September 2 Afghanistan-Taliban news

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will visit Pakistan for talks on Afghanistan, according to Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Raab will hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, on “the evolving situation in Afghanistan and bilateral matters,” the ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The statement said he would visit the country Thursday and Friday, adding, “Foreign Secretary Raab is also scheduled to have interaction at the leadership-level.”

The statement noted Pakistan and the UK “have been closely engaged on the latest developments in Afghanistan” highlighting the phone call between Prime Minister Imran Khan and Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Aug.18 as well as stating that, “Foreign Minister Qureshi and Secretary of State Dominic Raab discussed the situation in Afghanistan twice on 16 and 27 August.”

“The visit will reinforce the current momentum in high-level exchanges between the two countries and help strengthen bilateral cooperation on a range of issues,” it continued. 

It is unclear if Raab has arrived in Pakistan. The UK Foreign Office has not replied to CNN’s request for comment.

Earlier on Thursday, Raab met with Qatar’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, in Doha over the situation in Afghanistan. 

Appearing at a news conference alongside his Qatari counterpart, Raab said he feels a responsibility to make sure that the remaining British nationals and Afghans who worked for the British armed forces and UK government in Afghanistan can come to the UK despite the official evacuation mission ending. 

“I'm here, not just in Qatar but moving on afterwards, to talk to regional countries about how we can ensure safe passage through third countries," Raab told CNN’s Sam Kiley.

Raab also said the UK will not be recognizing the Taliban as a government “anytime in the foreseeable future”. However, he said “there is an important scope for engagement and dialogue” and a need to test the assurances made by the Taliban regarding safe passage of evacuees out of Afghanistan.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said “there are very few Afghan children currently arriving to the United States who are not accompanied by an adult known to them.”

CNN reported earlier this week that at least 34 Afghan children who were evacuated arrived to the United States without parents, according to an administration official, although some have already been reunited with family in the country.

“Once they arrive to the continental United States, normal protocols for unaccompanied children apply. And in those cases CBP (US Customs and Border Protection) or another federal agency refers them to the Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS (the US Department of Health and Human Services) and HHS then works to find extended family or other appropriate sponsors to care for the child using established sponsor assessment procedures,” he said.

“Unaccompanied minors not immediately unified with an appropriate caregiver, are placed in culturally and age appropriate facilities. ORR – the Office of Refugee Resettlement – has identified sites that have Dari and Pashto speakers and that are culturally appropriate in addition to the standing resources we have for all unaccompanied minors," he said.

“Overseas, unaccompanied minors are referred to international organizations to assess their best interests and promote family reunification when that’s possible,” Price said. UNICEF is among those organizations.

Price declined to give a specific definition for who counts as “an adult known to” a minor. 

Read more about the Afghans coming to the US here.

The White House admits that charter flights leaving Afghanistan and coming to the US are cause for “some concern” due to lack of reliable information coming out of the country, and that the number of Americans who still want to leave Afghanistan is “closer to 100” than 200.

While she pushed back on reports that the US may be stopping charter flights leaving Afghanistan, she added that the US doesn’t have “reliable means” to know who is on charter flights or who is organizing them, and that causes officials “some concern.”

“These charter flights are landing on US military bases, and we have to be very careful,” Psaki said. “We have concern about flights… where we don't have that level of information and understanding about the manifests what the protocols… that are underway.”

“There's also a question there are active there continue to be active ISIS-K threats,” the press secretary continued, “and there's also question of where these flights go where they land. We know ISIS-K has a keen interest in attacks against aviation targets, and our personnel on the ground in our Air Force in our military bases and these are among the risks that we take into account.” 

Psaki also gave an updated breakdown of evacuees who actually made it to the US between Aug. 17 and Aug. 31, saying that in total, 31,107 people have arrived.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers announced a series of initiatives aimed at supporting Afghan evacuees the state is housing at Fort McCoy, an army installation in central Wisconsin. 

Evers is encouraging individuals, businesses and other groups to provide donations as he said many Afghans were unable to bring personal items with them. Clean, new clothing and footwear are among items that are of the highest priority and needed at this time, Evers said in a release from his office. 

The governor is coordinating the efforts through the Wisconsin Emergency Management and the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, according to the release.

Catholic Charities of La Crosse and the American Red Cross are also supporting refugee relief efforts, the release said.

The Netherlands is looking into whether it can help Qatar and Turkey reopen the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag told Dutch national broadcaster NOS in Ankara.

She said the Netherlands’ priority was to help Dutch citizens, residents and Afghans “that we want to bring to the Netherlands.”

“That depends on how far Qatar and Turkey get in their agreements with the Taliban. And how they assess the safety situation at and near the airport. How to make that safe. And we are investigating whether we can play a role in that.” 

Kaag has visited Qatar, Pakistan and Turkey in the past two days.

Western Union is restarting money transfer services to Afghanistan, the company said in a statement posted on Twitter on Thursday.

“We understand the urgent needs of our customers and we are committed to supporting them during this time,” it added.

The company said it will offer a $0 transfer fee for all money transfers into Afghanistan for two weeks, effective 3 to 17 September. Sending money from Afghanistan to another country remains suspended, Western Union said. 

The Taliban's takeover has already pushed the country to the brink of economic collapse. Banks are open but it can take hours, even a whole day, to reach the front of the line outside them. A weekly withdrawal limit of 20,000 afghanis, around $200, has also been imposed. 

Former Afghanistan central bank Governor Abdul Fitrat told CNN the banking system faces collapse. “There is a huge banking crisis in the country. If that run continues like this, the banking system will not survive for a while. For long, it may be only a matter of three, four weeks, or maybe a couple of months for the banking sector to collapse,” Fitrat said.

"No one has money," one current employee of Afghanistan's central bank told CNN last week. The employee, speaking anonymously due to fears for their safety, said many families don't have enough money for their daily spending and some paychecks have been halted.

Around 75% of the previous government’s budget came from overseas according, according to the World Bank. 

At least one person has died following a stampede at an Afghanistan-Pakistan border crossing Wednesday, according to witnesses who spoke to CNN.

Safi Ullah, a 64-year-old man from Afghanistan, died in the incident, his son Shahid Ullah confirmed to CNN.

"Me and my father were trying to cross the border with the rest of our family, I lost my father in the stampede, later we found him dead," Ullah said.

In a distressing video showing the desperation at the Spin Boldak-Chaman land border crossing on the day of the stampede, hundreds of people determined to flee Afghanistan are shown converging on the border, wanting to enter Pakistan.

People at the front barriers find they have nowhere to go, but a large throng of hundreds of people at the back of the crowd continues to push forward, trapping and crushing them against the border crossing building.

Although Pakistan has said it will not accept any more Afghan refugees, the Spin Boldak-Chaman land border crossing between the countries has remained open.

Only Afghans who are traveling to Pakistan for medical treatment or have proof of residence in Pakistan, as well as holders of an Afghan identity document called a Tazkira, proving they live in Kandahar, are permitted to cross into Chaman, Pakistan.

Despite this, thousands of Afghans have attempted to cross over in recent days following the Taliban's takeover of the country.

At least 5,000 Afghan nationals were denied entry into Pakistan at the Spin Boldak crossing on Wednesday alone, an official from Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, who works at the crossing, told CNN on Thursday.

"Numbers might be higher" than that, he said.

The Taliban are "aware of the ongoing situation" at the border, spokesman Bilal Karimi said, adding that they are working to reduce the number of people trying to leave Afghanistan.

"We are taking measures, talking to locals, to ensure that issues at the border on the side of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan are addressed," Karimi told CNN.

"We are optimistic that in (a) couple of days, formation of the government will be announced, which will help overcome issues including border crossings," he said. "The flow of people will surely decrease in coming days."

The last American military flight left the airport and disappeared into the Kabul sky on Monday -- and minutes later, the Taliban flooded the streets around the city's last exit point, filling the night with celebratory gunfire.

It was a decisive and humbling final chapter to the United States' longest war, a two-decade effort that unraveled spectacularly in the space of a few weeks.

But for thousands of Afghans, the final Western flights took with them a last chance to leave the country. Many now fear their new realities; in particular, women, religious minorities, LGBTQ people, journalists and others face brutal treatment under the group's radical interpretation of Sharia Law.

Afghanistan is a very different country to the one the Taliban ruled between 1996 and 2001. Most Afghans don't even remember that era -- more than 60% of the country is aged under 25. It is urbanizing, diverse, and better connected to the world, all of which place it in stark contrast to the war-torn nation the Taliban conquered 25 years ago.

What the Taliban now do with that country is arguably the world's most pressing geopolitical question.

"This is one of the most dramatic changes in government in the modern era," Benjamin Petrini, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), told CNN.

The West is "pulling out not only ourselves but all the human resources that have worked with us for 20 years," he said. "Those will be replaced with what? That's a question mark."

Read the full story here:

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Qatar’s Minister of Foreign Affairs remains hopeful that there will be “some good news” on the re-opening of Kabul airport over the coming days, he said Thursday, adding that the Qatari government is engaging with both the Taliban and foreign partners to ensure the airport is operational “as soon as possible.” 

"We are still in the evaluation process, there is no clear indication of when it is going to be fully operational yet," Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said during a press conference in Doha, Qatar. 

Responding to a question from CNN, Al-Thani noted that Qatar is also working with the Turkish government to assess whether Turkey may be able to provide technical assistance to support the re-opening of the airport.  

“Hopefully in the next few days we will hear some good news,” Al-Thani added, stressing that the Taliban must first demonstrate their commitment to ensuring “safe passage and freedom of movement” for the people of Afghanistan.

Speaking alongside Al-Thani, Raab told reporters the UK would not "be recognizing the Taliban anytime in the foreseeable future."

However, he believes there is scope for "engagement and dialogue" with the Taliban over the assurances they have made.

So far, Raab said, the UK had secured safe passage out of Afghanistan for more than 17,000 "British nationals, Afghan workers, other special cases since April. But I do think we feel [a] responsibility to make sure that the remaining British nationals and Afghan workers can come to the UK."