P.O.Box 21375, Washington, D.C. 20009

UN food agency: $800m urgently needed for Afghanistan

April 10, 2023
Associated Press
10 April 2023
FILE - The symbol of the United Nations is displayed outside the Secretariat Building, Feb. 28, 2022, at United Nations Headquarters. The U.N. said Wednesday, April 5, 2023, that it cannot accept a Taliban decision to bar Afghan female staffers from working at the agency, calling it an “unparalleled” violation of women's rights. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The U.N. food agency said Monday it urgently needs $800 million for the next six months to help Afghanistan, which is at the highest risk of famine in a quarter of a century.

Aid agencies have been providing food, education and health care support to Afghans in the wake of the Taliban takeover of August 2021 and the economic collapse that followed it. But distribution has been severely impacted by a Taliban edict last December banning women from working at national and international nongovernmental groups.

The U.N. was not part of this ban but last week it said the Taliban-led government has stopped Afghan women from working at its agencies in the country. Authorities have yet to comment on the restriction.

The World Food Program said women aid workers play a vital role in delivering the agency’s food and nutrition assistance and that it it will make “every possible effort” to keep this going, while also trying to ensure the active involvement of female staff.

“The WFP urgently needs $800 million for the next six months to continue providing assistance to people in need across Afghanistan,” the organization said. “Catastrophic hunger knocks on Afghanistan’s doors and unless humanitarian support is sustained, hundreds of thousands more Afghans will need assistance to survive.”

The U.N. said Monday that its Afghan operations remain severely under-funded, with $249 million reported to be confirmed for 2023, nearly one-third of the amount received for the same period in 2022.

It said Afghanistan is dealing with its third consecutive year of drought-like conditions, a second year of crippling economic decline, and is still suffering from decades of conflict and natural disasters.

“The total ‘immediate’ funding requirements to address critical gaps for the coming three months is $717.4 million,” according to a statement from the agency’s office for humanitarian affairs. “This is all part of an overall funding gap of $4.38 billion across the humanitarian response for 2023.”

It previously said that Afghanistan is its lowest-funded operation globally, despite being the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.

The Taliban takeover drove millions of Afghans into poverty and hunger after foreign aid stopped almost overnight. Sanctions on Taliban rulers, a halt on bank transfers and frozen billions in Afghanistan’s currency reserves restricted access to global institutions and the outside money that supported the country’s aid-dependent economy before the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.

The country’s acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said Afghanistan’s assets have been illegally and unjustly frozen. He called for Afghanistan’s seat at the U.N. to be handed over to the Taliban-led government. It is still held by the government of former President Ashraf Ghani.

In a video statement shared Monday by the Foreign Ministry’s deputy spokesman, Hafiz Zia Ahmad, Muttaqi said U.N. offices and other international institutions are open in Kabul. He did not directly address the ban on female Afghan U.N. staffers in his remarks.

“They are active here, so our relationship is good so far,” said Muttaqi. “We are trying to represent Afghanistan at the United Nations, it is the right of Afghans. But now (Afghanistan’s seat) is in the hands of someone who does not represent Afghanistan, does not represent the people, and there is no other group that represents them.”

UN food agency: $800m urgently needed for Afghanistan
read more

Taliban ban restaurant gardens for families, women in Herat

April 10, 2023

Associated Press

10 April 2023

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban have banned families and women from restaurants with gardens or green spaces in Afghanistan’s northwestern Herat province, an official said Monday. The moves followed complaints from religious scholars and members of the public about mixing of genders in such places, he said.

It was the latest in a slew of restrictions imposed by the Taliban since they took power in August 2021. They have shut girls out of classrooms beyond sixth grade and women from universities, most types of employment, including jobs at the United Nations. They are also banned from public spaces such as parks and gyms.

Authorities say the curbs are in place because of gender mixing or because women allegedly are not wearing the hijab, or Islamic headscarf, correctly.

The outdoor dining ban only applies to establishments in Herat, where such premises remain open to men. Baz Mohammad Nazir, a deputy official from the Ministry of Vice and Virtue’s directorate in Herat, denied media reports that all restaurants were off limits to families and women, dismissing them as propaganda.

It applied only to restaurants with green areas, such as a park, where men and women could meet, he said. “After repeated complaints from scholars and ordinary people, we set limits and closed these restaurants.”

Azizurrahman Al Muhajir, who is head of the Vice and Virtue directorate in Herat, said: “It was like a park but they named it a restaurant and men and women were together. Thank God it has been corrected now. Also, our auditors are observing all the parks where men and women go.”

Nazir also denied reports that sales of DVDs of foreign films, TV shows and music are banned in the province, saying that business owners were advised against selling this material because it contradicted Islamic values.

Shopkeepers who did not follow through on the advice eventually saw their shops closed, Nazir added. He also denied local media reports that internet cafes have shut down in Herat, but said that gaming arcades were now off-limits to children because of unsuitable content. Some games insulted the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure in the Great Mosque at Mecca toward which Muslims turn when praying, and other Islamic symbols.

“Internet cafes, where students learn and use for their studies, are necessary and we have allowed them,” Nazir said.

Taliban ban restaurant gardens for families, women in Herat
read more

State Department review of US withdrawal from Afghanistan includes far more findings than White House document

April 7, 2023

By Kylie Atwood and Jennifer Hansler

CNN
Updated 11:49 AM EDT, Fri April 7, 2023

In this photo from the US Central Command Public Affairs office, US Marines assist with security at an evacuation control checkpoint during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 20, 2021.
In this photo from the US Central Command Public Affairs office, US Marines assist with security at an evacuation control checkpoint during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 20, 2021.

Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/US Marines/US Central Command Public Affairs

WashingtonCNN — 

The State Department’s review of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan has far more findings in it than the document about the withdrawal that the White House released Thursday afternoon, according to a source familiar with the report.

While the White House’s document focused on President Joe Biden having been “severely constrained” by the conditions created by former President Donald Trump, the State Department report has more than two dozen recommendations – some specifically related to how the department could have better prepared, including during the Biden administration, the source said.

“The Biden administration inherited a deadline without a clear plan of how to get there, but they then undertook their own review. And in April, Biden decided to go ahead with it and delayed the withdrawal timeline. So they did not exactly take the blueprint they were given in that regard. So some of that is a bit disingenuous to say that their hands were completely tied,” the source said, explaining their view on the need for the Biden administration to take some ownership for the conduct of the withdrawal.

The White House document does note that upon reflecting on the withdrawal, the State Department and the Pentagon “now prioritize earlier evacuations” when faced with a degrading security situation. But the document also defends the time for when the evacuation from Afghanistan occurred, citing interagency meetings and decision-making at the time.

The White House document also says that the US government now errs “on the side of aggressive communication about risks” when there is a destabilizing security environment.

But it is unclear why the White House document assessing the challenges and decisions surrounding the withdrawal did not cite the wide number of recommendations from the State Department report, which was the result of an intensive 90-day review. A spokesperson for the National Security Council, or NSC, said the document was a “separate product” that was “informed” by the various departments’ reviews.

The State Department’s much more detailed after-action report was sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday, but otherwise the department has not widely released any of the findings more than a year after the report’s completion. The report itself was launched by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in December 2021. Employees who worked on the chaotic evacuation have clamored for details as to what the department learned from the after-action report.

An NSC spokesperson said the department’s reviews “were not undertaken for public release but to improve internal processes.”

On Thursday, the department scrambled to put together a town hall for employees to discuss the report with Blinken and Undersecretary for Management John Bass, who was a key official in the Afghanistan withdrawal, according to three employees who attended the event.

Blinken described the report to employees without sharing it. He said that it detailed the processes, systems and mindsets that could have been improved, including the need for more urgent preparations for worst-case scenarios, employees said.Blinken said contingency preparations were inhibited by concerns that they would be too visible and would prompt concerns by Afghan officials, employees told CNN. The top US diplomat also pointed to competing and conflicting views in Washington about how to prioritize categories of evacuees, and he acknowledged that the department’s database technology and communications infrastructure were inadequate.
The employees said that, according to Blinken, the report makes 34 recommendations. They include strengthening the department’s crisis-response capabilities, appointing a single senior official for future complex crises, enhancing crisis communications such as call centers, building a so-called red team to challenge assumptions and running more tabletop exercises, employees said.

But for many employees, the town hall only led to more frustrations about a lack of full transparency. The source familiar with the full report explained that the findings were purposefully not classified so they could be widely shared if the department chose to do so, but so far that has not happened.

At least one employee was emotional during the town hall, criticizing how hastily it was arranged and the decision not to share the full report. Blinken cited concerns about politicizing the report and looking backward instead of forward, employees said.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment regarding the town hall or any plans to share parts of the department’s report more widely.

This story has been updated with additional information.

State Department review of US withdrawal from Afghanistan includes far more findings than White House document
read more

UN Tells Afghan Staff to Stay Home Until Taliban Clarifies Ban on Female Aid Workers

April 7, 2023
Akmal Dawi

Voice of America

April 6, 2023, 6:53 PM

FILE - Afghan women protest during a demonstration in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 26, 2022. The U.N. said April 5, 2023, it cannot accept a Taliban decision to bar Afghan female staffers from working at the agency.
FILE – Afghan women protest during a demonstration in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 26, 2022. The U.N. said April 5, 2023, it cannot accept a Taliban decision to bar Afghan female staffers from working at the agency.

Afghan women and men who work for the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan stayed home Thursday while the United Nations sought clarification on the Taliban’s statement ordering all local female employees to be fired because of their sex.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in New York that the Security Council was briefed on the issue Thursday and that the organization was continuing to engage with the Taliban.

“Afghan women and men are essential to all aspects of the U.N.’s work in Afghanistan. Afghan women’s meaningful participation is essential to reach safely and effectively populations in need with principled and quality assistance. Afghan women will not be replaced by men,” Dujarric said.

This week’s order by the Taliban to fire all female employees was the first time the world body has received such an order since its inception in 1945. The order followed the Islamist group’s previous edicts terminating women’s right to work, education and many other basic liberties.

“Banning Afghan women from working with the U.N. in Afghanistan is an intolerable violation of the most basic human rights,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted on Wednesday.

Some Afghan activists said the Taliban’s latest order marked the time for the international community to take drastic action.

“United Nations! Stand with your female employees and suspend your activities in Afghanistan,” said activists from a group calling itself Afghanistan’s Women Protester Movements Coalition.

In a statement, the group said the U.N. should suspend its operations in Afghanistan until Afghan women were allowed to return to work.

‘Don’t abandon Afghans’

Afghanistan is the largest humanitarian operation in the world for the U.N., requiring a $4.6 billion appeal for funding this year.

UN Launches $4.6B Appeal for Afghanistan, Warns of Drop in Funding

More than half of Afghanistan’s estimated population of 38 million suffers from severe hunger and 6 million of them are facing famine, the U.N. said.

“The world cannot abandon the people of Afghanistan at this precarious moment,” Ramiz Alakbarov, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Despite Alakbarov’s plea, the U.N. reported this week that it still was far short of funding its Afghan operations.

“Despite Afghanistan being the world’s largest and most severe humanitarian crisis, the 2023 appeal has received less than 5% of its requirement, making it the lowest funded aid operation globally,” the U.N. humanitarian coordination body said on Monday.

The drop in aid was anticipated and linked to the Taliban’s bans on Afghan women.

Speaking at the U.N. Security Council last month, Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), warned that “funding for Afghanistan is likely to drop if women [are] not allowed to work.”

“The U.N. cannot and must not leave Afghanistan but instead [should] have a harder look as to why their approach and strategy in Afghanistan is failing,” Heela Najibullah, a conflict resolution researcher at the University of Zurich, told VOA.

UNAMA still talking to Taliban

Established in 2002 immediately after the Taliban were ousted from power by a U.S.-led coalition, UNAMA, primarily a political mission with humanitarian and human rights priorities, has an annual budget of about $180 million, 22% of which is funded by the United States.

“Taliban rulers generally view UNAMA’s role less as an impartial political mission and conduit with the world and more as a proxy mission under Washington’s thumb,” Javid Ahmad, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told VOA.

Not recognized by any government, the Taliban have also been denied Afghanistan’s permanent representation at the U.N. in New York.

That has left UNAMA as the main international organization still talking to the group.

“UNAMA has been managing a nearly impossible task to be tough on the Taliban … while at the same time engaging in dialogue with the Taliban and avoiding being kicked out of the country,” Scott Worden, director of Afghanistan and Central Asia programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told VOA.

Suspending all U.N. activities would seriously exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, but some still debate the pros and cons of suspending UNAMA’s political mission.

“It may prove to be a forcing mechanism and focus energy toward a faster solution to the fundamental problems of Taliban governance,” Worden said, adding that such a move could shock the conscience of some Taliban members who have quietly opposed the extreme decisions of their supreme leader.

Unseen Taliban Leader Wields Godlike Powers in Afghanistan

But Ahmad of the Atlantic Council said walking away could empower Taliban factions who seek international isolation.

“There are powerful elements among Taliban rulers who desire to establish an ideological hermit kingdom like North Korea in order to insulate themselves from external pressure in the face of internal dissent. UNAMA’s disengagement will only expedite that process, something that could later become dangerously unmanageable,” he said.

VOA U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

UN Tells Afghan Staff to Stay Home Until Taliban Clarifies Ban on Female Aid Workers
read more

OIC Secretariat Has ‘Grave Concerns’ on Afghan Female UN Workers Ban

April 7, 2023
Fatema Adeeb
Tolo News
7 April 2023

The German mission for Afghanistan on Twitter said “we strongly condemn the Taliban’s” ban on women working for UNAMA.

The General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) called on the interim Afghan government to revisit its decision regarding barring Afghan female staff of the UN agencies in Afghanistan from working.

He also expressed “grave concerns” over the ban, saying that the new “edict will intensify the successive restrictive measures imposed on women and girls, including banning them from governmental organizations.”

The ban has faced continued reactions by many world countries and international organizations.

The German mission for Afghanistan on Twitter said “we strongly condemn the Taliban’s” ban on women working for UNAMA.

“It puts millions in acute danger and blatantly violates human rights. Women are essential to humanitarian assistance,” the German mission said on Twitter. “We are now coordinating further steps with our international partners.”

The deputy spokesman for the US Department of State, Vedant Patel, said that women are central to humanitarian and civil society operations around the world.”

“In Afghanistan in particular, only women are able to reach some of the most vulnerable, in part because many of the most vulnerable households are woman-headed and male aid workers cannot enter,” he told the reporter in Washington D.C.

This comes as the Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General, said that Afghan women will not be replaced by men.

“Afghan women and men are essential to all aspects of the UN’s work in Afghanistan. As we’ve said repeatedly, Afghan women’s meaningful participation is essential to reach safely and effectively populations in need with principled and quality assistance,” he said.

Political analysts said the ban will face Afghanistan with various types of challenges.

“As the ban on female’s education and girls led the fate of the Afghan generation to darkness, the ban on women’s work, especially for the women who are the only breadwinners of their families, is causing different challenges,” said Saleem Kakar, a political analyst.

The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss the Afghan interim government’s new decision about female employees of the UN in Afghanistan.

OIC Secretariat Has ‘Grave Concerns’ on Afghan Female UN Workers Ban
read more

Afghanistan evacuation should’ve happened sooner, White House concedes

April 7, 2023

By and

The Washington Post
April 7, 2023 

The White House said Thursday that it now prioritizes the early evacuation of Americans during security crises overseas, offering a tacit admission of fault two years ago in Afghanistan as the Biden administration provided Congress with long-awaited internal assessments of its chaotic response to Kabul’s impending collapse.

The material sent to Capitol Hill, which is classified and has not been made public, includes reviews conducted by several government agencies directly involved in the operation and the fateful decision-making that preceded it. A separate summary of events released by the National Security Council does not expressly accept blame for the administration’s miscalculations; it does, however, acknowledge how the hard-learned lessons of Afghanistan inspired officials to act with much greater urgency during subsequent emergencies.

The documents’ disclosure is certain to invite a fresh round of political feuding as House Republicans press ahead with oversight hearings scrutinizing the closing days of America’s longest war. The White House had faced intensifying pressure to turn over the agency assessments, which were mostly completed last year, and their transmission Thursday — as Washington prepared to pause for a long holiday weekend — appeared designed to minimize attention.

In a statement, Rep. Michael T. McCaul (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, suggested that the materials transmitted to Congress were incomplete, and he implored the administration to declassify “as much as possible” as lawmakers investigate “why the withdrawal was such a disaster.”

GOP leaders have portrayed the U.S. departure from Afghanistan as a deadly fiasco for which President Biden and his top advisers have ducked accountability. An estimated 170 Afghans were killed alongside 13 American troops in a suicide attack outside Kabul’s airport. Days later, Air Force drone operators killed 10 civilians, including seven children, believing incorrectly that they were targeting another would-be bomber.

The White House has maintained that Biden had few options after his predecessor, President Donald Trump, signed a deal with the Taliban in 2020 that required U.S. forces to leave the country. With its summary, the White House again sought to fault Trump for the chaos, even as it acknowledged that the Biden administration has handled later crises — in Ukraine and Ethiopia — far differently after what transpired in Kabul.

“We now prioritize earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation,” the summary said, noting that the administration withdrew some personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia in November 2021 “despite the vigorous objections of the Ethiopian government,” and last year evacuated personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv nearly two weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But the White House summary glosses over other key details about the evacuation from Afghanistan that cast the Biden administration in a negative light, including that Biden had ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops despite recommendations from defense officials who wanted the commander in chief to keep a force of about 2,500 in Afghanistan to help prevent the U.S.-backed government from collapsing.

The document makes no mention either that senior U.S. military officials who participated in the evacuation expressed frustration with the administration when interviewed as part of an earlier Defense Department investigation. In documents first reported on by The Washington Post last year, the senior commander during the mission, Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, told military investigators that the United States would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.”

A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains so politically volatile, said that, for days before Taliban fighters swept into the capital on gun trucks, senior Pentagon officials recommended against launching the evacuation. The operation began Aug. 14, after Biden’s senior national security advisers changed their recommendation, the official said. The Taliban seized control of Kabul the following day, after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.

Biden, who pledged to end the war while campaigning for president, later altered the deadline to say that U.S. forces would be out by Sept. 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of terrorist attacks on the United States that precipitated the invasion.

The evacuation pulled from harm’s way more than 120,000 people — Americans and Afghans who aided the war effort — in less than three weeks, but it was an operation that appeared on the brink of spiraling out of control for days before catastrophe struck.

With few good options to ensure security outside the airport where thousands had massed, desperate to catch a departing flight, U.S. military officials reached an uneasy agreement with the Taliban. Militant fighters were posted outside to maintain order while coalition troops processed those seeking entry. Service members involved in the mission have since said that they witnessed Taliban foot soldiers routinely beating civilians attempting to reach the airport and executing some of them.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told reporters at the White House that it is “undeniable” that Trump officials’ decisions and lack of planning “significantly limited” the options that were available to Biden.

When Biden took office, Kirby said, he inherited a force of about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, the fewest that had been there since 2001. The Special Immigrant Visa program run by the State Department to consider which Afghans deserved refuge in the United States for assisting the U.S. war effort also had been “starved for resources,” Kirby said, creating an uphill climb for the administration to move quickly to assist Afghan allies in harm’s way.

“Do not underestimate the effect that Doha agreement had on the morale and the willingness to fight of the Afghan defense forces,” Kirby said.

Despite civilian deaths and U.S. troops describing problems with food shortages, sanitation and people sneaking into the airport without screening, Kirby sought to make the case Thursday that the evacuation went well. “I’m sorry, I just don’t buy the whole argument of chaos,” Kirby said. “It was tough in the first few hours. You would expect it to be; there was nobody at the airport and certainly no Americans. It took time to get in there.”

Sen. Roger Wicker (R.-Miss.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also condemned the White House’s framing of the Afghanistan withdrawal. “Instead of addressing honestly and openly the substantial flaws in its decision-making process, the Biden administration has provided the public a full-throated and deeply partisan explanation of its indefensible Afghanistan policy,” he said.

Asked whether anyone in the U.S. intelligence community would be held responsible for failures in Afghanistan, Kirby said: “It’s really hard. I’ve yet to see an intelligence assessment that ever was 110 percent certain about something. They get paid to do the best they can.” He acknowledged, however, that “clearly, we didn’t get things right,” including “how fast the Taliban were moving across the country” during the first two weeks of August 2021, secret capitulation deals that had been made with Afghan security force commanders, and “how fast they were going to fold.”

The inspector general also determined that the “stage had been set” for collapse long before, by multiple U.S. administrations and the Afghan government, which failed to build units that were self-sustainable.

Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.

Afghanistan evacuation should’ve happened sooner, White House concedes
read more

UNSC to Discuss Women’s Employment in Afghanistan: Official

April 6, 2023
By Fatima Adib
Tolo News
6 April 2023

A UN spokesman on Tuesday said that the organization will discuss the negative impacts of the decision with the Afghan Ministry of Foreign on Wednesday.

The United Nations Security Council will have a discussion about women’s employment in Afghanistan on Thursday evening in response to the ban on female employees of the organization in Nangarhar province, US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas Greenfield, said.

Greenfield said on Twitter that “women are integral to humanitarian operations, including in Afghanistan where they provide lifesaving aid to the country’s most vulnerable.”

“The UN Security Council will convene (meeting) tomorrow to discuss the Taliban’s repugnant decision to bar women from working with the UN,” Greenfield added.

“We are working with other members of the council as well as with the secretary general in the UN to respond to this. They cannot be allowed to continue to restrict women from providing support to women,” Greenfield told reporters.

Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates mission to the UN said the UAE envoy in a meeting with Japan representative to the UN asked the UNSC to hold consultations about the situation in Afghanistan.

“Together, with our co-penholder Japanese Mission UN, we have called for the UNSC to hold closed consultations tomorrow on the situation in Afghanistan to hear from SRSG Roza Otunbayeva on the reported ban on Afghan women working for the UN,” the UAE mission to the UN said in a tweet on Wednesday.

A number of analysts said that bans on women could further isolate Afghanistan.

“Such steps can create gaps between the international community and the government of the Islamic Emirate in the current situation of the Islamic Emirate, which is experiencing political, economic, and international isolation,” said Mohammad Zalmay Afghanyar, a political affairs analyst.

“I don’t think that the approaches of the Security Council meeting will have any meaningful impact on the decision of the Islamic Emirate because the UN has not recognized the Islamic Emirate and has not granted them a seat,” said Salim Kakar, a political affairs analyst.

A UN spokesman on Tuesday said that the organization will discuss the negative impacts of the decision with the Afghan Ministry of Foreign on Wednesday.

UNSC to Discuss Women’s Employment in Afghanistan: Official
read more

Taliban top spokesman Mujahid asked to work from Kandahar

April 6, 2023

Al Jazeera

6 April 2023

Zabihullah Mujahid asked to work from Kandahar in addition to Kabul in a move seen as an assertion of control by the Taliban chief.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the main spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban administration, has been asked to work from the southern city of Kandahar in addition to the capital Kabul, a Taliban spokesperson has confirmed with Al Jazeera.

Innamullah Samangani, another deputy spokesman in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, has been transferred to Kandahar in one of the first cases of officials being shifted under the Taliban administration since it returned to power in August 2021.

Samangani will now be the head of the press and information bureau at the provincial level, a Taliban source told Al Jazeera.

The move is being seen as an assertion of power by the Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhunzada, who is based in the southern city located about 450km (280 miles) to the north. Akhunzada rarely appears in the public and mostly stays in Kandahar – the birthplace of the Taliban movement.

Abdul Haq Hammad, head of the media watchdog at the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture, told Al Jazeera that Mujahid’s deputy Bilal Karimi will still be based in Kabul while the former will shuttle between Kabul and Kandahar.

The reason for the latest changes – which highlight the rising importance of Kandahar – has not been revealed by the information ministry.

“The emir does seem like he is very paranoid about his own ministers, so he is trying to make sure everything is under his control,” Baheer told Al Jazeera. “It also shows his lack of trust of the others in Kabul, so he is trying to take as much control as he can … this, in the absence of constitutionalism and of any division of power, will keep happening.”

It’s believed that the supreme leader Akhunzada has been pushing for hardline policies and is said to be behind the decisions to ban girls and women from education and to bar women from working in NGOs.

Mujahid, who remained in hiding during the Taliban’s 20-year war against United States-led foreign forces, held a series of open press conferences in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, promising women’s rights and media freedom.

But the group has since gone back on its promises, enforcing widespread restrictions on women. Mujahid initially said that schools will reopen after an infrastructure upgrade to make way for gender-based segregation in classes. Going forward, however, the group has only doubled down announcing further curbs on women.

Earlier this week, the Taliban barred Afghan women employees of the United Nations from working.

Even so, several senior Taliban leaders have raised their voices in support of women’s education and their rights to work guaranteed under Islam.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Taliban top spokesman Mujahid asked to work from Kandahar
read more

Taliban bars Afghan women from working for U.N., organization says

April 5, 2023

By and Haq Nawaz Khan

The Washington Post
April 5, 2023 at 12:32 p.m. EDT

The United Nations said Wednesday that Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have banned Afghan women from working for the organization in the country, effective immediately, prompting strong condemnations and raising questions about foreign aid amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.

The U.N. said the ban, which it believes will be actively enforced, is likely to affect the organization’s ability to mitigate the country’s dire humanitarian situation. About two-thirds of Afghans are estimated to rely on lifesaving assistance.

Bilal Karimi, a deputy Taliban spokesman, had no immediate comment, saying he was still gathering information on the issue on Wednesday evening.

“The enforcement of this [ban] will harm the Afghan people, millions of whom are in need of this assistance,” Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for the U.N. secretary general, said in a statement.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., told reporters that the Taliban rulers’ “attempt to erase women” is “appalling; it’s unacceptable.”

The U.N. had already raised concerns Tuesday over a looming ban on its female staff in the country, saying in a tweet that “female national UN staff have been prevented from reporting to work in Nangarhar province,” and later adding that officials were under the impression that the ban applied nationwide.

But Hanif Nangarhari, a local director of information and culture, said Tuesday that “this issue is not new.”

The U.N. held talks with Taliban representatives Wednesday to gain clarity on the ban.

According to the U.N., the new ban on female Afghan workers is an extension of a directive first announced in December that barred female Afghan employees from working at international organizations. That ban prompted several major international aid groups to halt operations in Afghanistan, saying they couldn’t effectively reach people in need without female staffers, but U.N. agencies initially appeared to be largely unaffected.

Taliban representatives earlier said the December decision was made after “serious complaints” that women working for nongovernmental organizations were not observing conservative Islamic dress. Earlier last year, the Taliban had ordered all Afghan women to wear head-to-toe coverings in public.

Susannah George and Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

Taliban bars Afghan women from working for U.N., organization says
read more

Intl Community Must Help Afghanistan in Demining Efforts: Minister

April 5, 2023
TOLOnews
TV Network
4 April 2023

“More than 4,150 identified hazards remain, posing a lethal threat to communities, in particular children,” OCHA said.  

The acting State Minister for Natural Disasters urged the international community to help Afghanistan in efforts to clear land mines and unexploded ordnance.

Speaking at an event held to mark the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action, Minister Mohammad Abas Akhund criticized international donors for slashing their aid in the demining sector of Afghanistan.

“We call on international organizations to fully cooperate with us in this regard. I mean, if they have now appointed four people make it eight people to increase the number of demining workers,” he said.

Akhund said that there are many areas in Afghanistan that have not been cleared of mines.

Speaking at the gathering, an office of the HALO Trust—a humanitarian non-government organization which protects lives and restores livelihoods of people affected by conflict— said that at least 864 people have been killed or maimed in 2022.

“In 2022, approximately, 864 people were victims of unexploded ordinance. Among them, 411 people were martyred and 453 others were wounded,” said Farid Homayoun, an official the HALO Trust company.

The Directorate of Mine Action said that 3,500 square meters have been cleared of mines and 1,200 km other areas have been surveyed and need to be cleared.

According to officials within the Disaster Management Ministry, explosion of unexploded ordnance happens mainly in areas where scrap metal is being collected.

“I had a good life then. Now as time passes, my life is  deteriorating. My leg has gone through a second surgery,” said Mohammad Sadiq, a victim of a land mine.

“Our salaries have dropped. The fund that existed before is no longer available. The company is paying the salaries from savings,” said Ahmad Zia, an employee of a demining organization.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that since 1989, almost 57,000 Afghan civilians have been killed or injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war, and mine action partners in Afghanistan have cleared over 19 million items.

“More than 4,150 identified hazards remain, posing a lethal threat to communities, in particular children,” OCHA said.

Intl Community Must Help Afghanistan in Demining Efforts: Minister
read more

Recent Posts