U.S. to redirect Afghanistan’s frozen assets after Taliban rejects deal

September 14, 2022 Current News Articles

The Washington Post

September 14, 2022 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

Biden administration under pressure as Afghanistan faces enormous hunger crisis after U.S. capture of reserves

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced it will create a new fund out of some of Afghanistan’s frozen central bank reserves, aiming to alleviate the country’s mounting humanitarian crisis without enriching the Taliban, which rejected previous attempts at a compromise deal earlier this year.

In a statement, the Treasury Department said a new oversight body will deploy $3.5 billion of Afghanistan’s central bank reserves to help stabilize the country’s ravaged economy. The fund — which will be run in part by Swiss government officials and Afghan economic experts — can be used to help the country pay for critical imports, such as electricity, and will not be accessible to Taliban officials, according to the department.

The announcement follows more than a year of fighting over whether the Biden administration should return the $7 billion in Afghan assets that became inaccessible to the country’s leaders after the Taliban’s rise to power in August 2021. Economists say the freezing of these funds has fueled the collapse of Afghanistan’s economy and its hunger crisis, but the Biden administration and other analysts have said the Taliban cannot be trusted to administer such substantial amounts of money. Biden officials also announced in February that half of the $7 billion in funds would be separately earmarked for litigation filed by the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The deterioration of Afghanistan’s economy has put pressure on U.S. officials to explore how they might be able to turn the funds back over to the country’s central bank. In June, U.S. officials met with Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar, to discuss potential compromises that would allow technocrats at Afghanistan’s central bank to use the funds under close supervision to ensure the money does not fall into Taliban hands. The Taliban has rejected those proposals.

With a deal elusive, economists and aid groups have grown increasingly concerned about Afghanistan’s economy amid an exodus of capital and people. The United Nations estimated in August that approximately 4 million children are malnourished and close to 95 percent of the country is not getting enough to eat. Some economists say the new fund is insufficient to meet the country’s needs, given that the central bank reserves are critical for shoring up a currency that has cratered. A severe drought and a devastating hurricane have also combined to make what some experts have called the world’s greatest humanitarian catastrophe.

“This move can’t possibly compensate for the harm to the Afghan economy and millions of people who are starving, in large part because of the U.S. confiscation of Afghanistan’s central bank reserves,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank.

Still, the United States is leaving open the possibility that Afghanistan could eventually reclaim the bank assets in full. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo sent a letter on Tuesday to the Afghanistan central bank saying that it must meet three conditions — demonstrate political independence from the Taliban, implement anti-money-laundering guidelines, and add a “third-party monitor” — before the United States could consider returning the funds.

“The shortcomings of economic management are contributing to the economic and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan,” Adeyemo wrote in the letter.

He added, “There is currently no institution in Afghanistan that can guarantee that these funds would be used only for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan.”

UN expert describes ‘staggering repression’ of women and girls in Afghanistan

September 13, 2022 Current News Articles

The Guardian

A UN expert has described the “staggering repression” of women and girls in Afghanistan, as the UN mission in the country accused Taliban authorities of harassing its female Afghan employees.

In a statement on Monday, the UN mission described “an emerging pattern of harassment of Afghan UN female staff by the de facto authorities. Three Afghan women working for the UN were recently detained briefly and questioned by Taliban gunmen,” it said.

The UN called for an immediate end to all such acts of “intimidation and harassment targeting its Afghan female staff,” and reminded local authorities of their obligations under international law to guarantee the safety and security of all UN personnel operating in Afghanistan.

A statement released by the Taliban late Monday evening denied that local authorities had detained any UN employees.

The incident came as Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, called for radical changes. “The severe rollback of the rights of women and girls, reprisals targeting opponents and critics, and a clampdown on freedom of expression by the Taliban amount to a descent towards authoritarianism,” he told a Human Rights Council meeting.

Afghanistan ambassador Nasir Ahmad Andisha, who represents the toppled government, went further, describing a “gender apartheid” in the country.
Several Afghan women addressed the same meeting, including rights activist Mahbouba Seraj, who urged the 47-member council to set up a mechanism to investigate abuses.

“God only knows what kind of atrocities are not being reported,” she told the room full of UN diplomats in Geneva. “And I want that to be reported because this is not right. World: this is not right. Please, please, you’ve got to do something about it.”

A year after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, teenage girls are still barred from school and women are required to cover themselves from head to toe in public, with only their eyes showing. Hardliners appear to hold sway in the Taliban-led government, which imposed severe restrictions on access to education and jobs for girls and women, despite initial promises to the contrary.

Assistant secretary general for human rights, Ilze Brands Kehris, said that approximately 850,000 girls had so far dropped out of school, placing them at risk of child marriage and sexual economic exploitation.

On Saturday, in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktia province, Taliban authorities shut down five girls’ schools above the sixth grade that had briefly opened after a recommendation by tribal elders and school principals.

Earlier this month, four girls’ schools in Gardez, the provincial capital, and one in the Samkani district began operating without formal permission from the Taliban education ministry. On Saturday, all five schools were once again closed by authorities.

The UN has repeatedly urged the Taliban to ensure respect for international human rights.

Former Afghan MP: Taliban is a `gender apartheid’ regime

September 13, 2022 Current News Articles

By EDITH M. LEDERER

Associated Press

13 September 2022

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A former member of Afghanistan’s parliament urged the world on Monday to label the Taliban a “gender apartheid” regime because of its crackdown on human rights, saying the apartheid label was a catalyst for change in South Africa and can be a catalyst for change in Afghanistan.

Naheed Farid, a women’s rights activist who was the youngest-ever politician elected to parliament in 2010, told a U.N. news conference that as a result of severe restrictions on women’s movements, an end to secondary-school education for girls, and ban on jobs for women, “I’m hearing more and more stories from Afghan women choosing to take their life out of hopelessness and despair.”

“This is the ultimate indicator on how bad the situation is for Afghan women and girls — that they are choosing death, and that this is preferred for them than living under the Taliban regime,” she said.

Farid, now at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, said she isn’t the first person to call the Taliban a “gender apartheid” regime but she said “the inaction of the international community and decision-

She expressed hope that world leaders meeting next week for their annual gathering at the U.N. General Assembly would make time to meet and listen to Afghan women living in exile, and start grasping that “gender apartheid” is happening in Afghanistan because women are being “used and misused,” relegated to subordinate levels of society, and stripped of their human rights by the Taliban.

When the Taliban first ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, women and girls were subject to overwhelming restrictions — no education, no participation in public life, and women were required to wear the all-encompassing burqa.

Following the Taliban ouster by U.S. forces in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, and for the next 20 years, Afghan girls were not only enrolled in school but universities, and many women became doctors, lawyers, judges, members of parliament and owners of businesses, traveling without face coverings.

After the Taliban overran the capital on Aug. 15, 2021 as U.S. and NATO forces were in the final stages of their chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years, they promised a more moderate form of Islamic rule including allowing women to continue their education and work outside the home. They initially announced no dress code though they also vowed to impose Sharia, or Islamic law.

But Taliban hard-liners have since turned back the clock to their previous harsh rule, confirming the worst fears of rights activists and further complicating Taliban dealings with an already distrustful international community.

Farid accused the Taliban of using women as a “bargaining chip” to demand legitimacy, funds, and aid from the international community. She called this “very dangerous” because the full rights of Afghan women and girls must be a non-negotiable starting point for all negotiations with the Taliban.

Farid called on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, comprising 57 Muslim nations, and other countries to create a platform for Afghan women to directly negotiate with the Taliban on women’s rights and human rights issues. She also urged countries to maintain sanctions on the Taliban, for all 183 Taliban leaders to be kept on the U.N. sanctions blacklist, for a ban on Taliban representatives at the United Nations, and for all delegations meeting with the Taliban to include women.

Norway’s U.N. Ambassador Mona Juul, whose country oversees Afghanistan issues in the U.N. Security Council and organized the press conference, said that a year after the Taliban takeover “the situation or women and girls has deteriorated at a shocking scale and speed.” As one example, she said Afghanistan is now the only nation in the world that forbids girls from education beyond the sixth grade.

Najiba Sanjar, a human right activist and feminist said she was speaking to convey the voices of 17 million Afghan girls and women who have no voice now.

“We are all watching the sufferings of women, girls and minorities from the screens of our TVs as if an action movie is going on,” she told reporters. “A true form of injustice is taking place right in front of our eyes. And we are all watching silently and partaking in this sin by staying complacent and accepting it as a new normal.”

She pointed to a recent survey of women inside Afghanistan that found that only 4% of women reported always having enough food to eat, a quarter of women saying their income had dropped to zero, family violence and femicide increasing, and 57% of Afghan women married before the age of 19. She also cited families selling their daughters and their possessions to buy food.

Sanjar urged the international community to put all possible pressure on the Taliban to protect the rights of women and minorities to education and work while withholding diplomatic recognition.

“Because women’s rights are human rights, what is happening is already alarming for all women in the world,” she said.

Taliban says 40 rebel force members killed in northern Panjshir

September 13, 2022 Current News Articles

Reuters

September 13, 2022

KABUL, Sept 13 (Reuters) – The Taliban said on Tuesday they had killed 40 rebel force members, including four commanders, in the northern Afghan province of Panjshir.

The Taliban proclaimed victory over the province in September 2021, weeks after they took over the capital Kabul as foreign forces withdrew.

Resistance groups have since said they have been carrying out operations in the area and clashing with Taliban fighters.

The Taliban has in the past denied widespread fighting, saying they have established control of the entire country.

“Due to a clearance operation against rebels in Rekha, Dara and Afshar (areas) of Panjshir province, 40 have been killed including four commanders and 100 more have been arrested,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a Tweet on Tuesday.

The National Resistance Front, a group opposing the Taliban which has in the past claimed activity in the area, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Located just north of the capital Kabul, Panjshir is one of the smallest of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. It played a critical role in the resistance against Soviet occupation in the 1980s and was the centre of resistance against the Taliban when it ruled Afghanistan from to 1996 to 2001.

Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar; Writing by Charlotte Greenfield; editing by Jonathan Oatis

U.N. says three Afghan female staff temporarily detained by Taliban

September 13, 2022 Current News Articles

Reuters

September 12, 2022

KABUL, Sept 12 (Reuters) – The United Nations’ Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) on Monday said three of its female Afghan employees had been temporarily detained by Taliban security agents and called on the group to stop intimidation of its local female staff.

Taliban spokesmen said they strongly rejected the allegations.

UNAMA said in a statement that the three women employed by the U.N. had been singled out by armed security agents and detained for questioning temporarily on Monday, but did not provide further details about the incident.

“The UN calls for an immediate end to all such acts of intimidation and harassment targeting its Afghan female staff, calling on the de facto authorities to reiterate and enforce explicit guarantees for the safety and security of all U.N. personnel operating in Afghanistan,” the U.N. mission (UNAMA) said in a statement.

“There has been an emerging pattern of harassment of Afghan U.N. female staff by the de facto authorities,” UNAMA said, referring to the Taliban administration.

Taliban deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi told Reuters the Taliban rejected allegations of harassment, saying the incident involved Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice officials in the southern city of Kandahar.

“They wanted to know about a gathering of women, but then they realised that the gathering was related to U.N. female workers, they left them alone,” he said.

Since the Taliban took over the country just over a year ago, no foreign capital has recognised the group’s government and strict sanctions have isolated Afghanistan financially.

That has left many countries without an embassy in Kabul and caused the international community to cut development aid, leaving the United Nations and other NGOs to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid that is aimed at meeting urgent needs.

The group has placed growing restrictions on women’s access to public life, closing girls’ high schools in most provinces and saying women should cover their faces in public and not travel long distances without a male guardian. read more

Figures from international organisations show women’s participation in the workforce has declined, though some women are still working outside the home.

Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Alex Richardson

Over 300 Former Govt Officials, Traders Returned to Country: Commission

September 13, 2022 Current News Articles

Banafsha Binesh

Tolo News

12 September 2022

Some senior former government officials have returned to the country over the past several weeks.

The “Commission for the Return and Communications with Former Afghan Officials and Political Figures” said that over 300 officials of the former government and traders have returned to the country within the past four months.

A spokesman for the commission, Ahmadullah Wasiq, acknowledged that some of the officials who returned to the country have left the country again but said that their leaving was due to personal issues.

There are reports that some of the former government officials, including Dawlat Waziri, the former Defense Ministry spokesman, Amanullah Ghalib, former head of the Breshna Shirkat, and Kamal Nasir Osuli, former member of the parliament, have returned to the country and then left again.

“Hundreds of them have received the forms to return to the country. I don’t think it is necessary to publicize their names before their arrival. We are in contact with them, some of them left the country for treatment or to transfer their families,” Wassiq said.

However, some senior former government officials have returned to the country over the past several weeks.

“There is a need for more work to be done. It (Islamic Emirate) should make contact with more people and ask for cooperation from other people, other tribes in the country, thus a reconciliation path will be laid,” said Amanullah Hotaki, a political analyst.

“Some certain people returned but some others have not returned and the actions of the commission have not been very noticeable in the country. There was no representative and no plan or roadmap of how the individuals can return,” said Rahamatullah Bizhanpor, a political analyst.

According to Wassiq, the cases of the former government will be addressed based on the procedures of the commission and if they are accused of corruption by the former government they will be granted amnesty based on the decree of the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate.

Closing of Girls’ Schools Sparks Continued Criticism

September 13, 2022 Current News Articles

TOLOnews

TV Network

13 September 2022

She said that Afghanistan is the only country where girls can’t go to school.

Norway’s ambassador and permanent representative to the UN, Tine Mørch Smith, expressed criticism toward the closure of girls’ school above grade six in Afghanistan.

She said that Afghanistan is the only country where girls can’t go to school.

“One year after the Taliban takeover the situation for women and girls has deteriorated on a shocking scale … one grim example, is that Afghanistan is now the only nation in the world that forbids girls’ education. Almost one year has passed since Taliban banned teenage girls from schools,” she told a press conference.

Addressing the same press conference, the human rights activist Najiba Sanjar expressed concerns over deprivation of Afghan girls from their basic rights.

“The schools are closed, women are unemployed, family violence and femicide have increased. Fifty-seven percent of Afghan women are married before the age of 19, women-led organizations and human rights organization are shut down and others continue to face hundreds of restrictions every day,” Sanjar said.

Meanwhile, the Public Health Minister, Qalindar Ibad that the said Islamic Emarat is not against the education of girls and these schools will not be closed for ever.

“There is a mechanism underway regarding the girls’ school. The Islamic Emirate has never issued a decisive order that the schools will not be reopened,” Ibad said.

This comes as students expressed frustration, saying that they have been faded up with the promises.

“All of the summits held by the UN are at the level of tweets and there are no practical steps in this regard,” said Samina, a student.

“I have three daughters. They are in grades 10, 11 and 12. They are now suffering from mental pressure and when I see them, it affects me as well,” said Hamira, a student.

Earlier, the acting education minister Noorullah Munir claimed that people did not want their girls to attend school in the current situation.

Restrictions Will Cause Distance Between Kabul, World: Islamic Emirate

September 13, 2022 Current News Articles

TOLOnews

TV Network

13 September 2022

UN expert decries ‘systematic’ attacks on Afghan Shia groups

September 13, 2022 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

Published on 12 September 2022

A UN expert warns that Hazaras and other Shia communities in Afghanistan are facing ‘systematic’ attacks that may amount to international crimes.

Hazara and other Shia Muslim communities in Afghanistan are facing what seem to be “systematic” attacks that could amount to international crimes, a United Nations expert has warned.

Afghanistan’s Hazaras have faced decades of abuse and state-sponsored discrimination, including by the ruling Taliban, which first ran the country from 1996 to 2001 and then seized power again in August last year.

Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, said on Monday Hazara and other groups have been “arbitrary arrested, tortured, summarily executed, displaced from traditional lands, subjected to discriminatory taxation and otherwise marginalised”.

They are also the frequent target of attacks, including by the Taliban’s enemy, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), which considers them heretics.

“These attacks appear to be systematic in nature and reflect elements of an organisational policy,” Bennett said as he presented his first report to the UN Human Rights Council.

He added the attacks bear the “hallmarks of international crimes and need to be fully investigated”. International crimes refer to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Last month, United States-based rights group Human Rights Watch said the Taliban has failed to protect the Hazaras and other at-risk communities in Afghanistan, undermining the armed group’s promise of greater security.

Since the Taliban’s return to power, the ISKP has claimed responsibility for 13 attacks against Hazaras and has been linked to at least three more, killing and wounding at least 700 people, the rights group said.

‘Human rights crisis’

Bennett, who began his work in May, warned the rights situation in the country has deteriorated across the board.

“Afghans are trapped in a human rights crisis that the world has seemed powerless to address,” he said.

“There’s no country in the world where women and girls have so rapidly been deprived of their fundamental human rights purely because of gender.”

The overall humanitarian situation was dire, with nearly half the population facing acute levels of food shortage, he added.

“Children in particular are facing extreme hunger and high risks of exploitation, including forced labour and marriage,” he said.

Despite an amnesty, people who served in the Afghan army, security forces and Western-backed government prior to the Taliban takeover in August 2021, still faced “arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances”, he said.

Bennett called on the international community to do more to address the situation and to ensure accountability.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

Exclusive: Canada agrees to resettle Afghans held in UAE facility

September 12, 2022 Current News Articles

Reuters

September 9, 2022

Summary

Canada agrees to U.S. request, sources say
Afghans held in UAE for months
UAE does not resettle refugees

DUBAI/WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Canada will accept some 1,000 Afghans who fled the Taliban takeover of their homeland and have been held for months in a makeshift refugee centre in the United Arab Emirates awaiting resettlement to the United States and elsewhere, seven sources said.

Ottawa has agreed to a U.S. request to resettle some of the 5,000 Afghans still in Emirates Humanitarian City in Abu Dhabi, the sources said, and Canadian officials were now reviewing cases to identify those who meet Ottawa’s resettlement criteria.

It is the first known occasion of Afghans in the facility being resettled to a country to which they do not have direct ties with, such as by having worked with their government in Afghanistan.

Canada’s criteria for resettlement of those from the facility include religious minorities, single women, civil servants, social activists and journalists, the sources said.

Beyond the 1,000 people that Canada is taking at the request of the United States, Ottawa is also expected to take roughly a further 500 Afghans from the facility who do have ties to Canada, the sources said.

“It is happening,” said a U.S. source, who asked not to be further identified, confirming the Canadian resettlement operation expected to begin this month and end in October.

Asked about the arrangement, the Canadian embassy in Abu Dhabi shared an immigration department statement saying Ottawa’s priority was to support vulnerable Afghans getting to Canada.

Emirati authorities and the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi did not respond to requests for comment.

Mohammad, who said he was a legal adviser to U.S. government projects in Afghanistan, told Reuters from the facility that he had applied with his family for Canadian resettlement because the processing of their U.S. Special Immigration Visa applications has taken so long.

“Because of the delays, we decided to put our names on the list,” Mohammad said in a telephone interview on the condition that his last name be withheld. Like other Afghans there, he described the conditions in the facility as similar to “jail”.

“We have no freedom. We cannot go anywhere.”

Mohammad and his family are Hazaras, an ethnic minority that is overwhelmingly Shi’ite Muslim.

Canada’s decision to accept the Afghans brings the temporary refugee centre closer to closing, though sources said there was about another 1,000 who were not eligible to be relocated to the United States and would need resettlement elsewhere.

The UAE, a close security partner of the United States, last year agreed to temporarily house several thousand Afghans evacuated from Kabul as the Taliban ousted the U.S.-backed government during the final stages of the U.S.-led withdrawal.

More than 10,000 have since been relocated from the facility to the United States, while others were resettled to nations to which they had ties such as through working with their government in Afghanistan.

Protests have sporadically broken out at the facility, including last month, over what Afghans complain is a lack of communication and transparency of the resettlement process. There has been at least one suicide attempt, according to sources and Afghans in the centre.

The Canadian immigration department statement said Ottawa plans to resettle at least 40,000 vulnerable Afghans to Canada by 2024. More than 17,650 had been resettled, it added.

Like other Gulf states, the UAE is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and typically does not accept refugees. Foreign diplomats said some Afghans had rejected job offers in the UAE as there was no clear pathway to citizenship.

U.S. officials have said no one would be forcibly returned to Afghanistan and that Washington was working with the UAE and other nations to find “resettlement options” for those Afghans ineligible for resettlement in the United States.

The United States has so far taken in more than 85,000 Afghans since August 2021.

By EDITH M. LEDERER

‘Human rights crisis’

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