Armed forces minister James Heappey has said that British soldiers in Afghanistan are facing “extraordinary circumstances” at Kabul airport. UK troops were deployed to Kabul airport to aid the evacuation of people from the country, following the Taliban’s total takeover of Afghanistan. Mr Heappey told the BBC that while soldiers are helping with the evacuation,…
The Taliban say they will not extend the deadline for Western forces to leave Afghanistan. A spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, told the BBC’s Yalda Hakim that the 31 August was a red line and that any extension would be a “clear violation” of the Doha agreement between the United States and the Taliban. He said that…
Action-comedy film Free Guy sees Ryan Reynolds break free of his programming as a video game non-player character. He learns he is part of a massively multi-player game called Free City after wearing a pair of sunglasses from one of the games real world players. But how much did video game culture inspire the film?…
A report by human rights group Amnesty International has said the Taliban recently “massacred” and brutally tortured several members of the Hazara minority in Afghanistan. Following the militant group’s takeover of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Sunday, the Taliban have said that there would be “no revenge”. But Amnesty International’s Brian Castner told BBC World…
While there has been much attention on Afghans being evacuated at Kabul airport, it was important to remember there were more than 500,000 internally displaced people in the country, the UN refugee agency’s representative to Afghanistan has said. Caroline Van Buren told BBC World News that the country was facing a humanitarian crisis. Failure to…
There are some hard and difficult lessons to be learned about the recent events in Afghanistan, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said. It was a tragedy that the Afghan security forces collapsed so quickly, Mr Stoltenberg told BBC World News. He blamed a lack of leadership and logistics from the Afghan government, rather than…
Afghanistan’s former central bank governor has said that he will not return to the country despite assurances from the Taliban that former officials can return with amnesty to their jobs. Ajmal Ahmady told BBC World News that the Taliban had been looking for him, knocking on doors at properties where he had previously lived. Mr…
Afghanistan has gone through a lot of transformation in the last 20 years and is a different country to the one the Taliban left in 2001, the author of The Kite Runner has said. Khaled Hosseini told BBC World News that his one sliver of hope was that the Taliban would realise the country had…
President Ashraf Ghani was “gutless” to flee Afghanistan as the Taliban advanced to take power, the former Afghan MP Elay Ershad has said. She told BBC World News: “He left his people behind and he left his country behind. He could have stayed. I am so angry I don’t have words to explain it.” Mr…
The Norwegian Refugee Council, which is providing aid in Afghanistan, is in talks with the Taliban in an effort to secure free movement for its aid workers, and to be able to work without interference. The council’s Secretary General Jan Egeland told BBC World News that the Taliban was responding positively. “We as humanitarians will…
