Pak FM Qureshi, ISI chief Hameed visit Kabul, hold talks with Taliban leaders

Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi travelled to Kabul on Thursday along with spy agency ISI chief Faiz Hameed and held talks with the Taliban leadership.

They vowed to provide humanitarian assistance to save the Afghan people from an economic crisis.

Qureshi met interim Afghanistan Prime Minister Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund and underlined that Pakistan wanted lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Qureshi said Pakistan was determined to help the Afghan people to save them from an economic crisis.

The United Nations has warned last month that the poverty rate in Afghanistan was soaring and public services were close to collapse.

Journalists hit at protest

The Taliban struck several journalists to prevent media coverage of a women’s rights protest in Kabul on Thursday. A group of about 20 women marched from near the ministry of education to the ministry of finance in the Afghan capital. Wearing colourful headscarves they chanted slogans including: “Don’t politicise education”, as traffic drove by shortly before 10am.

A foreign journalist was struck with the butt of a rifle by one Taliban fighter, who swore and kicked the photographer in the back as another punched him. At least two more journalists were hit.

UN backs women’s rights

United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres made an appeal for reversing a decline in women’s rights in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. “We need to fight back - and turn the clock forward - for every woman and girl,” Guterres told the UN Security Council.

“Women will no longer accept reversals of their rights. They shouldn’t have to - in countries in conflict, or anywhere else,” he added.