The USCIRF criticized the StateDept’s refusal to add Taliban-led Afghanistan to the US government’s “countries of particular concern” list in its new report detailing the repression of worship in countries worldwide.
The commission’s 2023 annual report, released on Monday, called upon Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “designate Afghanistan under the de facto rule of the Taliban as a ‘country of particular concern’ for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.” USCIRF made the same recommendation in its 2022 annual report — to no avail.President Joe Biden’s April 2021 announcement of a full U.S.
“In 2022, religious freedom conditions in Afghanistan continued to deteriorate, as they have since the Taliban seized control of the country in August 2021,” USCIRF said Monday. “In contrast to its pledges for change and inclusivity upon its seizure of power, the Taliban has since ruled Afghanistan in a deeply repressive and intolerant manner — essentially unchanged from its previous era in power from 1996 to 2001.
Rep. Michael McCaul , the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has argued since late 2021 that the Biden administration has been stonewalling his investigations into the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. The USCIRF said Monday that the State Department did not designate Afghanistan as a country of particular concern “likely due to its nonrecognition of the Taliban as the de facto governing authority” but also “did not designate ISIS-K as an entity of particular concern due to the group’s lack of territorial control — its horrific campaign of violence against Afghan religious minorities notwithstanding.
In Russia, religious freedom conditions also “continued to decline,” the commission said, and Kremlin authorities “increasingly prosecuted members of religious minority communities using a range of legal mechanisms.”
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