The Taliban say they don\u2019t want to monopolize power, but they insist there won\u2019t be peace in Afghanistan until there is a new negotiated government in Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani is removed.<\/p>\n
In an interview with The Associated Press, Taliban spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, who is also a member of the group\u2019s negotiating team, laid out the insurgents\u2019 stance on what should come next in a country on the precipice.<\/p>\n
The Taliban have swiftly captured territory in recent weeks, seized strategic border crossings and are threatening a number of provincial capitals, as the last U.S. and NATO soldiers leave Afghanistan. This week, the top U.S. military officer, Gen. Mark Milley, told a Pentagon press conference that the Taliban have \u201cstrategic momentum,\u201d and he did not rule out a complete Taliban takeover. But he said it is not inevitable. \u201cI don\u2019t think the end game is yet written,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
New York on Thursday became the sixth state in the country to ban marriages involving a minor, which disproportionately involve girls being married to adult men.<\/p>\n
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) signed into a law a bill raising the age of consent to be married in the state to 18. The legislation will \u201cfurther protect vulnerable children from exploitation,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cChildren should be allowed to live their childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cuomo had enacted legislation in 2017 purporting to \u201cend child marriage in New York,\u201d a statement from the time said, by raising the age of consent to marry in the state from 14 to 18. But it allowed 17-year-olds to be married with parental and judicial consent, which advocates criticized as a loophole allowing parents to force minors into marriage.<\/p>\n
Last month, Rhode Island\u2019s Democratic governor signed legislation barring minors from being married. Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware have enacted similar laws, as have the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa.<\/p>\n
The legality of child marriages varies widely across the other 46 states. In Wyoming, the minimum age of consent for marriage is 16, but a child of any age can be married with parental and judicial consent. In Virginia, the minimum age is 18 \u2014 but there is an exception for minors who have been legally emancipated.<\/p>\n
Nearly 5,000 children were married in New York between 2000 and 2018, according to a study published in April by Unchained at Last, a nonprofit that advocates against child marriage in the United States.<\/p>\n
Nationally over that period, nearly 300,000 children were legally married, the study found. Of that figure, 86 percent were girls, and most were married to adult men. The average age difference for marriage involving girls was four years, according to the study.<\/p>\n
Child marriages have decreased significantly since the turn of the century, the study found: In 2000, at least 76,396 children were married. In 2018, the figure was 2,493.<\/p>\n
Still, advocates, politicians and experts note that child marriages often involve forced marriage, and can provide legal cover for what would otherwise be statutory rape.<\/p>\n
The bill\u2019s sponsor, state Sen. Julia Salazar (D), said in a statement that \u201cregardless of maturity level, minors lack sufficient legal rights and autonomy that they need to protect them if they enter a marriage contract before becoming adults.\u201d<\/p>\n
Girls who are married before the age of 18 are more likely to be victims of domestic violence and less likely to stay in school, according to the United Nations, which has called child marriage a \u201chuman rights violation” and made ending the practice by 2030 one of its goals for sustainable development.<\/p>\n
The coronavirus pandemic has worsened the issue, the United Nations said in March, noting that factors including economic shock and school closures have contributed.<\/p>\n
Shaheen said the Taliban will lay down their weapons when a negotiated government acceptable to all sides in the conflict is installed in Kabul and Ghani\u2019s government is gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to make it clear that we do not believe in the monopoly of power because any governments who (sought) to monopolize power in Afghanistan in the past, were not successful governments,\u201d said Shaheen, apparently including the Taliban\u2019s own five-year rule in that assessment. \u201cSo we do not want to repeat that same formula.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he was also uncompromising on the continued rule of Ghani, calling him a war monger and accusing him of using his Tuesday speech on the Islamic holy day of Eid-al-Adha to promise an offensive against the Taliban. Shaheen dismissed Ghani\u2019s right to govern, resurrecting allegations of widespread fraud that surrounded Ghani\u2019s 2019 election win. After that vote, both Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah declared themselves president. After a compromise deal, Abdullah is now No. 2 in the government and heads the reconciliation council.<\/p>\n
Ghani has often said he will remain in office until new elections can determine the next government. His critics \u2014 including ones outside the Taliban \u2014 accuse him of seeking only to keep power, causing splits among government supporters.<\/p>\n
Last weekend, Abdullah headed a high-level delegation to the Qatari capital Doha for talks with Taliban leaders. It ended with promises of more talks, as well as greater attention to the protection of civilians and infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Shaheen called the talks a good beginning. But he said the government\u2019s repeated demands for a ceasefire while Ghani stayed in power were tantamount to demanding a Taliban surrender.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t want reconciliation, but they want surrendering,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Before any ceasefire, there must be an agreement on a new government \u201cacceptable to us and to other Afghans,\u201d he said. Then \u201cthere will be no war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shaheen said under this new government, women will be allowed to work, go to school, and participate in politics, but will have to wear the hijab, or headscarf. He said women won\u2019t be required to have a male relative with them to leave their home, and that Taliban commanders in newly occupied districts have orders that universities, schools and markets operate as before, including with the participation of women and girls.<\/p>\n
However, there have been repeated reports from captured districts of Taliban imposing harsh restrictions on women, even setting fire to schools. One gruesome video that emerged appeared to show Taliban killing captured commandos in northern Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Shaheen said some Taliban commanders had ignored the leadership\u2019s orders against repressive and drastic behavior and that several have been put before a Taliban military tribunal and punished, though he did provide specifics. He contended the video was fake, a splicing of separate footage.<\/p>\n
Shaheen said there are no plans to make a military push on Kabul and that the Taliban have so far \u201crestrained\u201d themselves from taking provincial capitals. But he warned they could, given the weapons and equipment they have acquired in newly captured districts. He contended that the majority of the Taliban\u2019s battlefield successes came through negotiations, not fighting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose districts which have fallen to us and the military forces who have joined us … were through mediation of the people, through talks,\u201d he said. \u201cThey (did not fall) through fighting … it would have been very hard for us to take 194 districts in just eight weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Taliban control about half of Afghanistan\u2019s 419 district centers, and while they have yet to capture any of the 34 provincial capitals, they are pressuring about half of them, Milley said. In recent days, the U.S. has carried out airstrikes in support of beleaguered Afghan government troops in the southern city of Kandahar, around which the Taliban have been amassing, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Thursday.<\/p>\n
The rapid fall of districts and the seemingly disheartened response by Afghan government forces have prompted U.S.-allied warlords to resurrect militias with a violent history. For many Afghans weary of more than four decades of war, that raises fears of a repeat of the brutal civil war in the early 1990s in which those same warlords battled for power.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, no one no one wants a civil war, including me,\u201d said Shaheen.<\/p>\n
Shaheen also repeated Taliban promises aimed at reassuring Afghans who fear the group.<\/p>\n
Washington has promised to relocate thousands of U.S. military interpreters. Shaheen said they had nothing to fear from the Taliban and denied threatening them. But, he added, if some want to take asylum in the West because Afghanistan\u2019s economy is so poor, \u201cthat is up to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also denied that the Taliban have threatened journalists and Afghanistan\u2019s nascent civil society, which has been targeted by dozens of killings over the past year. The Islamic State group has taken responsibility for some, but the Afghan government has blamed the Taliban for most of the killings while the Taliban in turn accuse the Afghan government of carrying out the killings to defame them. Rarely has the government made arrests into the killings or revealed the findings of its investigations.<\/p>\n
Shaheen said journalists, including those working for Western media outlets, have nothing to fear from a government that includes the Taliban.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not issued letters to journalists (threatening them), especially to those who are working for foreign media outlets. They can continue their work even in the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Taliban say they don\u2019t want to monopolize power, but they insist there won\u2019t be peace in Afghanistan until there is a new negotiated government in Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani is removed. In an interview with The Associated Press, Taliban spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, who is also a member of the group\u2019s negotiating team, laid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n