The Islamist Taliban joined British critics Friday to denounce Prince Harry for admitting to being responsible for the killing of 25 people in Afghanistan while serving as a military helicopter pilot there.

The British prince made the disclosures in his upcoming memoir, Spare, claiming the army had trained him to view members of the then-insurgent Taliban not “as people” but instead as “chess pieces” to be removed from the board.

Taliban foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi slammed Harry’s revelations.

“The western occupation of Afghanistan is truly an odious moment in human history and comments by Prince Harry is a microcosm of the trauma experienced by Afghans at the hands of occupation forces whom murdered innocents without any accountability,” Balkhi told VOA in written comments.

“Some of the recent reports highlighting the scale of murder by foreign airpower and raids including by UK forces is what Prince Harry also participated in,” Balkhi said.

Harry is quoted as saying that the death of the 25 people “wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it leave me ashamed.”

The 38-year-old Duke of Sussex said he killed the insurgents during his second deployment to Afghanistan in 2012, when he conducted six combat missions as an Apache helicopter co-pilot.

“Mr. Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return. Among the killers of Afghans, not many have your decency to reveal their conscience and confess to their war crimes,” tweeted Anas Haqqani, a central Taliban leader.

Harry also came under fire from British media and former army officers for what they denounced as irresponsible disclosures by the prince, fearing they could endanger his personal security and expose British soldiers serving overseas to revenge attacks by Taliban sympathizers.

“Love you #PrinceHarry but you need to shut up!” Ben McBean, a former Royal Marine who served with Harry in Afghanistan, tweeted Thursday. “Makes you wonder the people he’s hanging around with. If it was good people, somebody by now would have told him to stop.” 

Harry’s autobiography is scheduled for publication in Britain on January 10. It showed up on bookshelves in Barcelona, Spain, on January 5. 

More than 240,000 people, most of them civilians, died as a direct result of the war in Afghanistan since the U.S. invaded the country to topple the Taliban in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S.

The U.S. and its NATO allies lost the lives of 3,586 soldiers, including 2,442 Americans, according to figures released by the Brown University’s Costs of War project in 2021.

“I don’t expect that the [International Criminal Court] will summon you or the human rights activists will condemn you, because they are deaf and blind for you. But hopefully these atrocities will be remembered in the history of humanity,” Haqqani wrote.

Haqqani is the younger brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister in the interim Taliban administration.

The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021 from the then internationally backed government as the United States-led western troops withdrew from the country after 20 years of war with the insurgents.

The Taliban themselves were accused of committing war crimes while waging insurgent attacks against foreign forces and their Afghan partners.

The elder Haqqani led and trained a large group of militants, plotting high-profile attacks in support of Taliban insurgents and killing hundreds of people, including foreign nationals.

“The Haqqanis killed some Americans, yes. But they killed vastly more Afghans—the same people, with the same humanity, that he’s lecturing Harry about,” tweeted Jonathan Schroden who directs the U.S.-based Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the CNA Corporation.

The U.S. still lists the so-called Haqqani Network of militants as a global terrorist organization and carries a multimillion-dollar bounty for information leading to the arrest of its head, the current Taliban interior minister.

The Islamist rulers have rolled back the human rights of Afghans and placed restrictions on women’s access to public life, as well as education since taking control of Afghanistan.

The Taliban have reintroduced their strict interpretation of Islamic law or Shariah to govern Afghanistan, regularly carrying out public flogging of alleged criminals, including women, in defiance of global calls for halting the punishment. The group also staged its public execution of a convicted murder last month, triggering a global outrage.

The Taliban have rejected calls for reversing bans on women and other polices, effectively deterring the international community from formally granting legitimacy to the de facto rulers in Kabul.
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United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Tuerk has warned about what he sees as the “systematic countering of women’s rights and gender equality” around the world.

In an exclusive interview Wednesday with Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, Tuerk said he was very concerned about the “backsliding and the pushbacks” he has seen against women recently, particularly on social media.

“We see it in social media, for example, where misogynistic, sexist comments seem to be allowed in a way, and thriving, which is very concerning,” he said.

Tuerk cited Afghanistan and the ruling Taliban as the “worst of the worst,” and called their repression of women “unparalleled.” Last month, the Taliban banned women from working in nongovernmental organizations and had previously reneged on promises to allow women and girls to receive university and secondary education.

The human rights chief called on the international community to “act in utmost solidarity with the women and the girls of Afghanistan, and we need to make sure that this cannot be the norm in the future.”

Tuerk has also sought to visit Iran, where protests have rocked the country since September, when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody after she allegedly violated the country’s strict dress code for women. He said the Iranian authorities had yet to respond to his request.

Tuerk said if he is allowed to go, he would again call for a repeal of “discriminatory practices against women and girls” and raise the subject of the authorities’ brutal crackdown on the protests. He expressed particular alarm at the use of the death penalty in connection with the protests.

He said, the death penalty “must absolutely not be used in this type of context under any circumstances.”

Oslo-based monitor Iran Human Rights says nearly 500 people have been killed in the crackdown, while thousands have been arrested.

Beyond the systematic actions taken by states, Tuerk called for a “global consensus” on how to address misinformation and hate speech, how to counter it on social platforms, how to make sure they act responsibly and “don’t add fuel to the fire, to conflict situations … or the backlash that we saw on gender issues.”

Overall, the U.N. human rights chief interpreted these acts of misogyny as “a last attempt by patriarchy to show its force,” against a worldwide movement toward the empowerment of women and gender equity.

He said, “They cannot prevent the new world from giving birth, and I’m very, very confident that this will be a thing of the past because patriarchy is not for the future. It’s something that has to be put into the history books.”

Information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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The deadliest Ukrainian strike on Russian troops reported so far has reignited criticism of Moscow’s mobilization drive and laid bare a lack of trust in officials almost a year into the offensive.

The Russian army announced 89 soldiers were killed when Kyiv struck a temporary base in the Russian-occupied town of Makiivka with U.S.-supplied rockets just after midnight at New Year’s, while Ukraine put the toll in the hundreds.

Widespread reports of many recently mobilized men being among the dead stirred some anger after months of discontent over the chaotic draft.

There were also rare displays of public grief in Russia, with some frustration toward the army, whose actions in Ukraine are shrouded in secrecy.

Usually, officials would rush to blame the West and Ukraine.

But this time, for many pro-Kremlin commentators, the culprit was closer to home: the army leadership.

Many questioned if 89 was the real death toll, as reports spread on social media that ammunition was stored near where the soldiers slept.

The army blamed the troops themselves, saying the devastating strike likely came after they used their cell phones despite a ban.

But, in a rare move, the army also promised to punish its own officials for mistakes after an investigation.

Placing the blame on the troops caused some anger.

“Well of course. It is not the commander who gave the order to place personnel in the school building that is to blame,” Moscow lawmaker Andrei Medvedev said on Telegram. “But just a simple fighter with a phone, apparently, is to blame for the tragedy.”

‘Something is not going to plan’

Russia has introduced harsh laws against “discrediting the army” since sending troops to Ukraine, de facto banning criticism of its offensive.

And sociologist Denis Volkov said such deadly strikes have little short-term impact on the mood of Russians as state media had not been dedicating much airtime to Russian losses.

After authorities declared an end to the draft in late October, Volkov said “apathy has risen considerably” in Russian society.

He did, however, say that a series of defeats and withdrawals in Ukraine has led to a feeling among some Russians “that something is not going to plan.”

“People notice and it does influence the feeling that not everything is as rainbowlike as is portrayed or as they would like it to be,” Volkov said.

“But still, the majority think that everything is fine and that we need to continue (the offensive).”

‘I am shocked’

Yet in the Samara region, where some of the soldiers were known to have been from, the strikes led to public vigils that have been rare since Russia President Vladimir Putin launched the offensive.

Concern quickly spread on the social media pages of relatives of soldiers from Samara, calling for a thorough investigation.

“It is not cellphones and their owners that are to blame, but the banal negligence of the commanders, who I am sure did not even try to resettle the personnel,” read one social media post.

“I am shocked the commanders did not warn of the dangers,” one woman wrote on the same page.

Some questioned why authorities needed a mobilization in the first place.

Others were divided over whether the cellphones led to the devastation.

A group of activists in Samara have also called for army officials to be punished and for names of the dead to be made public.

“This is a big tragedy for the Samara region,” the group wrote on social media.

“It is important to remember, these were mobilized (people), not professional soldiers.”
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Britain’s Prince Harry says his older brother and heir to the throne Prince William knocked him to the floor during a 2019 argument over Harry’s American wife, Meghan, in his much-awaited memoir, which went on sale days early in Spain on Thursday.

In his book Spare, Harry also discloses how the brothers, the sons of King Charles, had begged their father not to marry his second wife, Camilla, now Queen Consort, and that he had taken cocaine as a teenager.

The book was due to be published on January 10, but The Guardian newspaper printed leaked extracts overnight, and Reuters and other media have been able to obtain Spanish-language versions that went on sale early in Spain.

Details of its contents also come as ITV released a clip of an upcoming interview with Harry in which he said he could not commit to attending his father’s coronation in May and defended his decision to speak out.

Revelations

Harry’s memoir gives a personal account of his struggles dealing with the death of his mother Princess Diana, his time in the military — when he said he killed 25 Taliban insurgents while serving in Afghanistan — and his conflicts with the press.

But the most striking revelations concern the relationship with his family, something that has hung like a shadow over the British royals since he and Meghan stepped down from official duties in 2020 to move to California to forge a new life.

As is usual for the royal family, spokespeople for King Charles and Prince William have declined to comment.

Harry, 38, wrote in his memoir that his brawl with William, 40, took place in 2019 at his then London home after his brother had called Meghan “difficult,” “rude” and “abrasive.”

“He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor,” Harry wrote.

“I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.”

William then challenged his younger brother to hit back, but Harry said he refused. William later returned to the scene, “looking regretful, and apologized,” Harry wrote, with his brother asking him not to tell Meghan that he had “attacked” him.

William and Harry were once seen as very close after the death of their mother in a Paris car crash in 1997. But the brothers have fallen out since Harry married Meghan, a former actress, in 2018 and the couple then quit their royal role.

In another section of the book, Harry refers to his first meeting with Camilla, whom Diana had blamed for the breakup of her marriage. Harry says he and William had approved of Camilla but asked their father not to marry her.

“Despite the fact that Willy and I asked him not to do it, my father went ahead,” Harry wrote. “Despite the bitterness and sadness we felt in closing another loop in the history of our mother, we understood this was irrelevant.”

Stinging criticism

Since their exit from royal life, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as Harry and Meghan are officially known, have delivered stinging criticism of the Windsors and the British monarchy, which has included accusations of racism that William himself has dismissed.

Last month, Harry and Meghan’s six-part Netflix documentary, which attracted record audiences, aired with renewed accusations, including that William had screamed at Harry during a crisis summit to discuss his future.

The main criticism from Harry and Meghan is that royal aides not only refused to hit back at hostile, inaccurate press coverage but were complicit in leaking negative stories to protect other royals, most notably William.

“I don’t know how staying silent is ever going to make things better,” Harry said in Thursday’s ITV clip.

Asked why he was invading the privacy of his family, something he had railed against, he replied: “That will be the accusation from the people that don’t understand or don’t want to believe that my family have been briefing the press.”

The title of his book Spare comes from an oft-cited quote in British aristocratic circles about the need for an heir, and a spare.

Harry says Charles reputedly said to Diana on the day he was born: “Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an heir and a spare — my work is done.”

How much the disclosures will resonate with the public is unclear. A YouGov poll this week found 65% of those surveyed were “not interested at all” in his upcoming book, while another found greater sympathy among respondents for William and his wife, Kate, than for Harry and Meghan.

Charles himself is still hoping for a reconciliation with his son, unnamed sources told newspapers this week.

In its leaked extracts, The Guardian says the king had stood between his two sons during a difficult meeting at Windsor Castle following the April 2021 funeral for their grandfather Prince Philip, the late Queen Elizabeth’s husband.

“Please, boys,” Harry quoted his father as saying. “Don’t make my final years a misery.”
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