Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad and Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul; Editing by Alexandra Hudson
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.
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.
“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.
Rainstorms Kill More Than 130 Across Afghanistan and Pakistan
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 rain has been relentless these past years, and now it’s taken my sons,” Mr. Zada said in a phone interview.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
But under mounting political pressure to address disparities in the earlier review and the accounts of the Marines at the gate — which also included reports that the Islamic State had conducted a test run of the bombing — a team of Army and Marine Corps officers interviewed more than 50 people who were not interviewed the first time around.
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.
Review says Abbey Gate bombing wasn’t preventable, refutes claims troops sighted the would-be bomber
WASHINGTON (AP) — The suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed U.S. troops and Afghans in August 2021 was not preventable, and the “bald man in black” spotted by U.S. service members the morning of the attack was not the bomber, according to a new review by U.S. Central Command.
The findings, released 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 U.S. military is confirming 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 U.S. 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 believe they saw the possible bomber but couldn’t 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.
“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.
The review notes that the bald man was first seen around 7 a.m. and that troops lost sight of him by 10 a.m. The bombing was more than seven hours later, and the U.S. says al-Logari didn’t get to Abbey Gate until “very shortly” before the blast took place. They declined to be more specific about the timing, saying details are classified.
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.
And Mark Schmitz, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, questioned the photo itself.
“They kept saying this is who Tyler Vargas-Andrews was looking at and we were thinking to ourselves, ‘well, that’s interesting. Why is this a picture of a picture from a Canon camera?’” he said. “To me it felt like they were trying to find the guy in those cameras that may have come close to looking like somebody of interest that they can try to sell to us.”
The families, however, also said they were relieved to get more details about their loved ones’ deaths, saying the initial briefings were not as good.
Schmitz said that Army Gen. Eric Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, was part of the latest briefing and apologized for how the families were treated during the initial probe. This time around officials were able to share with Schmitz for the first time exactly where his son was when the bomb went off and that he was unconscious almost immediately, and therefore did not feel the impact of the shrapnel that went through his left torso, hitting a primary artery.
Team members said they also are planning to speak with the troops who were interviewed this time, to share the results of the report.
They said the review also could not completely rule out claims that militants did a test run of the bombing several days earlier. But after reviewing photos and other intelligence, the team concluded it was unlikely that three men seen carrying a large bag — which troops deemed suspicious — were doing a trial run.
More broadly, the team said the review brought some new details to light, including more discussion about the possible bombing test run. But they said overall it confirmed the findings of U.S. Central Command’s initial investigation into the bombing: that it was not preventable and that reports of threats prior to the bombing were too vague.
As an example, the new review noted that threat reports talked about a possible bomber with groomed hair, wearing loose clothes, and carrying a black bag. That description, the review said, could have matched anyone in the enormous crowd desperately trying to get into the airport.
The team said they conducted 52 interviews for the review — adding up to a total of 190 when the previous investigation is included. Service members were asked about 64 questions, and the sessions lasted between one hour and seven hours long.
A number of those questioned weren’t included in the original investigation, many because they were severely wounded in the attack. The new review was ordered last September by Kurilla, largely due to criticism of the initial investigation and assertions that the deadly assault could have been stopped.
Members of the team said the Islamic State group put out the bomber’s name on social media, but U.S. intelligence was later able to independently confirm that report.
U.S. Central Command’s initial investigation concluded in November 2021 that given the worsening security situation at the airport’s Abbey Gate as Afghans became increasingly desperate to flee, “ the attack was not preventable at the tactical level without degrading the mission to maximize the number of evacuees.”
Critics have slammed the Biden administration for the catastrophic evacuation, and they’ve complained that no one was held accountable for it. And while the U.S. 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.
Pakistani police warn Afghan migrants to leave Balochistan in a day

According to a media report, authorities in the Balochistan province have issued a warning for Afghan migrants, indicating that they should voluntarily leave villages in the province by Tuesday.
Police stated that Afghan migrants with Afghan citizenship cards and registration cards are subject to this warning, as reported by the Afghanistan international.
Afghan migrants said on Monday that police have warned if they don’t leave Baluchistan’s villages by 8 a.m. local time on Tuesday, April 16th, they will be forcibly expelled.
According to the report, police have warned villages such as Kraz, Nav Bazar, and Pishin in Balochistan to evacuate and return to Afghanistan voluntarily.
Earlier, the Pakistani government announced that Afghan migrants with Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC) and Proof of Registration (PoR) cards would not be expelled from Pakistan, but now provincial authorities in Balochistan say even legal migrants will be expelled.
Proof of Registration and Afghan Citizenship Cards are identity documents for Afghan migrants, allowing them to live legally in Pakistan. These cards are valid throughout Pakistan.
Since November last year, Pakistani authorities have forcibly deported over 700,000 Afghan migrants from the country, exacerbating the dire humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan. These migrants now face numerous challenges, including shortages of food, shelter, and employment opportunities.
The Afghan migrants deported from Pakistan in recent months find themselves confronting a multitude of difficulties. With limited access to basic necessities such as food, shelter, and employment opportunities, they struggle to rebuild their lives amidst the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.
While the Pakistani government had announced it would soon begin the second phase of expelling Afghan migrants from Pakistan.
The current Taliban regime has remained silent on the issue, refraining from making any comments or statements regarding the situation.