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Reuters

Flag-waving protesters took to the streets of more Afghan cities on Thursday as popular opposition to the Taliban spread, and a witness said several people were killed when the militants fired on a crowd in Asadabad in the east.
“Our flag our identity,” a crowd of men and some women waving black, red and green national flags shouted in Kabul, a video clip posted on social media showed.
One woman walked with a flag wrapped around her shoulders. Afghanistan celebrates its 1919 independence from British control on August 19. Some of those marching also chanted “God is greatest”.
A Taliban spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Chilling photo shows why Afghan women fear Taliban rule
In Asadabad, capital of Kunar province, several people were killed during a rally but it was not clear if the casualties resulted from the firing or from a stampede that it triggered, witness Mohammed Salim said.
“Hundreds of people came out on the streets,” Salim said. “At first I was scared and didn’t want to go but when I saw one of my neighbours joined in I took out the flag I have at home.”
“Several people were killed and injured in the stampede and firing by the Taliban.”
Protests also flared up in the city of Jalalabad and a district of Paktia province, both also in the east.
On Wednesday, Taliban fighters fired at protesters waving in flag Jalalabad, killing three, witnesses and media reported.
In some places, protesters tore down white Taliban flags, according to media. Media reported similar scenes in Asadabad and another eastern city, Khost, on Wednesday.


First Vice-President Amrullah Saleh, who is trying to rally opposition to the Taliban, expressed support for the protests.
“Salute those who carry the national flag and thus stand for dignity of the nation,” he said on Twitter.
Saleh said on Tuesday he was in Afghanistan and the “legitimate caretaker president” after president Ashraf Ghani fled as the Taliban took Kabul.
The crackdown on protests will raise new doubts about Taliban assurances they have changed since their 1996-2001 rule when they severely restricted women, staged public executions and blew up ancient Buddhist statues.

They now say they want peace, will not take revenge against old enemies and would respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law.
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Amad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, based in the old anti-Taliban stronghold of the Panjsher Valley, northeast of Kabul, called for Western support to fight the Taliban.
“I write from the Panjsher Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban,” wrote Massoud, the son of Amhad Shah Massoud, a veteran guerilla leader assassinated by suspected al-Qaeda militants on behalf of the Taliban in 2001.
While Kabul has been generally calm since Taliban forces entered on Sunday, the airport has been in chaos as people rushed for a way out of the country.
Twelve people have been killed in and around the airport since then, a Nato and a Taliban official said. The deaths were caused either by gun shots or by stampedes, the Taliban official said.
He urged people who do not have the legal right to travel to go home. “We don’t want to hurt anyone at the airport,” said the Taliban official, who declined to be identified.
The Afghanistan images that could tarnish Biden’s legacy
On Wednesday, witnesses said Taliban gunmen prevented people from getting into the airport compound. A Taliban official said soldiers had fired into the air to disperse the crowd.
An Afghan national team footballer died in a fall from a US plane at Kabul airport on Monday, when crowds of people were seen trying to board a moving aircraft, Afghanistan’s Ariana News reported.
Gunmen unleashed sustained fire into the air on Thursday at several entrances to the airport, sending the crowds, including women clutching babies, scattering. It was not clear if the men firing were Taliban or security staff helping US forces inside.
The United States and other Western powers pressed on with the evacuation of their nationals and some of their Afghan staff from the capital’s airport, from where about 8,000 people have been flown out since Sunday, a Western security official said.
Under a pact negotiated last year by former president Donald Trump’s administration, the US agreed to withdraw its forces in exchange for a Taliban guarantee they would not let Afghanistan be used to launch terrorist attacks.
The Taliban also agreed not to attack foreign forces as they left.
President Joe Biden said US forces would remain until the evacuation of Americans was finished, even if that meant staying past an August 31 deadline for withdrawal.
In an ABC interview aired on Thursday, Biden said the Taliban must decide whether it wants to be recognised by the international community.
Asked if he thought the Taliban had changed, Biden told ABC News, “No.”
“I think they’re going through a sort of existential crisis about: Do they want to be recognised by the international community as being a legitimate government? I’m not sure they do,” he said, adding that the group appeared more committed to its beliefs.
He also said that it would take economic and diplomatic pressure – not military force – to ensure women’s rights.


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Afghanistan: several killed in Taliban firing as protesters mark Independence Day

Afghans celebrate the country’s Independence Day in Kabul on Thursday. Photo: AFP

epa09417420 Taliban fighters patrol in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, 17 August 2021. Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar on 16 August declared victory and an end to the decades-long war in Afghanistan, a day after the insurgents entered Kabul to take control of the country. Baradar, who heads the Taliban political office in Qatar, released a short video message after President Ashraf Ghani fled and conceded that the insurgents had won the 20-year war. EPA-EFE/STRINGER

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Taliban fighters patrol in Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood in Kabul on Wednesday. Photo: AP

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Journalist Sonia Sarkar on a military plane leaving Afghanistan, along with 120 other Indian citizens being evacuated from the country. Photo: Sonia Sarkar

Please at Kabul airport leaving Afghanistan on Tuesday August 17. Photo: Sonia Sarkar

Afghan men and women sit on the road at the entrance to the airport in Kabul, desperate to leave the country. Photo: Sonia Sarkar

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Several people were killed when Taliban fighters fired on people waving the national flag at an Independence Day rally in Asadabad
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said he did not think the militant group had changed its fundamental beliefs



Several people were killed when Taliban fighters fired on people waving the national flag at an Independence Day rally in Asadabad.
