State Dept: Restrictions on Women Will Delay Kabul’s Intl Relations

The Islamic Emirate said that the rights of women are fully secured in Afghanistan and other countries should not interfere in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.

The deputy spokesman of the US State Department said that Washington “deplores the edicts that the Taliban have promulgated regularly that fundamentally repress the right of Afghan women and girls.”

“We’ve seen this now time and time again – denying them education, denying them the ability to work, denying them the ability to participate in the provision of humanitarian assistance that benefits all Afghans,” said Vedant Patel, a spokesman for the US Department of State.

“And it’s safe to say from conversations among countries around the world that to the extent that the Taliban is looking for more normal relations with countries around the world, that will not happen in a long time, so as they continue to advance these repressive edicts against women and girls,” said Patel.

Meanwhile the Islamic Emirate said that the rights of women are fully secured in Afghanistan and other countries should not interfere in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.

“Women’s fundamental rights are secure based on interests of the country, and the Islamic Emirate is making efforts to ensure them. Thus, there is no problem in this regard. The internal affairs should be left to the Afghans,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate.

Some political analysts and women right activists in the country urged the Islamic Emirate to show flexibility for the sake of the normalization of relations with the international community.

“The government of the Taliban must inevitably show flexibility for the continuation of their work (engagement). If they don’t show essential flexibility, the continuation of governance will be challenging,” said Sayed Jawad Sajadi, political analyst.

After the Islamic Emirate takeover, more than 20 decrees and orders have been issued by the current government in the fields of education, work and other sectors for women and girls.

State Dept: Restrictions on Women Will Delay Kabul’s Intl Relations
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UN says Afghan girls’ education activist arrested in Kabul

By RAHIM FAIEZ

Associated Press

March 28, 2023

ISLAMABAD (AP) — An Afghan rights activist who has campaigned for girls’ education has been arrested in Kabul, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The U.N. mission in Afghanistan said Matiullah Wesa, founder and president of Pen Path — a local nongovernmental group that travels across Afghanistan with a mobile school and library — was arrested in the Afghan capital on Monday.

Local reports said Taliban security forces detained Wesa after his return from a trip to Europe.

The U.N. urged authorities in Kabul to clarify Wesa’s whereabouts, reasons for his arrest and ensure his access to legal representation and contact with family. There was no immediate word from the Taliban on the arrest.

Since their takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed restrictions on women’s and minority rights. Girls are barred from school beyond the sixth grade and last year, the Taliban banned women from going to university.

Wesa’s brother, Attaullah Wesa, said the Taliban forces surrounded their family’s house on Tuesday. They beat up the Wesas’ other two brothers, insulted their mother and confiscated the arrested activist’s mobile phone.

Social media activists later created a hashtag to campaign for Wesa’s release. Many posts condemned his detention and demanded immediate freedom for the activist.Wesa has been outspoken in his demands for girls to have the right to go to school and learn, and has repeatedly called on the Taliban-led government to reverse its bans. His most recent tweets about female education coincided with the start of the new academic year in Afghanistan, with girls remaining shut out of classrooms and campuses.

Wesa and others from the Pen Path launched a door-to-door campaign to promote girls’ education.

“We have been volunteering for 14 years to reach people and convey the message for girls education, Wesa had said in recent posts. “During the past 18 months we campaigned house to house in order to eliminate illiteracy and to end all our miseries,” he added.

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was alarmed by Wesa’s detention.

“His safety is paramount & all his legal rights must be respected,” Bennett tweeted.

Also Tuesday, Amnesty International raised the alarm about the deterioration of human rights in South Asian countries. In a new report released Tuesday the London-based watchdog also criticized the Taliban for imposing restrictions on women and minority rights since their takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.

Peaceful protesters have faced arbitrary arrests, torture and enforced disappearance while journalists faced arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as torture and other ill-treatment for reporting that was critical of the Taliban, said Amnesty.

“Women have been at the forefront of protests in the region, often challenging patriarchal control over their bodies, lives, choices and sexuality on behalf of the state, society and family,” said Yamini Mishra, the group’s regional director.

The failure of South Asian countries “to uphold gender justice leaves a terrible legacy of suppression, violence and stunted potential,” she added.

Meanwhile, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing near the foreign ministry in Kabul the previous day, when six people were killed and about a dozen wounded. It was the second time this year that IS staged an attack near the ministry. In mid-January, the militant group killed five people there and wounded several others.

The regional IS affiliate — known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province — is a key rival of the Taliban and has frequently targeted Taliban officials and patrols, as well as members of Afghanistan’s Shiite minority.

IS has increased its attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover.

UN says Afghan girls’ education activist arrested in Kabul
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The Taliban needs to start an intra-Afghan dialogue but with who?

For the past year and a half, the Taliban has taken the international community and the Afghan population on a ride – a ride so wild that it has left its own high-ranking officials dizzy as well. The Taliban government has consistently backtracked on promises and stripped citizens of more and more rights.

The policies it has introduced have been getting progressively worse – each new policy overshadowing the previous one with its grave consequences. Education for girls and women has been gradually restricted, employment for women has been limited, freedom of expression has been violated, dissidents have been detained and tortured and the intelligence directorate has only grown in strength.

The socioeconomic failures and rights violations by the Taliban have naturally attracted the most international attention – and rightly so. But there is another issue that is quite important in which the Taliban has also failed to make any progress: national dialogue and the formation of an inclusive government.

To be inclusive in government is a big ask from an Islamist group that has come to power on the heels of a total military victory. And it is hardly surprising that after the initial conversations with some political groups, the Taliban announced a cabinet excluding all of them.

Since then, there has been little willingness from the Taliban to have any meaningful formal dialogue with other Afghans regarding governing the country. And yet, much of the international community has made inclusivity a condition for the normalisation of relations and recognition of the government.

What is more, a national dialogue will have to take place when the Taliban decides to finally sit down and draft a new constitution. Currently, the country does not have a constitution because the one adopted in 2004, under which the previous regime operated, was suspended after the Taliban takeover. For the constitution-writing process to be legitimate, it would require the inclusion of other political actors.

That said, ongoing efforts from some quarters to push for such a national dialogue by imposing certain individuals or groups on the Taliban to negotiate with have been counterproductive, to say the least.

There have been plenty of bad ideas from the West about who the Taliban should talk to. There have been meetings between Western officials and exiled Afghan warlords in an effort to breathe relevance into them. There has been Western backing for groups like the National Resistance Front, headed by Ahmad Massoud, the son of a late anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban military leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud. His group recently organised a conference in Tajikistan, attended by Western diplomats.

Other prominent Afghans associated with the Afghan Republic have also been busy forming political parties and associations, hoping to attract Western support and eventually a seat at the negotiating table. Among them are Rahmatullah Nabil, former chief of the National Directorate of Security, Hanif Atmar, an ex-foreign minister and a few failed warlords. Most of these “new” political parties and other groupings of Afghans are a mere repackaging of old figures that were central to the failure of the past 20 years.

If the main reason to demand inclusivity is to achieve better representation of the interests of the Afghan population in government, then these individuals and groups are the obviously wrong answer.

A quick glance at Afghanistan’s history over the past 40 years would show how most of those standing in line for an invitation to the national dialogue do not represent the Afghan population. Their participation in coups, the civil war and the failed and corrupt democratic system discredits them.

Even the leaders and parties of the Afghan fight against the Soviets, such as Hezbi Islami, Jamiat Islami, and others, who used to enjoy the support of a large portion of the population, have now lost their legitimacy.

Most of these individuals were eventually given immunity for their past crimes and were given a fresh start at the 2001 Bonn conference where Afghanistan’s post-Taliban government was arranged. In the following 20 years, they joined others in forming a kleptocratic elite and gaining positions of power through electoral fraud. The result was an unstable, inefficient regime which collapsed like a house of cards in the face of the Taliban surge.

One of the blessings of the Taliban takeover was the expulsion of these corrupt politicians and warlords. There is little wisdom in politically resuscitating groups and individuals that have been rejected by the nation and are meeting their natural political deaths.

The international community’s obsession with including those who have never done right by the country distracts us from the very few who did an honourable job inside the country. There are individuals such as former MP Ramazan Bashardost, former MP Syed Selab and Chief Executive of the National Development State Owned Corporation Abdur Rehman Attash, who did not flee the country after the fall of Kabul and continue to serve the country through their public commentary, aid work and governmental positions respectively.

The international community also seems to be ignoring the fact that Afghanistan has all the potential to grow a native, grassroots opposition led by the young generation. Many young people and members of civil society have decided to stay behind and work hard to make a difference. Their efforts should be recognised and they should be given space for growth and development. They are now laying the foundations of forces that the Taliban will eventually have to recognise and engage with.

It should press the Taliban to agree to a national dialogue in principle and let it choose who it will talk to and include in the government. Loose conditions of ethnic and gender inclusion should be made which the Taliban should meet of its own accord. Those that are chosen to be included are unlikely to be given meaningful roles anyways.

It is better to have a national dialogue led by the Taliban with little progress than one with bad apples from the past imposed on it. The latter would just plunge the country back into bottomless corruption, but this time without any international oversight. At the same time, allowing the Taliban to lead the process will give time for an organic opposition to take root in the country so that a true national dialogue can eventually be held and legitimate political processes established in Afghanistan.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The Taliban needs to start an intra-Afghan dialogue but with who?
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Islamabad Calls on Kabul to Take Action Against ‘Terrorist Entities’

The deputy spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, Bilal Karimi, said that there is no threat from Afghan soil toward any country.

Pakistan Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch called on the Afghan interim government to take steps against “terrorist entities and to ensure that they do not pose a threat to Pakistani people and Pakistani security forces.”

Speaking at a press conference, Baloch said they are in “contact with the Afghan interim authorities on security and counter-terrorism matters including our concerns regarding terrorist entities which have hideouts in Afghanistan.”

“We expect the Afghan authorities to take action against these terrorist entities and to ensure that they do not pose a threat to Pakistani people and Pakistani security forces,” she said.

“There is a possibility that Pakistan is not sure about the promises, steps or remarks of the Islamic Emirate. Or it has not been ensured and therefore, it has been repeating such comments,” said Tahir Khan, a Pakistani journalist.

The deputy spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, Bilal Karimi, said that there is no threat from Afghan soil toward any country.

“Peace and security have been ensured all over the country. There is no such group to make threats from this country to other countries. There is no evidence in this regard and the Islamic Emirate does not allow Afghan territory to be used against other countries,” Karimi said.

“If Pakistan really wants to solve problems in this region, all of these problems that exist against Afghanistan and Pakistan should be addressed jointly,” said Mohammad Hassan Haqyar, a political analyst.

Nearly one month ago, a senior delegation from Pakistan, led by the country’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, visited Kabul and met with several top Islamic Emirate officials.

The Islamic Emirate’s spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that a delegation from Afghanistan will travel to Pakistan to discuss the economic and political issues with the country’s officials.

“Whenever their delegation comes to Afghanistan, this side also promises to send a delegation, comprised of officials, who will visit Pakistan to fully discuss political and trade issues. The time for their travel will be determined later,” he said.

Islamabad Calls on Kabul to Take Action Against ‘Terrorist Entities’
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McCaul Gives Monday Deadline to Blinken in Afghan Subpoena Threat

Previously, Vedant Patel, principal deputy spokesperson of the US State Department, said that the department is committed to cooperate with the committee’s work.

The Republican chairman of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday gave the State Department until Monday to produce documents related to the August 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan or face a subpoena.

“I have the subpoena. it’s right here. And I’m prepared to serve this. We had discussions and I think as a federal prosecutor you want to work things out but when you can’t, you have to go forward with the subpoena, and arrest warrant and indictment. So, sir, I’m going to give you until of close of business on Monday…,” Representative Michael McCaul told Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he testified to the committee about the department’s budget request.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that he will provide this information to the committee by mid-April.

Analysts have different views on the departure of foreign troops from Afghanistan.

“One of the major contributing elements was the fact that Americans and other foreigners in general were sick of the war in Afghanistan and no longer wanted to remain here. The deal was quickly signed and they departed Afghanistan as a result,” said Wahid Faqiri, a political analyst.

“The proof of the irresponsibility of America’s departure from the war in Afghanistan is the fall of the system, sovereignty, and administration, and notably the fall of a 300,000-member national army,” said Wais Nasiri, another political analyst.

Previously, Vedant Patel, principal deputy spokesperson of the US State Department, said that the department is committed to cooperate with the committee’s work. And we have since provided hundreds of pages of documents responsive to the chairman’s request regarding Afghanistan, and we will continue to do so.

McCaul Gives Monday Deadline to Blinken in Afghan Subpoena Threat
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Calls Mount to Reopen Afghan Schools for Girls

Several Kabul and Khost residents asked the Islamic Emirate to comply with the people’s demand to open schools for girls.

Female students in Kabul said on the opening day of the 1402 academic year that they once again felt hopeless as a result of the closing of their schools.

They asked the Islamic Emirate to reopen girls’ schools above sixth grade across the country.

Maryam, who was waiting for the schools to open along with thousands other students, said: “Why are schools closed to girls? When there is no female doctor, a woman should go to a male doctor?”

“Today is the day of despair for us. We were waiting to go to school on this day, but we were not allowed to go to school,” Sadaf, a student told TOLOnews.

“Today, I have a very bad feeling, because I could not go to school. When I see someone go to school, I feel bad that why I cannot go,” Amina, another student in Kabul said.

Meanwhile, male students are asking the current government to allow girls to be educated as well.

“We went to school, it was great. One thing that made me sad was that girls’ schools did not open,” said Faizullah, a student.

“We ask the Islamic Emirate to reopen girls’ schools because girls also have a right to education, so they serve their country,” said Rouhullah, a student.

Several Kabul and Khost residents asked the Islamic Emirate to comply with the people’s demand to open schools for girls.

“This is the demand of all the people and serious attention should be paid to these demands,” said Haji Adam Khan, a tribal elder of Khost.

“Girls’ schools should be opened so that we have a bright future,” said Mohammad Hossein, a resident of Kabul.

Earlier, the head of the security department in Parwan, Azizullah Omar, told TOLOnews that schools for female students will reopen soon after the work on the curriculum is finished.

“There is no problem about the start of schooling. There is only a problem in the curriculum. And therefore, a committee has been formed for its reform. After the confirmation of the clerics, the schools will start,” he said.

Calls Mount to Reopen Afghan Schools for Girls
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Taliban want control of more Afghan diplomatic missions

Associated Press

25 March 2023

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban government is trying to take charge of more Afghan embassies abroad, a spokesman said Saturday, amid their continued international isolation because of restrictions on women and girls.

The Taliban initially promised a more moderate rule after their takeover in August 2021, but instead imposed sweeping bans and other measures curtailing basic freedoms.

The U.N. and foreign governments have fiercely condemned the restrictions on female education and employment, and the international community remains wary of officially recognizing the Taliban, although some countries retain an active diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, including Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, and China.

“The Islamic Emirate has sent diplomats to at least 14 countries and efforts are underway to take charge of other diplomatic missions abroad,” the government’s main spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a video. “Diplomats of the former government are continuing their activities in coordination with the Foreign Ministry.”

The administration has sent its diplomats to Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia, China, Kazakhstan and other Arab and African countries, according to Mujahid. He gave no further details.In February, authorities handed over control of Afghanistan’s embassy in Tehran to envoys of the Taliban government. It was previously staffed by envoys from the former U.S.-backed Afghan government.

The deputy spokesman for the government, Bilal Karimi, was unable to immediately provide figures on how many Afghan diplomatic missions are active overseas or how many the administration has taken charge of since August 2021.

“There are many embassies abroad. The Islamic Emirate wants to have diplomatic relations with all countries and move forward with good interactions,” he told The Associated Press. “It is our hope that embassies will be opened in all countries as soon as official relations begin with the Islamic Emirate.”

The Foreign Ministry spokesman did not respond to the AP’s questions on embassies.

In January, the highest-ranking woman at the United Nations, Amina Mohammed, said the Taliban want international recognition and Afghanistan’s U.N. seat, which is currently held by the former government led by Ashraf Ghani.

“Recognition is one leverage that we have and we should hold on to,” she said, after meeting Taliban ministers in Kabul and Kandahar to try to reverse their crackdowns on women and girls.

They have banned girls from middle school, high school and university and banned women from most fields of employment, including at nongovernmental groups. Women have also been ordered to wear head-to-toe clothing in public and are barred from parks and gyms.

Schools reopened for the new academic year last week without teenage girls, more than 18 months after the ban on secondary education came into effect.

Universities reopened after the winter break in early March without their female students, and the ban on NGO work is still in place, although some aid agencies have partially resumed their activities through exemptions.

Jan Egeland, the secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said Friday that more than three months have passed since the “intolerable ban” on female aid workers in Afghanistan. “We have made some local progress, allowing women’s return to work, but still await national permits.”

Taliban want control of more Afghan diplomatic missions
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Islamic Emirate Has Diplomats in 14 World Countries: Mujahid

Some political analysts believe that the fate of Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions abroad will not be clarified until the Islamic Emirate is recognized.

The Islamic Emirate has sent diplomats to at least 14 countries, a spokesman said, adding that efforts are underway to take charge of other diplomatic missions abroad.

The Islamic Emirate’s spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said that diplomats of the former government are continuing their activities in coordination with the Foreign Ministry.

“There could be some of them (diplomats) who have not been in contact with us, or they didn’t want to be in contact with us; anyway, they are the people who do not represent any side. But the diplomats are in contact with the Foreign Ministry. They represent the Islamic Emirate and the people of Afghanistan,” he said.

However, some diplomats of the former government who are in charge of Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions said that they do not have official relations with Kabul due to a lack of adherence to international norms by the Islamic Emirate.

“Some of them are influenced by the political situation in the country and they were forced to cooperate with the Taliban. Some of the embassies that are in Europe and the US, they indeed changed their course,” said Mehdi Minadi, a former diplomat.

“Regarding the institutions that are officially active or were active, the embassies and diplomatic missions, the Foreign Ministry… did not take immediate action over them to assess the situation of the embassies and political missions abroad,” said Mirwais Ghiasi, a former diplomat.

“There is no official contact with the Kabul department. One of the main goals of the embassy is to provide consulate services very transparently and normally to citizens,” said Ahmad Khalid Akbar, the diplomat of Afghanistan’s embassy in Rome.

However, some political analysts believe that the fate of Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions abroad will not be clarified until the Islamic Emirate is recognized.

“The diplomats that are in Western countries–they are conducting consulate services for the Afghan refugees in these countries. This is a convenience but they should release their incomes transparently,” said Toreq Farhadi, political analyst.

According to the Islamic Emirate, its diplomats are in Tehran, Istanbul, Islamabad, Dubai, Kremlin, Beijing and Kazakhstan as well as some other Arabic and African countries.

Islamic Emirate Has Diplomats in 14 World Countries: Mujahid
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GOP threatens to subpoena State Dept. for classified Afghanistan cable

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday threatened to subpoena the State Department over documents related to the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, raising the stakes in America’s ongoing reckoning over its chaotic exit in 2021.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) gave Secretary of State Antony Blinken until Monday evening to provide the committee with a cable written by diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul expressing urgent concerns about deteriorating security before the U.S.-backed government there collapsed and ceded the country to the Taliban. The July 13, 2021, communication was sent via a special “dissent channel” that allows State Department officials to issue warnings or express contrarian views directly to senior agency officials.

“We need this dissent cable, and I think the American people deserve to see it, to know what in the world was going on in those critical weeks,” McCaul told Blinken during a hearing on the State Department budget. “I have the subpoena. It’s right here, and I’m prepared to serve this.”

McCaul, who before becoming committee chairman oversaw a 2022 Republican report on the events surrounding the withdrawal, has requested a number of documents related to the tumultuous U.S. departure, which included the evacuation of more than 100,000 civilians and a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and an estimated 170 Afghans. Those events and the Taliban’s ascendancy marked an ignominious end to the two-decade U.S. struggle in Afghanistan.

The State Department has provided lawmakers with some, but not all, of the requested documents — Blinken referenced “thousands of pages” from one report alone. He told McCaul that the State Department would submit an internal after-action report in the coming weeks, but he put the dissent cable in a different category.

“It is vital to me that we preserve the integrity of that process and of that channel, that we not take any steps that could have a chilling effect on the willingness of others to come forward in the future, to express dissenting views on the policies that are being pursued,” Blinken said, emphasizing a desire to protect the identities of those who submit such messages.

Blinken said the agency was ready to provide “relevant information” from the cable to lawmakers in a briefing or another forum.

“I hope we can find a way to do it that meets both of our needs,” he said.

Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), a Democrat who headed the committee until Republicans took the House majority earlier this year, said he also had requested the cable, which is classified. But he said he understood the desire to avoid discouraging employees from using the dissent channel in the future.

“I hope the department works to accommodate this congressional request because I think the substance that is in the cable is tremendously important for members of this committee to know and if we do it in a classified session,” he said.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) cautioned Blinken against providing heavily redacted documents to the committee. Another Republican lawmaker, Rep. Tim Burchett (Tenn.), showed the committee a page, fully black with redactions, that he said was taken from one of the administration’s submitted documents.

“I might suggest to you after our mutual many years of doing this, that your best choice is accommodation when appropriate, compliance when a subpoena comes, which means that this sort of redaction cannot and shall not be accepted by Congress once a subpoena is issued,” Issa said.

He urged Blinken to make sure the committee “won’t be getting what I sometimes call a black cow eating a licorice at midnight.”

Fallout over the evacuation has persisted for the Biden administration, with newly emboldened House Republicans vowing accountability for miscalculations and mistakes made as the Taliban roared back into power two years ago. McCaul has said he plans to hold series of hearings intended to unearth more detail about the decision-making leading up to the operation and as it transpired over those two weeks in August 2021.

At a hearing earlier this month, a group of current and former military personnel who helped rescue the United States’ Afghan allies decried the chaos, telling lawmakers in sometimes tearful testimony of the emotional toll the experience has taken on them. Some laid blame squarely on the Biden administration.

“The withdrawal was a catastrophe, in my opinion, and there was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence,” Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a Marine who lost an arm, a leg and a kidney in the suicide bombing, told the committee.

Appearing on Thursday on Capitol Hill to discuss the Pentagon’s budget request for next year, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, demurred when asked about blame for errors made during the war’s closing weeks, instead declaring the withdrawal a “strategic failure.”

“There’s a lot of lessons to be learned, and all of us are learning those lessons,” Milley said.

“I can think of no greater tragedy than what happened at Abbey Gate,” he added, referring to the location of the suicide bombing, “and I have to fully reconcile myself to that entire affair.”

GOP threatens to subpoena State Dept. for classified Afghanistan cable
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UK aid cuts could force closure of Afghan project supporting women and girls

The Guardian

Fri 24 Mar 2023

Slashing funding to the programme from a promised £7m to just £1m sends a ‘stark message to the world’, says Save the Children

The UK government has cut almost £6m in funding to a programme in Afghanistan supporting vulnerable women and girls.

Save the Children said it has been told by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office that it will receive just over £1m of a promised £7m to support more than 100,000 people to access essential basic services such as healthcare and education.

The charity said the year-long programme, which started in December and delivers classes to women and girls across Afghanistan, may now be forced to close this month. Save the Children is scrambling to secure funds to continue the work, which provides a lifeline for many who face the risk of early marriage, violence and other forms of exploitation.

Gwen Hines, CEO of Save the Children UK, said: “Afghan children are already dying from hunger and disease, and now face having funding for basic food, health and education programmes withdrawn by the British government.

“The decision to cut millions in funding to Afghan children sends a stark message to the world that the UK is turning its back on the most vulnerable children and families in one of the world’s most challenging contexts. The UK’s rhetoric that it supports women and girls in Afghanistan now rings hollow.”

More than 28 million people – more than half the population – including 15 million children, are in need of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, according to the UN.

Since 2019, the total UK aid budget has been cut by £4bn, from 0.7% gross national income (£15.2bn) to 0.5% (£11.4bn) in 2021. As much as a third of the aid budget is now being spent on housing refugees in the UK, which MPs on the international development committee (IDC) have described as “unsustainable”.

The IDC had launched a parliamentary inquiry into the impact of the government’s funding cuts on women and girls in low-income countries.

The cut to Save the Children’s programme, Supporting Afghanistan’s Basic Services, comes three months after the Taliban issued a decree banning Afghan women from working for NGOs. The charity was among a number of organisations that suspended operations as a result. It has resumed its work after receiving assurances from the authorities that female staff will be safe and can work without obstruction.

Last week, the UK government launched its global women and girls strategy promising to “put women and girls at the heart of FCDO’s work”.

The FCDO has been approached for comment.

UK aid cuts could force closure of Afghan project supporting women and girls
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