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FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE
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FIRST
Note by Gino d'Artali
Indept investigative journalist
Below you can read a number of quotes/excerpts I compiled of international
broadcasters and magazines about the situation of Afghanistan's Women Resistence.
At the end of each quote/excerpt there is a link to the full article (incl. from
the broadcaster's complete article).
Note from Gino d'Artali: The following quotes/excerpts from Rukhshana Media do
not have an excact date but Sept is correct. I put my hands in the fire for
them.
And Rukhshana Media: In my memory of course I new of the existence of the German
weekly magazine 'Der Spiegel/The Mirror' because I also have lived there before
and after the cold war and it is a magazine I wholeheartedly recommend!
And I found an article titled:
<<A Paradox for the Taliban
Resistance in Afghanistan Appears to Be Growing.
After almost two decades as a guerilla movement, the Taliban have completely
underestimated what it means to run a state. It will be extremely difficult for
them to keep Afghanistan under control.
By Christoph Reuter
25.08.2021
I will not quote some parts here but simply advice you to really read it and
feel supported and to spread the word!
Now you may think that it's an old story but my mother always said to me <Mi
figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da
qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so called
'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali < My mother (1931-1997).
Read more here:
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-paradox-for-the-taliban-resistance-in-afghanistan-appears-to-be-growing-a-661beb11-035f-4eee-a749-b40c153055b9
And Sisters in danger and rage because of the taliban: Know that worldwide
thousands i.e. hundreds of thousands of women and feminists are behind you and
supporting you the best they can.
Gino d'Artali, indept investigative journalist and radical feminist.
Also on this page afghanistan's parents of daughters and a number of
international media, incl. cryfreedom.net, if the taliban will keep to their
word that girls, teens and students will be allowed to go to school (again).
I'd like to refer to a very brave Afghani teenage girl who nearly payed with her
life for saying <One pencil, one book, one teacher.>
Malala Yousafhai
Malala
Yousafhai 2
The Guardian
<<The long read
‘I pleaded for help. No one wrote back’: the pain of watching my country fall to
the Taliban
As the fighters advanced on Kabul, it was civilians who mobilised to help with
the evacuation. In the absence of a plan, the hardest decisions fell on
inexperienced volunteers, and the stress began to tell.
by Zarlasht Halaimzai
In the weeks before Kabul fell, my mind was strangely calm. There is a moment
just before the world falls apart, when human beings almost believe they can
reverse the sequence of events that has brought them to this point – a flash of
magical thinking in which they can will a different reality into existence. On 2
July, when the Americans left Bagram airbase, I woke up in London with a
horrible headache. My phone was inundated with messages of disbelief. <I am so
sorry about it,> a few friends wrote, but they couldn’t name <it>. I couldn’t
name it either.
I’d never been to the Bagram airbase, but I knew it as the sprawling capital of
American power in Afghanistan, an impenetrable fortress about 30 miles north of
Kabul that had accommodated tens of thousands of troops for almost two decades,
along with the latest military technology, a jail where detainees had been
tortured, a spa where soldiers could get a manicure, and fast-food vendors
selling hamburgers. How did the Americans leave this carefully crafted citadel
without telling anyone? <Gone in the darkness of the night, like thieves,> my
father said, at our home in London, barely concealing his shock as he glanced up
from his tablet. He had been glued to the news for days. We have family and
friends in Afghanistan, and we worried about what would happen to them if the
situation deteriorated.
I was born in Afghanistan, and spent most of my childhood there. When I was 11,
my family fled Kabul, driven out by the war. For four years we lived like
nomads, waiting to get back to our home. In the 1990s, while different factions
jockeyed for power, we still believed we would go home. But when the Taliban
took over in 1996, that hope became untenable, and we ended up in London seeking
asylum.
At the time that my family became exiles, Afghans were reeling from the long
proxy war that the US and Russia fought in the country for most of the 80s. In
the midst of the cold war, the US had helped arm and train Afghan militia groups
to fight against the Soviet-backed communist government. Both sides committed
terrible atrocities, and ordinary Afghans were caught in the middle. Throughout
this brutal clash of empires, the US promised Afghans prosperity once the
Russians were defeated.
Afghanistan was at the forefront of US foreign policy in this period. In 1982,
Ronald Reagan proclaimed 21 March as Afghanistan Day, <to commemorate the valor
of the Afghan people and to condemn the continuing Soviet invasion of their
country>. The following year, he invited the mujahideen to the White House as
defenders of human rights. But none of this brought safety or security to the
Afghan people. No matter how Afghans have tried to make good on this alliance,
the principal feature of the relationship between the US and Afghanistan has
always been force.
When I was little, I read a Russian fairytale in which a cruel king set the man
whose wife he coveted a series of gruelling tasks, in the hope that the man
would disappear and never come back. When the man completed all the tasks, the
king sent him on an impossible mission: Go there, I don’t know where; get that,
I don’t know what.
In their rage after 9/11, the Americans, supported by 42 countries including the
UK, invaded Afghanistan. Their aim was to take out al-Qaida and the Taliban.
When enough bombs had been dropped on a country already so devastated by war
that it could barely support life, the US set the Afghans a series of impossible
tasks to rebuild Afghanistan in its image.
The Afghans tried. After 20 years, during which there emerged a fragile
democracy, universities, a commission for human rights, Afghan Idol, Sesame
Street, Valentine-themed cafes in Kabul, a tiny trade in pomegranates and grapes
(the best grapes and pomegranates in the world) and a whole generation of young
Afghans hungry for a better life, the story turned much darker. For Afghans
watching the US sign a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020, there was
an unnerving feeling that we could see what was coming, that there was nothing
we could do to prevent the impending disaster.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/30/i-pleaded-for-help-no-one-wrote-back-the-pain-of-watching-my-country-fall-to-the-taliban
The Guardian
30 Sept 2021
By Emma Graham-Harrison in Lashkar Gah
<<Uncertainty hovers over Helmand’s schools as Taliban ban older girls.
At Malalay school in Lashkar Gah, female staff struggle into work despite
anxiety over their jobs and half their pupils missing.
The walls of the Malalay school, in the centre of Lashkar Gah, Helmand, are
pockmarked with bullets from the last weeks of bitter fighting between the
Taliban and government forces, the glass in its windows shattered by a blast.
Its teachers have not been paid for two months and several say they were bombed
out of their homes in the final battles, but they are staggering on, somehow,
for their students, most of them girls.
<My home has been destroyed by a bombing, even my shoes have been ripped to
pieces, but I am still willing to come here and work,> said one geography
teacher, Arezoo Sayedi, who shared photos of fragments from the shell that
ripped apart her home weeks earlier. <We are all crowded into just one room, to
try and avoid the mosquitoes.> They are missing almost half their students and
unclear about the future of their jobs. The Taliban have brought in a de facto
ban on education for teenage girls. Boys in grades 7 to 12 have been back at
school for nearly two weeks, while girls have been ordered to stay at home.
Those girls make up 1,600 of the Malalay school’s 3,600 female students, and it
is unclear if they will ever be allowed back, or what will happen to the jobs of
the women employed to teach them. The school also educates 600 boys in
segregated classes in grades 1 to 3.
Teachers who are mothers of teenage girls say they will leave Afghanistan unless
their daughters are allowed to study, even though they want to stay in their
homes and jobs. <My daughter is in 8th grade and she is still at home,> said one
teacher, whose family fled Afghanistan the first time the Taliban came to power,
a generation ago, allowing her to get an education. <If schools don’t restart
here, our family is ready to go and be refugees again.> The Taliban have asked
women – many of them educated abroad last time the group were in power – to
return to work in the healthcare and education sectors, while blocking the
training of a new generation. The irony is not lost on Afghan women.
“A society without women is not a society. We need educated women to become
professionals. Women need female doctors, they shouldn’t have to go and see a
man when they are sick,” said the Malalay schoolteacher who plans to leave if
her daughter cannot study. She asked not to be named.
There has been no official statement about plans for women’s education, although
several Taliban officials have said that girls secondary education will resume
soon. But without any details of why girls are still at home, many Afghan women
who lived through the Taliban’s rule in the 1990s are sceptical. Then the group
claimed to recognise women’s right to an education under Islam, but said
security was not good enough for girls to attend school. That near total ban
lasted throughout the five years they were in power, though some girls were
educated in underground schools, or went to primary classes dressed as boys. The
trend was repeated in parts of Helmand that the Taliban controlled before they
seized the rest of Afghanistan this August, leading to fears they would ban
girls’ education nationwide.
However, in Lashkar Gah, Abdullah Spilanay, a school principal, said that the
Taliban had and told him to restart classes for younger students, although they
had not provided any money for the school or its teachers.
<The Taliban contacted us, and said there is no problem with women teaching
girls, the teachers can carry on working,> said Spilanay, who has been at the
school for two decades and is the only male teacher working there. <It was a
surprising day. They came here and met with 40 teachers, called us brothers and
sisters, and what worries we had in our hearts [about being able to continue
work] have been dispelled.>
The joyful chatter of young girls heading to and from class filters into the
staffroom where we talk.
This reassurance has not been converted into the funds the school needs,
however. <Economically there is no reason for them to keep teaching,> Spilanay
said of the staff, who have not been paid for two months.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/30/uncertainty-hovers-over-helmands-schools-as-taliban-ban-older-girls
Al Jazeera
30 Sept 2021
<<Qatar calls Taliban moves on girls education ‘very disappointing’.
In a joint press conference with EU’s Josep Borrell, Sheikh Mohammed called on
the Taliban to maintain ‘gains’ made in past years.
Qatar’s top diplomat says the Taliban’s moves on girls’ education in Afghanistan
are <very disappointing> and <a step backwards>, and called on the group’s
leadership to look to Doha for how to run an Islamic system. Foreign Minister
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was referring to, among other things,
the Taliban’s refusal to allow Afghan female secondary school students to resume
their studies, weeks after the group took power.
He spoke at a news conference on Thursday with European Union Foreign Policy
Chief Josep Borrell in Doha.
<The recent actions that we have seen unfortunately in Afghanistan, it has been
very disappointing to see some steps being taken backwards,> he said.
Doha has become a key broker in Afghanistan following last month’s withdrawal of
US forces, helping to evacuate thousands of foreigners and Afghans, engaging the
new Taliban rulers and supporting operations at Kabul airport. <We need to keep
engaging them and urging them not to take such actions, and we have also been
trying to demonstrate for the Taliban how Muslim countries can conduct their
laws, how they can deal with the women’s issues,> said Sheikh Mohammed.
<One of the examples is the State of Qatar, which is a Muslim country; our
system is an Islamic system [but] we have women outnumbering men in workforces,
in government and in higher education.
The Taliban follows an extremely strict interpretation of Islamic law that
segregates men and women, and have also slashed women’s access to work.
.................The Taliban follows an extremely strict interpretation of
Islamic law that segregates men and women, and have also slashed women’s access
to work. It has been almost two weeks since girls were prevented from going to
secondary school, and isolated rallies led by women have broken out across
Afghanistan in recent days. > >>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/30/qatar-taliban-afghanistan-eu-borrell
Al Jazeera
29 Sept 2021
Ali M Latifi
<<‘Death knell’: Afghan journalists fear new Taliban media rules.
Journalists, rights workers, worried that 11 new directives issued by the
Taliban may lead to censorship of the media.
In spite of Taliban promises of a <free and independent> media, journalists and
media workers have faced detention, physical abuse and torture since the group
took over Afghanistan six weeks ago. Now a new set of media regulations issued
earlier this week by the Taliban has journalists and rights workers worrying
that the group is moving towards outright censorship of the media – reviving
memories of its repressive rule in the 1990s.
The 11 directives include a requirement that: <Media outlets will prepare
detailed reports in coordination with the Government Media and Information
Center (GMIC),> which is currently headed by Mohammad Yusuf Ahmadi, a former
spokesman for the group during their 20-year rebellion against the US
occupation. The media did face challenges under previous Afghan administrations,
including the government of former President Ashraf Ghani, which often came
under criticism for its lack of transparency and hostile attitudes towards the
media.
Despite these difficulties, though, Afghanistan had the distinction of having a
higher press freedom rating than Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, India, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. But since the takeover, journalists are finding it
increasingly difficult to operate under the Taliban’s so-called <Islamic
Emirate>.
Taliban’s mouthpieces
Sami Mahdi, a well-known television journalist who recently published a report
on the state of the media under Taliban rule, says the group has been sending
very clear signs about its attitude towards the media since their August 15
takeover. <From the day the Taliban took over Kabul, the media has been facing a
lot of pressure and violence from the Taliban side … Just for doing their daily
job,> Mahdi said, referring to recent reports of violence and intimidation
against covering demonstrations and interviewing daily labourers.
Mahdi said this reliance on force and aggression, <sends a clear message to the
media, that they should become the Taliban’s mouthpieces,> if they want to
survive. >>
Read more here (especially a female's journalist opinion):
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/29/afghan-journalists-skeptical-of-new-taliban-media-regulations
The Guardian
<<Fears grow for photojournalist arrested by Taliban as executions resume.
Taliban deny Morteza Samadi, 21, has been sentenced to death but family
concerned for his safety after he was detained while covering women’s protests
in Herat.
Rights and freedom is supported by
Humanity United
Zahra Joya and Ruchi Kumar
Wed 29 Sep 2021
After rumours circulated online that Morteza had been sentenced to death, the
Taliban released a statement denying he was about to be executed and said that
they would release him after he had been cleared by <national security>.
Morteza’s family has only been allowed a one-minute phone call with him since
his arrest on 7 September and has not received any information about what he may
be charged with.
Mustafa Samadi, Morteza’s brother, told the Guardian that the Taliban have not
shared any details of where or in what conditions he is being held. The family
said he was arrested after Taliban fighters stopped him while he was working and
found images of the protests and social media posts on his phone. Mustafa said:
<I have [had] no news on my brother’s fate for three weeks.> The family believe
he may have been charged with inciting protests. <My brother has not committed
any crime and should not be sentenced to death. He should be released,> he said.
The Taliban’s treatment of journalists and their attacks on free speech since
gaining control of Afghanistan has drawn criticism from across the world.
On 19 September, the government announced 11 rules that imposed severe
restrictions on free speech in the country, laying the groundwork for the
detention of journalists.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/sep/29/fears-grow-for-photojournalist-arrested-by-taliban-as-executions-resume
Al Jazeera
28 Sept 2021
By Federico Marsi
<<Medics overwhelmed as Afghanistan healthcare crumbles.
Hundreds of health facilities have shut their doors to patients since aid money
to Afghanistan was halted amid a mounting humanitarian crisis.
Since fleeing Afghanistan shortly before the Taliban takeover last month,
Farhana has been unable to find peace. Nightmares take her back to the moments
she jostled among a crowd of thousands to enter the gate of Kabul’s airport. The
34-year-old gynaecologist was among tens of thousands of Afghans who left the
country within days of the Taliban’s return to power 20 years after they were
removed in a US-led military invasion.
She is assailed by sorrow and guilt for the patients she has left behind at the
public maternity hospital in the western city of Herat, where she was one of
eight Afghan female health workers trained by Italy’s Umberto Veronesi
Foundation to diagnose breast cancer. <I am so, so incredibly sorry for them,>
Farhana – whose name was changed to protect her identity – told Al Jazeera from
Italy.
Patients keep arriving at the now-closed centre only to find it shut, she is
told by those who stayed behind. <These people are in need, I hope we can find a
way to reopen it in the future,> Farhana said.
‘Close to death’
Health workers, both public and private, who remain in Afghanistan are battling
a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions, with dwindling personnel and
resources as the country’s healthcare system nears collapse. Tankred Stöbe,
medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders (MSF), was on duty at MSF’s
inpatient therapeutic feeding centre in Herat when a toddler named Sabratullah
was brought in three weeks ago.
<He was close to death,> Stöbe told Al Jazeera. <He couldn’t respond, his eyes
were sunken, he couldn’t eat or drink by himself any more.> The 18-months-old
boy’s body weight was down to 3.5kg (7.7 pounds) – the weight of a healthy
newborn – and Stöbe and his team rushed to inject his feeble body with a
nutritious solution.
<To see this little boy on the verge of starvation, in a city where you see food
at every corner, is heart-breaking,> Stöbe said. Herat is considered one of
Afghanistan’s agricultural and business hubs.
In the wake of Kabul’s fall to the Taliban, the US froze nearly $9bn in assets
belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank. Moreover, the country was cut off from
international financial institutions, resulting in a liquidity crunch that
forced local banks to set a withdrawal limit of 20,000 afghani ($200) per week.
But many complain of not being able to access even this sum.
One in three Afghans is estimated to be acutely food insecure due to high food
prices and increasing poverty, among other factors, with the situation likely to
get worse, aid agencies say. While needs are soaring, nearly 2,000 donor-funded
health facilities have closed or are partially operational after international
donors halted aid money due to concerns over funding a Taliban government.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/9/28/medics-in-afghanistan-face-tough-choices-as-healthcare-crumbles
Rukhshana Media
Sept 2021
<<Wish wisdom. What did rural women lose in the Taliban regime?
Shamsia, 35, married a man who had been a victim of the civil war when she was
16 years old. The teenage girl who, every time she saw her husband's severed
foot, remembered the fire of the war that had burned her childhood.
After the fall of the Taliban regime, she forgot about the wars with the birth
of her two children.
Four years ago, when Shamsia's husband fell ill, she was forced to sell the
small shop they owned in the village and move to the center of Samangan province
for treatment. But her husband dies and Shamsia is left alone with her two
children.
With the help of the people of one of the villages in the city of Aibak, she
finally owns a house where she still lives. Little by little, she turns to waqf,
and her daughter and son (Nabila and Navid) go back to school, and the mother
spends her time in temporary houses (laundry and rural jobs, and relatively
capitalist families need workers). The wages she earns are changing.> >>
Read more here:
https://rukhshana.com/what-did-rural-women-lose-only
Rukhshana Media
Letter to the Taliban; Let the girls go to school.
27 Sept 2021
Fakhrieh Joya
<<I am an Afghan girl whose goals were reduced to zero in one hour. After a year
and a half of trying to get to Kabul University, I woke up at night. The sprouts
of hope and excitement for entering the university grew every day until Kabul
fell and I suddenly became numb.
In your system (Taliban) the results of the entrance exam were announced and I
got 300 points; But I was not excited. I did not shed tears of joy. I shed tears
of despair. I was not happy with my success, I was sad. Because it was no longer
possible to study the way I wanted to. No, it was not even possible for me to go
to university anymore. Everything was closed to the girls, especially Omid.
I am now an immigrant teenager, a landless and stateless person. Someone whose
small life is in crisis and everything he had planned is ruined. But I think of
my peers. They are in utter despair. They are not even safe like souls, let
alone their wishes and aspirations.
I ask you (the Taliban) not to commit genocide. Despair is also a form of
genocide. * Reopen girls' schools, universities and colleges. Let them breathe.
To live.
Read more here:
https://rukhshana.com/afghan-girls-letter-to-the-taliban
The Guardian
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
27 Sep 2021
<<Taliban threatening Chevening scholars’ families, says MP.
Caroline Lucas warns five of those studying in Brighton feel desperate about
relatives’ safety in Afghanistan.
Chevening scholars from Afghanistan are receiving threatening messages from the
Taliban about what they intend to do to harm their relatives back in their place
of birth, according to their local MP, Caroline Lucas. Nine of the 35 scholars
evacuated from Afghanistan were due to study at the University of Sussex in
Brighton, but five of them have not been allowed to bring their families to
safety with them. Foreign Office rules allowed only “immediate family” such as
spouses or dependent children under 18 on to the emergency evacuation flights.
Lucas, the MP for Brighton Pavilion, said their families had elderly dependent
parents or dependent siblings still in Afghanistan, and in all cases the five
scholars were the primary breadwinners for the households. She said the five
were <absolutely desperate about their families’ safety with their anguish
heightened by the knowledge that their families are at risk precisely because of
their decision to take up their Chevening placements – placements which mark
them out as ‘collaborators’ with the UK>. Their names are being withheld for
security purposes.
Lukas said the fathers of two of the scholars were murdered by the Taliban two
years ago, and they were receiving WhatsApp messages from the Taliban
threatening the lives of the rest of their families.
One of the Chevening scholars said he was hearing reports that the Taliban were
trying to buy young school-age girls who were their relatives.
Lucas said she had sought to raise the issue with the Foreign Office, Home
Office and Chevening secretariat but had been met with <a deafening silence>.
She said the government had failed to offer any clear assurance to those still
trying to leave Afghanistan on how they would be helped. The government has said
it will take 5,000 refugees in the first year and up to 20,000 over as long as
five years, but the scheme has still not opened.
Lucas said on the basis of the number of British nationals from Afghanistan in
her constituency seeking help, the scheme would be massively oversubscribed. She
said parliament had gone into recess due to the party conference season with
only the bare bones of the Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme announced on 20
August in existence.
In a letter to the prime minister, she complained the government was telling MPs
that individuals needed to wait for the scheme to open, with no indication of
when that would be and apparently no idea how many of the 5,000 places for the
first year were already committed.
Lucas said: <My estimate based on my caseload is that there could be more than
33,000 family members alone that meet the scheme’s criteria, let alone those in
the specified at-risk groups, so even 20,000 places over five years falls
shamefully short. The government does not appear to know how many of the 5,000
places on the scheme will need to be allocated in the first instance to eligible
Afghans already in the UK, such as 500 who were evacuated on Operation Pitting
flights but did not qualify for Arap [the Afghan relocations and assistance
policy], or to those that have crossed the border and are in refugee camps.>
She added: <The government is also directing people towards a visa process that,
by its own admission, is impossible to fulfil and, when it does get up and
running, will incur all the usual charges and minimum income criteria.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/27/taliban-threatening-chevening-scholars-families-says-mp
Al Jazeera
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
27 Sep 2021
<<The international criminal court’s new prosecutor has asked the court to
relaunch an inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity committed by the
Taliban and supporters of Islamic State in Afghanistan since 2003. The move by
Karim Khan shows a determination to use international law to investigate not
only past but also contemporary crimes against humanity. The Hague-based ICC has
notified the Taliban via Afghanistan’s embassy in the Netherlands that it
intends to resume an investigation. A previous ICC inquiry was deferred in April
2020 following a request by the then Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani to be
given time to gather evidence in cooperation with ICC lawyers. Khan, a British
QC who is three months into his nine-year tenure as ICC prosecutor, said <odious
and criminal acts should stop immediately and investigations commence to
vindicate the principles that were established 75 years ago at Nuremberg and to
honour humanity’s basic responsibility to itself>.
His submission states there is no longer the prospect of a genuine and effective
domestic investigation into crimes within Afghanistan. His proposal includes a
plan to deprioritise but not drop any alleged war crimes committed by the US and
the Afghan army since they are not ongoing.
<The current de facto control of the territory of Afghanistan by the Taliban,
and its implications (including for law enforcement and judicial activity in
Afghanistan), represents a fundamental change in circumstances necessitating the
present application,> the submission states.
The prosecutor will face criticism for deprioritising the US from the
investigation. But he states <the gravity, scale and continuing nature of the
alleged crimes by the Taliban and the Islamic State which include attacks on
civilians, targeted extrajudicial executions, persecution of women and girls,
crimes against children demand focus and proper resources from my office if we
are to construct credible cases capable of being proved beyond reasonable doubt
in the courtroom>.
One of the criteria for deciding whether to resume the stalled inquiry turns on
the extent to which domestic legal remedies are available.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/27/icc-asked-to-relaunch-inquiry-into-taliban-and-is-war-crimes
Al Jazeera
27 Sept 2021
<<Afghanistan envoy withdraws from UN General Assembly debate.
Isaczai, ambassador for the government overthrown by the Taliban, was due to
speak on Monday.
Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United Nations has pulled out of delivering an
address to world leaders at the General Assembly on Monday.
Ghulam Isaczai, who represented president Ashraf Ghani’s government that was
overthrown last month, was due to defy the Taliban with a speech but his name
was removed from the list of speakers.
“We have received information that the Member State [Afghanistan] withdrew its
participation in the General Debate which was scheduled for today,” Monica
Grayley, spokesperson for the assembly’s president, told Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera
was unable to reach Isaczai or the Afghanistan’s mission to the UN despite
repeated attempts. Grayley had earlier told AFP news agency that Afghanistan’s
mission to the UN did not give a reason for the withdrawal. The move came amid
competing claims for Afghanistan’s UN seat in New York after the Taliban seized
power last month.
President Ghani fled the country after the Taliban retook Afghanistan 20 years
after it was removed from power in a United States-led military invasion. Last
week, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi asked to address the gathering
of world leaders at the United Nations and nominated the group’s Doha-based
spokesman Suhail Shaheen as Afghanistan’s UN ambassador.
Isaczai has not commented on the withdrawal.
On September 20, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres received a letter signed
by Muttaqi, saying that President Ghani was “ousted” and that countries across
the world <no longer recognise him as president>. Therefore, Isaczai no longer
represents Afghanistan, Muttaqi added in the letter.
During the Taliban’s rule between 1996 and 2001, the UN had refused to recognise
its government. Instead, it gave Afghanistan’s seat to the previous government
of President Burhanuddin Rabbani. The Taliban has said it wants international
recognition and financial help to rebuild the war-battered country, but the
makeup of the new Taliban government has posed a dilemma for the UN.
Several of Taliban’s interim ministers are on the UN’s blacklist of
international <terrorists and funders of terrorism>
The Taliban has accused the US of violating the 2020 Doha Agreement, as it
demanded that its leaders should be taken off the <terror> list.
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/27/no-one-from-afghanistan-will-address-world-leaders-at
Al Jazeera
Ali M Latifi
27 Sept 2021
<<Taliban takes on ISKP, its most serious foe in Afghanistan.
Afghan group cracks down on ISKP (ISIS-K) members after a series of deadly
attacks, but experts say it won’t be an easy task.
After taking over Afghanistan last month, the Taliban claimed that security <has
been assured> and that the county was taken out of the <quagmire of war>. But a
series of attacks carried out by an affiliate of the ISIL (ISIS) group in recent
weeks has shattered the claims of security.
In the six weeks since the Taliban came to power, there have been reports of
Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), attacks and activity in the
cities of Kabul, Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif.
On the evening of August 26, just 11 days after the Taliban takeover of the
country, ISKP claimed responsibility for a bombing at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai
International Airport. That attack led to the deaths of more than 180 people and
injuries to hundreds of others.
In the last several weeks, several attacks have been reported in the city of
Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, and one of ISKP’s most common
targets. The recent attacks, including IED explosions, killed civilians and
purported Taliban fighters. In a Telegram message, ISKP claimed to have killed
up to 35 Taliban fighters in Jalalabad, a figure the Taliban denies. Each of
these instances has been met with harsh words from the Taliban, who continue to
pledge to eradicate any forces loyal to the ISIL group. Deputy Minister of
Information and Culture Zabihullah Mujahid told Al Jazeera that the group is
actively <hunting down those who are sowing chaos in the country.
Taliban crackdown
The Taliban has launched a crackdown on ISKP members, with reported detention of
at least 80 purported fighters in Nangarhar – an ISKP stronghold.
The Taliban also claimed to have killed Mawlawi Ziya ul-Haq, also known as Abu
Omar Khorasani, the former leader of ISKP, in Kabul’s notorious Pul-e-Charkhi
prison. The Afghan group has also been credited with the death of Farooq
Bengalzai, an ISIL leader from Pakistan who was reportedly killed while
travelling in southwestern Afghanistan.
On August 28, the Taliban was accused of arresting Shaikh Abu Obaidullah
Mutawakil, a well-known Salafist scholar, in the capital Kabul. A week later,
Mutawakil was found dead. The Taliban denied any part in Mutawakil’s death, but
that has done little to ease the suspicions. Furthering those doubts is the fact
that within weeks of Mutawakil’s killing, the Taliban had also closed more than
three dozen Salafist mosques across 16 different provinces. There is the fear
that the Taliban could be borrowing from the playbook of former Afghan
governments, which had been accused of unlawful detentions, extrajudicial
killings and of using labels like Taliban, ISKP and al-Qaeda to go after any
potential unwanted elements without providing proper evidence.>>
Opinion from Gino d'Artali: Now do not think that any enemy of the taliban is
your friend. It would not surprise me if Afghanistan is at the edge of a civil
war with 4 evently going to battle each other: the taliban; ISIS; ISKP (ISIS-K)
and Al Quaida and in my opinion all are Terrorists!
However might win the innocent women are the ones loosing apart from families;
elderly and children in general.
Do read the Al Jazeera article here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/27/afghanistan-taliban-promises-to-eradicate-groups-seeking-chaos
Al Jazeera
26 Sept 2021
<<Italy rules out recognising a Taliban government in Afghanistan.
Italy’s FM urges foreign governments to prevent financial collapse that would
result in a massive flow of migrants.
Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Luigi Di Maio has said the Taliban government
in Afghanistan could not be recognised but said Afghans should start receiving
the financial support that was frozen after the armed group took power last
month. He urged foreign governments to prevent a financial collapse there that
would result in a massive flow of migrants. <Recognition of the Taliban
government is impossible since there are 17 terrorists among the ministers, and
the human rights of women and girls are continuously violated,> Di Maio told
state-owned television Rai 3 on Sunday.
<Clearly, we must prevent Afghanistan from implosion and from an uncontrolled
flow of migration that could destabilise neighbouring countries,> Di Maio, who
chaired a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in New York last week, said.
<There are ways to guarantee financial support without giving money to the
Taliban. We have also agreed that a part of humanitarian aid must always go to
the protection of women and girls.>
Italy holds the annual, rotating presidency of the G20 and is looking to host a
special summit on Afghanistan.
The G20 countries, together with Afghanistan’s neighbours, are committed to
fight against terrorism, and to work for the protection of human rights, Di Maio
added.
On Friday, the United States Treasury Department said it issued two general
licences, one allowing the US government, NGOs and certain international
organisations, including the United Nations, to engage in transactions with the
Taliban or Haqqani Network – both under sanctions – that are necessary to
provide humanitarian assistance.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/26/italy-taliban-government-cannot-be-recognised
Al Jazeera
25 Sept 2021
<<From: The Listening Post
Drone exposé: The journalism that forced the Pentagon’s mea culpa
Journalistic investigations reveal that a US military drone strike killed
civilians in Afghanistan. Plus, Canada’s residential school reckoning.
United States drone warfare is finally being exposed. But why did it take
American news outlets so long to get to such a big story?
Contributors:
Emran Feroz, Founder, Drone Memorial
Christine Fair, Security Studies Program, Georgetown University
Spencer Ackerman, Author, Reign of Terror
Vanessa Gezari, National Security Editor, The Intercept
Watch the video here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-listening-post/2021/9/25/drone-expose-the-journalism-that-forced-the-pentagons-mea-culpa
Ruhshana Media
Sept 2021
<< Women's sports clubs were closed after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.
Women athletes have been living in secret since the fall of the provinces.
Women's Sports In the two decades of the Republic, Afghanistan has flourished in
a patriarchal society, and women / girls have hardly been allowed to
participate. But the existence of family barriers and gender discrimination
persisted in society. With the Taliban, women, however, were completely barred
from sports. Shafiqa Sadat Mohseni, a woman who has been teaching martial arts
to women voluntarily for the past few years, has now had her gym closed. The day
the Taliban entered Kabul, Ms. Mohseni and her students were playing sports at
their small club on the outskirts of the city west of Kabul. When Mohseni woke
up that morning, he felt, <The sun on the morning of Sunday, August 14 in Kabul,
like many people in the city, has faded.> But he had said to himself that when
he went to the club and started training his students, he would be in a good
mood again. The 11 a.m. Kabul time signaled the sudden arrival of Taliban
fighters in the city, and Mohseni Sarasimeh was forced to close his sports club
and say goodbye to his students. This farewell to his disciples was not like the
days before. They said goodbye at a time when it was no longer clear when they
would meet.
RukhShana Media
Sept 2021
<<The Taliban Ministry of Education has denied <rumors> that girls' schools will
reopen. The Taliban Ministry of Education has announced that no decision has
been made so far on whether the girls will return to school.
Rkhshanh: The Department today (Friday, 2 in) in a statement, published on
social networks rumors that girls' schools reopen next week on Saturday
rejected. The announcement states that work is underway on a plan to reopen
girls' schools, the outcome of which will be shared with the public later.
Boys' schools reopened on 27 September. The Taliban have not yet invited girls
to attend school.
Taliban spokesmen have always said they are working on a procedure for girls to
return to school.>>
Read more here:
https://rukhshana.com
Al Jazeera
24 Sept 2021
<<Taliban official says strict punishment, executions, will return.
Taliban leader Mullah Nooruddin Turabi says punishments such as ‘cutting off
hands’ was necessary for ‘security’ as it had a deterrent effect.
One of the founders of the Taliban and the chief enforcer of its strict rule of
Afghanistan during the 1990s says the group will once again carry out executions
and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public. In an interview with The
Associated Press news agency, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi dismissed outrage over the
Taliban’s executions in the past, which sometimes took place in front of crowds
at a stadium, and he warned the world against interfering with Afghanistan’s new
rulers. <Everyone criticised us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have
never said anything about their laws and their punishments,> Turabi told the AP,
speaking in Kabul.
<No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will
make our laws on the Quran.>
Since the Taliban overran Kabul on August 15 and seized control of the country,
Afghans and the world have been watching to see whether they will recreate their
harsh rule of the 1996-2001 period.
Turabi’s comments pointed to how the group’s leaders remain entrenched in a
deeply conservative, hardline worldview, even if they are embracing
technological changes, like video and mobile phones.
‘Peace and stability’
Turabi, now in his early 60s, was justice minister and head of the so-called
Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – effectively, the
religious police – during the Taliban’s previous rule. At that time, the world
denounced the Taliban’s punishments, which took place in Kabul’s stadium or on
the grounds of the sprawling Eid Gah Mosque, often attended by hundreds of
Afghan men.
Executions of convicted murderers were usually by a single shot to the head,
carried out by the victim’s family, who had the option of accepting <blood
money> and allowing the culprit to live. For convicted thieves, the punishment
was amputation of a hand. For those convicted of highway robbery, a hand and a
foot were amputated. Trials and convictions were rarely public and the judiciary
was weighted in favour of Islamic scholars, whose knowledge of the law was
limited to religious injunctions.
Turabi said that this time, judges – including women – would adjudicate cases,
but the foundation of Afghanistan’s laws will be the Quran. He said the same
punishments would be revived.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/24/taliban-official-says-strict-punishment-executions-will-return
or note by Gino d'Artali this article publisched by the Guardian:
The Guardian
21 Sept 2021
Diane Taylor and Dan Sabbagh
<<QC calls on UK to support female judges at risk in Afghanistan.
Government urged to give sanctuary to hundreds of female judges and lawyers
living under the Taliban.
Helena Kennedy QC has launched an urgent appeal to provide support to judges
along with lawyers, women’s rights activists, human rights defenders and their
families at risk in Afghanistan and in need of a safe haven abroad.
As part of the #EvacuateHer campaign, Lady Kennedy has also launched a petition
calling on the UK government to provide sanctuary to Afghan judges and lawyers
at risk. The Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (Arap) initially stated
judges were eligible under the scheme but no longer includes this group. The
campaign is one of many attempts to help the hundreds of women who have sat as
judges in Afghanistan. In the past 20 years, about 270 women have sat as judges
– about one-tenth of the country’s judiciary.
Their cases have included many the Taliban would consider as a direct challenge
to their authority – liberating women from marriages where they found themselves
enslaved, freeing women from situations of domestic violence and upholding the
right of girls and women to education and careers. Some have been involved in
ordering the imprisonment of members of the Taliban and terrorists from Islamic
State and other organisations.
Speaking from a hiding place in Kabul, one judge told the Guardian: <It was not
easy to become a female judge in Afghanistan. But now the Taliban have taken
everything from us – our job, our family and our security. I cannot sleep
because I am not sure if I will be alive tomorrow. The Taliban can enter my
house and kill me at any time. They believe it is against Islam for a woman to
be a judge. I want the British government to help us today. Tomorrow may be too
late for us.>
Judge Anisa Dhanji, representing the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ),
said: <Our current efforts are focused, of course, on the judges who remain in
Afghanistan and in trying to help to evacuate them, especially those who,
because of their ethnicity, type of work or their individual profiles, are at
exceptional risk. A group from the IAWJ board and other members have been
working in shifts 24/7 on these efforts for more than a month now. <It has been
extremely difficult, and often heartbreaking, when after days of intense
efforts, hopes are dashed at the last minute, because of one obstacle or
another. >
Runna Alizoy, 42, escaped Afghanistan to the UK 19 years ago while she was
part-way through studying to be a doctor. She qualified as a paramedic after
reaching the UK. Her older sister is a senior judge in Afghanistan who is now in
hiding. Alizoy is desperately lobbying everyone she can think of in the UK to
bring her sister and family members to safety.
<It’s hard to put into words my grief for my sister. The lives of female judges
have been stolen,> she said. <They say they Taliban have changed. They have
changed. Twenty years ago they whipped women in the street and sent them home.
Now they shoot them and send them to their graves.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/21/qc-baroness-helena-kennedy-calls-on-uk-to-support-female-judges-at-risk-in-afghanistan
and my question is will the taliban start again lapidate women to death for
aledged adultary?
And it might be interesting to read this article published by the Center for
Strategic Studies on 28 April 2020 and titled <<The US and Taliban are partners
now: What about the Afghan women?>>
Read it here:
https://sites.tufts.edu/css/the-us-and-taliban-are-partners-now-what-about-the-afghan-women/
Note by Gino d'Artali: In any case I'm in deep fear for the Afghanistan women
today who risks their lives and limbs.
The Guardian
23 Sept 2021
Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor
<<Military
Revealed: UK forces linked to deaths of nearly 300 Afghan civilians.
MoD compensation logs show just £2,380 paid on average, with more than 80
children among victims.
British forces are linked to the deaths of 86 children and more than 200 adult
civilians during the Afghanistan conflict, with compensation of just £2,380 paid
on average for each life lost, new figures reveal. They are recorded in official
Ministry of Defence (MoD) compensation logs, obtained by a series of freedom of
information requests. According to the data, the youngest recorded civilian
victim was three years old.
One of the most serious incidents listed in the records is the award of
£4,233.60 to a family following the death of four children who were mistakenly
<shot and killed> in an incident in December 2009.
Some of the payments amounted to less than a few hundred pounds. In February
2008, one family received £104.17 following a confirmed fatality and damage to a
property in Helmand province, while another was compensated £586.42 for the
death of their 10-year-old son in December 2009.
The data was compiled by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), which examined the
logs to coincide with the withdrawal of western forces from Afghanistan last
month culminating in the chaotic airlift from Kabul airport.
There is renewed focus on civilian casualties in Afghanistan after the US was
forced to admit that a drone strike last month killed 10 civilians including
seven children – and not militants from Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP),
as was first claimed.
A <terrible mistake> was made, said Gen Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of US
Central Command, as he offered his <profound condolences to the family and
friends of those who were killed>. In the British logs, many of the incidents
are recorded only briefly. Murray Jones, the author of the research, said:
<These files do not make for easy reading. The banality of language means
hundreds of tragic deaths, including dozens of children, read more like an
inventory.> AOAV estimates 20,390 civilians were killed or injured by
international and Afghan forces during the 20-year conflict – although that is
one-third of the number killed by the Taliban and other insurgents. A total of
457 British soldiers also died during the period.
Overall the compensation logs show £688,000 was paid out by the UK military for
incidents involving 289 deaths between 2006 and 2013, the last year of British
combat operations in the country, meaning the average compensation paid by the
MoD per civilian killed was £2,380.
Payments recorded also relate to operations involving the SAS, which has been
accused of being involved in the execution of civilians during the conflict. The
family of three Afghan farmers allegedly killed in cold blood in 2012 received
£3,634 three weeks after the incident. The logs describe the money as an
<assistance payment to be made to calm local atmopherics [sic]>.>>
Note by Gino d'Artali: Shame on you UK for paying so little compensation! As if
Afghanistans civilians lives are not worth a penny.
And {sick} is a phrase meaning litteraly quoted by the journalist by her/him as
such ended.
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/23/2380-for-a-life-uk-forces-linked-to-nearly-300-afghan-civilian-deaths
Al Jazeera
23 Sept 2021
<<Thousands of Afghans seeking refuge in regional countries: UNHCR
UN refugee agency says at least 35,400 Afghan refugees have arrived in Iran,
Pakistan and Tajikistan since January 1.
Tens of thousands of Afghans in neighbouring countries are thought to be in need
of international refugee protections, having sought refuge there after the
Taliban took control of Afghanistan last month, the United Nation’s refugee
agency says.
In the period between January 1-July 22, 2021 – just before the Taliban’s
overthrow of the Afghan government – nearly 4,000 Afghans were estimated to have
become new refugees in Iran, Pakistan and Tajikistan, according to data released
by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
That number rose to 35,400 by September 22, an almost nine-fold increase, the UN
agency said in its latest report on Wednesday.
<The majority of Afghan new arrivals approaching UNHCR in Pakistan and Iran are
largely undocumented and a large majority of Afghan new arrivals interviewed by
UNHCR report leaving Afghanistan for security-related reasons,> says the
agency’s latest Afghanistan situation report.
At least 19,300 new Afghan refugees have entered Iran this year, 10,800 have
gone to Pakistan and 5,300 to Tajikistan, the data estimates, adding that the
real figures may be higher.
The UNHCR has in recent days warned regional governments of the possibility of a
humanitarian crisis sparking mass refugee movement from Afghanistan if the
country is not stabilised. So far, however, UNHCR says border movements by
Afghans seeking refuge in regional countries have been limited. Last week, UNHCR
chief Filippo Grandi visited Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan to survey the
situation and hold talks with Pakistani officials regarding the situation in
Afghanistan and Pakistan’s support of ongoing aid operations.
Grandi called on world powers to engage with the Taliban government in order to
facilitate the running of basic public services, or face the possibility of a
governance <implosion>.
<It is important that the international community finds the necessary direction,
the necessary ways to ensure the functioning of Afghanistan,> he said. <Because
an implosion of Afghanistan, the collapse of public services for example, like
health or education, if the state ceases to function, then this will provoke a
crisis that is much bigger than humanitarian.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/23/afghanistan-refugees-pakistan-iran-unhcr
Read also an article about the same subject and publisched by Aljazeera -
<Afghan refugees in Qatar’s World Cup complex fear for families>
here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/4/afghan-refugees-in-qatars-world-cup-complex-fear-for-families
Al Jazeera
23 Sept 2021
Ali M Latifa
<<How deep are divisions among the Taliban?
Sources tell Al Jazeera the discord is very real and if disharmony grows, it
will spell trouble for the people.
There have been reports of divisions among the Taliban leadership, raising
questions about the unity within the group which took over the country last
month. The public’s doubts about the group’s unity only increased earlier this
month, when Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy prime minister, seemed to
have disappeared from public view.
Then came reports that he had been killed.
When he did reappear, it was with a pre-recorded statement. Baradar, clearly
reading from some sort of a statement, said his fading from the public eye was
the result of travel, and that the Taliban, <have compassion among ourselves,
more than a family>.
In a final bid to ease suspicions about his death or injury, Baradar was
photographed attending a meeting with United Nations officials on Monday.
However, diplomatic and political sources have told Al Jazeera that the discord
among the Taliban leadership is very real, adding that if the disharmony grows,
it will spell further trouble for the Afghan people.
A writer and reporter who has spent several years covering the Taliban said the
divisions are the result of a political-military divide. The hardliners, he
said, <feel that they are owed things for 20 years of fighting>.
Awaiting the spoils of war
A political source who has had a decades-long relationship with the Taliban’s
top brass agrees. He says the effects of that rift extend from the halls of
power to the streets, where the Taliban fighters have been going through major
cities and forcefully taking the belongings of former officials and their
families. <Right now, all they care about is taking people’s cars and houses.>
Families of former officials have told Al Jazeera that Taliban fighters have
tried to seize their belongings, including homes they rented and their private
cars. This is despite the deputy minister of information and culture, Zabihullah
Mujahid, saying two days after the Taliban took over the country that <we have
instructed everyone not to enter anybody’s house, whether they’re civilians or
military>. At that same August 17 media briefing, Mujahid went on to say,
<There’s a huge difference between us and the previous government.>
However, to those familiar with the situation, the current Taliban leadership is
facing many of the same issues with factions as the government of former
President Ashraf Ghani, who fled the country the day the Taliban took Kabul.
Sources speaking to Al Jazeera said as with other Afghan governments, the
divisions among the Taliban fall along personality lines. But unlike previous
administrations, the Taliban does not just suffer from overly ambitious members
or opposing political views, its split is much more fundamental. Currently, the
Taliban, said the sources, is made up of fighters still awaiting the spoils of
war versus politicians who want to assuage the fears of the Afghan people and
the international community.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/23/how-deep-are-divisions-among-the-taliban
Ruhshana Media
July 23 2021
<<Women flee before the Taliban take over!
Author : Lynodanel
Translator: Assadollah Jafari ?Pezhman
Source: Foreign Policy / July 23, 2021
BAMYAN, Afghanistan: When Taliban gunmen stormed a remote Afghan district this
month (July), residents in that district and region panicked, looting local
property, and even committing outrageous crimes. They also demanded that the
group know the names and ages of the girls and women who wanted them to gather
and marry young Taliban fighters.
In the central district of Bamyan province, people in Sighan district said the
Taliban had beaten some men who were trying to resist, forcing some residents to
show them women's wardrobes until the age of the girls and Women living in the
area must set an age to marry Taliban fighters.>>
Read also other articles by Rukhshana at:
https://rukhshana.com/with-spread-of-taliban-attacks-concerns-about-forced-marriages-and-sex-slavery-have-risen-in-some-afghan-cities
The Guardian
by Annie Kelly and
Rights and freedom is supported by
Humanity United
22 Sept 2021
<<The outspoken
Zahra Joya: the Afghan reporter who fled the Taliban – and kept telling the
truth about women.
As a child in Afghanistan, she pretended to be a boy in order to get an
education, before starting her own women’s news agency. Now living in Britain,
her fight continues. Just over a month ago, Zahra Joya left her house in Kabul
to walk to her office, as she had been doing every day. From this small office,
Joya, a journalist, ran Rukhshana Media, the news agency she founded last year
to report on the stories of women and girls across Afghanistan. By the time she
returned home in the afternoon, however, men with guns were on street corners
and her sisters were shut inside their house, shaking with fear. In just a few
hours, normal life had been obliterated.
<Right to the end, on that afternoon of 15 August, I couldn’t believe what was
happening,> she says. <It was like a bad dream. Even on that day, it just seemed
impossible that the Taliban could come to power so quickly, wipe away 20 years
and drag us all back to the past.>
Joya was airlifted out of Kabul by the UK government in the last frantic and
terrifying days of the evacuation, along with other family members. Although she
is in a place of safety, her world, once alive with possibilities, has been
reduced to a hotel room with sealed windows and beige walls.
<All my life, I thought I was part of creating a new Afghanistan,> she says. <I
never in my life imagined I’d end up a refugee.> It is just over two weeks since
she arrived in the UK and she is still numb with the shock and trauma of what
has happened.
She feels a deep grief over the eradication of women from public life in
Afghanistan. Last week, the Taliban announced that only boys would be in the
classrooms when secondary schools reopened, making Afghanistan the only country
in the world to deny 50% of its population the basic right to education. In
Kabul, it has also been announced that women will not be allowed to occupy any
public sector jobs that could be done by men.
<To believe the Taliban’s propaganda, that they are somehow different this time
around, is to betray the millions of Afghan women and girls who have lost their
chance to have anything but a life of domestic servitude and illiteracy,> she
says. <I think of everything that I and so many other women fought so hard to
achieve and it has all disappeared. We lost everything.>
Rukhshana Media has not quite been wiped away: Joya is still running it, albeit
from a tiny desk in her hotel room. It is, she says, the only thing that is
keeping her going. <Some mornings, I wake up and I feel like I just can’t do
this, but then I open my laptop and I am a journalist again; I have a purpose.>
Joya has been a journalist for nearly a decade, in local news agencies and then
as an investigative reporter for newspapers in Kabul. She originally wanted to
be a prosecutor, but a university friend suggested she do a few days’ work on a
local newspaper. She was hooked immediately.
Life for a female reporter was not easy. Afghanistan has long been one of the
most dangerous places in the world for female journalists and she was often the
only woman in the newsroom. <I would have to argue with colleagues and people on
the street, who would be telling me to go home and that I should be ashamed for
being out in public asking questions. I would always say: ‘I am a journalist and
I have the right to be here.’>
By the time she founded Rukshana, with her own money, in December 2020, she was
also working as the deputy director of communications at the Kabul municipal
government. <I wanted to show that women – especially women from an ethnic
minority like me – could be active in public life,> she says. Joya is from the
Hazara community, the majority of whom are from the Shia sect of Islam and who
have long been persecuted by the Taliban.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/22/zahra-joya-the-afghan-reporter-who-fled-the-taliban-and-kept-telling-the-truth-about-women
Note by Gino d'Artali: I regularly visit the website of, as the banner read,
Rakhshana Media, but Miss Joya speaks of <Rukhshana Media>. I will investigate
first on what to do but rest assured that I'll continue to visit the website.
Al Jazeera
22 Sept 2021
By Joseph Stepansky and Mersiha Gadzo
<<World leaders address United Nations General Assembly: Live.
Leaders of Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Jordan, Venezuela and Ukraine to speak
as UNGA continues.
Note from Gino d'Artali: I will only copy/paste what Germany's opinion is
because very important human and women's rights and at the end close with the
URL where you can read the full article:
Germany says Taliban ‘show’ at UNGA would serve no purpose. Germany has voiced
opposition to the Taliban’s request to address the UNGA, saying the <show> by
Afghanistan’s new rulers would serve no purpose.
<To schedule a show at the United Nations won’t serve anything,> German Foreign
Minister Heiko Maas told reporters.
<What’s important are concrete deeds and not just words, including on human
rights and in particular the rights of women and on an inclusive government and
distancing from terrorist groups,> he said.
The UN’s credentials committee, which determines who is recognised as a
representative of a particular country, is not expected to make a decision on
Afghanistan until after the current week of high level meetings and speeches.>>
Read the whole article here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/22/world-leaders-speak-for-second-day-at-un-general-assembly-live
The Guardian
21 Sept 2021
Diane Taylor and Dan Sabbagh
<<QC calls on UK to support female judges at risk in Afghanistan.
Government urged to give sanctuary to hundreds of female judges and lawyers
living under the Taliban.
Helena Kennedy QC has launched an urgent appeal to provide support to judges
along with lawyers, women’s rights activists, human rights defenders and their
families at risk in Afghanistan and in need of a safe haven abroad.
As part of the #EvacuateHer campaign, Lady Kennedy has also launched a petition
calling on the UK government to provide sanctuary to Afghan judges and lawyers
at risk. The Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (Arap) initially stated
judges were eligible under the scheme but no longer includes this group. The
campaign is one of many attempts to help the hundreds of women who have sat as
judges in Afghanistan. In the past 20 years, about 270 women have sat as judges
– about one-tenth of the country’s judiciary.
Their cases have included many the Taliban would consider as a direct challenge
to their authority – liberating women from marriages where they found themselves
enslaved, freeing women from situations of domestic violence and upholding the
right of girls and women to education and careers. Some have been involved in
ordering the imprisonment of members of the Taliban and terrorists from Islamic
State and other organisations.
Speaking from a hiding place in Kabul, one judge told the Guardian: <It was not
easy to become a female judge in Afghanistan. But now the Taliban have taken
everything from us – our job, our family and our security. I cannot sleep
because I am not sure if I will be alive tomorrow. The Taliban can enter my
house and kill me at any time. They believe it is against Islam for a woman to
be a judge. I want the British government to help us today. Tomorrow may be too
late for us.>
Judge Anisa Dhanji, representing the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ),
said: <Our current efforts are focused, of course, on the judges who remain in
Afghanistan and in trying to help to evacuate them, especially those who,
because of their ethnicity, type of work or their individual profiles, are at
exceptional risk. A group from the IAWJ board and other members have been
working in shifts 24/7 on these efforts for more than a month now. <It has been
extremely difficult, and often heartbreaking, when after days of intense
efforts, hopes are dashed at the last minute, because of one obstacle or
another. >
Runna Alizoy, 42, escaped Afghanistan to the UK 19 years ago while she was
part-way through studying to be a doctor. She qualified as a paramedic after
reaching the UK. Her older sister is a senior judge in Afghanistan who is now in
hiding. Alizoy is desperately lobbying everyone she can think of in the UK to
bring her sister and family members to safety.
<It’s hard to put into words my grief for my sister. The lives of female judges
have been stolen,> she said. <They say they Taliban have changed. They have
changed. Twenty years ago they whipped women in the street and sent them home.
Now they shoot them and send them to their graves.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/21/qc-baroness-helena-kennedy-calls-on-uk-to-support-female-judges-at-risk-in-afghanistan
United Nations News
21 Sept 2021
<<Afghanistan: ‘Palpable’ fear of ‘brutal and systemic repression’ of women
grows.
Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan last month, they have made some
commitments to uphold human rights. However, their subsequent actions have
<sadly contradicted” those promises, the UN rights chief told a side event of
the General Assembly on Tuesday.
Michelle Bachelet informed a high-level event on safeguarding 20 years of
international engagement in Afghanistan, that women have been <progressively
excluded from the public sphere”, prohibited from appearing without a male
guardian and face increasing restrictions on their right to work.
<The Ministry that once promoted women's rights has been disbanded, and its
premises taken over by a Ministry for the propagation of Virtue and the
prevention of Vice – an all-male office that will apply guidelines on
appropriate dress and behaviour> the human rights chief said.
Moreover, Taliban representatives have dismantled many other former government
offices for women’s affairs, gaining access to sensitive files, threatening
staff, and accusing women's civil society groups of spreading <anti-Islamic>
ideas.
<There is real and palpable fear among Afghan women of a return to the Taliban's
brutal and systemic repression of women and girls during the 1990s>, said the
High Commissioner.
Severe consequences.
Meanwhile, a growing humanitarian crisis across the country is putting one
million children in danger of extreme hunger, with families headed by women –
most of whom can no longer work – among those at greatest risk. Over the last 20
years, Afghan women have worked towards ensuring greater respect for and
protection of their rights to education, work, political participation and
freedom – of movement and expression.
<These rights are part of the evolution of Afghan society and are integral to
the development and economic growth of Afghanistan>, underscored Ms. Bachelet.
As women and girls comprise half of Afghanistan’s population, she reminded that
the country would benefit by utilizing their talents and capabilities.
Uphold human rights
The High Commissioner said that <first and foremost>, women and girls must have
full and equal access to essential services, including healthcare and education;
be able to work in every sector of the economy; be free to move without
restrictions; and live free of all gender-related violence.
<In short, Afghan women and girls’ human rights must be upheld and defended>.
When engaging with the Taliban, Ms. Bachelet stressed that the international
community, including the UN and all its Member States, must commit to <strong
advocacy that demands compliance with these basic requirements for any fair and
just society>.
<Respect for the rights of the women and girls of Afghanistan now will be a
harbinger of the country's future>, she said. <They face extraordinary
challenges – and we will remain at their side>.>>
Read more here:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1100562
Al Jazeera
21 Sept 2021
<<US officials fear al-Qaeda threat after fall of Kabul to Taliban.
In wake of chaotic US withdrawal, US intelligence agencies are watching to see
if al-Qaeda and ISKP gain.
Top United States security officials are concerned about the potential threat to
the US from al-Qaeda following the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
Christine Abizaid, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, told a
Senate committee on Tuesday that US intelligence agencies are re-assessing
rapidly developing threats from fighter groups in Afghanistan.
Abizaid’s agency, created by Congress in the years after the September 11
al-Qaeda attacks, is responsible for assembling information from across all US
spy agencies about potential threats to the US from Al Qaeda and groups like the
Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K).
<It is fair to assess that the development of those groups’ external operations
capability … we’ve got to monitor and assess whether that’s going to happen
faster than we had predicted otherwise,> Abizaid told senators.
Prior to the US military withdrawal, the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency had
previously warned US policymakers that al-Qaeda would be able to reconstitute in
Afghanistan within one to three years. <Threat from Afghanistan is the top of
our priority in terms of what that dynamic landscape is likely to present,>
Abizaid said. FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate that FBI officials
share the concern about the possibility of al-Qaeda regaining a <safe haven> in
Afghanistan and ISKP being able to <operate more freely>. <We are concerned
about what the future holds,> Wray said.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/21/us-officials-fear-al-qaeda-threat-after-fall-of-kabul-to-taliban
Opinion
Gino d'Artali
21 Sept 2021
Promises promises. Sounds familiar right?!
Read the below excerpt from an article and also the complete article by Al
Jazeera.
Al Jazeera
21 Sept 2021
<<Girls to return to secondary schools ‘soon as possible’: Taliban.
Taliban spokesman says ‘a safe learning environment’ is needed before older
girls could fully return to school.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/21/taliban-name-deputy-ministers-double-down-on-all-male-cabinet
Al Jazeera
21 Sept 2021
<<Taliban names deputy ministers, double down on all-male cabinet.
Taliban brings members of the ethnic minority into the cabinet, but fails to
appoint any women despite calls for inclusivity.
The Taliban government has expanded its interim cabinet by naming deputy
ministers on Tuesday. But it failed to appoint any women, doubling down on a
hardline course despite the international outcry that followed their initial
presentation of an all-male cabinet lineup earlier this month.
The international community has warned that it will judge the Taliban by its
actions, and that recognition of a Taliban-led government would be linked to the
treatment of women and minorities. In its previous rule of Afghanistan in the
late 1990s, the Taliban had barred girls and women from schools, work and public
life.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid defended the latest additions to
the cabinet at a news conference on Tuesday, saying it included members of
ethnic minorities, such as the Hazaras, and that women might be added later.
Mujahid bristled at international conditions for recognition, saying there was
no reason for withholding it.
<It is the responsibility of the United Nations to recognise our government
[and] for other countries, including European, Asian and Islamic countries, to
have diplomatic relations with us,> he said. He also took the time to announce
several appointments, including ministers and deputy ministers, to the Taliban’s
caretaker government. The appointments included figures from Panjshir and
Baghlan. Panjshir is home to the National Resistance Front, which is the sole
large-scale effort to try and keep the Taliban from taking over the entire
country.
Calls for inclusivity continue
Baghlan has also seen pockets of resistance in some districts over the last
month. By pointing out that three of the new posts would be given to residents
of Panjshir, Baghlan and Sar-e-Pul, provinces with considerable Tajik and Uzbek
populations, the Taliban seems to be sending a message of inclusivity. The
Taliban has framed the cabinet as an interim government, suggesting that changes
were still possible, but it has not said if there would ever be elections.
Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Kabul, said the new announcement
is unlikely to win over the international community’s consent.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/21/taliban-name-deputy-ministers-double-down-on-all-male-cabinet
Opinion Gino d'Artali
21 Sept 2021
The bellow excerpt i.e. from an Al Jazeera article proves how incapable the
taliban really is.
Al Jazeera
21 Sept 2021
<<India seized $2.7bn in Afghan heroin amid Taliban takeover chaos.
Nearly three tonnes of heroin originating from Afghanistan seized and two people
arrested in one of India’s biggest hauls to date.
Indian officials say they seized nearly three tonnes of heroin originating from
Afghanistan worth an estimated 200bn rupees ($2.72bn) amid the chaos following
last month’s takeover of the country by the Taliban. India’s top anti-smuggling
agency, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), seized two containers at
Mundra Port in the western state of Gujarat on September 15 after receiving
intelligence they contained narcotics, according to a Gujarat official speaking
anonymously.
More than 2,988kg (6,590 pounds) of heroin was recovered in one of India’s
biggest such hauls to date. Two people have been arrested in connection with the
haul and investigations were ongoing, the official in Gujarat, who is not
authorised to speak publicly, said.
The containers had been imported by a firm in the southern coastal city of
Vijayawada, the official added
<Investigation conducted so far has also revealed the involvement of Afghan
nationals, who are under investigation.>
DRI officials declined to comment.
The narcotics were headed to New Delhi and the two arrested people had sought an
import-export licence based on a home address in the southern city of Vijayawada,
police in Vijayawada said in a statement on Monday. The containers’ cargo had
been declared as semi-processed talc stones from Afghanistan and had been
shipped from Bandar Abbas Port in Iran to Mundra, the official said, adding that
forensic tests confirmed the presence of heroin. Afghanistan is the world’s
biggest illicit opiate supplier, but since taking power, the Taliban has said it
plans to ban the drug trade, without giving details on how.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/21/india-heroin-afghanistan-taliban-gujarat-drugs
i.e. 2 more related articles from Al Jazeera:
- Is Afghanistan-made methamphetamine about to flood Europe?
- Opium: Afghanistan’s drug trade that helped fuel the Taliban
Ruhshana Media
Sept 2021
<<International Federation of Journalists:Women journalists fired after
Taliban rise to power.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) says women journalists have
been fired since the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, and about 153 media
outlets have been forced to close.
Rakhshanah: The International Foundation has announced the publication of a
report on violence against media workers and attacks on freedom of the press in
Afghanistan have risen sharply.
<I believe that what we are witnessing is an official media outlet in
Afghanistan now a Taliban media outlet without women,> said Anthony Blanger,
secretary general of the International Federation of Journalists.
Reports of arrests, confiscation of equipment, and even torture and beatings of
journalists in Afghanistan are on the rise, he said.
According to the report, Blanger said the International Federation of
Journalists (IMF) was deeply concerned about the safety of journalists' lives
after the release of some 1,000 Afghan prisoners by the Taliban, as they covered
their detention in the previous government.
According to the International Federation of Journalists, 7,000 media workers
have been affected by the Taliban's takeover of Kabul so far.
Quoted from Rakhshana Media>>
Read more here:
https://rukhshana.com/women-journalists-were-fired-after-taliban-came-to-power
Ruhshana Media
Sept 2021
<<Armed women; Passing through the stage of mere victim of war.
It is not new that indigenous Afghan women have taken up arms against terrorists
and come to the battlefield. They stood up to the terrorists at every turn when
they saw that their homes, lives and freedoms were in danger. But this time in
the midst of war and peace under the umbrella of the republican system and the
presence of international forces and local male militias; Women's groups are
also marching against the Taliban. Women in cumbersome traditional clothing with
stout torsos who have worked hard farming and unpaid housework; Red, green and
pear, which are anti-war but show good weapons against terrorists.
This time, women have come to the battlefield not by hiding their identities but
by highlighting their outward feminine values. They have come to the fore to
prevent men from fighting and trading alone and making history. Women have come
to draw their forgotten presence on the warrior men and say that you are not
fighting only with men. Now that you have no choice but to wage war on us; So we
play this part of the story of war and peace equally, if not, not completely
forgotten.
So far, however, women have played little role in the war and in the
distribution of power; But it has not been so significant that it has never
brought them to the forefront of the issue of power. In Afghanistan in
particular, women did not have a small share of power; Although they have
carried a large amount of the psyche and emotions of wars. They have not been
alone on the battlefield in the past, but they have paid more than men
emotionally and have taken on family responsibilities.
In some provinces of Afghanistan, especially Ghor, Jawzjan, women have taken up
arms and guarded their villages. They have gone from being victims of mere war
and practically standing up against extremism and unjust male warfare. >>
Read more here:
https://rukhshana.com/passing-through-the-stage-of-mere-victim-of-war
The Guardian
20 Sept 2021
<<The Guardian picture essay.
One month in Kabul under Taliban rule– a photo essay.
By Photojournalist Stefanie Glinski
reports from Kabul on the events of the past four weeks and the capital’s new
rulers.
<<Above its tightly clustered houses and peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains,
Kabul’s blue skies were once dotted with countless colourful kites, flown by
children from the hilltops or their rooftops. Since the Taliban took the Afghan
capital a month ago, they have disappeared.
A girl stares at two Taliban members waiting for a glass of juice. And while
more than 100,000 people managed to escape their country’s uncertain future –
evacuated through the international airport – those left behind are grappling
with a new reality. The Taliban rapidly took over Afghanistan in an aggressive
offensive that only lasted a few weeks and saw much of the Afghan army surrender
or escape. The militant group eventually entered Kabul without much of a fight
as former president Ashraf Ghani and much of his cabinet fled.
Forty years of war have already devastated Afghanistan, causing suffering, death
and widespread poverty.
Now the militant group the Americans came to defeat is once again back in power.
A message painted on to blast walls in the city centre reminds of just that:
<Our nation has, with the help of God, defeated America,> one of the new Taliban
slogans reads, replacing the previous colourful murals that once decorated
Kabul.
Over the past decades, the Afghan people have gained little but lost much.
Again, many had to flee their homeland. They now live scattered across the
continents, leaving behind their once comfortable lives and jobs – cherished
even amid war – trading it for a future as refugees. Their hearts yearn for
home, but many Afghans can’t imagine a future under the Taliban yet again,
remembering too well the group’s brutal 1996-2001 regime.
The ‘Islamic Emirate’ has not outlawed kites, nor has the group denied education
to women, but with the formation of a new all-male interim government, details
have emerged concerning the country’s future leadership: women are not to study
with men and music is outlawed. The ministry for the propagation of virtue and
prevention of vice is back – once feared as the strict enforcer of sharia law.
The Taliban are seen roaming the city, their fighters visiting the zoo and
amusement parks, eating ice-cream by the roadside, guns flung over their
shoulders. Some say they have come from rural provinces for <sightseeing> while
others have brought their children. They stand in groups and take selfies
together, high-spirited and excited to explore the city. The Afghan flag has
largely been replaced with the white “Islamic Emirate” emblem, with children
selling the new banners amid heavy traffic across the city, walking up to
rolled-down car windows, asking for a few small bills in exchange for the new
banner. Women have taken to the street to protest the new regime in many parts
of the city – demanding rights to work and education. Some protests have turned
violent with Taliban fighters beating women in the crowd and journalists
detained and flogged.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/20/one-month-in-kabul-under-taliban-rule-a-photo-essay
Al Jazeera
20 Sept 2021
By Ricardo Garcia Vilanova
<<Fixing lives and limbs through decades of war in Afghanistan.
For more than 30 years, an orthopaedic centre staffed by its former patients has
given hope to Afghans caught in conflict.
After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the United States and its allies invaded
Afghanistan – a campaign that lasted 20 years and took the greatest toll on
Afghan civilians. Photojournalist Ricardo Garcia Vilanova covered Afghanistan
between 2007 and 2011. He writes about photographing those trying to help amidst
the conflict. The first memory I have of Afghanistan is arriving in the capital
Kabul before dawn on a flight via Frankfurt. It was 2007 and I had been working
for several years in Haiti before I decided to go to Afghanistan as a
freelancer, without any real assignment. Once in the country, I was lucky to get
work with American publications, which allowed me to continue travelling back
and forth.
That first day, I left the terminal in darkness, watching as several soldiers
stood guard on the periphery of the airport between barbed wire fences and
concrete blast walls set up to protect the airport from car bombs. Unlike other
airports, there were no taxis or any alternative means of transportation. It
seemed I had no option but to sleep there until the next morning. But then a
fellow passenger from my flight, an NGO worker, offered me a lift to my
guesthouse in a convoy of two armoured cars.
It was winter, the night was cold and there was no electricity. As we drove, the
streets were dark and deserted and several checkpoints manned by Afghan Forces
marked the different access points to the city.
The outlook seemed bleak. Even though there was no active war in Kabul, there
was elsewhere in the country, so the atmosphere in the capital was one of latent
war. For many Afghans, this was a feeling they seemed to have normalised.
For decades, even before the so-called <war on terror>, Afghans had known
conflict. Twenty years prior, the country was embroiled in a civil war between
the forces of the National Army, supported by Russia, and the Mujahideen rebels.
Then, as in later conflicts, humanitarians arrived to help with aid and medical
care. In 1988, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) set up the
Ali Abad Orthopaedic Centre in the capital, to provide physical rehabilitation
and artificial limbs for the war wounded who had been victims of fighting,
landmines and bombs.
Two years after that, in 1990, Italian physiotherapist Alberto Cairo arrived to
work at the centre. More than three decades later, he has not left, deciding to
spend his life helping those affected by Afghanistan’s decades-long conflicts.
Three decades of care
I met Alberto on my first trip to Kabul. The then-55-year-old director of the
orthopaedic centre was personable, outgoing, courteous and attentive as he went
about his work.
My first thought upon meeting him was to wonder how someone could dedicate
themselves to helping others without expecting anything in return, living cut
off from everything he once considered a normal part of his life in the West.
But he is part of that nucleus of people who altruistically try to help others,
and that is his mission and legacy in life.
Alberto told me that it was in 1992 when he met the man who changed his life –
and whose example would go on to change the lives of thousands of others, people
who have passed through the ICRC centres for treatment and those who have worked
there.
The man Alberto met was called Mahmood. He had no legs and one arm. He was in
the middle of the street in a wheelchair, trying to escape a nearby explosion
with his youngest son.
Although fighting had ravaged the capital, causing the orthopaedic centre to
close, Alberto invited Mahmood in for treatment. After a while, Mahmood was up
and about with the help of his new prosthetics.
Once Alberto was able to reopen the centre, Mahmood started working there too.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/9/20/fixing-lives-and-limbs-through-decades-of-war-in-afghanistan
Al Jazeera
20 Sept 2021
By Saadullah Akhtar
<<Fleeing Afghan Hazaras face uncertain future in Pakistan.
Pakistan says it is unable to take any more refugees and has begun deporting new
arrivals back to Afghanistan.
Quetta, Pakistan – When the Taliban came to capture the northern Afghan city of
Mazar-i-Sharif, Ferozan knew that her life in the country was over and that she
would have to flee her home with her husband and two young children.
<There was war again, and I was very afraid,> she says. <We decided to take the
path of escape and came here.>
Like thousands of others, Ferozan – who like many Afghans goes by only one name
– fled to the eastern neighbouring country, Pakistan. They now face an uncertain
future, in a country where government officials say they are unable to take any
more refugees and have begun to deport some new arrivals. <The Balochistan
government and the federal government have already decided that there are
already three to four million Afghan refugees present in Pakistan,” said Liaquat
Shahwani, a spokesman for the provincial government in Balochistan, where most
new Afghan refugees have arrived. <We cannot cope with that burden, we cannot
carry it, why should more new people come? There are other neighbouring
countries, they can go there.>
Provincial official Jummadad Khan Mandhokhail told Al Jazeera that at least 250
new Afghan refugees had already been deported since the fresh arrival of people
began following the fall of the Afghan government on August 15.
<We have returned them because the Pakistan government has not at this time made
any camps to facilitate Afghan refugees,> said Shahwani. <Our decision is that
we will not allow them right now.>
Nowhere to go
A member of the Hazara ethnicity, the third-largest by population in
Afghanistan, Ferozan and her family felt they would be under greater threat
under the Taliban, which was accused of carrying out atrocities against Hazaras
during their first stint in power between 1996 and 2001.
The armed group, which seized Mazar-i-Sharif on August 14 and took complete
control of the capital Kabul a day later, had targeted members of the Hazara
ethnicity, most of whom are Shia Muslims, in a series of targeted massacres and
bombings for decades.
In August, human rights organisation Amnesty International found evidence that
Taliban fighters had killed nine Hazara men after taking control of Ghazni
province in July.
The ISIL (ISIS) armed group has also targeted ethnic Hazaras in Afghanistan in
major bombings in recent years.
Since the fall of the Afghan government last month, the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than 9,290 new refugees
have arrived in Pakistan, more than 90 percent of them through the southern
border crossing between the Afghan town of Spin Boldak and the Pakistani town of
Chaman.
Of those who have arrived, more than 30 percent are estimated to be of the
Hazara ethnicity, UNCHR says.
<I have become homeless and come here,> says Ferozan. <My demand of the
government is that they must help us and take us somewhere. We are staying in a
mosque, we have no clothes, no blankets and nothing else either.>
Ferozan and more than 100 other refugees were staying at the Rizvia mosque in
Quetta, the provincial capital of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province,
located about 100km (62 miles) from the border crossing at Chaman.
Dozens of families slept on carpets laid across the floor of the main prayer
hall at the mosque, with a small tent partition dividing the space between men
and women. As Ferozan and other refugees spoke of their experiences crossing the
border, several young children played around them.
<It is my plea to the government to help us, hold the hands of us poor people.
For how long will we wander like this, how long will we face war?> asks Ferozan.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/20/fleeing-afghan-hazaras-face-uncertain-future-in-pakistan
The Guardian
20 Sept 2021
<<The Guardian picture essay.
One month in Kabul under Taliban rule– a photo essay.
By Photojournalist Stefanie Glinski
reports from Kabul on the events of the past four weeks and the capital’s new
rulers.
<<Above its tightly clustered houses and peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains,
Kabul’s blue skies were once dotted with countless colourful kites, flown by
children from the hilltops or their rooftops. Since the Taliban took the Afghan
capital a month ago, they have disappeared.
A girl stares at two Taliban members waiting for a glass of juice. And while
more than 100,000 people managed to escape their country’s uncertain future –
evacuated through the international airport – those left behind are grappling
with a new reality. The Taliban rapidly took over Afghanistan in an aggressive
offensive that only lasted a few weeks and saw much of the Afghan army surrender
or escape. The militant group eventually entered Kabul without much of a fight
as former president Ashraf Ghani and much of his cabinet fled.
Forty years of war have already devastated Afghanistan, causing suffering, death
and widespread poverty.
Now the militant group the Americans came to defeat is once again back in power.
A message painted on to blast walls in the city centre reminds of just that:
<Our nation has, with the help of God, defeated America,> one of the new Taliban
slogans reads, replacing the previous colourful murals that once decorated
Kabul.
Over the past decades, the Afghan people have gained little but lost much.
Again, many had to flee their homeland. They now live scattered across the
continents, leaving behind their once comfortable lives and jobs – cherished
even amid war – trading it for a future as refugees. Their hearts yearn for
home, but many Afghans can’t imagine a future under the Taliban yet again,
remembering too well the group’s brutal 1996-2001 regime.
The ‘Islamic Emirate’ has not outlawed kites, nor has the group denied education
to women, but with the formation of a new all-male interim government, details
have emerged concerning the country’s future leadership: women are not to study
with men and music is outlawed. The ministry for the propagation of virtue and
prevention of vice is back – once feared as the strict enforcer of sharia law.
The Taliban are seen roaming the city, their fighters visiting the zoo and
amusement parks, eating ice-cream by the roadside, guns flung over their
shoulders. Some say they have come from rural provinces for <sightseeing> while
others have brought their children. They stand in groups and take selfies
together, high-spirited and excited to explore the city. The Afghan flag has
largely been replaced with the white “Islamic Emirate” emblem, with children
selling the new banners amid heavy traffic across the city, walking up to
rolled-down car windows, asking for a few small bills in exchange for the new
banner. Women have taken to the street to protest the new regime in many parts
of the city – demanding rights to work and education. Some protests have turned
violent with Taliban fighters beating women in the crowd and journalists
detained and flogged.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/20/one-month-in-kabul-under-taliban-rule-a-photo-essay
Al Jazeera
20 Sept 2021
By Ricardo Garcia Vilanova
<<Fixing lives and limbs through decades of war in Afghanistan.
For more than 30 years, an orthopaedic centre staffed by its former patients has
given hope to Afghans caught in conflict.
After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the United States and its allies invaded
Afghanistan – a campaign that lasted 20 years and took the greatest toll on
Afghan civilians. Photojournalist Ricardo Garcia Vilanova covered Afghanistan
between 2007 and 2011. He writes about photographing those trying to help amidst
the conflict. The first memory I have of Afghanistan is arriving in the capital
Kabul before dawn on a flight via Frankfurt. It was 2007 and I had been working
for several years in Haiti before I decided to go to Afghanistan as a
freelancer, without any real assignment. Once in the country, I was lucky to get
work with American publications, which allowed me to continue travelling back
and forth.
That first day, I left the terminal in darkness, watching as several soldiers
stood guard on the periphery of the airport between barbed wire fences and
concrete blast walls set up to protect the airport from car bombs. Unlike other
airports, there were no taxis or any alternative means of transportation. It
seemed I had no option but to sleep there until the next morning. But then a
fellow passenger from my flight, an NGO worker, offered me a lift to my
guesthouse in a convoy of two armoured cars.
It was winter, the night was cold and there was no electricity. As we drove, the
streets were dark and deserted and several checkpoints manned by Afghan Forces
marked the different access points to the city.
The outlook seemed bleak. Even though there was no active war in Kabul, there
was elsewhere in the country, so the atmosphere in the capital was one of latent
war. For many Afghans, this was a feeling they seemed to have normalised.
For decades, even before the so-called <war on terror>, Afghans had known
conflict. Twenty years prior, the country was embroiled in a civil war between
the forces of the National Army, supported by Russia, and the Mujahideen rebels.
Then, as in later conflicts, humanitarians arrived to help with aid and medical
care. In 1988, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) set up the
Ali Abad Orthopaedic Centre in the capital, to provide physical rehabilitation
and artificial limbs for the war wounded who had been victims of fighting,
landmines and bombs.
Two years after that, in 1990, Italian physiotherapist Alberto Cairo arrived to
work at the centre. More than three decades later, he has not left, deciding to
spend his life helping those affected by Afghanistan’s decades-long conflicts.
Three decades of care
I met Alberto on my first trip to Kabul. The then-55-year-old director of the
orthopaedic centre was personable, outgoing, courteous and attentive as he went
about his work.
My first thought upon meeting him was to wonder how someone could dedicate
themselves to helping others without expecting anything in return, living cut
off from everything he once considered a normal part of his life in the West.
But he is part of that nucleus of people who altruistically try to help others,
and that is his mission and legacy in life.
Alberto told me that it was in 1992 when he met the man who changed his life –
and whose example would go on to change the lives of thousands of others, people
who have passed through the ICRC centres for treatment and those who have worked
there.
The man Alberto met was called Mahmood. He had no legs and one arm. He was in
the middle of the street in a wheelchair, trying to escape a nearby explosion
with his youngest son.
Although fighting had ravaged the capital, causing the orthopaedic centre to
close, Alberto invited Mahmood in for treatment. After a while, Mahmood was up
and about with the help of his new prosthetics.
Once Alberto was able to reopen the centre, Mahmood started working there too.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/9/20/fixing-lives-and-limbs-through-decades-of-war-in-afghanistan
Al Jazeera
20 Sept 2021
By Saadullah Akhtar
<<Fleeing Afghan Hazaras face uncertain future in Pakistan.
Pakistan says it is unable to take any more refugees and has begun deporting new
arrivals back to Afghanistan.
Quetta, Pakistan – When the Taliban came to capture the northern Afghan city of
Mazar-i-Sharif, Ferozan knew that her life in the country was over and that she
would have to flee her home with her husband and two young children.
<There was war again, and I was very afraid,> she says. <We decided to take the
path of escape and came here.>
Like thousands of others, Ferozan – who like many Afghans goes by only one name
– fled to the eastern neighbouring country, Pakistan. They now face an uncertain
future, in a country where government officials say they are unable to take any
more refugees and have begun to deport some new arrivals. <The Balochistan
government and the federal government have already decided that there are
already three to four million Afghan refugees present in Pakistan,” said Liaquat
Shahwani, a spokesman for the provincial government in Balochistan, where most
new Afghan refugees have arrived. <We cannot cope with that burden, we cannot
carry it, why should more new people come? There are other neighbouring
countries, they can go there.>
Provincial official Jummadad Khan Mandhokhail told Al Jazeera that at least 250
new Afghan refugees had already been deported since the fresh arrival of people
began following the fall of the Afghan government on August 15.
<We have returned them because the Pakistan government has not at this time made
any camps to facilitate Afghan refugees,> said Shahwani. <Our decision is that
we will not allow them right now.>
Nowhere to go
A member of the Hazara ethnicity, the third-largest by population in
Afghanistan, Ferozan and her family felt they would be under greater threat
under the Taliban, which was accused of carrying out atrocities against Hazaras
during their first stint in power between 1996 and 2001.
The armed group, which seized Mazar-i-Sharif on August 14 and took complete
control of the capital Kabul a day later, had targeted members of the Hazara
ethnicity, most of whom are Shia Muslims, in a series of targeted massacres and
bombings for decades.
In August, human rights organisation Amnesty International found evidence that
Taliban fighters had killed nine Hazara men after taking control of Ghazni
province in July.
The ISIL (ISIS) armed group has also targeted ethnic Hazaras in Afghanistan in
major bombings in recent years.
Since the fall of the Afghan government last month, the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than 9,290 new refugees
have arrived in Pakistan, more than 90 percent of them through the southern
border crossing between the Afghan town of Spin Boldak and the Pakistani town of
Chaman.
Of those who have arrived, more than 30 percent are estimated to be of the
Hazara ethnicity, UNCHR says.
<I have become homeless and come here,> says Ferozan. <My demand of the
government is that they must help us and take us somewhere. We are staying in a
mosque, we have no clothes, no blankets and nothing else either.>
Ferozan and more than 100 other refugees were staying at the Rizvia mosque in
Quetta, the provincial capital of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province,
located about 100km (62 miles) from the border crossing at Chaman.
Dozens of families slept on carpets laid across the floor of the main prayer
hall at the mosque, with a small tent partition dividing the space between men
and women. As Ferozan and other refugees spoke of their experiences crossing the
border, several young children played around them.
<It is my plea to the government to help us, hold the hands of us poor people.
For how long will we wander like this, how long will we face war?> asks Ferozan.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/20/fleeing-afghan-hazaras-face-uncertain-future-in-pakistan
Ruhshana Media
Sept 2021
Author: Sahar Fitrat
<<We Afghans burn our identities to survive and resist.
The Taliban are removing us and our identities; But in order to survive, we hide
or burn every trace of ourselves and our desires.
Five years ago, on August 24, 2016, when the Taliban attacked my university, the
American University of Afghanistan, it burned a part of my body that would never
heal. I accidentally survived that accident. I left the university just five
minutes before the terrorist attack began. One of my friends who was with me,
his brother did not leave the university in time.
The trauma and pain that the Taliban inflicted on us that day affected all of
our lives. When I see pictures of the Taliban circling Kabul and beating people,
I see the innocent faces of my friends, colleagues and loved ones taken from me.
I will never forgive the Taliban. But most importantly, I will never forgive
them because they forced us to burn our identities and histories to survive
their savagery, even if we did.
On August 15, the day Afghanistan fell, we were sitting in a friendly apartment
miles from Kabul. My friend, a well-known artist, kept in touch with all the
acquaintances he had in his homeland. We were both looking at the pictures of
our country with confusion, the videos and the writings saying that the Taliban
had reached the capital.
With the fall of Kabul, our dreams of a different Afghanistan fell. Suddenly,
our biggest nightmare was happening right before our eyes. My friend called his
family in Kabul and asked them to pack up and burn all his documents, books and
prizes. The next day, I received a message from another friend: <Did you know
that all the files and documents of the American University of Afghanistan
students were burned?>
Burning is not a new phenomenon in the collective memory of Afghans. In 1989, at
the end of the Soviet-Afghan war, when the Mujahideen took over large parts of
Afghanistan, a generation just like ours burned everything they had, everything
that gave them identity. In 1996, history repeated itself for the first time the
Taliban occupied Afghanistan. Once again, in 2021, we are burning official
documents, books, photo albums, computers, instruments, clothes, memories,
sculptures and paintings. But in addition to these, we have many unrealized
rebellious dreams, our perceptions of identity and belonging, and we burn and
bury many parts of our formed and unformed identities.
Burning means the decision we have been forced to make, between the hope of
surviving without what we have and the risk of doubling not only ourselves but
all our loved ones. But I also see burning as a form of resistance, a
self-sacrificing act of denying individual and family history, the sudden
removal of a human footprint, a kind of eradication of identity, lifestyle and
even values. All to survive. Our collective understanding.
Afghan life Living with this constant alarm is a must go. This clock is always
ringing. Going as an asylum seeker, going to become an asylum seeker, or even
living in your own country but like asylum seekers. Afghan life means gathering
and learning to open up all that life over and over again on a smaller scale.
Unfortunately, we have become masters at this.
These days, I am filled with countless emotions. I'm angry at the corrupt sect
we call the president and his group. I am disturbed by the whole world that has
left Afghanistan and its people alone. I'm angry, because the louder we shout
and ask for help, the more deaf the world becomes. World leaders have left us
alone and continue to do so by legitimizing the Taliban.
Our people are dying every day. They have died in the last forty-two years,
since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. These bloodsheds continue unfortunate.
We live in a world that clearly and seriously reminds us that there are lives
that are worthwhile and there are lives that are not. Through institutions,
social media and the news, we see that solidarity with Afghanistan is a show and
that humanity has become baseless. How do we get to these days when dogs are
flown out of Afghanistan when people are being left unattended?
Above all, I am sad for our people. For myself, for the generation that will be
scattered all over the world.>>
Read more here:
https://rukhshana.com/we-afghans-burn-our-identities-to-survive-and-resist
The following materials (Links to it on the same page) are recommended:
- Taliban spokesman: The Ministry of Women was symbolic and had no performance.
- UN: Human rights, especially the rights of Afghan women and girls, must be
guaranteed
The Guardian
19 Sept 2021
Emma Graham-Harrison and Abdul Rauf Wafa in Kandahar
<<‘We don’t want people to be in a panic,’ says chief of Taliban morality police.
Exclusive: In his first interview with western media, Kandahar’s enforcer
promises things will be different from the brutal 1990s.
Mawlawi Mohammad Shebani is officially in charge of policing morals throughout
Kandahar, the Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan.
He is newly appointed head of the provincial office for the promotion of virtue
and prevention of vice, a title which strikes fear into many Afghans old enough
to remember its previous incarnation under Taliban rule in the 1990s.
Its officers served as the brutal enforcers of the group’s extreme
interpretation of Islam, whipping men into mosques to pray, policing beard
length, smashing radios and televisions and attacking or detaining women who
tried to work, went out without a male guardian or showed their faces in public.
Now it is back, and in the first western media interview with an official from
the organisation, Shebani detailed its structure and how it will police Afghan
behaviour, and revealed the pocket handbook meant to guide the work of his men.
He described a network fully integrated into the Taliban police force, with ties
to mosques and madrassas, and formal rules of operation, which have been made
public.
<The difference is we didn’t have a specific book of principles. There was just
the mujahideen without a written code,> he said of the 1990s.
He promised his men would focus on persuasion not violence. But the guidelines
he shared with the Observer, drawn up into a dense booklet about the size of a
smartphone, approved the use of force against the most recalcitrant offenders.
It describes a multistep process of handling offenders, first educating them,
then pressuring them to change their behaviour. If they are still recalcitrant,
force may be an option, according to the booklet, published last year when the
Taliban were building up the network inside their insurgency, and in the pockets
of rural Afghanistan they controlled at the time.
<Fourth step, if still the person continues (the offending behaviour), and this
can cause a lot of problems, then you can stop him with your hands,> the
guidelines said.
It also included rules redolent of the harshest aspects of Taliban rule in the
1990s, including a requirement that women leave the home only if they are
accompanied by a male guardian, compulsory prayer and stipulations on beard
length for men.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/persuasion-first-violence-later-the-talibans-new-vice-and-virtue-approach
Note from Gino d'Artali: Unfortunately I did not find The Obeserver's article. I
apologize.
The Guardian
19 Sept 2021
<<Kabul government’s female workers told to stay at home by Taliban.
Only those who cannot be replaced by men may remain, in further sign of
Taliban’s hardline rule over Afghans.
Female employees in the Kabul city government have been told to stay home, with
work only allowed for those who cannot be replaced by men, the interim mayor of
Afghanistan’s capital said on Sunday, detailing the latest restrictions on women
by the new Taliban rulers.
The decision to prevent most female city workers from returning to their jobs is
another sign that the Taliban, who overran Kabul last month, are enforcing their
harsh interpretation of Islam despite initial promises by some that they would
be tolerant and inclusive. Under their previous rule in the 1990s, the Taliban
barred girls and women from schools, jobs and public life.
Witnesses, meanwhile, said an explosion targeted a Taliban vehicle in the
eastern provincial city of Jalalabad, and hospital officials said five people
were killed in the second such deadly blast in as many days in the Islamic State
stronghold.
In recent days the new Taliban government has issued several decrees rolling
back the rights of girls and women. It told female middle and high school
students that they could not return to class for the time being, while boys in
those grades resumed studies this weekend. Female university students were
informed that studies would take place in gender-segregated settings from now on,
and that they must abide by a strict Islamic dress code. Under the US-backed
government deposed by the Taliban, university studies had been co-ed for the
most part.
On Friday the Taliban shut down the women’s affairs ministry, replacing it with
a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” tasked
with enforcing Islamic law. On Sunday just over a dozen women staged a protest
outside the ministry, holding up signs calling for the participation of women in
public life. <A society in which women are not active is [sic] dead society,>
one sign read.
<Why are they taking our rights?> said one of the protesters, 30-year-old Basira
Tawana. <We are here for our rights and the rights of our daughters.>
The protest lasted about 10 minutes. After a short verbal confrontation with a
man, the women got into cars and left, as Taliban in two cars observed from
nearby. Over the past months, Taliban fighters have broken up several women’s
protests by force.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/kabul-governments-female-workers-told-to-stay-at-home-by-taliban
Al Jazeera
18 Sept 2021
<<Taliban replaces ministry for women with ‘guidance’ ministry.
In Kabul, a new sign was up outside the Women’s Affairs Ministry, announcing it
was now the ‘Ministry for Preaching and Guidance and the Propagation of Virtue
and the Prevention of Vice’.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have set up a ministry for the “propagation of
virtue and the prevention of vice” in the building that once housed the Women’s
Affairs Ministry, escorting out World Bank staffers on Saturday as part of the
forced move.
It was the latest troubling sign that the Taliban is restricting women’s rights
as they settle into government, just a month since they overran the capital
Kabul. In their first period of rule in the 1990s, the Taliban denied girls and
women the right to education and barred them from public life.
Separately, three explosions targeted Taliban vehicles in the eastern provincial
capital of Jalalabad on Saturday, killing three people and wounding 20,
witnesses said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but ISIL (ISIS)
fighters, based in the area, are enemies of the Taliban.
The Taliban is facing major economic and security problems as it attempts to
govern, and a growing challenge by ISIL would further stretch its resources.
‘Girls forgotten’
In Kabul, a new sign was up outside the Women’s Affairs Ministry, announcing it
was now the <Ministry for Preaching and Guidance and the Propagation of Virtue
and the Prevention of Vice>.
The staff of the World Bank’s $100m Women’s Economic Empowerment and Rural
Development Project, which was run out of the Women’s Affairs Ministry, were
escorted off the grounds on Saturday, said project member Sharif Akhtar, who was
among those being removed.
Videos posted to social media showed women workers from the ministry protesting
outside after losing their jobs. No official from the Taliban responded to
requests for comment.
Mabouba Suraj, who heads the Afghan Women’s Network, said she was astounded by
the flurry of orders released by the Taliban-run government restricting women
and girls.
Meanwhile, the Taliban-run Ministry of Education asked boys from grades 7 to 12
back to school on Saturday along with their male teachers, but there was no
mention of girls in those grades returning to school. Previously, the Taliban’s
minister of higher education said girls would be given equal access to education,
albeit in gender-segregated settings.
<It is becoming really, really troublesome … Is this the stage where the girls
are going to be forgotten?> Suraj said. <I know they don’t believe in giving
explanations, but explanations are very important.>
Suraj speculated the contradictory statements perhaps reflect divisions within
the Taliban as they seek to consolidate their power, with the more pragmatic
within the movement losing out to hard-liners among them, at least for now.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/18/taliban-replace-ministry-for-women-with-guidance-ministry
Ruhshana Media
UNICEF: All Afghan girls should resume their studies without delay
17 September 2021
<<KABUL, AFG- JULY 25: Zinat Karimi, 17, listens during 10th-grade class at the
Zarghoona high school on July 25 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Zarghoona girls
high school is the largest in Kabul with 8,500 female students attending
classes. The school opened after almost a two month break due to the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic. Currently, there is widespread fear that the Taliban who
already control around half the country will reintroduce its notorious system
barring girls and women from almost all work, and access to education. The
Ministry of Education has announced the opening of schools, but there are mixed
reports in many areas where the Taliban have taken control or where fighting is
ongoing.
International Organization for the Protection of Children (UNICEF) has issued
statement saying that girls should resume their education without delay.
Rakhshana: The international body said that the opening of schools on Afghan
boys after months of closure due to corona virus, welcome; But she worries about
imposing restrictions on female students. <We are very concerned that many girls
may not be allowed to return at this time.>
<Girls cannot and should not be abandoned,> said Henrietta Four, executive
director of the International Organization for the Protection of Children. <It
is very important that all girls, including older girls, are able to resume
their education without further delay.> >>
Read more here:
https://rukhshana.com/all-afghan-girls-should-resume-their-studies-without-delay
Al Jazeera
17 Sept 2021
<<Taliban says classes resume for Afghan boys, no mention of girls.
Private schools at primary, secondary level, as well as official religious
schools, will be open from Saturday.
Afghan schools will open for boys from Saturday, the new Taliban-run education
ministry has said in a statement that did not mention when girls might be able
to go back to their classes. More than a month after the movement seized the
capital, Kabul, most educational institutions have remained closed as the
Taliban has struggled to reopen the economy and restore normal life in the
cities.
At some of the schools that have managed to operate, girls up to the sixth grade
have attended, and female students have gone to university classes. But high
schools for girls have been closed.
The Taliban announced an interim administration last week and officials have
said they will not replicate the policies of the previous Taliban government
(1996-2001), which banned girls’ education, and they have promised that girls
will be able to study so long as they do so in segregated classrooms.
However, there have been reports of women being barred from going to work, and
some have demonstrated to demand their rights to employment and education.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/17/taliban-says-classes-resume-afghan-boys-no-mention-girls
Al Jazeera
17 Sept 2021
<<Taliban says classes resume for Afghan boys, no mention of girls.
Private schools at primary, secondary level, as well as official religious
schools, will be open from Saturday.
While the Taliban did not order schools to close after its takeover, the group
has said the security situation meant that many activities for women and girls
were not yet possible – and the latest statement did not mention girls at all.
It said state and private schools at primary and secondary level as well as
official religious schools would be open from Saturday.
<All teachers and male students should attend school,> the statement said.
Separately on Friday, the Taliban appeared to have shut down the government’s
ministry of women’s affairs and replaced it with a department known for
enforcing strict religious doctrine.
Several posts have appeared on Twitter in the past 24 hours showing female
workers from the ministry protesting outside the building, saying they had lost
their jobs.>>
Read more here (and the quote/article above and below) :
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/17/taliban-says-classes-resume-afghan-boys-no-mention-girls
Al Jazeera
17 Sept 2021
<<UN Security Council extends Afghan mission mandate for six months
Fifteen-member body unanimously passes resolution that also calls for
establishment of an ‘inclusive and representative government’.
The United Nations Security Council has unanimously agreed to renew the world
body’s Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) for another six months – a
temporary extension given the uncertainty in the country since the Taliban
takeover last month.
The 15-member council asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to report by
January 31, 2022 “on strategic and operational recommendations for the mandate
of UNAMA, in light of recent political, security and social developments”.
The document, which was drafted by Estonia and Norway, stressed <the importance
of the establishment of an inclusive and representative government> and called
for “full, equal and meaningful participation of women, and upholding human
rights, including for women, children and minorities”.
Afghanistan’s new rulers, however, have formed an interim government made up
only of Taliban members and associates and no women.
In August, a council resolution calling for freedom of movement for Afghans
wishing to leave the country after the Taliban takeover won 13 votes, as Russia
and China abstained.
The text approved on Friday said the UN would continue to play an <important
role> in promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said
parts of the mission, such as humanitarian assistance, are likely to be <greatly
increased>.
<[There are] real worries about the state of the economy, the not properly
functioning banking system – the idea that literally thousands, maybe millions
of people will start a slow and steady exodus from Afghanistan,> he said.
<That’s why the UN Security Council has not done what it normally does – which
is extend this mission just as it is every year for another year. They’ve
decided they need to look at the shape of this and how it’s going to work, and
that’s why they’ve agreed to a six-month extension for now,> Bays added.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/17/un-security-council-extends-afghan-mission-mandate-for-six-months
Ruhshana Media
15 Sept 2021
<<One month after the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.
Women are still at home. On the twenty-fourth day of Assad this year,
Afghanistan underwent a transformation. The government of the country led by
Mohammad Ashraf Ghani fell to the Taliban terrorist group.
The arrival of the Taliban in Kabul and the return of the group to power
coincided with the escape of the President of Afghanistan. Someone who has said
many times, <He beheads, but not the trench.> Now he has acted contrary to what
he told the people, leaving the country's population of 36 million alone in fear
of the Taliban's return.
This month, Afghanistan has been in the spotlight of foreign media and
journalists. The issue of Afghanistan is still at the forefront of the world's
media coverage. The majority of the people of this country believe that rapid
and shocking developments have taken place in Afghanistan within a month and
they are surprised by the return of the Taliban to power. Among all these events,
what is very naked is the sudden change in the living conditions of Afghan women.
The lives of women in this country have changed unimaginably. Half of
Afghanistan's population now has to stay at home. The majority of women left all
their offices and workplaces and took refuge in their homes just about an hour
before the advent of Saturday, August 15th. With the exception of some female
employees, other female employees of Afghan government departments have not been
allowed to work in accordance with the Islamic Sharia law imposed by the Taliban
in the Ministries of Public Health and Education.
Women who also worked in private offices,
Women who also worked in private offices, with the exception of a number of
female journalists, are still housewifes.
Lida (a pseudonym), a girl who until a month ago was the financial manager of a
private construction company, is now, in her own words, <in the corner of the
room.> A girl who no longer laughs out loud, as her mother says. She, who has
been protesting for three days in a row in Kabul, says life has no meaning for
her. Because they have spoken face to face with the Taliban and they do not
smell anything of a life of democracy and a participatory society.>>
Read more here:
https://rukhshana.com/one-month-after-taliban-takeover-women-have-retreated-indoors
Al Jazeera
16 Sept 2021
Zarifa Ghafari
Afghan activist, politician and former mayor of Maidan Shahr, capital city of
the Wardak Province, Afghanistan.
<<The world should not yet engage with the new Taliban government.
The international community should not legitimise the Taliban government before
it demonstrates that it will respect the human rights of all Afghans.
I left Afghanistan, my beloved country, just a few days after the Taliban took
control of Kabul. I did not want to leave, but I had no choice. Soon after the
Taliban assumed control of the capital city, its fighters started to look for
me. They showed up at my house (which I had already left in fear of my safety)
and harassed my family members and people working for me. They beat up my
security guards and violently interrogated people who know me in an effort to
find me.
It was obvious that my life was in grave danger, but this was not the reason why
I chose to leave the country. I left because I knew that if I stayed, they would
come for my family, too.
In 2018, I became the mayor of Maidan Shar, a conservative town in the Wardak
province of Afghanistan where the Taliban has widespread support. Since then, I
survived several attempts on my life. The Taliban and its supporters did not
want to see a young woman in a position of authority, so they tried to
intimidate me into leaving my post in every way they could. In late 2020, they
killed my father because of the work I do.
When the Taliban took control of the country, I knew the group would not
hesitate to hurt other members of my family to get their hands on me. My family
is not political, they just want to live their lives in peace. They already
sacrificed so much for the choices I made. I had to leave the country to ensure
their safety. Despite all this, the Taliban is now claiming that it has changed.
Its leaders insist that under the Taliban’s rule, every Afghan, including
working women, journalists, civil rights activists and political opponents, will
be safe. They are asking people not to leave Afghanistan and inviting those who
had already left to return home. They insist those who were working in
government jobs before the Taliban takeover will be allowed to return to their
offices.
I do not believe any of this.
Even if I put all of my own bad experiences with them aside, the way they
continue to treat Afghans who do not think like them, or behave according to
their rules, shows that their promises are empty. Just a few days ago, Taliban
members raided the house of doctor and civil rights activist Fahima Rahmati.
They beat her up and harassed her family. They took her brothers and
brothers-in-law with them. These men, who are not charged with any crime, are
still missing. Fahima’s story is just one among many. My female colleagues and
friends in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan are telling me they are still
not allowed to return to their offices. My colleagues from the Defence Ministry
told me that they tried to enter the ministry two days ago, but the Taliban did
not let them into the building, and told them not to return.
If the Taliban was really committed to keeping us safe, and respecting our
hard-earned rights and liberties, we would not be hearing stories like these
every day.
There may be some within the Taliban leadership who really want to keep their
promises about respecting human rights, but the Taliban is not united. There are
different factions within the group who have very different visions for the
future of the country.
Just days after the Taliban announced its new government, for example, Mullah
Abdul Ghani Baradar, a Taliban co-founder, and Khalil ur-Rahman Haqqani, the
minister for refugees and a prominent figure within the Haqqani network,
exchanged strong words inside the presidential palace, as their supporters
brawled nearby. It was later revealed that the two factions were fighting over
who should take credit for the Taliban’s victory over the United States and how
power should be divided in the new cabinet.
How can we believe that the Taliban would keep its promises about human rights
and inclusivity, while its leaders are fighting each other to obtain more power
and influence?
Recently, the Taliban has also been claiming that the international community
can only help the people of Afghanistan by engaging with the new Taliban
government. This is not true.>>
Really read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/9/16/the-world-should-not-yet-engage-with-the-new-taliban-government
Al Jazeera
16 Sept 2021
<<Afghanistan envoys marooned abroad after Taliban’s sudden return.
Hundreds of Afghan diplomats are still living abroad, with many saying money is
running out as they fear over family’s safety.
The Taliban’s abrupt return to power has left hundreds of Afghan diplomats
overseas in limbo: running out of money to keep missions operating, fearful for
families back home and desperate to secure refuge abroad. The group, which
swiftly removed Afghanistan’s Western-backed government on August 15, on Tuesday
said it had sent messages to all of its embassies telling diplomats to continue
their work.
But eight embassy staff who spoke to Reuters news agency on condition of
anonymity, in countries including Canada, Germany and Japan, described
dysfunction and despair at their missions.
<My colleagues here and in many countries are pleading with host nations to
accept them,> said an Afghan diplomat in Berlin, who said he feared what might
happen to his wife and four daughters who remain in Kabul if he allowed his name
to be used.
<I am literally begging. Diplomats are willing to become refugees,> he said,
adding he would have to sell everything, including a large house in Kabul, and
<start all over again>.
Afghanistan’s missions overseas face a period of <prolonged limbo> as countries
decide whether to recognise the Taliban, said Afzal Ashraf, an international
relations expert and visiting fellow at Britain’s University of Nottingham.
<What can those embassies do? They don’t represent a government. They don’t have
a policy to implement,> he said, adding that embassy staff would likely be
granted political asylum due to safety concerns if they returned to Afghanistan.
The Taliban, which enforced a strict interpretation of Islamic law with
punishments like amputations and stonings during its previous rule from 1996 to
2001, has sought to show a more conciliatory face since coming back to
power.Spokespeople have reassured Afghans that they are not out for revenge and
will respect people’s rights, including women’s.
But reports of house-to-house searches and reprisals against former officials
and ethnic minorities have made people wary. The Taliban has promised to
investigate any abuses.
A group of envoys from the deposed government issued a first-of-its-kind joint
statement on Wednesday, calling on world leaders to deny the Taliban formal
recognition.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/16/afghanistan-envoys-marooned-abroad-taliban-diplomacy-refugees
Al Jazeera
16 Sept 2021
<<Afghan women dress up in colourful attire in ‘fight for identity’.
Online campaign with hashtags such as #DoNotTouchMyClothes and #AfghanistanCulture
criticises dress code under Taliban rule.
Afghan youth rights activist Wazhma Sayle says she was shocked to see a
photograph online, apparently of women dressed in black all-enveloping niqabs
and gowns, staging a demonstration in support of the country’s new Taliban
rulers at Kabul University.
The 36 year old, who is based in Sweden, later posted a photograph of herself on
Twitter dressed in a bright green and silver dress captioned: <This is Afghan
culture & how we dress! Anything less than this does not represent Afghan women!>
Other Afghan women overseas have posted similar pictures, striking a chord in
Kabul.
<At least they are able to tell the world that we, the women of Afghanistan, do
not support the Taliban,> said Fatima, a 22-year-old in the Afghan capital.
<I cannot post such pictures or wear those kind of clothes here anymore. If I
did, the Taliban would kill me.>
Many women said they believed the purported protest, which has appeared on
social media and in Western media, was staged and that several people dressed in
the head-to-toe black burqa gowns were men.
Reuters news agency said it has not verified the authenticity of the pictures.
<It is good our women (overseas) were able to protest about it,> said Khatima,
another young woman in Kabul. <The reality is, the burqa is not representative
of women in Afghanistan.>
When the Taliban was in power two decades ago, women had to cover themselves
from head to toe. Those who broke the rules sometimes suffered humiliation and
public beatings by the Taliban’s religious police.
While the new Taliban regime has promised to allow women more freedoms, there
have been reports of women being barred from going to work, and some being
beaten in recent weeks for protesting against Taliban rule.
Universities have installed curtains inside classrooms to segregate men and
women.
The online campaign with hashtags such as #DoNotTouchMyClothes and #AfghanistanCulture
began when US-based Afghan historian Bahar Jalali tweeted to criticise the black
garments worn by the university demonstrators.
<No woman has ever dressed like this in the history of Afghanistan. This is
utterly foreign and alien to Afghan culture,> she said.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/16/afghanistan-women-colourful-attire-social-media
Gino d'Artali
Indept investigative journalist
Opinion
16 Sept 2021
It was to be expected that Afghanistan women living abroad are kind of in denial
concerning the Afghani womens living in Afghanistan it's position and fights
today. That's why I follow and report about what is happening with and to the
women there.
Al Jazeera
30 August 2021
Ali M Latifi
<<Kabul families say children killed in US drone attack.
Ten people from a Kabul neighbourhood killed in US drone attack – Washington
claims ISKP fighters were the target.
Kabul, Afghanistan – The Ahmadi and Nejrabi families had packed all their
belongings, waiting for word to be escorted to Kabul airport and eventually
moved to the United States, but the message Washington sent instead was a rocket
into their homes in a Kabul neighbourhood.
The Sunday afternoon drone attack, which the US claimed was conducted on an
Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) target, killed 10 members of
the families, ranging from two to 40 years old.
Aimal Ahmadi, whose nieces and nephews were among those killed, is still in
disbelief. Like others in the neighbourhood, he is incensed that his brother and
nephews and nieces were never recognised in the media as what they were, a
family going about their life.
For hours, he and the rest of the surviving family had to listen to Afghan and
international media refer to their loved ones, whose remains they had to gather
with their own hands, simply as suspected ISKP targets.
<They were innocent, helpless children,> Ahmadi says of the majority of the
victims, including two-year-old Malika. Had he not gone out to buy groceries,
Ahmadi himself could have very easily been one of the victims.
He says his brother, 40-year-old engineer Zemarai, had just arrived home from
work. Because the families were expecting to go to the US, Zemarai asked one of
his sons to park the car inside the two-floor house. He wanted his older boys to
practice driving before they arrived in the US.
Several of the children quickly packed into the car, wanting to take the short
ride from the street to the garden of the family home.
<When the car had come to a stop, that’s when the rocket hit,> Aimal told Al
Jazeera.
Walls stained red with blood
What happened next was an all-too-common scene of mayhem in Afghanistan as
frantic relatives and neighbours ran to the scene. Some brought water, hoping to
douse the flames that had spread from the Toyota sedan the children had packed
into to an SUV parked nearby.
<It’s very symbolic that US operations in Afghanistan started with drone strikes
and ended with drone strikes. It seems they’ve learned nothing in 20 years>.
Emran Feroz, an Afghan journalist
Neighbours speaking to Al Jazeera said the house, where little boys and girls
had been playing a few minutes prior, turned into a <horror scene>. They
described human flesh stuck to the walls. Bones fallen into the bushes. Walls
stained red with blood. Shattered glass everywhere.
Talking about one of the younger boys, Farzad, a neighbour said: <We only found
his legs.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/30/an-afghan-family-killed-by-a-us-airstrike-in-kabul
Al Jazeera
From: The Stream
August 5 2021
<<What should Pakistan do to end violence against women?
Shocked by the recent gruesome murder of a prominent woman in Pakistan,
activists are pressing authorities to address rising cases of gender-based
violence within the country. Noor Mukadam, a 27-year-old daughter of a former
diplomat, was tortured and beheaded in late July by an acquaintance for
allegedly rejecting his advances. Her death has reignited calls for reform in
Pakistan, a conservative Muslim country where courts and laws have been accused
of favouring perpetrators. Pakistan has grappled with misogyny for decades. But
coronavirus-related lockdowns are exacerbating the problems women face and have
resulted in a huge spike in domestic violence incidents. Reported cases of
slapping, pushing, kicking and other incidents jumped up to 40 percent in some
parts of the country, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).
Pakistan also continues to rank near the bottom of global gender indices when it
comes to educational, political and economic opportunities for women. Some
activists cite growing religious extremism as one reason why the crisis is
getting worse.
However, government leaders often downplay the scope of the problem. In an
interview late last month, Prime Minister Imran Khan said:
<“You look at the situation in Pakistan even now, you look at the rape cases
here, compare it to Western countries, they are minuscule compared to there. Yes,
we have our issues, we have certain cultural problems, every nation has that.
But that comes with cultural evolution, with education. But as far a women’s
dignity goes, respect, I can say after going all over the world, this society
gives more respect and dignity to women.> >>
Note from Gino d'Artali:
'Yeah right.' Read the full article here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2021/8/5/what-should-pakistan-do-to-end-violence-against-women
|
