They called on the Islamic Emirate to reopen the universities for female students.
Female students expressed concerns about their uncertain future as they have been banned from going to universities for around six months.
They called on the Islamic Emirate to reopen the universities for female students.
“The exams have begun and the boys are allowed to take their examinations and go to their universities but the girls are not allowed. Why? What is the reason?” said Khujasta, a student.
“This is a situation that has sidelined all of us. We call on the government to reopen the schools and universities as soon as possible so that we can study,” said Marriam, a student.
Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan, in a meeting with Kansuke Nagaoka, Japan’s special representative for Afghanistan, discussed the current situation in Afghanistan and the region.
Karzai tweeted that in the meeting the value of education for the progress of Afghanistan was discussed and the hope was expressed that the “gates of education” would be opened immediately for girls.
“The education of girls is very important for Afghan society and it can have an important role in the development of the country, but unfortunately, the doors of education are closed for girls,” said Suraya Paikan, a women’s rights activist.
Meanwhile, the Qatar Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Lolwah Al Khater met with the special envoy of Italy for Afghanistan, Gianfranco Petruzzella, and Italian ambassador to Afghanistan, Natalia Quintavalle, and discussed ways to “strengthen cooperation in the fields of health and education.”
“Qatar has a good view towards Afghanistan and wants to help with Afghanistan, thus, its lobby and visits with the world countries about Afghanistan will be beneficial particularly in female education and women of women,” said Aziz Maarij, a political analyst.
The closure of universities for female students has sparked reactions both at the national and international levels.
However, the Islamic Emirate said that the closing of universities for girls is for a “temporary” period of time, but did not give clarification about the exact date of the reopening of universities for female students.
Afghan Girls Embittered Over Continued Exclusion From University
The Islamic Emirate has yet to comment regarding the concerns of the participants of the UN Human Rights meeting in Geneva.
The participants of the “1st Meeting – 53rd Regular Session of the Human Rights Council,” in Geneva expressed concerns about the human rights situation in Afghanistan.
The UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur for Afghan human rights, Richard Bennett, told the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva that the Afghan “de facto authorities must be required to comply with the international human rights obligation.”
Bennett, who was presenting his report about the situation of human rights including the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, called on the Afghan interim government to form an inclusive government.
“The de facto authorities must be required to comply with the international human rights obligations. Rescind all the discriminatory edicts and restore the rule of law, including legal protections for women, especially those focused on ending violence against women and girls and prosecuting perpetrators,” he said. “They must establish an inclusive government and respect the rich diversity of Afghanistan’s people.”
The US envoy for Afghanistan’s human rights and women, Rina Amiri, who was also speaking to the council, said that “respect for human rights and women’s inclusion at levels of society is important to addressing the welfare of Afghans and integral to economically viable, stable and secure Afghanistan.”
Qatar’s envoy to the UN office in Geneva, Hend Al-Muftah, told the meeting that her country has expressed its deep concern regarding the suspension of female students in secondary school and the prevention of Afghan women from working at NGOs.
The UN Rapporteur for Afghan human rights said in its report that “in its resolution 51/20, the Human Rights Council requested the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls to prepare a joint report on the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan.”
The Islamic Emirate has yet to comment regarding the concerns of the participants of the UN Human Rights meeting in Geneva.
However, the Islamic Emirate’s spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid on Friday called Bennet’s report unjust and baseless, saying that the cultural and Islamic values of Afghanistan have been neglected in this report.
Participants at UNHRC Meeting Voice Concerns Over Afghan Human Rights
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says the country is enjoying its greatest stability of the past 40 years.
The Taliban has rejected a United States watchdog’s report saying foreign armed groups and domestic security threats have increased in Afghanistan since the group took over the country in a blitzkrieg in August 2021.
“We strongly reject SIGAR’s propaganda,” the Taliban’s chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a statement late on Sunday, referring to the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
“The Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan has complete control over the situation and will not allow any group or entity to destabilise Afghanistan or use Afghan soil against any other country,” Mujahid said, using the name of the Taliban administration.
According to Mujahid, SIGAR highlighted in its latest report that the Taliban government is facing serious security problems and foreign armed groups and domestic threats have increased in Afghanistan, resulting in increasing risk for some countries.
The spokesman argued that Afghanistan is now experiencing security and stability that it has not seen in 40 years.
He added that “no foreign armed group is active in Afghanistan” and the ISIL (ISIS) armed group has been severely weakened and is on the verge of being destroyed.
“Afghanistan is not a threat to anyone, but on the contrary, the Islamic emirate wants good and constructive relations with the international community, including the United States of America,” the statement concluded.
The Taliban has said it has kept the promise made in the 2020 Doha Agreement with the US not to allow armed groups to operate on Afghan soil.
The pact resulted in the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces after 20 years of war and occupation. But the August 2021 pull-out of US troops led to the swift collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government and military and the return to power of the Taliban.
The Taliban has accused the US of not honouring its promises by continuing Afghanistan’s diplomatic isolation.
An affiliate of ISIL (ISIS) has been posing the biggest threat to the Taliban’s authority, claiming responsibility for several attacks.
Hundreds of people have been killed and wounded, including foreigners and members of the minority Hazara community, in attacks carried out by the Islamic State of Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) in a bid to undermine the Taliban government.
The armed group has also targeted Taliban administration officials, including claiming the killing of the governor of the northern province of Balkh in an attack on his office in March and of the acting governor of the northeastern province of Badakhshan this month.
The Taliban administration has launched a crackdown on members of ISKP, raiding its hideouts in several provinces.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
Taliban slams US report on rising threats in Afghanistan
Late one night two months ago, a team of Taliban security officers assembled on the outskirts of Afghanistan’s capital to prepare for a raid on an Islamic State hide-out.
As the zero hour approached, the men fiddled with their automatic rifles while their leader, Habib Rahman Inqayad, scrambled to get the exact location of their target. He grabbed his colleagues’ phones and called their superiors, who insisted they had sent him the location pin of the target to his WhatsApp.
There was just one problem: WhatsApp had blocked his account to comply with American sanctions.
“The only way we communicate is WhatsApp — and I didn’t have access,” said Mr. Inqayad, 25, whom The New York Times has followed since the Taliban seized power in August 2021.
He was not alone. In recent months, complaints from Taliban officials, the police and soldiers of their WhatsApp accounts being banned or temporarily deactivated have become widespread, disruptions that have illuminated how the messaging platform has become a backbone of the Taliban’s nascent government. Those interruptions also underscore the far-reaching consequences of international sanctions on a government that has become among the most isolated in the world.
The United States has long criminalized any form of support for the Taliban. Consequently, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, scans group names, descriptions and group profile photos on the messaging app to identify users among the Taliban and block their accounts, according to a spokesman for the company.
The policy has been in place since U.S. sanctions were enacted more than two decades ago. Even when the Taliban were an insurgency, the ban handicapped some fighters who relied on the app because it catered to people with neither literacy nor technological skills; using WhatsApp’s voice message feature, they could send messages and listen to the verbal instructions from their commanders with the press of a button.
But over the past two years, the Taliban’s reliance on WhatsApp has become even more far-reaching as smartphone use has proliferated and 4G networks have improved across Afghanistan with the end of the U.S.-led war. As the Taliban have consolidated control and settled into governance, the inner bureaucratic workings of their administration have also become more organized — with WhatsApp central to their official communications.
Government departments use WhatsApp groups to disseminate information among employees. Officials rely on other groups to distribute statements to journalists and transmit official communiqués between ministries. Security forces plan and coordinate raids on Islamic State cells, criminal networks and resistance fighters from their phones on the app.
“WhatsApp is so important to us — all my work depends on it,” said Shir Ahmad Burhani, a police spokesman for the Taliban administration in Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan. “If there were no WhatsApp, all our administrative and nonadministrative work would be paralyzed.”
The use of WhatsApp among the Taliban’s ranks began during the war, as the app gained popularity worldwide and cellphone towers began sprouting up across Afghanistan. Today, experts estimate that around 70 percent of Afghanistan’s population has access to a cellphone. Like millions across the globe, Afghans depend on WhatsApp’s speed and flexibility to communicate with each other and the outside world..
During the war, Taliban fighters took photographs when they attacked government outposts and shared them on WhatsApp with their superiors and the insurgency’s media wing, said Kunduzi, a commander in the Taliban Army’s Second Regiment, who preferred to go only by his surname because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. “WhatsApp was a simple tool, and sending videos and photos via email used to take a lot of work and time,” he added.
Since the Taliban seized power, the popularity and accessibility of WhatsApp among the group’s ranks has grown rapidly. Former Taliban fighters began using their smartphones around the clock, no longer afraid that Western forces could use the signal to track or target them in drone strikes, they say.
As thousands of former fighters took up new posts as policemen and soldiers in major cities that were now under Taliban control, they also gained access to proper cellphone stores.
One recent afternoon at a cellphone shop in central Kabul, the capital, a dozen Talibs crowded onto wooden benches, waiting for their service tickets to be called. Since the new government began doling out salaries to Taliban fighters turned government employees, cellphone providers have been overrun with new customers. Many vendors can no longer keep up with the demand. Across Afghanistan, stores have reported shortages of SIM cards and have had to turn customers away.
Sitting in the waiting room, Muhammad Arif Omid, 21, fiddled with his paper ticket in one hand and his Samsung smartphone in the other. Originally from Helmand Province in the south, Mr. Omid bought his first cellphone and SIM card around four years ago — back when doing so was a days- or weekslong effort.
“We were living in the mountains — we couldn’t go to the shops in cities to get a phone or SIM,” he said. Instead, Talib fighters had to track down secondhand dealers in rural provinces under the movement’s control or give money to a relative to shop for them. Nowadays, he says, getting a nice smartphone and data plan is easier than ever.
But the cat-and-mouse game of shutting down accounts has become a headache for officials in the Taliban administration — an almost daily reminder that the government they lead is all but shunned on the world stage.
No foreign government has formally recognized the Taliban administration in Afghanistan. The U.S. government’s freeze on billions of dollars of assets belonging to the Afghan central bank has hindered the economy. Travel bans have kept Taliban leaders from meeting some dignitaries abroad. Some social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube appear to have interpreted the sanctions more loosely and have allowed Taliban members to use their platforms, but the country’s most popular messaging app is technically off-limits.
“We have one group of 50 people belonging to the Islamic Emirate, and 40 to 45 WhatsApp numbers in it have been blocked,” said Abdul Mobin Safi, a spokesman for the police in Takhar Province, in northern Afghanistan, referring to the Taliban administration as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Mr. Safi has been among those barred — a move that caused him to lose around 10 gigabytes of data, including old photographs and videos from the war, and the numbers of many of his colleagues.
“It’s like I have lost half of my memory,” he said. “I’ve faced a lot of problems — I lost the numbers of reporters, of everyone.”
Still, many who have had their accounts shut down have found workarounds, buying new SIM cards and opening new accounts, and turned the ban more into a game of Whac-A-Mole.
About a month after Mr. Inqayad, the security officer, was unable to reach his commanders during the night operation, he begrudgingly bought a new SIM card, opened a new WhatsApp account and began the process of recovering lost phone numbers and rejoining WhatsApp groups.
Sitting at his police post, a refurbished shipping container with a hand-held radio, Mr. Inqayad pulled out his phone and began scrolling through his new account. He pointed out all of the groups he is a part of: one for all of the police in his district, another for the former fighters loyal to a single commander, a third he uses to communicate with his superiors at headquarters. In all, he says, he is a part of around 80 WhatsApp groups — more than a dozen of which are used for official government purposes.
He recently purchased a new unlimited data plan that costs him 700 afghanis a month — about $8. It is expensive for his budget, he says, but worth it for the app.
“My entire life is on my WhatsApp,” he said.
Najim Rahim contributed reporting from San Francisco, and Yaqoob Akbary from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Christina Goldbaum is a correspondent in the Kabul, Afghanistan, bureau. @cegoldbaum
The Taliban Government Runs on WhatsApp. There’s Just One Problem.
Zardari added that “simultaneously, Pakistan hopes that the Taliban authorities would be responsive to the expectations of the international community.”
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has called on the international community to maintain a pragmatic approach and constructive engagement with Afghanistan and provide support and assistance to avert any potential humanitarian crisis in the country.
Addressing an event at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, Zardari said that abandoning Afghanistan or its 40 million people during this critical phase could lead to “unimaginable consequences.”
“The international community must continue to provide support and assistance to avert any potential humanitarian disaster and help build a sustainable economy for the long-term development of Afghanistan,” he said.
Zardari added that “simultaneously, Pakistan hopes that the Taliban authorities would be responsive to the expectations of the international community.”
He said that “the Afghan interim government must ensure inclusivity, respect for human rights of all Afghan and effective counter-terrorism action.”
The Islamic Emirate welcomed the Pakistani foreign minister’s comments but added that the world’s demands, which include interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, are unacceptable.
“In terms of human rights, I should tell you that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan provides all people’s rights in accordance with Islamic principles and the Sharia law. And of course, efforts are underway in some areas where there are inadequacies. Secondly, the demands of the countries must also be fair and there should be no interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman of the Islamic Emirate.
But a number of political analysts said that Pakistan can play a good role in improving the situation in Afghanistan.
“in order to gain more trust from the international community, it is even possible to ask for help from neighboring countries like Pakistan to take honest and practical steps in this direction,” said Najib Rahman Shamal, a political affairs analyst.
“They want to demonstrate their involvement in Afghan issues in order to gain credit from the international community about Afghanistan and create the impression that Pakistan has a greater influence in Afghanistan,” said Wahid Faqiri, an international relations analyst.
The formation of an inclusive government, fight against the threat of terrorist organizations, refraining from using Afghanistan’s territory against other countries, respect for human rights, and the provision of employment and education for women are all conditions of the international community for interaction with the current Afghan government.
However, the Islamic Emirate continually asserted that such matters are deemed internal to Afghanistan and that foreign countries should not interfere in its internal affairs.
Zardari Calls for International Community’s Engagement with Afghanistan
BAMIAN, Afghanistan — The three Taliban soldiers gazed down at the gaping hole in the 125-foot cliff where one of Afghanistan’s two great Buddha figures once stood and wondered aloud who was to blame for its destruction 22 years ago.
“This is the identity of our country,” said Kheyal Mohammad, 44, wearing a camouflage cap as he bent over a railing at the top of the giant cavity. “It shouldn’t have been bombed.”
The soldiers, taking a rare day off from military training to visit the site, agreed that the people who had destroyed the work were “careless,” and it should be rebuilt. “If God wills,” Mohammad exclaimed.
In 2001, Taliban founder Mohammad Omar declared the Buddhas false gods and announced plans to destroy them. Ignoring pleas from around the world, Taliban fighters detonated explosives and fired antiaircraft guns to smash the immense sixth-century reliefs to pieces.
The attack on the treasured ancient monument stunned the international community and cemented the Taliban’s reputation as uncompromising extremists.
With the group now back in power, Bamian holds new symbolic and economic importance to the cash-strapped region: Officials see the Buddha remnants as a potentially lucrative source of revenue and are working to draw tourism around the site. They suggest their efforts are not only a gesture to archaeologists, but also reflect a regime that’s more pragmatic now than when it first ruled from 1996 to 2001.
“Bamian and the Buddhas in particular are of great importance to our government, just as they are to the world,” Atiqullah Azizi, the Taliban’s deputy culture minister, said in an interview. He said more than 1,000 guards have been assigned to protect cultural heritage across Afghanistan, restricting access and overseeing ticket sales. Staffers at Kabul’s national museum were surprised last month to see senior Taliban officials at the inauguration of a prominent museum section dedicated to Buddhist artifacts.
But other Taliban members struggle to embrace artifacts they still find blasphemous. Bamian provincial governor Abdullah Sarhadi said he is committed to preserving Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. But he said tourists should be steered toward other sites.
“We are Muslims,” Sarhadi, who says he was held by the United States at Guantánamo Bay, said in an interview. “We should follow the demands of God.” He defended the order to destroy the Buddhas as a “good decision.”
For archaeologists, Bamian is a test of whether Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage, which also includes synagogues and Hindu artifacts, can survive the return of the Taliban. But it could also help answer a much broader question: What kind of government does the regime want to be this time — and how much has it really changed since 2001?
Visitors entering Bamian’s small provincial capital, surrounded by potato fields in the shadow of the snow-capped Hindu Kush mountains, pass a sign that blames the “terrorist Taliban group” for the Buddhas’ destruction. The word “terrorist” has been mostly crossed out.
Authorities have set up a ticket office at the foot of the larger of the two figures, where they charge Afghans 58 cents and foreigners $3.45 to visit. Armed guards sit next to an ice cream vendor nearby. There are few customers.
The main hotel here is fenced off with barbed wire, but gold chandeliers flicker above Japanese, Australian and Taliban flags. Paintings on the walls depict the Buddhas before they were defaced. A new souvenir market is being planned nearby, according to Saifurrahman Mohammadi, information and culture director for the regional Taliban government.
At 26, Mohammadi is too young to remember the monument’s destruction. He says it’s time for the world to move on.
“We’re talking about something that happened decades ago,” he said. His office building features a map of World Heritage sites from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Since 2003, UNESCO has designated the defaced Buddhas, a fortified citadel and other excavations in Bamian as endangered historic sites.
Last year, Mohammadi said, 200,000 registered tourists, most of them Afghans, visited the province, spending an average of $57 each. With additional efforts to promote and revitalize the area, he added, tourism “could become a significant source of income.”
In one of the world’s least developed countries, Bamian has long been one of its poorest regions. The population tries to eke out its living on coal mining and subsistence farming. “These archaeological sites could massively improve people’s lives here,” Mohammadi said.
But people here are skeptical. Few have forgiven the atrocities that human rights groups say the Taliban committed from 1996 to 2001 against the region’s predominantly Shiite Muslim population of minority ethnic Hazaras, a relatively progressive and educated but impoverished minority that remains outspoken against Taliban policies today.
As the economy continues to deteriorate, with international sanctions imposed and cuts in humanitarian aid limiting the inflow of money, there seems little here for people to celebrate.
The teenage sisters who run a dimly lit souvenir shop in Bamian say the street once bustled with tourists who bought colorful Afghan dresses and hand-knotted rugs depicting the Buddhas. But since the Taliban returned, they say, business has fallen 50 percent.
“The shop won’t survive if things continue as they are,” said one sister, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The day before, she said, the Taliban had inspected the private education center where she studies. Finding boys and girls in the same classroom, they halted classes for the day. The girl said she was too afraid to return that morning.
“I’m scared,” she said. “There is no good future here.”
These days, the Bamian Buddhas mostly attract two very different kinds of visitors. Some are Taliban soldiers stationed nearby who are stunned by the beauty of the carved-out cliffs. Others are educated urban Afghans who are angry at the Taliban for destroying the works — and the lives they built during the 20 years the group was out of power.
As visitors toured the site on a recent spring day, some complained within hearing distance of guards.
“The Taliban have a mentality from 500 years ago,” said a 27-year old man visiting from Iran. “They’re mentally not capable of making use of this place.”
Sayed, a 22-year old Afghan man, said he had driven all day to reach the site, curious to learn about his country’s history before Islam became its dominant religion. The Taliban, he said, cannot be trusted with preserving the site.
“They are professionals at destroying things,” he said. “Not at rebuilding them.”
‘The entire world’s heritage’
While concern for Bamian is shared by a range of organizations and experts, there’s been little archaeological work done here since the Taliban’s return in August 2021 led foreign governments and donors to freeze aid and withdraw their archaeologists.
Mohammadi said the government has added guards and gates to protect the site but is unable to finance more extensive work. The groups that left, he said, are welcome to return and resume their projects. “We urge them as government members but also as humans,” he said. “This is the entire world’s heritage.”
But many nonprofits and donors say it would be immoral to return to Afghanistan while the Taliban increases restrictions on women.
Separately, even before the Taliban returned, foreigners disagreed on what to do with the Buddhas. Some favored reconstruction; others wanted to preserve the current remnants.
Today, the site is overlooked by a sprawling but empty cultural center and museum that was built mostly during the Taliban’s absence. Taliban officials allowed a Washington Post team to peer into the site. Sealed doors led to storage rooms where artifacts, visible through slits, appeared to be intact.
UNESCO, which championed the construction of the center, said its opening “has been postponed indefinitely” as a result of the “political context.” While artifacts in the center appear to be safe, the organization said, it remains “deeply concerned about the conservation of the Bamiyan site” after looting and illegal excavations in 2021.
But in a sign that some international archaeologists could ultimately return, UNESCO recently resumed a project with 100 local workers to secure paths and develop conservation works in Bamian.
Philippe Marquis, who heads a French archaeological delegation focused on Afghanistan, says he’s more worried about other, less famous sites. Examining satellite imagery of northern Afghanistan, he says, his delegation recently spotted signs of large-scale excavations. They fear they were signs that economically desperate Afghans might be trying to sell artifacts.
Azizi, the deputy culture minister, strongly denied any government involvement. He said authorities are committed to prosecuting looters.
Marquis said the Taliban “have understood that destroying archaeological sites or historical buildings is not going to gain them support.”
“But the fact is that they are totally lacking capacity and expertise. And they’re the first ones to acknowledge it.”
Drawing foreign tourists will be a challenge. Marc Leaderman’s British-based company led tours of Bamian before the Taliban’s return. Now, he says, neither he nor his clients are interested in returning.
Afghanistan still has “a huge amount to offer,” Leaderman said, but with the Taliban back in power, “there is just not a lot of joy in the country at the moment.”
Not everyone agrees. One recent afternoon, a group of government officials — some Taliban members, some holdovers from the U.S.-backed government they overthrew — were enjoying a trip to Band-e-Amir, a national park near Bamian that features clear blue lakes and pedal-operated swan boats for rent.
“We’re stunned,” said Mohammad Younus Mukhles, 30, a former Taliban fighter who was drinking tea and laughing with comrades in a pedal boat. “It’s very safe.”
Pamela Constable in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
Cash-strapped Taliban selling tickets to ruins of Buddhas it blew up
June 16 (Reuters) – The Taliban’s acting governor of the Afghan central bank met China’s ambassador this week to discuss banking relations and business, the bank’s spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.
Afghanistan’s banking system has been severely hampered by U.S.-led sanctions, a drop in liquidity from frozen central bank assets and a cut in development spending. Regulatory risk concerns of international banks have also largely cut off the country’s formal banking sector from the global financial system.
China does not have formal diplomatic ties with Afghanistan but has continued to maintain an embassy in Kabul since the Taliban took over the country in 2021. Beijing has recently signalled economic interest in its neighbour, and although some Chinese business executives have raised security concerns, they have said they are looking into investment opportunities, especially in mining.
“In this meeting, economy, banking relations, business and some related topics were discussed,” the bank’s spokesperson Hassibullah Noori told Reuters, adding the meeting took place on Thursday in Kabul between Ambassador Wang Yu and acting governor Mullah Hidayatullah Badri.
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson’s office said in a statement to Reuters that the ambassador had met Badri and other heads of “relevant departments” in recent days.
“Both sides exchanged opinions on strengthening China-Afghanistan cooperation in areas such as the economy and trade,” the statement said, adding financial sanctions on Afghanistan were hampering the country’s development.
“China has always supported the peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan, provides sincere help to Afghanistan, and welcomes Afghanistan to join the Belt and Road Initiative,” it said.
Badri is a senior Taliban figure who became acting head of the central bank in March after stepping down as acting finance minister. He was head of the economic commission of the Islamic Emirate, as the Taliban refer to their government, as they conducted a 20-year insurgency against the former Western-backed government of Afghanistan, according to Taliban officials, and he ran most of the Taliban’s fundraising operations at the time.
Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad; Additional reporting by Laurie Chen in Beijing Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Frances Kerry
Taliban’s central-bank governor meets Chinese envoy to discuss banking ties
Since they captured power in summer 2021, the Taleban have issued two strict bans on drugs. In April 2022, they banned the cultivation and production of opium and the use, trade and transport of all illegal narcotics. A year later, in March 2023, they issued another ban, specifically on the cultivation of cannabis and the production of hashish. Recent satellite imagery from the UK-based organisation Alcis has indicated that there has, indeed, been a dramatic decrease in opium cultivation in 2023. Data on whether the more recent cannabis ban is being observed and enforced is yet to come. In this report, AAN’s Jelena Bjelica and Fabrizio Foschini offer some background on the bans, including the less-covered prohibitions on cannabis and methamphetamine, and wonder if the Taleban will be able to continue to enforce their restrictions on a sector of the economy which is critical to national and many households’ income – without a backlash.Afghanistan is one of the world’s major producers of illicit drugs: it has been the world’s largest producer of illegal opiates (opium, heroin and morphine) for more than 20 years, a large producer of cannabis resin (chars, or hashish) for decades and, in the last ten years, a significant producer of methamphetamine, which it exports as meth or other drugs that use meth, like ecstasy, to the region and beyond. However, the Taleban government appears determined to strip the country of all these unflattering ‘accomplishments’. Since the group returned to power in August 2021, it has issued two anti-drug decrees and has been steadily enforcing them. However, they have also kept a blind eye to the trade and trafficking of narcotics, according to a recent report by Alcis and the independent researcher and author on illicit drugs in Afghanistan, David Mansfield.In this report, we first sum up developments on the opium ban, then provide some historical background for the less-debated ban on cannabis, and finally review and summarise what available sources say about methamphetamine production since the Taleban takeover. We conclude with a brief analysis of the impact of these measures on both farmers and the national economy and ask how sustainable the Emirate’s approach to counter-narcotics is in the long run.
The opium ban
The Taleban issued their first anti-drug decree, since they returned to power, banning the cultivation of poppy and production of opium in April 2022. It was right at the beginning of the opium harvest and when Afghans across the country were already suffering under the strain of economic collapse triggered by the Taleban’s military capture of power (for our initial analysis of the ban, see this report). However, the authorities granted farmers a grace period of two months, which meant the 2022 harvest was largely unaffected by the ban. Some eradication was reported to have taken place, as confirmed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its crop monitoring report released in November 2022. UNODC estimated that during this two-month grace period, approximately 6,200 tons of opium were harvested from the roughly 233,000 hectares of land planted with opium poppy in autumn 2021. The area of land sown with poppy in 2021/2022, the UNODC said, was “the third largest” since it began monitoring in 1995, with the opium crop witnessing further expansion mainly in the southwestern provinces. [1]
However, the Taleban Ministry of Interior conducted numerous anti-narcotics operations after the grace period, according to news reports (for example, here). These operations have been confirmed by Mansfield, who reported that the campaign to ban opium built up steadily and over a period of time:
In fact, what followed Haibatullah’s proclamation in April 2022 was a steady ramping up of pressure on drugs production, initially targeting the smaller lower yielding spring and summer poppy crops in the south and southwest, before tackling the methamphetamine industry over the summer and fall, and culminating in concerted action against the 2022/23 poppy crop.
This steady effort seems to have paid off. According to high-resolution satellite imagery of land use by Alcis and Mansfield’s analysis, in Helmand province, poppy cultivation “has fallen from more than 120,000 hectares in 2022 to less than 1,000 hectares in 2023.” [2]
That is significant because far more than half of Afghanistan’s annual opium cultivation has traditionally taken place in Helmand (see graphs 1 and 2). A favourable climate in the province allows for the harvest of up to three crops of opium poppy annually: the winter crop is usually planted in October/November and harvested in April/May, while the spring and summer crop seasons are far shorter and give poorer yields – April to July and July to September, respectively. The timing of the spring and summer harvests in Helmand is precisely the reason, according to Mansfield, why the Taleban focused their anti-drugs effort in Helmand and surrounding areas:
The authorities didn’t touch the standing crop – the one planted in the fall of 2021 – that was only a week or two from harvest as that would have provoked widespread unrest so close to the harvest season and after farmers had invested considerable time and resources in their poppy fields.
Rather it was the second and even third crops of the season that was the focus of the Taliban’s eradication efforts over the spring and summer of 2022. Typically, small and poor yielding, these crops were not well established and were a much easier target for the authorities. Much was made of these efforts with videos of crop destruction posted on social media by the Ministry of Interior as well as by individual commanders and farmers.
Graph 1: Data extracted from the UNODC Annual Opium Surveys. Graph by AAN, 2023.Graph 2: Data for years 2001 to 2022 extracted from the UNODC Annual Opium Surveys; data for 2023 from the Alcis report. Graph by AAN, 2023.
According to Mansfield’s recent analysis, wheat cultivation now dominates the landscape of what had been Afghanistan’s main opium-producing region, the southern and southwestern provinces, which had produced around 80 per cent of Afghanistan’s opium annually for at least the last ten years. He said that in Nangrahar province, another significant opium producer, “by the end of the [2023] season there were only small pockets of poppy cultivation” and that “while cultivation persists – and may have even increased – in parts of the northeast, such as Badakhshan, it is clear the stage is set for the lowest levels of poppy cultivation since the Taliban ban of 2000/01.”
Counterintuitively, in the short run, the ban was not a disaster for all those involved in opium production and trade. Richer farmers and traders have benefited because of a hike in prices. Opium prices had been relatively low until August 2021, when the Taleban came to power, at which point they rose (see our reporting here). That increase in opium prices was an undisputed incentive for farmers to plant opium poppy in the 2021/22 growing season. Then, prices rose further in the wake of the April 2022 announcement of the ban. By November of that year, Mansfield says, “opium prices had risen to almost US$360 per kilogram in the south and southwest, and US$ 475 per kilogram in the east – triple what it had been in November 2021.” Farmers who could afford to wait to sell their opium until after harvest benefitted from the price rises. It gave them a measure of temporary financial security, even as they wondered what damage to their future incomes the looming ban would cause. For poorer farmers, who are given seeds and other support by traders in exchange for the forthcoming harvest, in practice going into debt each year, the higher prices came too late to have brought benefit. Landless labourers, who are typically paid in raw opium, also could not afford to wait for prices to rise. The short-term impact of the ban, therefore, has been very mixed.
The cannabis ban
The Taleban had indicated their intention to take action against all drugs, including cannabis, in April 2022 [3] when the decree banning opium also included a prohibition against the “use, transport, selling, trading, importing and exporting of all types of drugs.” [4] They have also taken demonstrative action against cannabis cultivation, for example by destroying cannabis fields in Farah province in June 2022, as can be seen in this Radio Free Europe video.
The timing of the second decree, numbered 510, which specifically forbids cannabis cultivation and charges the Ministry of Interior and the ‘investigative agencies’ with destroying cannabis and sending violators to court for prosecution, was precise. It was issued on 9 March 2023 (16 Sha’ban 1444 in the Islamic lunar calendar), just before cannabis would typically be sowed.
In Afghanistan, cannabis is a summer crop, with planting done in most of the country between late March and late May, harvesting in October and November, and resin extraction in December and January. The ban came before the crop was or would have been planted. However, according to AAN sources, it seems that in the north, specifically in Balkh, Badakhshan and Takhar provinces, the cultivation of cannabis persists. The hashish from Balkh and Badakhshan, in particular, is very much valued on the local and regional markets, and it seems highly unlikely that farmers in these two provinces would easily let go of such a valuable cash crop. It also appears that the Taleban may be acting more cautiously in these provinces and are aware of people’s dissatisfaction with the policy. In most provinces, cannabis is grown and is sown as part of a patchwork pattern among other crops, such as maize, and rarely constitutes the sole production of a rural household. Even so, the sudden loss of a year’s harvest would still represent a serious blow to the prospects of economic survival for many an Afghan family. [5]
The ban on cannabis also has wider implications than the ban on poppy. It challenges the circulation of a substance engrained in the life of many Afghans, the occasional consumption of which constitutes a favourite pastime for many otherwise ‘respectable’ people. Despite cannabis not being condoned by either religious or social norms, its use within certain limits has been tolerated more easily than other ‘vices’. Its use is fairly widespread, cross-cutting Afghan society in terms of its use by various age groups and in both rural and urban areas, although typically only by men (for more details on hashish consumption in Afghan society, read this AAN report). The relatively relaxed attitude towards hashish smoking as an occasional pleasure does not hold true for any other intoxicating substance, although opium may also be valued for its medicinal role in pain relief (a role that has always risked addiction, especially when used to treat chronic pain).
Like poppy, the Taleban had formally banned hashish production and consumption during the first Emirate (find their subsequent decrees on this here and here), although, unlike poppy, they had not made much effort to prevent its cultivation. However, in March 2020, while the Taleban were still waging their anti-government insurgency, they did issue a decree banning the cultivation of cannabis and the production and trafficking of hashish in areas under their control. They put a great deal of effort into formulating that ban, consulting Islamic scholars and their own various commissions before issuing it, and justifying the prohibition on religious and social grounds, while also being conscious of the financial cost it imposed on farmers (see this AAN report).
The strategy pursued by the Taleban in the growing season that followed the insurgency-era ban was to let farmers harvest the 2020/21 crop and then prevent them from sowing cannabis seeds the following year, but only in selected areas of the country: they enforced the ban in provinces where cannabis was a relatively new crop, such as Ghazni, Logar and Paktika. However, in that first year of the implementation of the ban, they did not stop farmers growing it in its traditional heartlands, such as Kandahar, Balkh and Nangrahar (for details on the 2020 Taleban ban, read this AAN report).
What about meth?
The methamphetamine industry has been expanding rapidly in Afghanistan since 2015 when local meth production moved to using plant-based ephedrine because the process of making it from over-the-counter medicines, such as cough syrups and decongestants, was complicated and more expensive. The raw material is the plant, ephedra, which grows naturally in arid areas above 2,500 metres above sea level, in Afghanistan’s central highlands and surrounding areas. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction was the first to note this move in a 2020 report:
Ephedrine, known locally as ‘F’, can be extracted using a relatively simple and low-cost method.… According to an ephedrine ‘cook’ in Bakwa, ‘this is easy, everyone can learn it’; another villager in Bakwa described how the number of local ephedrine cooks had risen from one to 30 in a period of three years.
Mansfield reported that the Taleban issued a ban on ephedra in December 2021; AAN has not been able to confirm the ban, but the actions of the Taleban in destroying stocks of the plant and laboratories in multiple provinces have been widely reported. [6] The prime focus of the Taleban was the Abdul Wadud bazaar in Bakwa in the southwestern province of Farah, which was the most important trading market for the ephedra plant. [7] “Once in Abdul Wadood,” Mansfield wrote, “[the plants] would be stored on open ground in the centre of the bazaar, where [they] would be milled and sold to the growing number of makeshift ephedrine labs that had been established in the surrounding area.” He described how those involved in the trade in Bakwa were first told they could not store the crop and later saw labs targeted. The number of labs in the 400 km2 area around Abdul Wadud, he said, went from 174 in February 2000 to 126 in March 2021, 114 in January 2022 and zero by September 2022. Yet, when it comes to methamphetamine, Mansfield said, “disruption rather than elimination is the more likely outcome of these efforts.”
The market disruption was significant and by November 2022 the price of ephedra and ephedrine had risen fourfold compared to twelve months prior, while meth prices had tripled. Prices have largely remained at these levels ever since.
AAN found the same upward pressure on prices when, in June 2022, a few months after the April decree banning all drugs and drug-producing plants, we asked about the price of ephedra and meth. We were told that one man (4.5 kilogrammes) of ephedra had been selling for about 150 afghanis (around USD 1.7), but since the ban, the price had risen almost seven-fold, to around 1,000 afghanis (USD 11.4) per man. As for the refined product, meth, called shisha (glass) in Afghanistan, one kilo was going for 150,000 afghanis (around USD 1,700) in June 2022. A local contact also suggested that, at least as late as June 2022, for each truckload, which is almost 4,500 kg of ephedra, transported to Bakwa market, the Taleban were still taking 300,000 afghanis (around USD 3,400) in taxes and transit fees.
What might be the rationale for the Emirate’s anti-narcotics drive?
The prohibition on the consumption of intoxicating substances is an obvious element of the Emirate’s view of the role of an Islamic state in upholding and enforcing proper Muslim conduct. In his April 2022 decree, Taleban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada says that those disobeying will face sharia ‘procedures’. As we explored in our detailed look at the thinking behind the Taleban’s March 2020 ban on cannabis in areas under their control, it was clear that the movement has been willing and able to justify their decisions on the grounds of religious sanction. When looking at the reasons behind that insurgency-era ban, we found they were multiple and went beyond the religious injunctions. They included the leadership’s desire to control its members: in a number of areas under Taleban control, some Taleban commanders had themselves been cultivating cannabis and trading its produce. Widespread hashish consumption among the population and the involvement of their own members in its very production appear to have raised the alarm among the Taleban leadership about cannabis at that time.
That mix of motivations may also hold true for the current bans. As well as religious injunctions against taxing intoxicating substances, there are domestic worries about consumption: in the past decade, addiction to drugs, especially heroin, has become a major problem in Afghanistan and a serious concern for broader public opinion. The Taleban have already displayed an iron fist against drug users in some hotspots of drug consumption on the streets of Kabul. The desire to demonstrate their ability to crack down on the widespread presence of drugs and their consumption may also have been behind the bans. They could boost support for the Taleban among some sectors of the population who are concerned about drug addiction, although would that balance the potential opposition from farmers, traders and labourers taking such an economic blow from the counter-narcotics prohibitions?
It seems possible, as well, that the Taleban’s decision to announce the ban on opium just months after taking power, as well as their determination to implement it, may be oriented towards international audiences as well. The fight against the production and trafficking of opiates is one of the strategic levels of interaction between Afghanistan and the world and possibly the only one where the Taleban can hope to establish non-controversial relationships and positive cooperation with most international actors. Any major success on this side could bring the Taleban some much-needed plaudits, at least as a reliable partner in the fight against drugs. Shortly after the publication of the ALCIS report, on 7 June, for example, US special representative Thomas West acknowledged the Taleban’s achievement.
International reactions to the cannabis decree have been fewer, but the move has been commented on positively in the press of Pakistan, itself a producer, as well as a major consumer of Afghan hashish. Pakistani commentators also pointed to the blow this will cause to the funding of militant outfits (likely referring to the Tehrik-e Taleban Pakistan or TTP) and to the need, as they see it, for the United Nations and ‘international community’ to offer economic assistance to the Taleban to help support its counter-narcotics policy.
The Taleban may hope to attract ad hoc forms of economic support and cooperation to support their counter-narcotics policy. They may even hope it will ease their path to recognition. Or, they may just believe the bans are the right thing to do. Cynical observers might also point to those benefiting financially from the opium ban; in particular, anyone who had stocks or could buy up stocks of opium paste would already have made major short-term gains.
Can the bans be sustained?
The Taleban’s achievements in counter-narcotics so far certainly look impressive. Although comprehensive data on cannabis cultivation and production of meth is yet to come in, it is clear that the Emirate has, at least, effectively and severely cut back opium cultivation in the 2022/23 growing season. The reduction is especially dramatic given that, for two decades, the internationally-backed Republic failed to do anything even close to this. Indeed, it is a feat matched only by the Taleban’s first emirate. Then, the collapse of the Taleban regime in November 2001 meant it was never known how long they might have maintained their ban on poppy. This important question could be answered this time round: How sustainable – economically, socially and politically – will the Taleban’s sudden cutting off of opium production be?
The major consequence of the bans will be economic. This time, even richer opium farmers, who have seen the ban temporarily boost their household economies, will join poorer farmers and the landless who usually gain much-needed cash from labouring in the poppy fields, in being hit hard by the loss of this important cash crop if the ban lasts into future years. As prices for opium rise off the back of the ban, the loss of earnings will become even starker. An indication of losses can be seen by what happened after the last ban in 2000 collapsed when the United States intervened the following year. The one-year ban had triggered a massive price hike, and, according to UNODC, farmers, when they could grow poppy again, gained on average 16,000 USD per hectare compared to earlier years (the average annual gross income of farmers in the period 1994-1999 had been close to 1,500 USD per hectare: for more information on how much farmers earn on average see this AAN report ).
As for cannabis, its cultivation in Afghanistan has always been a fast-changing phenomenon, which is difficult for researchers and the authorities alike to monitor. Thanks to the availability of solar-powered generators for irrigation, the plant can be grown on many types of soil, even on terrain unsuitable for other crops. It also does not require sophisticated skills or prohibitive investment. In recent years, cannabis has been spreading to different parts of the country beyond its ‘traditional’ growing areas of Balkh, Takhar and Kandahar. In Logar, Ghazni and Paktika provinces displaced people or sharecroppers from outside the area have put empty stretches of land to use to grow cannabis, hoping for quick economic returns from small investments in irrigation. Like opium, a one-year decrease in production will not affect those who stocked reserves and may even have a ‘beneficial’ effect on market prices. The ban on cannabis is far more difficult to enforce because hemp plants can prosper nearly anywhere, including on very rugged mountain terrain. It is, therefore, unlikely to be as effective as the ban on poppy. Even so, in due time, an economic backlash will be felt by cannabis farmers.
The Taleban have also shown their determination to stop the production of meth, which will also hurt many households’ economies, even though, as Mansfield has tweeted, their targeting of labs in populated areas may just accelerate the existing trend to site labs in more remote mountainous areas, nearer, and therefore more cost-effective, to where ephedra grows. [8]
A complete halt to the drug economy, especially to opium production, trade and export, would be a major blow not only to many individual households but also to the national economy. UNODC has estimated that the potential gross value of the opiate economy in the 2010s, including exports, was equivalent to almost half of Afghanistan’s total licit GDP and helped employ about a quarter of a million people. Such a sudden drop in national income would surely exacerbate the humanitarian crisis affecting Afghanistan since the Taleban capture of power. “An effective ban on drug production in the midst of a failing economy,” warned Mansfield, “is a recipe for disaster.” In a lucid analysis for the United States Institute of Peace, economist William Byrd has also unpicked the harm the bans will have on Afghanistan’s economy, deep enough, he believes, as does Mansfield, to potentially cause a major outflow of refugees.
For government income as well, the bans will have consequences. In the past, the Taleban have taxed opium farmers with ushr (a tithe on the harvest) and traders with ‘customs duties’. [9] Here, however, it is a messy picture, at least on trade. According to Mansfield, drugs exports are ongoing:
Opium grown prior to the imposition of Haibatullah’s ban continues to be sold and seizures by Afghanistan’s neighbours and further afield, suggest a continued supply of both opiates and methamphetamine. In March 2023, the Taliban even removed the formal tax they imposed on the export of opiates since coming to power, easing the transactions costs for the cross border trade.
The Taleban must be aware that the financial losses for Afghanistan would be immeasurable if its international and national drug trade networks were dismantled for good. It appears that, for now, then, the ban has hit farmers, especially poorer ones, but the traders have escaped any consequences. [10]
State policy that hits people’s pockets, especially when it is seen to discriminate, is always risky. If few Afghans are likely to object in principle to the Taleban bans on drugs, the economic consequences of the prohibitions have the potential to alienate those sections of rural society that find a much-needed source of income in the cultivation of poppy or hemp or the collection of ephedra. For opium, that would be the south and southwest, Nangrahar and Badakhshan. Cultivation of cannabis is widespread across almost all provinces of the country, but there are areas where it is particularly developed and relevant in economic terms. Some of these areas, such as the provinces of Panjshir, Takhar and Balkh, are already hotspots of opposition to the Taleban.
At the very least, the bans are likely to mean some loss of goodwill from those directly affected and, therefore, the need for the authorities to either expend political capital for cajoling farmers to obey the ban or deal with the political consequences if they have to enforce it coercively.
Much will depend on whether the ban is maintained into a second and subsequent years, as lost harvests hit the incomes of richer farmers, traders deal with dwindling stockpiles of opium, the government deals with a loss of income and Afghanistan’s national economy suffers. 2024 and future years will be the real test for the Taleban’s anti-drug policy.
Edited by Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
UNODC said: “[I]n the 2022 cropping season… opium cultivation continued to be concentrated in the south-western parts of the country (accounting for 73%), where the largest increases [compared to 2021] took place, followed by the western provinces (accounting for 14%). In some regions opium poppy cultivation occupied a significant proportion of overall agricultural land. For example, in Hilmand province one-fifth of arable land was dedicated to opium poppy, and in some districts the proportion was even higher – taking away fields from vitally important food crops, including wheat.”
↑2
Interestingly, in 2001 during the first Taleban ban, Helmand recorded no poppy cultivation; of an estimated 7,606 hectares (ha) of opium poppy that was cultivated in Afghanistan during the 2001 season, none was in Helmand (indeed, almost all cultivation that year was in Northern Alliance controlled Badakhshan province). Helmand’s poppy fields shrank from 42,853 hectares in 2000 to zero in 2001.
↑3
This was despite having reportedly shown some interest in a proposal by one German entrepreneur who, in December 2021, said he wanted to legally commercialise Afghan hashish for therapeutic purposes (in German here and English here).
↑4
Full text of the opium decree (AAN translation):
In the name of Allah, the most merciful
Decree of His Excellency Amir al-mu’minin, may Allah protect him, concerning the forbidding of poppy cultivation in the country
Number: (30)
Date: 04/09/1443 lunar hijri [5 April 2022]
All compatriots are hereby informed that from the date of the issuance of this decree, cultivating poppies in Afghanistan is completely forbidden. After this time, no one should cultivate poppies on their land. Anyone who sows it, their crops will be destroyed and they themselves will face Sharia procedures.
Likewise, the use, transport, selling, trading, importing and exporting of all types of drugs such as alcohol, heroin, shisha [methamphetamine], tablet K [a ‘dirty cocktail of methamphetamine, opium and MDMA], hashish and all other types of drugs, as well as drug-producing plants is forbidden. Anyone disobeying this decree will be referred to the legal and justice departments of the Islamic Emirate and will face severe punishment.
Wa al-salam [Regards]
Amir al-mu’minin Sheikh ul-Quran wa al-Hadith [Authority in teaching Quran and Hadith]
Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada
↑5
The rise of the more worrying opium poppy over the last 50 years has overshadowed Afghanistan’s role as a producer and exporter of hashish, which began in the 19th century. In the 1970s, when Afghanistan was a prime supplier of hashish to Europe and even North America, King Zahir Shah was prompted to ban cultivation and launch eradication campaigns in exchange for funding from the United States government. Production of hashish continued even during the decades of the Afghan conflict, with hemp becoming, much like opium, a cash crop of choice for Afghan farmers in times of uncertainty and thus a staple of Afghanistan’s illicit war economy. The post-2001 governments banned the cultivation, trafficking and consumption of hashish with successive counter-narcotics laws (read AAN analysis here). These efforts met little success, however, UNODC said in 2009 that Afghanistan is the “world’s top producers of hashish”.
↑6
Read recent reports about Taleban anti-ephedra operations in Uruzgan here, here and here; Sar-e Pul here; Baghlan here; Daikundi here; and Bamiyan here.
↑7
Laboratories for methamphetamine production in the same area had been the target of deadly US airstrikes in 2019 (read AAN report here).
↑8
Mansfield tweeted about the Taleban destroying meth labs on 12 June 2023:
This is not to say that the meth industry has been eliminated. It has not. Production persists but at markedly higher costs & in more remote mountainous areas, many of them closer to the source of the ephedra crop (which grows at 2500+m)…. This was a process that in part began prior to the Taliban ban- a logical response to the challenges of transporting bulky ephedra to ephedrine labs hundreds of miles away- but escalated after with larger numbers of labs appearing in the central highlands & areas nearby.
This report has not looked at the consequences of the Taleban ban on opium to global supply. Given the extensive stocks of opium paste, shortages will not be immediate as long as they are still exported. After the 2000 ban, according to Mansfield, it took about 18 months to two years for the price of heroin to be pushed up.
Taleban Bans on Drugs: What is the Emirate’s counter-narcotics agenda?
June 15 (Reuters) – The U.N. children’s agency said it was holding discussions with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban over “timelines and practicalities” for a possible required handover of its education programmes and that classes would continue in the meantime.
Aid officials say that the Taliban had signalled international organisations could no longer be involved in education projects, in a move criticised by the U.N. but not yet confirmed by Afghan authorities.
UNICEF said it had received assurances from the education ministry that its community-based classes, which educate 500,000 students, would continue while they discussed the matter.
“As the lead agency for the education cluster in Afghanistan, UNICEF is engaged in constructive discussions with the de facto Ministry of Education and appreciates the commitment from the de facto minister to keep all … classes continuing while discussions take place about timelines and practicalities,” UNICEF’s Afghanistan spokesperson, Samantha Mort, told Reuters.
“In order to minimise disruption to children’s learning, it is imperative that any handover to national NGOs is done strategically and includes comprehensive assessment and capacity building.”
A spokesperson for the Taliban did not respond to request for comment. The Ministry of Education has not publicly confirmed the policy.
The Taliban, who took power in 2021, have closed most secondary schools to girls, stopped female students attending universities and stopped many Afghan women working for aid groups and the United Nations in accordance with their strict interpretation of Islamic law.
International organisations have been heavily involved in education projects, and UNICEF made an agreement with the Taliban to run community classes before they took over the country.
Two humanitarian sources told Reuters this month that aid agencies had been told provincial authorities had been directed to stop the involvement of international organisations in education projects, possibly within weeks.\
The U.N. spokesperson in New York said the move would be a “horrendous step backwards”.
UNICEF runs many community-based classes including for 300,000 girls, often in homes in rural areas.
The Taliban took over Afghanistan after a 20-year insurgency against U.S.-led forces with a speed and ease that took the world by surprise.
Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Nick Macfie
UN in talks about possibly handing over Afghan teaching projects to Taliban
The Ministry of Economics said that children in the country need humanitarian aid and support in the education sector.
UNICEF’s representative in Afghanistan Fran Equiza said that “16 million children” are in need of protection and humanitarian assistance.
Fran Equiza added that in Afghanistan, children’s rights are eroded every day and too many kids are burdened with responsibilities way beyond their age.
“That smile gives me hope. This smile and this child-friendly space, in a country with almost 16 million children, need protection and humanitarian assistance. In a country in which way too many kids are burdened with responsibilities way beyond their age, and children’s rights are eroded every day,”
The Ministry of Economics said that children in the country need humanitarian aid and support in the education sector, and the world should support the current government in both areas.
“Afghan children need support in two areas, in the area of humanitarian aid and in the area of education. We request the international community support the Islamic Emirate in both areas,” said Abdul Latif Nazari, the deputy minister of the Economy.
Meanwhile, some children in the capital said that because of their families and life, they face hard labor and they ask the Islamic Emirate to pay more attention to the rights of children.
“We call on the Islamic Emirate to pay attention to children so we can learn and be someone in the future,” said Najib, a child.
“I don’t want to work, I want to learn and become a pilot,” said Fahim, a child.
Earlier, the head of the labour organization in Afghanistan announced the increase in the number of child labourers in the country and said that the battles of several decades and the poverty of families are considered the main reasons for child labor.
UNICEF also said that In Afghanistan, 1 in 5 children is engaged in child labour, and it considered the political change in the country to be one of the factors influencing the increase in child labor.
UNICEF: 16M Children Need Protection and Humanitarian Assistance
The United Nations says aid workers are still in a “race against time” to remove rubble and rebuild after the devastating earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan last month, killing at least 2,200 people and cutting off remote areas.
The 6.0-magnitude quake on Aug. 31 was shallow, destroying or causing extensive damage to low-rise buildings in the mountainous region. It hit late at night, and homes — mostly made of mud, wood, or rocks — collapsed instantly, becoming death traps.
Satellite data shows that about 40,500 truckloads of debris still needs to be cleared from affected areas in several provinces, the United Nations Development Program said Wednesday. Entire communities have been upended and families are sleeping in the open, it added.
The quake’s epicenter was in remote and rugged Kunar province, challenging rescue and relief efforts by the Taliban government and humanitarian groups. Authorities deployed helicopters or airdropped army commandos to evacuate survivors. Aid workers walked for hours on foot to reach isolated communities.
“This is a race against time,” said Devanand Ramiah, from the UNDP’s Crisis Bureau. “Debris removal and reconstruction operations must start safely and swiftly.”
People’s main demands were the reconstruction of houses and water supplies, according to a spokesman for a Taliban government committee tasked with helping survivors, Zia ur Rahman Speenghar.
People were getting assistance in cash, food, tents, beds, and other necessities, Speenghar said Thursday. Three new roads were under construction in the Dewagal Valley, and roads would be built to areas where there previously were none.
“Various countries and organizations have offered assistance in the construction of houses but that takes time. After the second round of assistance, work will begin on the third round, which is considering what kind of houses can be built here,” the spokesman said.
Afghanistan is facing a “perfect storm” of crises, including natural disasters like the recent earthquake, said Roza Otunbayeva, who leads the U.N. mission to the country.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
