IRC Concerned over Impacts of Ban on Women Aid Workers

The IRC said that the ability to reach Afghans in need relies on at its all level of organization.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) on Thursday expressed its concerns over the impacts of the Islamic Emirate’s ban on women from working in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), saying it “comes at a dangerous moment as winter conditions set in on a population already devastated by decades of conflict and an unprecedented economic collapse.” 

The IRC said that the ability to reach Afghans in need relies on at its all level of organization.

“82% of female-headed households in Afghanistan are food insecure—32 percentage points more than male-headed households,” the IRC said.

Aria Baktash, who worked for an NGO, is among those who lost their jobs after the decision.

“After they issued the decree, both my sister and I lost our jobs. We were making our family’s expenses from our salaries at the organization,” she said.

The World Food Program of the UN in Afghanistan also said that it has suspended its operations for three weeks in the country.

“The WFP’s assistance or the humanitarian assistance will be vital in 2023. Because in 2023, 28.3 million or two-thirds of the population in Afghanistan will need humanitarian assistance,” said Wahidullah Amani, a spokesman for the WFP.

“The suspension of aid by donors will affect the process of provision of the international community’s assistance to the poor people of Afghanistan. It undoubtedly pushes the poor households into further poverty,” said Mir Shakib Mir, an economic affairs analyst.

This comes as the IRC said that it has reached out to six million people in one year.

“Eleven million women and girls are unable to have access to international aid due to such attempts, according to the UN. I think this issue gives an excuse for the organizations or to anyone else to not be able to provide aid,” said Sayed Massoud, an economic affairs analyst.

Earlier, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that 20 million people will face acute hunger by March 2023.

IRC Concerned over Impacts of Ban on Women Aid Workers
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As Taliban erases women’s rights, Biden encounters limits of U.S. sway

The Biden administration is contemplating actions to punish the Taliban for its treatment of women and girls, potentially including cuts to American aid, even as officials acknowledge that the U.S. withdrawal has left them with little power to stop the group’s leaders from imposing their harsh vision on Afghan society.

Officials are scrambling to respond to restrictive announcements from the Taliban-led government in Kabul, which last month prohibited women from attending university — meaning women cannot attend school after age 12 — and from working for aid groups, a consequential move in a nation that remains highly dependent on outside assistance.

The decisions elicited international outcry, including among some Muslim leaders, and prompted prominent aid groups to suspend their work in Afghanistan. The Taliban previously took steps to exclude female students from secondary educationrequire women to wear head-to-toe coverings in public and impose other severe constraints on the lives of women and girls.

But U.S. officials are struggling to find ways to exert influence over the Taliban’s top decision-makers more than a year after America’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan, which triggered the collapse of the U.S.-backed government and handed the militant group a stunning victory following a two-decade war.

Officials and experts now expect the effort to help Afghan women and girls regain their rights will be a long-term endeavor, one that in the meantime may leave millions severely marginalized.

“The U.S. government’s leverage is extremely limited,” said Scott Worden, an Afghanistan expert at the U.S. Institute for Peace. “This needs to be approached both multilaterally and with a strategy looking at the Taliban’s interests and what can impact them over time.”

After its August 2021 departure, the United States has had scant sway in Kabul despite being the largest humanitarian donor to Afghanistan — humanitarian aid exceeded $1 billion during that period — and the custodian of frozen Afghan reserves, some of which have been placed in an internationally administered fund. Washington also wields influence over other countries’ decisions about whether to eventually grant the Taliban government official recognition, something the group continues to crave.

But thus far, officials have been reluctant to alter or restrict U.S. assistance as part of their attempt to defend rights for women and other groups, arguing that such cuts could exacerbate the suffering of Afghans. And as recently as late December, a top American official said U.S. humanitarian aid would remain unconditional.

That approach may be changing as Taliban leaders show willingness to flout global condemnation and make the delivery of needed medical, food and other assistance more difficult by excluding female aid workers. An administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to address internal deliberations, said that while U.S. options and leverage may be limited, there was consensus that the Taliban’s actions were unacceptable.

“Among the many options that are on the table includes looking at the type and amount of aid being sent via international partners,” the official said, declining to elaborate.

The United States could also voice support for the United Nations to maintain travel bans against Taliban leaders, or potentially impose new sanctions or other measures to restrict their finances and movements.

Deliberations over Afghanistan occur as the Biden administration touts its leadership of the coalition opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine, what officials contend is proof of President Biden’s foreign policy credentials. The broad international praise his position has garnered stands in contrast to the criticism he faced after the Afghanistan withdrawal, which plunged the country into economic crisis and left millions of Afghans, including many U.S. allies during the war, stranded in a country governed by a repressive enemy regime.

The Taliban has defied U.S. hopes in other ways, excluding broad sections of Afghan society from its government and harboring the leader of al-Qaeda in Kabul before he was killed in an American drone strike last summer. The group’s record to date suggests that Western officials misjudged the influence of Taliban moderates who for years had promised foreign interlocutors that the organization had abandoned the practices seen as most problematic during its earlier rein in the 1990s.

The Biden administration has already taken some punitive steps in response, temporarily halting engagement with the group after its decision to bar girls from secondary school and imposing visa restrictions on Taliban figures believed to be responsible for gender repression.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking after the Taliban’s announcement on higher education, promised that the group would face “consequences” for its treatment of women and girls. “There are going to be costs if this is not reversed,” he said.

This week, State Department spokesman Ned Price said officials were discussing options.

The Taliban “cannot expect to take these draconian, barbaric steps that prevent opportunity for women and girls but more recently inflict such tremendous suffering on all of the people of Afghanistan and still expect to find a path to improved relations with the rest of the world,” he told reporters. “It is our goal with the response that we are developing internally and with our allies and partners to prove to them that will not be the case.”

Halima Kazem, who is part of advocacy coalition Together Stronger, said some Afghan women she has spoken to are urging the United States to use reductions in assistance as pressure on the Taliban to change its policies. Many of them say they don’t receive much of that aid in any case, Kazem said. Others disagree, she added.

In a recent letter to Blinken, Together Stronger urged the U.S. government to take several steps including limiting its engagement with the Taliban; establishing a liaison office to help coordinate aid and advocacy work within Afghanistan; and helping persecuted Afghans resettle in the United States.

For now, Kazem said, the best hope may be influencing Taliban moderates and hoping they eventually gain more sway within the organization relative to hard-liners such as Haibatullah Akhunzada, the ultraconservative cleric who is the group’s supreme leader.

In a speech in November 2021, Akhunzada said God, rather than the Taliban, would provide food for the people of Afghanistan.

“There’s a very ideological hard line that wants to make a modern caliphate, that wants at any costs to prove that that kind of society has a place in the modern world,” Kazem said. “That group doesn’t care about these pressures.”

Even as the Biden administration seeks ways to help Afghan women in their worsening plight, senior officials are reinforcing their support for the president’s decision to depart the country. National security adviser Jake Sullivan recently described Biden’s withdrawal decision as an important part of the administration’s approach to foreign affairs, suggesting it had allowed the United States to focus on the future rather than the legacy of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Now, the administration is hoping to strike a balance between preserving its role as a major provider of assistance and “also doing what we can to prevent the humanitarian situation from deteriorating further as a result of the difficult operating environment the Taliban have created,” a State Department spokesperson said.

“These things take time,” the official said. “They are serious.”

James Dobbins, who served as a top U.S. diplomat for Afghanistan issues over several decades, noted that the U.S. government may not know enough about the Taliban’s internal dynamics to effectively prejudge the effect of punitive actions and whether they might strengthen or weaken the hand of militant hard-liners.

Dobbins recommended continuing to talk with the group and looking for ways to influence it where possible. He described the current situation as a foreseeable outcome of the American exit, which exposed the weaknesses of the Afghan state and left millions at the mercy of a group that waged a 20-year insurgency to establish its extremist state.

“It’s very disappointing,” he said. “But it was a predictable fact of leaving.”

Missy Ryan writes about diplomacy, national security and the State Department for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2014 to write about the Pentagon and military issues. She has reported from Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mexico, Peru, Argentina and Chile

As Taliban erases women’s rights, Biden encounters limits of U.S. sway
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Biden aides struggle to respond to Taliban’s latest curbs on women

The Biden administration is grappling with how to respond to new Taliban restrictions on women’s rights in Afghanistan, knowing that punishing the ruling Islamists risks rupturing the limited relationship the United States has with them.

The discussion among administration officials is fluid and positions have varied depending on the proposed penalties, a current administration official and a former U.S. official familiar with the talks said. Those proposals include new economic sanctions and tighter bans on Taliban leaders’ travels abroad, as well as limiting certain types of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

But in broad terms, according to the current and former officials, the debate has pitted Tom West, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, against Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights. West is wary of going too far in isolating the Taliban, with whom the U.S. tries to cooperate on counter-terrorism, while Amiri wants to get tougher on them as they try to erase women from public life.

While insisting that the Taliban will face consequences, a State Department spokesperson on Thursday downplayed claims of differences between West and Amiri. In the latest deliberations, “Tom and Rina have been of a similar mind” and “in the same camp advocating for similar accountability mechanisms.” The spokesperson, however, would not describe the mechanisms being discussed or how far each official wanted to go.

Nearly 18 months after the U.S. military left and the Taliban took charge, Afghanistan’s deepening misery is a growing blight on President Joe Biden’s human rights record. It’s a topic that Republicans, who are taking control of the House, are likely to hammer as they launch investigations into the administration’s handling of Afghanistan.

“We knew this was coming but dreaded it and couldn’t stop it,” said the current official, who, like the State Department spokesperson and others, requested anonymity to describe sensitive internal administration conversations.

White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson dismissed the idea that Biden was disengaged on the topic. She pointed to his mentioning the repression of Afghan women and girls during his speech last September to the United Nations General Assembly.

“As soon as the Taliban announced additional restrictive measures, the president directed his team to quickly assess the implications for our assistance programs and coordinate with partners to make clear to the Taliban that they will only be further isolated from the world and not get the legitimacy they seek,” Watson added.

The Taliban leadership’s latest edicts, issued last month, bar women from universities and from working for many NGOs — leading several humanitarian groups to suspend operations in Afghanistan, where millions face starvation and other insecurity.

Months ago, the militant group’s top leaders barred girls from secondary schools, and they also have issued other decrees that ban women and girls from certain public spaces and jobs. There are fears they will ultimately bar girls from primary school.

The current administration official said there are interagency meetings scheduled this week to discuss a U.S. response, but a decision may not come until next week.

“We are working with our partners throughout the government and also with like-minded partners around the world to devise an appropriate set of consequences that register our condemnation for this outrageous edict on the part of the Taliban, while also protecting our status as the world’s leading humanitarian provider for the people of Afghanistan,” the State Department’s lead spokesperson, Ned Price, told reporters during Wednesday’s press briefing.

Washington has some leverage over the Taliban, both diplomatically and economically. The Taliban have sought international recognition as a government, and they also want foreign investment. The United States has sway over billions of dollars in Afghan funds that could help stabilize the country’s economy, and American sanctions have ripple effects that deter foreign investment.

But the Taliban have leverage, too, including the freedom they give to terrorist groups that operate from Afghan soil. Former Al Qaeda chief and 9/11 attacks plotter Osama bin Laden used Afghanistan as a base. Last year, his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Kabul. The Islamic State terrorist group, meanwhile, is a Taliban rival and U.S. foe that has staged a number of attacks in Afghanistan over the past year and a half.

Cooperation on counterterrorism is just one of many factors that U.S. officials including West and Amiri — neither of whom responded to requests for comment — have to consider as they weigh how to respond to the Taliban’s human rights abuses.

The differences between West and Amiri are not massive and are more a matter of degree — both want to hold the Taliban accountable. Their stances also reflect their specific jobs, the current administration official said. “It’s generally true that Tom wants to find some way to keep working with the Taliban. I think he thinks that’s his mandate from the president,” the official said. “Rina has a more human rights-principled approach — do what we should do and let the chips fall where they may.”

To make things harder, the Taliban’s top leaders are deeply conservative Islamists who appear personally immune to most U.S. economic sanctions and travel bans; they are unlikely to have many financial assets outside Afghanistan and don’t travel much. They are said to be based in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

If the United States decides to cut or change humanitarian aid to Afghanistan as part of its penalties, it’s unlikely to be severe, the current official said.

U.S. officials have little — if any — contact with these top Taliban figures, which include the group’s No. 1 leader or “emir,” Haibatullah Akhundzada, said former U.S. officials in touch with the administration. Instead, U.S. officials deal with the Taliban’s more public faces in Kabul and in third party countries such as Qatar, but those people have less power.

Even if U.S. officials set aside diplomatic sensitivities and were willing to publicly engage with Akhundzada, the secretive Taliban leader is unlikely to agree to meet, former officials and analysts said.

Not all Taliban members support Akhundzada’s deeply conservative approach to women and girls’ rights. In fact, one prominent Taliban figure, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is believed to support educating girls and women, said a second current U.S. official familiar with the Afghan file. The Haqqani network is among the most violent Taliban factions.

Still, the Taliban have a strong central structure, so even more progressive elements defer to the conservative leadership, the U.S. official said. That makes it hard for the United States to sow division in the group.

Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban official, insisted to POLITICO via a WhatsApp message that the education bans were only temporary. He referred questions about the NGO work bans to another Taliban official who could not be reached for comment.

Afghan officials are “working in full swing” to ensure a “conducive environment” for women’s education, Shaheen wrote. “None is against women’s education per se, but they want women [to] receive education in an environment compliant to our values and rules,” he said, in a nod to strict Islamic law.

But the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan for much of the 1990s, have previously claimed that such bans are temporary, only to keep schools closed to girls.

Lisa Curtis, who oversaw Afghanistan at the National Security Council in the Trump administration, argued that Biden aides should use sanctions as well as other tools to pressure the Taliban. The administration can, for instance, engage more publicly with Afghan opposition leaders or re-open the Afghan Embassy in Washington but under the control of non-Taliban figures, she said.

“It’s been almost 18 months. The Taliban has not changed,” she said. “At some point there has to be consequences.”

Others outside the Biden team, however, said it would be a mistake to further isolate the militant movement. In the long run, for the good of all Afghans, engagement is critical, said a former U.S. official familiar with the issue.

“We need to own up to the fact that our policy of shrilly criticizing them every five minutes isn’t working,” the former official said.

A former U.S. diplomat also familiar with the Afghan file argued that one approach is for the United States to lower its profile and empower institutions such as the United Nations to pressure the militant rulers.

The current strategy isn’t working, the former diplomat said, and in the meantime, “this country has so grievously erased the basic rights of half its citizens.”

Biden aides struggle to respond to Taliban’s latest curbs on women
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Afghanistan’s Taliban administration in oil extraction deal with Chinese company

By 
Reuters
January 5, 2023

KABUL, Jan 5 (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s Taliban-led administration is to sign a contract with a Chinese company to extract oil from the Amu Darya basin in the country’s north, the acting mining minister said on Thursday.

The contract would be signed with Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co (CAPEIC), officials told a news conference in Kabul.

It will be the first major public commodities extraction deal the Taliban administration has signed with an foreign company since taking power in 2021.

It also underscores neighbouring China’s economic involvement in the region even though the Islamic State militant group has targeted its citizens in Afghanistan.

“The Amu Darya oil contract is an important project between China and Afghanistan,” China’s ambassador, Wang Yu, told the news conference.

China has not formally recognised the Taliban administration but it has significant interests in a country at the centre of a region important for its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.

The Chinese company will invest $150 million a year in Afghanistan under the contract, the spokesperson for the Taliban-run administration, Zabihullah Mujahid, said on Twitter.

Its investment would increase to $540 million in three years for the 25-year contract, he said.

The Taliban-run administration will have a 20% partnership in the project, which can be increased to 75%, he added.

The announcement came a day after the Taliban administration said its forces had killed eight Islamic State members in raids, including some who were behind an attack last month on a hotel catering to Chinese businessmen in the capital, Kabul.

China’s state-owned company National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) signed a contract with Afghanistan’s previous, U.S.-backed government in 2012 to extract oil at the Amu Darya basin in the northern provinces of Faryab and Sar-e Pul.

At the time, up to 87 million barrels of crude were estimated to be in Amu Darya.

Acting Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Baradar told the news conference that another Chinese company, which he did not identify, had not continued extraction after the fall of the previous government so the deal had been struck with CAPEIC.

“We ask the company to continue the procedure according to international standards, also we ask them to provide for the interest of the people of Sar-e Pul,” he said.

The mining minister said a condition of the deal was that the oil be processed in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is estimated to be sitting on untapped resources of more than $1 trillion, which has attracted the interest of some foreign investors though decades of turmoil has prevented any significant exploitation.

A Chinese state-owned company is also in talks with the Taliban-led administration over the operation of a copper mine in eastern Logar province, another deal that was first signed under the previous government.

Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar; Writing by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Tom Hogue, Robert Birsel
Afghanistan’s Taliban administration in oil extraction deal with Chinese company
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‘Our sisters deserve better’: Afghan men quit university jobs after ban on female students

Hikmat Noori

The Guardian

Wed 4 Jan 2023

A Taliban decree against higher education for women – called a ‘betrayal of the nation’ – has led to male lecturers and student walkouts in solidarity

Baktash Amini loved his job as an assistant professor in the physics faculty at Kabul University. As well as having a passion for teaching, he took pride in helping his students pursue careers in physics, setting up partnerships with the International Centre for Theoretical Physics and Cern, among others.

But his efforts to further scientific education in Afghanistan seemed futile when the Taliban announced that women would be banned from university education. “The night [the] Taliban closed the doors of universities to Afghan women, I received many messages and calls from my students. I cannot find the words to describe their situation. I am an academic and the only way I could express protest was by [leaving] a system that discriminates against women,” he says. He resigned from his “dream job” on 21 December.

Prof Amini is among at least 60 Afghan academics who have resigned in protest at the Taliban’s decree banning women from higher education. “The Taliban have taken women’s education hostage to their political benefits. This is betrayal of the nation,” says Abdul Raqib Ekleel, an urban development lecturer at Kabul Polytechnic University, who also resigned from his position.

“In the last year and half, the Taliban have made many irrational demands on female students, such as regulating their clothes, hijab, separate classes, being accompanied by mahram [legal male guardian] and the students have obliged with all of them. Every professor conducted the same lectures twice every week, once for the male and then for female. Despite that, the Taliban still banned the women,” says Ekleel.

“These bans are against Islamic values and against national interest. It impacts everyone, not just the women. I could not be part of such a system,” he adds.

Another lecturer at Kabul University tore up his degrees and education documents on national television. “Today, if my sister and my mother cannot study, what use are these education [degrees] to me? Here you go, I am tearing my original documents. I was a lecturer and I taught [students], but this country is no longer a place for education,” said a tearful Ismail Mashal in a clip that has gone viral on social media.

When the presenter asked what he wanted, Mashal said: “Until you allow my sister and mother [back into universities], I will not teach.”

Even before the Taliban takeover, university was often a challenging environment for Afghan women, who faced harassment and discrimination. “Every day was a struggle to prove that we deserved to be there [on campus],” says 23-year-old Samira*, a final-year student. “But things have just worsened since the Taliban takeover. They kept restricting every movement, even asking questions to a male professor was forbidden. And now they have completely banned us.”

Samira had spent the evening studying for exams when she heard about the ban. “I cannot describe the pain to you. I am in my last semester. I just had a few more months to go before I graduate. I wanted to go out and scream,” she says.

That night, she wrote on a WhatsApp group with her classmates: “Doesn’t anyone care that the future of women of Afghanistan is at stake?”

Many of her female classmates were already mobilising on WhatsApp groups, discussing ways to protest against the ban. In the past year and half, Afghan women have regularly protested in the streets against the Taliban’s regressive policies, despite threats and attacks. However, few men have joined them and have often been criticised for their absence from the demonstrations in an already weakened civil society.

With the ban on women’s higher education, however, men have stepped up: as well as male teaching staff resigning, male students have walked out of classrooms and exam halls in in solidarity with female classmates.

“We stood up in support of our sisters because we couldn’t tolerate this injustice any more,” says one 19-year-old male student, who participated in the walkouts on 21 December along with dozens of other students from Nangarhar University.

Similar protests were reported in other provinces – including Kabul, Kandahar and Ghazni – with hundreds of students and lecturers staging walkouts and chanting slogans of “all or none”, demanding women be allowed backon to campuses.

“Our sisters are talented and deserve better, but also such bans on education will have a very negative, irreversible impact on our society. This is why we [Afghan men] need to speak up now,” the student from Nangarhar adds.

Dissatisfaction at increasingly regressive policies and an environment of fear created by the Taliban was already high among Afghan academics.

However, the Taliban’s brutal reaction to dissent discouraged many from taking action. One of the few academics who dared to speak out was Prof Faizullah Jalal, who was arrested in January last year.

“Previously, we wanted to demonstrate against decisions that were unjust towards our sisters. We had created groups to mobilise classmates to raise our voice, but then the Taliban found out about it and sent threats to all the group admins, and I had no option but to keep silent,” the student from Nangarhar says.

But, as the situation worsens in Afghanistan, men, particularly in academia, are now questioning their silence. “University professors cannot pick [up] a gun and stand against the Taliban and their decision. In any other democratic society, civil movements are one of the ways to fight,” says Ekleel.

“Even though there is no justice or democracy under the Taliban, the women have been protesting since the Taliban arrival, protecting our values all by themselves. I think it is our duty to stand with them.”

‘Our sisters deserve better’: Afghan men quit university jobs after ban on female students
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Deputy Prime Minister Meets UNAMA Envoy Markus Potzel

A number of analysts said that the ban on women’s jobs in NGOs will have a negative impact on the country’s situation.

Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Kabir in a meeting with UNAMA envoy Markus Potzel discussed women’s access to work and education as well as humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and an inclusive government in the country.

In this meeting, the deputy prime minister said the Islamic Emirate has pledged to an inclusive government.

“Efforts are made to have people in government from different ethnic groups to be aware and committed to their country,” said Hassan Haqyar, a media official in the Prime Minister’s office.

Potzel said that Islamic Emirate’s latest decision about the ban on women aid workers will have negative impacts on the international community’s assistance.

Meanwhile, the acting minister of mines and petroleum, Shahabuddin Delawar, at a press conference in Kabul assured that the problem of women’s education will be addressed.

“Religious scholars are educated but nobody knows now that the issue is until the next order and we are waiting for all the problems to be solved,” Delawar said.

A number of analysts said that the ban on women’s jobs in NGOs will have a negative impact on the country’s situation.

“The closure of schools and universities and the ban on women aid workers will have a negative impact on the future and the consequences will be irreparable,” said Mohammad Omar Nahzat, a political analyst.

“The right to education and work is clear in Islam. We ask the Islamic Emirate to lift the bans,” said Sayed Hashim Jawadi Balkhabi, a political analyst.

Deputy Prime Minister Meets UNAMA Envoy Markus Potzel
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UNSC to Hold Meeting to Discuss Ban on Women Aid Workers in Afghanistan

Tolo News

5 Jan 2023

The UAE announced on Twitter that the closed-door meeting was requested by it and Japan for Jan. 13.

The UN Security Council is set to meet privately next week to discuss a decision by Islamic Emirate’s administration to ban female humanitarian aid workers.

The UAE announced on Twitter that the closed-door meeting was requested by it and Japan for Jan. 13.

“The UAE and Japan called for a private meeting of the UNSC on Afghanistan to be convened on 13 January in light of the latest decisions announced by the Taliban and their impact, including on the humanitarian situations,” said Shahad Matar, a spokesperson for the UAE permanent mission to the UN.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Washington is “committed to standing up for women wherever their rights are threatened, including in Afghanistan, as unfortunately, we continue to see deepen and get worse.”

He made the remarks at the US Strategy on Global Women’s Economic Security.

Analysts and former diplomats said that convening such meetings will help with issues of suspension of higher education and work for women at the NGOs.

“The UN and the Security Council are credible organizations in the world and can recommend and press in the internal issues of the countries based on principles 39, 40 and 42,” said Aziz Maarij, a former diplomat.

“Holding such meetings can create hopes for the betterment of the situation in Afghanistan if the results are in favor of ensuring women’s rights in Afghanistan and practical steps towards the removal of the ban on women’s education and work,” said Mariam Maaroof Arwin, a women’s rights activist.

The Islamic Emirate did not comment on the matter.

UNSC to Hold Meeting to Discuss Ban on Women Aid Workers in Afghanistan
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Afghan businesswoman Hassina Syed to return home to work with Taliban

BBC News
 4 Jan 2023

An Afghan businesswoman and women’s rights activist intends to return to the country less than two years after she fled on a British military plane.

Hassina Syed left Afghanistan in August 2021, when the Taliban took control of the country, and has since been living in Lincolnshire with her family.

Hassina Syed

Hassina Syed left Afghanistan in August 2021 when the Taliban took control of the country

Her husband Peter Jouvenal, an ex-BBC cameraman, was held in Kabul for six months before being released in June.

Ms Syed said she would work with the Taliban to help her country progress.

“This month I will go inshallah [God willing], I will go back to my country and start from beginning,” she said.

“I have to be there to work. I can’t sit outside.

“This is my responsibility because I gained a lot of positivity from my country and I want to give back to my country.”

Peter Jouvenal and his wife Hassina Syed
The couple live in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire

The businesswoman and activist left Afghanistan on an evacuation flight with her Afghan passport and British driving licence.

Then, four months later in December, her husband was one of five Britons detained by the Taliban, who accused him of spying, but he was freed after six months of campaigning.

The couple have since been living in Woodhall Spa.

Last month, the pair were invited – alongside speakers including former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – to the Nobel Peace Prize Forum in Oslo, Norway, where they discussed how Afghanistan could move forward.

Afghanistan sparked international condemnation after women were banned from attending universities.

Girls had already been excluded from secondary schools since the Taliban retook power last year.

Speaking from her Lincolnshire home, Ms Syed said she had to “work with the Taliban not against them” if she wanted the country to have a chance of a positive future.

“The Taliban is now controlling Afghanistan and they are the leaders. This is the reality and we have to work with them because of our Afghan people. We can’t ignore them.”

She said she wanted to help the Afghan people “to stand on their own feet”.

Peter Jouvenal
Mr Jouvenal filmed an interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997 for CNN

When asked about his experience of an Afghan jail, Mr Jouvenal described his treatment as being “very good”.

“We were treated extremely well. The food was excellent,” he said.

“We became friends with all the guards there.

“I spent 40 years in Afghanistan, so I would say 50% of the guesthouses I lived in were worse than this prison.”

Mr Jouvenal, who filmed an interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997 for CNN, said he would later join his wife in Afghanistan and help rebuild their life there.

Afghan businesswoman Hassina Syed to return home to work with Taliban
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Taliban says eight ISIL fighters killed in raids in Afghanistan

Al Jazeera
Published On 5 Jan 2023

The raids follow a series of attacks conducted by ISIL, including a deadly bombing near a checkpoint in Kabul.

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban has killed eight ISIL (ISIS) fighters and arrested several others in a series of raids targeting key figures in a spate of attacks in Kabul, a senior Taliban government spokesman has said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Thursday that the raids in the capital city and western Nimroz province the previous day targeted ISIL members who organised recent attacks on Kabul’s Longan Hotel, Pakistan’s embassy and the military airport.

Eight ISIL fighters, including foreign nationals, were killed and seven others arrested in Kabul, while a separate operation in western Nimroz province resulted in two more ISIL arrests, Mujahid said.

“These members had a main role in the attack on the [Logan] hotel and paved the way for foreign [ISIL] members to come to Afghanistan,” the spokesperson said in a tweet.

ISIL claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing near a checkpoint at the Afghan capital’s military airport on Sunday. The group said that attack was carried out by someone that also took part in the Longan Hotel assault in mid-December.

ISIL had published a photo of the attacker, identifying him as Abdul Jabbar, saying he withdrew safely from the attack on the hotel after he ran out of ammunition. It added he detonated his explosives-laden vest targeting the soldiers gathered at the checkpoint.

ISIL’s regional affiliate – known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) – is a key rival of the Taliban and has increased its attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Targets have included Taliban patrols and members of Afghanistan’s Shia minority.

The Taliban swept across the country in August 2021, seizing power as United States and NATO forces were in the last weeks of their final withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
Taliban says eight ISIL fighters killed in raids in Afghanistan
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Afghanistan used to launch attacks on Pakistan: Defence minister

By

Al Jazeera

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s defence minister has alleged that Afghanistan’s soil is being used by armed groups to launch attacks on his country, prompting a sharp response from Taliban government in Kabul which called the allegation “incorrect” and “regrettable”.

“We have spoken to Afghanistan government and we will keep saying that … their soil is being used for cross-border terrorism,” Khwaja Asif told a private news channel on Monday night.

Asif’s remarks came shortly after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, newly appointed military chief General Asim Munir and other top officials attended a meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC) in the capital Islamabad.

A statement issued by the government after the NSC meeting said “no country will be allowed to provide sanctuaries to terrorists” and their attacks “will be dealt with full force of the state”.

The NSC statement did not name any country but it was an apparent reference to neighbouring Afghanistan, whose government denies the allegations as “provocative and baseless”.

‘Provocative assertions’

In response to the two statements, Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, on Tuesday said “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wants good relations with all its neighboring countries, including Pakistan,” using the name Taliban has given to the country.

“The Islamic Emirate is trying its best that the territory of Afghanistan is not used against Pakistan or any other country. We are committed to this goal, but the Pakistani side is also responsible to try controlling the situation, refrain from giving baseless statements and provocative assertions, because such statement and mistrust is not in the interest of either side,” it added.

The exchange of words between Pakistan and Afghanistan officials follows a series of recent attacks by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an armed group also known as Pakistani Taliban because of its ideological affinity with the Afghan Taliban.

The TTP has been waging a rebellion against the state of Pakistan for more than a decade. The group demands the imposition of their hardline interpretation of Islamic law, the release of its members arrested by the government, and a reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s tribal areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

In 2022 alone, Pakistan’s monitoring agencies recorded more than 150 attacks launched by the TTP across the country, killing dozens of people. Authorities fear the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan has emboldened the TTP and led to its resurgence.

In November, the armed group unilaterally ended an Afghan Taliban-brokered ceasefire agreement with the Pakistani government and ordered its fighters to carry out attacks across the country.

In his interview with the news channel, Asif invoked the Doha accord the Taliban signed with the United States in February 2020 to facilitate the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.

As part of the pact, the Taliban committed to not allowing any armed group to use Afghanistan’s soil to launch attacks on another nation. As US and NATO troops began to leave in August 2021, the Afghan Taliban took over Kabul.

‘Peace is non-negotiable’

In a tweet on Tuesday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Sharif said Pakistan will “adopt zero tolerance policy for terrorists challenging its writ”. “Peace is non-negotiable,” he wrote.

Last month, TTP fighters overpowered Pakistani security personnel and took them as hostages at a counterterrorism centre in the Bannu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan. The 40-hour siege ended after the Pakistani military stormed the facility and killed all 33 TTP attackers.

The incident added to escalating tensions between Islamabad and Kabul.

Last week, Pakistan’s interior minister Rana Sanaullah said his government is considering launching attacks on TTP hideouts in Afghanistan if the Taliban government fails in handing over members of the armed group to Pakistan.

The Taliban responded, saying Afghanistan is “not without its owner”.

“As always, we are ready to defend the territorial integrity and independence of our homeland, and it is mentionable we have a better experience than anyone in defending and protecting our country,” it said in a statement.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
Afghanistan used to launch attacks on Pakistan: Defence minister
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