Save the Children Warns of Food Crisis Among Afghan Returnees

The Islamic Emirate said that serious efforts are ongoing to address the challenges of Afghan migrants in order to provide them with shelter.

Save the Children said that most children from Afghan families deported from Pakistan do not have access to adequate shelter, education, and food.

The organization, citing a published survey, added that one in every three children faces a hunger crisis, and one in every six families lives under a tent.

Save the Children said: “About three-quarters of returnees and families in host communities reduced portion sizes or restricted the food consumption of adults so small children could eat on at least two days in the previous week. Almost 8 million children in Afghanistan – or one in three – are facing crisis levels of hunger. Nearly one in six families live in tents. Only a third had managed to bring assets back with them from Pakistan. Almost two thirds (65%) of children who have returned to Afghanistan have not been enrolled in school.”

Khan Mohammad, who recently returned from Pakistan to Kabul, said he had left the country during the former Soviet Red Army’s presence and now faces a challenging life with his children.

Khan Mohammad told TOLOnews: “We couldn’t work in Pakistan, and if we went out, they would arrest us and ask for money in exchange for release.”

“We have neither a shelter to live in nor anything to eat; these are our problems,” a woman deported from Pakistan told TOLOnews.

Ahmadullah, 30, also recently returned with his family from Pakistan and is worried about advancing their life and providing for them.

“We are poor people, it would be very good if we are helped, as we have neither work nor shelter here,” Ahmadullah told TOLOnews.

The Islamic Emirate said that serious efforts are ongoing to address the challenges of Afghan migrants in order to provide them with shelter.

Hamdullah Fetrat, the deputy spokesperson of the Islamic Emirate, said: “The Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation created commissions for returning migrants and displaced people that have been addressing their issues for over a year now, and work on building houses for them is proceeding rapidly.”

According to the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, 555 Afghan migrants returned to the country through the Torkham and Spin Boldak crossings on Wednesday.

Save the Children Warns of Food Crisis Among Afghan Returnees
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11,000 Afghan Migrants Incarcerated in Iran and Pakistan

Meanwhile, many Afghan migrants residing in Iran and Pakistan complain about the challenges they face in these two countries. 

The Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MoRR) reports that eleven thousand Afghan migrants are currently imprisoned in the prisons of Iran and Pakistan.

According to Abdul Matlub Haqqani, the spokesperson for this ministry, over twelve thousand prisoners have been released from Pakistan and Iran in the past year and have returned to the country.

The spokesperson for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations said, “In the past year, approximately 12,020 individuals have been released from prisons in Iran and Pakistan, and currently, about 11,000 Afghans who have been arrested for various crimes are incarcerated in these countries. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, particularly the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations, is making efforts to secure the release of these prisoners.”

Meanwhile, many Afghan migrants residing in Iran and Pakistan complain about the challenges they face in these two countries.

They urge the interim government to take serious measures to address their issues.

Mehdi, an Afghan migrant in Iran, stated: “A few days ago in southern Tehran, buses were organized to deport migrants, and dozens of people were transferred to camps with these city buses.”

Hawa, an Afghan migrant in Pakistan, said, “Unfortunately, the situation for migrants in Pakistan is dire and concerning; an Afghan in Pakistan does not enjoy the slightest municipal standing.”

Some activists in the field of migrant rights say that the Islamic Emirate should persuade the governments of Pakistan and Iran based on international conventions to stop harassing and detaining Afghan migrants.

Juma Khan Poya, an activist in the field of migrant rights, said: “The current authorities and officials in Afghanistan, based on international conventions including the Geneva Conventions, should persuade the governments of Iran and Pakistan to cease the harassment and detention of migrants.”

Previously, the Islamic Emirate’s Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, reported that over the past two years, they have freed more than four thousand Afghans from Pakistani prisons.

11,000 Afghan Migrants Incarcerated in Iran and Pakistan
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Afghan women turn to entrepreneurship but struggle to access capital

By  and 

KABUL, April 17 (Reuters) – Female-led businesses now represent an economic lifeline for Afghan women living under Taliban restrictions, but face a series of problems accessing capital and markets, a United Nations Development Programme study released on Wednesday showed.
The UNDP found that 41% of 3,100 Afghan female entrepreneurs surveyed had to take on debt but just 5% of them had been able to gain credit through a bank or micro-finance institution, instead mostly relying on lending from friends or family members.
Respondents also reported restrictions hampered their operations, with over 70% saying they were unable to travel to a local market without a male guardian.
The Taliban have not formally banned women from work but have barred many Afghan female aidworkers, shuttered beauty salons, which employed tens of thousands of women, and limited women’s movement and work in many institutions without a male guardian.
That has caused female formal employment – already low even before the Taliban took over in 2021 – to plummet, according to international development and labour organisations.
However female entrepreneurship has continued and some Taliban officials, including the commerce minister, have said their administration wants to support female businesses, many of which employ women in carpet weaving, handicrafts, dried fruit and saffron production.
Sadeqa Sadiqyar, a member of the Afghan Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry in western Herat province said her fruit snack business employed eight women and had managed to open a second branch since 2021.
However, she said her business was not reaching its potential in part due to competition from cheap imports and a lack of credit access.
“A challenge we face is the lack of financial support or resources; if organizations could assist us with financial issues, we could create more job opportunities for women and even export our products abroad,” she said.

Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad and Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul; Editing by Alexandra Hudson

Afghan women turn to entrepreneurship but struggle to access capital
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250,000 Afghan children need education, food and homes after returning from Pakistan, says NGO

Associated Press

Updated 12:33 PM EDT, April 18, 2024

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A quarter of a million Afghan children need education, food and homes after being forcibly returned from Pakistan, a nongovernmental organization said Thursday.

Pakistan is cracking down on foreigners it alleges are in the country illegally, including 1.7 million Afghans. It insists the campaign is not directed against Afghans specifically, but they make up most of the foreigners in the country.

More than 520,000 Afghans have left Pakistan since last October.

Save the Children said families are entering Afghanistan with “virtually nothing” and that nearly half of all returnees are children.

A survey of families by the NGO said nearly all of them lacked enough food for the next one to two months. Some returnees and host families had to borrow money for food or rely on friends and relatives for food.

Almost two thirds of children who have returned to Afghanistan have not been enrolled in school, according to Save the Children. The majority told the organization they don’t have the necessary documents to register and enroll in school. In Pakistan, more than two-thirds of these children had been attending school, it said.

Arshad Malik, Save the Children country director for Afghanistan, said the return of so many people was creating an additional strain on already overstretched resources.

“Many undocumented Afghan children were born in Pakistan,” he said. “Afghanistan is not the place they call home. In addition to the returns from Pakistan, 600,000 Afghans arrived from Iran last year.”

A spokesman for the Refugee Ministry, Abdul Mutalib Haqqani, said education was available for any child who was missing out on classes.

“They can register in any class and continue to learn, whether they have documents or not,” said Haqqani. “This problem has been solved by us.”

Pakistan’s decision to deport Afghans who entered illegally struck hard. Many Afghans have lived for decades in Pakistan, driven there by successive wars at home.

When the order was announced, hundreds of thousands feared arrest and fled back to Afghanistan.

250,000 Afghan children need education, food and homes after returning from Pakistan, says NGO
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Rainstorms Kill More Than 130 Across Afghanistan and Pakistan

Zia ur-Rehman and 

Zia ur-Rehman reported from Islamabad and Christina Goldbaum from London.

The New York Times

A deluge of unseasonably heavy rains has lashed Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent days, killing more than 130 people across both countries, with the authorities forecasting more flooding and rainfall, and some experts pointing to climate change as the cause.

In Afghanistan, at least 70 people have been killed in flash floods and other weather-related incidents, while more than 2,600 homes have been destroyed or damaged, according to Mullah Janan Sayeq, a spokesman for the Ministry of Disaster Management. At least 62 people have died in the storms in neighboring Pakistan, which has been hammered by rainfall at nearly twice the average rate for this time of year, according to Pakistani officials.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, the Pakistani region bordering Afghanistan, appears to be the hardest hit. Flash floods and landslides caused by torrential rains have damaged homes and destroyed infrastructure. Photos and videos from the province show roads turned into raging rivers, and homes and bridges being swept away.

“The rains have caused significant damage,” Bilal Faizi, spokesperson for the provincial disaster management authority, said in a phone interview. He added that at least 33 people had died in the province over the past four days, and 336 houses had been destroyed.

Around midnight on Monday in Swat Valley, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Akbar Zada woke up to a thunderous crash after a boulder tumbled down a nearby mountain in the rain and destroyed a room of his home where two of his sons were sleeping. The boys, 14 and 16, were both killed.

The deluge in Afghanistan and Pakistan began at the same time that rainstorms swept the Gulf, battering the United Arab Emirates and Oman with record-setting rainfall that killed at least 20 people in both countries. The storms in the United Arab Emirates constituted the largest rainfall event in the region in 75 years.

In Pakistan, the recent flooding comes just over two years after a devastating monsoon season battered the country in 2022, killing over 1,700 people and affecting about 33 million more. That flooding destroyed millions of acres of crops, caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage and started an international conversation about the environmental costs of global warming that poorer countries disproportionately shoulder.

The rainstorms this week offered more grim reminders of those costs. In Swat Valley, a popular tourist destination, landslides and washed-out roads caused by the heavy rains stranded thousands, mostly tourists, according to Amjad Ali Khan, a local member of Parliament who oversaw rescue efforts. At least 15 landslides have been reported in the area.

“To mitigate future climate-change disasters, the provincial government has plans to build retention dams to manage water flow and control deforestation to prevent soil erosion,” Dr. Khan said.

Heavy rains also triggered devastating flash floods that tore through Pakistan’s Balochistan Province, particularly its coastal region, causing widespread damage in Gwadar, a seaside city.

Last month, Gwadar received an exceptional amount of rainfall exceeding seven inches in less than 48 hours. Situated in an arid region of southern Pakistan, Gwadar had not experienced a deluge of that magnitude in recent memory, and the rainfall submerged most buildings in the city.

Those weather warnings also spurred concerns about the unseasonable rain affecting Pakistan’s wheat harvest, and stoked fears that the country’s monsoon season between June and September might also bring increased levels of devastation this year.

“This is exactly what we’ve been warning about,” said Muhammad Qasim, a professor of environmental science at the University of Swat. “Climate change is leading to more erratic weather patterns, with extreme events like heat waves, droughts and unpredictable monsoons becoming increasingly common.”

Safiullah Padshah contributed reporting.

Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times, leading the coverage of the region. 

Rainstorms Kill More Than 130 Across Afghanistan and Pakistan
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UN: Life expectancy average declines in Afghanistan

The United Nations, in its annual report analyzing Afghanistan’s situation in 2023, stated that despite the “tireless efforts” of the organization and its partners to address issues in Afghanistan, the country continues to grapple with “complex and multifaceted challenges.”

The report titled “UN Annual Results Report for Afghanistan in 2023” was released on Thursday, the 18th of April, revealing that in 2024, approximately 15.8 million people will face food insecurity and emergency levels of vulnerability.

Citing Gallup survey results and polls conducted by UN agencies in Afghanistan, the organization concluded that the “average life expectancy in the past five years [in Afghanistan] has decreased.”

The year 2024 is described as “highly challenging” for the people of Afghanistan, encompassing deep levels of need and emergency poverty levels. The UN report states: Afghans cite access to food as their most essential need. Millions who are unable to afford or produce basic sustenance face hunger and malnutrition.

The organization emphasizes the urgency of upholding human rights principles in Afghanistan and stresses the importance of remaining committed to human rights, gender equality, and women’s empowerment in 2024.

UN: Life expectancy average declines in Afghanistan
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US review finds August 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul airport was unpreventable

Associated Press

Monday, April 15, 2024

Findings also detailed how a ‘bald man in black’ thought by service members to be the bomber was misidentified

The findings, released on Monday, refute assertions by some service members who believed they had a chance to take out the would-be bomber but did not get approval. And, for the first time, the USmilitary confirmed that the bomber was Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an Islamic State militant who had been in an Afghan prison but was released by the Taliban as the group took control of the country that summer.

The Abbey Gate bombing during the final chaotic days of the Afghanistan withdrawal killed 13 US service members and 170 Afghans, and wounded scores more. It triggered widespread debate and congressional criticism, fueled by emotional testimony from a Marine injured in the blast, who said snipers believed they saw the possible bomber but could not get approval to take him out.

Former Marine Sgt Tyler Vargas-Andrews told the House foreign affairs committee last March that Marines and others aiding in the evacuation were given descriptions of men believed to be plotting an attack. Vargas-Andrews, who was injured in the blast but not interviewed in the initial investigation, said he and others saw a man matching the description and might have been able to stop the attack, but requests to take action were denied.

In a detailed briefing to a small number of reporters, members of the team that carried out the review released photos of the bald man identified by military snipers as a potential threat and compared them with photos of al-Logari. The team members described facial recognition and other analysis they used confirmed those were not the same man.

“For the past two years, some service members have claimed that they had the bomber in their sights and they could have prevented the attack. We now know that is not correct,” said a team member.

They said they also showed the photo of the bald man to service members during the latest interviews, and that the troops again confirmed that was the suspicious man they had targeted.

The review notes that the bald man was first seen around 7am and that troops lost sight of him by 10am. The bombing was more than seven hours later, and the US says al-Logari did not get to Abbey Gate until “very shortly” before the blast took place.

Family members of those killed in the blast received similar briefings over the past two weekends and some are still unconvinced.

“For me, personally, we are still not clear. I believe Tyler saw what Tyler saw and he knows what he saw. And it was not the guy that they were claiming was the man in black,” Jim McCollum, the father of Marine Lance Cpl Rylee McCollum, told the Associated Press.

Critics have slammed the Biden administration for the catastrophic evacuation, and they have complained that no one was held accountable for it. And while the US was able to get more than 130,000 civilians out of the country during the panic after the Taliban took control of the government, there were horrifying images of desperate Afghans clinging to military aircraft as they lifted off.

US review finds August 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul airport was unpreventable
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Islamic Emirate’s Qatar Office Seeks to Reshape Afghan Global Image

The head of the Islamic Emirate’s political office in Doha, Suhail Shaheen, told TOLOnews that the office is striving to portray a “true” image of Afghanistan through international media.
Shaheen mentioned that this office works to coordinate and improve relations between the Islamic Emirate and other countries.

According to Shaheen, the political office of the Islamic Emirate in Qatar also plays a constructive role in providing newly printed passports and banknotes and transferring them to the country.

Suhail Shaheen said: “The political office is active in the diplomatic sector and discusses various issues, including economic, political, and educational matters with delegations from different countries, striving to attract investment and economic aid.”

A number of political analysts emphasized strengthening the internal and foreign policy of Afghanistan’s interim government.

“The Islamic Emirate should formalize and legislate its internal and foreign policies to address the questions that arise in the region and beyond,” Mohammad Matin Mohammadkhil, a political analyst, told TOLOnews.

“The internal and foreign policy of the Islamic Emirate is economically focused, and the Islamic Emirate endeavors to strengthen its economic and investment relations with countries worldwide,” said Shamsur Rahman Ahmadzai, a political analyst.

The Islamic Emirate’s political office in Doha was opened on June 17, 2013, with the initial aim of facilitating peace talks and resolving Afghanistan’s problems peacefully.

According to Islamic Emirate officials, this office has now become a bridge connecting Afghanistan to the global community.

Islamic Emirate’s Qatar Office Seeks to Reshape Afghan Global Image
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Women’s Rights Condition for US Recognition of Islamic Emirate: State Dept

The US State Department reiterated that without women’s participation in society and the economy, the “Taliban” will not be recognized.

Speaking at a press conference, the US Department of State’s deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said that equal rights for women and girls in Afghanistan are a fundamental principle of Washington’s policy towards Kabul.

Patel said: “Equal rights for Afghan women and girls continues to be a key tenant of our Afghanistan policy and we continue to reiterate regularly through relevant channels with the Taliban that their self-stated goal of legitimacy can only be achieved –and likely of being impossible to achieve if half of the population is being left out of participating in its society, participating in its economy, and it continues to be a key factor of our approach to Afghanistan policy and it’s something that we’ll continue to work towards.”

Meanwhile, some political analysts and university scholars emphasized the need for full, equal, and meaningful participation of women and girls in the country and said that if this situation continues, Afghanistan will face a crisis.

“We have no higher right than the right to education, the right to work, and individual freedom, which the Islamic Emirate has not yet acted upon and must act on,” said Zakiullah Mohammadi, a university scholar.

“As long as the female population of Afghanistan does not have access to their rights, such as the right to education and work, which are very fitting, we cannot move towards progress,” said Naser Shafiq, a political analyst.

The Islamic Emirate has recently not commented on this matter; however, it has always emphasized that women’s rights in Afghanistan are protected within the framework of Islamic laws.

Women’s Rights Condition for US Recognition of Islamic Emirate: State Dept
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Pentagon Reviews Events Before Attack That Killed 13 U.S. Troops in Kabul

The New York Times

A new Pentagon review of the events leading up to the bombing that killed 13 American service members at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2021, has reaffirmed earlier findings that U.S. troops could not have prevented the deadly violence.

The review’s conclusions focus on the final days and hours at Abbey Gate before the attack, which also killed as many as 170 civilians. The review provides new details about the Islamic State bomber who carried out the suicide mission, including how he slipped into the crowds trying to evacuate the capital’s airport just moments before detonating explosives.

Some Marines who were at the gate have said they identified the suspected bomber — who became known to investigators as “Bald Man in Black” — in the crowds hours before the attack but were twice denied permission by their superiors to shoot him. But the review, building on a previous investigation made public in February 2022, rejected those accusations.

The narrative of missed opportunities to avert tragedy has gained momentum over the past year among conservatives and has contributed to broader Republican criticisms of the Biden administration’s troop withdrawal and evacuation from Kabul in August 2021.

The bombing was a searing experience for the military after 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Thirteen flag-draped coffins were flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, and a succession of funerals were held across the country for the service members, most of them under the age of 25.

Military officials had stood by the conclusions of the earlier inquiry that a lone Islamic State suicide bomber carried out the attack and was not joined by accomplices firing into the crowd.

One of the main issues was the identity of the bomber. Almost immediately after the attack, the Islamic State identified him as Abdul Rahman Al-Logari. U.S. and other Western intelligence analysts later pieced together evidence that led them to the same conclusion.

American officials at the time said that Mr. Logari was a former engineering student who was one of several thousand militants freed from at least two high-security prisons after the Taliban seized control of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021. The Taliban emptied the facilities indiscriminately, releasing not only their own imprisoned members but also fighters from ISIS Khorasan or ISIS-K, the terrorist organization’s Afghanistan branch and the Taliban’s nemesis.

Mr. Logari was not unknown to the Americans. In 2017, the C.I.A. tipped off Indian intelligence agents that he was plotting a suicide bombing in New Delhi, U.S. officials said. Indian authorities foiled the attack and turned Mr. Logari over to the C.I.A., which sent him to Afghanistan to serve time at the Parwan prison at Bagram Air Base. He remained there until he was freed amid the chaos after Kabul fell.

At the airport, investigators said, the bomber detonated a 20-pound explosive, probably carried in a backpack or vest, spraying 5-millimeter ball bearings in a tremendous blast that was captured in grainy video images shown to Pentagon reporters.

All this was known to the Marine and Army officials as they started their supplemental review last September. But they were assigned to address the lingering questions.

On the day of the bombing, Marines at the gate were given intelligence to be on the lookout for a man with groomed hair, wearing loose clothes and carrying a black bag of explosives. The review team determined, after additional interviews and assessing security camera footage and other photographs of the chaotic scene, that the description was not specific enough to meaningfully narrow the search.

But Marines at the gate came forward later to say that at about 7 a.m., they saw an individual matching the suicide bomber’s description. The Marines said that the man had engaged in suspicious behavior and that they had sent urgent warnings to leaders asking for permission to shoot. Twice their request was denied, they said.

The review team concluded that the Marines had conflated the intelligence reports with an earlier spotting of a man wearing beige clothes and carrying a black bag. The team also reviewed a photo taken of the suspect from one of the sniper team’s cameras.

The man in question did not actually match the description, the review team concluded. He was bald, wore black clothes and was not carrying a black bag. Moreover, photographs taken of Mr. Logari when he was in American custody did not match the photographs of the suspect, even after facial recognition software was used.

“Al-Logari and ‘Bald Man in Black’ received the strongest negative result,” concluded a slide from the supplemental review team’s findings that was briefed to reporters.

Moreover, the review team concluded, Mr. Logari did not arrive at Abbey Gate on Aug. 26 until “immediately before” the attack, minimizing his chances of being detected by the Marines.

The review team went through a similar process to discount the sightings of specific individuals whom Marines had suspected of carrying out a dry run of the eventual attack.

Members of the review team did not challenge the motives or dedication of the Marines who raised the vexing questions. But in the end, the review team concluded, the Marines were mistaken.

As traumatic as the bombing was, perhaps it is not surprising that the recollections and conclusions of Marines and soldiers that day, however sincere, were not supported by subsequent inquiries.

The findings of the original Army-led investigation in February 2022 contradicted initial reports by senior U.S. commanders that militants had fired into the crowd of people at the airport seeking to flee the Afghan capital and had caused some of the casualties.

The accounts of what unfolded immediately after the attack — from the Pentagon and people on the ground — changed several times. Defense Department officials initially said that nearby fighters from Islamic State Khorasan began firing weapons. That turned out not to be true.

Some people near the scene said the Marines had shot indiscriminately into the crowd, apparently believing they were under fire. That, too, according to the accounting by the military’s Central Command, turned out not to be true, although investigators said that British and American forces had fired warning shots in the air.

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades.

Pentagon Reviews Events Before Attack That Killed 13 U.S. Troops in Kabul
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