ISIS claims responsibility for Moscow attack, suspects appear in court

Trump’s exaggerates claim that many Americans are ‘hostages’ in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON — When former President Donald Trump argues that President Joe Biden botched the 2021 American withdrawal from Afghanistan — a broad point that even some of Biden’s fellow Democrats will concede — he often laments what his campaign says are hundreds or thousands of U.S. citizens trapped in a country ruled by the Taliban.

“For 18 months, we lost nobody in Afghanistan. And then we had that horrible, horrible withdrawal where we lost 13 soldiers, 38 horribly wounded, left Americans behind,” Trump said in remarks after his Super Tuesday victories earlier this month.

“You have Americans right now still behind,” he continued. “Call them hostages, if you like.”

In a video his campaign released last week, Trump repeated the charge.

“We have many American people still living in Afghanistan, probably as hostages,” he said.

But two senior Biden administration national security officials told NBC News that the Taliban is holding two Americans that the U.S. government would like to see released. Other Americans in Afghanistan are there of their own volition, they said.

“Every American who wanted to leave has left,” the first official said. “In fact, we didn’t leave a single person behind. And we are also getting Afghan allies out every month.”

State Department officials said they could not provide an exact figure for how many U.S. citizens are in Afghanistan and have requested assistance in getting out of the country.

“It is impossible to say with certainty how many U.S. citizens are in Afghanistan today,” a State Department spokesperson said. “In the 30 months since our embassy closed, many U.S. citizens departed, returned, and departed again.”

One of the Americans being jailed by the Taliban, Ryan Corbett, started a microfinance company in the country during the war, fled with assistance from the U.S. government in 2021, and then returned in 2022. The harsh conditions he faces, and his deteriorating physical condition, have been detailed by onetime fellow prisoners who were released. He has not been charged with a crime.

The national security officials declined to name the other person whose release they are seeking but noted that person entered Afghanistan on a tourist visa after the 2021 evacuation.

“Both went to Afghanistan AFTER we left,” the first official said in a text message.

At least 67,000 Afghans have applied for what are known as special immigrant visas created for local nationals who supported the U.S. mission in the country, according to State Department officials. At least 20,000 Afghans have been found eligible for those visas and are moving forward in the process.

Since regaining power, the Taliban have reportedly killed at least 200 members of the Afghan security forces, which fought alongside U.S forces. The Taliban have also banned girls over the age of 11 from attending school, the only government in the world to do so.

The ban is enforced unevenly across Afghanistan, but an unknown number of Afghan women are believed to also want to leave the country.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump, defended the former president’s argument.

“President Trump is absolutely right to call out Joe Biden for his betrayal of Americans in Afghanistan,” Leavitt said in a statement. “Biden’s calamitous withdrawal left hundreds, if not thousands, of citizens behind and led to the tragic deaths of 13 U.S. Service Members at Abbey Gate.”

Abbey Gate is the location outside the Kabul Airport where 13 American service members were killed in a terrorist attack as the U.S. evacuated Afghanistan in August 2021.

“Now the Taliban has regained control of the country using billions of dollars of our military equipment, and radical terrorists are emboldened across the entire region,” Leavitt said.

Jonathan Allen

Jonathan Allen is a senior national politics reporter for NBC News, based in Washington.

Olympia Sonnier

Abigail Williams contributed.

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She secretly educated herself to escape Afghanistan. Now, she’s working to help women still there

Sola Mahfouz stopped going to school in 2007 when she was an 11-year-old living in Afghanistan.

“A group of men, they came to our door and threatened my father, that if you continue to go into school, they will throw acid on our face or kidnap,” she recalled. So she spent years confined to her home doing domestic chores.

“Over the years, I left home only a couple of times a year and, whenever I did, I had to wear the suffocating burqa that covered me from head to toe,” said Mahfouz, who uses a pseudonym to protect the safety of her family members who still live in Afghanistan. “But, meanwhile, my brothers were going to school and they were thriving academically, and I felt jealous of their lives.”

Once her chores were done each day, she embarked on a secret mission to educate herself. She spent almost six years teaching herself English and math online and eventually made her way to Arizona State University for college.

Today, she works as a quantum computer researcher at Tufts University.

A portrait of Sola Mahfouz — Sola Mahfouz.NBC News

Mahfouz, 27, also is working to bring awareness to the plight of Afghan girls three years after the Taliban officially banned them from attending school beyond sixth grade.

The school year in Afghanistan began this month without the 1 million girls estimated to be barred from school since the Taliban returned to power following the 2021 withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.

“Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where women and girls are not allowed to attend secondary and higher education,” said Fareshta Abbasi, an Afghan researcher working with Human Rights Watch. Abbasi, who is currently living in exile in the United Kingdom, says women have been banned from almost all aspects of public life in Afghanistan.

“Women do not have the right to freedom of movement. They need to be accompanied by a mahram, which is a male blood-related member of the family,” she said. “Women do not have the right to protest. No right to freedom of expression, no right to assembly.”

Those are all things Mahfouz experienced as a child even though the Taliban was not in power when she grew up there.

“When I was 16 years old, I did not even know how to subtract. And that was, because when I was 11 years old, I was forced to stop going to school,” she said.

Mahfouz recounted her determination to educate herself, her decision to leave Afghanistan and her harrowing journey to cross the border into Pakistan in her 2023 memoir, “Defiant Dreams,” which she co-wrote with Malaina Kapoor, a student at Stanford University who advocates for human rights.

Sola Mahfouz and Malaina Kapour laugh while speaking. — Sola Mahfouz, on the left, and Malaina Kapoor.Courtesy Sola Mahfouz and Malaina Kapoor

“I remember when we were writing the book, and I was working on those chapters, I would call her over and over, because I would say, ‘I just don’t understand how this is possible. How could you remain so driven?’” Kapoor said of Mahfouz. “But I think what I eventually realized is, there was such a level of desperation because that knowledge really meant the difference between a future within the compound walls that she had always lived in, and a future that might have meant something more,” Kapoor said.

The two have again teamed up with the hope of improving the future of other girls in Afghanistan. They are in the brainstorming phase with the educational organization Khan Academy to develop resources for women in Afghanistan. Mahfouz used a temperamental internet connection, laptop and free online resources like Khan Academy when she taught herself.

“We have been in the brainstorming process to create a digital space where women can gather, they can read, they can share stories they can write … because you can’t just give a woman a computer, you can’t just tell them, ‘OK, just go online, and just like learn.’” Mahfouz said, “Afghan culture is very social … So how can you have that social environment where they can support one another, be safe and learn?”

Kapoor, 21, and Mahfouz are also creating an educational curriculum for teachers to educate American children on the challenges happening in Afghanistan today using their book to guide discussions.

Sola Mahfouz and Malaina Kapour siting at a table and looking at a laptop. — Sola Mahfouz and Malaina Kapour.Courtesy Sola Mahfouz and Malaina Kapour

They have been invited to participate in programs by the United Nations for Women’s History Month and beyond to continue advocating for the rights of Afghan women.

Mahfouz has also been able to teach some of her younger relatives in Afghanistan who are impacted by the education ban.

“I’ve been helping them with English,” she said, “I have been reading books to try to communicate with them and educate them about the resources that are available.”

Ultimately, the duo said their goal is to continue elevating the stories of the girls and women in Afghanistan.

“Every day in Afghanistan, there are millions of human rights violations against women and that’s something that women around the world, but also everyone around the world, should feel very, very deeply,” Kapoor said, “And so, our mission is to bring these stories through our work with the U.N. through our work with schools and building curriculum to educate as many people as we can.”

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ISIS claims responsibility for Moscow attack, suspects appear in court

ISIS claims responsibility for Moscow attack, suspects appear in court – CBS News

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The four men accused of carrying out the deadliest terror attack in Russia in nearly 20 years appeared in court on terrorism charges Sunday. More than 130 people were killed when the men allegedly opened fire at a concert hall near Moscow on Friday. An affiliate of the Islamic State group says it was behind the attack. CBS News national security contributor Sam Vinograd has more.

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U.S. pushes Taliban on human rights, American prisoners 2 years after hardliners’ Afghanistan takeover

U.S. officials held formal direct talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, this week, with the American delegation pushing Afghanistan‘s hardline Islamic rulers to restore basic rights for women and girls and to free U.S. nationals detained in the country. The Taliban asked in return for its leaders’ names to be removed from sanctions lists and for access to their country’s government cash reserves locked in foreign bank accounts.

U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West led the delegation, along with Rina Amiri, the Special Envoy for Afghan women, girls, and human rights, and Karen Deker, the Chief of the U.S. mission to Afghanistan, based in Doha. The Taliban delegation was led by Afghanistan’s de-facto Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Mutaqi.

According to a statement posted online by the Taliban, “the two sides discussed confidence building, taking practical steps thereof, removing blacklists and lifting sanctions, unfreezing DAB [Afghanistan’s central bank] reserves, economic stability of Afghanistan, countering narcotics, and issues on human rights.”

TOPSHOT-AFGHANISTAN-SOCIETY-LIFESTYLE — Afghan burqa-clad women walk past Taliban security personnel along a street in Jalalabad on April 30, 2023.

SHAFIULLAH KAKAR/AFP via Getty Images

A statement issued Monday by the U.S. State Department said the delegation had “expressed deep concern regarding the humanitarian crisis and the need to continue to support aid organizations and UN bodies delivering assistance consistent with humanitarian principles” in Afghanistan.

“U.S. officials pressed for the immediate and unconditional release of detained U.S. citizens, noting that these detentions were a significant obstacle to positive engagement,” the State Department said. In December, the U.S. government confirmed the release of two Americans who had been detained by the Taliban, and it alluded at the time to there being more U.S. nationals held in the country, but they have not been identified.

The U.S. representatives also voiced “grave concern regarding detentions, media crackdowns, and limits on religious practice,” the State Department said, adding that the delegation “took note” of the Taliban’s “continuing commitment” to stopping Afghanistan being a base for attacks on the U.S. and its allies, acknowledging “a decrease in large-scale terrorist attacks against Afghan civilians.”

Amiri said in a tweet that she and her colleagues had “called for the removal of restrictions on women & girls, including access to education & work; release of detainees; & end to corporal punishment, & crackdown on media & freedom of expression.”

Education activist Malala Yousafzai on the Taliban banning women from universities

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The U.S. and the United Nations have made human rights demands of the Taliban since the group stormed back to power when the U.S. military withdrew from the country in August 2021.

Last year, Amiri declined to meet with a Taliban delegation over the group’s oppression of women and girls.

Since retaking the country, the Taliban has barred girls over the age of 12 from formal education, made it virtually impossible for them to work in most professions, and restricted their movements in public unless chaperoned by an adult male relative.

The most recent crackdown was a ban on beauty salons, which the clerics ordered to close countrywide last month, eliminating one of the last means Afghan women had of interacting and earning income.

Despite two years of consistent demands from the U.S., the United Nations and many other countries, the Taliban has not made any concessions to improve human rights in Afghanistan, despite the country continuing to receiving billions of dollars in aid annually.

Given the Taliban’s steady erasure of human rights, Amiri’s closed-door meetings with the Taliban delegation on Sunday and Monday in Doha drew stinging criticism from some Afghan human rights activists.

Fawzia Kofi, a former member of the Afghan parliament and the previous government’s negotiating team that dealt with the Taliban, said the U.S. and its allies, “only issue statements on the women’s and human rights violations, and then there is no action.”

“Each country is pursuing their political interests, as opposed to the interests of the people of Afghanistan and women of Afghanistan,” Kofi told CBS News on Tuesday. “That’s why people question the principles of engagement” with the Taliban.

Addressing Amiri by name in a tweet, activist Humaira Qadiri said she and the U.S. envoy had together met with Afghan women in the Herat province. They “all asked us [you and me] to be their voice and not engage with the Taliban,” she said, accusing the U.S. representative of betraying women’s trust.

“Dear Rina, women who really defend women’s rights in Afghanistan never want the continuation of Taliban power!” Parwana Ibrahim Khail, an activist who was detained for several weeks by the Taliban after she criticized the group’s severe restrictions on women, said in a social media post. “Please do not listen to the words of some women who support the Taliban! Taliban is a terrorist group!” she added.

“The Americans and specifically Rina Amiri shouldn’t compromise our rights and principles but work on safeguarding them and put pressure on the regime,” education and women’s rights activist Sodaba Bayani told CBS News. “Taliban are not representatives of Afghanistan or Afghan people and the reason why we are against any form of engagement and talks with them is that the results of such negotiations may have the same consequences as the previous Doha deal in 2020.”

ISIS-K leader behind Kabul airport attack killed by Taliban, U.S. says

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Given the presence of terrorist groups in Afghanistan, including al Qaeda and regional ISIS affiliate ISIS-Khorasan, some analysts argue the U.S. must maintain ties with the Taliban leadership to monitor potential threats originating from Afghanistan.

It’s unclear how much cooperation Washington can expect, given that the U.S. has expressed no willingness to meet the Taliban’s demands.

“The U.S. administration wants to keep in touch with the Taliban to ensure Washington’s security interests are preserved, namely that the Taliban continue the fight against Daesh [ISIS-Khorasan], which is an enemy for the U.S, its allies, and also for the Afghan people,” veteran regional analyst Torek Farhadi told CBS News.

“In exchange, the Taliban want things the U.S. cannot give them: Removing sanctions from Taliban leaders is not politically possible while the Taliban continue their repressive policies against women and girls in the country,” said Farhadi.

He added that un-freezing the roughly $3.5 billion in Afghan government cash reserves that U.S. has set aside in a special fund was “not possible either, since the bank is run exclusively by the Taliban and there are no guarantees the dollars would not end up with the sanctioned Taliban.”

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Pakistan bombing death toll tops 50, ISIS affiliate suspected in attack on pro-Taliban election rally

Khar, Pakistan — The death toll from a massive suicide bombing that targeted an election rally for a pro-Taliban cleric rose to 54 Monday, as Pakistan held funerals and the government vowed to hunt down those behind the attack. No one immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bombing, which also wounded nearly 200 people, but police said their initial investigation suggested the ISIS group’s regional affiliate could be responsible.

The victims were attending a rally organized by the Jamiat Ulema Islam party, headed by hard-line cleric and politician Fazlur Rehman. He did not attend the rally, held under a large tent close to a market in Bajur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan.

Rehman, who has long supported Afghanistan’s Taliban government, escaped at least two known bomb attacks in 2011 and 2014, when bombings damaged his car at rallies.

Victims of the bombing were buried in Bajur on Monday.

PAKISTAN-BLAST — Boys weep over the death of a family member at a funeral a day after bomb blast in the Bajur district of Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province targeted a political rally, July 31, 2023.

ABDUL MAJEED/AFP/Getty

As condolences continued to pour in from across the country, dozens of people who received minor injuries were discharged from hospital while the critically wounded were taken to the provincial capital of Peshawar by army helicopters. The death toll continued to rise as critically wounded people died in hospital, physician Gul Naseeb said.

On Monday, police recorded statements from some of the wounded at a hospital in Khar, Bajur’s largest town. Feroz Jamal, the provincial information minister, said police were “investigating this attack in all aspects.”

At least 1,000 people were gathered under a large tent Sunday as their party prepared for parliamentary elections, expected in October or November.

“People were chanting God is Great on the arrival of senior leaders, when I heard the deafening sound of the bomb,” said Khan Mohammad, a local resident who said he was standing outside the tent.

Mohammad said he heard people crying for help, and minutes later ambulances started arriving and taking the wounded away.

Abdul Rasheed, a senior leader in Rehman’s party said the bombing was aimed at weakening the party but that “such attacks cannot deter our resolve.”

Islamist groups have long had a presence in Bajur. The district was formerly a base for al Qaeda and a stronghold of the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The army declared the district clear of the group in 2016 following a series of offensives.

The regional ISIS affiliate, known as the ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, is based in neighboring Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province and is a rival of the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda.

Taliban armed with U.S. weapons faces threat from ISIS-K

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Shaukat Abbas, a senior police officer, said that police have made progress in their investigation, but did not provide details.

Pakistani security analyst Mahmood Shah told The Associated Press that breakaway factions of the TTP could also be behind the attack. He said some TTP members have been known to disobey their top leadership to carry out attacks, as have breakaway factions of the group.

Shah said such factions could have perpetrated the attack to cause “confusion, instability and unrest ahead of the elections.”

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is expected to dissolve Pakistan’s parliament in August.

Rehman’s party is part of Sharif’s coalition government, which came to power in April 2022 by ousting former Prime Minister Imran Khan through a no-confidence vote in the legislature.

Sharif called Rehman to express his condolences and assure the cleric that those who orchestrated the attack would be punished. The bombing has also drawn nationwide condemnation, with ruling and opposition parties offering condolences to the families of the victims. The U.S. and Russian embassies in Islamabad also condemned the attack.

Khan condemned the bombing Sunday.

The Pakistani Taliban also distanced themselves from the attack, saying that the attack aimed to set Islamists against each other. Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, wrote in a tweet that “such crimes cannot be justified in any way.”

Sunday’s bombing was one of the four worst attacks in northwestern Pakistan since 2014, when 147 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed in a Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar.

In January, 74 people were killed in a bombing at a mosque in Peshawar. And in February, more than 100 people, mostly policemen, died in a bombing at a mosque inside a high-security compound housing Peshawar police headquarters.

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Bomb at political rally in northwest Pakistan kills at least 44 people and wounds nearly 200

An explosion at a political rally on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan killed at least 44 people and wounded nearly 200 in a Sunday attack that a senior leader said wanted to weaken Pakistani Islamists.

The Bajur district near the Afghan border was a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban — a close ally of Afghanistan’s Taliban government — before the Pakistani army drove the militants out of the area. Supporters of hardline Pakistani cleric and political party leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman, whose Jamiat Ulema Islam generally supports regional Islamists, were meeting in Bajur Sunday in a hall close to a market outside the district capital. Party officials said Rehman was not at the rally but organizers added tents because so many supporters showed up, and party volunteers with batons were helping control the crowd.

Officials were announcing the arrival of Abdul Rasheed, a leader of the Jamiat Ulema Islam party, when the bomb went off in one of Pakistan’s bloodiest attacks in recent years.

“There was dust and smoke around, and I was under some injured people from where I could hardly stand up, only to see chaos and some scattered limbs,” said Adam Khan, 45, who was knocked to the ground by the blast around 4 p.m. and hit by splinters in his leg and both hands.

The Pakistan Taliban, or TTP, said in a statement sent to The Associated Press that the bombing was aimed at setting Islamists against each other. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, said on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that “such crimes cannot be justified in any way.”

An ambulance after a suicide bombing at a public rally in northwestern Pakistan, Bajaur, Khar on July 30, 2023.

Punjab Emergency Service / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The Afghan Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan in mid-August 2021 emboldened the TTP. They unilaterally ended a cease-fire agreement with the Pakistani government in November, and have stepped up attacks across the country.

The bombing came hours before the arrival of Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Islamabad, where he was to participate in an event to mark a decade of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, a sprawling package under which Beijing has invested billions of dollars in Pakistan.

In recent months, China has helped Pakistan avoid a default on sovereign payments. However, some Chinese nationals have also been targeted by militants in northwestern Pakistan and elsewhere.

Feroz Jamal, the provincial information minister, told The Associated Press that so far 44 people had been “martyred” and nearly 200 wounded in the bombing.

The bombing was one of the four worst attacks in the northwest since 2014, when 147 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed in a Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar. In January, 74 people were killed in a bombing at a mosque in Peshawar. n February, more than 100 people, mostly policemen, died in a bombing at a mosque inside a high-security compound housing Peshawar police headquarters.

Prime Minister Sharif and President Arif Alvi condemned the attack and asked officials to provide all possible assistance to the wounded and the bereaved families.

Maulana Ziaullah, the local chief of Rehman’s party, was among the dead. JUI leaders Rasheed and former lawmaker Maulana Jamaluddin were also on the stage but escaped unhurt.

Rasheed, the regional chief of the party, said the attack was an attempt to remove JUI from the field before parliamentary elections in November, but he said such tactics would not work. The bombing drew nationwide condemnation, with the ruling and opposition parties extending condolences to the families of those who died in the attack.

Rehman is considered to be a pro-Taliban cleric and his political party is part of the coalition government in Islamabad. Meetings are being organized across the country to mobilize supporters for the upcoming elections.

“Many of our fellows lost their lives and many more wounded in this incident. I will ask the federal and provincial administrations to fully investigate this incident and provide due compensation and medical facilities to the affected ones,” Rasheed said.

Mohammad Wali, another attendant at the rally, said he was listening to a speaker address the crowd when the huge explosion temporarily deafened him.

“I was near the water dispenser to fetch a glass of water when the bomb exploded, throwing me to the ground,” he said. “We came to the meeting with enthusiasm but ended up at the hospital seeing crying, wounded people and sobbing relatives taking the bodies of their loved ones.”

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