A brutal weekend for women under Taliban rule, as regime moves to welcome more international aid

Separately, a Taliban spokesman told The Guardian that the group had detained four men who allegedly struck female protesters during a Saturday demonstration against the Taliban’s extreme interpretation of Islamic law, which sharply curtails women’s political rights.

Here’s what to know

As the Taliban swept to power last month, the group sought to convince the world that it won’t return to the harsh rule it imposed when it last controlled the country, from 1996 to 2001. There is deep skepticism about those promises.

Among the fiercest remaining enemies of the Taliban are resistance forces in the holdout Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul. As the Islamist militants moved deep into the area, anti-Taliban fighters were under growing pressure amid claims and counterclaims by each side.

Early Monday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that the Islamist groups had “completely conquered” the Panjshir Valley. Photos circulating on social media depicting Taliban members outside the gate of the provincial governor’s compound, according to Reuters.

Mujahid’s claim could not be immediately independently verified and a spokesperson with the National Resistance Front could not immediately be reached for comment.

The latest developments add to recent reports of reprisal killings across the country. They could make it harder for the Taliban to convince world leaders to resume the flow of foreign aid that has largely been frozen since it took over Afghanistan.

Taliban officials met in Kabul on Sunday with the United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, who promised to maintain assistance for the Afghan people, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross also arrived in the country on Sunday to visit aid operations. In a video message, Peter Maurer said he would talk to authorities about ensuring “neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian action” continues.

The U.N. has warned of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where foreign aid made up much of the previous Western-backed government’s budget.

The new regime is hoping to reopen Kabul airport to international flights, which will be a major pipeline for aid delivery. A few domestic flights were able to resume after Qatari engineers set up temporary radio communications between air traffic controllers and pilots last week. But a top aviation official told The Washington Post that there were no radar or navigation systems in place, preventing international commercial flights from restarting.

Meanwhile, in Mazar-e Sharif, airplanes with Americans and interpreters have been waiting on the ground for days amid conflicting reports that they are being held up either by the Taliban or awaiting State Department clearance for departure.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) said on “Fox News Sunday” that the planes were waiting for clearance from the Taliban in what he described as “a hostage situation.” But Eric Montalvo, a former Marine Corps officer and attorney heading coordination for three of the charter planes in Mazar, told The Post it is the U.S. State Department that must tell the Taliban that the flights are authorized to depart for Qatar.

A State Department spokeswoman said that the department no longer has personnel on the ground after the U.S.-led evacuation mission ended last month, and it doesn’t control the airspace “whether over Afghanistan or elsewhere in the region.”

“Given these constraints, we also do not have a reliable means to confirm the basic details of charter flights, including who may be organizing them, the number of U.S. citizens and other priority groups onboard, the accuracy of the rest of the manifest, and where they plan to land, among many other issues,” the spokeswoman said.

The United States will, however “hold the Taliban to its pledge to let people freely depart Afghanistan,” she added.

In the Panjshir, the last significant pocket of resistance to Taliban rule, the leader of an anti-Taliban group on Sunday said he would accept a negotiated settlement to end the fighting.

Ahmad Massoud, head of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, made the announcement on the group’s Facebook page, hours before the Taliban claimed victory over his forces.

Resistance fighters set up a base in the Panjshir Valley days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul last month, convinced that they could hold a valley that was never conquered by the Taliban in the 1990s nor by the Soviet Union in its nearly decade-long occupation in the 1980s.

Susannah George, Ezzatullah Mehrdad, Haq Nawaz Khan, Shaiq Hussain and Sammy Westfall contributed reporting.