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IEA says progress made on airport contracts with Qatar, Turkey
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) said on Friday that progress has been made in negotiations with Qatar and Turkey to manage the country’s airports but that no final agreement has yet been reached with the two countries.
The IEA’s deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi said an IEA delegation, led by the acting foreign minister, to Doha recently, focused on areas of concern which were identified and that efforts were now being made to resolve the issues.
Among those who met with Turkish and Qatari officials was the IEA’s acting minister of transport and civil aviation.
“The meetings and negotiations were good, and the issues that postponed the negotiations and the points that are complicated were identified as the same points, and the same points will be examined to solve the problems, but no agreement has been reached yet,” said Karimi.
Meanwhile, the First Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar recently met with businessmen in Doha and told them he had instructed transport and aviation ministry officials to prioritize negotiations on airport management.
“In the discussion of airports, especially Kabul airport, we have talks inside and outside with a number of countries, but we have not yet reached an agreement with anyone, and we are considering it and informing the aviation authorities to take this issue seriously,” said Baradar.
This comes after several meetings in the past few months between the technical teams of the transport and aviation ministry and delegates from Turkey and Qatar.
Earlier this year, reports emerged that Turkey and Qatar were trying to deploy troops to Afghan airports, but the Islamic Emirate has denied the allegations, stressing that their talks with Qatar and Turkey are of a technical nature and there is no talk of a foreign troop presence in the country.
Sadai Banowan, a women-run radio station in Badakhshan province has been shut down for playing music during the holy months of Ramazan.
Moezuddin Ahmadi, the director for information and culture in Badakhshan province, told the UK’s Guardian that the station had violated the “laws and regulations of the Islamic emirate” several times by broadcasting songs and music during Ramazan and was shuttered because of the breach.
“If this radio station accepts the policy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and gives a guarantee that it will not repeat such a thing again, we will allow it to operate again,” said Ahmadi.
Station head Najia Sorosh denied there was any violation, saying there was no need for the closure and called it a conspiracy, the Guardian reported. The Taliban “told us that you have broadcast music. We have not broadcast any kind of music,” she said.
The Islamic Emirate’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says Daesh has been destroyed by the security forces in the country and is not as big a threat as it was a year ago.
In a recent interview with Voice of America, Pashto, Mujahid said that the Afghan security forces “since August 2021, have arrested and imprisoned around 1,600 to 1,700 Daesh militants and have killed more than 1,100.”
The remarks came as the IEA usually downplays the presence and the threat of Daesh militants in Afghanistan.
Mujahid said Daesh hideouts had been destroyed across the country, including in Zabul, Kunar and Jawzjan provinces, and that Daesh fighters were mostly supported by the previous government. Some of them escaped from the prisons during the regime change.
However, he added that the Afghan security forces either killed, arrested, or imprisoned them.
Daesh has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in the past few months including one last month close to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which left six people dead and dozens wounded.
The Ministry of Interior says the special forces from the ministry and the 209th Army Corps of Al-Fatah carried out an operation and rescued a businessman who was kidnapped a month ago in Balkh, Mazar-e-Sharif city.
The ministry said on Twitter the trader was abducted in the first district of Mazar-e-Sharif city by kidnappers and a ransom of $300,000 was demanded for his release.
Two of the kidnappers were arrested in this operation, the officials said.
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