West: US Engaging With Kabul Despite ‘Grave Concern’ With Policies

March 3, 2023 Current News Articles

Mohammad Farshad Daryosh

TOLOnews’ Reporter

3 March 2023

However, the Islamic Emirate said that effective steps have been taken to maintain the relations between the two countries.

The US special envoy for Afghanistan, Thomas West, said Washington has not seen significant steps towards normalization with the Islamic Emirate.

In a special interview with TOLOnews, West stated that the current Afghan government lacks a permanent representative at the UN and official ties with international financial institutions.

“We have not seen significant steps towards normalization with the Taliban, They do not have a permanent representative sitting in New York at the United Nations, they do not have formal relationships with international financial institutions, they do not have diplomats serving abroad in the West, they do not have access to suspended assets in foreign countries and I do not envision that we will budge on any of these issues until they make more responsible decisions,” West noted.

Speaking during the interview, West further said that despite all the concerns Washington has about the current government’s policies toward the Afghan people, it also wants to engage with Kabul.

“We are engaging with the Taliban ourselves despite some of what I have said here today that reflects our grave concern about the Taliban’s policies toward the Afghan people. We do favor a policy of engagement ourselves, that is why I met with the Taliban leaders in December, I suspect that I will meet Taliban leaders in the future and talk about our interests in Afghanistan,” he added.

The US special envoy for Afghanistan noted that Washington calls for dialogue between Afghans.

“What we want to see is the emergence of a dialogue among Afghans inside of Afghanistan to begin with who have genuine support in their communities with the Taliban in a structured and serious and organized fashion, to talk about the future of the country, to talk about a constitution, to talk about the basic rights of Afghans–that process has not unfolded in any serious manner,” West noted.

“The relationship of America and other countries with the interim administration of the Taliban will get better when changes are being made in the four basic areas. First, the fundamental rights of the Afghan people need to be respected. Second, it’s important to protect women’s and girls’ fundamental rights, including their ability to work and attend school,” said Nematullah Bizhanpor, an international relations expert.

However, the Islamic Emirate said that effective steps have been taken to maintain the relations between the two countries.

The Islamic Emirate’s spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said that the US is seeking excuses for Afghanistan’s internal affairs and is preventing the normalization of relations.

“The US representatives were in touch with us and are still; they have to make clear what they want from the Islamic Emirate. The Islamic Emirate has taken all possible steps to maintain the bilateral relationship and is prepared to shift its policies from one of conflict to one of peace and collaboration,” Mujahid noted.

The Islamic Emirate has previously said that despite having fulfilled all its commitments to the United States, Washington has not fulfilled its promises to the Islamic Emirate.

Asylum seekers in Karachi tell of terror of being sent back to the Taliban and despair at being shackled and held in Pakistani jails

March 3, 2023 Current News Articles

Shah Meer Baloch in Pakistan

The Guardian

Thu 2 Mar 2023

Pakistan crackdown on Afghan refugees leaves ‘four dead’ and thousands in cells

Refugees are reportedly dying in Pakistani prisons, and children are being arrested and tied together with ropes, as a wave of detentions and deportations spreads fearamong the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have crossed the border since the Taliban took power.

According to lawyers representing Afghans in detention, at least four people have died in custody, and thousands more, including children, are being held in prisons as Pakistan hardens its stance against Afghan citizens.

The most recent death in custody was a 50-year-old Afghan man who was refused hospital treatment while he waited for a judge to hear his case, according to Moniza Kakar, a Karachi-based human rights lawyer who has been fighting to stop Afghan asylum seekers and refugees being deported to Afghanistan.

Kakar claimed that other Afghans in detention were being mistreated, and the judicial process was not being carried out properly by judges assigned to their cases. Photos have emerged on social media claiming to show refugee children bound together with ropes by police in Karachi.

“In this crackdown, registered and unregistered Afghans are facing the brunt,” she said. “More than 800 Afghans are in prisons in Karachi and across Sindh province alone, and at least 1,100 have been deported who had no documents.”

Earlier this week, the Guardian attended a deportation hearing in Karachi and witnessed dozens of shackled Afghan refugees and asylum seekers being held in cramped cells while they awaited their court hearing.

A young mother, Ayesha Bashir, was being held in a cell with her five-year-old daughter. She had been in detention for three months, she said, after crossing the border in north-west Pakistan and travelling to Karachi to consult a gynaecologist after multiple miscarriages.

“We were more than 20 people on a bus,” she said. “Before we entered Karachi, the police stopped the bus in the bordering town of Hub. They asked for our visas or identity cards, but we didn’t have any.”

Afghan asylum seekers await their fate at a deportation hearing in Karachi this week. Photograph: Shah Meer Baloch

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the treatment of Afghan refugees and demanded that the authorities follow judicial process. It said in a statement: “The government must take responsibility for any Afghan women and children in its custody and ensure they are given immediate access to legal counsel. It must also hold to account anyone responsible for intimidating human rights defenders attempting to highlight the plight of these prisoners.”

While Pakistani authorities claim they are only detaining illegal Afghan entrants, Kakar said those with official UNHCR refugee status are also being arrested and detained. “More than 450 Afghans with refugee status have [now] also been arrested,” she said.

Since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, about 250,000 Afghans have arrived in Pakistan. Last summer, it began a programme to send undocumented migrants back across the border. Since then, arrests and deportations have increased with more than 600 Afghans allegedly deported in just three days in January, and thousands more detained.

In the past few weeks, targeting of Afghans, regardless of their legal status, has turned more aggressive. Multiple sources within the security services say this is linked to a surge of violent attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, amid accusations by the authorities that the Taliban are providing safe sanctuary to Pakistani militants.

The sources said that Afghan asylum seekers are suspected of having links to the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups. One security official, who asked not to be named, said: “Afghan refugees can easily move, and they don’t have identification. So they are used in militancy.”

Afghans in exile in Pakistan, who spoke to the Guardian under condition of anonymity, said they now live in constant fear for their lives, seldom leaving their homes.

Salima, a 45-year-old Afghan surgeon, said: “We have no job, no income, my children are out of school, and we have to pay exorbitant fees to renew our visas.” Salima had faced constant threats in Afghanistan, she said, not just from the Taliban but also from other criminal groups. “One day, armed men tried to kidnap my child. We barely escaped alive.”

She and her family entered Pakistan legally but now fear the escalating round-ups of Afghan families and mass detentions. They are terrified of being arrested and sent back to the Taliban.

“Just a few days ago, I was pulled out of a taxi by the police,” she said. “They rounded me up with other Afghans and didn’t even allow me to show my documents. They were angry and abusive. I had to beg them to forgive me, even though I didn’t commit any crimes. I am here on a proper visa.”

Although Pakistan has not adopted the UN Refugee Convention 1951, which confers a legal duty on countries to protect people fleeing serious harm, it has entered a tripartite agreement with Afghanistan and the UNHCR, which allows the UNHCR to provide Afghan refugees with registration documents that entitle them to stay in Pakistan and open bank accounts.

Twenty kilometres from Karachi city, in an informal settlement for Afghan refugees, Masooma* showed the Guardian her refugee registration documents and told how her husband, Siraj Ud Din, and his friend, Abdul Salam, were also registered as refugees with the UNHCR but were arrested last year.

Masooma*, second from left with her children, shows her refugee registration document. Photograph: Shah Meer Baloch

She said the police arrested them for being undocumented, but the truth was that “the police have lost or thrown their cards. How is it possible I have a card and my husband does not have one?”

Her mother-in-law, sitting close by, said her son was born in Pakistan. “We have been in Pakistan for the last 40 years. All my children were born here. The police have told us he will be deported to Afghanistan after six months. We have no one there now.”

Pakistan’s states and frontier regions minister, Senator Talha Mahmood, disputed that there had been a crackdown on Afghans living in Pakistan but said that routine raids were being carried out to search for undocumented immigrants from Afghanistan.

A spokesperson for UNHCR said: “UNHCR acknowledges Pakistan’s generosity in hosting one of the world’s largest refugee populations for more than 40 years. Since 2021, UNHCR has been in discussions with the government on measures and mechanisms to support vulnerable Afghans. Regrettably, no progress has been made.

“We are concerned regarding reports of the arrest and detention of Afghan refugees in Sindh province. The government and people of Pakistan have a commendable, decades-long history of providing asylum and protection to displaced Afghans, and we urge authorities to release those who are seeking asylum.”

* Name has been changed to protect identity

Additional reporting by Ruchi Kumar

Ned Price: Islamic Emirate Has Not Fulfilled Doha Agreement

March 3, 2023 Current News Articles

Fatema Adeeb

Tolo News

2 March 2023

Meanwhile, the Islamic Emirate said that it has fulfilled to Doha agreement, but America violated some points of the agreement.

The spokesman for the US State Department once again accused the Islamic Emirate of violating the Doha agreement.

Ned Price in a press conference said that Islamic Emirate has not “fulfilled the Doha Agreement” in terms of engaging in political dialogue, fighting terrorist groups and respecting human rights.

“We have seen Mullah Baradar’s own statement, and we of course disagree with the key points in his own statement. Namely, the Taliban have not fulfilled their own commitments – the commitments that they made in the Doha Agreement, the Taliban also have not fulfilled their Doha commitment to engage in political dialogue leading to a negotiated settlement. That remains to be done. We shouldn’t forget that the Doha Agreement envisioned a peaceful settlement, not a takeover on the part of the Taliban,” said Ned Price.

“Some important issues were not dealt with and both sides violated the Doha Agreement …,” said Najib Rahman, political analyst.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Emirate said that it has fulfilled to Doha agreement, but America violated some points of the agreement.

“The Islamic Emirate completely fulfilled the agreement but America and its partners neglected parts of the agreement,” said Bilal Karimi, spokesman for Islamic Emirate.

Political analysts asked both sides to fulfill the Doha agreement.

“They accused each other of violating the Doha agreements; it will be better that both sides make a commission and fulfill it together,” said Aziz Miraj, a former diplomat.

“We can say that sides involved in the negotiations reached their own goals,” said Wali Frozan, political analyst.

The complete withdrawal of foreign forces, the complete release of prisoners on both sides, the lifting of sanctions against members of the Islamic Emirate in the event of national dialogue, and the refraining of America and its allies from interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs are important parts of this agreement.

Poor U.S. planning in Afghanistan helped Taliban take over, watchdog says

February 28, 2023 Current News Articles

By Ellen Francis

The Washington Post

February 28, 2023

A new government watchdog report details how poor planning in the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, after years of inadequate oversight, contributed to the rapid collapse of the Western-backed government as the Taliban closed in on Kabul.

The report released Tuesday describes an “abrupt and uncoordinated” pullout in 2021 and poor accountability for weapons sent to Afghanistan — with an estimate of more than $7 billion in military equipment left under Taliban control. Also at fault, it said, was the failure to create “an independent and self-sustainable” security force in Afghanistan after 20 years and $90 billion of international support.

It is the latest in a series of assessments by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, examining the demise of Afghan security forces and the Taliban takeover in America’s longest war. Many of the findings confirm previous reporting by The Washington Post and other news organizations on the final days of the Afghan government’s tenure and the U.S. troop withdrawal.

The watchdog said in reports released last year that tens of millions of dollars disappeared from Afghan government bank accounts during the Taliban comeback, and in the run-up to it, paranoia riddled senior levels of the government in Kabul as chaos overwhelmed security forces.

According to the latest SIGAR report, an agreement signed with the Taliban by the Trump administration in 2020 facilitated the unraveling, “resulting in a sense of abandonment” in Afghan government forces and the population. “The agreement set in motion a series of events crucial to understanding the [Afghan security forces’] collapse,” it said.

Tuesday’s report to Congress comes a year and a half after the militant group’s return to power stunned the world. Since then, Afghans have faced rising poverty and a crackdown on civil rights. The SIGAR report also coincides with a massive flow of Western weapons to Ukraine that has raised questions around how to conduct proper oversight.

“There is an understandable desire amid a crisis to focus on getting money out the door and to worry about oversight later, but too often that creates more problems than it solves,” the Afghanistan report said, citing the special inspector general, John Sopko. “Given the ongoing conflict and the unprecedented volume of weapons being transferred to Ukraine, the risk that some equipment ends up on the black market or in the wrong hands is likely unavoidable,” it said.

In Afghanistan, SIGAR found, the United States did not have “a full accounting of equipment and personnel even before the collapse.” It also blamed the fall of Kabul in part on corruption that eroded Afghan security forces and on the government’s inability to implement national security.

As the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital in August 2021, U.S. troops and their allies airlifted more than 100,000 people out of Afghanistan in an evacuation marred by chaos, violence and harrowing images of people trying to cling to U.S. aircraft.

In late 2021, a whistleblower in Britain described the British handling of the evacuation as “arbitrary and dysfunctional.” Thousands of emails from Afghans potentially eligible for flights out went unread by the British Foreign Office, he said.

The whistleblower, a Foreign Office official at the time, cited “inadequate staffing” and said staff members were “asked to make hundreds of life and death decisions about which they knew nothing.”

Western officials have acknowledged that many Afghans, including some who worked with U.S. and allied forces, were left scrambling as the evacuation ended, leaving Afghanistan firmly under Taliban control after 20 years of war.

80 Afghan citizens dead in Italian shipwreck – Taliban foreign ministry

February 28, 2023 Current News Articles

Reuters

February 28, 2023

KABUL, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s Taliban-led foreign ministry said on Tuesday that 80 Afghan citizens, including children, had died in Sunday’s shipwreck off the southern coast of Italy.

Rescuers have so far confirmed at least 64 people were killed after a sailboat sank in heavy seas near Steccato di Cutro, a seaside resort on the eastern coast of Calabria. Eighty people had been rescued and more people were believed to be missing.

“With great sadness, we learned … that 80 Afghan refugees, including women and children, who were travelling from Türkiye to Italy in a wooden boat, drowned and died in the southern sea of Italy,” the Afghan foreign affairs ministry said in a statement.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan prays for forgiveness for the martyrs and patience for the families and relatives of the victims, urging all citizens once again to avoid going to foreign countries through irregular migration,” the statement added, referring to the Taliban’s name for its government.

The boat had set sail from the port of Izmir in western Turkey. The U.N. refugee agency has said almost half of arrivals by sea between Turkey and Italy last year were Afghans.

Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield in Kabul; Editing by Toby Chopra

Restrictions on Afghan Women Discussed at UN

February 28, 2023 Current News Articles

TOLOnews

TV Network

28 Feb 2023

UN special rapporteur for Afghan human rights, Richard Bennett, in a report expressed concerns over the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan.

The representatives of several countries at the meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva expressed concerns over the existing restrictions on Afghan women and girls.

Hala Mazyad Al-Tuwaijri, the president of the Saudi Human Rights Commission, at the UN Human Rights Council, said Saudi Arabia calls on Kabul to rescind its decisions so women can “fully enjoy their rights without discrimination.”

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that Germany will make sure to continue to help all Afghans who “need water, who need food, who need medicine.”

“We know that our efforts will not change the brutal violation of Afghan’s women’s rights … But it matters. It matters to every single woman who is not allowed to go outside,” she said. “It matters to every single child who wants to go to school.”

UN special rapporteur for Afghan human rights, Richard Bennett, in a report expressed concerns over the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan.

Bennett said that the recent edicts of the Afghan caretaker government affected the humanitarian delivery and economy of the country.

He said that the economy experienced a further dramatic decline of around 30–35 percent in 2021–2022.

The deputy foreign minister of Turky, Mehmet Kemal Bozay, said that the international community must not allow the situation in Afghanistan to deteriorate “even further.”

“We remind the interim government that recent limitations on women such as those on the right to education are not human,” he said.

However, the deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate, Bilal Karimi said that the rights of women are ensured in an Islamic structure.

“Regarding the internal issues of our country, the Islamic Emirate adjusts itself based on the Islamic laws and based on the notions of the people of Afghanistan and no country should be worried about it,” he said.

This comes as the permanent mission of Afghanistan in Geneva said on Twitter that the Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation, Hissein Brahim Taha, spoke in Geneva and, reiterated the OIC’s condemnation of Kabul’s edicts banning women from education and work, saying: “It is against our religion.”

Dying Children and Frozen Flocks in Afghanistan’s Bitter Winter of Crisis

February 28, 2023 Current News Articles

By Christina Goldbaum and Yaqoob Akbary

The New York Times

Feb. 28, 2023

QADIS, Afghanistan — When the temperatures plunged far below freezing in Niaz Mohammad’s village last month, the father of three struggled to keep his family warm. One particularly cold night, he piled every stick and every shrub he had collected into their small wood stove. He scavenged for trash that might burn, covered the windows with plastic tarps and held his 2-month-old son close to his chest.

But the cold was merciless. Freezing winds whistled through cracks in the wall. Ice crept across the room: It covered the windows, then the walls, then the thick red blanket wrapped around Mr. Mohammad’s wailing son.

Soon the infant fell silent in his arms. His tears turned to ice that clung to his face. By daybreak, he was gone.

“The cold took him,” Mr. Mohammad, 30, told visiting journalists for The New York Times, describing the details of that horrible night.

Afghanistan is gripped by a winter that both Afghan officials and aid group officials are describing as the harshest in over a decade, battering millions of people already reeling from a humanitarian crisis. As of Monday, more than 200 people had died from hypothermia and more than 225,000 head of livestock had perished from the cold alone, according to the Afghan authorities. That does not take into account a vast and rising human toll from malnutrition, disease and untreated injuries as clinics and hospitals around the country have come under stress.

While Afghanistan has endured natural disasters and economic desperation for decades, the harsh temperatures this winter come at a particularly difficult moment. In late December, the Taliban administration barred women from working in most local and international aid organizations — prompting many to suspend operations, severing a lifeline for communities reliant on the aid.

Despite weeks of negotiations between humanitarian officials and the government, the Taliban’s top leadership appears unwilling to reverse the ban. That has left the aid community divided over what a principled response looks like: shutting off aid to millions in need, or trying to continue without women in their ranks, thus greatly reducing their agencies’ reach in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Ministry of Disaster Management has tried to fill the gap, officials say, working with local organizations to provide some food and cash assistance. But the response has been hampered by difficulty reaching far-flung communities (some accessible only by military helicopter), and by financial sanctions from foreign governments.

In recent weeks, some nongovernmental organizations have negotiated with local officials to secure exemptions to the ban, letting them continue to operate with female aid workers in certain provinces. But many donors have balked at the authorities’ discrimination against women, who have effectively been shut out of most aspects of public life, education and employment. Some, particularly among European countries, even privately weighed cutting most funding for Afghanistan in response, according to diplomats and international humanitarian workers.

The temporary cutback in aid has already been felt across Afghanistan, which fell into a humanitarian crisis after Western troops withdrew in August 2021. Soon after, sanctions crippled the banking sector, food prices soared and hospitals filled with malnourished children. Today around half of the country’s 40 million people face potentially life-threatening levels of food insecurity, according to the United Nations. Of those, six million are nearing famine.

In Mr. Mohammad’s village, in the Qadis district of northwestern Afghanistan, the low temperatures devastated people already living on the edge of survival. The district center in Qadis is home to just 4,000 or so families, living in low, mud-brick homes webbed by dirt alleys. The town sits between desert dunes and snow-topped mountains.

In recent years, the province — one of the nation’s poorest — has suffered from a crippling drought that wilted fields and famished farm animals. An earthquake last year razed entire villages. After the Western-backed government collapsed along with the economy, many men in Qadis left for Herat, an economic hub around 100 miles away, or for Iran, looking for work. Few found it.

When the first wave of cold tore through last month, it pushed the town to the brink. Five hundred patients a day went down with pneumonia or other cold-related ailments or injuries, flooding the town’s health clinic in record numbers, according to Dr. Zamanulden Haziq, the clinic’s director.

One resident, Taza Gul, 50, stepped outside at dawn to find her husband stretched out in the snow. He had fallen on his way to their outhouse at night, hours earlier. As she brushed the snow off him, she saw one arm and one leg had turned blackish-blue; he died soon after.

In a village nearby, Gul Qadisi, 62, spent nearly a month desperately trying to secure medical care for her year-old grandson, who developed a relentless cough that left him gasping for air. The roads were too clogged with snow for any cars to take them to a clinic or hospital. Finally she managed to get him to the regional hospital in Herat, where the children’s intensive care unit, run by Doctors Without Borders, was crowded to double its capacity, with two or three sick children for every bed. Doctors told her she had barely made it in time; the child had been near death from pneumonia.

“This winter was the worst winter, the worst I have ever experienced,” she told Times journalists this month, her grandson recovering in a hospital bed at her side.

In this community, as with many across Afghanistan, the overlapping crises of an economic crash, malnutrition and brutal weather have cut short any sense of relief after the long war finally ended in 2021.

“We were happy the fighting is over, but the problem is now we don’t have money to buy food or wood to keep us warm,” said Chaman Gul, a mother of three daughters in her 30s. Her son was killed seven years ago by soldiers with the Western-backed government, who claimed he had provided support to the Taliban, she said. He was 12 years old. Two years later, her husband, the family’s breadwinner, was disabled by a stray bullet.

Ms. Gul and her family live in a one-room home that sits against a hillside a 10-minute walk from the town’s main street. They burn manure, kept piled outside the house, in a makeshift stove for warmth. The house is decorated with scraps the children found during trips into town looking for things to burn: a flier for a cellphone company, drawings from a handbook for mothers that show children collecting water from a river and a well.

When the cold weather set in, village elders tried to organize food for Ms. Gul’s family and others in need. But most of the parents in the town had so little bread and rice that they were already skipping meals so their children could eat. There was nothing left to share.

One recent afternoon, the town was preparing for another cold snap. Men scavenged the nearby hills for as much kindling as they could carry. Elders frantically phoned shepherds who had left with their herds and told them to return — the mountains where they hoped to find usable pastures would soon be blanketed in fresh snow.

Bahaulden Rahimi, a 60-year-old shepherd, was three days into a six-day journey to find land where his sheep could graze when he got the warning call. Haunted by the account of a shepherd who had died with his herd when temperatures dropped in January, he came straight home.

Now, he worries that he has merely delayed his flock’s fate. He was running out of feed, the price of which had more than doubled at the local market in recent months, he said. He had picked up a hacking cough that was worsening by the day, and 13 of his 80 sheep had already died from the cold, a roughly $3,000 loss that threatened his family’s lives, as well.

“Losing the sheep, it’s like losing a family member,” he said. “This is all we have.”

Safiullah Padshah contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

Taliban: 2 senior IS members killed in Afghanistan

February 28, 2023 Current News Articles

RAHIM FAIEZ

Associated Press

28 Feb 2023

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Two senior regional members of the Islamic State group have been killed in Afghanistan in recent weeks in separate operations by the Taliban security forces, a Taliban spokesman said Tuesday.

Taliban forces killed Qari Fateh, the regional IS intelligence and operations chief, during a raid in Kabul over the weekend, Zabihullah Mujahid, the main spokesman for the Taliban government, said in a statement.

A news outlet allied with the Islamic State group on Tuesday posted confirmation of Fateh’s death on an IS-run Telegram chat.

Earlier this month in a separate operation in Kabul, three IS members — including senior IS leader Ijaz Amin Ahingar — were killed.

Mujahid said that a number of other IS members, including foreign nationals planning deadly attacks, also have been detained in recent days.

The regional affiliate of the Islamic State group — known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province — is a key rival of the Taliban. The militant group has increased its attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021. Targets have included Taliban patrols and members of Afghanistan’s Shiite minority.

In January, eight IS militants were killed and nine others arrested in a series of raids targeting key figures.

The raids in the capital city and western Nimroz province targeted IS militants who organized attacks on Kabul’s Longan Hotel, Pakistan embassy and the military airport.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing near a checkpoint at the Afghan capital’s military airport. IS said that attack was carried out by the same militant who took part in the Longan Hotel assault in mid-December.

IS claimed the attack on a Chinese-owned hotel in the heart of Kabul, causing China to advise its citizens to leave Afghanistan “as soon as possible.”

Earlier, the IS also claimed a shooting attack targeting the Pakistani Embassy in Kabul. Shots were fired at the embassy from a nearby building, triggering anger in Pakistan and raising tensions between the two South Asian neighbors.

Pakistan’s top diplomat in Kabul was walking across the lawn inside the embassy compound at the time of the attack. He was unharmed, but one of his Pakistani guards was wounded.

The Taliban swept across the country in mid-August 2021, seizing power as U.S. and NATO forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.

The international community has not recognized the Taliban government, wary of the harsh measures they have imposed since their takeover — including restricting rights and freedoms, especially for of women and minorities.

Will China’s latest investment in Afghanistan actually work?

February 28, 2023 Current News Articles

By Ruchi Kumar and Hikmat Noori

Al Jazeera

While a deal to extract oil has raised hopes in the war-torn nation, experts warn of China’s sketchy record.

The Taliban-run Afghanistan saw its first significant foreign investment last month when a Chinese firm signed a 25-year-long, multimillion-dollar contract to extract oil. Experts are cautiously optimistic the project may bring jobs and income despite China’s sketchy record on executing deals.

On January 6, the Taliban signed with Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company (CAPEIC), a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), a contract to extract oil from the Amu Darya basin, which stretches between central Asian countries and Afghanistan where it covers about 4.5 square kilometres (1.73 square miles). The deal will see an investment of $150m in the first year in Afghanistan and $540m over the next three years, a Taliban spokesperson said on Twitter.

“The daily rate of oil extraction will be from 1,000 to 20,000 tonnes,” spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid shared in a tweet, adding that the Taliban will be a 20 percent partner in the deal, which will later be extended to 75 percent.

Abdul Jalil Jumrainy, an industry expert and the former director general of the Afghan Petroleum Authority at the Ministry of Mining and Petroleum, is one of the many following the development with a little bit of hope.

“Looking at the situation now, the way our people are struggling, in my opinion, this [project] can be a source of revenue that provides economic relief – an opportunity for Afghans to benefit from their resources,” Jumrainy said. “Even if a major part of it goes to the government, there will be jobs created and some Afghan expertise will be utilised, and that is a good thing,” he said.

Though “it all depends on how it is implemented”, he added.

Sketchy past

While the announcement has brought some initial cheer to the beleaguered country, old Afghan hands are cautious in their optimism, not only because China is yet to see through any of its investments in the country’s mining sector, but because this particular deal sounds just like the one the previous Afghan government had called off on account of corruption.

That exploration and production sharing deal was struck in 2011, under the previous Afghan government, between China’s state-owned CNPC and an Afghan company called Watan Group for the “Kashkari block”, one of the three blocks now part of the recent Amu Darya tender.

“It was a major win for the government because CNPC is a very big company and China is currently the biggest oil and gas buyer in the region,” recalled Jumrainy.

China imports gas from Turkmenistan via four pipelines, three of which transit through Uzbekistan and one via Tajikistan. Afghanistan was offered the opportunity to be part of the fourth pipeline.

The “Afghan government at the time asked CNPC to be part of the tendering process, which they rejected. It was a great opportunity for Afghanistan to develop its petroleum sector had the Chinese agreed to a fair tendering process,” Jumrainy said.

The previous deal, also for 25 years, would have seen a potential initial investment of $400 million to extract 87 million barrels of oil, eventually generating at least $7bn in revenues for Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has significant potential for oil and gas, Jumrainy said. “Afghanistan was among the major exporters via Turkmenistan to the Soviet Union. However, there hasn’t been sufficient exploration in the last few decades which requires billions in investment,” he said.

The previous government had hoped China would be a significant investor in Afghan extractive sectors, including copper, oil and gas, but very little materialised.

“There were certain regulatory and budgeting concerns of CNPC’s expenditures in Amu Darya EPSC and when the government raised questions and hired independent auditors, CNPC shut the field and its staff left the country. The expenses were higher and contracts were given to Chinese companies without following proper procurement rules,” he recalled.

The Afghan government made several other attempts to revive the deal but the negotiations fell apart. “When we visited China to ask CNPC to resume the deal, they asked to be the sole source for arrangements of the entire Amu Darya basin covering 10 blocks. But the government decided against it and instead put the potential gas block up for bidding. We offered for them to be part of the tender process but they were not interested,” Jumrainy said, adding that the CNPC’s local Afghan partners had similar concerns, which led to disputes between the two sides.

The previous controversies with CNPC, Jumrainy speculated, may be the reason why the deal with the Taliban was made through an affiliate company rather than with the state body itself.

Then there is the case of the Mes Aynak mines, one of the largest untapped deposits of copper globally, 40km (25 miles) southeast of Kabul.

In 2008, a Chinese company took a 30-year lease for Mes Aynak mines to extract nearly 11.08 million tonnes of copper. Now, more than halfway through their lease, the company is yet to develop the mines. “Until the concrete investments are actually made on the ground, I would be sceptical of considering any of the announced figures or targets as being more than declarative ambitions,” Zhou said.

In a sign the Taliban is aware of the Chinese lackadaisical performance, the Taliban spokesperson said that under the Amu Darya contract, “if the said company does not fulfil all the materials and items mentioned in the notice within one year, the contract will be automatically terminated.”

Political significance

Nevertheless, the deal has a degree of political significance given the Taliban government’s pariah state status, said Jiayi Zhou, a researcher at SIPRI, an independent conflict research institute based in Sweden, who specialises in China geopolitics. “But it is also not completely surprising: Chinese corporations had been publicly in contact with Taliban over the past year, to renegotiate and restart previous mining and oil contracts settled in 2008 and 2011. This deal is essentially the fruit of those talks,” she said.

Zhou also pointed out that the Taliban have been engaged in negotiations with several other neighbours as well to resume economic cooperation projects.

“Among Afghanistan’s neighbours, broadly, there is consensus that there is no alternative to some form of engagement with the Taliban, if only for reasons of ensuring regional stability and security,” she said, noting that such channels of economic interaction between Afghanistan and its neighbours have remained open. “I would at least in part contextualise Chinese investments as being part of that wider picture,” Zhou added.

Omar Sadr, an Afghan academic and former professor at the American University of Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera that China’s engagement with the Taliban is based more on security rather than economic interests.

“Chinese interest in Afghanistan is driven by two major factors: preventing an entrenchment of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and the return of the US to the region,” Sadr said.

ETIM is an al-Qaeda-affiliated armed group that has conducted attacks on China in its pursuit of the creation of “East Turkistan” on the Chinese mainland. It is in China’s interests to stabilise the Taliban government, Sadr told Al Jazeera.

“Both of these interests are historically embedded in the Chinese engagement over the last 10 years. Any form of economic interest would be secondary to the security interest,” he added.

China’s renewed interest in Afghanistan came after the fall of the United States-backed Afghan government. Independent Chinese investors were making inroads, albeit weak and flailing attempts, into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. This latest deal cements China’s presence in the war-ravaged country.

But the true test of the deal will remain to be seen in its implementations, experts say.

“The real win is not in getting the contract or getting the Chinese back on the ground but in how [the Taliban] regulate and implement [contracts and projects], considering the current capacity within the Ministry,” Jumrainy, the industry expert, said, adding that not many details of the deal were made public.

“The question remains on what benefits Afghans will receive; training, technology transfer, revenues from the contract, none of these are known,” he pointed out.

China is also aware of the Taliban’s limitations and, as a result, has not committed much, Sadr added. The investments under the Taliban deal are significantly less than those announced between 2002 and 2021.

“Its state-owned corporations, in particular, will not invest in Afghanistan until it is sure of its security. We should recall the latest attack on Chinese investors in downtown Kabul which prompted China to advise its nationals to leave Afghanistan,” he said, referring to an attack in December 2022 on a Kabul hotel popular with Chinese nationals, for which ISIL (ISIS) claimed responsibility.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Enrollment Drops By 70% in Universities, Educational Centers

February 26, 2023 Current News Articles

Nazir Shinwari

Tolo News

26 Feb 2023

The media director of the union, Mohammad Karim Nasiri, said that the number of participants has dropped by 70 percent.

RAHIM FAIEZ

Sketchy past

Political significance

Recent Posts