Nimroz Governor Escapes Suicide Attack, 3 Guards Injured

January 14, 2024
TOLOnews
TV Network
14 Jan 2024

Khalid escaped the attack unhurt but three of his bodyguards were injured, according to the officials.

A suicide bomber seeking to target the governor of Nimroz, Mohammad Qassim Khalid, was gunned down before reaching his target but three force members of the Islamic Emirate were injured as the explosive attached to the individual was detonated, officials said.

Khalid escaped the attack unhurt but three of his bodyguards were injured, according to the officials.

A TOLOnews’ reporter said that the provincial capital was stormed by security forces and intense security measures were taken following the attack which happened on Sunday afternoon.

“Before he blew himself up, he [attacker] was killed by firing of the Muahideens [Islamic Emirate forces] and his explosives were detonated,” Khalid said.

The attack also raised concerns among the residents of the province.

They called on the security forces to increase efforts to provide better security.

“It was for two to three years that there was a calm situation. The people are worried now, the security must improve,” said Khairulah, a resident of Nimroz.

“They are away from humanity and Islam,” said Ghulam Dastageer, a resident of Nimroz.

The attacker crossed two security checkpoints and reached the building of the governor’s office, according to the security officials.

The attack happened around 1:00 PM when the employees left the office.

“Around 1:00 PM, an individual reached near the office and wanted to blow himself up and reach the governor but was gunned down by the security forces. Then he blew himself up,” said Gul Mohammad Qudrat, a spokesman for the Nimroz department of security.

No group has so far claimed the attack.

Last year, the governor of Balkh was killed in a suicide bombing that occurred at his office.

Nimroz Governor Escapes Suicide Attack, 3 Guards Injured
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Afghan women defying countless restrictions

January 11, 2024
Khaama Press
Afghan Women’s Restaurant/Image/Khaama Press.

In Afghanistan, women face multiple layers of restrictions, often rooted in undesirable customs and practices driven by low education levels in society. The resurgence of the Taliban regime has further obscured these restrictions under the guise of “religious” or “Afghan cultural” norms, leading to Afghanistan being ranked as the worst country for women for the second consecutive year. Despite numerous challenges and instilled fear, some resilient young girls run private businesses, pursue education, and are dedicated to personal growth and combating ignorance. This report highlights the story of a young woman managing a women’s restaurant in Kabul.

Samira, a young woman, has created a restaurant in the Khair Khana area that employs over 20 women who are heads of their families. At 31 years old, Samira not only owns the restaurant but also works shoulder-to-shoulder with 20 other women daily, serving customers.

Samira completed her education in short-term business courses and is striving to continue her university studies in this field. She currently oversees the “Afghan Women’s Restaurant” and a tailoring workshop that provides training in the sewing profession to underprivileged girls.

Samira’s small establishment, ‘Afghan Women’s Restaurant’ not only serves as a place where people can buy affordable food but also creates job opportunities for many women, all in a time when women and girls lack security in various parts of the city.

Afghan Women’s Restaurant/Image/Khaama Press.

This restaurant, by cooking local, affordable, and delicious food, has managed to attract a large customer base from the bustling areas of Kabul’s Khair Khana neighbourhood.

The prices at Samira’s restaurant start from 5 Afghanis and go up to 150 Afghanis. This has led to a steady stream of customers flocking to the Afghan Women’s Restaurant in Khair Khana daily. Here, not only is mouthwatering cuisine prepared, but special occasions like birthdays and small gatherings are also celebrated affordably.

In response to the question of how she has succeeded amidst these increasing restrictions, Ms. Samira said, “When women support each other, they can succeed. Success knows no gender boundaries.”

She added, “We have approximately three categories of employees: girls who were students, girls who are currently in school, and women who are heads of their families and take care of their own dependents.”

Delicious dishes like Ashak, Mantu, Samosa, and Bolani are among the most popular items at this restaurant, and the number of daily visitors keeps increasing. However, Samira personally addresses the various challenges that arise.

She states, “We face many challenges, including attempts to intimidate us, occasional power outages, and sometimes direct or indirect efforts to prevent customers from entering our restaurant.”

These problems and obstacles often come from individuals who own shops near the Afghan Women’s Restaurant. Such harassment has recently become a serious concern for Samira.

Samira explains, “Restaurants run by men located near our restaurant try to harm us.” She added, “It has been at least two months since the Afghan Women’s Restaurant has been operating without electricity due to these issues.”

Afghan Women’s Restaurant/image Khaama Press.

While expressing her concerns about the fate of the women working at her restaurant, Samira recounted, “I have heard several times that the owners of shops and restaurants next to ours playfully tell their male apprentices that it’s your fault that a woman has managed to disrupt your market and our restaurant.”

Ms. Samira adds that she initiated the Afghan Women’s Restaurant with an initial investment of 7,000 Afghanis. This entrepreneurial woman is now working to expand her representation and employ more women from the earnings of this restaurant.

Although many women-only restaurants have been established in Afghanistan, Samira explains that in the previous government, she was able to employ 500 women by running a tailoring workshop. However, after the change in the regime, her workshop ceased operations, and she started the women’s restaurant in August 2021. According to her, it was the first restaurant managed by women after the resurgence of the Taliban administration.

Samira has not only opened doors for dozens of young girls to learn the art of tailoring alongside the restaurant but has also provided an opportunity for girls who have missed out on formal education. She has managed to create a platform for them to acquire tailoring skills through the cooperation of her former trainees from the tailoring workshop.

She clarifies that she doesn’t profit from teaching tailoring to these girls; her only goal is to assist women and girls who, for various reasons, have been deprived of their basic rights.

Samira hopes that the current situation will change, and people will come to terms with the fact that women have the right, both legally and humanely, to work outside their homes.

Afghan women defying countless restrictions
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What We Wrote, What You Read in 2023: Daily struggles, edicts and orders, falcons flying high

January 11, 2024

Kate Clark

2023 was a busy year for AAN, with just over 50 publications. They ranged from in-depth investigations into the economy, public finance and the aid industry to a poetic journey into the world of falconry. We introduced a new form of report – short, first-person accounts by Afghans of what they are doing to survive – and try to prosper – which we have called The Daily Hustle. We also posted two major publications on Islamic Emirate thinking and law-making, a translation of Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada’s orders and edicts, with accompanying analysis, and a review of a book by the Chief Justice outlining what he believes a properly constituted Islamic state should be like. Our most widely-read report of 2023 also gave readers a window into the thinking of Afghanistan’s new rulers: five former Taleban fighters spoke about life in the capital, with some unexpected comments. Here, Kate Clark looks back at 2023 – what we wrote and what you read – and introduces some of AAN’s plans for 2024.

What we were writing in 2023

2023 was a year in which the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) really bedded down and our reporting reflected that: we looked at the Amir’s decrees – what he felt had needed banning, promoting or making obligatory – and the way the IEA has extended control over higher education. We also looked at its spending priorities. Indeed, the economy proved to be a strong constant throughout the year.

Little had changed in how the outside world and the IEA dealt with each other since it re-established its rule over Afghanistan in August 2021. Given the financial dependence of the Islamic Republic, and indeed the Afghan economy, on outside funding, and the subsequent and lasting rift with donor countries, the economic consequences of the 2021 change of government persist. Our work tried to unpick this, with reports on IEA perceptions of the aid industry, the parallels and differences between its ban on women working for NGOs and the United Nations in the 1990s and now, and a candid look at aid diversion. We also scrutinised international attitudes towards the IEA, with in-depth reports on the various meetings and initiatives for regional and international actors to thrash out a way forward to deal with a government that has not wanted to heed their demands.

These ‘top-down’ or ‘big picture’ views of the economy and politics were balanced by reports that zeroed in on the local, sometimes hyper-local level: how shopkeepers, civil servants and farmers in the formerly heavily contested Andar district have found prosperity since the end of the fighting, the struggle by three women now selling goods on the streets of the capital to try to feed their families, or how one girl, banned from secondary education, has found a job teaching younger girls, trying to “help [their] dreams come true.” Reports on rights and freedoms, especially those of women and girls, featured strongly, as they have done in earlier years.

Some subjects continue regardless of who is in power in Kabul, for example, the long dispute between Afghanistan and Iran over water from the Helmand River, Chinese investments in Afghanistan – motivated by economic interest or security fears? – and the fate of Afghans held in the United States prison camp in Guantanamo, something that we have reported on every year for the last decade. Actually, in 2023, there was just one Afghan left, Muhammad Rahim, held without charge or trial since 2007. We reported on his efforts to persuade the authorities to release him. Unfathomably, even though it is now two years after the last American troops left his country, the US continues to argue that the war is, in fact, not over and Rahim remains a threat to its national security.

In 2023, we also rolled out two new types of report. The first, The Daily Hustle, trialled in late 2022 became a firm feature on our website. It tells the stories of individual Afghans: surviving a Kabul winter, opening a girls’ home school, or the journey to Pakistan to visit family. The second is what we are calling ‘themed reports’. Grounded in in-depth research and/or dealing with complex subjects, we hope they will have a long shelf-life and so present them as graphically designed PDFs. Our aim is to facilitate the ease and enjoyment of reading them. We used this format for reports on, for example, how Afghan musicians are faring, on various aspects of the aid industry, and for a review by former BBC journalist and Deoband graduate, John Butt, of the IEA’s Chief Justice’s theory of jurisprudence, ‘Al-Emarat al-Islamiya wa Nidhamuha’ (The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance).

At AAN, individual researchers generally focus on what interests them, a strategy which we hope keeps our publications lively and fresh. At the same time, we try to cover a broad range of topics, so set ourselves to cover eight key thematic categories:

  • War and Peace
  • Economy, Development and the Environment
  • Culture and Context
  • Political Landscape
  • Rights and Freedoms
  • Regional Relations
  • International Engagement
  • Migration

In the table below, it can be seen that three of these categories dominated our research in 2023: Economy, Development and the Environment, followed by Rights and Freedoms, and then Culture and Context. That last category is where we try to provide a wider and deeper context for thinking about Afghanistan that goes beyond economics and politics: music, history, literature and wildlife. They are often our favourite reports to write. Indeed, we ended 2023 with two such reports, about falconry in Afghanistan: the first surveyed the poetry and literature going back into history of falcon and falconer; the second explored how every year, raptor birds migrating across Afghanistan, are “caught and sold, often abroad, to be trained to hunt other prey in turn,” while wealthy hunters from the Gulf come to Afghanistan to hunt bustards with falcons. Finally, it was noticeable that War and Peace dominated our reporting in earlier years – in 2021, two out of every five reports fell into this category, as did 14 of the 20 most-read reports. In 2023, just one report fell into that category.

 AAN Category Published Top 20 read
Number Percent Number Percent
Economy, Development, Enviroment 19 38 6 30
Rights and Freedoms 11 22 6 30
Context and Culture 9 18 5 25
International Engagment 5 10 1 5
Poltical Landscape 3 6 2 10
Migration 1 2 0 0
War and Peace 1 2 0 0
Regional Relations 1 2 0 0
Table by AAN.

What you were reading in 2023

As to what you, our readers, were interested in, the same three categories dominated our list of the twenty most-read reports. Way out ahead, with almost ten times as many page views as the second most-read report was ‘New Lives in the City: How Taleban have experienced life in Kabul’, by guest author Sabawoon Samim. He interviewed five former fighters, asking what they thought about living in a city previously viewed as at the heart of the ‘foreign occupation’ and with a population degraded by Western ways. Much of their experience, however, was positive. They liked the modern facilities and relative cleanness of the capital and the ethnic diversity: “You can see an Uzbek, Pashtun and a Tajik living in one building and going to the same mosque,” commented one man, who also said: “Unlike villages where a lot of people go to the mosque to impress others, people in Kabul go there just for the sake of Allah.” Our report was picked up by foreign media, used to vilify the Taleban, who discovered with astonishment that they shared some experiences with the former fighters – chafing at the dull and restricted nature of office life, for example. Our second most-read publication was a dossier of reports on women’s rights, published in 2021, a reminder that concerns about the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan remain evergreen.

Other publications from earlier years also featured in the top twenty most-read reports. An investigation into the damage and threat of the climate crisis by guest author Mohammad Assem Mayar was widely read, as were two reports on the cultural history of hashish in Afghanistan, on production and consumption, both published in 2019. The crossover of those interested in Afghanistan and in drugs has pushed up reader numbers for these two reports to our most-read reports every year since they were published.

As for readers of our reports in Dari and Pashto, the five most-read were very varied. Way out in front, with almost twice as many page views as any other report was ‘From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in Western writing’, from 2014. It was a rare survey of how Uzbeks have been portrayed by Western media and authors from colonial times to modern-day, much of it with racist overtones. Other reports, which were also popular in earlier years and featured in the top-five list, were Mayar’s look at climate change and a charting of a then new Afghan migration route through the Balkans, published in 2016. At number five, though, was a report published late in 2023 – the review of the IEA’s Chief Justice’s theory of jurisprudence. The book was written in Arabic, so perhaps it is not surprising that readers wanted to read a scholarly analysis of it in Pashto.

The year ahead

In 2024, it looks inevitable that Economy, Development and the Environment, International Engagement (or non-engagement) and Rights and Freedoms will form a large part of our research portfolio, as they did in 2023. Regional Relations also look likely to loom large; the IEA, at least, puts great store in them, and difficulties with the neighbours can have major repercussions, as the forced migration of Afghans from Pakistan has shown (almost half a million since September, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR).

In the first week of January, we heard from one of those Afghans who had spent the last 35 years of his 55 years in Pakistan. “It’s not easy to start a life, especially at my age,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d have to start all over again, but I’m an Afghan. I know from experience that life is full of unexpected twists and turns.” At AAN, we expect to be covering such unexpected twists and turns, as they affect Afghanistan and look forward to sharing the year’s journey with you.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour

AAN’s 20 most-widely read reports in 2023 (English)

  1. New Lives in the City: How Taleban have experienced life in Kabul, Sabawoon Samim, 2 February 2023
  2. Dossier XXX: Afghan Women’s Rights and the New Phase of the Conflict, AAN Team, 29 July 2021
  3. The Myth of ‘Afghan Black’ (1): A cultural history of cannabis cultivation and hashish production in Afghanistan, Jelena Bjelica and Fabrizio Foschini, 7 January 2019
  4. The Bride Price: The Afghan tradition of paying for wives, Fazal Rahman Muzhary, 25 October 2016
  5. “We need to breathe too”: Women across Afghanistan navigate the Taleban’s hijab ruling, Kate Clark and Saeda Rahimi, 1 June 2022
  6. Taleban Perceptions of Aid: Conspiracy, corruption and miscommunication, Sabawoon Samim and Ashley Jackson, 30 July 2023
  7. A Taleban Theory of State: A review of the Chief Justice’s book of jurisprudence, John Butt 3 September 2023
  8. The Climate Change Crisis in Afghanistan: The catastrophe worsens – what hope for action?,, Mohammad Assem Mayar, 6 June 2022
  9. What Do The Taleban Spend Afghanistan’s Money On? Government expenditure under the Islamic Emirate, Kate Clark and Roxanna Shapour, 16 March 2023
  10. The Myth of ‘Afghan Black’ (2): The cultural history of hashish consumption in Afghanistan
  11. Fabrizio Foschini, Jelena Bjelica and Obaid Ali 10 January 2019
  12. Bans on Women Working, Then and Now: The dilemmas of delivering humanitarian aid during the first and second Islamic Emirates, Kate Clark, 16 April 2023
  13. Aid Diversion in Afghanistan: Is it time for a candid conversation? Ashley Jackson, 1 October 2023
  14. The May 2023 Doha meeting: How should the outside world deal with the Taleban? Kate Clark, 30 April 2023
  15. Global Warming and Afghanistan: Drought, hunger and thirst expected to worsen, Mohammad Assem Mayar, 6 November 2021
  16. Disappointment over Karbala: A pilgrimage off-limits in 2020… and memories of 2019, Rohullah Sorush, 8 October 2020
  17. From Land-grabbing to Haircuts: The decrees and edicts of the Taleban supreme leader, Kate Clark, 15 July 2023 (The original Dari and Pashto and English translations of the Amir’s orders, edicts and instructions can be read on the Resources section of the AAN website.)
  18. Gender Persecution in Afghanistan: Could it come under the ICC’s Afghanistan investigation? Ehsan Qaane, 26 May 2023
  19. A Worsening “Human Rights Crisis”: New hard-hitting report from UN Special Rapporteur, Kate Clark 6 March 2023
  20. The Emergent Taleban-Defined University: Enforcing a top-down reorientation and unquestioning obedience under ‘a war of thoughts’ Said Reza Kazemi, 6 August 2023

AAN’s five most-widely read reports in 2023 (Dari and Pashto)

  1. From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in western writing, Christian Bleuer, 17 October 2014 (English version here)
  2. Afghan Exodus: The re-emergence of smugglers along the Balkan route, Martine van Bijlert and Jelena Bjelica, 10 August 2016 (English version here)
  3. Who Gets to Go to School? (1): What people told us about education since the Taleban took over, Kate Clark and the AAN Team, 26 January 2022, (English version here)
  4. The Climate Change Crisis in Afghanistan: The catastrophe worsens – what hope for action?, Mohammad Assem Mayar, 6 June 2022 (English version here)
  5. A Taleban Theory of State: A review of the Chief Justice’s book of jurisprudence, John Butt, 3 September 2023 (English version here)

 

What We Wrote, What You Read in 2023: Daily struggles, edicts and orders, falcons flying high
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Afghan girls detained and lashed by Taliban for violating hijab rules

January 11, 2024
Zuhal Ahad

Girls as young as 16 have been arrested across the Afghan capital, Kabul, in the past week for violating the Taliban’s hijab rules.

The girls – who were detained in shopping centres, classes and street markets – were accused of “spreading and encouraging others to wear a bad hijab” and wearing makeup.

Since taking power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have further restricted women’s access to education, employment and public spaces. In May 2022, they decreed that women should cover themselves from head to toe, revealing only their eyes.

Lale*, 16, said she was arrested by the Taliban along with a number of other girls at her English language class and pulled into a police truck. She said girls who confronted the men and refused to go were beaten, while she was lashed on her feet and legs when trying to reason with them. Her father was later badly beaten for “raising immoral girls”.

“My attire was modest and even included a face mask – a precaution I had adopted since the Taliban takeover,” said Lale. “But they beat me anyway, insisting that my outfit was improper.”

Lale, who was detained for two days and nights, said the Taliban repeatedly cursed them as infidels, for studying English and for aspiring to go abroad.

She was released after community elders intervened and she signed a document pledging not to leave her home without the mandatory head-covering. She has also been banned from attending her English classes.

“I was barred from school when the Taliban took over in 2021, and now I cannot even go to my private classes,” she said. “I can no longer imagine anything for my future other than staying home and getting married.

“I saw how badly my father was beaten because I went to the [English] course. When I saw his photos after returning home, I was so scared that I would lose him. I don’t have the motivation to study after this. I don’t want this experience again.”

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesperson, claimed in a voice message to the Guardian that families of the detained women had raised concerns with the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice that their daughters were supported by foreign groups to promote “bad hijab”.

“As a result, they were taken to police stations and freed on bail,” he said, adding that such arrests were “not usual practice”.

The detentions happened less than a week after the UN security council requested a special envoy to engage with the Taliban, particularly over gender and women’s rights. The Taliban rejected this proposal, however, claiming it would complicate the situation by imposing external solutions.

Fereshta Abbasi, a researcher at the New York-based organisation Human Rights Watch, said: “The arrests of women in Afghanistan are a further crackdown on the basic rights of women and can be intimidating and put more pressure even on women who are still working in the health, primary education and nutrition sectors, and they would not appear in public as they used to.”

Videos and photographs shared with the Guardian by another female Afghan activist, who asked not to disclose her identity, show a number of men and women demonstrating in the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Kabul, with placards inviting people to a “beautiful life” by “promoting and observing proper hijab”.

The activist, who witnessed the demonstrations, explained that these were families of detainees seeking the release of the women and aiming to prevent further arrests in the community.

* Name has been changed to protect her identity

Afghan girls detained and lashed by Taliban for violating hijab rules
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Blasts Hit Kabul, Balkh Leaving Several Killed

January 11, 2024
Mujeeb Rahman Awrang Stanikzai
Head of TOLOnews’ Online Department
11 Jan 2024

Meanwhile, sources in Mazar-e-Sharif said that an explosion took place this afternoon (Thursday) in the city.

At least two civilians were killed and 12 others were injured in a grenade blast in PD 18 of Kabul today, a spokesman for the Kabul security department, Khalid Zadran said.

He said that an investigation is underway to arrest the perpetrator.

Kabul-based Emergency NGO– a humanitarian health organization- said that “the number of patients that our Surgical Centre received following “the explosion in Kabul PD18 has risen to 13, including 6 women, 4 men, a 17-year-old boy and 2 children.”

Meanwhile, sources in Mazar-e-Sharif said that an explosion took place this afternoon (Thursday) in the city.

The explosion took place around 3:00 PM in PD4 of Mazar-e-Sharif, sources said.

So far, there are no details about possible casualties or the cause of this explosion, and local officials have not yet made comments on it.

No one has claimed responsibility for either of the blasts.

Blasts Hit Kabul, Balkh Leaving Several Killed
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Reopening of UK Embassy in Kabul is Under Review: UK Official

January 11, 2024
 TOLOnews
TV Network
11 Jan 2024

Some political analysts said that it is necessary for the Islamic Emirate to give in to some of the demands of the international community.

Andrew Mitchell MP, Minister of State at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, said the government will keep “very much under review” calls to reopen the UK embassy in Afghanistan, but the security and political situation does not currently allow them to re-establish a diplomatic presence in Kabul.

Mitchell said that the policy of the Islamic Emirate’s change of approach towards women and ethnic minorities, the release of British hostages, and Afghanistan not turning into terrorist bases again have been mentioned as fundamental conditions of the UK against the Islamic Emirate.

Andrew Mitchell MP, Minister of State at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, said: “And rights be rolled back elsewhere to minority groups such as the Hazara people faced discrimination and attacks. The position of the UK … is that the UN security resolutions have consistently set out the basic expectations of the Taliban, this include preserving the rights of women and minorities and ensuring Afghanistan will no longer be used as a base for terrorist activities. Senior officials speak regularly to the Taliban including, to secure the release of four British national detainees last October. Officials also visit Kabul if situation permits including a visit last month for the British chargé d’affaires to Kabul where he met a wide range of senior Taliban’s figures. Regardless of complexities of relationship that the UK government has helped lead the way in securing the Afghan people. And in respect to his plea about the embassy, we will note what he has said, and keep that very much under review.”

Some political analysts said that it is necessary for the Islamic Emirate to give in to some of the demands of the international community.

“The Islamic Emirate must eliminate the small and big excuses that regional countries and superpowers like Britain have,” Abdul Matin Naseri, a political analyst, told TOLOnews.

Earlier, Amir Khan Muttaqi, the acting foreign minister, said he met with the current Afghan government, in a meeting with Robert Chatterton Dickson, the ad interim chargé d’affaires of the UK mission in Afghanistan.

Reopening of UK Embassy in Kabul is Under Review: UK Official
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UN ‘concerned’ Taliban detaining Afghan women for dress code violations

January 11, 2024
Al Jazeera
Published On 11 Jan 2024
Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says the UN preoccupation with Afghan women is unwarranted.

In a statement on Thursday, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said it had “documented a series of hijab decree enforcement campaigns” taking place since January 1 in Kabul and Daykundi provinces.

These were under orders from the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice and the police, it said, and women had been “warned” and “detained”.

To secure a woman’s release from detention, UNAMA said her male guardian, also called a mahram, was required to sign a letter guaranteeing her future compliance or else face punishment.

The mission said it was looking into claims of ill-treatment of the women and extortion in exchange for their release, and warned that physical violence and detentions were demeaning and dangerous.

Since returning to power in August 2021, Taliban authorities have imposed numerous restrictions on women and girls, with laws the UN has labelled “gender apartheid”.

“Enforcement measures involving physical violence are especially demeaning and dangerous for Afghan women and girls,” said Roza Otunbayeva, UN special envoy and head of the mission.

“Detentions carry an enormous stigma that puts Afghan women at even greater risk,” she said. “They also destroy public trust.”

‘Pushing women into even greater isolation’

The Taliban said last week that female police officers have been taking women into custody for wearing “bad hijab.”

When the Taliban retook power in 2021, they ordered women to cover up when leaving home, stopped girls and women from attending high school or university, and banned them from parks, gyms and public baths.

They also barred them from working for the UN or NGOs, and most female government employees were dismissed from their jobs or paid to stay at home.

The UN mission’s statement said it “fears the current crackdown is pushing women into even greater isolation due to fear of arbitrary arrest, and creating a permissive environment for men to enforce repressive measures at home”.

The Taliban chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the UN preoccupation with Afghan women was unwarranted, and dismissed its concerns.

“Afghan women wear hijab of their own accord,” he said on X. “They don’t need to be forced. The Vice and Virtue Ministry hasn’t forced anyone [to wear hijab] either.”

In May 2022, the Taliban issued a decree calling for women to only show their eyes and recommending they wear the head-to-toe burqa, similar to restrictions during their previous rule of the country between 1996 and 2001.

A spokesman for the Vice and Virtue Ministry, Abdul Ghafar Farooq, earlier on Thursday rejected reports that women and girls were being arrested or beaten for wearing “bad hijab” and called it propaganda from the foreign media.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
UN ‘concerned’ Taliban detaining Afghan women for dress code violations
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Taliban detains dozens of women in Afghanistan for breaking hijab rules with “modeling”

January 11, 2024

 

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have rounded up dozens of women in an apparent crackdown on perceived violations of the group’s strict dress code. Dozens of women and girls were detained briefly last week in Kabul, a senior Taliban spokesperson told CBS News on Monday, confirming what appeared to be a new tactic in the group’s efforts to curb women’s rights.

The arrests by the Taliban’s morality police occurred over several days and first came to light via videos and photos posted on social media. The Taliban confirmed the arrests after photos and video clips showed women being loaded onto the back of police pickup trucks in the capital city.

A spokesperson for the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Ministry, which enforces its harsh interpretation of Islam on both men and women, told CBS News the women were all either released on bail after several hours, or turned over to judicial authorities for further investigation. It was not clear how many people remained in custody after the mass arrests.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban regime’s chief spokesperson, confirmed the arrests to CBS News on Monday, saying “a group of women who were involved in modeling to promote clothes were detained, advised in front of their family members, and released within hours. No woman was subject to imprisonment during this process.”

In an interview with Afghan outlet TOLO News, which was later removed from the social media platform X, Mujahid, without providing evidence, said the women had received instruction from outside the country to promote violations of the group’s rules requiring women and girls to wear the hijab, or headscarf, to cover their hair.

In a video published by the Afghanistan International news outlet, a young girl is seen in tears speaking about the Taliban detaining her sister as they both returned from their religious school in Kabul.AD MOREFlooding, heavy winds hit the Northeast, tornadoes leavedamage across Florida panhandle

“The Taliban took my sister. We wore hijab and were holding the Quran in our hands. How do I explain this to my father?” the girl can be heard saying in the video, which was not independently verified by CBS News.

There were more arrests reported Monday. CBS News spoke with a sibling of a young woman whom they said was detained Monday morning and remained in Taliban custody late on Tuesday.

The person said that after several hours of searching, the family found the woman at a local police station late Tuesday evening, where Taliban officials demanded money, along with her passport and other documentation, as a penalty and “to guarantee that she will not violate the dress code in the future.”

The family member said the authorities told the family they would “take her biometrics and photos, and if she violates the dress code in the future, she will be imprisoned for a longer period.”

On Wednesday, the family told CBS News they paid the equivalent of about $2,200, which they had to borrow from relatives and friends, to secure the woman’s release. They sent CBS News photos showing bruises they said the woman sustained when she was beaten by authorities in custody.

In addition, they said Taliban officials made them hand over their home ownership documents and that the woman’s father and brother had to sign “a document stating that she would not go out without a male chaperon and hijab.”

The family said they were warned that if the woman was found violating the dress code again, “she will be imprisoned without legal representation and according to Islamic law.”

The United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, called for the immediate release of all the women who were detained.

“Recent arrests of women in Kabul Afghanistan for ‘bad hijab’, confirmed by the Taliban, regrettably signified further restrictions on women’s freedom of expression and undermines other rights,” Bennett said in a social media post. “They should all be released immediately and without conditions.”

Amid the criticism and media coverage, the Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Virtue issued a statement on suggesting the women and girls had been picked up for begging on Kabul’s streets and noting that they would be released after their biometrics were taken, though no supporting evidence was provided to back the new explanation for the detentions.

Since retaking control of Afghanistan after the U.S. military withdrawal in August 2021, the Taliban has reintroduced many draconian rules limiting the public lives of women and girls in the country.

Girls are not permitted to attend school after the age of 12 and women are barred from universities. They’re also banned from visiting parks, participating in sports, working in many sectors — including for international non-profit organizations — forbidden from running beauty salons or visiting public baths, and even from traveling outside their homes without a male chaperon.

“They have expedited their war against women,” Fawzia Koofi, a former female member of Afghanistan’s parliament, said in a social media post in reaction to the recent arrests. “On a daily basis, their morality police arrests tens of women from the streets of Kabul. To the Taliban, every woman in Afghanistan is guilty to be proven innocent.”

Torek Farhadi, a veteran political analyst on the region, told CBS News the Taliban’s rigid enforcement of its rules set Afghanistan apart from even other conservative Islamic ruled nations.

“The Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic sharia [law] is again off the mark from what is in practice in other Islamic countries, just as is their decision on girls’ education, barring them from going to school,” he said, adding: “Now that they have the guns, they can impose their views on society.”

When the Taliban first ruled over Afghanistan between 1994 and the 2001 U.S.-led military invasion, the group routinely arrested men and boys for shaving or trimming their beards, or for wearing jeans or other Western garments, and jailed them for days.

Analysts including Farhadi told CBS News that the Taliban’s direct law enforcement intervention against women for alleged dress code violations, rather than punishing male relatives or guardians, appeared to be a new tactic and an escalation of the crackdown on women’s rights.

Taliban detains dozens of women in Afghanistan for breaking hijab rules with “modeling”
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Iran Deports Nearly 900 Afghan Minors in 2 Months: Nimroz Official

January 11, 2024
TOLOnews
TV Network
10 Jan 2024

Local officials in Nimroz province said that they are trying to find ways to return these minors to their homes.

Nearly 900 Afghan minors have been deported from Iran to Nimroz province in Afghanistan in the last two months, a local official in Nimroz said.

Sediqullah, 14, is one of hundreds of children who have been deported by Iranian security forces but whose families remain in Iran

He is striving to find a way to join his family again.

“My two brothers and parents are still in Iran, I have been arrested and repatriated,” said Sediqullah, an Afghan returnee.

“We ask the Afghan government to give us money so that we can go to our homes,” said another returnee, Muhammad.

“There was a problem in my family, to solve that, I decided to work to earn money,” said Edrees, an Afghan returnee.

Local officials in Nimroz province said that they are trying to find ways to return these minors to their homes.

“The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has signed several MoUs with different organizations to return these children to their homes,” said Muhammad Omar Zubair, head of the directorate of Labor and Social Affairs in Nimroz province.

It comes as the repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan and Iran has recently increased.

Iran Deports Nearly 900 Afghan Minors in 2 Months: Nimroz Official
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Islamic Emirate Calls UNSC Decisions on Afghanistan ‘Unilateral’

January 11, 2024
Hadia Ziaei
Tolo News
10 Jan 2024

The statement reads that according to reports of the head of UNAMA, Roza Otunbayeva, 50 decrees have been issued regarding women.

The Islamic Emirate said the decisions of the UN Security Council regarding Afghanistan are “unilateral.”

The spokesman for the Islamic Emirate, Zabihullah Mujahid, said that this organization has not carefully assessed the issues of Afghanistan in its statements and resolutions.

“This is something that does not take into consideration the realities of Afghanistan. Sometimes when they issued a statement or a resolution, they did not carefully assess the issues of Afghanistan, and especially did not ask about the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and did not share their views,” Mujahid said.

This comes as the UN reported on the holding of meetings of the UNSC last year, saying it has approved various resolutions regarding Afghanistan, Palestine and Ukraine.

“The Security Council unanimously adopted two resolutions concerning Afghanistan on 16 March.  By the terms of resolution 2678 (2023), the Council decided to extend UNAMA’s mandate until 17 March 2024 and called upon all relevant Afghan political actors and stakeholders to coordinate with the Mission in the implementation of its mandate and to ensure the safety, security and freedom of movement of UN and associated personnel throughout the country.  By the terms of resolution 2679 (2023), the Council requested the Secretary-General to conduct and provide, no later than 17 November, an independent assessment, after consultations with all relevant Afghan political actors and stakeholders, as well as the region and the wider international community. Such assessment should include forward-looking recommendations to address the current challenges faced by Afghanistan.

As the year came to an end, on 29 December, the Council adopted resolution 2721 (2023), with 13 votes in favour to none against, with 2 abstentions (China, Russian Federation).  By the terms of the text, the 15-nation organ requested the Secretary-General appoint a Special Envoy for Afghanistan, provided with robust expertise on human rights and gender.  Also requesting that Council members consider the independent assessment on that country, it affirmed that the objective of this process should be an Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbours, fully reintegrated into the international community.  In addition, the Council also recognized the need to ensure the full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of Afghan women in the process throughout,” the report reads.

“Since UNAMA is an investigative and humanitarian aid agency in Afghanistan, the extension of their work is necessary for Afghanistan, and this agency should be in Afghanistan so that Afghanistan is not deprived of humanitarian aid,” Bilal Fatemi, an international relations analyst, told TOLOnews.

“The government should accept those demands of the world that are not against our beliefs, so that the world interacts with them and we will get rid of these problems,” Hamidullah Hotaki, a political analyst, told TOLOnews.

The statement reads that according to reports of the head of UNAMA, Roza Otunbayeva, 50 decrees have been issued regarding women.

“Briefing the Council on 26 September, Ms. Otunbayeva reported that more than 50 decrees issued by the Taliban aimed at eliminating women from public life and education. The Mission’s view was to maintain dialogue, to attempt to help change such policies. Ms. Bahous of UN-Women said restrictions were being enforced more frequently and with more severity, including by male family members, and accompanied by increases in child marriage and in child labour. She also reported that Afghan women continued to call on international actors to use all means at their disposal to pressure for change, including sanctions without exceptions for travel, and the issue of non-recognition,” the report reads.

Islamic Emirate Calls UNSC Decisions on Afghanistan ‘Unilateral’
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