War in Afghanistan

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.

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.

The top U.S. military officers from United States and Russia held six hours of talks in Helsinki on Wednesday, in the first face-to-face meeting between them since 2019 as both nations adjust to the U.S. pullout and Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

The international community should continue to engage with Afghanistan, Turkey's foreign minister said on Sept. 22. 

Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and his counterparts exchanged opinions on irregular migration and the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan as part of a virtual G20 foreign ministers meeting hosted by the Italian chair of the intergovernmental forum.

Turkey's presidential spokesman met on Sept. 22 with the U.S. national security adviser at the White House.

Ahead of a one-on-one meeting on Sept. 21 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. and Turkey's top diplomats said they would continue to work on Afghanistan.

The European Union will focus on humanitarian aid as it figures out how to deal with the Taliban, aiming on an informal arrangement with Afghanistan's new rulers to ensure safe aid corridors, four diplomats and two officials said.