The Taliban flag is painted on a wall outside the American embassy compound in Kabul, Afghanistan on Sept. 11, 2021. (AP)Afghanistan crisis Highlights: The United Nations’ human rights chief criticised Monday the Taliban’s record since seizing power in Afghanistan, saying stated commitments did not match realities on the ground such as the status of women.
“Importantly, and in contradiction to assurances that the Taliban would uphold women’s rights, over the past three weeks, women have instead been progressively excluded from the public sphere,” UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said in her speech.
Meanwhile, in a first since the Taliban’s takeover, a foreign commercial flight landed in Kabul Monday. According to Reuters, a special chartered commercial flight of Pakistan International Airlines carried officials from the World Bank and journalists. The aircraft later returned to Islamabad.
A man walks with a child through Fort Bliss' Doña Ana Village where Afghan refugees are being housed, in New Mexico, Friday, Sept. 10, 2021. (AP)
With Afghanistan facing a grave humanitarian crisis, India on Monday said it will stand by Afghans just as it did in the past.
Noting that Afghanistan is passing through a “critical and challenging” phase, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar also said the international community must come forward to help it.
In a virtual address at the UN high-level meeting on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, the minister said that India has consistently supported a central role of the global body in the future of the war-torn country. More details here.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday called for donors to pledge hundreds of millions of dollars for Afghanistan, saying that poverty was spiralling and many people could run out of food by the end of the month.
“After decades of war, suffering and insecurity, they face perhaps their most perilous hour,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters in opening remarks at a Geneva conference where $606 million is being sought.
Denmark said at the Geneva donor conference on Afghanistan it is giving 240 million more kroner ($38.1 million) to the ailing country.
Meanwhile, neighboring Norway pledged Monday an extra 100 million kroner ($11.5 million) to be sent via different organizations of the United Nations and the International Red Cross, among others.
“More than 18 million people in Afghanistan now need protection and life-saving assistance. Half of all children are at risk of acute malnutrition,” said Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide.
The Danish money also would be channeled through U.N. agencies and Danish organizations working in the region. (AP)
Qatar's foreign minister said on Monday the Gulf state has asked the Taliban to respect women's rights by giving several examples of Muslim countries where women have an active role in society.
According to Reuters, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani was speaking in a joint press conference with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian in Doha. Le Drian said dozens of French nationals are still in Afghanistan and Paris is working with Qatar to evacuate them.
The United Nations' human rights chief Michelle Bachelet on Monday noted that the Taliban's stated commitments did not match the realities on the ground in regards to human rights, Reuters reported.
"Importantly, and in contradiction to assurances that the Taliban would uphold women's rights, over the past three weeks, women have instead been progressively excluded from the public sphere," she told the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Bachelet also criticised the lack of women in the newly formed Taliban government and its dominance by ethnic Pashtun.
The UNHCR Commissioner Filippo Grandi visited Kabul on Monday to "assess the country’s acute humanitarian needs and the situation of 3.5 million displaced Afghans."
The Boeing 777 with the flight number PK 6429 departed from Islamabad, Pakistan, as a commercial flight chartered by the World Bank, carrying officials from the bank and journalists, airline spokesman Abdullah H. Khan said.
The aircraft later returned to Islamabad. "It was a special chartered commercial flight," Khan told Reuters. "We also accommodated other individuals who wanted to leave Afghanistan since we had space on the plane," PIA's Chief Operating Officer Arshad Malik said in a statement. (Reuters)
Youth and civil society activists at a press conference in Kabul on Sunday said the Taliban’s cabinet is not inclusive as it lacks women, minorities and youth, TOLO News reported. The group urged the Taliban to address this.
Russia is planning to send food and medicine to Afghanistan soon as humanitarian aid, the RIA news agency cited Russia's foreign ministry as saying on Monday. (Reuters)
The Pakistan International Airlines said 'it is keen to resume regular commercial services to Afghanistan, but it is too soon to say how frequently flights would operate.'
A Pakistan International Airlines flight landed at the Kabul airport Monday, with around 10 people on board, according to AFP.
In its first clear and official reference to the Taliban as a state actor, India acknowledged in a joint statement with Australia Sunday that the group holds “positions of power and authority across Afghanistan”.
This reference is a step forward for the diplomatic establishment, but falls short of officially recognising the Taliban administration as the government of Afghanistan. Sources told The Indian Express that Sunday’s formulation was arrived at after “much debate and deliberation” over the last week after the Taliban announced its Cabinet. Read more.
The health care system in Afghanistan is teetering on the edge of collapse, endangering the lives of millions and compounding a deepening humanitarian crisis, public health experts warn.
Afghanistan is already on the brink of universal poverty, according to a United Nations report Thursday, and only its richest citizens will be able to afford health care. Assuming that health care coverage is cut by half because of the funding loss, deaths among women and children will increase by at least 33% over the next year — nearly 2,000 women and more than 26,000 children per year — according to one analysis. Read the full New York Times report here.
The United Nations is convening an aid conference in Geneva on Monday in an effort to raise more than $600 million for Afghanistan, warning of a humanitarian crisis there following the Taliban takeover.
Even before the Taliban's seizure of Kabul last month, half the population - or 18 million people - was dependent on aid. That figure looks set to increase due to drought and shortages of cash and food, UN officials and aid groups warn. An abrupt end to billions of dollars in foreign donations following the collapse of Afghanistan's Western-backed government and the ensuing victory of the Taliban has heaped more pressure on UN programmes.Yet UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says his organisation is struggling financially: 'At the present moment the UN is not even able to pay its salaries to its own workers,' he told reporters on Friday. (Reuters)
Qatar Foreign Minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in his meeting with the Taliban leaders discussed bilateral relations, humanitarian assistance and interaction with the world, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen tweeted.
Border forces and armed police units deployed in the counter-terrorism grid have been directed by the central security establishment to prepare and administer a new training module on the Taliban and its modus operandi to the troops in view of the "emerging" scenario following the Islamic militia taking over Afghanistan. --PTI
As the Taliban tighten its grip on power in Afghanistan, patrons of the popular Afghan music in Pakistan are shutting their offices with artistes in Kabul being forced to flee into hiding, resulting in cancellation of music programmes and huge losses for the industry. The Taliban swept across the country last month, seizing control of almost all key towns and cities in the backdrop of withdrawal of the US forces that began on May 1. On August 15, the capital city of Kabul fell to the insurgents. The Taliban claimed victory over opposition forces in the last holdout province of Panjshir on September 6, completing their takeover of Afghanistan three weeks after capturing Kabul. --PTI
Taliban's spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, who appeared before the media for the first time in a decade at a press conference after the insurgent group seized Kabul last month, said that he lived in the Afghan capital right under the nose of his adversaries who considered him a 'ghost-like' figure during the war. Mujahid, who operated in the shadows for years, also admitted that he studied at the Haqqania seminary in Nowshera in northwest Pakistan, which has also been dubbed the Taliban University or the 'University of Jihad' internationally. "They (US and Afghan National Forces) used to think I did not exist," Mujahid told The Express Tribune newspaper in an interview. --PTI
Women in Afghanistan can continue to study in universities, including at post-graduate levels, but classrooms will be gender-segregated and Islamic dress is compulsory, the higher education minister in the new Taliban government said Sunday.
The minister, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, laid out the new policies at a news conference, several days after Afghanistan’s new rulers formed an all-male government.
The world has been watching closely to see to what extent the Taliban might act differently from their first time in power, in the late 1990s. During that era, girls and women were denied an education, and were excluded from public life. Read more
Describing the new Afghanistan government as "spectacularly uninclusive" even within the Taliban frame, author-historian William Dalrymple says the "all-male old guard ultra-conservative Pashtun mullah, establishment is unlikely to survive.
Surprised that the Taliban talked about inclusivity but did not even "dress it up", the author of 'Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan' said the new government wouldn't appeal to either western donors', 60 per cent of Afghans or women who comprise 50 per cent of the country's population.
"It is a surprise because even if they haven't given big places to (former president) Hamid Karzai or someone from the old regime or even if they were doing but a window dressing by putting a few women in minor positions that would have been more expected given the PR they were putting out over the last month," Dalrymple told PTI in a phone interview. (PTI)
Hundreds of women, many wearing full-length robes, their faces obscured by black veils, filled the auditorium of a university in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday holding signs — many of them in English — in support of the Taliban and its strict interpretation of Islam, including separate education for men and women.
The Taliban said the demonstration at Shaheed Rabbani Education University, which followed anti-Taliban protests last week by Afghan women demanding equal rights, was organized by female university lecturers and students.
Since the United States and its allies departed Kabul on Aug. 30, leaving Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban, the country’s women have been at the forefront of protests demanding that their rights continue to be respected. Read the New York Times report here.
In 2007, Afghanistan’s then president Hamid Karzai took his intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh for a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart General Pervez Musharraf. They handed the Pakistani president a dossier of the whereabouts of some al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives hiding in Pakistan, including in some safe-houses in Mansehra, a hilly area adjacent to Abbottabad.
“Musharraf was dismissive of the information but uncomfortable at being put on the spot. He shifted in his chair, grasping the arms, almost shaking at the mention of Mansehra,” journalist Carlotta Gall writes in her book, The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan 2001-2014. She quotes Saleh as saying, “I did not know then that that was where bin Laden was hiding.” Read the full report here.
Afghanistan's first 2001 post-Taliban president Hamid Karzai marked the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America with a meeting of tribal elders at his high-walled compound in the Afghan capital where he has remained with his family since the August return of the Taliban to Kabul. (AP)
Echoing India’s concern, visiting Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Saturday “we share very strong interests in ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for the breeding or the training of terrorists” and this is “an abiding concern of the international community”.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said Afghanistan “must not allow its soil to be used in any manner, by anybody for terrorism”.
Although they did not name the Taliban, the two ministers — India and Australia held the 2+2 talks between their Foreign and Defence Ministers — flagged issues of concern about human rights. Read the full report here.