Taliban

Senior Pentagon officials said on Sept. 29 the collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces in August could be traced to a 2020 U.S. agreement with the Taliban that promised a complete U.S. troop withdrawal.

Turkey's ambassador to Afghanistan met the Taliban's acting deputy prime minister and assured of strengthening bilateral ties between Kabul and Ankara, an official statement said on Sept. 29. 

The Taliban killed a child. The reason - suspicion that his father was involved in the resistance against the new regime.

The news was spread by Afghan media, which published a video with the bloody body of the little boy. According to Panjshir Observer, the murder took place in Takhar province.

The top U.S. military officer called the 20-year war in Afghanistan a "strategic failure" and acknowledged to Congress that he had favored keeping several thousand troops in the country to prevent a collapse of the U.S.-supported Kabul government and a rapid takeover by the Taliban.

Turkey has been conducting dialogue with Taliban officials through the Turkish Embassy in Kabul, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Sept. 27, noting that Turkey has decided to provide humanitarian aid to Afghanistan through neighboring Pakistan.

Turkic Council members are meeting in Istanbul on Sept. 27 to discuss current developments in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have taken power.

A prominent leader of the Taliban has said the group will reintroduce punishments such as amputations and executions for criminals, though perhaps not publicly.

Some of the refugees fleeing the Taliban's brutality in Afghanistanare taking an arduous route across neighboring Iran to try and cross into Turkey. We met a family in the Turkish border city of Van who made it out of Afghanistan the night before the capital fell to the Taliban. 

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.

The Turkish ambassador to Qatar met on on Sept. 23 the acting deputy foreign minister of Taliban administration in Afghanistan, the Turkish Embassy in Doha said.