Der Spiegel reports:

The narrow, unpaved road winds though a world of rock for hours on end, navigable only at a snail’s pace. Rocky, weathered crags line the horizon, their color ranging from a pale ochre to dark granite in the glistening sun, as though all life here was extinguished long ago. Only a couple of crows can be seen rising on the thermals along the cliff walls.

This makes what appears far below all the more intense as we round a bend: a bright, emerald-green strip of trees, fields and lush greenery along meandering waterways. A hidden paradise created over four decades by farmers who dug wells and hundreds of meters of subterranean channels, transforming the valley into arable farmland.

But down below, in the Tagabdar Valley, among the pomegranate trees, cornfields and blackberry bushes, family patriarchs step fearfully out of their homes. Sixteen days earlier, says village chief Said Iqbal, in a story echoed by several of the farmers, the Taliban showed up in captured police pickups. The armed men called together the village’s men and delivered them an ultimatum: All residents, they were told, had 15 days to leave their homes, land and belongings and disappear. The valley they had farmed for several decades and had never been claimed by others, no longer belonged to them, they were told. The Taliban ordered them to leave on their own, otherwise they would be driven out with force. Deadly force, if necessary.

“But where are we to go?” one of the men asked. Doesn’t matter, the Taliban answered, just depart this Garden of Eden surrounded by an inhospitable landscape. Then the Taliban left. The ultimatum supposedly expired yesterday. Some of the roughly 300 families – around 2,000 people – have already left Tagabdar, they say. And those that remain listen in fear to each approaching vehicle.

Four days after DER SPIEGEL’s visit to the valley, the rest were driven out, fleeing to relatives in other villages, to the cities or to the slums of Kabul.

The brutal landgrab in the Tagabdar Valley and two other villages in the area began in early September. Over the subsequent weeks, the expulsions were expanded to include more than a dozen other villages in the remote and difficult-to-access mountains of Daykundi, a province in central Afghanistan. Taken together, they suggest a conflict which could ultimately lead to ethnic cleansing across the country if Afghanistan’s largest ethnicity, the Pashtun, feel emboldened by the Taliban victory to take land and rights from minorities. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports:

The Taliban on Saturday ruled out cooperation with the United States to contain extremist groups in Afghanistan, staking out an uncompromising position on a key issue ahead of the first direct talks between the former foes since America withdrew from the country in August.

Senior Taliban officials and U.S. representatives are to meet Saturday and Sunday in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Officials from both sides have said issues include reining in extremist groups and the evacuation of foreign citizens and Afghans from the country. The Taliban have signaled flexibility on evacuations.

However, Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen told The Associated Press there would be no cooperation with Washington on containing the increasingly active Islamic State group in Afghanistan. IS has taken responsibility for a number of recent attacks, including a suicide bombing Friday that killed 46 minority Shiite Muslims and wounded dozens as they prayed in a mosque in the northern city of Kunduz.

“We are able to tackle Daesh independently,” Shaheen said, when asked whether the Taliban would work with the U.S. to contain the Islamic State affiliate. [Continue reading…]