Stability in Afghanistan: Prioritize human rights and women’s rights

November 9, 2022 Analytical articles

Opinion by Fawzia Koofi

Opinion contributor

The Hill

9 Nov 2022

I was recently jolted awake at 3 a.m. by a call. As I answered the phone, at first all I could hear was girls screaming in terror and sharp banging on a metal door. Seconds that felt like hours passed before I heard the trembling voice of a teenage girl on the line. “Help us Ms. Koofi, please help us! We are locked inside our dorms by the Taliban, they are going to kill us,” she told me.

Stability in Afghanistan: Prioritize human rights and women’s rights© Provided by The Hill

The caller was among 10 or so teenage girls from Afghanistan’s northern city of Mazar-i Sharif whom the Taliban held in their dorms to prevent them from protesting. The protests of these girls represented an existential threat to the Taliban.

From thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., I tried to comfort the girls by promising them that I would not let their suffering, which is the reality for countless women and girls across Afghanistan, go unheard. With a heavy heart, I hung up the phone. I tweeted about these girls and their terrifying experience. I then reached out to my contacts inside Afghanistan and nearby countries, seeking help to try and save these brave yet petrified girls.

The Taliban finally agreed to release the girls from captivity after videos of their treatment circulated on social media. I was relieved to see them released, yet the horror that these teenage girls went through that day provides only a small glimpse into the tragic saga of the fearless girls and women of Afghanistan who are languishing under Taliban’s gender apartheid regime.

Since returning to power last August, Taliban leaders have issued more than 30 edicts banning, banishing, sanctioning, and restricting girls and women in Afghanistan from life, liberty and the pursuit of their hopes and dreams. Although the Taliban’s ban prohibiting teenage girls from going to school seems to occasionally make the international news these days, the tragic and painful reality of Afghan women’s lives under Taliban is far more horrific. The Taliban have created an ecosystem of violence aimed at strengthening their gender apartheid regime to eliminate women and girls from all realms of public life. The ban on girls’ education is only one element of this.

I know this from personal experience. In 1996, I had just enrolled in medical school with high hopes of becoming a doctor. That same year the Taliban took over Kabul, banning me and millions of other girls across Afghanistan from education, employment and personal freedom. The Taliban’s first regime lasted five years before it was ousted following the Sept. 11 attacks, but it took me more than 20 years to readjust and recover.

After Taliban’s ouster in 2001, I enrolled in law school so I could contribute to creating a legal basis where women would never have to endure the unspeakable pain and suffering inflicted onto my generation. We came together as women and called for 25 percent of the seats in the parliament to be reserved for women, which was included in the new democratic constitution. We went door-to-door in remote villages to inform women and girls of their rights. We fought for inclusion of women in the media and for free press so we could educate the next generation.

Yet even in those early days of hope in 2000s, it was not easy! Although the Taliban had been ousted from power, the shadow of their dark ideology was still lingering. For example, when I was elected to the parliament, women MPs were not given the same amount of time to speak. And if we fought back, our mics would be cut off. We were regularly subjected to verbal abuse. But we remained steadfast and marched onwards.

Today, Afghanistan has changed drastically since 2001. Despite the Taliban’s ongoing brutal crackdown on girls and women, protests led by women for basic human rights continue in the country, the best evidence that the seeds of liberty planted and nurtured over the past 20 years have taken root, we have created our own Identity, in a country the base of politics is ethnicity or religious group, we the women of Afghanistan created women ethnic group with the aim to look beyond the initials causes of divisions among us!

While international attention has largely moved on since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, there is an urgent need for the US and international community to adopt engagement policies with the Taliban that go beyond security concerns and focus on human rights instead. If the Taliban are allowed to continue grossly violating Afghan women’s rights, Afghanistan will always remain dangerously unstable, and millions of Afghans will continue to flee the country to secure a better future for their female family members. And violence will never cease. After a brief respite last year, violence is once again rising. According to a recent report, nearly 3000 people have been killed and injured since the Taliban took over Afghanistan. If we consider undocumented killings carried out by the Taliban; estimates are substantially higher.

The situation in Afghanistan seems like a quagmire but righting the ship should begin with prioritizing human rights and intra-Afghan dialogue which pave the way for a political settlement between Taliban, a marginal reality of Afghanistan empowered by force and violence, and the larger reality which reflects the diverse society of my country. A similar space like Doha process, which provided Taliban with an address to engage in talks in 2013, should be made available for all anti-Taliban political opposition, including Afghan women and civil society, to lead the dialogue with the Taliban to reach a political settlement that provides a meaningful path to economic and political stability and protects and builds on the gains of the past 20 years.

Sadly, from my meetings with US officials and UN member states, it is clear that many in the international community see Afghanistan as a complete failure. However, the continued struggle and bravery of women in Afghanistan tirelessly fighting for their rights contradict this misperception.

It’s important to remember that lack of government inclusivity, gross violations of human rights, and unprecedented repression of women under the Taliban’s first regime in the 1990s had turned Afghanistan into the world’s top destination and safe haven for regional and international terror groups. This eventually culminated into the tragic events of 9/11.

The international community cannot afford to let Afghanistan return to pre 9/11 situation again. We cannot allow the seeds of freedom and women’s rights that were so carefully cultivated over the last 20 years to be uprooted by the Taliban. And we cannot stand idly by waiting for another 3:00am phone call.

Fawzia Koofi served as an Afghan parliamentary lawmaker and is an accomplished author and internationally known outspoken advocate for the rights of women and children, democracy and moderate Islam. Koofi was also one of the few women on the Negotiation Team of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in Doha.

In Afghanistan, Was a Loss Better than Peace?

November 9, 2022 Analytical articles

BY: Kate Bateman

United States Institute of Peace

Thursday, November 3, 2022

The American war in Afghanistan incurred staggering costs — for the United States, Afghans and others — over two decades. The U.S. government spent $2.3 trillion, and the war led to the deaths of 2,324 U.S. military personnel, 3,917 U.S. contractors and 1,144 allied troops. For Afghans, the statistics are nearly unimaginable: 70,000 Afghan military and police deaths, 46,319 Afghan civilians (although that is likely a significant underestimation) and some 53,000 opposition fighters killed. Almost 67,000 other people were killed in Pakistan in relation to the Afghan war.

The full extent of the indirect costs is greater still, considering injuries and illnesses, displacement, war widows and orphans, malnutrition, destruction of infrastructure and environmental degradation due to the war. Given these immense costs and the Taliban’s total victory, it is worth examining closely whether it was possible to achieve a compromise with the Taliban that would have preserved U.S. and Afghan government political objectives.

In a discussion at USIP, U.S. government officials and academic experts noted that for a long time the U.S. did not seek political negotiations because U.S. officials thought victory was possible and the political risks of talking to the Taliban too high. By the time that thinking changed, impatience and weak U.S. leverage made it impossible for Washington to secure any interests beyond the withdrawal of troops. Interagency silos, biases toward a need for vengeance and a focus on total victory fed misjudgments that ultimately resulted in a lack of meaningful attention to pursuing a political settlement.

Prioritizing Short-term Counterterrorism Above a Political Settlement

Over the course of four U.S. administrations, counterterrorism remained the United States’ primary goal in Afghanistan. “The peace process was never our priority,” said Tamanna Salikuddin, the director of South Asia programs at the USIP, during the discussion.

Dipali Mukhopadhyay, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota and a senior expert at USIP, noted that the primacy of counterterrorism put “the Afghan government in an impossible position. It demanded of them to engage as if they were a sovereign state when, in fact, they were a territory that was being used by the U.S. in service of this war. And the Taliban understood that.”

The reasons for U.S. inattention to a comprehensive political settlement shifted over the 20-year intervention. In the immediate wake of the attacks on 9/11 and the swift ousting of the Taliban government, “the focus was on building a new government in Kabul” and its legitimacy, Salikuddin said. “Even when senior Taliban leaders offered to surrender in exchange for amnesty, there was no space for consideration of it because ‘we were winning’ and ‘we would beat the terrorists.’ No one expected the Taliban would come back as a major threat.”

Mukhopadhyay observed that “logics of vengeance, triumphalism and political expediency” drove U.S. strategic decision-making in the early years of the war, and in large part persisted through 2021. Salikuddin similarly recalled that the failure to prevent 9/11 energized U.S. national security and intelligence institutions, and U.S. activities mirrored the need for vengeance. This contributed to a political climate in which talking to the Taliban “was just not acceptable,” and even in the Obama administration when U.S. officials pursued secret channels for talks, “it was taboo,” said Salikuddin. “We had sold the American public this idea that the Taliban were the worst terrorists … and there was no way we could negotiate with them. How would we then politically acknowledge that we were going to talk with them?”

U.S. government perceptions of the battlefield also continued to shape thinking about negotiating with the Taliban, even when those perceptions were flawed. Chris Kolenda, a retired U.S. Army colonel and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, pointed to critical factors that the United States misjudged or failed to appreciate: the Taliban’s external sanctuary in Pakistan, a degree of indigenous support for the Taliban and the Afghan Republic government’s inability to win the battle of legitimacy in insurgent-controlled or contested areas.

These factors were stacked against U.S. goals to degrade or defeat the insurgency and build a national government with an army and police forces capable of standing up to the Taliban. As Kolenda underscored, historically, no counterinsurgency effort has been successful when those factors were pointing in the wrong direction. The U.S. exit strategy, however, was premised on the vain hope that it could overcome those factors.

At crucial junctures, like the Obama administration’s troop surge, the U.S. government failed to invest in alternative, political paths to end the war. According to Salikuddin, who was a senior advisor to the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2014-2017, the policy debates were about counterterrorism versus counterinsurgency, how to get Pakistan to cooperate and how to strengthen the Afghan government and security forces.

On the other hand, very few U.S. officials advocated for a comprehensive political process as the main line of effort. Indeed, for many years, some held on to a glimmer of hope that the United States would win the war. The low numbers of U.S. casualties meant that keeping troops in Afghanistan became an acceptable status quo.

The irony is that the idea of a political process to end the war gained traction and acceptance within U.S. policymaking circles at the same time that U.S. leverage was on the decline, as the American troop presence dwindled. By the Trump administration, the American public was increasingly war-weary and there was desperation to end America’s longest war. This in turn “made the peace process an expedience, a way to get out, not really a way to get a settlement,” said Salikuddin.

Kolenda stressed the consequences of U.S. impatience: “As soon as the U.S. began unilateral troop withdrawals, it became clear that the U.S. just wanted to get out. Then the Taliban could play for time and play hardball.” Nor were the incentives right for the Afghan Republic to negotiate an end to the conflict, Kolenda observed; the imperative for Republic leaders was to do everything they could to keep U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

U.S. Bureaucracy Not Set Up to Pursue a Political Settlement

Salikuddin, Kolenda, and Mukhopadhyay concurred that there are significant structural obstacles within the U.S. government that militated against efforts to align political and military strategies, or even to conceive of ending a conflict through a negotiated settlement.

“The U.S. has no organized way of thinking about war termination beyond decisive, zero-sum victory,” Kolenda argued. Part of the problem is resource imbalances that privilege military tools of national power. U.S. agencies often operated in silos and without a strategic vision of a realistic end state. “We have nobody functionally in charge of our wars. There is nobody on the ground in Kabul in charge of all U.S. efforts on the ground. [Those efforts] are all silos reporting to Washington, and all doing their own things,” Kolenda said.

From the intelligence community to the Defense Department to the State Department to the U.S. Agency for International Development, each bureaucracy was focused on its own goals without an overarching strategy driving toward a common goal. These agencies may have been achieving milestones, Kolenda said, and therefore believed they were being successful. Meanwhile, the overall mission was in drift. “Instead of being a fist that moves as one, we’re like five fingers that we keep getting jammed.”

Why Did Lessons Go Unlearned or Ignored?

From the outset of the war, a vast amount of relevant knowledge could have informed U.S. policy, Mukhopadhyay said. For instance, empirical evidence existed on the role that spoilers could play in derailing peace, the importance of third-party peacekeeping forces, the risks of holding elections too early, the perverse effects of aid and the salience of sanctuary in the success of insurgencies. “Yet at every step of the way” she said, “the lessons within those empirical findings seem to have been ignored.” Even much of the evidence and research produced throughout the war seemed largely irrelevant to policy on the ground.

The use of knowledge and research, Mukhopadhyay said, emerged later as an attempt to do two things: “[T]o clean up messes that had already been made by decisions that were locked in early on, and to affirm or confirm a set of biases that were driving the spending of money, the movement of troops and the unrolling of one doctrine versus another.”

New research then fed into a “wartime information economy” that often “enabled projects, programs and ideas that maybe were working in a micro sense but weren’t actually shifting political facts on the ground in a meaningful way,” Mukhopadhyay said. Again, like the siloed “fingers” of agencies that Kolenda described, particular forms of research and evidence were used to justify certain activities, with the sum of the parts being less than the whole.

Much of this research was conducted by outsider organizations and individuals, who lacked a deeply rooted understanding of the country.

Mukhopadhyay pointed to numerous structural dynamics in how policy was made and implemented, which also “do not lend themselves to deeper reflection” and reassessment. These include the ways in which personnel were assigned, short tours, force protection and the insulated ways that embassies and organizations operated.

Mukhopadhyay described a kind of clash of civilizations between the worlds of the academy and of policymakers. The way academic work is published, its long timelines, decisions on hiring and tenure, and what kind of research gets funded do not correspond to the way policy is made or incentivize relevance to policy or timeliness. Further, the parameters of policy decisions tend to be complex and opaque to outsiders, curtailing their ability to contribute to those decisions.

Nevertheless, there were exceptions in Afghanistan: research on drone warfare, civilian casualties and the role of contractors “shed light on problems, shifted the needle in public discourse, and created debate within military and civilian institutions that seemed productive and important,” Mukhopadhyay said.

In the end, though, it wasn’t enough to move the needle in Afghanistan. The hope now is that these lessons can inform policy in future conflicts, preventing a repeat of the immense costs in blood and treasure seen during the Afghanistan war.

EU Contributes €50 Million to WFP for Afghanistan

November 9, 2022 Current News Articles

Mujeeb Rahman Awrang Stanikzai

Head of TOLOnews’ Online Department

9 Nov 2022

9 in 10 households cannot meet their food needs, with those headed by women particularly vulnerable, according to the latest WFP assessment.

The European Union (EU) donated €50 Million in aid for the World Food Program in Afghanistan, the WFP said in a statement, adding that it would help (WFP) to reach Afghan communities with livelihoods and resilience support.

The WFP said that due to unprecedented economic hardship and environmental disasters like earthquakes and flooding, the Afghans are less prepared than ever to weather another harsh winter.

9 in 10 households cannot meet their food needs, with those headed by women particularly vulnerable, according to the latest WFP assessment.

“This is a time of urgent need for Afghanistan. The people are reeling from the effects of four decades of conflict, climate hazards, COVID-19 and the socioeconomic crisis that have deprived people of their jobs and livelihoods across the country in the past year,” Raffaella Iodice, EU Chargée d’affaires to Afghanistan was quoted in the statement. “People who previously were able to put food on the table are now struggling and turning to humanitarian agencies to help steady them in this new reality. We are committed to helping the Afghan population, especially the most vulnerable. Our investment in WFP’s resilience programming is an investment that will have long-lasting, positive effects for local communities.”

Mary-Ellen McGroarty, WFP Afghanistan country director, said that the people of Afghanistan need support in building productive livelihoods more than ever.

“We are extraordinarily thankful to the European Union for this latest contribution. It allows WFP to continue our long-term livelihood and resilience work to help families be better prepared for and withstand environmental and man-made shocks. With skills training, young people and women, who are often the only breadwinners of their families, are empowered and have the means to support themselves and their families,” McGroarty said.

UK army killed 64 children in Afghanistan between 2006-14: Report

November 9, 2022 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

Published On 9 Nov 2022

The British army paid $165,332 in compensation after the deaths of 64 children in Afghanistan, a new report says.

British forces have paid compensation for the deaths of 64 children in Afghanistan, a toll four times higher than the 16 child deaths publicly acknowledged by the Ministry of Defence, according to a new report.

Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a United Kingdom-based charity, found that the British government paid, on average, £1,656 ($1,894) in compensation for each person killed.

Between 2006-2014, “there were 64 confirmed child victims in Afghanistan where the British military paid compensation, although the number of children killed could be as high as 135”.

Additionally, AOAV found that between April 2007 and December 2012, there were 38 incidents involving the 64 child deaths.

The average age of a child killed was six years old, and air strikes were the most common cause of death listed.

‘Tragedy’

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence responded to the new report, saying: “Any civilian death during conflict is a tragedy, more so when children and family members are involved.

“The UK Armed Forces works hard to minimise that risk, which regrettably can never be entirely eliminated.”

Compensation

Total payouts by the military amounted to £144,593 ($165,332), but the report explained this included the deaths of adults.

Families attempting to claim compensation for the loss of a relative were expected to show evidence, including birth certificates and interviews with British personnel, to confirm there was no affiliation with the Taliban.

“The majority of the 881 fatality claims brought to the ACO (Allied Commander Operations) were rejected. Just one-quarter of those received any compensation.”

Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence, said: “The number of children killed following British military action in Helmand should give pause for thought.

“War invariably leads to death and modern war will always bring civilian casualties, but not reporting on such deaths – however much it might be a source of regret and horror to the soldiers involved in the killings and however accidental such deaths were – would be an omission of responsibility and an erosion of truth.

“This report hopes to give some details to the often-forgotten children killed in war and, in some way, to send a warning to future Westminster politicians who might consider sending troops into battle,” Overton said.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

Biden, Democrats’ downward spiral began with Afghanistan

November 9, 2022 Analytical articles

OPINION

By Arthur Herman | Fox News

Published November 8, 2022

Historians will pinpoint Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan as the moment when Americans began to lose trust in their president

When historians look back at the pivot point for the Biden presidency—and what originally set up the coming expected Democrat meltdown in Tuesday’s midterms—they will point to Afghanistan, and the series of disastrous decisions the president made in July and August 2021. They not only led to the worst foreign policy debacle for the Unite States since the fall of Saigon in 1975. They also led the public to wonder whether the president they had just elected, was truly fit for office. It’s a question that’s only gathered negative momentum since. placeholder

Although Biden and the media would try to blame the chaos that resulted from his mishandling of Afghanistan on President Donald Trump, the truth was Biden had inherited a stable if uncertain situation in Afghanistan. While Trump had made it clear he was pulling American troops out of Afghanistan and winding up America’s longest war, he had also not set a timetable for departure. And no one—least of all the Taliban—doubted whether Trump would send U.S. troops back in-country if needed. The man who had stamped out ISIS was not a person to mess with.

When Biden took charge, however, he threw out any pretense of a carefully staged or thoughtful withdrawal.

First came the decision on July 2 to shutter Bagram Air Force base, the central hub of the U.S. presence and security. Six days later Biden shocked everyone, including the Afghan government, by announcing he was speeding up the U.S. withdrawal deadline to August 31—two weeks earlier than originally planned. By July 21 the Taliban controlled half of Afghanistan, despite Biden’s assurances to Americans that the collapse of the country was “not inevitable.” Three weeks later the Taliban took the capital Kabul, where the remaining American presence had shrunk to the U.S. embassy perimeter.

What happened next was a human tragedy and a series of disastrous optics. While Biden assured the public there would be no images of helicopters leaving the U.S. embassy roof as happened during the abandonment of Saigon in 1975, what they did get were images of desperate Afghans chasing after a U.S. C-17 on the Kabul airport runway–even clinging to the plane’s wheel wells as it took off, then falling to their deaths. Meanwhile, the embassy grounds were swamped by thousands of Afghans fleeing Taliban retribution.

Biden’s other broken promise was that no Americans would be left behind. In fact, hundreds of Americans were stuck in-country along with thousands of Afghans who had loyally served with us against the Taliban. It required private agencies like Project Dynamo to do what the Biden team was unwilling or unable to do, namely making sure Americans who wanted to get were able to get out.

Then on August 16 came the suicide bomber attack that killed 13 U.S. service members, followed by a botched attempt to take out another would-be bomber, which resulted in the death of an Afghan aid worker and seven children.

At the same time, Biden’s statement in an interview that none of his generals had disagreed with the decision to flee Afghanistan, turned out to be another falsehood.

But perhaps the final blow to Biden’s reputation came with the air strike on Al Qaeda leader Zawahiri as he was visiting Kabul. If the president and his team hoped this would make Biden look bad and bold—as when Donald Trump had taken out IRGC head Suleimani–the public realized this really meant Al Qaeda was back in business in Afghanistan.

In effect, we had come full circle, back where we were when Operation Enduring Freedom was first launched more than 20 years earlier. The Taliban decided to underline our humiliation with a victory parade with some of the $7 billion of captured US equipment, from Humvees to attack helicopters. That video became the emblem of the worst U.S. foreign policy disaster in more than 40 years—and the image of Biden as not only incompetent but dishonest.

That impression was reflected in the polls. When Biden first announced plans for a withdrawal from Afghanistan in April, his approval rating stood at 52.5 percent. By the end of August, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed his approval had slumped to 43 percent. It’s never recovered since.

If the Tuesday midterms turn out to be a disaster for Democrats, they can blame their policies on crime, on the border, on COVID lockdowns, and their promotion of CRT and drag queens in kindergartens.

But in the end it’s their president’s decisions in Afghanistan that set them off on their downward spiral. It was during July and August 2021 that–to paraphrase Winston Churchill–those terrible words were first pronounced against them: Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.

Starting with their chief executive.

The Taliban wants to segregate women. So it’s training female doctors.

November 9, 2022 Current News Articles

By Claire Parker

The Washington Post

November 5, 2022 at 3:11 p.m. EDT

KABUL — After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last year, nearly a third of the resident doctors in Omeida Momand’s class at a Kabul women’s hospital fled the country, she said, leaving the staff stretched thin.

Momand decided to stay, to finish the last step in her 11 years of training to care for Afghanistan’s women. By day, she examines gynecology patients and monitors mothers with high-risk pregnancies in a room sometimes so crowded that patients lie on the floor. Night shifts are spent performing emergency Caesareans.

Her determination to practice medicine in her home country has aligned, ironically, with the Taliban’s own interests. In the highly conservative Islamic society the Taliban hopes to create, officials say, women should be cared for by other women. That means educating more female doctors.

This marks a rare instance of the Taliban publicly and loudly promoting women’s education and employment. Training female doctors and nurses is part of the movement’s effort to prove it can provide essential services while building a society structured on gender segregation.

Muhammad Hassan Ghyasi, acting deputy minister of public health, said in an interview that his ministry has received “clear instructions from the top level” to bring policies in line with the Taliban’s strict interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law. A new policy submitted recently to the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, for approval would formalize a rule already applied in some hospitals that female health workers should treat women, while male health workers should treat men.

Ghyasi said the policy will stipulate that if there is no qualified female doctor available, a female patient can see a male doctor. But with Afghanistan’s health system under strain — and an economic crisis fueled by Western sanctions exacerbating hunger and sickness — the need for qualified medical professionals of both genders is greater than ever.

The Taliban effort to expand medical education for women, especially in fields traditionally dominated by men, contrasts with the government’s draconian restrictions on girls and women. Since taking power, the Taliban has barred many girls from secondary school and shut women out of most professions. This fall, authorities prohibited female university aspirants from enrolling in subjects including journalism, engineering and economics.

The educational restrictions seem certain to limit the number of women in the coming years who can train as doctors. Other Taliban policies, such as requirements in some areas that women only travel with male guardians, have hamstrung the efforts of female doctors to practice.

But at several government-run institutes for nursing, radiology and other health fields, the proportion of women admitted — at least 46 percent this semester — represents a slight increase compared with 2020 figures, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which supports the institutes.

Taliban authorities also point to residency programs like the one at Rabia Balkhi Hospital, where Momand works, as evidence of their commitment to educating female health workers. Hospital director Seemin Mishkin Mohmand said the Taliban health ministry has been supportive of her ambitions to expand the program and offer more-advanced training.

Momand is set to graduate this fall at the top of her class, and hopes to open a gynecology clinic in a rural province.

“When I was a child, this was my hope — to become a doctor, to serve my country and my people, especially to serve our poor women,” she said.

The needs in Afghanistan are enormous. The maternal mortality rate is among the highest in the world. Worsening malnutrition has contributed to a rise in premature births and pregnancy complications, according to Hamida Hamidi, a doctor at Rabia Balkhi and head of its training programs.

The health system, heavily reliant on foreign aid, neared collapse in the wake of the Taliban takeover. After billions in funding were cut, the ICRC and the United Nations stepped in last year to cover tens of thousands of health workers’ salaries. Still, some hospitals have closed. Significant numbers of doctors have left the country. And with war over, the volume of patients seeking care is rising.

The main hospital in Wardak, a province neighboring Kabul, used to be on the front line of fighting. Since the end of the war, the number of patients has doubled, hospital director Mohammad Nader Rahmani said.

As in many areas in Afghanistan, families here prefer that female relatives see women doctors. But while women make up a majority of patients, they account for only a quarter of the hospital’s doctors.

The hospital, run by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, recently hired a female radiologist, Rahmani said. But the limited pool of female health workers has made it difficult to hire more.

The Taliban’s stated goal of creating a separate but equal health system for men and women remains a distant dream, hospital administrators and international aid workers said. “In the short term, this policy is impossible to implement,” Rahmani said.

A dearth of specialists

In Afghanistan, as in many other countries, the essential task of caring for mothers and babies has long been dominated by women. Women make up a significantly smaller proportion of other medical specialists, Afghan doctors and hospital administrators say.

Six years ago, the World Health Organization raised the alarm about how a lack of female health-care workers was preventing Afghan women from receiving adequate care.

But it wasn’t always this way. When Hamidi was in medical school in the early 1990s, the country had female neurosurgeons and urologists, she recalled. When civil war broke out in 1992, many fled to the West. The Taliban took power, for the first time, four years later and “everything changed,” Hamidi said. Families grew uncomfortable with their daughters entering medical fields outside of maternal health, and that attitude outlasted initial Taliban rule.

At the hospital in Wardak and others run by international organizations, gender segregation has not yet been enforced, administrators say. The ICRC has also not observed gender segregation at government hospitals it supports, according to Lucien Christen, ICRC spokesperson for Afghanistan.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, a young woman named Shayma who had gone into labor arrived at the hospital in Wardak, needing an emergency C-section. The only doctors available at that time were men. After some convincing, Shayma’s husband and brother agreed to let two male doctors perform the operation alongside two female midwives.

If male doctors had been prohibited from operating on women, “we would have lost our daughter and my grandson,” said Shayma’s mother, Sharifa, who uses only one name.

While gender segregation has not been enforced in the Wardak hospital, at least so far, three current or former female surgeons at public hospitals in Kabul said male and female staff have already been forced to work separately.

One of the surgeons, a first-year resident from Wardak, said she wanted to become a surgeon to help the women of her province. But in September 2021, Taliban officials barred women at her hospital from working night shifts and said they must work in separate rooms from their male colleagues.

“The problem is you cannot separate men and women because we need to work together,” said the resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “That’s why we stated we cannot be separated. They sent us home and suspended us.”

More than a year later, she has not been allowed to return to her post.

Kobra Safi worked at a teaching hospital in Kabul as a plastic reconstructive surgeon until August 2021, treating burn patients. Several days after Kabul fell, Taliban officials told her she could no longer have contact with her mentor, a male surgeon. “That destroyed my dream of doing plastic surgery,” she said.

Safi got on an evacuation flight two months later and spent nearly a year in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates before resettling in Canada this September.

Counterproductive policies

Even as the Taliban says it is looking to expand medical training for women, other policies are limiting the ability of women to provide health care — or access it.

Fouzia Shafique, senior health adviser for UNICEF in Afghanistan, said the agency is hearing more and more reports, especially in the country’s south and east, of women being told at health facilities that they must arrive with a male guardian to get treatment. Female health workers, meanwhile, have faced “significant issues” traveling to work in some areas because they must find a male relative to take them.

Ghyasi, the deputy health minister, said he had “not seen” reports of women being turned away from health facilities, though he added: “We are not denying it, because at the moment we have some problems.”

The pipeline for future female doctors is also narrowing. Schools in 24 out of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces remain closed to girls above sixth grade, U.N. special rapporteur Richard Bennett told the U.N. Human Rights Council in September.

The Taliban closed the high school Wajeha Kazimi, 19, attended just before she finished 12th grade. She was still able to graduate, and spent more than a year studying for the university entrance exam at a test-prep center in Kabul. In September, she survived a suicide bombing there that left more than 50 people dead.

Kazimi hopes to go into public health or pediatrics, and ranked medicine as her top choice on the university exam.

“When we were choosing, we remembered our friends who were killed who wished to become a doctor,” she said. Her 15-year-old sister, though, remains shut out of formal education.

The Taliban’s curbs on girls’ education are also costing the country some of its best male doctors. Five of the eight surgeons at the Emergency NGO-run trauma hospital in Kabul left the country after the Taliban takeover — some so their daughters could continue their schooling, medical coordinator Dimitra Giannakopoulou said.

Aid agencies continue to lobby Taliban authorities to reopen secondary schools for the sake of public health.

“Girls need to have finished high school if they’re going to enroll in a midwifery course, if they’re going to be a paramedic or if they’re going to train as vaccinators,” Shafique said. “And we now have two years of which we have no cohorts graduating out of high school and therefore no people to train.”

Susannah George and Zahra Nabi in Kabul contributed to this report.

Afghanistan: Taliban member kills young girl after she rejected marriage proposal

November 8, 2022 Current News Articles

The New India Express

By ANI

9 Nov 2022

Surprisingly, the Taliban government officials in the Balkh province acknowledged the incident and claimed that Mullah Yasin was detained and assured that he is in custody.

KABUL [Afghanistan]: Afghanistan’s Taliban security head killed a young girl in Balkh province after she rejected his marriage proposal, Khaama Press reported citing local sources.

The Taliban administration’s head of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in the Sholgara district of Balkh province, Mullah Yasin killed a young girl named Maryam after she rejected his marriage proposal.

Surprisingly, the Taliban government officials in the Balkh province acknowledged the incident and claimed that Mullah Yasin was detained and assured that he is in custody.

According to Mohammad Asif Waziri, the spokesperson for the Taliban chief of police in the province of Balkh, Maryam was the victim of a single murder by a department employee, reported Khaama Press.

The Taliban leader had previously told his people to decide on a path of action, think about their responsibilities, and refrain from having more than one wife, according to Khaama Press.

This occurs at a time when Taliban commanders are reported to have paid sizable dowries to their fathers-in-law in return for the hands of their daughters, and a Taliban commander recently transported his newlywed bride home on a military chopper belonging to the Afghan National Army, as per Khaama Press.

Ever since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the plight of Afghan women has continued to be deplorable in the country.

Women’s lives have become worst under the Taliban’s regime. The girls were stopped from going to school beyond sixth grade on March 23 and a decree against the women’s dress code was issued after a month. There are restrictions on movement, education and freedom of expression of women posing a threat to their survival.

Not only this, the lack of female healthcare workers has prevented women from accessing basic medical facilities, and international donors, who fund 90 percent of health clinics, are hesitant to send money because of their fear of the funds being misused.

Around 80 percent of women working in the media have lost their jobs, and almost 18 million women in the country are struggling for health, education and social rights. Many women, particularly those who worked in security agencies, lost their jobs after the Islamic Emirate was re-established.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report the previous month, outlining the human rights situation in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover.

The report summarized UNAMA’s findings with regard to the protection of civilians, extrajudicial killings, torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary arrests and detentions, the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, fundamental freedoms and the situation in places of detention. Amid this, the rehiring of women officers comes as a ray of hope for the women facing several severe challenges in the country.

Some female police forces urged the Islamic Emirate to allow more women to work in government institutions. “We ask the Islamic Emirate to let all the women return to their jobs,” said Mashoqa, a police officer.

Campaign Highlights Plight of High School Girls Kept From Kankor Exam

November 8, 2022 Current News Articles

Asma Saayin

Tolo News

8 Nov 2022

These students asked the Islamic Emirate to open secondary schools for girls so they can gain entrance for the upcoming Kankor exam.

A social media campaign has been launched under the name “Let Afghan Girls Learn.”

The organizer of the event said that its goal is to immediately open the gates of secondary and high schools for girls.

“This is a non-political campaign. The goal is to invite different guests for a week, both Afghans and foreigners, knowledgeable professors and any people who will discuss the opening of schools,” said Obaidullah Bahir, host of the campaign.

Some students said that due to the closing of schools for girls they have lost access to the Kankor exam and now their future is unknown. They said this year “thousands of girls were prevented from taking the Kankor Exam.”

These students asked the Islamic Emirate to open secondary schools for girls so they can gain entrance for the upcoming Kankor exam.

Nazanin is a 12^th grade student and due to the closing of the schools for girls she could not participate in the Kankor exam, and she said that all her dreams to continue her education have turned into despair.

“We just want the school to be opened, we are worried about our future, we want the schools to be opened so that we can study,” said Nazanin, a student.

“The 11th grader who went to 12th is without a future, the 12th grader who is studying to prepare for Kankor is also unlucky,” said Lima, a student.

Some female students who are not allowed to go to school say they face depression.

“I request the Islamic Emirate to reopen the schools for girls as soon as possible because we want to be educated and to study and make our country progress,” said Arezo, a student.

However, the officials of the Ministry of Education did not provide a comment on the issue after repeated requests.

Meanwhile, some religious clerics said that depriving girls of school is against Islamic law.

“No one can say that from Islam, pertaining to girls, especially in Afghanistan–to the extent that we are in Afghanistan because we need our sisters to study–it is forbidden for them to go to school. I think that this is a strategic issue,” said Rahmatullah Norzai, professor of religious scholars.

At the same time, as girls’ schools are closed, the presence of women in higher education institutions and entrance exams have also decreased

MoPW: 65,000 Workers to Be Sent Abroad

November 8, 2022 Current News Articles

Tolo News

7 Nov 2022

Afghanistan Among Countries with Most Displaced People

November 8, 2022 Current News Articles

Fatema Adeeb

Tolo News

8 Nov 2022

Opinion by Fawzia Koofi

Prioritizing Short-term Counterterrorism Above a Political Settlement

U.S. Bureaucracy Not Set Up to Pursue a Political Settlement

Why Did Lessons Go Unlearned or Ignored?

‘Tragedy’

Compensation

The New India Express

Recent Posts