embracing technological changes, like video and mobile phones.

Turabi, now in his early 60s, was justice minister and head of the so-called Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – effectively, the religious police – during the Taliban's previous rule.

At that time, the world denounced the Taliban's punishments, which took place in Kabul's sports stadium or on the grounds of the sprawling Eid Gah Mosque, often attended by hundreds of Afghan men.

Executions of convicted murderers were usually by a single shot to the head, carried out by the victim's family, who had the option of accepting "blood money" and allowing the culprit to live. For convicted thieves, the punishment was amputation of a hand. For those convicted of highway robbery, a hand and a foot were amputated.

Trials and convictions were rarely public and the judiciary was weighted in favor of Islamic clerics, whose knowledge of the law was limited to religious injunctions.

Turabi said that this time, judges – including women – would adjudicate cases, but the foundation of Afghanistan's laws will be the Quran. He said the same punishments would be revived.

"Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security," he said, saying it had a deterrent effect. He said the Cabinet was studying whether to do punishments in public and will "develop a policy."

In recent days in Kabul, Taliban fighters have revived a punishment they commonly used in the past — public shaming of men accused of small-time theft.

On at least two occasions in the last week, Kabul men have been packed into the back of a pickup truck, their hands tied, and were paraded around to humiliate them. In one case, their faces were painted to identify them as thieves. In the other, stale bread was hung from their necks or stuffed in their mouth. It wasn't immediately clear what their crimes were.

Wearing a white turban and a bushy, unkempt white beard, the stocky Turabi limped slightly on his artificial leg. He lost a leg and one eye during fighting with Soviet troops in the 1980s.

Under the new Taliban government, he is in charge of prisons. He is among a number of Taliban leaders, including members of the all-male interim cabinet, who are on a United Nations sanctions list.

During the previous Taliban rule, he was one of the group's most ferocious and uncompromising enforcers.

Turabi was notorious for ripping music tapes from cars, stringing up destroyed cassettes in trees and signposts. He demanded men wear turbans in all government offices and his minions routinely beat men whose beards had been trimmed. Sports were banned, and Turabi's legion of enforcers forced men to the mosque for prayers five times daily.

"We are changed from the past," he said.

He said now the Taliban would allow television, mobile phones, photos, and video "because this is the necessity of the people, and we are serious about it." He suggested that the Taliban viewed the media as a way to spread their message. "Now we know instead of reaching just hundreds, we can reach millions," he said. He added that if punishments are made public, then people may be allowed to video or take photos to spread the deterrent effect.

The US and its allies have been trying to use the threat of isolation – and the economic damage that would result from it – to pressure the Taliban to moderate their rule and give other factions, minorities, and women a place in power.

Turabi dismissed criticism over the previous Taliban rule, arguing that it had succeeded in bringing stability. "We had complete safety in every part of the country," he said of the late 1990s.

Even as Kabul residents express fear over their new Taliban rulers, some acknowledge grudgingly that the capital has already become safer in just the past month. Before the Taliban takeover, bands of thieves roamed the streets, and relentless crime had driven most people off the streets after dark.

"It's not a good thing to see these people being shamed in public, but it stops the criminals because when people see it, they think 'I don't want that to be me,'" said Amaan, a store owner in the center of Kabul.

Another shopkeeper said it was a violation of human rights but that he was also happy to be able to open his store after dark.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post 'Cutting off hands is very necessary for security,' Taliban official says appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Qatar played an outsized role in US efforts to evacuate tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan. Now the tiny Gulf Arab state is being asked to help shape what is next for Afghanistan because of its ties with both Washington and the Taliban, who are in charge in Kabul.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Qatar will be among global heavyweights on Monday when US. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosts a virtual meeting to discuss a coordinated approach for the days ahead, as the US completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the country. The meeting will also include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, Turkey, the European Union and NATO.

Qatar has also reportedly been asked by the Taliban to provide civilian technical assistance at Kabul's international airport, once the US military withdrawal is complete on Tuesday. Authorities in Qatar have not commented on the reports.

Meanwhile, international UN agencies are asking Qatar for help and support in delivering aid to Afghanistan.

Qatar's role was somewhat unexpected. The nation, which shares a land border with Saudi Arabia and a vast underwater gas field in the Persian Gulf with Iran, was supposed to be a transit point for a just a few thousand people airlifted from Afghanistan over a timeline of several months.

After the surprisingly swift Taliban takeover of Kabul on Aug. 15, the United States looked to Qatar to help shoulder the evacuations of tens of thousands in a chaotic and hurried airlift.

In the end, nearly 40% of all evacuees were moved out via Qatar, winning its leadership heaps of praise from Washington. International media outlets also leaned on Qatar for their own staff evacuations. The United States said Saturday that 113,500 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan since Aug. 14. Qatar says a little more than 43,000 had transited through the country.

Qatar's role in the evacuations reflects its position as host of the Middle East's biggest US military base, but also its decision years ago to host the Taliban's political leadership in exile, giving it some sway with the militant group. Qatar also hosted US-Taliban peace talks.

Assistant Qatari Foreign Minister Lolwa al-Khater acknowledged the political gains scored by Qatar in the past weeks, but rebuffed any suggestion that Qatar's efforts were purely strategic.

"If anyone assumes that it's only about political gains, believe me, there are ways to do PR that are way easier than risking our people there on the ground, way easier than us having sleepless nights literally for the past two weeks, way less complicated than spending our time looking after every kid and every pregnant woman," she told The Associated Press.

For some of the most sensitive rescue efforts in Afghanistan, Qatar conducted the operation with just a few hundred troops and its own military aircraft. Qatar evacuated a girls' boarding school, an all-girls robotics team and journalists working for international media, among others. Qatar's ambassador accompanied convoys of buses through a gauntlet of Taliban checkpoints in Kabul and past various Western military checkpoints at the airport, where massive crowds had gathered, desperate to flee.

In all, al-Khater said Qatar secured passage to the airport for some 3,000 people and airlifted as many as 1,500 after receiving requests from international organizations and vetting their names.

Al-Khater said Qatar was uniquely positioned because of its ability to speak to various parties on the ground and its willingness to escort people through Taliban-controlled Kabul.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

"What many people don't realize is that this trip is not a phone call to Taliban," she said. "You have checkpoints by the US side, by the British side, by the NATO side, by the Turkish side ... and we have to juggle with all of these variables and factors."

The Taliban have promised amnesty to all those who remain Afghanistan. Still, many of those desperate to get out – including civil society activists, those who had worked for Western armies and women afraid to lose hard-won rights – say they do not trust the militants. In addition, other armed groups pose a growing threat. Last week, an attack by an Islamic State suicide bomber killed more than 180 people outside Kabul airport.

The US-led evacuation process has been marred by miscalculation and chaos, and that spilled over to the al-Udeid base in Qatar.

The hangars at al-Udeid were so crammed that the United States halted flights from Kabul for several hours during the peak of evacuation efforts on Aug. 20. Nearby countries, like Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, accepted several thousand evacuees to alleviate pressure on the American base.

At al-Udeid, Afghan families evacuated by the US waited for hours in poorly ventilated, humid hangars in the middle of the desert with inadequate cooling. A video posted by The Washington Post showed hundreds of evacuees in one such hangar with only one lavatory and people sleeping on the ground.

Qatar built an emergency field hospital, additional shelters and portable washrooms to help plug the gaps. In addition to what the US military is distributing, the Qatari military is handing out 50,000 meals a day, and more still by local charities. Qatar Airways has also provided 10 aircraft to transport evacuees from its capital, Doha, to other countries.

Around 20,000 evacuees remain in Qatar, some expecting to leave in a matter of weeks and others in months to come as they await resettlement elsewhere. Seven Afghan women have delivered babies since their arrival in Qatar.

Qatar is absorbing only a very small number of evacuees, among them a group of female students who will be offered scholarships to continue their education in Doha. Qatar is also hosting some evacuees in furnished apartment facilities built for the FIFA World Cup, which will be played in Doha next year.

The energy-rich nation is a tiny country with a little more than 300,000 citizens, where expatriate foreign workers on temporary visas far outnumber the local population.

The White House says US President Joe Biden personally expressed his appreciation to Qatar's 41-year-old Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani by phone and noted that the US-led airlift would not have been possible without Qatar's support facilitating the transfer of thousands of people daily.

It's the kind of positive publicity that millions of dollars spent by Gulf Arab states on lobbying and public relations could scarcely guarantee.

The post Qatar stepping into Afghan vacuum left by US withdrawal appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

American forces launched a drone strike in Kabul on Sunday that blew up a vehicle carrying "multiple suicide bombers" from Afghanistan's Islamic State affiliate suspected of preparing to attack the airport, a United States officials said, as the US nears the end of its military presence in the Afghan capital.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The strike was the second carried out by US forces in Afghanistan since an Islamic State suicide bomber struck the airport on Thursday, killing 13 US troops and scores of Afghan civilians trying to flee the country.

One US official said Sunday's strike was carried out by an unmanned aircraft and that secondary explosions following the strike showed the vehicle had been carrying a "substantial amount of explosive material."

The post US drone kills ISIS bombers planning another attack on Kabul airport appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called off a planned weekend visit to Israel because of the situation in Afghanistan, the German government said Thursday.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Merkel was due to travel to Israel on Saturday for her first trip to the country since Prime Minister Naftali Bennett took office. Her visit had been due to last until Monday.

It was canceled in consultation with Bennett "because of current developments in Afghanistan," Merkel's office said in a statement. Germany is one of the countries that has been scrambling to evacuate from Kabul its own nationals and Afghans who helped its forces during a nearly-two decade deployment in the country.

Merkel's office said the intention is for the chancellor to go ahead with her visit at an unspecified later time.

Merkel is approaching the end of her time in office. She is not running in Germany's national election on Sept. 26 but it isn't yet clear when she will step down. In Germany, the outgoing government stays in office until a new one is sworn in, and forming a coalition can be a time-consuming process.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Germany's Merkel cancels Israel trip due to Afghan crisis appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The United Arab Emirates has helped evacuate 28,000 people from Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of Kabul, a senior Emirati official said Thursday.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The UAE and Qatar have been instrumental staging posts for evacuation flights for Western countries' citizens as well as Afghan interpreters, journalists and others.

Western countries including Britain, France and the United States are scrambling to get the last of their citizens and protected Afghans out while Poland and the Netherlands are wrapping up their operations.

Of the headline 28,000 to have passed through the Emirates, some 12,000 were evacuated by Britain, and 9,000 by the US.

Prior to the fall of Kabul, the UAE had helped evacuate 8,500 others although the official, who declined to be named, did not specify when these evacuations started.

Speaking to journalists in Abu Dhabi, the official said his country is currently hosting 8,500 evacuees on a temporary basis with most expected to head to the US in the coming days. Others had been hospitalized and were receiving medical care.

Abu Dhabi is not coordinating any evacuations with the Taliban, the official said, but convoys to the airport were guaranteed through the US – although security conditions on the ground were a concern.

Abu Dhabi expected the operation will conclude by the end of the month, the official said, coinciding with the August 31 deadline that US President Joe Biden set.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post UAE evacuates 28,000 Afghans fleeing Taliban appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

In order to understand the last 40 years of Islamic struggle in Afghanistan, up until the hasty withdrawal of American troops, we must first look at the legacy of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. He was born in a small Palestinian village near Jenin in the West Bank, and moved to Jordan after the 1967 Six-Day War.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

He joined the Muslim Brotherhood and orchestrated attacks together with the Palestine Liberation Organization against Israel. After completing his studies at the Al-Azhar University in Egypt and spending a short time in Saudi Arabia, he made his way to Islamabad, where he met the local Mujahideen fighting the Soviets.

A charismatic leader, Azzam led thousands of Muslim volunteers to war, including one of his closest disciple Osama bin Laden. His vision was simple: to "fight and defeat our enemies and establish an Islamic state on a piece of land like Afghanistan… Jihad will spread and Islam will fight Jews in Palestine and establish an Islamic state in Palestine and elsewhere. Then, all these countries will unite into one Islamic state."

In his vision, which greatly influenced Hamas as well, Azzam marked Islam's victory in Afghanistan as the starting point of the Islamic struggle, ending in the liberation of Palestine. In this respect, Taliban's speedy takeover of Afghanistan can be perceived by many as an inspiration to press ahead with the struggle.

The Taliban's victory in Afghanistan has implications when it comes to Israel. And the United States, which seeks to disengage from the Middle East, must pay attention to these developments too. America used to have a hegemony in the region, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That is what prompted Israel's former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to sign the Oslo Accords, despite the obvious risks.

Back then, it seemed that the world was headed towards more stability. The Arab world was in a state of crisis at the time, which peaked after the US victory in Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991. America was not only superior because of its technological abilities, but also due to its ability to lead the anti-Iraq coalition, which included Arab forces like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Both PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan, who supported Iraq, found themselves in a crisis after the Gulf War. This state of affairs is what led to the Oslo Accords.

However, everything has changed since then. The United States is no longer as powerful in the Middle East, while Russia's role has become more influential. Small and ongoing wars have been breaking out around the world under a new paradigm that has been undermining the new world order: radical Islamic forces – from Afghanistan to Yemen, and from Syria to Libya – have realized that their very inferiority to the West is what gives them the fighting potential to uproot the stability the West so desperately needs. Iran has managed to fully tap this potential through its regional meddling. The world that brought about the Oslo Accords no longer exists, and it is something Prime Minister Naftali Bennett should make clear to the Biden administration during his upcoming trip to Washington.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post With Afghanistan's fall, the world is even less stable appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The sudden return of Taliban rule in Afghanistan and the desperate scenes of people clinging to aircraft taking off from Kabul's airport have raised concern in European countries of a potential refugee crisis.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Haunted by a 2015 migration crisis fueled by the Syrian war, European leaders desperately want to avoid another large-scale influx of refugees and migrants from Afghanistan. Except for those who helped Western forces in the country's two-decade war, the message to Afghans considering fleeing to Europe is: If you must leave, go to neighboring countries, but don't come here.

"It must be our goal to keep the majority of the people in the region," Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said this week, echoing what many European leaders say.

European Union officials told a meeting of interior ministers this week that the most important lesson from 2015 was not to leave Afghans to their own devices, and that without urgent humanitarian help they will start moving, according to a confidential German diplomatic memo obtained by The Associated Press.

Austria, among the EU's migration hard-liners, suggested setting up "deportation centers" in countries neighboring Afghanistan so that EU countries can deport Afghans who have been denied asylum even if they cannot be sent back to their homeland.

The US and its NATO allies are scrambling to evacuate thousands of Afghans who fear they'll be punished by the Taliban for having worked with Western forces. But other Afghans are unlikely to get the same welcome.

Even Germany, which since 2015 has admitted more Syrians than any other Western nation, is sending a different signal today.

Several German politicians, including Armin Laschet, the center-right Union bloc's candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor, warned last week that there must be "no repeat" of the migration crisis of 2015.

French President Emmanuel Macron stressed that "Europe alone cannot shoulder the consequences" of the situation in Afghanistan and "must anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migratory flows."

Britain, which left the EU in 2020, said it would welcome 5,000 Afghan refugees this year and resettle 20,000 Afghans in coming years.

Besides that, there have been few concrete offers from European countries, which besides evacuating their own citizens and Afghan collaborators, say they're focusing on helping Afghans inside their country and in neighboring countries such as Iran and Pakistan.

Europe "should not wait until people stand at our external border," EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johanson said.

EU Council President Charles Michel acknowledged the challenges facing Europe when he visited Madrid on Saturday to tour Spain's emergency hub for Afghan refugees.

"Partnerships with third-party countries will be at the heart of our discussion in the European Union. We have to adopt strategies that ensure migration is possible in an orderly and consistent fashion," he said. "We need to find that balance between the dignity of the European Union and the capacity to defend European Union interests."

Greece, whose scenic islands facing the Turkish coast were the European point of entry for hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and others six years ago, has made clear it doesn't want to relive that crisis.

Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said Greece won't accept being the "gateway for irregular flows into the EU," and that it considers Turkey to be a safe place for Afghans.

Such talk makes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan see red. His country already hosts 3.6 million Syrians and hundreds of thousands of Afghans, and he has used the threat of sending them to Europe for political leverage.

"Turkey has no duty, responsibility or obligation to be Europe's refugee warehouse," Erdogan warned in a speech Thursday.

The Turkish president talked about migration from Afghanistan in a rare phone call with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Friday, and also is discussing the issue with Iran.

Attitudes toward migrants have hardened in Europe following the 2015 crisis, fueling the rise of far-right parties like the Alternative for Germany, the biggest opposition party in parliament ahead of Germany's parliamentary election next month.

Even in Turkey, migrants from Syria and Afghanistan, once treated like Muslim brethren, are increasingly viewed with suspicion as the country grapples with rising inflation and unemployment.

Acknowledging the public's "unease" about migration, Erdogan noted how his government has reinforced the eastern border with Iran with military, gendarmerie, police and the new wall, which has been under construction since 2017.

AP journalists near the Turkish border with Iran encountered dozens of Afghans this week, mostly young men, but also some women and children. Smuggled across the border at night in small groups, they said they left their country to escape the Taliban, violence and poverty.

"The situation in Afghanistan was intense," said one young man, Hassan Khan. "The Taliban captured the whole of Afghanistan. But there is no work in Afghanistan, we were compelled to come here."

Observers say there are no indications yet of any mass movement across the border. Turkish authorities say they have intercepted 35,000 Afghans entering the country illegally so far this year, compared with over 50,000 in all of 2020 and more than 200,000 in 2019.

UNCHR estimates that 90% of the 2.6 million Afghan refugees outside of the country live in neighboring Iran and Pakistan. Both countries also host large numbers of Afghans who left in search of better economic opportunities.

By comparison, about 630,000 Afghans have applied for asylum in EU countries in the past 10 years, with the highest numbers in Germany, Hungary, Greece and Sweden, according to the EU statistics agency.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said it's not a forgone conclusion that the Taliban takeover will result in a new refugee crisis.

"I would warn against a self-fulfilling prophecy," he told AP. Afghans are "scared, bewildered but also hopeful that a long, long war will be over and maybe now they can avoid the crossfire."

He said much depends on the Taliban allowing development and humanitarian work to continue.

"If you would have a collapse of public services and if there would be a major food crisis, there will be, for sure, a mass movement of people," Egeland said.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Europe fears Afghan refugee crisis after Taliban takeover appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar has arrived in Kabul for talks with other Afghan leaders to discuss creating a new 'inclusive' government, an unnamed Taliban official told local news outlets Saturday, almost a week after the militants took over the capital.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The former foes are locked in difficult talks for a coalition government as pressure mounts on all parties to avert a renewed civil war.

The Taliban and the inner circle of former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani worked together – through an intricate web of connections and relationships on the ground – to avert a bigger war at the gates of Kabul last week.

Taliban leaders, former figures in the Ghani government, and former Northern Alliance commanders dispersed between Pakistan and Afghanistan have made progress in talks on forming a transitional government in Kabul. One source in contact with key Northern Alliance figures visiting the Pakistani capital of Islamabad even painted an optimistic picture of the backchannel talks that extended from Panjshir to Kabul, Islamabad, Doha, and Washington.

This comes with two parallel developments. Taliban commanders have resisted calls from hardline elements to declare a unilateral government by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. At the same time, Ahmad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, met representatives of the Taliban in Panjshir, the seat of legendary former anti-Soviet warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Massoud and most of the former Northern Alliance commanders and members of the previous government in Kabul have also refrained so far from declaring unilateral steps such as a government in exile, despite a flurry of contacts seeking legal opinion on such a move.

The talks are underway, largely far from the glare of the international media, which remains focused on the disturbing images from around the Kabul airport, and the heart-wrenching stories of journalists, women activists, and Afghans who worked with international forces – all of whom question the Taliban's narrative of moderation.

While in talks with the Taliban, Massoud has simultaneously called for the West to support his forces in Panjshir, an area in northern Afghanistan the Taliban has spared so far and is now the focus of anti-Taliban activities.

The Northern Alliance resisted the Taliban for much of the 1990s from Panjshir but failed to defeat the Taliban until the United States and NATO extended support after Sept. 11, 2001. The Alliance merged into successive Afghan governments after November 2001, and its commanders have been in power until Ghani fled the country last week.

Should the talks for a power-sharing deal collapse, there are serious doubts whether anti-Taliban forces in Panjshir or other former Northern Alliance commanders can hold back the Taliban. The same, however, is also true for the Taliban, which although powerful enough to control large swathes of Afghanistan may be unable to completely stamp out resistance.

Both the Northern Alliance and Taliban are mujahideen, representatives of an extremist version of Islam that has plagued Afghanistan for the past four decades and was instrumental in scuttling Western attempts at modernizing Afghan society. Many Afghan critics see both as two sides of the same coin. The Western-backed former Northern Alliance commanders were unsuccessful in translating unprecedented international support into enduring change in Afghanistan, mainly because they shared many of the regressive policies of the Taliban, especially in terms of women's rights, education, and government.

Before Sept. 11, the Northern Alliance was backed by Iran, India, and Russia, while the Taliban received backing from Pakistan, Persian Gulf states, and the US. The deck has been rearranged multiple times in the twenty years since 2001. Currently, the situation is murky at best. Most of Afghanistan's neighbors have little appetite for a reenactment of the proxy war of the 1990s.

A lot is at stake in the clandestine trilateral talks underway between former Northern Alliance commanders, Massoud's faction in Panjshir, and the Taliban. A group of Alliance commanders has been in the Pakistani capital since Aug. 15, and announced plans to extend its stay, raising hopes for a power-sharing agreement.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Taliban chief to meet with Afghan leaders to form 'inclusive' new government appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Saudi Arabia on Monday urged Taliban insurgents – who seized Afghanistan's capital Kabul, completing a sweep across the country – to preserve lives, property and security as stipulated by "Islamic principles".

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

"The kingdom stands with the choices that the Afghan people make without interference," the foreign ministry of Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, said in a statement issued by official media.

"Based on the noble principles of Islam..., the kingdom of Saudi Arabia hopes that the Taliban movement and all Afghan parties will work to preserve security, stability, lives and property,"

It also voiced hope the situation would stabilize as soon as possible, as thousands of Afghans fearful of the Taliban filled Kabul airport in desperate efforts to leave. Five people were killed in the chaos on Monday.

Fellow Gulf state Qatar said it was seeking a peaceful transition in Afghanistan and was doing its utmost to help efforts to evacuate diplomats and foreign staff in international organizations from the country.

Doha has hosted a Taliban office since 2013 for peace talks and has played a central role in trying to reach a political settlement in Afghanistan with the withdrawal of US troops.

"There is international concern about the fast pace of developments and Qatar is doing its utmost to bring a peaceful transition, especially after the vacuum that was created," Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told a news conference in the Jordanian capital Amman.

Bahrain, current chair of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, said on Monday it would initiate consultations with fellow Gulf Arab states regarding the situation in Afghanistan, state media reported.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Saudi Arabia calls on Taliban to protect lives, follow 'noble Islam principles' appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Hujjatullah Zia is an Afghani journalist who lives in Kabul, and got to bear witness to the fall of the capital city to the Taliban on Sunday.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

He spoke with Israel Hayom amid the Taliban's takeover of the capital on Sunday and provided a glimpse of the chaos.

The stunning pace at which the radical group recaptured the country after 20 years of fighting with the US-led international coalition and the Afghan government caught many off guard, including the residents themselves.

The journalist, who is a senior writer at The Daily Outlook Afghanistan, also spoke with us on Monday, a day after the takeover was complete.

He said that even as the chaos continued in the airport, the city itself was trying to adjust and that calm has been somewhat restored.

Video: Hujjatullah Zia

"Life is getting normal and it is a bit busier today in Kabul," he told Israel Hayom. "Schools, universities and government administrations are all off," he noted. His publication has also stopped its reporting because it no longer has a readership.

"The foreign embassies are our readers, they are closed," he explained.

On Sunday he said that the day began rather calmly, but soon things turned ugly.

"The stores and shops were closed, it was not a busy day for the people. You know, the people were afraid, because the Taliban entered the city," he said as the capital was falling. "About 30 minutes ago, I went to the police station and met a few Taliban fighters and they were stationed at police checkpoints and police stations."

Q: So after you met them what happened? 

"A number of young people started taking selfies with the Taliban. It was a bit surprising. You know, the Taliban entered Kabul without violence or fighting, there was no fighting with the army. They said they would not enter the city so that they can negotiate with the government but they were already here informally."

Q: You began your day in the city center and then you discovered that they had entered the city? 

"The people were afraid in the beginning. A lot of people decided not to go out of their homes. Because they were afraid of the Taliban. The public here, especially women, are afraid of the Taliban."

Q: When the Taliban entered the city, did women also take selfies with them? 

"No, women could be hardly seen in the in streets. Only a small number of women were walking, in the areas where the Taliban are not seen. In the city's downtown, there were only a small number of women. They did not go near the Taliban. My sister went to the bazaar [local market] but quickly ended her shopping and rushed back home; she came back scared, telling me that the Taliban had entered and people were afraid, with everyone hurrying to get back home. She also wanted to go the doctor, but she didn't have time, she just rushed back from the bazaar and she told me that people were running back home."

Q: Is she safe now? Is she worried that something could happen to her? 

"She is very worried. I told her that the Taliban said they would not hurt her."

Q: So what is your daily life going to be like now?

"Everyone is worried about their jobs, and there is confusion. They are not sure if they can keep their job. So we just hope that we can continue our job. I am not so sure how, because journalists are more vulnerable, and I am not sure they won't impose restrictions on us and on the freedom of the press."

Q: What part of the city are you in? 

"I am in District 13. About 1 hour from the airport."

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Kabul residents try to restore normalcy, one selfie at a time appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.