White House: ‘We Didn’t Just Leave a Bunch of Weapons in Afghanistan’

Speaking at a press briefing, he said that the US has not left a bunch of weapons in Afghanistan. 

John Kirby, US National Security Council spokesman, once again rejected the claims regarding the existence of weapons left by US forces in Afghanistan.

Speaking at a press briefing, he said that the US has not left a bunch of weapons in Afghanistan.

“We didn’t just leave a bunch of weapons in Afghanistan, this is a fallacy, this is a farce, what we did over the course of our 20 years in Afghanistan, a course with congressional approval and consultation, was arm and helped equip the Afghan national security forces,” John Kirby noted.

The spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, Zabihullah Mujahid, referring to the remarks of Kirby, said that the US military equipment was destroyed when the American forces left the country.

“There are no weapons in Afghanistan that fell into the hands of a smuggler, or were transfered  somewhere; We reject this claim … by any country. But in the past twenty years of occupation, weapons were being brought from remote countries or through different countries to Afghanistan and were falling into the hands of America and it was equipping American troops,” Mujahid told TOLOnews.

Meanwhile, some military and political analysts have different views regarding the US military equipment.

“The concerns of the neighboring countries, especially Pakistan are true. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan should be accountable in this regard,” Sadiq Shinwari, a military analyst said.

“Any government that defends independence or is responsible for preserving independence must protect its territorial integrity, its national sovereignty, and its independence in such a way that any weapon, whether it be a light weapon or a heavy weapon, is honor and dignity,” Abdul Shukor Dadras, a political analyst said.

Earlier, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR), said in a report that more than seven billion dollars’ worth of US military equipment was left in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.

White House: ‘We Didn’t Just Leave a Bunch of Weapons in Afghanistan’
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Roza Otunbayeva Briefs UN Security Council on Situation of Afghanistan

Pointing out the issue of engagement, the UN envoy said that officials of the current Afghan government are open to further engagement with UNAMA.

The head of UNAMA, Roza Otunbayeva, today briefed the UN Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan, saying that the human rights situation in Afghanistan today is a record of “systemic discrimination against women and girls”.

“The key features of the human rights situation in Afghanistan today are a record of systemic discrimination against women and girls, repression of political dissent and free speech, a lack of meaningful representation of minorities, and ongoing instances of extrajudicial killing, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and ill treatment,” she said.

Pointing out the issue of engagement, the UN envoy said that officials of the current Afghan government are open to further engagement with UNAMA.

“We see that many of the de facto authorities are open to further engagement with UNAMA and to seek an awareness of human rights standards,” Otunbayeva added.

The head of UNAMA, referring to the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan said: “The humanitarian situation remains of grave concern. We are entering another winter in which more than 20 million people will depend on aid. Given this year’s drop in funding, and by extension provision of assistance, many needy Afghans will be more vulnerable than they were this time last year.”

Briefing the UNSC, Roza Otunbayeva said that the Islamic Emirate maintained a good level of security in the country.

“The de facto authorities continue to maintain a generally good level of security. Unexploded ordnance remains a significant concern in Afghanistan, especially for children. Relations between the de facto Directorate of Mine Action Coordination and the United Nations have improved and the suspension limiting any form of cooperation was lifted in October this year,” she said.

Roza Otunbayeva Briefs UN Security Council on Situation of Afghanistan
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Afghans fled the Taliban in droves. Now Pakistan wants to send them back

By Andrew North

The Economist

Dec 19th, 2023

Omid has been living in Pakistan without a formal permit. The police are trying to push him out

He was eating dinner with his family when the knocking began. Like many Afghans, Omid, a translator, had fled from Afghanistan in 2021 after the Taliban took over. He and his family snuck across the border to Pakistan, where they tried to keep a low profile as they waited for their applications for asylum in the West to be processed.

Omid, his wife Nafisa and their three children were sitting cross-legged on the floor tucking into a steaming dish of rice and beans that Nafisa had prepared. The children were reaching out for strips of flatbread when they heard a series of sharp thumps on the metal gate outside their home. The noise made everyone freeze. “Open up,” a voice shouted. “It’s the police.”

“Again?” whispered Omid to Nafisa, as he got up to answer the door. It was the third time that officers had come to their house in as many weeks. They had already taken copies of all their documents. Omid was shocked to see a squad of eight officers gathered outside. “We have come to search the house,” said their commander, wearing the signature dark shirt and beret of the Pakistani police.

The lights on the police vehicles had attracted an audience of nearby residents. “Namak haram!” Omid heard someone shout, a phrase that translates roughly as “traitors”. Until recently it was a phrase that Afghans in Pakistan didn’t hear very often; now it’s hurled at them with alarming frequency.

About 4m Afghan refugees were living in Pakistan at the start of 2023, the result of decades of war and repression on the other side of the border. Nearly half of them didn’t have formal permission to live in Pakistan, but most of the time the police weren’t terribly strict about paperwork.

Then on October 3rd the Pakistani government announced that it was going to start arresting irregular migrants and removing them from the country. Although the official statement didn’t mention Afghans by name, everyone knew it referred to them. Police began seeking them out, and public expressions of hostility surged.

The most vulnerable refugees are those like Omid, who fled after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Many of the 600,000 Afghans who came to Pakistan then had already applied for asylum in other countries – including Britain and America – and intended to stay in Pakistan only temporarily. Because these claims took so long to process, they were forced to overstay their short-term visas.

The thought of going back to Afghanistan terrifies Omid. He knew as soon as they returned to power that the Taliban might target him for working with foreigners, and tried to get on a Western evacuation flight during the chaotic airlift in August 2021. He couldn’t make it through the crush around Kabul airport.

The Islamists put out reassuring statements offering amnesty to anyone who had worked with America or the previous American-backed government. But as the months went on, Omid heard numerous reports of people associated with foreigners being threatened, abducted and murdered. One day towards the end of 2021, a Taliban official got in touch and told Omid he knew about his past. “He called me a marked man,” he said.

Over the following days Omid received a succession of calls from numbers he didn’t recognise. “I stopped picking up after I heard a voice say, ‘We are watching you’,” he said. “I knew I had to leave as soon as I could.”

Soon after the announcement in October, Afghans across Pakistan started to share news and rumours on WhatsApp about people being arrested. Some heard of whole families being taken away, including women and children.

Omid’s landlord came to their home to explain that he risked being punished for letting his property to Afghans. “Leave now,” he said, “or I will hand you over to the police.” After showing the landlord documents that proved their asylum cases were still pending, Omid persuaded him to give the family a reprieve. But the landlord was still uneasy. “Please go as soon as you can,” he said.

Omid is trying to speed up his asylum application, but there’s not much he can do about it. Western governments are overwhelmed by the backlog of cases, and the process moves very slowly. In December, following a visit from America’s envoy to Afghanistan, Pakistan’s government extended the deportation deadline to February 2024.

The police seem determined to carry on rooting out Afghans, however. Since October at least 400,000 Afghans have returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan. Some of these people had been arrested and deported, but many are so scared of ending up in a Pakistani jail that they cross the border voluntarily.

Omid’s family have stopped leaving the house for all but the most essential missions – they no longer even go to the mosque to pray. The fate that could await them if they are deported to Afghanistan is too awful to contemplate. “I don’t even want to think what will happen to us if we’re sent back,” Omid said.

No one is quite sure why the Pakistani government decided to turn against Afghan refugees after tolerating them for so many years. Some suspect that politicians are trying to distract the public from Pakistan’s economic crisis. (Pakistani officials say they are simply enforcing existing immigration codes.)

But any hopes for a compliant ally across the border quickly evaporated. In the past two years there has been a series of terror attacks in Pakistan, many of them suicide-bombings, which have killed more than 2,000 people. They have been mounted by a group affiliated with the Taliban called the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan, which the Pakistani government says has been given sanctuary in Afghanistan.

Omid tried to explain to the policeman that they had already submitted all their details to his colleagues. The commander pushed past, with his colleagues following behind. The family’s dinner was getting cold. “Who else is living here?” the commander demanded, before asking for everyone’s papers.

Omid’s wife was ordered into another room to be searched and questioned by the female officers. The commander told Omid to follow him as he scoured the rest of the house. “He kept asking me the same questions,” said Omid. “Who we were. Where we were from. He knew all the answers. It was just pressure.”

The only thing that has saved him from being arrested so far is the documentation he has showing his family’s asylum cases are still under active consideration. But he may just have got lucky. Afghans say that some others in the same situation have been sent back regardless.

Finally, the commander called a halt to his search and handed back Omid’s documents. “Eat,” he said, gesturing to their meal. But the message was clear. The authorities were not going to leave him alone. As the officer left, he called the family namak haram (traitors). “For God’s sake,” he said, “just go.” 

(Names and some details have been changed to protect identities)

Andrew North is writing a book about Afghanistan. He was previously based in Kabul with the BBC

Afghans fled the Taliban in droves. Now Pakistan wants to send them back
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US State Dept Warns Americans Against Traveling to Afghanistan

The statement claims that the “Taliban have harassed and detained aid and humanitarian workers.”

The US Department of State urged its citizens to refrain from traveling to Afghanistan “due to terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping and crime.”

“US citizens should not travel to Afghanistan for any reason,” the State department said in statement.

Since the political change in August 2021, the US Embassy in Kabul has suspended operations, and the US government is not able to provide “any emergency consular services to US citizens in Afghanistan.”

“Multiple terrorist groups are active in country and US citizens are targets of kidnapping and wrongful detentions,” the statement said. “The Department has assessed that there is a risk of wrongful detention of US citizens by the Taliban.”

The statement claims that the “Taliban have harassed and detained aid and humanitarian workers.”

It also added that the activities of foreigners may be viewed with suspicion, and reasons for detention may be unclear.

“Even if you are registered with the appropriate authorities to conduct business, the risk of detention is high,” the statement added.

The Department of State also urged US citizens who are in Afghanistan to depart immediately via commercial means “if possible.”

The Islamic Emirate’s spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that such statements are based on incorrect information and that Afghanistan is safe and there is no threat to foreign nationals.

“The Taliban do not regularly permit the United States to conduct welfare checks on US citizens in detention, including by phone,” it said. “Detention can be lengthy and while in detention, US citizens have limited or no access to medical attention and may be subject to physical abuse.”

US State Dept Warns Americans Against Traveling to Afghanistan
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FM Muttaqi Opposes Appointment of UN Peace Envoy for Kabul

The acting minister also said that Afghanistan’s doors for engagement were open for all.

The acting minister of foreign affairs, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said he opposes the appointment of a representative of the UN for peace and reconciliation negotiations in Afghanistan.

The new potential envoy was suggested by UN special coordinator for Afghanistan  Feridun Sinirlioğlu in his report to the UNSC in November 2023.

In a meeting with UK Chargé d’Affaires for Afghanistan Robert Chatterton Dickson, Muttaqi said the report of the UN’s special coordinator on Afghanistan is “balanced,” according to Zia Ahmad Takal, the deputy spokesperson of the ministry.

The acting minister also said that Afghanistan’s doors for engagement were open for all.

“Amir Khan Muttaqi considered most parts of the report of the UN special coordinator for Afghanistan as positive but opposed the appointment of a UN peace representative for Afghanistan taking into account the current situation of the country. He added that Afghanistan has had developments in many sectors and has positive engagement with countries,” said Zia Ahmad Takal, deputy spokesperson for the ministry of foreign affairs.

Takal said that the acting foreign minister also met with the Chinese special envoy for Afghanistan, Yue Xiaoyong.

In the meeting, Amir Khan Muttaqi said better bilateral relations between the two countries are “important” and he emphasized the start of work on Mes Aynak copper mine.

Political and economic analysts are of the view that strengthening economic and political relations between Afghanistan and its neighbors would benefit Kabul.

“The investment of foreigners in Afghanistan’s natural resources can strategically ensure the economic growth of the country,” said Muhammad Bashir Shabiri, an economic analyst.

“The world has a consensus in strategic engagement with Afghanistan. Countries will individually engage with Afghanistan considering their respective interests,” said Fazal Rahman Oriya, a political analyst.

Earlier, the Islamic Emirate urged its desire for positive engagement with the world.

FM Muttaqi Opposes Appointment of UN Peace Envoy for Kabul
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Islamic Emirate Considers Witholding of UN Seat ‘Illegal’

The committee reviewed two conflicting communications regarding Afghanistan’s representation at the seventy-eighth session of the General Assembly.

The Islamic Emirate considers the UN members’ decision to not hand over the Afghanistan seat at the United Nations to its ambassador “illegal.”

This comes as the UN Credentials Committee has deferred its decision on assigning Afghanistan’s seat in the organization to the Islamic Emirate for the third consecutive time.

The committee reviewed two conflicting communications regarding Afghanistan’s representation at the seventy-eighth session of the General Assembly, both from the Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Emirate and Naseer Ahmad Faiq, who is the current Chargé d’Affaires of Afghanistan Permanent Mission to the United Nations.

“Afghanistan should take its seat as soon as possible; but we should be happy about it, that the seat has not been suspended for now because if so, that would be another major challenge. If the situation becomes better in the country, the possibility of regaining the seat is high,” said Toreq Farhadi, a political analyst.

But the Islamic Emirate, in reaction to the decision of the UN regarding the fate of Afghanistan’s seat at the United Nations, said not handing it over to the Islamic Emirate’s ambassador is “illegal and unfair.”

“As the UN has not given this seat to the Islamic Emirate, we consider this action illegal, unfair, a discriminatory action which damages the reputation and credibility of the [United Nations],” said Suhail Shaheen, the Islamic Emirate’s designated permanent representative to the UN.

“To attract international support, it is first of all important to focus on the issue of recognition of Afghanistan which is linked to bringing reforms within the current government in Afghanistan,” said Najib Rahman Shamal, a political analyst.

“The UN seat was important for Afghanistan. It was a bridge between us and the world. Unfortunately we have been out of the international community for the past two and a half years,” said Kamran Aman, a political analyst.

The UN was established in 1945 and Afghanistan became its member in 1946.

Islamic Emirate Considers Witholding of UN Seat ‘Illegal’
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Afghanistan: ‘I have to sedate my hungry baby due to aid cuts’

By Yogita Limaye

Afghanistan correspondent

BBC/Aamir Peerzada
Sohaila often feeds her youngest child tea as she has nothing more nutritious to give her

“The last time I was able to buy milk for my baby was two months ago. Normally I just fill the [feeding] bottle with tea. Or I soak bread in tea and then feed it to her,” Sohaila Niyazi says, sitting on the floor of her mud brick home up a hill in eastern Kabul.

There are no roads to her house – you have to walk up steep mud tracks with sewage flowing by the side of them.

Sohaila is a widow. She has six children, her youngest a 15-month-old girl named Husna Fakeeri. The tea that Sohaila refers to is what’s traditionally drunk in Afghanistan, made with green leaves and hot water, without any milk or sugar. It contains nothing that’s of any nutritional value for her baby.

Sohaila is one of the 10 million people who have stopped receiving emergency food assistance from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) over the past year – cuts necessitated by a massive funding shortfall. It’s a crushing blow, especially for the estimated two million households run by women in Afghanistan.

Under Taliban rule, Sohaila says she can’t go out to work and feed her family.

“There have been nights when we have had nothing to eat. I say to my children, where can I go begging at this time of night? They sleep in a state of hunger and when they wake up I wonder what I should do. If a neighbour brings us some food the children scramble, saying ‘give me, give me’. I try to split it between them to calm them down,” Sohaila says.

To calm her hungry baby girl, Sohaila says she gives her “sleep medicine”.

“I give it so that she doesn’t wake up and ask for milk because I have no milk to give her. After giving her the medicine, she sleeps from one morning to the next,” says Sohaila. “Sometimes I check to see if she’s alive or dead.”

We inquire about the medicine she’s giving her daughter and find that it is a common antihistamine or anti-allergy drug. Sedation is a side effect.

Doctors have told us that while it’s less harmful than the tranquilisers and anti-depressants we have found being given by some Afghan parents to their hungry children, in higher doses the medicine can cause respiratory distress.

Sohaila says her husband was a civilian killed in crossfire in Panjshir province in 2022, in fighting between Taliban forces and those resisting Taliban rule. After his death, she depended heavily on the aid given by the WFP – flour, oil and beans.

Now the WFP says it’s able to provide supplies to only three million people – less than a quarter of those experiencing acute hunger.

Sohaila is entirely reliant on donations from relatives or neighbours.

For much of the time that we are there, baby Husna is quiet and inactive.

She is moderately malnourished, one of more than three million children suffering from the condition in the country, according to Unicef. More than a quarter of those have the worst form of it – severe acute malnutrition. It’s the worst it’s ever been in Afghanistan, the United Nations says.

And while malnutrition is ravaging the country’s youngest, aid which had prevented healthcare from collapsing has had to be withdrawn.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was paying the salaries of health workers, and funding medicines and food at more than 30 hospitals – an emergency stopgap measure implemented following the regime change in 2021.

Now it doesn’t have the resources to continue, and aid has been withdrawn from most health facilities, including Afghanistan’s only children’s hospital, Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul.

“The salary of doctors and nurses comes from the government now. They have all had their pay cut by half,” Dr Mohammad Iqbal Sadiq, the Taliban-appointed medical director of the hospital, tells us.

The hospital has also closed its outpatient department and is providing services only for those who need to be admitted to the hospital.

The malnutrition ward is full, and on many days, they have to fit more than one child in a bed.

In one corner Sumaya sits upright. At 14 months she weighs as much as a newborn baby, her tiny face wrinkled like that of a much older person.

Next to her is Mohammad Shafi. He weighs half of what he should at 18 months. His father was a Taliban fighter, killed in a road accident. His mother died of an illness.

When we pass his bedside his elderly grandmother, Hayat Bibi, comes to us looking distraught, wanting to tell her story.

Mohammad is cared for by his grandmother. His father was killed in a road accident and his mother died from an illness

She says the Taliban helped bring her grandson to the hospital, but she doesn’t know how they will get by.

“I’m relying on the mercy of God. I have nowhere else to turn to. I’m totally lost,” Hayat Bibi says, her eyes welling up. “I’m struggling myself. My head hurts so much I feel like it might explode.”

We asked the Taliban government’s main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, what they were doing to convince the international community to give more aid.

“Aid has been cut because the economies of donor countries are not doing well. And there have been two big calamities – Covid and the war in Ukraine. So we can’t expect help from them. We won’t get aid by talking to them,” he told us.

“We have to become self-reliant. Our economy has stabilised and we are giving out mining contracts which will create thousands of jobs. But of course, I’m not saying aid should be cut because we still have challenges.”

Did he recognise that Taliban policies were a part of the problem too; that donors didn’t want to give money to a country where the government had imposed stringent restrictions on women?

“If aid is being used as a pressure tool then the Islamic Emirate has its own values which it will safeguard at any cost. Afghans have made big sacrifices in the past to protect our values and will endure the cutting of aid too,” Mr Mujahid said.

His words will not comfort many Afghans. Two-thirds of the country’s people don’t know where their next meal will come from.

In a cold, damp, one-room home off a street in Kabul we meet a woman who says she’s been stopped by the Taliban from selling fruit, vegetables, socks and other odd items on the street. She says she’s also been detained once. Her husband was killed during the war and she has four children to provide for. She doesn’t want to be named.

She breaks down inconsolably minutes into talking about her situation.

“They should at least allow us to work and earn an honest living. I swear to God we are not going out to do bad things. We only go to earn food for our children and they harass us like this,” she says.

This mother of four says she was stopped from selling food on the street

She’s now been forced to send her 12-year-old son out to work.

“I asked one Taliban brother, what do I feed my children if I don’t earn? He said give them poison but don’t come outside your home,” she says. “Two times the Taliban government gave me some money, but it is nowhere close to enough.”

Prior to the Taliban takeover, three-quarters of public spending came from foreign money given directly to the previous regime. It was stopped in August 2021, sending the economy into a spiral.

Aid agencies stepped in to provide a temporary but critical bridge.

Much of that funding has now gone.

It is hard to overstate the severity of the situation. We have seen it over and over again this past year.

Millions are surviving on dry bread and water. Some will not make it through the winter.

Additional reporting by Imogen Anderson. Photos by Aamir Peerzada.

Afghanistan: ‘I have to sedate my hungry baby due to aid cuts’
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Afghan Refugees in Turkey Hope for Relocation, Fear Deportation

WASHINGTON —

Edris Niazi had “a normal life,” back in Kabul, working as a government employee, but his life “turned upside down” after the Taliban seized power in 2021.

Niazi, 32, is now working as a welder in Turkey’s Kayseri province with “no future,” as he fears being deported to Afghanistan.

“There is no way that I return to Afghanistan,” Niazi said. “My life is in danger, and I would try whatever it takes to go to a third country, either through legal or illegal routes.”

Many urban, educated Afghans like Niazi escaped after Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban.

According to the U.N., more than 1.6 million Afghans have fled since August 2021, bringing the total number of Afghan refugees in the neighboring countries to 8.2 million.

More than 300,000 Afghan refugees live in Turkey. Many of them, like Niazi, are hoping to be relocated to a third country.

“Turkey is not the place that one would like to stay in it permanently,” Niazi said. “Turkey serves as a bridge” for refugees hoping to go to Europe.

Waiting for relocation

Many Afghan families in Turkey have been waiting for resettlement in third countries for years.

Munir Mansoori, who fled with his family to Turkey in 2016, is still waiting to be relocated to a third country.

“We have tried all the venues [for relocation] but our efforts have yet to yield results,” said Mansoori, who worked as a journalist with Ariana TV back in Afghanistan.

“Here in Turkey, we can’t work in our profession. We can’t work here. It is a different country with a different culture and language,” he said.

He said that he is afraid of deportation as his life would be in danger in Afghanistan.

“I am afraid of being deported. I received threats because I was hosting a music show in Afghanistan before coming to Turkey,” he added.

Ali Hikmat, the co-founder of the Afghan Refugee Solidarity Association, told VOA that in just one week in November, “Turkey arrested 820 Afghans in the eastern part of Turkey and deported them by air to Kabul.”

Hikmat added that Afghans are also pushed back to Iran via the land border.

Last year, Human Rights Watch reported that Turkey was “routinely” pushing back tens of thousands of Afghan refugees to Iran or sending them back to Afghanistan, “with little or no examination of their claims for international protection.”

Based on the information provided by the Turkish authorities, HRW reported that Turkey deported 44,768 Afghans by air to Kabul in the first eight months of 2022.

Worries about education

Shabnam Mohammadi was in high school in Afghanistan’s western province of Herat when the Taliban seized power in 2021.

She, together with her parents and three brothers, left Afghanistan two months after the takeover and crossed the border to Iran and then to Turkey.

Mohammadi told VOA that as soon as the family reached Turkey, they “applied for relocation [to a third country] but heard nothing.”

“It is difficult here. We left everything behind and had to start from the beginning,” she said, “We can’t go to school. We don’t have a future here and can’t go to Afghanistan.”

Mohammadi added that the family still hopes to be resettled in a third country where she and her brothers can attend school.

“But now that we are in Turkey, it is not clear what is going to happen to us,” she said.

Mohammadi said that she would not be able to go to school or work if she returned to Afghanistan.

After seizing power in 2021, the Taliban banned girls’ secondary and university education. Women are also barred from working with NGOs, going to parks and gyms and long-distance traveling without a male chaperone.

“Like everyone else,” Niazi said, “I would like to go to a place where my daughter can get an education. I want her to have a better future.”

This story originated in VOA’s Afghan Service.

Afghan Refugees in Turkey Hope for Relocation, Fear Deportation
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Kabul Calls on Host Nations to Not Use Afghan Refugees Politically

Intl Migrants Day has arrived while Afghanistan witnessed the deportation of thousands of migrants from Pakistan, Iran and other countries in recent months.

Coinciding with International Migrants Day, the senior officials of the Islamic Emirate on Monday in a ceremony asked the countries not to use Afghan immigrants as a political tool.

Criticizing the deportation of Afghan immigrants by some neighboring countries, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, deputy prime minister for economic affairs, asked these countries to deal legally with Afghan immigrants.

International Migrants Day has arrived while Afghanistan witnessed the deportation of thousands of migrants from Pakistan, Iran and other countries in recent months.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, said: “The expulsion of our Muslim brothers by the countries is an illegal decision and against fairness and good neighborliness. The perpetrators failed to achieve the goals that were behind this persecution [expulsion].”

Second Deputy Prime Minister, Abdul Salam Hanafi, who was present at the ceremony at the Government Media and Information Center (GMIC), said: “A large number of our brothers and sisters returned to their homeland from different countries, the number of them reaches more than 700,000, who came to Afghanistan in a short time and by force.”

The Islamic Emirate’s Prime Minister, Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, in a message on the occasion of International Migrants Day, asked international institutions to support the rights of Afghan immigrants.

Khalil Rahman Haqqani, the acting Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, discussed the causes of illegal migrations in the country during the commemoration of the International Migrants Day.

Khalil Rahman Haqqani, the acting minister for refugees and repatriation, said: “Afghans were tortured by different countries and are present all over the world. Even now, after forty years of sadness and poverty, they destroyed their property, children, culture and customs.”

The Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation has also announced the creation of fifteen committees, including the land distribution committee, to deal with the problems of immigrants who have just returned to the country.

Kabul Calls on Host Nations to Not Use Afghan Refugees Politically
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Oppressed by the Taliban, she swallowed acid. Now her siblings are trying to save her life

By  and Abdul Basir Bina

Karachi, Pakistan 

Arzo is so weak she spends most of her day lying on a thin mattress in a dimly lit room under a ceiling fan that steadily circulates the polluted air of Pakistan’s largest city.

To pass the time, she watches makeup videos on her cellphone, the glow of the screen illuminating the faded freckles of a teenager whose skin now rarely sees the sun.

Arzo is a long way from her home in Afghanistan, where she lived with her parents before being smuggled across the border for medical treatment.

Her older brother and sister, Ahamad and Mahsa, now care for her in a rented room in Karachi, their temporary refuge from life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

“Don’t worry,” whispers Ahamad, as he kisses Arzo’s hand. “You will be fine. Don’t worry, we are with you always. I’m hoping you will be fine soon.”

CNN is not using Arzo’s or her siblings’ real names because they fear reprisals from the Taliban, and being discovered by Pakistani officials, who have deported more than 26,000 Afghans since announcing a crackdown on undocumented migrants in October.

Being forcibly returned to Afghanistan would mean certain death for the 15-year-old, her siblings say, because she needs medical care they say isn’t available in their home country.

The siblings don’t normally talk about why their little sister is so unwell – they don’t want to upset her. As they told CNN their story, Arzo silently wept.

A girl with ambition

Arzo dances barefoot in jeans to pop music with her sisters inside a home in Afghanistan. She smiles as she twists her hands in time with the beat.

Ahamad said the video was filmed six months after the Taliban seized control of the country in August 2021. Schools were closed but his sisters were confident they would reopen.

They didn’t. Instead, the Taliban gradually reimposed the repressive policies that shrank the role of women in society during their previous rule from 1996 to 2001, despite assurances they wouldn’t.

Women are banned from most workplaces, universities, national parks, gyms and going anywhere in public without a male chaperone.

Mahsa had already graduated high school, but Arzo still had three years ahead of her.

When their village school closed, their worried father sent his daughters to study English at an education center in Kabul, but that soon shut, too.

Back at home, Mahsa took up tailoring to pass the time. But Arzo drifted deeper into depression.

“Most of the time she said, ‘I hope we should move from this place, I don’t want to be here, there is no education and I want to become a doctor,’” Mahsa recalled Arzo saying.

One day in July, Mahsa walked downstairs to find her sister staring at her with bulging eyes.

“I asked her, ‘What happened to you?’ She said that she drank acid. I didn’t believe it, so I put my fingers in her mouth and she vomited up blood,” Mahsa said.

Doctors see rise in suicides

 

Experts say reliable statistics on suicide and suicide attempts aren’t compiled in Afghanistan, but rights groups and doctors say they’ve seen an increase under Taliban rule.

Dr. Shikib Ahmadi has been working six days a week and longer hours than ever, seeing patients at a mental health clinic in Afghanistan’s western Herat province. He’s using a pseudonym because he fears the Taliban will punish him for speaking to foreign media.

Ahmadi said the number of female patients at his clinic has surged 40% to 50% since the Taliban’s takeover two years ago. Around 10% of those patients kill themselves, he said.

Their lives restricted by the Taliban, girls and women are turning to cheap household items to attempt suicide, he said. Rat poison, liquid chemicals, cleaning fluids, and farming fertilizer – anything they think will ease their grief.

Ahmadi says he tries to tell them things will get better, that schools will reopen, that they can work at home while they wait, tailoring or doing something that gives them purpose.

But the truth is he doesn’t know if classes will ever resume, and his own hope is fading.

“I don’t see any good future for anyone in this country,” he said.

Another group of girls has just graduated from sixth grade – the end of their education under Taliban rules.

Ahmadi fears that will mean another wave of self-harm and suicide.

“Last year, everyone had a hope that next year the schools will be open. The government promised that they will open the schools,” he said.

“But since this year, the schools are not open, so people lost their hopes. I feel like the number of suicides will increase.”

CNN has contacted the Taliban for comment about the reported rise in suicide among women.

In a statement provided by the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in January, the group claimed that female suicide rates had fallen since they came to power.

“In the last 20 years, there were many case (sic) of women committing suicide, but by the grace of Allah, we do not have such cases now,” the statement said.

The claim is contradicted by multiple reports, including from UN experts, who said in July that “reports of depression and suicide are widespread, especially among adolescent girls prevented from pursuing education.”

The Taliban’s return

Arzo was born in 2008, seven years after the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan and removed the Taliban leaders the US accused of harboring al Qaeda terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks.

Under the Western-backed Afghan government, a devastating civil war raged for years, but life had nonetheless improved for Afghan women. Many started school, earned degrees and became role models for girls like Arzo and Mahsa.

But everything changed in 2021 when the US and its allies started pulling out of Afghanistan, creating space for the resurgence of Taliban fighters, who’d retreated to rural areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Back in power in the cities, the Taliban reimposed their radical Islamist ideology, carrying out extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, and unlawfully detaining anyone considered a threat to their leadership, according to rights groups.

In the chaotic aftermath of the takeover, women were initially told to stay at home because the fighters were “not trained” to respect them. Restrictions were gradually tightened, and now millions of girls and women are largely confined to their own homes with the threat of punishment if they don’t comply.

Ayesha Ahmad, an associate professor in global health humanities at St. George’s University of London, was conducting in-depth interviews with women in Afghanistan who had fled domestic violence when the Taliban moved in.

“I will never forget the day of the takeover, the frantic calls and communications and the absolute terror that they were feeling because they knew what the reality would be, and they were right,” she said.

Now many more women are vulnerable to violence, she said, and some see suicide as the only escape, despite the cultural stigma and shame it would bring on their families.

“Suicide is a sin in Islam, and in this context of religious extremism, women are not going to be seen as a victim,” she said.

With little sympathy from the Taliban leaders who created this situation, Afghanistan’s women are looking outside their country for support.

Heather Barr, associate director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, said Afghan women worry the world is beginning to accept that what’s happening to them is normal.

“Everyone’s kind of shrugging and saying, ‘Well, it’s Afghanistan.’ It should be intolerable to all of us. Because what happens in Afghanistan, and how the international community does or doesn’t respond, has huge implications for women’s rights globally,” she said.

“We have to be saying to our governments that this can’t be seen as normal. This can’t be treated as just one more country with a domestic issue.”

‘I cry for her future’

Ahamad wasn’t in Afghanistan in July when his sister drank the acid.

He had already fled to Pakistan, fearing retribution from the Taliban for his work as a journalist before they took power. He told CNN his father and uncle took Arzo to a local doctor, who gave her some medicine and told them to go to Kabul if her condition worsened. It did.

In Kabul, a doctor said the acid had damaged her esophagus and stomach and she was unlikely to survive surgery. So, they decided to take her to Pakistan, where Ahamad was waiting with a doctor. Ahamad then took Arzo to Karachi, where another doctor inserted a feeding tube into her stomach.

That was three months ago. Since then, Ahamad says Arzo has steadily lost weight and now weighs about 25 kilograms or 55 pounds.

“Her situation is not good at all. The doctors installed the pipe to her stomach for feeding so she can gain weight and be ready for the real operation,” in January, Ahamad said.

“Maybe she won’t gain weight,” he said. “And maybe they won’t do the operation.”

Mahsa sits on the bed, her needle piercing fabric with enough precision to keep her mind focused on the task. She would like to return to study, but right now caring for her sister is all that matters.

“I can’t sleep at night because she is in pain,” Mahsa said.

The siblings know they’re taking a huge risk by speaking out – they fear the Taliban’s reach in Pakistan and for their parents, who are still living in Afghanistan.

But they’re desperate.

Neither can work, the siblings say, and they don’t have the $5,000 needed for Arzo’s surgery, as well as money for the room, food for themselves and the cans of powdered milk and juice they need to keep her weight from dropping.

They don’t want to think about what happens if the last of their money runs out, or if the Pakistani police come knocking on the door.

Since October, when Pakistan’s government announced it was no longer tolerating the presence of undocumented Afghans, nearly 400,000 have returned to Afghanistan, according to the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Most left voluntarily, driven away by the fear of arrest, according to a joint statement from UN agencies.

In October, the UN’s OCHR urged Pakistan to halt the removals, warning that those who returned were at “grave risk of human rights violations.”

The most vulnerable included “civil society activists, journalists, human rights defenders, former government officials and security force members, and of course women and girls as a whole,” spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told journalists in Geneva.

Pakistan has defended its Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan (IFRP), saying in a statement that it’s “compliant with applicable international norms and principles.”

Ahamad wants a safe place to go with his sisters, where they can rebuild their lives, resume their studies, and start to work as they’d always planned to do.

He knows that returning to Afghanistan is not an option for his sisters, especially Arzo, who cries with despair at the suggestion.

“If she returns to Afghanistan, she will face the same fate. It would be better to live in a peaceful country and continue her education and proper treatment,” Ahamad said.

For now, they live within the four walls of a room heavy with grief for the girl who used to dance barefoot but now struggles to find the strength to lift her head.

“I don’t cry in front of her, but I kiss her and cry while she sleeps at night, for her future, for her treatment, so she can survive this sickness,” said Ahamad.

Oppressed by the Taliban, she swallowed acid. Now her siblings are trying to save her life
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