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The Taliban swept to power with ease last August after a 20-year conflict against US-led forces ended in a hasty withdrawal by all foreign troops.

The Taliban have celebrated the first anniversary of the withdrawal of US-led forces from Afghanistan with a military parade showcasing equipment left behind by foreign troops and calls for their government to be accepted as legitimate internationally.

Fireworks lit up the sky over Kabul on Tuesday night on the anniversary of the withdrawal and Wednesday was also a public holiday, with small celebrations across Kabul including parades by Taliban forces.

The US withdrawal, completed a minute before midnight on August 30, 2021, came as the Taliban swept to power after a 20-year war against US-led forces who invaded Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The experience of the past 20 years can be a good guide Any kind of pressure and threats on Afghanistans people in the last 20 years has failed and just increased the crisis, the Taliban said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan the name the Taliban give their government is the legitimate government of the country and the representative of the brave Afghan nation, the statement said.

The Taliban statement called on the international community to allow Afghans to have an independent Islamic government that has a positive interaction with the world.

No country has recognised the Taliban, who took over Afghanistan with a speed and ease that took the world by surprise.

The international community has pressed the Taliban on human rights, particularly those of girls and women whose access to school and work has been limited. It has also urged the Taliban to stop harassing critics, activists, and journalists.

The Taliban say they are discussing the matter of girls education and deny cracking down on dissent.

The celebration also included a military parade at Bagram Airbase, the nerve centre of US forces during the war.

Groups of Taliban fighters marched as helicopters flew by, video footage aired by state television showed. Minutes later, dozens of military vehicles including the iconic US militarys Humvees and tanks, seized in the war or left behind by US forces during their chaotic withdrawal, were paraded.

Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund said in speech marking the withdrawal that the Taliban had put an end to killings and bombing and had ensured national security, according to the local channel TOLOnews.

He said that sanctions on Afghanistan had increased poverty and that understanding would achieve better results than pressure, according to the news channel.

Banners celebrating victories against three empires the former Soviet Union and Britain also lost wars in Afghanistan flew in Kabul.

Hundreds of white Taliban flags bearing the Islamic proclamation of faith flew on streets and government buildings, while squares in the capital were decorated with lights.

Despite the Talibans pride in taking over, Afghanistans 38 million people face a desperate humanitarian crisis aggravated after billions of dollars in Central Bank assets were frozen and foreign aid dried up.

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Afghanistans Taliban mark anniversary of US-led force withdrawal - Al Jazeera English

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Four children are dead and three others are injured after an unexploded ordnance detonated after being brought into an Afghanistan classroom.

The incident in Afghanistan's Helmand province happened when children discovered an unexploded shell and brought it inside their religious school and started playing with it, according a statement from the provincial police chiefs office.

The children were ages 7 to 14 and at least three others were injured, according to the police statement.

Local officials say that three of the children were killed instantly while an unidentified doctor at a local hospital said another female child died later from her injuries.

AIR FORCE COLONEL RECALLS THE LAST FLIGHTS OUT OF KABUL IN ONE OF THE LARGEST EVACUATIONS IN HISTORY

Covered body of a girl lies in the back of a vehicle after she was killed by unexploded shell in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. ((AP Photo/Abdul Khaliq))

Afghanistan has suffered from decades of war and remains highly dangerous for children, who often collect scrap metal to sell to support their families. Many are killed or maimed when they come across unexploded ordnance.

The explosion comes weeks after the one-year anniversary of the United States military withdrawal from Afghanistan following its invasion of the country two decades ago.

AFGHANISTAN MOSQUE EXPLOSION LEAVES 18 DEAD, INCLUDING PRO-TALIBAN CLERIC

Over 41,000 Afghan civilians have been killed or wounded by landmines and other ordnances since the end of the Soviet invasion of the country in the late 1980s, according to the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS).

Covered body of a girl lies in the back of a vehicle after she was killed by unexploded shell in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. Unexploded ordnance detonated Saturday in southern Afghanistan killing at least four children and injuring three others after the kids brought it inside their school, police and a doctor said (. (AP Photo/Abdul Khaliq))

More than two-thirds of those killed by unexploded ordnances that detonated were children, many of whom were playing with the bombs after picking them up, VOA News reported.

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Associated Press contributed to this report

Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.

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Afghanistan children killed after playing with unexploded ordinance that detonated in classroom - Fox News

A dispute between two families over the harvesting of pine nuts (Chilgoza)resulted in two fatalities and three injuries, according to local sources in the southeastern Afghan province ofPaktia.

Authorities from the Taliban in the province have confirmed the veracity of the occurrence, which involved a conflict between two families that resulted in the deaths of two people and serious injuries to three more.

According to Omar Badri, the spokesman for the Taliban chief of police in Paktia province, the tragedy took place in the Jani Khail district at around 6:00 in the morning on Saturday, September 3.

The conflict reportedly took place in the village of Dahan Khushk in the Jani Khail district ofPaktia province, and according to local sources, the injured peoples conditions are disconcerting.

Hospital management in the province of Paktia, however,has not yet provided any information about the conditionsof the injured.

A similar incident occurred in late August in the southeast Afghan province of Khost, where a land dispute between two families led to one fatality and 10 injuries.

With the cash-strapped Taliban in power, poverty, hunger, and unemployment at an all-time high, exacerbated by the asset freeze on Afghanistans foreign reserves, the number of crimes, suicides, family disputes, and honor killings has skyrocketed in various regions of Afghanistan.

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Dispute over Pine Nut Harvest in Southeast Afghanistan Results in 2 Deaths and 3 Injuries - The Khaama Press News Agency - The Khaama Press News...

Violent clashes between rival factions within Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim community left 23 people dead and hundreds more wounded this week. The mayhem ended abruptly when powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers to withdraw from locations they'd occupied in Baghdad and elsewhere, and to go home.

But while al-Sadr's command defused the deadly standoff between his backers and rival Shiite factions considered allies, if not proxies, of neighboring Iran, the underlying rift remains. Iraqis know that if it's not mended, the violence could easily erupt again, and escalate into a wider conflict.

"It was a terrifying 24 hours, we could hear bullets hitting walls and cars around our apartment," Ahmad Abdullah told CBS News. Abdulla, 36, lives with his wife and two daughters less than a mile from the heavily fortified "Green Zone" in Baghdad, where much of the government is based and which is often the focal point of unrest.

He compared the situation to the civil war that tore Iraq apart between 2003, when the U.S. invaded to topple Saddam Hussein, and 2008.

The clashes didn't take many Iraqis by surprise. The country has been mired in political turbulence since the last national elections in October 2021.

Al-Sadr's nationalist political movement, which opposes both Iran's and the West's influence in Iraq, won the most parliamentary seats in the voting, securing 73 of the total 329.

But they fell short of the two-thirds majority of seats required to form a new government unilaterally. Al-Sadr and his senior aides refused to negotiate a power-sharing unity government with the rival "Coordination Framework," an alliance of mostly Iran-aligned Shiite parties.

Al-Sadr dismissed the Framework's politicians as corrupt proxies of Iran. But without cooperation from its factions including the State of Law parliamentary bloc led by two-term former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki al-Sadr couldn't form a new government.

Iraq has been run by a "caretaker government" since 2020, even before the elections last year failed to establish a new administration.

Al-Sadr tried many times to form a government, but with the deadlock persisting, in June he told all 73 of his bloc's Members of Parliament to resign in protest. He gave his supporters a green light to occupy the parliament and block the next session of the legislature, and then said the parliament should be dissolved and new elections held.

On Monday, al-Sadr went a step further and announced his resignation from politics not for the first time. His followers took it as a battle cry, marching from the parliament they'd occupied for days toward other governmental buildings, including a presidential palace that hosts meetings for heads of state and foreign dignitaries.

They kept marching toward houses and offices of al-Sadr's rivals, and that's when it got ugly. Militias the al-Sadrists say are backed by Iran started confronting them. It escalated quickly, and soon small arms, drones and even mortars were fired.

The chaotic scenes were reminiscent of Iraq's civil war and the sectarian violence that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003. It intensified when the al-Sadr movement's military wing joined his supporters in the melee.

By the time the cleric told his backers to go home, almost two dozen people were dead in Baghdad and other Shiite-majority cities in southern Iraq.

Al-Sadr has long been one of Iraq's most influential Shiite clerics, as was his late father, from whom he inherited a large following.

Unlike many other Shiite leaders in the country, al-Sadr opposed the U.S. invasion in 2003 from the very first day. Soon after U.S. troops arrived, he declared war on them, and it was his militia that claimed many of the U.S. lives lost during the conflict.

Many Iraqis saw al-Sadr as a commander doing what their national leaders would not standing up to a foreign invader and the war gave his domestic popularity and nationalistic image a huge boost.

By 2007, al-Sadr was seen as a serious threat to the U.S. military and the Iraqi administration it backed. So, the U.S. helped usher Nouri al-Maliki into the presidency, vowing to help him take on al-Sadr and his militia.

It was the birth of the enmity between two of Iraq's most powerful Shiite leaders.

Al-Maliki and his Al-Dawa Party remain the second most powerful Shiite faction in Iraq, after al-Sadr's.

An audio clip of al-Maliki speaking, which was leaked recently to Iraqi media, confirms that he has connections with Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard, which will only bolster the contempt for him among al-Sadr's loyal supporters.

CBS News spoke with many Iraqi politicians who suggested that the division within the country's huge Shiite population between the al-Sadrists and al-Maliki's supporters has now reached a point of no return.

If they can't agree to work together for the greater good of the country, few see much reason to hope for a stable government in the near future.

"It might look like the two groups are fighting for their election rights and constitutional deadlines, but make no mistake, neither one of them care about democracy and laws," political analyst Rostam Mahmood told CBS News.

Sources told CBS News on Wednesday that Iraq's Supreme Court would consider the al-Sadr movement's request to formally dissolve the parliament and order new elections, indicating at least some effort to ease the tension that sparked this week's violence.

But Mahmood wasn't optimistic about a lasting solution.

"Post-invasion Iraq is now run by groups and leaders that believe in completely different values than a democratic society," Mahmood said. "The idea of parachuting democracy into Iraq didn't work. Just like Afghanistan, Iraq is another failed state, and the country will fall into the wrong hands in the end."

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Iraq political clashes leave 23 dead. Here's why some fear that "just like Afghanistan, Iraq is another failed state." - CBS News

A boy pulls a cart loaded with goods in al-Rasafi Square in central Baghdad, Iraq, on Aug. 29, 2022. (Xinhua/Khalil Dawood)

BAGHDAD, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- On a hot summer day in downtown Baghdad when the temperature reached 45 degrees Celsius, Ahmed Saad, 10, stood on the sidewalk of the al-Rasheed Street, selling bottled water and small bags of ice cubes to passers-by and nearby shop-owners.

Saad wakes up every morning in the poor al-Fadhil neighborhood in the Iraqi capital to work to earn money for his family.

It is not uncommon to see underage girls and boys, such as Saad, selling goods in Baghdad's crowded streets and markets, pushing carts to deliver goods, or unloading the trucks.

This is just part of the rising child labor problem in the war-torn Iraq, where the number of children forced to work is increasing due to the decline in Iraqi families' incomes caused by the political chaos and economic woes.

"We are a five-member family and live in a room rented in an old house. I have to help my father, who is a daily wage worker. I gain, sometimes 5,000 Iraqi dinars (about four U.S. dollars)," Saad told Xinhua.

"I left school in the 3rd grade and went to work to help my father because his income is not enough for the family," he said sadly.

Muthanna Ibrahim, 12, usually works in the nearby al-Shorja market in central Baghdad, pushing carts to deliver goods unloaded from trucks parked on the al-Rasafi Square to the wholesale stores.

He has been working to help his mother to support the six-member family, including four younger brothers, since his father died of cancer two years ago.

"The work here is hard, but what should I do? I have to help my mother, who bakes bread from morning to evening, to feed my younger brothers and help them complete their studies," Ibrahim told Xinhua.

Many Iraqi families choose one of their sons, usually the eldest son like Ibrahim, to quit school to work so that his younger brothers could complete school studies for a better future.

Mohammed al-Qaragholi, a retired engineer, told Xinhua that child labor is rejected because it deprives the children of education and increases their risk of exposure to dangers, including exploitation by drug and terrorist gangs.

"The reason for child labor is that our country has witnessed wars, displacement, and sectarianism. All these problems have become a pressure factor on families. The government must help these people and put them on the right path," al-Qaragholi explained.

He warned that working children face many risks, including the spread of drugs, urging the government to focus on scaling up social protection and increasing investments in public services such as education, health and child protection.

Ali al-Obaidi, a lawyer, told Xinhua that the Iraqi labor law sets a minimum working age of 15, and prohibits children from dropping out of school and engaging in activities that degrade their dignity.

"The government must pay very, very much attention to this issue (child labor) because the building of the nation depends on building the next generation. If one (of these children) is in the street, he will be subject to harassment and vulnerable to being exploited in terrorist operations," al-Obaidi said.

He slammed the lack of public awareness and the government's tolerance for the rise in child labor in Iraq, which has never restored normal life since the U.S. invasion in 2003 that opened the Pandora's box of chaos, violence, and sufferings for the Iraqi people.

In June, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Iraq said in a statement that "children make up the majority of 4.5 million Iraqis who are at risk of poverty due to the impact of conflict and COVID-19, with one in two children (48.8 percent) facing a high risk of multiple deprivations in education, health, living conditions, and financial security."

"Child labor has been on the rise in Iraq in recent years due to armed conflict, displacement, socio-economic challenges, and the pandemic; children were moved to remote learning, increasing the risk of dropping out of school and entering the workforce," the statement said.

It warned that depriving children of their childhood and education would expose them to the risks of serious hazards, illness and exploitations.

A boy loads goods on a cart at al-Rasafi Square in central Baghdad, Iraq, on Aug. 29, 2022. (Xinhua/Khalil Dawood)

A boy pushes a cart loaded with goods at al-Rasafi Square in central Baghdad, Iraq, on Aug. 29, 2022. (Xinhua/Khalil Dawood)

A boy sells pieces of ice at a market in central Baghdad, Iraq, on Aug. 29, 2022. (Xinhua/Khalil Dawood)

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Feature: Child labor in Iraq on rise after years of war, instability - Xinhua