Multiple casualties occur at deadly anti-Taliban protests in Afghan cities

ISLAMABAD: Taliban fighters killed two protesters and injured 12 others in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Wednesday during protest demonstrations against the insurgent group’s takeover of Afghanistan by force.
The militants fired into the crowd after beating up protesters who attempted to remove a white Taliban banner with Islamic inscriptions and replace it with the country’s green, red and black flag.
Firing was also reported from a central square in Daronta district, just outside Jalalabad, when people there also replaced a Taliban flag. There were also reports and videos of violence in the southeastern city of Khost, with some reports suggesting that deaths and injuries had occurred at an anti-Taliban demonstration there. A video shared on social media showed people taking to the street in Khost, with gunshots heard in the background.
The militants had seized Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province along the border with Pakistan, hours before the fall of Kabul without resistance after negotiating a deal with local leaders.
In a show of resistance, hundreds of Jalalabad residents marched through the centre of the city waving flags of the Afghan Republic, whistling and shouting anti-Taliban slogans. Many protesters climbed onto the buildings at the city’s busiest intersection, Pashtunistan Square, to replace the Taliban flags with national flags.
When the militants fired to disperse the crowd, some people ran away while others continued with their demonstration, whistling and cheering. Several videos of the firing have been uploaded on social media. "We are not scared of the violence of these barbarians. We will protest again to prevent Taliban from desecrating the Afghan flag," one of the protesters said in a video post.
Meanwhile, an Afghan journalist, Hafizullah Maroof, tweeted that "colleagues (journalistas) in the city were in tears after being beaten up by Taliban fighters while covering the protest".
People also came out into the streets in Asadabad, Kunar’s capital, as anger at the Taliban takeover grew.
Violent incidents continued in the country as former Afghan president Hamid Karzai and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, a prominent political figure in Afghanistan, met Taliban representatives in Kabul. They also met Anas Haqqani, a senior Taliban leader and son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a slain founder of the Haqqani network, which was declared a terrorist group by Washington in 2012.
Mohammad Yusof Saha, Karzai’s spokesman, said that these meetings would eventually facilitate negotiations with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the top Taliban political leader, who had landed in Afghanistan on Tuesday.
Despite Taliban announcements of a general amnesty and their appeal to people to stay in the country, thousands of people are desperately attempting to flee amid fears of a return to the Taliban’s brutal 1996-2001 regime.
Many urbanised Afghans are suspicious at the sequence of events that began after the Taliban gained control of border crossings with neighbouring countries. This was followed by the insurgents capturing Afghan provincial capitals one after another, and then finally entering Kabul, in just 10 days. "This was a major blow as it had choked the road communications of Ghani’s Afghanistan with its neighbours. It seems the Taliban have been given the power through an understanding. If the US wanted peace in this country, they needed first to seek some sort of an understanding between Kabul and the Taliban instead of signing an agreement with the militants without involving the Afghan government," a faculty member at Jalalabad’s State University said.
Another faculty member, a professor at the same university, doubted the rapid surrender of cities in the presence of 350,000 well-trained Afghan troops. "Professional soldiers don’t fight without officers’ order. It seems the top civil and military leadership had no clear strategy on how to timely direct and mobilise the forces," the professor opined. He said Afghan troops were apparently trained to fight jointly with Western forces under their command and supervision. "They were demoralised by the departure of their Western partners and the absence of an efficient command structure in their ranks," he added.