The agreement comes as Afghanistan faces a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Afghanistan’s government has signed a provisional agreement with Russia to import petroleum products and wheat at a discount, according to Taliban officials.
The deal includes the annual purchase of one million tonnes of petrol, one million tonnes of diesel, half a million tonnes of cooking gas and two million tonnes of wheat, Ministry of Commerce and Industry spokesperson Akhundzada Abdul Salam Jawad told dpa news agency on Wednesday.
He said the import process was expected to “start soon” for Afghanistan, which has been plunged into economic crisis after development aid upon which the country relied was cut following the Taliban’s takeover last year.
Haji Nooruddin Azizi, the acting commerce and industry minister, told the Reuters news agency the agreement would run for an unspecified trial period, after which both sides were expected to sign a longer-term deal if they were content with the arrangement.
He declined to give details on pricing or payment methods, but said Russia had agreed to a discount to global markets on goods that would be delivered to Afghanistan by road and rail.
Azizi said his ministry was working to diversify its trading partners and that Russia had offered the Taliban administration a discount compared with average global commodity prices.
There were no immediate comments by Russia’s energy and agriculture ministries.
However, Russian Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov confirmed the provisional agreements on the shipment of fuel and grain to Afghanistan.
“There were such agreements, indeed. As far as I understand, they are preliminary; now, the sides must sign specific [agreements] on volumes and range of products,” he told Russian state news agency TASS on Wednesday.
Russia has been hit hard by Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine. The unprecedented measures have forced it to push exports to Asian countries – particularly China and India – to support its economy.
Like all other countries, Russia does not officially recognise the Taliban’s government. Moscow, however, hosted leaders of the movement before they returned to power in August 2021 and its embassy is one of only a handful to remain open in the Afghan capital, Kabul, after the hasty withdrawal of United States-led foreign forces.
“The contract was agreed upon last month when the minister of industry and trade visited Russia,” Jawad said of the reported agreement.
The move could help to ease the isolation that has effectively cut it off from the global banking system amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.
The billions of dollars in foreign aid that had helped prop up Afghanistan’s economy for 20 years following the US-led invasion of the country has also been vastly reduced, further deepening the crisis. Meanwhile, food production has been affected by a two-year drought.
Taliban officials have maintained that they are looking to strike trade deals with the international community.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
Taliban signs ‘preliminary’ deal with Russia for oil, gas, wheat
Senior member of Afghanistan’s Taliban-run government urges rulers to reopen secondary schools for girls, saying ‘women must get education’.
A senior member of the Taliban-run government in Afghanistan has called on the country’s new rulers to reopen schools for girls beyond the sixth year, saying there is no valid reason in Islam for the ban.
The appeal from Taliban Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai on Tuesday came during a Taliban gathering in Kabul. It was a rare moderate voice amid the harsh measures imposed by the Taliban since they overran the country and seized power in August 2021.
Since returning to power, the Taliban has shut down girls’ secondary schools across the country, ordered women to wear hijabs in the workplace and to cover their faces in public, and has banned women from travelling long distances without a close male relative.
The Taliban have said they are working on a plan to open secondary schools for girls but have not given a timeframe.
The United Nations has called the ban “shameful” and the international community has been wary of officially recognising the Taliban, fearing a return to the same harsh rule the Taliban imposed when they were last in power in the late 1990s.
“It is very important that education must be provided to all, without any discrimination,” Stanikzai said. “Women must get an education, there is no Islamic prohibition for girls’ education.”
“Let’s not provide opportunities for others to create a gap between the government and people,” he added. “If there are technical issues, that needs to be resolved, and schools for girls must be opened.”
Stanikzai was once head of the Taliban team in talks that led to the 2020 agreement in Qatar between the Taliban and the United States that included the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan.
His remarks followed the Taliban appointment of a new education minister, days after the UN called on them to reopen schools for girls. The UN has estimated that more than one million girls have been barred from attending most middle schools and high schools during the past year.
The ban targets female students in years seven to 12, primarily affecting girls aged 12 to 18.
The ban has drawn international condemnation and sanctions.
The Taliban has defended its decision, saying such restrictions have been done to preserve “national interest” and women’s “honour”.
A year after the Taliban took over the country as the Western-backed government and military crumbled, the UN has said it is increasingly concerned that restrictions on girls’ education, as well as other measures curtailing basic freedoms, would deepen Afghanistan’s economic crisis and lead to greater insecurity, poverty, and isolation.
The country has been reeling from a humanitarian crisis with more than half of the population facing hunger. amid Western-imposed sanctions, as well as the freezing of humanitarian aid and nearly $10bn in Afghan central bank assets.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
Taliban official calls for schools to be reopened for girls
Sharif’s remarks sparked reactions from the Islamic Emirate and former President Hamid Karzai.
The Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif said that “Pakistan shares the key concern of the international community regarding the threat posed by the major terrorist groups operating from Afghanistan especially ISIS-K and Takrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, as well as al-Qaeda ETIM and IMU.”
He made the remarks at the 77th United Nation General Assembly.
Sharif’s remarks sparked reactions from the Islamic Emirate and former President Hamid Karzai.
“Some countries, including the United States and Pakistan, expressed concerns … that threat of terrorism still exists in Afghanistan,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “These concerns, based on incorrect information and sources, are being brought up as the relevant parties are yet to hand over seat of Afghanistan at the United Nations to its rightful, legal and political owners, the Afghan government.”
Speaking at a gathering in Kabul, the acting foreign minister said that there are “biased circles in the world calling Afghanistan a terrorist haven.”
Former President Karzai said the remarks are not true.
Karzai said in a statement that Afghanistan has been the victim of terrorism and that terrorist sanctuaries have been active under the Pakistani government in the country–and have been used against Afghanistan for decades.
“Representing Afghanistan in the international conference is not possible and this issue makes the situation worse day by day—and this causes some countries who themselves train and grow terrorism to accuse Afghanistan for the chaos in the region,” said Sayed Javad Sijadi.
Sharif also urged the Islamic Emirate to respect human rights and women’s rights.
Pakistan Concerned by Terrorist Presence in Afghanistan: Sharif
WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) – The United States will provide an additional $327 million in aid to Afghanistan to shore up humanitarian assistance, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday.
“This assistance from the United States will continue to support the scaled-up humanitarian response in Afghanistan and neighboring countries through international humanitarian organizations,” Blinken said in a statement.
Reporting by Doina Chiacu
U.S. providing $327 million in aid to Afghanistan, Blinken says
Meanwhile, some university professors and students said that the nation’s universities’ curricula haven’t been updated in years.
The Ministry of Higher Education said that it will review and revise the curriculum in light of Afghan culture, international educational standards, and Islamic law.
Ahmad Taqi, the spokesperson for this ministry, said that 35 academic curricula have already been finalized, and that a single academic curriculum will be set up across the entire country.
“We have adopted those international norms that we support and are working to align Afghanistan’s curriculum with those norms so that we can compete with other countries in curriculum,” Taqi said.
Meanwhile, some university professors and students said that the nation’s universities’ curricula haven’t been updated in years.
“We expect that this process will be finished according to scientific, academic norms. This move of the Ministry of Higher Education is commendable,” said Fazelhadi Wazin, a university lecturer.
“The Ministry of Higher Education should make changes in the academic curriculum relating to fields,” said Safiullah Rahmani, a student.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Higher Education, there are 165 different educational curricula available nationwide, of which 20 bachelor’s degree curricula and 15 master’s degree curricula have already been finalized.
MoHE to Review Curriculum in Light of Islamic Law, Intl Standards
At least seven people killed and 40 wounded after blast near Kabul mosque – the latest in a deadly series of bombings during Friday prayers throughout Afghanistan.
Several people were killed and dozens more wounded when a car bomb went off at a mosque in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, as worshippers streamed out of afternoon prayers.
A column of black smoke rose into the sky on Friday and gunshots rang out several minutes after the explosion in Wazir Akbar Khan, an area formerly home to the city’s “Green Zone”, the location of many foreign embassies and NATO but now controlled by the ruling Taliban.
The Associated Press news agency quoted a Taliban official as saying that at least seven people were killed and 41 wounded. Afghan media reports put the death toll at nine.
“After prayers, when people wanted to come out from the mosque, a blast happened,” said Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran. “All casualties are civilians.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The Italian-NGO Emergency Hospital said it received 14 people from the blast, four of whom were dead on arrival.
The United Nations mission in Kabul said on Twitter the bombing was another “bitter reminder of ongoing insecurity and terrorist activity in Afghanistan.”
“Our thoughts are with the families of those killed, wishing speedy recovery to the injured,” added the mission, known as UNAMA.
Raffaella Iodice, the deputy head of the European Union’s Delegation to Afghanistan, said in a tweet she was “feeling appalled by today’s Kabul blast and learning about … (casualties) this detonation has caused.”
Interior ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor said the blast went off on the main road near the mosque and an investigation was under way.
The explosion on Friday was the latest in a deadly series of bombings at mosques during Friday prayers in recent months.
In 2020, the Wazir Akbar Khan mosque was struck by a bomb that killed two people, including the mosque’s prayer leader.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
Bomb goes off as worshippers exit Kabul mosque, kills at least 7
The White House and members of both parties had hoped to attach the legislation to a must-pass spending bill this month. But some Republicans have raised security concerns.
WASHINGTON — On the lawn outside the Capitol this week, the flags of two countries flew in protest: America’s and Afghanistan’s from before it fell to the Taliban.
Beside them stood supporters of Afghans who had risked their lives to help Americans during the decades-long war in Afghanistan — as translators, drivers and fixers — and had to flee the country last year when U.S. forces withdrew. About 82,000 were evacuated to the United States, but since then most have been living in legal limbo, with no long-term authorization to remain.
Military veterans and other supporters have been lobbying Congress for more than a year to provide Afghan evacuees with a pathway to permanent legal status in the United States. Many have only temporary authorization to stay, even though they will most likely never be able to safely return to their former homes. Now, they are pushing for legislation addressing the issue to be tacked onto a must-pass spending bill to keep government funded past the end of the month, when it is slated to lapse.
But despite support from the White House, a bipartisan group of senators and military veterans, a direct path to legal status for Afghans has proved difficult to establish amid opposition from some Republicans, who argue that the evacuees pose security risks. The measure is unlikely to be included in the spending package this month because of those objections.
“It’s an atrocity that it is taking so long to get this simple thing done,” said Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran and the founder of the group AfghanEvac, which supports resettlement efforts. “This shouldn’t be controversial. I wish we could show up for them like they showed up for us.”
The advocates have thrown their support behind a bipartisan bill called the Afghan Adjustment Act that would allow Afghans who have short-term humanitarian parole status — which typically lasts for two years — to apply for permanent legal status if they submit to additional vetting, including an interview.
The protest at the Capitol in support of the bill has continued for a week. “We’re not going until this gets done,” said Matt Zeller, an Army captain who served in Afghanistan and whose interpreter saved his life.
The measure, sponsored by Senators Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, is modeled off laws enacted after other humanitarian crises, like the Vietnam War. Similar statutes also were enacted after crises in Cuba, Nicaragua and Iraq.
The bill would allow evacuees who pass an added layer of security checks to seek permanent authorization to stay in the United States without wading through the yearslong bureaucratic burdens of applying and being approved for asylum. It is meant to address security concerns about the Afghan evacuees, who were chaotically rushed from the country as U.S. forces abruptly departed, prompting some to argue that they were not properly
About 3,500 of the evacuees brought to the United States are now lawful permanent residents, and more than 3,000 received special immigrant visas. Most of the others are in the country under the tenuous status of humanitarian parole.
“Afghans have found themselves in this real legal limbo because the U.S. government has essentially applied short-term Band-Aids for a population that needs long-term protection,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. “The Biden administration inherited a refugee program in ruin from its predecessors.”
Congress did not include a similar proposal in an emergency spending bill passed in May to help fund the war in Ukraine, despite President Biden’s call to do so.
Proponents argue that the lack of action reflects bias on the part of some policymakers against helping people from a majority-Muslim country when the United States has been far more welcoming to refugees from Ukraine, a mostly white and majority-Christian nation.
“The degree of support for Ukrainian refugees is appropriately and deservedly high,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a co-sponsor of the legislation to help Afghan evacuees. “But Afghans, even those who served alongside us, have struggled somewhat to garner the same level of support. And that’s really regrettable.”
The difference is particularly acute for Afghans who are still abroad. Since the evacuation of their country ended, the United States has mostly stopped quickly accepting parole requests from Afghans who remain overseas. Many of those who are applying have fled Afghanistan, and there is currently no entity that processes applications from within the country, which is controlled by the Taliban.
A vast majority of humanitarian parole applications for Afghans abroad have yet to be considered or have been denied. After the initial evacuation, 48,900 parole requests were made on their behalf; only 369 had been approved through July.
By contrast, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have entered the United States on humanitarian parole.
Republicans argue that their opposition to granting a path to legal residency for Afghan evacuees is rooted in security concerns.
Stephen Miller, who was a senior adviser to President Donald J. Trump and a central figure in gutting the refugee program during his administration, argued shortly after the fall of Kabul that Afghan evacuees should not be allowed into the United States because they had not faced stringent vetting.
“If you bring in several provinces’ worth of individuals from Afghanistan, you will replicate the conditions in Afghanistan here in the United States of America and all the horrors that entails,” Mr. Miller said on Fox News last year.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, has raised concerns on Capitol Hill about vetting, citing a report by the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security that found that evacuees from Afghanistan “who were not fully vetted” were allowed into the United States.
“The vetting of those admitted to the United States in the wake of President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan has been completely insufficient,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement.
Customs and Border Protection disagreed with the finding, saying that the agency had informed investigators in November that “all individuals were screened, vetted and inspected.”
Republicans have also complained that the State Department has not been forthcoming with information about its vetting process.
The lawmakers sponsoring the bill said it would ensure that Afghans who sought permanent residency would be held to higher security standards.
The bill would mandate screening “equivalent to the vetting they would have received if they were going to come here originally as refugees,” Ms. Klobuchar said.
Mr. Graham said his fellow Republicans had a “legitimate concern” about security, but those could be addressed by tightening the bill’s vetting requirements.
“These people have no place to go. Their country has fallen into hell,” he said of the Afghan evacuees. “There are security concerns, but here’s the overarching theme for me: We need to try to do right by these folks.”
For now, there is little sign that Congress is prepared to act, even as some of the Afghans say they would gladly submit to more vetting if it means a chance to stay permanently in the United States.
Arafat Safi, who was a senior official in Afghanistan’s foreign affairs ministry when Kabul fell to the Taliban and is now in the United States on humanitarian parole, said there was no way he could return to his country.
“I don’t see a way back to Afghanistan while these guys are there,” he said of the Taliban. “I have always wished a better future for my kids, a better place where they can be raised. So I believe the United States will be my home.”
Mr. VanDiver, who has been among the protesters outside the Capitol this week, said he became involved with the effort after an Afghan friend texted him from a mountain surrounded by the Taliban in August 2021.
“He asked me to grant his last request and help get his family out,” Mr. VanDiver said. “So I did. And I’m doing everything I can.”
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.
Bill to Grant Afghan Evacuees a Path to Residency Hits Snags
Over a year out, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan still seems, from afar, shocking, swift, baffling. In a matter of days, the Afghan government – and a fraught, nearly two-decade war by western countries to uphold it – collapsed. Escape from Kabul, a new, day-by-day account of the hellish last gasp of the war in Afghanistan, submerges in that confusion; by mid-August 2021, Kabul remained the only secure route out of the country, and tens of thousands of people crowded the airfield, desperate for a way out. “It was like doomsday at Kabul airport,” says Muslim Hotak, a student who tried to flee with 5,000 others in the initial run on the airport on 15 August 2021.
Escape from Kabul, directed by Jamie Roberts, embeds in the chaos, blending horrific images familiar to news consumers – crowds crushing toward a closed gate, children pushed against barbed wire, anguished people clinging to the wheels of a moving plane – with first-hand accounts of the evacuation. As with Roberts’s previous film Four Hours at the Capitol, which used first-hand accounts and archival footage for an on-the-ground accounting of the January 6 insurrection, Escape from Kabul trains specifically on a discrete event: the 15 days at Kabul airport before the US withdrawal deadline of 31 August 2021.
It’s neither a history of the doomed war on terror nor an explainer of the decisions leading up the humanitarian disaster at Kabul airport – Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban signed at Doha in 2020, which excluded the Afghan government, or the Biden administration’s faulty assumptions on how long Kabul would hold. Instead, the 77-minute film assembles a visceral collage of archival footage (often shot on cellphones) and recollections from three main parties: the US marines tasked with keeping the airfield clear, Taliban commanders encroaching upon the airfield and complete takeover of the capital, and Afghan women and students who endured harrowing conditions for a shot at leaving.
“We live in a world where it’s very hard to make sense of an increasingly complex information landscape, increasingly complex and fragmented political landscape,” said Dan Reed (Leaving Neverland, In the Shadow of 9/11), a producer on the film. “Hearing from people who were at the center of a big, important story that changed their lives and changed world history, just speaking to you about what it was like – at the heart of it, it’s ‘that could be me.’” You could be tasked with trying to maintain a semblance of control as the walls are closing in, as expressed by several marines whose mission is to hold the airport as Afghan citizens beg for an escape. The compartmentalization is clear – as one marine puts it in the film on forcing back crowds with every good reason to leave, “It wasn’t pleasant for them, it wasn’t pleasant for us.”
You could be a student, a female newscaster, a government minister on behalf of women, a family member of someone who assisted the US military, faced with an impossible choice – “we could die trying to leave, or we could be killed”, says Malalai Hussainy, a female student in her first year of university who stood for four days in sewage water, oppressive heat and crushing crowds for one of the 124,000 spots on an aircraft out of Kabul. A handful of Taliban commanders who were also surrounding the airport in the final days of the evacuation have their own justifications; one recalls how US forces slaughtered two of his family members. Others have fought the Americans since they were children.
“In the end, an intellectual grasp, a Wikipedia grasp of what’s going on doesn’t really connect you to that event,” said Reed of the film’s assemblage of first-hand accounts, sans narration or analysis. “You will come away from our documentary kinda feeling that you kinda get what that was like. But you won’t come away feeling like you have a perfect grasp of the negotiations [to withdraw from Afghanistan] and the history.”
Many of those first-person accounts were filmed in Kabul during the early months of this year, when Roberts and his team negotiated meetings with Taliban leaders when it was “a stage where it was open country a little bit”, he said. (The film ends with a chilling postscript: as of July 2022, the UN confirmed numerous systemic human rights abuses, particularly against women, under the Taliban.) “We wanted the suicide commanders who encircled the airport, we wanted the guy who came in on the motorcycle with his men to explain what the story was like, right from the front,” said Roberts. “That took a long time – a lot of meetings and a lot of working through networks, going to literally when they’re on checkpoints talking to them to going to the very top Talibs and working down.”
Roberts and his team obtained footage filmed by Taliban soldiers who eventually took over the airport and government buildings. The crew also worked with Afghan citizens whose attempts to leave the country were unsuccessful. “We really wanted to represent them and we wanted to do it openly, so you could see their faces, so you could see them as humans, that was the whole point of the film,” said Roberts.
Escape from Kabul depicts a mosaic of the unfathomable – how you could be so fearful as to hand an infant over to American forces beyond the airport gates, a desperate sacrifice for a better future; what that might feel like to receive, when your mission as a marine is to keep the crowd at bay for a devastatingly slow evacuation process. Why someone would cling to the wing of a plane as it took off; how that might feel to witness them fall back to earth. The anxiety felt by soldiers expecting a suicide bomb attack; the gruesome aftermath of the survivor who awakens in a bombed-out sewage canal next to his dead brothers, three of the 170 Afghan civilians and 13 US military personnel killed in the attack claimed by the Islamic State. How this all could have happened in the first place. “What we didn’t anticipate was the sheer desperation and fear and willingness of the people to put themselves at tremendous risk to get themselves and their families out of Afghanistan,” says Maj Jordan Eddington, one of the marines maintaining control of the airfield, though it seems unthinkable how, given the promises made by western forces, that that couldn’t be foreseen.
The film does not delve into the larger chain of events for such a gut-wrenching failure, instead remaining firmly rooted in the experiential. But Reed allows that “The United States and Great Britain and the allies invested in a system that was hollowed, and that was never going to be able to take the strain, and never really committed enough to do a completely alternative system.” The main failure was one of imagination, “not understanding how quickly the collapse would happen when it began”.
“There was no regard for all those people who lived on that thin crust of westernized existence in Kabul,” he added. “They were the people who bought into the dream that we sold them and then they were the people that we abandoned. There’s no other way of looking at it.”
The documentary, then, stands in a for a way of looking toward the people swept up in the current of events beyond their control, who made it out, or were left behind, or celebrated a long-fought victory over invading forces. “We have an opportunity now to make a lasting reminder of how messy and how bad and how appalling this can be if we don’t take more care when we turn our back on a very expensive failure,” said Reed. “Look at these people in the face. This is what it was like.”
Escape From Kabul is available on HBO in the US, the BBC in the UK and streaming on Paramount+ and Binge in Australia
‘This is what it was like’: reliving the devastating US withdrawal from Afghanistan
Tuesday’s order also announced that acting Deputy Interior Minister Mullah Mohammad Mohsin would be appointed to run the northern province of Panjshir.
The Islamic Emirate’s supreme leader issued an order on Tuesday announcing a reshuffle of several national and provincial positions, including replacing the acting education minister.
Islamic Emirate spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid released the list of changes, saying they were by order of the Islamic Emirate’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, who is based in Kandahar, the southern province.
Makhdom Alam was appointed commander of the security department of Ghazni province, according to the decree.
Makhdom Alam is a famous commander of the Islamic Emirate in northern Afghanistan. Earlier, he had been arrested on charges of kidnapping but was released after being in detention for around one month.
“Based on the decree of the (supreme leader), the reshuffling took place and this is a usual procedure in government. This happened to improve activities,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate.
“The people wish for fundamental reforms in the government. For example, the changes in the Education Ministry pave the ground for the immediate reopening of girls’ schools. Also, the changes in other departments of the government happened based on the people’s wishes,” said Najibullah Jami, a political analyst.
The newly appointed Education Minister, Mawlawi Habibullah Agha, is said to be one of the closest figures to the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate, Mawlawi Hebatullah Akhundzada.
The education ministry initially said all schools would open in March, but secondary schools for girls have mostly stayed shut.
The Islamic Emirate now say they are working on a plan to open secondary schools for girls but have not given a specific timeframe.
Islamic Emirate and diplomatic sources told Reuters that last week several ministers had gathered in Kandahar for a cabinet meeting led by the supreme leader. The Taliban’s information ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request to confirm the cabinet meeting had taken place.
Tuesday’s order also announced that acting Deputy Interior Minister Mullah Mohammad Mohsin would be appointed to run the northern province of Panjshir, replacing a provincial governor who would be reassigned as governor of eastern Logar province.
Resistance groups have said they have been carrying out operations in the Panjshir and clashing with Islamic fighters.
The Islamic Emirate said last week they had killed 40 fighters of the Resistance Front, including four commanders, in Panjshir. However, the Islamic Emirate has denied widespread fighting, saying it has established control of the entire country.
Islamic Emirate Replaces Acting Education Minister in Reshuffle
This comes as some women’s rights activists said that many women have become jobless.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken launched the Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience (AWER) on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
“AWER is a new public-private partnership between the Department of State and Boston University that aims to catalyze business, philanthropic, and civil society commitments to advance Afghan women’s entrepreneurship, employment, and educational opportunities in Afghanistan and third countries,” the US Department of State said in a press release.
This comes as some women’s rights activists said that many women have become jobless.
The event was attended by Afghan women entrepreneurs, business leaders and civil society members, as well as representatives of the US and other foreign governments, including US special envoy for Afghanistan Thomas West and US special envoy for Afghanistan Women and Human Rights Rina Amiri.
“This is a public-private partnership that will help improve access to education training, expand job opportunity, support women entrepreneurs in Afghanistan as well as in other countries. Now I don’t want to sugarcoat it. This is going to be hard, given the severe restraint imposed by the Taliban. But we are determined to safely deliver this support to women in Afghanistan,” Blinken said at the event.
Speaking at the event, Blinken noted Deloitte’s commitment to work with the Alliance’s first member Pod in mentoring 2,000 Afghan women under MWMA as an example of how AWER aims to foster economic opportunity for Afghan women and girls, the statement reads.
The announcement of the Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience by the Afghan women comes as many women became jobless after the Islamic Emirate swept into power.
“If such programs are launched for girls, they will surely improve. As you and I know that women are contributing half of the society,” said Manizha Nasiri, a women’s rights activist.
“We see that girls have been affected recently. They are deprived of the right to education. They lost their jobs. They are facing a lot of economic challenges,” said Husna Rasuli, a civil rights activist.
Meanwhile, the Afghanistan Chamber Commerce and Industry (ACCI) said that more than 4,000 women entrepreneurs have invested in the country.
“The girls who live in Afghanistan have faced restrictions after the changes happened in the country. Especially considering the situation that many women cannot go to their jobs in government departments,” said Roya Hafizi, acting head of the ACCI.
US Launches Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience
Afghanistan Peace Campaign