Pompeo Says Ashraf Ghani “Stole The Election”

January 15, 2023 Current News Articles

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14 Jan 2023

Pompeo added that Ghani was never asked to step down from power.

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Mohammad Ashraf Ghani stole the election just more effective than his competitor at stealing votes.

Pompeo added that Ghani was never asked to step down from power.

“He would think that I did, but I didn’t. I was incredibly frustrated with president Ghani, it took us to step in and finally get all the Afghans to the negotiating table. This was an effort that president Obama had tried to undertake even a little bit before that I just to get the conversations going and we ultimately achieved, and President Ghani was against that. He didn’t want to do that… He stole the election just more effective than his competitor at stealing votes,” Pompeo said.

Speaking at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, Pompeo said that Ashraf Ghani, the former president of Afghanistan, was opposed to the talks between “the United States and the Taliban.”

“President Ghani wasn’t up for that, didn’t want to participate in it and that was most unfortunate, because in the end, you see what happens: Unlike Zelensky who chose to stay, President Ghani hops on an airplane and heads to someplace to go live a very nice peaceful life while there so many people were suffering in Afghanistan,” Pompeo said.

Hashmat Ghani Ahmadzai, the brother of former president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, rejected the remarks made against his brother by the former US Secretary of State.

“Now they want to cover up his faults in this way and at the same time create another hostility or war of words among Afghan politicians like they have always done,” Hashmat Ghani said.

“The remarks of Pompeo about Ashraf Ghani are completely true. Ghani’s approach was that it was either him or nobody,” said Sayed Javad Sajjadi, a university lecturer.

From 2018 to 2021, Mike Pompeo served as the US Secretary of State, and it was during this time that “the US and the Taliban” signed the Doha agreement.

UN: Afghan bank’s cash remarks ‘misleading, unhelpful’

January 15, 2023 Current News Articles

Associated Press

15 Jan 2023

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The U.N. criticized Afghanistan’s Taliban-controlled central bank for making “misleading and unhelpful” remarks about cash destined for humanitarian work. It comes amid growing tension between the global body and the country’s rulers over bans on female education and employment.

The U.N. uses the money mostly to provide millions of Afghans with critical humanitarian assistance, flying in cash because of banking disruptions since the Taliban seized power in August 2021.

Foreign aid stopped after the takeover. World governments imposed sanctions, halted bank transfers and froze billions more in Afghanistan’s currency reserves, unwilling to work with the Taliban, given their rule in the late 1990s and their refusal to educate girls and allow women to work.

The Taliban have, in the last 18 months, barred females from education beyond sixth grade, including university, from public spaces and from most employment.

Most recently, they barred women from working at national and international non-governmental organizations. That has drawn condemnation from the U.N., aid agencies and foreign governments and raised concerns that Afghans will suffer and even die if female workers continue to be excluded from humanitarian work. The Taliban show no signs of reversing these edicts, despite repeated calls to do so and visits from high-level U.N. and other foreign officials.

Their chief spokesman says authorities will not allow un-Islamic activities in Afghanistan and that politics should be kept out of humanitarian aid.

The U.N. in Afghanistan issued a statement late Saturday in response to a tweet from the Taliban-controlled central bank, which said a package of $40 million was deposited in a commercial bank in the Afghan capital, Kabul. It posted a photo of wads of cash.

“Da Afghanistan Bank (the Afghan central bank) appreciates any principled move that will bring currency to the country and help the needy in the society,” the tweet said.

But the U.N. said its cash is placed into designated accounts in a private bank and distributed directly to its agencies and a small number of “approved and vetted” humanitarian partners in Afghanistan.

“None of the cash brought is deposited in the Central Bank of Afghanistan nor provided to the Taliban de facto authorities by the UN,” the world body said in a statement. “Announcements by non-UN entities about UN. fund shipments are misleading & unhelpful.”

The United Nations has flown in around $1.8 billion in funds for the U.N. and its partners to carry out their work since December 2021.

It said the amount of cash brought in to Afghanistan is proportional to the U.N.’s program of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan.

“If the volume of assistance that the UN is able to provide diminishes the amount of cash shipped will be reduced,” the U.N. said.

It said the cash transfer mechanism has proved to be essential in the provision of life-saving assistance to more than 25 million Afghans.

Police: Ex-Afghan female lawmaker, guard shot dead at home

January 15, 2023 Current News Articles

Associated Press

15 Jan 2023

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A former Afghan female lawmaker and her bodyguard have been shot dead by unknown assailants at her home in the capital, Kabul, police said Sunday.

Mursal Nabizada was among the few female parliamentarians who stayed in Kabul after the Taliban seized power in August 2021.

It is the first time a lawmaker from the previous administration has been killed in the city since the takeover.

Local police chief Molvi Hamidullah Khalid said Nabizada and her guard were shot dead around 3 a.m. Saturday in the same room.

He said her brother and a second security guard were injured. A third security guard fled the scene with money and jewelry.

She died on the first floor of her home, which she used as her office. Khalid said investigations are underway. He did not answer questions about possible motives.

Abdullah Abdullah, who was a top official in Afghanistan’s former Western-backed government, said he was saddened by Nabizada’s death and hoped the perpetrators would be punished. He described her as a “representative and servant of the people.”

A former Kandahar parliamentarian, Malalai Ishaqzai, also offered her condolences.

Nabizada was elected in 2019 to represent Kabul and stayed in office until the Taliban takeover.

She was a member of the parliamentary defense commission and worked at a private non-governmental group, the Institute for Human Resources Development and Research.

As Humanitarian Crises Escalate, So Do Demands to End Them

January 14, 2023 Analytical articles

The New York Times

Jan. 14, 2023

This article is part of our special report on the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, says the global refugee crisis “is manageable, not insoluble.”

Humanitarian crises — especially the plight of refugees — around the world are once again among the issues on the agenda at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

A report by the International Rescue Committee predicts that in 2023 nearly 340 million people will require some kind of humanitarian aid as a result of civil wars, invasions like the one in Ukraine, poverty, income inequality, climate change and more.

David Miliband, 57, is president and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee, one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid and refugee advocacy organizations.

The group, whose founding was precipitated in the 1930s by Albert Einstein, a refugee himself, deploys more than 40,000 staff members and volunteers in 40 countries.

Mr. Miliband is a former member of the British Parliament and was foreign secretary from 2007 to 2010. He had served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the New Agenda for Fragility and Resilience until Dec. 31, when his term ended. He said he planned to attend the forum again this year.

Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum, said in a statement that refugees had always been part of the forum’s agenda but that “since the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, we have increased our focus on the world’s most vulnerable populations — including refugees and other displaced persons — through a dedicated set of discussions, communities and initiatives.”

For example, the statement said, the forum’s Humanitarian and Resilience Investing Initiative is trying to channel private capital toward “vulnerable communities and fragile economies,” and its Refugee Employment and Employability Initiative is building on its support for Ukrainian refugees to bolster employment of refugees across conflict zones.

Mr. Miliband recently spoke by telephone and email about the global crisis and challenges. The interview has been edited and condensed.

If there is one point about the plight of the world’s refugees you would like to emphasize at Davos, what would it be?

That the refugee crisis is manageable, not insoluble.

It is, right now, concentrated in relatively few countries. It’s about a hundred million people. The number has more or less tripled in the last decade. If you listened to some media, you’d think that Western Europe or Britain or America host most refugees. They don’t. Most are in countries like Lebanon or Jordan or Turkey or Bangladesh or Uganda.

But it can be managed. The refugee crisis is one of the global risks, alongside climate and health pandemics, that have been monstrously undermanaged and mismanaged in this phase of globalization these past 20 years.

My message to the people going to Davos is that if they are to continue to reap the benefits of globalization, they have to be willing to bear the burdens of globalization. The “burdens” refer to those who make the rules for how the world deals with the transnational needs that arise in a connected world.

What are some concrete steps that can be taken?

We think that humanitarian catastrophe is a choice. Reducing the scale of global humanitarian need means incentivizing actors with power to make the choice against it. The 100 million displaced worldwide and the 340 million in humanitarian need [according to United Nations data] will need more than aid to break the cycle of protracted crisis. They need fresh thinking on preventing famine; protection from the worst impacts of conflict and impunity; and a new deal for the displaced, via support to low- and middle-income states least equipped to support large refugee populations but providing a global public good. We need ambitious refugee resettlement targets.

What has caused the number of refugees to triple in the last 20 years?

Well, we know the answer to that. Civil wars. They represent 80 percent of the driver of humanitarian need. Second, the climate crisis, which for many people is a contributor to conflict and the flight of people. But the fundamental reason we have more refugees is that we’ve had more, longer and more virulent civil wars around the world — with the exception of Ukraine, which is obviously the product of an invasion.

Has the worldwide resurgence of authoritarianism exacerbated the increased refugee numbers?

There’s no question that we’re living in an age of democratic recession. There is good evidence that the more autocratic a regime, the more it rides with impunity in the wars it engages with. Since we’re primarily looking at the drivers of refugees from conflict, I would say that the rise of autocracy is an associated factor rather than the driving factor. It’s the impunity that threatens them.

The Taliban in Afghanistan recently barred women who were not accompanied by a male relative from workplaces. In response, the rescue committee, whose 8,000 employees in the country includes 3,000 females, has suspended operations there. That must have been a difficult decision to make.

I.R.C. operations depend on our Afghan female staff as well as male. They work at all levels of the organization, from senior leadership to health care staff working with female patients.

We simply cannot work without them. We know that Afghans are suffering from extreme poverty. They cannot do without humanitarian aid, but that is the consequence of the latest edict.

In the I.R.C.’s annual report, you write that the “guardrails” protecting the world’s refugees are being eroded. Can you define what you mean by “guardrails?”

Guardrails are the buffers that prevent disaster turning into catastrophe. And they are weakening. Social safety nets are weakening. Overseas aid is weakening. The laws of war are being weakened. So we are saying we need to strengthen the guardrails because that’s the way to at least mitigate some of the worst symptoms of conflict and disaster.

Obviously, the best case is to get to the roots of the problems and reinvent diplomacy to try and tackle these civil wars of source. But that’s easier said than done.

How do you avoid feeling numbed by the huge number of people in need of your advocacy — tens of millions?

If you’re running an NGO [nongovernmental organization], you’re trying to make the world better one person, one family at a time. So we are working from the ground level.

And I think second, if you look at the statistics, you can get depressed. If you look at the people, you have hope. And that’s the way we try and run the I.R.C.: from the lessons of the fortitude and the determination and the creativity of the people who are our clients.

In 2013, you left British politics to head the I.R.C. Do you feel you are able to effect more change leading an NGO than you could in politics?

No. It’s different. If you’re in politics, you look at the big picture and the danger is that you lose sight of the people. If you are at an NGO, you see the people, but the danger is that you lose sight of the big picture.

Not all the news about refugee policy is negative. As chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel offered to absorb nearly a million people fleeing the Syrian conflict. Colombia has provided a haven for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans. The member states of the European Union have been welcoming to the Ukrainians. What can we learn from these examples of generosity?

That when people and governments decide to manage a refugee crisis, they can — even when the flow is very fast and very large. Generosity — and I don’t like using that word — has been an enormous benefit to the societies that have done it. Just think about America and what refugees have done. But you have to manage the system properly. The U.S. southern border is not managed properly. It takes six to 10 weeks to process an asylum claim in Germany. It takes three to four years in America. That’s the recipe for backlash.

Finally, treat individuals with dignity because they can become patriotic and productive citizens when they are given some humanity.

Any final thoughts for the Davos conferees?

I think we are facing the globalization of risk. At the moment, it is being matched by the nationalization of resilience. And so, what I want global leaders to do is fill that gap. Stepping up and into global responsibility to match global power is the essential demand that we make in Davos.

Claudia Dreifus teaches science journalism at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. She had previously taught at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 17, 2023

Taliban ban on female aid workers poses big dilemma for US

January 14, 2023 Current News Articles

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER

Associated Press

14 January 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — For an idled worker at a Kabul-based aid group, Abaad, that helps abused Afghan women, frightened and often tearful calls are coming in, not only from her clients but also from her female colleagues.

A Dec. 24 order from the Taliban barring aid groups from employing women is paralyzing deliveries that help keep millions of Afghans alive, and threatening humanitarian services countrywide. As another result of the ban, thousands of women who work for such organizations across the war-battered country are facing the loss of income they desperately need to feed their own families.

The prohibition is posing one of the biggest policy challenges over Afghanistan for the United States and other countries since the U.S. military withdrawal in August 2021 opened the door for the Taliban takeover. Those nations face the difficult task of crafting an international response that neither further worsens the plight of millions of aid-dependent Afghans nor caves in to the Taliban’s crackdown on women.

The United Nations estimates that 85% of nongovernmental aid organizations in Afghanistan have partially or fully shut down operations because of the ban, which is the Taliban’s latest step to drive women from public life.

Abaad was among those suspending its work. Its female employees provided support and counseling to women who endured rape, beatings, forced marriages or other domestic abuse.

Female clients told the Abaad worker that without the group’s help, they fear they will wind up on Kabul’s streets. For the worker herself and for thousands like her across Afghanistan, they depend on their paychecks to survive in a broken economy where aid officials say 97% of the population is now in poverty or at risk of it.

One colleague told her she was contemplating suicide.

The aid worker and others interviewed expressed hope that the United States, the United Nations and others will stand by them and persuade the Taliban to relent on the ban.

“That’s all we ask. They should find a solution, find a way to support people here in Afghanistan,” she said. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of her safety.

Several leading global aid organizations that have suspended operations are urging U.N. aid agencies to do the same. They are asking the Biden administration to use its influence to ensure the international community stands firm.

The U.S. is the largest single humanitarian donor to Afghanistan. It also has an abiding interests in quelling security threats from extremist groups in Afghanistan, one of the tasks for which it hopes to maintain some limited relationship with the Taliban.

A U.S. official involved in the discussions predicted a final international response that falls somewhere between suspending all aid operations, which the official said would be inhumane and ineffective, and the other extreme of fully acquiescing to the Taliban ban.

One proposal being looked at in the administration is stopping all but lifesaving aid to Afghans, according to another U.S. official and nongovernmental officials familiar with the discussion.

The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss ongoing deliberations and they all spoke on condition of anonymity.

Aid group officials and analysts point to the difficulty of narrowing down what is lifesaving assistance, however. Food aid, certainly. But what about other forms of support such as maternal care, which has helped more than halve Afghanistan’s maternal mortality rate since the 1990s?

Major nongovernmental aid organizations say that without female workers, it’s impossible for them to effectively reach the women and children who make up 75% of those in need. That’s because of Afghanistan’s conservative customs and the Taliban’s rules prohibiting contact between unrelated men and women.

“Our suspensions are operational necessities,” said Anastasia Moran, senior officer for humanitarian policy at the International Rescue Committee. “It’s not being punitive. It’s not trying to withdraw services. It’s not a negotiating tactic.”

The Taliban crackdown is re-creating conditions from their first time in power in the mid-1990s, when successive edicts drove women out of schools, jobs, aid work and increasingly into their homes. Taliban leaders then ultimately ordered households to paint their windows black, so that no passersby could see the women inside. It left women and children in female-headed households little means to access money or help to stay alive.

The U.S. invasion that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ended that first era of Taliban rule. The Biden administration and aid groups all cite a determination to avoid a repeat of the fractured, rivalry-driven and often ad hoc international response to the Taliban abuses in the 1990s, including the crackdown then on women.

U.N. Security Council members met Friday behind closed doors to consider the international response, after 11 of the 15 member nations reiterated the council’s demand for “unhindered access for humanitarian actors regardless of gender.”

The humanitarian crisis brought on by the Taliban’s ban comes at a politically sensitive moment for Biden, with Republicans now leading the House and pledging to investigate the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Rep. Michael McCaul, a foreign-policy veteran newly in charge of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the crackdown on women part of the “disastrous” consequences of the U.S. withdrawal. McCaul. R-Texas, said his committee will push for answers from administration officials on their handling of Afghanistan policy.

“This administration promised consequences if the Taliban revoked its promise to uphold the human rights of Afghan women and girls,” McCaul said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Unfortunately, it is no surprise to see the Taliban violate this commitment, and now consequences must be swiftly delivered.”

Almost all involved expressed hope that quiet diplomacy led by U.N. officials over the next few weeks could lead the Taliban to soften their stance, allowing female aid workers and aid organizations overall to resume their duties.

U.N. and other officials are meeting daily on the matter with the Taliban’s most senior leaders in Kabul, who have access to the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and his associates in the southern city of Kandahar, a U.S. official said.

Some caution the international community may face years of little influence over Afghanistan’s rulers.

In the meantime, the mission for those assisting isolated, abused women was clear. said Masuda Sultan, an Afghan woman also working with the Abaad aid group.

“Our goal is to help these women,” Sultan said, speaking from Dubai. “If they don’t get help, they will die.”

Iran Calls for Formation of Inclusive Government in Afghanistan

January 14, 2023 Current News Articles

Nazir Shinwari

Tolo News

14 Jan 2023

The Islamic Emirate said that it wants to have good relations with all its neighbors and urged them to refrain from interfering in Afghan internal affairs.

The formation of an inclusive government with the participation of all ethnic groups in the country is the solution to Afghanistan’s issues, said Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

The top Iranian official said that Tehran has contacts with the current Afghan government in order to reduce its issues during a meeting with political and religious groups in Lebanon.

“We have not recognized the current rulers of Afghanistan but we do communicate and discuss various matters with them in an effort to solve the country’s difficulties. Forming an inclusive government in Afghanistan with the participation of all ethnic groups in this nation is the country’s solution,” Abdollahian said.

The Islamic Emirate said that it wants to have good relations with all its neighbors and urged them to refrain from interfering in Afghan internal affairs.

“The internal matters of the nation belong to the people of Afghanistan, and the countries of the world and the region must fulfill their obligations in the area of creating relations between Afghanistan and the world,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman of the Islamic Emirate.

According to some political analysts, Afghanistan can overcome its political, economic, and international isolation by pursuing a balanced and impartial policy.

“Afghanistan needs an inclusive government, and that is the time when the Islamic Emirate may move from a state of transitory government,” said Sayed Bilal Fatemi, a political analyst.

“There should not be a gap between the people and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Afghanistan can get out of the current political and economic isolation by having a balanced and impartial approach,” said Atif Mukhtar, political analyst.

No country has so far recognized the current Afghan government, but the Islamic Emirate has diplomatic ties with a number of countries, including Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and others.

Republicans probe chaotic US military withdrawal from Afghanistan

January 14, 2023 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

About 2,500 US soldiers died in Afghanistan, a conflict that became the longest war the United States fought.

Republican legislators have launched an investigation into the chaotic United States military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which allowed an immediate takeover by the Taliban and led to scenes of thousands of desperate people storming Kabul airport, some clinging to departing US planes as they rolled down the runway.

Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Friday he had written to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting an array of records, from intelligence assessments to communications with the Taliban.

McCaul, a longstanding opposition member on the committee who became its chairman after the House flipped to Republican control at the start of the year, said it was “absurd and disgraceful” that US President Joe Biden’s administration “continues to withhold information related to the withdrawal”.

“In the event of continued noncompliance, the committee will use the authorities available to it to enforce these requests as necessary, including through a compulsory process,” he said.

Thirteen US soldiers were killed on August 26, 2021 in a bombing outside Kabul airport as the capital fell, with the government crumbling days later despite $2 trillion being pumped into Afghanistan over two decades by the US and NATO forces.

While Trump sealed the withdrawal with the Taliban, his Republican Party has roundly criticised Biden’s handling of the operation and promised hearings as part of a series of probes into his administration.

The scenes of desperate Afghans clinging to moving US military planes as they taxied on the runway at Kabul airport preceded a sharp drop in Biden’s approval ratings nine months after he was elected promising smooth, competent leadership after the pandemonium under his predecessor Donald Trump.

The State Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Friday but has said it has provided more than 150 briefings to members of Congress since the August 2021 withdrawal, according to US media.

Approximately 2,500 US troops died in what became the country’s longest war but Afghanistan was no longer a priority back home, with 50 percent of respondents in a Gallup poll conducted a year after the withdrawal saying the entire war was a mistake.

SOURCE: AFP

UN Security Council members urge Taliban to void bans on women

January 14, 2023 Current News Articles

Eleven members of the UNSC call on the group to reverse restrictive policies on women’s and girls’ education and work.

Several members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have urged the Taliban to end its repressive treatment of women in Afghanistan, as the group continued to impose restrictive policies on their education and work.

The 15-member UNSC met privately on Friday – at the request of the United Arab Emirates and Japan – to discuss the decisions by the Taliban-led administration, which seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 following the US troop withdrawal.

Since then, the Taliban has squeezed women out of almost all areas of public life, banning them from secondary and higher education, public sector work and visiting parks.

“We urge the Taliban to immediately reverse all oppressive measures against women and girls,” said Japanese Ambassador Ishikane Kimihiro, speaking on behalf of 11 members of the Security Council, on Friday.

The 11 members – Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Japan, Malta, Switzerland, the UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States – called on the Taliban to “respect the rights of women and girls, and their full, equal and meaningful participation and inclusion across all aspects of society in Afghanistan, from political and economic, to education and public space”.

They also called on the authorities in Afghanistan to reverse bans on women working for aid groups or attending universities and high school.

Several international aid groups have suspended their work in Afghanistan because of the latest ban, which was announced by the Taliban government on December 24.

“The situation of women and girls in Afghanistan must remain high on the agenda of the Security Council,” said Friday’s statement.

The United Nations has said 97 percent of Afghans live in poverty, two-thirds of the population need aid to survive, and 20 million people face acute hunger.

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell described the ban on female aid workers as “both wrong and dangerous”, according to her prepared remarks for the private Security Council meeting on Friday, seen by Reuters news agency.

“It is not hyperbole to say that without them, lives will be lost, children will die,” she said.

Australia’s men’s team recently withdrew from a cricket series against Afghanistan scheduled for March following further restrictions on women’s and girls’ rights imposed by the Taliban.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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