Afghanistan crisis: Committee on price control to be established

Video footage has surfaced on social media that shows a US-made Black Hawk helicopter flying over Afghanistan's Kandahar province, with a person seen hanging below from a rope. However, on Tuesday it was not immediately clear whether the person was dead or alive. Later, it was clarified that an Afghan pilot was reportedly flying the chopper, and a Taliban member was trying to install the group's flag. "Afghan pilot flying this is someone I have known over the years. He was trained in the US and UAE, he confirmed to me that he flew the Blackhawk helicopter. Taliban fighter seen here was trying to install Taliban flag from air but it didn't work in the end," Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary tweeted.

As foreign forces concluded their drawdown from Kabul, the United States said that they have entered a "new chapter" of engagement with Afghanistan. The US completed the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan on August 30, ending one of its longest wars. In a matter of few weeks, US and Coalition forces evacuated more than 123,000 civilians out of Afghanistan and slightly more than 6,000 of them were US citizens. "And our work continues, as you heard from the Secretary (Anthony Blinken). A new chapter of America's engagement with Afghanistan has begun," US Department of State spokesperson Ned Price said in a press briefing.

There is growing concern among Pakistani officials about security in neighbouring Afghanistan, as the Taliban tries to form a government and stabilise the country following the departure of U.S. and other foreign forces. Islamabad is particularly worried about militant fighters from a separate, Pakistani Taliban group crossing from Afghanistan and launching lethal attacks on its territory. Thousands of Pakistanis have been killed in jihadist violence in the last two decades.

In the last call between US President Joe Biden and his Afghanistan counterpart before the Taliban seized control of the country, the leaders discussed military aid, political strategy and messaging tactics, but neither Biden nor Ashraf Ghani appeared aware of or prepared for the immediate danger of the entire country falling to insurgents, a transcript reviewed by Reuters shows. The men spoke for roughly 14 minutes on July 23. On August 15, Ghani fled the presidential palace, and the Taliban entered Kabul. Since then, tens of thousands of desperate Afghans have fled and 13 US troops and scores of Afghan civilians were killed in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport during the frenetic US military evacuation.

Picture credit: Zhman TV/via Reuters

Taliban supporters paraded coffins draped with American and NATO flags in the eastern city of Khost on Tuesday, part of celebrations across the country following the withdrawal of the last US troops. The mock funeral, in which coffins covered in French and British flags were also carried along the street through a large crowd, marked the end of a 20-year war and a hasty and humiliating exit for Washington and its NATO allies. Some of the crowd held guns aloft, while others waved Taliban flags or snapped the procession on mobile phones. "August 31 is our formal Freedom Day. On this day, American occupying forces and NATO forces fled the country," Taliban official Qari Saeed Khosti told local television station Zhman TV during its coverage of the event.

The United Nations Security Council resolution on Afghanistan addresses India's key concerns relating to the country following its takeover by the Taliban, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. The UN Security Council, under India's presidency, on Monday adopted a resolution demanding that the territory of Afghanistan should not be used to threaten any country or shelter terrorists.

Addressing the nation, a defensive President Joe Biden called the US airlift to extract more than 120,000 Afghans, Americans and other allies to end a 20-year war an “extraordinary success,” though more than 100 Americans and thousands of Afghans remain behind. Twenty-four hours after the last American C-17 cargo plane roared off from Kabul, Biden vigorously defended his decision to end America's longest war and withdraw all US troops ahead of an August 31 deadline.

In the turbulent endgame to the Afghanistan crisis, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai — Sheru to the Class of 1982 at Dehradun’s Indian Military Academy — has become as much the face of the Taliban’s India outreach as he is the radical regime’s pointsman for political transition. Back in the 1970s, when the older generation of Afghans experienced the last stretch of peace, Stanekzai and two others who would go on to become central figures in the troubled nation’s history — deposed President Ashraf Ghani and Afghan-American peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad — were all busy finding themselves while studying on scholarships abroad.

The last American soldier to leave Afghanistan did not put out the lights at the Kabul airport because Taliban militants swept in to celebrate their victory and US defeat even as the military aircraft carrying the final contingent of troops pulled out a minute before the August 31 deadline.