Islamic State Attack Kills 17 at Shiite Mosque in Northern Afghanistan

October 17, 2023 Current News Articles

Christina Goldbaum reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Najim Rahim from San Francisco.

Oct. 14, 2023

A suicide attack by the Islamic State at a Shiite mosque in northern Afghanistan killed at least 17 people on Friday, according to hospital officials and eyewitnesses, in a bloody reminder of the insecurity that remains in the country and has spread to Pakistan two years after the end of the U.S.-led war.

The attack occurred around 1:30 p.m., just as hundreds had gathered at the mosque for Friday prayers in Pul-i-Khumri, the capital of Baghlan Province, a coal-rich and mountainous stretch of northern Afghanistan.

The blast hit the Imam Zaman Mosque, the largest Shiite mosque in the city, and witnesses and Taliban officials said they believe the assault was carried out by a single suicide attacker.

“The explosion occurred in the midst of a crowd of worshipers,” said Mustafa Hashemi, the director of the province’s department for information and culture.

Disputing the death toll provided by hospital staff, Taliban officials said that only seven people were killed in the blast. Eyewitnesses who spoke to The New York Times said that dozens of people were injured in the attack.

Sayed Mujtaba Hashemi, whose father is the imam of the mosque, was kneeling in the last row of worshipers as his father was finishing his sermon, he said. Then, as prayers were about to begin, he heard a loud sound and was thrown to the ground.

When he opened his eyes, he saw people’s bodies splayed across the carpeted floor. Screams and wails filled the air. Some people began stumbling out of the building, many limping from injuries they had sustained in the blast.

“As everyone left, one thought crossed my mind: Where is my father?” he said. He rushed to the pulpit and saw him, alive but with pieces of metal lodged into his neck and hand.

Videos and photos of the attack’s aftermath on social media show the emerald green walls of the mosque splattered with red blood. Pieces of the white concrete ceiling were scattered across the floor, much of its red carpet shredded to pieces.

Hours later, the Islamic State affiliate in the region, known as the Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K, took responsibility for the attack, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist organizations.

ISIS-K is a Sunni extremist group that was founded in 2015 and has targeted Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan, particularly those from the predominantly Shiite Hazara ethnic minority. Shiites make up around 10 percent of Afghanistan’s population, the vast majority of which is Sunni.

After the Taliban seized power in 2021, ISIS-K stepped up its attacks in Afghanistan, reaching into parts of the country that had previously been spared its violence and were far from the group’s stronghold in the east along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.

ISIS-K has been antagonistic toward the Taliban administration, claiming it is not implementing true Shariah law, the legal code of Islam, and carrying out hit-and-run attacks on Taliban security forces.

The violence has drawn a heavy-handed response by the Taliban, which has carried out a brutal crackdown on the group over the past two years. That offensive has pushed some ISIS-K fighters into Pakistan, where the group has carried out a string of major attacks in recent months.

Since the beginning of the year, the Taliban have killed eight high-ranking Islamic State officials, according to American officials. In that time, Afghanistan has been spared the spate of high-profile blasts on Shiite mosques and education centers in predominantly Shiite neighborhoods that rocked the country in the first year of Taliban rule.

But the attack on Friday offered a heartbreaking reminder that Afghanistan had not yet shaken free from the threat posed by the terrorist group.

“We thought the situation had improved,” said Bezhan Timory, 22, a worshiper at the mosque. “But now the targeting of the Shia community has started again. This is very worrying for us. I am really worried.”

World has abandoned Afghanistan, says country’s last women’s minister

October 17, 2023 Current News Articles

By Tommy Greene

Al Jazeera

Hasina Safi speaks to Al Jazeera on the global response to the war-torn country’s humanitarian crises.

Belfast, Northern Ireland – The international community’s response to Afghanistan’s ongoing humanitarian crisis is “confused” and requires a wholesale rethink, according to Hasina Safi, the former and last minister for women’s affairs in Afghanistan.

Now a leading women’s rights advocate, Safi told Al Jazeera in a recent interview in Belfast that many in the war-torn country now ruled by the Taliban feel “abandoned” and “forgotten”.

After the Taliban retook power in 2021, Safi’s ministry was replaced by the ministry of “guidance and preaching”.

There has been a failure, Safi said, to follow up a series of pledges made amid the withdrawal of US and UK troops from the territory in late August 2021 with concrete, “practical” responses.

Safi spoke to Al Jazeera at the recent One Young World summit, which brought thousands of young people from more than 190 countries to Belfast.

“Outside Afghanistan, the situation is very confused,” she said.

INTERACTIVE_AFGHANISTAN_WOMEN_TIMELINE_MAR8_2023

“The international community do not know what to do. There are conferences, there are events, there are various kinds of programmes. But there is no practical result which can really help the disappointment inside Afghanistan for those who are at risk and deprived,” said Safi.

She alleged that a number of decrees issued by the Taliban authorities, which are still not officially recognised by any international government, are considered to be violating international human rights principles.

“The situation is very disappointing. Day by day, instead of introducing mechanisms or coordination in finding ways of supporting people, there are decrees, there are directives – one after the oher,” she said. “Sometimes these are about the clothes they wear, sometimes it’s about make-up, sometimes about their mobility outside.”

Safi also told Al Jazeera that Afghans feel they have been abandoned, as their plight slips down the global news agenda.

“I will not say there is just a ‘sense of abandonment’ – there is abandonment. Period.

“Afghanistan is part of the global human community. It is a country of strategic significance and when the outside world abandons Afghanistan it is abandoning a part of itself.”

She said there is an urgent need to increase aid efforts in Afghanistan, where nearly 50 percent were thought to be living under the poverty line a year before Western forces withdrew from the territory.

“Ensuring higher and higher-secondary education of girls and women is another key priority,” she said.

“And a strategic revisit of the support of the international community to the people of Afghanistan is required. This should be based on the real needs of its people.

“There should be a consolidated report of all the initiatives happening in the last two years – covering [perspectives and experiences] within Afghanistan, the diaspora, the international community – which puts their strategic vision on the table.”

epa04624456 Hasina Safi, Director of the Afghan Women's Network, speaks during a meeting on UN peacekeeping missions in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 17 February 2015. Representatives of more than forty European countries are gathered at the conference at the invitation of Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders. EPA/REMKO DE WAAL — Hasina Safi, who campaigns for Afghan women’s rights, says the world has forgotten about the cause [File: Remko de Waal/EPA]

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Afghanistan’s Herat province hit by third earthquake in nearly a week

October 17, 2023 Current News Articles

At least one person reported dead and nearly 100 injured after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hits Herat province.

The western province of Herat in Afghanistan has been hit with a magnitude 6.3 earthquake – its third since powerful quakes on October 8 killed more than 2,000 people.

The United States Geological Survey said the quake hit just after 8am (03:30 GMT) on Sunday, with the epicentre 33km (21 miles) northwest of Herat city, the capital of the eponymous western province.

It was followed by a magnitude 5.5 aftershock 20 minutes later, it said.

The effect of Sunday’s earthquakes is still unclear, but the AFP news agency quoted Abdul Qadeem Mohammadi, head doctor at Herat Regional Hospital, as saying “so far 93 injured and one dead have been registered”.

Another magnitude 6.3 earthquake had hit about 40km (25 miles) northwest of Herat eight days ago, with several strong aftershocks of lesser magnitude following.

That earthquake had proven devastating, levelling a large number of rural homes and killing 2,053 people, according to Taliban officials.

The area suffered another strong earthquake days later, which killed one person as many citizens had started sleeping outside for fear of more aftershocks.

Reports indicate many citizens of the area still slept outside as the quake hit on Sunday, fearing their homes crumbling and trapping them under rubble.

Dust storms followed the quakes, which only made living situations worse and damaged the tents that survivors lived in.

“Herat’s people are panicked and scared,” AFP quoted 27-year-old shopkeeper Hamid Nizami as saying. “It’s Allah’s blessing that it happened during the day, people were awake.”

“Many of our countrymen don’t have any place to live and nights are getting colder.”

As thousands still live around the ruins of homes where entire families were wiped out in an instant last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) says nearly 20,000 people have been affected by the string of disasters, with women and children making up most of the deaths.

Taliban authorities, who seized power in August 2021 after the withdrawal of US forces, are struggling to provide assistance as the country is already facing a humanitarian challenge, and does not have strong relations with international aid organisations.

Many volunteers had to dig up survivors and bodies with nothing but their bare hands after last week’s earthquakes.

No country has officially recognised the Taliban government, and Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis was exacerbated after many countries withdrew foreign aid.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

‘Nobody was prepared’ for earthquake that ravaged western Afghanistan

October 12, 2023 Current News Articles

By Rick Noack

The Washington Post

October 10, 2023

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In western Afghanistan’s Zinda Jan district, Saturday’s 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck without warning.

By all accounts, the windy day began as usual, with villagers heading out to their sheds and fields in the chilly morning temperatures, women doing their daily chores, and children playing in the mud brick houses that are common in the region..

Hours later, families were ripped apart and entire villages pulverized in an earthquake that lasted only seconds. The Taliban-run government estimates that thousands were killed, which would make it one of the worst natural disasters in Afghanistan in decades.

Nobody expected it in this part of Afghanistan, which wasn’t considered particularly earthquake-prone, said Reshma Azmi, an aid worker with CARE Afghanistan. “And nobody was prepared,” she said.

Abdulhay, a 35-year-old volunteer rescuer who was among the first to arrive at the epicenter, said the victims he pulled out of the rubble had died only inches away from their doors. Houses collapsed within seconds of the first quake, killing mostly women and children who were at home at the time, charities said after first assessments on Monday.

Amid the first reports of a powerful quake, attention had initially focused on toppled cans in supermarkets and cracks in high-rises in the nearby provincial capital of Herat. It took rescuers and local authorities hours to grasp the full scale of the damage in the more remote surroundings, where cellphone service was cut off by the quake, first responders said.

Mawlawi Mir Ahmad, a 32-year-old survivor, said emergency services arrived in his village two hours after the quake. At that point, more than 2,400 people were probably dead, according to a preliminary death toll issued by the Afghan government on Sunday. The United Nations confirmed more than 1,000 deaths, saying that hundreds are still missing.

As authorities initially appeared paralyzed, villagers used their bare hands to remove bricks while aftershocks rattled the piles of collapsed houses. Survivors’ praying and wailing was drowned out when Afghan military helicopters began to arrive at the epicenter to take survivors and bodies to Herat’s regional hospital.

Built for 600 patients, the hospital faced an influx of more than 1,500 earthquake casualties, doctors said. Many victims had to be treated on the hospital floors and in makeshift wards outside the building.

At the epicenter, the rescue effort appeared to be largely uncoordinated in the first critical hours, residents said in interviews. “There was nobody to guide the volunteers,” said Herat resident Aziz Ahmad Mehruban.

Aid efforts picked up on Sunday and intensified Monday, with several neighboring countries offering their assistance to the Afghan authorities. Pakistan’s government said it was sending thousands of tents, blankets, hygiene kits and ration bags. Iran, with a border only miles from the earthquake’s epicenter, sent a team of specialists.

Janan Saiq, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Disaster Management, said more than 30 rescue teams had been deployed by Monday afternoon, up from around a dozen on Sunday.

But Saiq appealed for more international support. “I call on the international aid organizations to help those who are impacted by the earthquake. They have no shelter and no food,” he said in a news conference.

Afghanistan has faced a shortfall in international aid this year. Donors have been distracted by other crises, including the war in Ukraine, and some have grown weary of being seen as supportive of the Afghan government or have been alienated by its policies, notably its suppression of women.

Salma Ben Aissa, the International Rescue Committee’s Afghanistan director, said more than 29 million Afghans were already in need of humanitarian assistance before the earthquake. “It’s becoming more and more difficult to address all that is happening,” she said, warning that a harsh winter could worsen the country’s humanitarian crisis.

In and around Herat, located at an altitude of about 3,000 feet, nighttime temperatures can fall as low as 40 degrees Fahrenheit at this time of the year.

Mehruban said the lack of supplies to keep survivors warm was so acute on Sunday that volunteers gave away their own tents in the earthquake zone.

Siddig Ibrahim, a senior UNICEF official in the region, said survivors were still in urgent need of tents, blankets and cash and that “no commitment has been made yet to provide any of these items.”

Several aftershocks — including a 5.1-magnitude quake on Monday evening — further complicated the emergency response. At the regional Herat headquarters of the World Vision charity, employees had to be sent home after multiple quakes on Monday, national director Thamindri De Silva said in an interview.

De Silva had to briefly interrupt the interview when a new aftershock struck the charity’s building in the evening. Equipment rattled in the background.

“The children of our families are completely traumatized,” she said, once the aftershock had subsided. “Kids as young as 3 are saying: ‘I don’t want to go home.’”

Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

UN Urges Halt to Pakistan’s Forcible Returns of Afghan Migrants

October 12, 2023 Current News Articles

Ayaz Gul
Voice of America
October 07, 2023 5:57 AM

*Afghan families wait to board into a bus to depart for their homeland, in Karachi, Pakistan, Oct. 6, 2023.*

The United Nations agencies for migration and refugee protection Saturday jointly appealed to Pakistan to suspend plans to deport undocumented Afghan immigrants, warning they could be at imminent risk back in Afghanistan.

The appeal comes after Pakistan Tuesday ordered all immigrants in the country illegally, including some 1.7 million Afghan nationals, to leave by Nov. 1 or face deportation to their native countries. Many families have already left for Afghanistan to avoid arrest and forcible deportation, with the Pakistani information ministry issuing a daily countdown to remind those covered by the policy that days are running out for them.

“Afghanistan is going through a severe humanitarian crisis with several human rights challenges, particularly for women and girls,” said a joint statement from the International Organization for Migration and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “Such plans would have serious implications for all who have been forced to leave the country and may face serious protection risks upon return,” it added.

Immigrants facing deportation included hundreds of thousands of families who fled Afghanistan after the hardline Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021 and imposed sweeping restrictions on women’s access to education and work.

The U.N. statement recognized Islamabad’s “sovereign prerogative” over its domestic policies, the need to manage populations on Pakistani territory, and its obligations to ensure public safety and security.

The IOM and UNHCR, while appreciating Pakistan’s “generous hospitality” toward Afghan nationals for over four decades, despite challenges, repeated the call for all returns to be voluntary, safe, dignified, and without any pressure.

“The forced repatriation of Afghan nationals has the potential to result in severe human rights violations, including the separation of families and deportation of minors,” warned the U.N. agencies.

The warning comes a day after Pakistan pledged to repatriate all immigrants in the country illegally, including Afghans, in a “phased and orderly” manner instead of deportations.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told reporters Friday that the decision to expel the migrants was in line with Pakistan’s laws and that the government was determined to enforce them.

Baloch said that the crackdown was not directed against Afghans only, saying the plan would target all foreigners who were overstaying their visas and did not possess valid documentation.

“This policy will apply to all individuals of all nationalities, and there is no discrimination in that respect,” she said. Baloch underscored that the campaign would not target the 1.4 million Afghan refugees in the country legally and hosted by Pakistan for years.

Pakistan has cited growing incidents of terrorism for ordering the undocumented Afghans to leave the country, saying that Afghan nationals carried out 14 out of 24 suicide bombings in the country this year.

Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have denounced the deportation of Afghans as “inhumane” and called for Pakistan to review the decision, saying the unauthorized immigrants are not involved in the security challenges facing Pakistan. They said Kabul is not allowing anyone to use Afghan soil against neighboring countries.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baloch asserted Friday that militants linked to the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, are orchestrating terrorism against the country from Afghan sanctuaries. She said the issue is under discussion with Afghan officials.

“We believe that there are hideouts and sanctuaries of TTP inside Afghanistan. Many of the terrorist incidents that we have seen in recent weeks and months have connections with elements inside Afghanistan,” she said.

Work on Second Phase of Qosh Tepa Canal Starts

October 12, 2023 Current News Articles

By Zikrullah Yaazdani

Tolo News

11 Oct 2023

They said that the Islamic Emirate is ready to address the concerns of the countries of the region through diplomatic channels.

Following the completion of the work of the first phase of the Qosh Tepa Canal, work on its second phase started on Wednesday.

Senior officials of the Islamic Emirate who went to Balkh province to participate in the opening ceremony of the second phase of the Qosh Tepa Canal, said that Afghanistan will reach self-sufficiency in growing its own grains.

“The Islamic Emirate intends to pay serious attention to agriculture and managing water, as we witness its good example in taking steps in the building of the Qosh Tepa Canal,” said Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy prime minister for economic affairs.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, officials of the Islamic Emirate asked regional countries, especially Uzbekistan to not be worried about the construction of Qosh Tepa Canal.

They said that the Islamic Emirate is ready to address the concerns of the countries of the region through diplomatic channels.

“There should be no worries for our neighbors here. God willing, no matter how much we use, we will still not reach that level– what Afghanistan has a right to, which is from the Amu River,” said Abdul Salam Hanafi, 2nd deputy prime minister.

“If our neighbors have worries in this regard, we are ready to contact them through diplomatic channels,” said Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Emirate security officials pledged the security of the Qosh Tepa Canal project, saying that they will not allow anyone to create obstacles to this project.

“All of us, especially the national and Islamic armies of the Defense Ministry are behind the implantation of such projects, and they will support it with all their power,” said Mawlawi Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, the acting defense minister.

“Afghans are a zealous nation and stand by their commitments and promises. We do not cross our limits and we defend our rights,” said Sirajuddin Haqqani, the acting interior minister.

The Qosh Tepa Canal is 280 kilometers long and 100 meters wide, which starts from Kaldar district of Balkh province and reaches Andkhoy Faryab district after passing through Jawzjan province.

Afghanistan earthquakes a ‘disaster on top of a disaster’, World Food Programme says

October 12, 2023 Current News Articles

By Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam

Reuters

October 11, 2023

KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct 11 (Reuters) – The World Food Programme on Wednesday called the recent Afghanistan earthquakes a ‘disaster on top of a disaster,’ urging the international community to provide humanitarian aid to the war-torn nation.

Limited aid makes relief work difficult after earthquakes and aftershocks since Saturday rattled the religiously conservative nation. The tremors killed at least 2,400 people and injured more than 2,000, the Taliban-run government said, making the quakes among the world’s deadliest so far this year after tremblors in Turkey and Syria killed an estimated 50,000 people.

“We have 50 million people who do not know where their next meal will come from, and the World Food Program is only able to support 3 million people due to a massive funding shortfall,” Kropf said in Herat, a northwestern province where the WFP has begun distributing rations.

“All the houses are completely flattened” and health centers have been turned into rubble, he added. “Livelihoods have been destroyed.”

The WFP is initially providing each family of seven with 2100 kilocalories a day for a month, and may consider other forms of aid like cash in the coming weeks, Kropf said. To battle malnutrition, it has been distributing high energy biscuits and a special peanut butter.

“Breastfeeding women are amongst the most vulnerable,” along with children and pregnant women, he said. “If we can help them prevent malnutrition, that’s how we do it, because preventing malnutrition is much cheaper than treating malnutrition.”

Women and children make up two-thirds of the injured in Afghanistan, said Dr. Alaa AbouZeid, head of the World Health Organization’s emergency response in the country, on Monday.Afghanistan’s healthcare system, reliant almost entirely on foreign aid, has faced crippling cuts in the two years since the Taliban took over and much international assistance, which had formed the backbone of the economy, was halted.

Afghans have endured decades of wars, since the fight to drive out Soviet Union military forces in 1979-1989 to U.S. efforts to topple the Taliban government after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and the Taliban’s victory in 2021.

The United Nations and humanitarian agencies reduced the budget for Afghanistan’s 2023 aid plan to $3.2 billion from $4.6 billion earlier in the year, in wake of Taliban administration restrictions on female aid workers.

The WFP has already slashed rations and cash assistance from eight million Afghans this year, underscoring the severity of financial challenges aid agencies face in what the United Nations considers the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Reporting by Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam in Karachi; Writing by Ariba Shahid in Karachi; Editing by Richard Chang

‘The Wrath of God’: Afghans Mourn Unimaginable Loss From Quake

October 12, 2023 Current News Articles

By Christina Goldbaum and Yaqoob Akbary

The New York Times

Reporting from Zinda Jan district in northwestern Afghanistan

Oct. 12, 2023

Wails echoed across what was left of the village when the ambulance arrived. Inside was the body of a 12-year-old girl, Roqia. She had died in a nearby hospital Tuesday morning, days after a devastating earthquake hit this stretch of northwestern Afghanistan and sent her mud-brick home crashing down on top of her.

The vehicle drove to the top of a nearby hill where mounds of dirt marked around 70 freshly dug graves. A crowd of men gathered and opened its back door, gently pulling out the girl, whose small frame was wrapped in a thick, white blanket.

Seeing her, her uncle, Shir Ahmad, stumbled backward. “Oh God, oh God,” he cried, gasping for breath. A man slipped his arms around his back to steady him as he sank to the ground in sobs.

“I lost four relatives,” the man said. “Don’t cry.”

Since Saturday, when the deadliest earthquakes to strike Afghanistan in decades occurred, hundreds of Afghans in one of the worst-hit districts, Zinda Jan, have been struggling to come to terms with the almost unfathomable destruction.

In a matter of minutes, a handful of entire villages — once clusters of mud-brick homes, their thick, beige walls blending into the endless desert — were transformed into mounds of dust. Nearly everyone in the area lost at least one relative when their homes crumbled. Many have lost most, if not all, of their immediate family.

The district is little more than a stretch of desert punctuated by villages where people live hand-to-mouth along Afghanistan’s western border. Most families survive by growing wheat, corn and figs in modest gardens and shepherding small livestock herds. Many men work as day laborers in neighboring Iran, earning only a few hundred dollars a month.

By Tuesday, the death toll from two 6.3-magnitude quakes had climbed to at least 1,053 people, according to the United Nations, while Taliban officials have said the true figure could be closer to 2,000. The vast majority of those dead belonged to only 11 villages, some of which lost a quarter or more of their populations in the quake. Early Wednesday, another 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit near Herat City, sending people running out of their homes for the second time in five days.

Across the hamlets struck by the earlier disasters, the grief and loss are palpable. The air is tinged with the smell of rotting flesh — whether from victims whose bodies have yet to be recovered or from livestock that were crushed under rubble, no one is quite sure. Rows upon rows of dirt mounds marking mass graves now outline the edges of villages that have been decimated. Sporadic screams and sobs pierce the quiet as waves of anguish overwhelm the few survivors.

In Seya Aab village, moments after the men lowered Roqia’s body into a grave on Tuesday afternoon, a young man whose mother had also been killed collapsed on top of her grave in tears. “Oh God, oh God, please help me,” he yelled.

Farther down the hill, now a newly dug cemetery, a grandfather let out a cry and dropped to his knees, drawing a crowd around him. Minutes later, another man howled in tears and screamed: “They are all of us! They are all of us!”

In Nayeb Rafi, a nearby village, the only building to survive the quake was a concrete school built by an aid group. Every single mud-brick home was destroyed. Residents told a visiting team of journalists from The New York Times that they estimate that of the roughly 2,000 people living there, 750 were killed.

At the edge of the hamlet, a man in his 70s sat on the edge of a pile of mud brick — what was once his home — in a daze. He had wrapped a hefty brown blanket dug from the rubble around his shoulders to protect himself from the chilly morning air. Behind him, black smoke from a small fire another survivor had lit for warmth clouded the sky.

The man, who goes by one name, Zarin, said he had just slaughtered a sheep for his family to eat on Saturday when the earth beneath him began to shake violently, throwing him to the ground. When the convulsions finally ended, he was up to his chest in crumbled mud brick. He could hear a child’s voice crying for help but could barely see anything amid clouds of white dust, he said.

When he finally pried himself free from the rubble, he began frantically digging with his hands where his house once stood. He and another villager pulled out his granddaughter, alive, then turned their attention to where they heard two women’s voices shouting for help.

“I could hear them crying: ‘Father! Uncle! Brother! Help me! I’m still alive!’” Zarin recalled. They managed to dig out one woman who was pregnant. She was bloodied and coughing up dust, but alive, he said. By the time they found the other woman, it was too late.

“Everything is gone,” he said.

Nearby, a teenage boy sat outside a bright blue makeshift tent, decorated with waves and palm trees, that an aid organization had given him the day prior. He had been walking in a nearby pasture with his family’s eight sheep when the quake struck. He abandoned the livestock and ran to his home, only to find a pile of dust — and silence. Beneath it, his mother, his father, his younger sister and two brothers had all died.

“I don’t even know what happened to the sheep,” the boy, Khan Mohammad, 18, said, staring blankly at the horizon.

Hours after the quake hit on Saturday, volunteers from the nearby Herat City and government workers made their way through the desert dunes and rough roads to the village, helping residents pull their loved ones from the rubble and shuttling injured people to a nearby hospital.

But by Tuesday, efforts to rescue people had ended. Instead, volunteer crews armed with shovels and excavators knew their task had become more somber: Recovering the remains of those missing, any hope they might still be alive gone.

One man, Sirajuddin, 45, worked alongside his brother and uncle with a shovel and pickax to recover what they could: a bag of flour here, a pan there.

“Where is Wais?” he asked his uncle, Naeem, 58, who had just returned from visiting injured relatives in the hospital in Herat City that morning.

“He was with his daughter, she’s OK,” he replied.

“What about Zahra?” Sirajuddin, who goes by one name, asked. Naeem shrugged, the cousin’s fate unknown.

Explaining what was once their close-knit community, the men rattled off the names of their neighbors, and the loss each one of them just incurred.

There was Jan Mohammad, a farmer, whose wife and two daughters died. Next door to him was Nazar, a man in his 60s who died alongside his 5-year-old and 2-year-old grandsons. Further down was Gafar, whose daughter was killed; Sataar, whose brother and two sons were killed; and a widow, Maryam, whose 18-year-old daughter died. And then there was Ahmad’s family of five. Only his daughter and son survived.

As Sirajuddin dug, a forest green police vehicle roared through town, an officer calling through its loudspeaker for people to go to the edge of the city to help improve a mass gravesite where around 300 people were buried the night before.

There, hundreds of men — mostly volunteers from villages across the province — picked up shovels and began tossing dirt on top of six rows of graves. Every two or three feet they placed a stone, an imprecise but symbolic way to differentiate each person buried in the ditches.

One volunteer, Abdi Mohammadi, 45, paused to look over the gravesite. Then he shook his head.

“This place has seen the wrath of God,” he said.

Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times. More about Christina Goldbaum

Another Powerful Quake Hits Afghanistan, Days After Deadly Temblors

October 12, 2023 Current News Articles

By Christina Goldbaum and Yaqoob Akbary

The New York Times

Reporting from Herat City, Afghanistan

Oct. 11, 2023

A magnitude-6.3 earthquake rocked Herat City, near the site of two devastating ones that killed more than 1,000 people last weekend.

A powerful earthquake struck Herat Province in Afghanistan near the border with Iran early Wednesday, several days after two major quakes in the same area killed more than 1,000 people.

The magnitude-6.3 temblor struck northwestern Afghanistan at 5:22 a.m. at a depth of about six miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The epicenter was just outside Herat City, the provincial capital and one of the country’s cultural and economic hubs.

At least 120 people were injured in the quake on Wednesday and one was killed, according to Dr. Mohammad Asif Kabir, head of Herat Province’s

“When my body started shaking I realized it was another quake,” said Nadar, 52, who goes by one name and who had been sleeping in his yard. “Everyone sleeping outside was shouting and screaming.”

Inside the Arg Hotel, a team of New York Times journalists felt the walls shake violently and the building sway. Bright lights illuminating the hallway flickered and went dark as guests ran out of the building. When the shaking subsided, parts of the concrete walls had broken off, and pieces of the ceiling in some rooms had crashed to the floor.

“I thought that it was all over,” said Mr. Reza, 28. When he woke to the walls shaking, he sprinted from the house barefoot, through the yard and to the alley outside.

“I was so scared and shocked, now I feel dizzy and I’m just throwing up,” he added.

The Saturday quakes, both of which were also 6.3 magnitude, caused mud-brick homes in several districts to come crashing down. At least seven tremors followed.

There was optimism that the Wednesday quake would be less destructive. The buildings in Herat City are mostly made from concrete — not mud-brick, as in districts that saw the worst devastation on Saturday — and many people were sleeping outside.

But the historic city, which once served as a center of medieval Islamic culture, home to poets, scholars and painters, the ruins of ancient architecture did not survive the quake unscathed.

At the Musalla of Gawhar Shah, a 15th-century Islamic religious complex, the top of one of five minarets still standing was partially damaged by the quake, according to Farid Ahmad Ayoubi, the director of information for Herat Province. The Great Mosque of Herat, one of the oldest mosques in the region, widely considered a masterpiece of Islamic architecture and recognizable by its vibrant blue minarets, was also damaged, he said.

At Herat’s regional public hospital, ambulances raced in and out of the gate Wednesday morning carrying dozens of injured people.

Outside the intensive care unit, dozens of doctors and nurses stood at a makeshift triage station and swarmed the ambulances as each new wave of patients arrived. They bandaged bloodied arms and legs, rolled out IVs on rickety metal stands and tried to calm people crying with fear as their loved ones were treated.

One man in a dirt-covered orange salwar kameez, a traditional loosefitting garment, carried a young boy to the triage station and laid him down on the pavement. After the initial quake Saturday morning, they had come from Nawabad village, on the outskirts of Herat, in an Army Ranger vehicle.

As doctors inserted an IV into the boy, the man stood up in tears and let out a shriek.

“There’s nothing left!” he cried, before pleading with hospital staff members to let him check the morgue for other relatives who were still missing from the weekend disaster, which leveled homes in his village.

“Please,” he begged. “Just let me go and check the dead bodies.”

For many in Herat, the quake on Wednesday was a terrifying reminder of the unease that continues to plague the city after the initial quake last weekend.

Along the grassy median of a main road running through the city, dozens of people lay inside makeshift tents they had constructed with clothes, rugs and string. Many had slept there since Saturday, fearing the aftershocks that have rolled through the city.

Mohammadi Yasin, 22, set up his campsite with his siblings and other relatives on Saturday afternoon, heeding the advice of his neighbors, who warned about possible tremors after the initial quakes.

“It’s not the safest place, but it’s the only one that we could find,” Mr. Yasin said, his 11-month-old nephew asleep in the shade of a tree next to him. “We don’t have a yard, and we couldn’t stay in alleys outside our house — there were big buildings around it; we were afraid they would fall down,” he added.

His family had returned to their two-story home nearby on Tuesday night, thinking the crisis was finally over. Then, early Wednesday morning, they were jolted awake as the ground shook violently beneath them. His two sisters screamed in fear as they fled the house for the alleyway, their drinking glasses tumbling off the shelves of their kitchen and smashing onto the ground.

Now, he said, his family plans to stay on the median for at least a week.

“We are not feeling safe; the earthquakes are happening all around us,” he said. “It might happen again.”

Andrés R. Martínez contributed reporting.

Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times. More about Christina Goldbaum

Pakistan Orders More Than a Million Afghans Out of the Country

October 9, 2023 Current News Articles

By Zia ur-Rehman and Christina Goldbaum

Zia ur-Rehman reported from Karachi, Pakistan, and Christina Goldbaum from London.

The New York Times

Oct. 8, 2023

Migrants from Afghanistan living illegally in Pakistan, many of whom fled the Taliban takeover, have been given four weeks to leave.

Hundreds of police officers flooded into a Karachi slum around midnight, surrounding the homes of Afghan migrants and pounding at their doors. Under the harsh glare of floodlights, the police told women to stand to one side of their homes and demanded the men present immigration papers proving they were living in Pakistan legally. Those without documents were lined up in the street, some shaking with fear for what was to come: Detention in a Pakistani prison and deportation to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

The police raid on Friday in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, followed an abrupt decision by the Pakistani authorities last week to deport the more than one million Afghan migrants living illegally in the country.

“Police entered every house without warning,” said Abdul Bashar, an Afghan migrant whose two cousins were among the 51 people who the police said were arrested during the neighborhood sweep. “The fear has left us restless, making it difficult for us to sleep peacefully at night.”

On Tuesday, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry announced that migrants residing illegally in the country had 28 days to leave voluntarily, and it offered a “reward” for information leading to their arrests once that deadline passed.

Though Pakistani officials say the crackdown applies to all foreign citizens, the policy is largely believed to be targeting Afghans, who make up the vast majority of migrants in Pakistan.

While Afghans have faced harassment in Pakistan for decades, this announcement was the government’s most far-reaching and explicit action affecting Afghan migrants. It was widely seen as a sign of the increasing hostility between the Pakistani government and the Taliban authorities in neighboring Afghanistan as they clash over extremist groups operating across their borders.

Over the past year, Pakistan has experienced a surge in terrorist attacks, both by militant groups that have found haven in Afghanistan under the Taliban administration and by others whose fighters have been pushed into Pakistan following a brutal Taliban-led crackdown on their ranks. Some former Taliban fighters have also migrated to Pakistan to wage jihad against the Pakistani government.

For months, the Pakistani authorities have pleaded with the Taliban to rein in extremist violence stemming from Afghan soil. But Taliban officials have rebuffed those calls, instead offering to mediate talks between the Pakistani authorities and the militants.

The growing animosity between the two countries has threatened to further destabilize a region that is already a political tinderbox.

On the other is nuclear-armed Pakistan, which has struggled with military coups, volatile politics and waves of sectarian violence since its founding 75 years ago.

Caught in between are the roughly 1.7 million Afghans living in Pakistan illegally, according to Pakistani officials. Among them are around 600,000 people — including journalists, activists and former policemen, soldiers and former officials with the toppled U.S.-backed government — who fled after the Taliban seized power, according to United Nations estimates.

Many of those migrants face a stark choice: Either return to Afghanistan, where they fear persecution by the Taliban, or remain in Pakistan and face harassment from the Pakistani authorities.

“We have been left in the lurch,” said Mahmood Kochai, an Afghan journalist who fled to Pakistan with his wife and six children after the Taliban seized power.

Like many Afghan migrants in the capital, Islamabad, Mr. Kochai arrived in Pakistan on a temporary visa, anticipating an asylum decision from Western embassies in Islamabad. Soon after arriving, he applied for sanctuary in the United States under a refugee program for Afghans who worked with the U.S. government or U.S.-funded organizations.

But since he applied more than a year ago, he has not heard anything back, Mr. Kochai said. Now, he is concerned about the expiration of their Pakistani visas in two months.

In Karachi, home to a sizable population of Afghan migrants, news of migrants’ getting arrested at security checkpoints on roads and in markets during routine outings has stoked panic.

Ali, a former Afghan security official who would give only his first name because of his immigrant status in Pakistan, said he and his neighbors — also Afghan migrants — had barely gone outside for two weeks, fearing getting arrested and being sent back to Afghanistan. If he is deported, he worries he faces arrest — or worse — because of his affiliation with the U.S.-backed government.

The new policy has in fact drawn criticism from human rights groups, which say deporting Afghans could put them at risk in Afghanistan. Despite the Taliban’s policy of blanket amnesty for Afghans who worked with the U.S.-backed government, human rights monitors have documented hundreds of abuses against former government officials since the Taliban seized power.

Pakistani officials have defended the policy as necessary to protect Pakistan from extremist violence. In a news conference on Tuesday, the Pakistani caretaker government’s interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti, asserted that Afghans were involved in 14 of the 24 major terrorist attacks in Pakistan this year.

“There are attacks on us from Afghanistan, and Afghan nationals are involved in those attacks,” he said. Taliban officials denied those claims.

The aggressive approach echoes similar crackdowns on Afghan migrants in years past, observers say. After a string of major terrorist attacks in 2016, the Pakistani authorities began a sweeping campaign to uproot Afghan migrants, forcing around 600,000 back to Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch characterized Pakistan’s actions as the world’s “largest unlawful mass forced return of refugees” in recent times.

“Afghans always get stuck when foreign relations break down between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Sanaa Alimia, researcher and author of “Refugee Cities: How Afghans Changed Urban Pakistan.”

“That usually manifests itself as harassment of ordinary Afghans in the country and those getting harassed are usually in the lowest income groups, they are an easy target,” she added.

Pakistan has not signed the 1951 Geneva Convention and its 1967 protocol covering the status of refugees, which protects people seeking asylum. Instead, Pakistan’s Foreigners’ Act grants the authorities the right to apprehend, detain and expel foreigners — including refugees and asylum seekers — who lack valid documentation.

After previous crackdowns, many Afghans have either remained in Pakistan or returned after being deported — underlining the limit of the Pakistani government’s ability to repatriate Afghans, experts say.

Now, with the government facing dueling economic and political crises, it is unclear how the Pakistani authorities would repatriate such a large number of refugees, a deportation campaign requiring substantial personnel as well as military and intelligence resources.

Maulvi Abdul Jabbar Takhari, the Taliban’s consul general in Karachi, said that many Afghans who had been arrested possess legal documents allowing them to live in Pakistan and that Taliban officials had been trying to secure their release.

Mr. Takhari, who lived as a refugee in Karachi for several years, urged Pakistan’s government “to provide a specific time frame for undocumented refugees so that they can peacefully and respectfully wind up their businesses and return to their homeland.”

But for Afghan migrants, the wave of arrests has been a chilling reminder of their precarious status in Pakistan. Many arrived in the country decades ago, after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and after the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal.

Abdullah Bukhari, 51, came to Karachi in 1980 from Kunduz Province fleeing violence during the Soviet-Afghan war. The notion of uprooting his life in less than a month feels absurd and heartbreaking.

“How can they uproot everything in such a short period?” Mr. Bukhari asked. “We’ve spent our lives as refugees and amid conflict, but our biggest concern is for our children. They have never experienced Afghanistan even for a day.”

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