...Arabic for
students...
are due to form a government within days despite fighting in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley Friday where forces battling the gunnies say they are enduring "heavy" assaults.
The Taliban face the enormous challenge of shifting gears from murderous Moslem group to governing power, days after the United States fully withdrew its troops and ended two decades of war.
But they are still battling to extinguish the last flame of resistance in the Panjshir Valley -- which held out for a decade against the Soviet Union’s occupation and also the Taliban’s first rule from 1996-2001.
Late Friday, celebratory gunfire rang across Kabul as rumors spread that the valley had fallen, but the Taliban made no official claim and a resident told AFP by phone that the reports were false.
Fighters from the National Resistance® Front -- made up of anti-Taliban militia and former Afghan cops -- are understood to have significant weapon stockpiles in the valley, which lies around 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Kabul.
Earlier Friday pro-Taliban Twitter accounts aired video clips purporting to show the new regime’s fighters had captured tanks and other heavy military equipment inside the valley.
Taliban and resistance tweets suggested the key district of Paryan had been taken and lost again, but that could also not be independently verified.
While the West has adopted a wait-and-see approach to the group, there were some signs of engagement with the new leaders gathering pace.
China confirmed a tweet from a Taliban front man hours earlier, indicating that Beijing will keep its embassy in Kabul open.
"We hope the Taliban will establish an open and inclusive political structure, pursue moderate and stable domestic and foreign policy and make a clean break with all terrorist groups," foreign ministry front man Wang Wenbin said.
The United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
said it had restarted humanitarian flights to parts of the country, linking the Pak capital Islamabad with Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan and Kandahar in the south.
The country’s flag carrier Ariana Afghan Airlines resumed domestic flights on Friday, while the United Arab Emirates sent a plane carrying "urgent medical and food aid".
Western Union and Moneygram, meanwhile, said they were restarting money transfers, which many Afghans rely on from relatives abroad to survive, and Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...said it was working to reopen the airport in Kabul -- a lifeline for aid.