Protests against Taliban as it boasts of defeating US

People march in the street carrying red, green and black Afghan flags.

Aug. 19, 2021 Updated 7:04 AM PT

KABUL, Afghanistan —

Anti-Taliban protesters defied their new rulers for the second day Thursday, marking Afghan Independence Day by attempting to hoist the red, green and black national banner but often getting beaten down by militant fighters who continue to control the streets of this capital and elsewhere.

Taliban leadership also celebrated independence day, when Afghanistan freed itself from British rule in YEAR, reveling in what it described as the group’s defeat of the United States.

“Today we are celebrating the anniversary of independence from Britain,” the Taliban said. “We at the same time, as a result of our jihadi resistance, forced another arrogant power of the world, the United States, to fail and retreat from our holy territory of Afghanistan.”

A gridlock crush at the international airport in Kabul, meanwhile, surged again, with desperate Afghans and others attempting to escape the country. In Washington, the Pentagon said it had flown out of the airport 12,000 people since July, including U.S. diplomats, Afghans eligible for special visas because of their work on behalf of the U.S. military and diplomatic missions, and others.

But the numbers still fell far short of the up to 9,000 people a day that the Pentagon says it has the capacity to evacuate. The shortfall highlights both the slow and sluggish bureaucratic process to finish paperwork for Afghans needing to leave and the terrifying difficulty many Americans and others are confronting as they attempt to make their way to the Kabul airport for evacuation flights.

Though yet to formally appoint its government, the Taliban is soon about to confront many of the difficulties of actually governing, with shortages of cash and supplies, and other countries and world institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, warning they would withhold the much-needed foreign aid that has sustain much of Afghanistan’s economy for years.

The Taliban has offered contradicting portrayals of its intentions, claiming both to be a more moderate version of its brutal self that ruled in the 1990s but also saying it will abide by Sharia law. The Taliban interpretation of Sharia is among the most draconian in the world.

A U.N. official also warned of dire food shortages in this nation of 38 million people reliant on imports. “A humanitarian crisis of incredible proportions is unfolding before our eyes,” Mary Ellen McGroarty, the head of the World Food Program in Afghanistan, warned in a statement. Drought, she said, has also destroyed more than 40% of the country’s crops lost. Many who fled the Taliban advance now live in parks and open spaces in Kabul.

“This is really Afghanistan’s hour of greatest need, and we urge the international community to stand by the Afghan people at this time,” she said.

With such pressures, the Taliban leadership also appeared keen to quell dissent. Many fear the Taliban will succeed in erasing two decades of efforts to expand women’s and human rights in Afghanistan and build democratic institutions. Pockets of resistance were emerging across the country, and in Kabul this was most evident in the independence day flag-raising ceremonies.

At one traffic circle in central Kabul, a group of Afghans was raising the traditional Afghan flag to replace the white Taliban banner. A group of Taliban fighters approached and pointed their guns at the group.

Los Angeles Times photographer Marcus Yam was attempting to photograph the scene when a Taliban fighter emerged out of nowhere and and sucker-punched him on the side of the head. The fighter continued to beat up Yam and another photographer working for a major U.S. newspaper and then to demand they erase the images they had shot.

Yam said at one point he was on his knees urging the armed fighter not to shoot him. After the beatings stopped, Yam and the other photographer were held for some 20 minutes until an English-speaking militant came along and asked the men who they worked for. This militant then attempted to defuse the situation, aware that attacking Western media was not in keeping with the image that the Taliban leadership is trying to project. He offered the photographers an energy drink and released them.

In Khost province, Taliban authorities instituted a 24-hour curfew Thursday after violently breaking up another protest, according to information obtained by journalists monitoring from abroad and reported by the Associated Press. The militants did not immediately acknowledge the demonstration or the curfew.

Protesters also took to the streets in Kunar province, according to witnesses and social media videos that lined up with reporting by the Associated Press.

At a rally Wednesday in the eastern city of Jalalabad, demonstrators lowered the Taliban’s flag and replaced it with Afghanistan’s tricolor. At least one person was killed.

“I predict that we will start seeing all kinds of resistance, some of it will be peaceful, some of it will be violent,” Candace Rondeaux, former advisor to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a government watchdog agency, said in a teleconference Thursday sponsored by the New America think tank.

Artist Basira Shahnawaz, 25, was watching the protest in Kabul Thursday. “People protest that they do not accept the Taliban,” she said via WhatsApp. “In the streets, they raise the Afghan flag and chant slogans.”

Shahnawaz was hiding at home, which is filled with paintings and sculptures, amid reports that Taliban militants are conducting door-to-door searches. As soon as the fighters enter, they will know she’s an artist and likely target her, she said.

“They kill artists,” she said, recalling the past rule of the Taliban, but, “I have no choice.”

At Kabul’s international airport, military evacuation flights continued, according to flight-tracking data. However, access to the airport remained difficult for those wanting to flee. On Thursday, Taliban militants fired into the air to control the crowds gathered at the airport’s blast walls, trying to get inside. Men, women and children fled.

Reporters who approached in vehicles were swamped by panicked Afghans, who shoved copies of their paperwork into the car windows and begged for help to leave.

Overnight, President Biden said he was committed to keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan until every American is evacuated, even if that means maintaining a military presence there beyond his Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawal. In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” that aired Thursday, Biden said he didn’t believe the Taliban had changed.

“I think they’re going through sort of an existential crisis about ‘do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government,’” Biden said. “I’m not sure they do.”

There has been no armed opposition to the Taliban. But videos from the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, a stronghold of the Northern Alliance militias that allied with the U.S. during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, appear to show potential opposition figures gathering there, the Associated Press reported. That area is in the only province that has not fallen to the Taliban.

Those figures include members of the deposed government — Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who asserted on Twitter that he is the country’s rightful president, and Defense Minister Gen. Bismillah Mohammadi — as well as Ahmad Massoud, the son of the slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud.

In an opinion piece published by the Washington Post, Massoud asked for weapons and aid to fight the Taliban.

“I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahedin fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban,” he wrote.

Yam reported from Kabul and Wilkinson from Washington. Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed from Houston.

As protests break out, Taliban boasts of beating the ‘arrogant’ U.S.