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https://news.sky.com/story/scotland-taliban-supporter-who-rents-farm-close-to-uks-nuclear-submarine-base-asked-to-leave-12430161

 

Scotland: Taliban supporter who rents farm close to UK's nuclear submarine base asked to leave

Local people say it is a very sensitive area and want the security services to get involved. But Waheed Totakhyl says he and fellow Afghans in the UK simply want to help their home country.

James Matthews - Scotland correspondent
James Matthews

Scotland correspondent @jamesmatthewsky

Sunday 10 October 2021 06:31, UK

A Taliban supporter who rents land near a UK nuclear submarine base has been told to leave the site by its Iranian owner.

It follows Sky News revelations that residents in the area had reported security concerns to police.

 

Waheed Totakhyl is an Afghan national who has previously called for the death of US soldiers in Afghanistan. His brother is a military commander for the Taliban in Kabul.

Re: Waheed Totakhyl  article from James Matthews  One other picture, which he has on his office wall, of him meeting Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, aka the ‘Butcher of Kabul.’ As mentioned in the copy.
Image:Waheed Totakhyl has this picture on his office wall of him meeting Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, aka the 'Butcher of Kabul'

He has been renting Aldonaig Farm, which overlooks the Gare Loch, the stretch of water used by naval traffic to come and go from HMNB Clyde at Faslane.

The farm also looks on to accommodation used by naval personnel and is less than five miles from the base itself.

Now, the owner of the farm has written to him, instructing him to vacate the premises. The landowner is Al Taghi, an Iranian national who is a former lieutenant in Iran's navy.

Mr Taghi, currently based in Canada, told Sky News he was sacked along with other naval officers during the Iranian revolution in 1979.

 

In a letter dated 8 October, he has written to Mr Totakhyl and told him to leave Aldonaig Farm.

Residents living near Britain's nuclear deterrent contacted Ministry of Defence police following behaviour they regarded as suspicious. They reported that, on 10 August, two cars containing eight Afghan nationals appeared at Aldonaig Farm and the men said they had driven from London, without further explanation.

Councillor George Freeman, from Argyll & Bute Council, told Sky News of concerns among local people.

"We're sitting right next door to Faslane and Coulport just over the hill," he said. "The nation's nuclear deterrent is here, so it's a very sensitive area. The fact that we have individuals here who admit supporting the Taliban, then they are asking questions - 'is nobody in the security services, do they not have concerns?' So far, we just can't get an answer on that."

Waheed Totakhyl  VT GRABS
Image:A photo on Mr Totakhyl's Facebook feed shows him (second from right) holding a rifle in the company of armed men in Afghanistan

Mr Totakhyl, who is the last-registered chairman of the Scottish Afghan Society, insists he is not a danger and says he rents the land because he "likes to be a farmer".

When Sky News put the residents' concerns to him, he said that he had, indeed, hosted visits to the farm by Afghan nationals from around the UK.

He disputed that any such event took place on 10 August, but says he was visited on 12 June by fellow members of Afghanistan's Hezb-e Islami party.

The party is led by Gulbuddin Helmatyar, a notorious Afghan warlord dubbed the Butcher of Kabul, who has pledged his support for the recent Taliban takeover.

Waheed Totakhyl told Sky News: "My friends visit me from Birmingham, London. They came this year just to visit me and talk about the situation in Afghanistan."

Asked if he understood concern around the meeting taking place close to the Faslane base, he said: "Yes, but we didn't have a meeting about Britain or Scotland. We were talking about Afghanistan, what was going to happen in Afghanistan and how can we help the people of Afghanistan from the UK."

???

 

Waheed Totakhyl  VT GRABS
Image:Mr Totakhyl leases Aldonaig Farm, four miles from HMNB Clyde, where the Royal Navy house the UK's nuclear submarines

Mr Totakhyl came to the UK from Afghanistan in 2001 and settled in the west of Scotland. He owns a takeaway shop which once sold "Osama bin Laden" pizzas. ???

A picture on his Facebook feed shows a photo, taken in Afghanistan, of him holding a rifle in the company of armed men.

He told Sky News it was taken during a visit to Bagram jail to visit his brother before he was released to take up his current position as a Taliban commander, and the armed men accompanying him were bodyguards from the Hezb-e Islami party.

In 2018, Mr Totakhyl was arrested for his part in a protest at a Home Office building in Glasgow, in support of two asylum seekers on hunger strike.

He has previously told Sky News that, since the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan is "more safe than Europe".

In April this year, the local Rhu and Shandon Community Council wrote to Al Taghi as the registered owner of Aldonaig Farm, complaining of fires being lit on the land. It also stated that police had been called several times to complaints about "noise…illegal gatherings and environmental pollution and damage".

 
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58862930

UK to resettle teenage Afghan women footballers and families

By Caroline Hawley
Diplomatic Correspondent

Published
47 minutes ago
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Afghan women footballers arriving in Pakistan after the Taliban takeover in September 2021IMAGE SOURCE,ROKIT FOUNDATION
Image caption,Many of Afghanistan's young women footballers fled to Pakistan in September

Dozens of Afghan girls with promising football careers, who fled the Taliban, have been told they can come to the UK to be resettled, along with their families.

The 35-member squad - aged 13-19 - fled Kabul last month and have been staying for the past few weeks in a hotel in Pakistan, where their temporary visas were due to expire on Monday.

"We are working to finalise visas to the Afghan Women's Development Team and look forward to welcoming them to the UK shortly," a UK government spokesman said.

The girls faced having to return to Afghanistan if another country had not accepted them.

"This is fantastic news, and we are most grateful to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel for this life-saving decision," said Siu-Anne Marie Gill, CEO of the ROKiT Foundation, which supported their escape.

"I'm absolutely thrilled for them to have a second chance at life," said the chairman of the foundation, Jonathan Kendrick, who financed the operation to get them on buses out of Afghanistan and to stay in Lahore. "This is a whole new world they are taking on and I'm sure with the football community supportive to their plight, they will settle in and be able to experience all of the joys life gives."

Ms Gill told the BBC the girls had become extremely nervous about what would happen to them, but were now hugely relieved. She said they would come to the UK in two to three weeks.

Leeds United and Chelsea are among a number of British football clubs who have promised to support them in the UK.

The young squad members have all been through an extraordinary ordeal.

Most of them are from Herat in western Afghanistan and had made their way to Kabul when the Western airlift started, staying in safe houses.

"Seventy percent of them had received death threats," said Ms Gill. "They were terrified."

Afghanistan's former women's team was airlifted to Australia and the girls' team were later given asylum in Portugal. But the fate of the development squad was uncertain - until now.

The girls, along with their coaches and family members, had been due to be evacuated to Qatar at the end of August. They were almost within sight of the airport when they were pulled off their buses because of security warnings. Two hours later, the airport was attacked by a suicide bomber.

After 10 days in hiding, they were eventually driven to the Afghan border, and crossed into Pakistan after being given personal permission to enter by Prime Minister Imran Khan.

But with their Pakistani visas about to run out, Ms Gill said, the "platform was burning" because it would have been far too dangerous for them to return to Afghanistan.

Women have not been able to take part in any sports since the Taliban takeover. The former women's football team captain, Khalida Popal, had warned players to burn their kits and delete social media images of them playing for fear of retribution from the Taliban.

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isnt taliban enforcing sharia which is is the islamic law so i'm not sure why so many muslims are calling them evil. Arent they doing everything according to sharia? When they say but taliban kills fellow muslims but arent they killing the muslims who oppose their rule and imposition of sharia which according to islam is right since they are killing people who are going against the law of allah? Im so confused.

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1 hour ago, proudkaur21 said:

isnt taliban enforcing sharia which is is the islamic law so i'm not sure why so many muslims are calling them evil. Arent they doing everything according to sharia? When they say but taliban kills fellow muslims but arent they killing the muslims who oppose their rule and imposition of sharia which according to islam is right since they are killing people who are going against the law of allah? Im so confused.

So are they. Confused that is. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

https://www.thedailystar.net/news/asia/news/last-known-jew-kabul-soon-leave-israel-2200601

The man known as the last Jew of Kabul could soon be heading to Israel, after agreeing to grant his estranged wife a religious divorce in a Zoom call — a precondition for smooth entry to the Holy Land.

Zebulon Simentov, who fled Afghanistan last month after the Taliban takeover, landed Sunday in Turkey on what his rescuers say is a final stop before traveling to Israel, perhaps as soon as this week.

It caps a weekslong odyssey that included an escape from his homeland as well as a videoconference divorce procedure meant to ensure he will not run into trouble with Israeli authorities.

Under Jewish religious law, a husband must agree to grant his wife a divorce, something he had refused to do for many years. Facing the prospect of legal action in Israel, where his ex-wife lives, Simentov, after resisting for years, finally agreed to the divorce last month in a special Zoom call supervised by Australian rabbinical authorities.The Associated Press viewed part of the proceeding. During the sometimes chaotic discussion, conducted through an interpreter who struggled to explain the procedure, Simentov agrees to sign a divorce document known as a "get" after receiving assurances that he will not face trouble in Israel.

Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, whose nonprofit group Tzedek Association funded the journey, said Simentov had spent the last few weeks living quietly in Pakistan, an Islamic country that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

He said his group had looked into bringing Simentov to the US but decided that Israel was a better destination both because of difficulties in arranging a US entry visa and because Simentov has many relatives, including five siblings and two daughters, already in Israel.

"We are relieved we were successful in helping Zebulon Simentov escape from Afghanistan and now into safety in Turkey," said Margaretten, whose group has helped evacuate several dozen other people from Afghanistan. "Zebulon's life was in danger in Afghanistan."

Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, greeted Simentov at the airport in Istanbul on Sunday.

He said he had an appointment to take Simentov to the Israeli consulate on Monday to arrange his entry to Israel. Under Israel's "Law of Return," any Jew is entitled to Israeli citizenship.

Chitrik said he had been working with Margaretten and other volunteers for several months to get Simentov out of Afghanistan. "I'm happy this issue is finally coming to rest," he said.

How long that will take remains unclear. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it was unaware of the request and Simentov could also be delayed by coronavirus protocols restricting entry to Israel.

Simentov, who lived in a dilapidated synagogue in Kabul, kept kosher and prayed in Hebrew, endured decades of war as the country's centuries-old Jewish community rapidly dwindled. But the Taliban takeover in August seems to have been the last straw.

Moti Kahana, an Israeli-American businessman who runs a private firm that organized the evacuation on behalf of Margaretten, told The Associated Press last month that Simentov was not worried about the Taliban because he had lived under their rule before. He said that threats of the more radical Islamic State group and pressure from neighbors who were rescued with him had helped persuade him to leave.

Hebrew manuscripts found in caves in northern Afghanistan indicate a thriving Jewish community existed there at least 1,000 years ago. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan was home to some 40,000 Jews, many of them Persian Jews who had fled forced conversion in neighboring Iran. The community's decline began with an exodus to Israel after its creation in 1948.

In an interview with The Associated Press in 2009, Simentov said the last Jewish families left after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

For several years he shared the synagogue building with the country's only other Jew, Isaak Levi, but they despised each other and feuded during the Taliban's previous rule from 1996 to 2001.

At one point, Levi accused Simentov of theft and spying and Simentov countered by accusing Levi of renting rooms to prostitutes, an allegation he denied, The New York Times reported in 2002. The Taliban arrested both men and beat them, and they confiscated the synagogue's ancient Torah scroll, which went missing after the Taliban were driven from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

When his 80-year-old housemate died in 2005, Simentov said he was happy to be rid of him.

Reporters who visited Simentov over the years — and paid the exorbitant fees he charged for interviews — found a portly man fond of whiskey, who kept a pet partridge and watched Afghan TV. He observed Jewish dietary restrictions and ran a kebab shop.

Born in the western city of Herat in 1959, he always insisted Afghanistan was home.

The Taliban, like other Islamic militant groups, are hostile to Israel but tolerated the country's miniscule Jewish community during their previous reign.

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https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/afghanistans-sikhs-to-make-choice-between-converting-to-islam-or-leaving-country-report/articleshow/87204174.cms

As the security scenario in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, Sikhs -- a community that was already in a dire situation before the collapse of the government -- practically have to make a choice between options of "converting to Sunni Islam or run away" from Afghanistan, said a report.

The community, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, has been ruined and devastated by years of emigration and death, driven by both systemic discrimination and an uptick in fanatical religious violence

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22 hours ago, Premi5 said:

 

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/afghanistans-sikhs-to-make-choice-between-converting-to-islam-or-leaving-country-report/articleshow/87204174.cms

As the security scenario in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, Sikhs -- a community that was already in a dire situation before the collapse of the government -- practically have to make a choice between options of "converting to Sunni Islam or run away" from Afghanistan, said a report.

The community, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, has been ruined and devastated by years of emigration and death, driven by both systemic discrimination and an uptick in fanatical religious violence

Funny how Indian news did not mention Afghan Hindus in the headline. Any other news related to Afghan Sikhs, they will make sure to merge them with Hindus (even if numbers are too minimum to mention). That time headlines will be - Afghan Hindus and Sikhs etc etc

Now the negative news to the community, let’s only mention Afghan Sikhs. Typical indian media.

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