Taliban ban on female aid workers poses big dilemma for US

January 14, 2023 Current News Articles

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER

Associated Press

14 January 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — For an idled worker at a Kabul-based aid group, Abaad, that helps abused Afghan women, frightened and often tearful calls are coming in, not only from her clients but also from her female colleagues.

A Dec. 24 order from the Taliban barring aid groups from employing women is paralyzing deliveries that help keep millions of Afghans alive, and threatening humanitarian services countrywide. As another result of the ban, thousands of women who work for such organizations across the war-battered country are facing the loss of income they desperately need to feed their own families.

The prohibition is posing one of the biggest policy challenges over Afghanistan for the United States and other countries since the U.S. military withdrawal in August 2021 opened the door for the Taliban takeover. Those nations face the difficult task of crafting an international response that neither further worsens the plight of millions of aid-dependent Afghans nor caves in to the Taliban’s crackdown on women.

The United Nations estimates that 85% of nongovernmental aid organizations in Afghanistan have partially or fully shut down operations because of the ban, which is the Taliban’s latest step to drive women from public life.

Abaad was among those suspending its work. Its female employees provided support and counseling to women who endured rape, beatings, forced marriages or other domestic abuse.

Female clients told the Abaad worker that without the group’s help, they fear they will wind up on Kabul’s streets. For the worker herself and for thousands like her across Afghanistan, they depend on their paychecks to survive in a broken economy where aid officials say 97% of the population is now in poverty or at risk of it.

One colleague told her she was contemplating suicide.

The aid worker and others interviewed expressed hope that the United States, the United Nations and others will stand by them and persuade the Taliban to relent on the ban.

“That’s all we ask. They should find a solution, find a way to support people here in Afghanistan,” she said. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of her safety.

Several leading global aid organizations that have suspended operations are urging U.N. aid agencies to do the same. They are asking the Biden administration to use its influence to ensure the international community stands firm.

The U.S. is the largest single humanitarian donor to Afghanistan. It also has an abiding interests in quelling security threats from extremist groups in Afghanistan, one of the tasks for which it hopes to maintain some limited relationship with the Taliban.

A U.S. official involved in the discussions predicted a final international response that falls somewhere between suspending all aid operations, which the official said would be inhumane and ineffective, and the other extreme of fully acquiescing to the Taliban ban.

One proposal being looked at in the administration is stopping all but lifesaving aid to Afghans, according to another U.S. official and nongovernmental officials familiar with the discussion.

The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss ongoing deliberations and they all spoke on condition of anonymity.

Aid group officials and analysts point to the difficulty of narrowing down what is lifesaving assistance, however. Food aid, certainly. But what about other forms of support such as maternal care, which has helped more than halve Afghanistan’s maternal mortality rate since the 1990s?

Major nongovernmental aid organizations say that without female workers, it’s impossible for them to effectively reach the women and children who make up 75% of those in need. That’s because of Afghanistan’s conservative customs and the Taliban’s rules prohibiting contact between unrelated men and women.

“Our suspensions are operational necessities,” said Anastasia Moran, senior officer for humanitarian policy at the International Rescue Committee. “It’s not being punitive. It’s not trying to withdraw services. It’s not a negotiating tactic.”

The Taliban crackdown is re-creating conditions from their first time in power in the mid-1990s, when successive edicts drove women out of schools, jobs, aid work and increasingly into their homes. Taliban leaders then ultimately ordered households to paint their windows black, so that no passersby could see the women inside. It left women and children in female-headed households little means to access money or help to stay alive.

The U.S. invasion that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ended that first era of Taliban rule. The Biden administration and aid groups all cite a determination to avoid a repeat of the fractured, rivalry-driven and often ad hoc international response to the Taliban abuses in the 1990s, including the crackdown then on women.

U.N. Security Council members met Friday behind closed doors to consider the international response, after 11 of the 15 member nations reiterated the council’s demand for “unhindered access for humanitarian actors regardless of gender.”

The humanitarian crisis brought on by the Taliban’s ban comes at a politically sensitive moment for Biden, with Republicans now leading the House and pledging to investigate the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Rep. Michael McCaul, a foreign-policy veteran newly in charge of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the crackdown on women part of the “disastrous” consequences of the U.S. withdrawal. McCaul. R-Texas, said his committee will push for answers from administration officials on their handling of Afghanistan policy.

“This administration promised consequences if the Taliban revoked its promise to uphold the human rights of Afghan women and girls,” McCaul said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Unfortunately, it is no surprise to see the Taliban violate this commitment, and now consequences must be swiftly delivered.”

Almost all involved expressed hope that quiet diplomacy led by U.N. officials over the next few weeks could lead the Taliban to soften their stance, allowing female aid workers and aid organizations overall to resume their duties.

U.N. and other officials are meeting daily on the matter with the Taliban’s most senior leaders in Kabul, who have access to the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and his associates in the southern city of Kandahar, a U.S. official said.

Some caution the international community may face years of little influence over Afghanistan’s rulers.

In the meantime, the mission for those assisting isolated, abused women was clear. said Masuda Sultan, an Afghan woman also working with the Abaad aid group.

“Our goal is to help these women,” Sultan said, speaking from Dubai. “If they don’t get help, they will die.”

Iran Calls for Formation of Inclusive Government in Afghanistan

January 14, 2023 Current News Articles

Nazir Shinwari

Tolo News

14 Jan 2023

The Islamic Emirate said that it wants to have good relations with all its neighbors and urged them to refrain from interfering in Afghan internal affairs.

The formation of an inclusive government with the participation of all ethnic groups in the country is the solution to Afghanistan’s issues, said Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

The top Iranian official said that Tehran has contacts with the current Afghan government in order to reduce its issues during a meeting with political and religious groups in Lebanon.

“We have not recognized the current rulers of Afghanistan but we do communicate and discuss various matters with them in an effort to solve the country’s difficulties. Forming an inclusive government in Afghanistan with the participation of all ethnic groups in this nation is the country’s solution,” Abdollahian said.

The Islamic Emirate said that it wants to have good relations with all its neighbors and urged them to refrain from interfering in Afghan internal affairs.

“The internal matters of the nation belong to the people of Afghanistan, and the countries of the world and the region must fulfill their obligations in the area of creating relations between Afghanistan and the world,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman of the Islamic Emirate.

According to some political analysts, Afghanistan can overcome its political, economic, and international isolation by pursuing a balanced and impartial policy.

“Afghanistan needs an inclusive government, and that is the time when the Islamic Emirate may move from a state of transitory government,” said Sayed Bilal Fatemi, a political analyst.

“There should not be a gap between the people and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Afghanistan can get out of the current political and economic isolation by having a balanced and impartial approach,” said Atif Mukhtar, political analyst.

No country has so far recognized the current Afghan government, but the Islamic Emirate has diplomatic ties with a number of countries, including Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and others.

Republicans probe chaotic US military withdrawal from Afghanistan

January 14, 2023 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

About 2,500 US soldiers died in Afghanistan, a conflict that became the longest war the United States fought.

Republican legislators have launched an investigation into the chaotic United States military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which allowed an immediate takeover by the Taliban and led to scenes of thousands of desperate people storming Kabul airport, some clinging to departing US planes as they rolled down the runway.

Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Friday he had written to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting an array of records, from intelligence assessments to communications with the Taliban.

McCaul, a longstanding opposition member on the committee who became its chairman after the House flipped to Republican control at the start of the year, said it was “absurd and disgraceful” that US President Joe Biden’s administration “continues to withhold information related to the withdrawal”.

“In the event of continued noncompliance, the committee will use the authorities available to it to enforce these requests as necessary, including through a compulsory process,” he said.

Thirteen US soldiers were killed on August 26, 2021 in a bombing outside Kabul airport as the capital fell, with the government crumbling days later despite $2 trillion being pumped into Afghanistan over two decades by the US and NATO forces.

While Trump sealed the withdrawal with the Taliban, his Republican Party has roundly criticised Biden’s handling of the operation and promised hearings as part of a series of probes into his administration.

The scenes of desperate Afghans clinging to moving US military planes as they taxied on the runway at Kabul airport preceded a sharp drop in Biden’s approval ratings nine months after he was elected promising smooth, competent leadership after the pandemonium under his predecessor Donald Trump.

The State Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Friday but has said it has provided more than 150 briefings to members of Congress since the August 2021 withdrawal, according to US media.

Approximately 2,500 US troops died in what became the country’s longest war but Afghanistan was no longer a priority back home, with 50 percent of respondents in a Gallup poll conducted a year after the withdrawal saying the entire war was a mistake.

SOURCE: AFP

UN Security Council members urge Taliban to void bans on women

January 14, 2023 Current News Articles

Eleven members of the UNSC call on the group to reverse restrictive policies on women’s and girls’ education and work.

Several members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have urged the Taliban to end its repressive treatment of women in Afghanistan, as the group continued to impose restrictive policies on their education and work.

The 15-member UNSC met privately on Friday – at the request of the United Arab Emirates and Japan – to discuss the decisions by the Taliban-led administration, which seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 following the US troop withdrawal.

Since then, the Taliban has squeezed women out of almost all areas of public life, banning them from secondary and higher education, public sector work and visiting parks.

“We urge the Taliban to immediately reverse all oppressive measures against women and girls,” said Japanese Ambassador Ishikane Kimihiro, speaking on behalf of 11 members of the Security Council, on Friday.

The 11 members – Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Japan, Malta, Switzerland, the UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States – called on the Taliban to “respect the rights of women and girls, and their full, equal and meaningful participation and inclusion across all aspects of society in Afghanistan, from political and economic, to education and public space”.

They also called on the authorities in Afghanistan to reverse bans on women working for aid groups or attending universities and high school.

Several international aid groups have suspended their work in Afghanistan because of the latest ban, which was announced by the Taliban government on December 24.

“The situation of women and girls in Afghanistan must remain high on the agenda of the Security Council,” said Friday’s statement.

The United Nations has said 97 percent of Afghans live in poverty, two-thirds of the population need aid to survive, and 20 million people face acute hunger.

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell described the ban on female aid workers as “both wrong and dangerous”, according to her prepared remarks for the private Security Council meeting on Friday, seen by Reuters news agency.

“It is not hyperbole to say that without them, lives will be lost, children will die,” she said.

Australia’s men’s team recently withdrew from a cricket series against Afghanistan scheduled for March following further restrictions on women’s and girls’ rights imposed by the Taliban.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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‘Burying Us Alive’: Afghan Women Devastated by Suspension of Aid Under Taliban Law

January 13, 2023 Current News Articles

By Christina Goldbaum and Najim Rahim

The New York Times

Jan. 13, 2023

Since the Taliban administration banned women from aid work, many groups have suspended their operations in the country and warned of permanently shutting down if the ban remains.

For years before the Taliban seized power and the economy collapsed, Jamila and her four children had clung to the edge of survival. After her husband died trying to cross the Iranian border, she and her children moved to a camp for displaced people in northwestern Afghanistan and relied on aid organizations.

One group brought her oil, flour and rice — food that kept her family from starving. Another gave her children pens and notebooks — the only supplies they had in primary school. A third vaccinated them against measles, polio and other illnesses.

But when Jamila tried to arrange an emergency parcel of food in late December, the aid worker cut the call short, explaining that the organization had suspended its operations: Last month the Afghan government barred women from working in most local and international aid groups, prompting many to stop their work. Jamila’s heart sank.

“If they are not allowed, we will die of hunger,” said Jamila, 27, who goes by only one name, like many women in rural Afghanistan. “We are starving.”

Just weeks since the Taliban administration’s decree, women across the country are grappling with the disappearance of lifesaving aid that their families and the country have relied on since the country plunged into a humanitarian crisis.

It has been a dual tragedy for Afghanistan, and for Afghan women in particular.

For many women and girls who had already faced increasing restrictions under the new government — including being shut away from many jobs, high schools, universities and public parks — the new edict removed one of the few remaining outlets for employment and public life. Given the conservative system that had existed in Afghanistan even before the Taliban took power last year and amplified the most hard-line traditions, aid groups had relied on female workers to reach other women and their families, who were often segregated from any contact with outside men.

Now, amid a malnutrition and health care crisis that has worsened as the Afghan government’s changes have turned the world away, many aid groups say the banning of those female workers has made it nearly impossible for them to work in the country. Those organizations described the move as a “red line” that violated humanitarian principles and that, if it remains in place, could permanently shut down their operations in Afghanistan.

The result is likely to be millions of Afghans left without critical aid during the harsh winter months. A record two-thirds of the population — or 28.3 million Afghans — are expected to need some form of humanitarian assistance next year as a hunger crisis looms over the country, according to United Nations estimates.

“This is not a choice. This is not a political decision. It’s actually reality. We cannot do our job if we do not have a female staff in place to work,” Adam Combs, regional director at the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in a news conference late last month.

In recent weeks, United Nations officials have met several times with the Afghan authorities to try to resolve the crisis, they said. But while Afghan officials have urged the resumption of aid programs, they have also indicated that the Taliban administration’s top leadership is unwilling to reverse the edict. Instead, the leadership has doubled down on accusations that women aid workers had not worn Islamic head scarves, or hijabs, in accordance with the new government’s laws on women’s attire, according to summaries of those meetings and other documents obtained by The New York Times.

In a meeting in late December between United Nations officials and officials with the Taliban administration in Kandahar — the heartland of the Taliban movement and center of power of the new government — Afghan officials accused Western countries, particularly the United States, of using aid as political leverage to push unwelcome Western values on the country, according to the documents.

Late last month, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban administration, said on Twitter that all organizations within Afghanistan must comply with the country’s laws, adding: “We do not allow anyone to talk rubbish or make threats regarding the decisions of our leaders under the title of humanitarian aid.”

Afghan officials have said that the ban does not directly apply to the United Nations — one of the last Western entities to maintain a presence in Afghanistan. Still, most U.N. aid agencies work with nongovernment organizations to implement their operations — many of which had relied on female aid workers to reach women and families in need and have now suspended their programs.

Many international donors also require that women make up at least half of the people an aid organization reaches in order to receive funding.

For women across the country, the effects of the ban and the suspension of aid have been devastating.

The situation “is a disaster,” said Abeda Mosavi, an employee of the Norwegian Refugee Council, or N.R.C., who works with Afghan widows in Kunduz, an economic hub in northern Afghanistan. “I don’t know the extent to which the Taliban understood the role of women in aid organizations and the crises that women will face after this.”

Since the ban was issued and N.R.C. suspended its operations, Ms. Mosavi has barely been able to sleep, she said, haunted by worries about the women she worked with to help make ends meet. Late last year, Ms. Mosavi met a widow with eight children who she said was trying to secure a quick marriage for her 13-year-old daughter — effectively selling her for a $2,000 dowry — to an older man to be his second wife. The woman felt it was the only way she could keep her other children alive and fed, but Ms. Mosavi persuaded her not to go through with it, and put her in touch with a food aid program.

“I don’t know what will happen to her now,” Ms. Mosavi said, racked with worry. “There are hundreds of cases like this.”

Other women aid workers — many of whom are the sole providers for their families — have themselves worried about how to put food on the table if the ban remains in place.

“If we are not allowed to work in NGOs, what should my children and I eat?” said Najima Rahmani, 42. Ms. Rahmani, a widow in the northern province of Balkh, was unemployed for six months before finding a job in November with Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, an implementing partner that works with the U.N.’s World Food Program.

Those six months without a job were like a living nightmare, she said.

Her family could not afford electricity in their home. She had to borrow money from relatives — who were struggling themselves — to try to scrape together the university fees for her two sons and daughter.

The government’s barring of women from attending universities last month was devastating to her and her daughter. Then the ban on NGO work came down, and it felt not just like a new blow, but like a prison sentence, condemning them all to return to a life of begging and hardship.

“I am in a lot of pain,” Ms. Rahmani said, breaking down into tears. “My wound is always fresh. The wound of a woman in my situation is always fresh, it never heals.”

Since the fall of the Western-backed government in August 2021, the new authorities’ initial promises that women would have opportunities like employment and a public life — requirements for engagement with Western donors — have nearly all been reversed.

Today, women are barred from gyms and public parks, and from traveling any significant distance without a male relative. They cannot attend high school or university. At checkpoints along streets and in spot inspections on farms, the morality police chastise women who are not covered from head to toe in all-concealing burqas and headpieces in public.

It has been a realization of some women’s worst fears about Taliban rule and a devastating loss for those who had hoped for much more than just an end to the war.

Habiba Akbari, who works for Afghan Aid, a British humanitarian and development organization, spent much of the past four years dodging sporadic fighting between the Western-backed government and Taliban forces to travel between her hometown in Badakhshan Province and her university in Kunduz City.

Ms. Akbari graduated last year — just before the Taliban administration banned women from attending university — and secured a job with the aid group. Her monthly salary of 30,000 Afghanis — around $350 — sustained her seven siblings and parents after her oldest sister and the family’s main provider was dismissed from her post as a prosecutor. But now, her work has been suspended — and any hope she held for her future has vanished.

“The Taliban are burying us alive,” Ms. Akbari said.

Isabella Kwai contributed reporting from London.

Christina Goldbaum is a correspondent in the Kabul, Afghanistan, bureau.

Najim Rahim is a reporter in the Kabul, Afghanistan, bureau.

UNSC to Discuss Afghanistan’s Situation in Closed-Door Meeting

January 13, 2023 Current News Articles

Mohammad Farshad Daryosh

News ReporterTolo News

13 Jan 2023

Chargé d’Affaires of the Afghanistan Permanent Mission to the UN, Naseer Ahmad Faiq, said that the meeting is due to be held on 13 January New York time.

The UN Security Council is holding a closed-door meeting on Friday about Afghanistan’s situation including the recent bans imposed by the caretaker government on women’s access to work and education.

Chargé d’Affaires of the Afghanistan Permanent Mission to the UN, Naseer Ahmad Faiq, said that the meeting is due to be held on 13 January New York time.

“The UN special envoy for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s executive director, David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee will give speeches. The meeting will provide an opportunity to discuss the negotiations and evaluation of the Taliban’s decision on humanitarian aid in Afghanistan,” Faiq said.

The Islamic Emirate reacted to the meeting, saying that without the presence of its representative, the meeting will not bring any result.

“We call on international organizations to respect the rules and values of the people of Afghanistan. All areas that they are concerned about are negotiable and they may come and talk with the Islamic Emirate closely so that they are convinced. Without the presence of the Islamic Emirate representing the people of Afghanistan, these decisions will not be helpful,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, the spokesman of the Islamic Emirate.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that “systemic attacks on women’s and girls’ rights and the flouting of international obligations are creating gender-based apartheid.”

“This deliberately undermines the development of a country that desperately needs the contributions of all in order to return to sustainable peace,” he said.

Amnesty International in a statement said that the UN Security Council (UNSC) closed-door meeting on Afghanistan “must focus on how to reverse the stifling ban by the Taliban on women and girls from accessing work, education, sports and public spaces.”

“The Security Council that asses the issue of the Afghan women’s rights should also consider the issue of Afghanistan. It can be done when major powers reach an agreement,” said Suraya Paikan, a human rights defender.

“Women have never been banned from education or politics and whatever is ordered for men, women are also beside it,” said Sayed Abdullah Ihsani, a member of the Assembly of Scholars.

This comes as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation also held an extraordinary meeting on Afghanistan this week.

IS claims responsibility for Kabul attack that killed 5

January 13, 2023 Current News Articles

Associated Press

January 12, 2023

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Thursday for a deadly bombing that killed at least five people near the Foreign Ministry in the Afghan capital the previous day.

The bombing was the second major attack in Kabul in 2023 and drew condemnation from the international community.

The extremist group said in a statement that a “martyrdom-seeker” it identified as Kheiber al-Qandahari detonated his explosive vest amidst a gathering of ministry employees and guards as they left through the ministry’s main gate.

There was no immediate response from Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers about the IS claim. Kabul police chief spokesman Khalid Zadran said Wednesday that the explosion killed five civilians and that “a number of others were wounded” near the ministry.

The IS news outlet Aamaq said the attack coincided with a ministry training course for diplomats.

The extremists have increased their assaults since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021. Targets have included Taliban patrols and members of the country’s Shiite minority.

After Wednesday’s attack, more than 40 wounded people were brought to a surgical center in Kabul run by Emergency NGO, a humanitarian organization. Stefano Sozza, Emergency’s director in Afghanistan, said at the time that he expected the number of casualties to rise.

The attack drew condemnation from the United Nations and various countries. In a statement Wednesday, Pakistan said it stood in solidarity with Afghans in the fight against militants.

China Thursday said that none of its citizens were killed or injured in the attack, following reports that a visiting delegation was due at the ministry.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a press briefing: “We hope Afghanistan will take strong measures to effectively protect the safety of all sides’ personnel and institutions in Afghanistan, including those from China.”

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