Türkiye announced on Tuesday it will send a train carrying more humanitarian aid to help the earthquake-affected people in Herat province of Afghanistan.

In a statement, Türkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) said 39 tons of blankets, 8 tons of beds, 85 tons of tents, 40 tons of hygiene materials, 33 tons of clothing, 15 tons of generators, 240 tons of food, 30 tons of kitchen equipment, 400 portable toilets and 18 tons of heaters will be delivered to Afghanistan.

Last month, consecutive earthquakes in the Herat province of Afghanistan, located on the border with Iran, caused the death of approximately 2,500 people, forcing the Afghan authorities to issue an international aid request.

Ankara has previously dispatched two aircraft from the Ministry of National Defense, carrying search and rescue personnel and humanitarian aid to the region.

Quake-hit region

The earthquake was one of the deadliest tremors in Afghanistan in recent years. The impact of the earthquake extended into neighboring Iran, where residents of Mashhad, a city with a population of over 1 million, located approximately 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the earthquake’s epicenter, reported feeling the shaking of their house walls.

Hemmed in by mountains, Afghanistan has a history of strong earthquakes, many in the rugged Hindu Kush region bordering Pakistan.

Severe earthquakes occur repeatedly in the region where the Arabian, Indian and Eurasian plates meet. A devastating quake killed more than 1,000 people in Afghanistan in 2022. After several decades of conflict, many houses are poorly built. Earthquakes therefore often cause major damage.

Source: Daily Sabah

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The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) recently established a water distribution network at Laghman University in the east of Afghanistan.

The ceremony held in the university campus for the opening of the project was attended by the Taliban interim government’s general director of foreign relations of the Ministry of Higher Education, Muhammed Nazar Irfan, the rector of Laghman University, professor Muhibullah Hidayet, faculty members and students.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Hidayet said that the Turkish state and people are the true friends of Afghanistan.

Maintaining that this prestigious project, which TIKA implemented with the understanding of “water is life,” plays a vital role in cleaning the university and achieving a greener university campus, Hidayet said: “Thus, we experience the joy of having access to clean water in our administrative buildings, mosque, dining hall and all other parts of our campus.”

Irfan said Afghanistan is a country that has been damaged by civil and foreign wars for the last 40 years but brother countries such as Türkiye do not leave them to face difficulties alone. He also noted that water comes first in development; therefore, thanks to this project, the university will also develop.

Irfan emphasized that Türkiye has implemented significant projects through TIKA in the capital Kabul and in many other provinces.

TIKA Kabul Office Coordinator Fazıl Akın Erdoğan stated they are happy to complete the Laghman University water project, saying Türkiye attaches great importance to education. He also underlined that the development of societies is only possible through education.

The official also noted that a 150-meter-deep (190-foot-deep) well was dug for the university, a 60,000-liter water tank was built and a 3.2-kilometer (1.9-mile) water network system was established to deliver it to administrative units and landscaping.

Source: Daily Sabah

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In a landmark resolution, the UN Security Council on Thursday condemned the de facto rulers of Afghanistan’s decision to ban women nationals from working for the United Nations, calling for Taliban leaders to “swiftly reverse” their decision.

The resolution passed unanimously by the 15-member body in New York, calls for the “full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of women and girls in Afghanistan”, and urges all countries and organisations with influence on the fundamentalist rulers of the country, “to promote an urgent reversal” of policies which have in effect erased women from public life.

Since the Taliban takeover of July 2021, when its forces toppled the democratically-elected Government, it has rolled back a wide range of human rights of women and girls, including a ban on attending high school and university, restrictions on movement and work, and in December, a decree banning female nationals from working from most NGOs.

Earlier this month the Taliban extended their ban to women working for the United Nations.

Afghan girls arrive in Rwanda to continue their education.

The UN underlined its “unequivocal condemnation” of the move in early April, noting that it contravenes international law, including the UN Charter. All UN staff have been told not to report to the office, except for some critical tasks, while an operational review is carried out, concluding on 5 May.

A record 28.3 million people in Afghanistan are in need of assistance this year, making Afghanistan the world’s largest aid operation, with the UN asking for $4.6 billion to fully fund relief efforts this year. The UN Humanitarian Coordinator warned this month that Afghanistan was also the world’s least well-funded operation, with less than five per cent funding pledged so far.

‘Deep concern’

The Security Council resolution lays out ambassadors’ “deep concern” over the ban on women working at the UN, saying that – along with the other erosions of basic rights – “will negatively and severely impact” the UN aid operations throughout the country, “including the delivery of life-saving assistance and basic services to the most vulnerable”.

Security Council Meets on Situation in Afghanistan

It stresses that the UN Assistance Mission in the country, UNAMA, will also be unable to implement its humanitarian mandate until the ban ends. The resolution emphasizes that the ban “is unprecedented in the history of the United Nations.”

‘Dire’ economic and humanitarian conditions

The resolution also stresses the urgent need to keep addressing Afghanistan’s “dire economic and humanitarian situation” and help the country restore self-reliance, recognizing the importance of allowing the Central Bank to use assets which are currently frozen outside the country, “for the benefit of the Afghan people.”

The Council backed the continued work of UNAMA reiterating its “full support”, and called on all with a stake in Afghanistan, including Taliban authorities, “to ensure the safety, security and freedom of movement of the United Nations and associated personnel throughout the country.”

Source: UN News

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Berlin (25/7 – 16.67)

The table is set for the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast to remain a geopolitical hotspot.

Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), eastern Tajikistan, is the home to the Pamir Mountains, also called “the roof of the world”, whose sharp mountain ranges and deep valleys resemble a lunar landscape. A far-flung frontier, situated in a troubled neighborhood, next to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, GBAO is a geopolitical treasure tethered to exterior interests: the authoritarian central Tajik government in Dushanbe, Chinese economic and military interests, and Russia, which historically frames the Pamirs as a part of its geopolitical backyard. The region’s inhabitants, the Pamiris, however, are seldom counseled.

In August 2021, desperation arrived in Ruzvat, a river community high up in the Pamir Mountains, in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), in eastern Tajikistan. The Panj River embodies the floating border between Tajikistan and northeastern Afghanistan, and the Taliban movement’s seizure of political power shook the ground on both sides of the river.

Since the independence of Tajikistan, the Pamirs in GBAO have remained a stronghold for various movements, and above all, an identity, that challenge the hegemonic Tajik nationalism bred by authoritarian Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon.

The Taliban’s successful power grab had swept through an Afghanistan militarily weakened by the abrupt American withdrawal after a 20-year presence in the country. The geopolitical map of Central Asia was, yet again, redrawn.

“The border closed, and along with that our livelihood was cut off,” Gulshan, a market vendor in Ruzvat, told me.

In GBAO, people have learned to decipher the geopolitical gales sweeping over the Pamir Mountains. The Panj River embodied the frontier during the Soviet-Afghan War and was a stronghold for the Afghan Northern Alliance, which militarily opposed the first Taliban government in Kabul in the later 1990s. Since the independence of Tajikistan, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Pamirs have remained a stronghold for various movements – and above all, an identity – that challenge the hegemonic Tajik nationalism bred by authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon in faraway Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital.

People have also learned how to stave off hunger. The sound of the river is ever-present from the threshold to Gulshan’s one-story-house. The view is hypnotic. A pallid winter sun looms just above the sharp mountain tops. On the Afghan riverbank, washed rugs dry in the sun next to tiny lots plowed by cows. It is an unforgiving environment adorned by the Taliban movement’s white flag.

“We often wave to the Taliban soldiers who patrol the river,” Gulshan told me. “They swing their Kalashnikovs over their shoulders and smile and wave back. They ride the jeeps that used to belong to the U.N. – the Taliban have just painted over the logo.”

Nowadays, waving is the only contact they have with their Afghan neighbors. Since the Taliban takeover, the border between the two countries remains closed, as well as the international market in Darvoz, next to a bridge border crossing. The source of income for river communities like Ruzvat is gone and has been replaced with nothing.

“We used to have our regular stand at the market in Darvoz, and we relied on trading and selling goods to Afghans,” Gulshan explained while walking up the slope to the Pamir Highway, a near-mythical stretch of cracked but paved road built by Soviet engineers in the 1930s upon historical trading routes entwined with the ancient Silk Road.

Along with her neighbor, friend, and colleague Nasreen, they now wave to passers-by in desperate hope that they will hit the brakes to purchase seasonal Bukhara pears, daily fresh tomatoes, or newly reaped onions displayed in buckets, upon cardboard boxes, or dangling from tree branches.

Their survival – like that of most residents of the border communities along the Panj River since the Afghan border closed – depends entirely on personal ingenuity.

In late November 2021, things got even worse in the Pamirs. A 29-year-old civilian, Gulbiddin Ziyobekov, was killed by Tajik police in Tavdem, a village south of Khorog (GBAO’s capital and largest city, with a population of around 30,000). The killing, described by witnesses as an assassination, sparked uprisings directed at the central government and Rahmon.

The following year, 2022, has been described as one of the worst years for human rights in Tajikistan since the end of the civil war in 1997, especially in GBAO. In May 2022, over a thousand Pamiris took to the streets of Khorog and Rushan, a strategic town along Pamir Highway, demanding justice for the killing of Ziyobekov and a governmental response to inflated commodity prices.

Dushanbe responded – with live ammunition, tear gas, mass arrests, torture, killings, and a four-month-long internet shutdown.

Local accounts estimate that more than 40 people lost their lives because of the uprisings in Khorog and Rushan; among them influential local leader Mamadboqir Mamadboqirov, who was slain in the streets of Khorog, having been on the central government’s hitlist ever since the mid-1990s. “Colonel Boqir,” as he was known, was a military commander for the Tajik Pamiri military forces and an outspoken critic of Rahmon. Hundreds of people have been arrested and tortured; private businesses have been nationalized and properties and financial capital seized by authorities.

In a symbolic gesture of total colonization, the Pamiri Ismaili flag was removed from a hilltop near Khorog.

With Mamadboqirov’s killing, there are few, if any, local Pamiri leaders left. Over the last three decades, the social structure of GBAO has been uprooted. The central Tajik government’s latest crackdown occurred while the rest of the global community has been focused on combatting inflation and addressing security issues in the wake of the Ukraine war. Rahmon and his peers have displayed their utter willingness and determination to erase whatever local autonomy GBAO had been granted after the civil war.

In GBAO, there is simply too much to gain in the eyes of exterior forces: the Pamir Mountains are a geopolitical asset not only for the central Tajik government in Dushanbe, but to Chinese economic and military interests. The region is an integral part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. And Russia considers the Pamirs a corner of its geopolitical backyard.

Much is at stake in the Pamir Mountains, and GBAO has been a geopolitical treasure tethered to exterior interests ever since the British and Russian empires drew swords on the roof of the world in the 19th century. GBAO covers nearly half of modern-day Tajikistan, and yet its population is merely 250,000 of the country’s 9.5 million inhabitants. Sharp mountain ranges cover large portions of the territory, and only a fraction – 3 percent – is arable land, but the earth contains many profitable natural resources, such as gold, uranium, and water.

GBAO remains, despite its riches, plagued by poverty and the lack of a basic social infrastructure. A century ago, when the region was integrated into the Soviet Union, the Pamirs welcomed an influx of engineers and settlers. The construction of the Pamir Highway paved the way for a modernization of eastern Tajikistan and gave the Pamirs access to neighboring Kyrgyzstan in the north, Uzbekistan in the west, and Afghanistan in the south.

“People used to have a reason to stop along the road – now, there’s only traffic coming from China or Kyrgyzstan, heading straight for Dushanbe,” Nasreen lamented. “Dust is all that lingers.”

Many of the answers to Tajikistan’s current political riddles can be traced back to the civil war between 1992 and 1997, a bloody conflict that some estimates say cost more than 100,000 lives and displaced more than 1 million people. The fall of the Soviet Union opened Pandora’s box, and various interests entered the battlefield in a quest for political power. Emomali Rahmon was one of them, and eventually ended up as the leader of the winning side of the war; one that had cast off its Communist mantle and replaced it with staunch nationalism and rampant nepotism.

On the losing side stood a cluster of opposition groups under the umbrella of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), led by the Islamic Renaissance Party, which had significant support in the Pamirs. The local government in GBAO even attempted to break free from the rest of Tajikistan and create an independent state. In the years after the 1997 peace treaty formally ended the war — and despite provisions in the peace agreement mandating space in the government for the opposition — Dushanbe routinely cracked down not only on the Islamist opposition but on local authorities in GBAO as well.

The highest price, though, has been paid by the local population, among them vendors like Gulshan and Nasreen. Desperation and despair are widespread, In 2021 more than 1.6 million Tajiks, most of them men, emigrated to Russia for work in what has become a routine flow of migrant workers. In Tajikistan countless families are dependent on remittances from abroad. In 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked concerns that the migrant economy would crater along with the Russian economy. But instead, rates of migration to Russia continued to increase following their 2020 pandemic slump, including from Tajikistan. The war, however, generated new risks for Tajik migrants, in particular that they would be recruited or coerced into joining Russian forces on the frontlines. 

“Many who make the journey to Russia are never heard from again,” said Gulshan.

The Tajik government’s latest crackdown is part of a pattern, where Dushanbe continues to target opposition forces and local authorities by aggressive means, often under the guise of “combating terrorism.” Eastward, in Xinjiang, Chinese authorities have increased their military presence along the Tajik border, raising concerns among some in Moscow about a decreasing strategic Russian foothold on the “roof of the world.”

The latest wave of repression did not lead to broad domestic blowback in Tajikistan, but the Tajik government runs the risk of triggering a backlash with each crackdown. Dushanbe might continue to justify repression under the banner of “counterterrorism,” but that could also pop the balloon of enforced authoritarian stability.

The table is thus set for GBAO to remain a geopolitical hotspot, wedged as it is between China’s repressive regime in Xinjiang, the central Tajik government in Dushanbe and its patrons in Russia, and the troubled situation in Afghanistan. And through it all, the people of GBAO will continue to seek out a life among the peaks and valleys of the Pamir Mountains, watching as the Panj River flows by.

“We either wait for a better future, or build one ourselves,” Adis concludes. “Pamiris have always been isolated and dependent on themselves; these past years don’t change that.”

Source

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The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Thursday calling on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to swiftly reverse their increasingly harsh restrictions on women and girls, which range from severely restricting education to banning women from most jobs, public spaces and gyms.

The council condemned the Taliban’s ban on women working for the U.N., a decision the resolution calls “unprecedented in the history of the United Nations.”

The unanimous 15-0 vote, with the United States, Russia and China all in favor, was a sign of the widespread global concerns over the Taliban’s actions. It was a rare moment of unity on a high-profile issue at a time of steep international divisions over the Ukraine war, although both Russia and China criticized the United States after the vote for its past role in Afghanistan and for refusing to return all $7 billion in frozen Afghan government funds.

The Security Council never considered sanctions against the Taliban but the strong rebuke by the U.N.’s most powerful body is a blow to the prestige of Afghanistan’s rulers, who are trying get credibility on the global stage – including formal recognition by the United Nations as Afghanistan’s legitimate government.

When the Taliban seized power in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO forces were pulling out of Afghanistan after two decades of war, they initially promised a more moderate rule than during their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001. But there has been a growing international outcry as Taliban leaders have gradually re-imposed their severe interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, on women and girls.

During the 20 years after the Taliban were ousted in 2001 for harboring al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, schools and universities were opened for girls and women entered the workforce and politics, and became judges, ministers and professors.

U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the council after the vote, “Today, the Security Council has sent a clear. unanimous message to the Taliban and to the world: We will not stand for the Taliban’s repression of women and girls.”

In Kabul on Friday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the Security Council’s condemnation of the decision to restrict Afghan women from working at the U.N. as an “internal social matter” that did not impact outside states.

“We remain committed to ensuring all rights of Afghan women while emphasizing that diversity must be respected and not politicized,” the ministry said in a statement.

Separately, a prominent figure in the Taliban denounced the Security Council’s “failed policy” of pressure. Anas Haqqani, brother of the Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, said in a tweet: “It would have been better if UNSC had assessed the removal of diplomatic & financial sanctions instead of such resolutions, which amounts to the collective punishment of Afghans.”

The resolution, co-sponsored by the United Arab Emirates and Japan, expresses “deep concern at the increasing erosion of respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls in Afghanistan by the Taliban” and reaffirms their “indispensable role” in Afghan society.

It calls on the Taliban to swiftly restore their access to education, employment, freedom of movement and equal participation in public life. And it urges all other U.N. member nations to use their influence to promote “an urgent reversal” of the Taliban’s policies and practices toward women and girls.

Under Taliban rule, girls have been barred from school beyond the sixth grade and women are now virtually confined to their homes, unable to go out and travel without a male guardian. In late December, the Taliban banned national and international aid groups from employing Afghan women and on April 4 they extended that ban to Afghan women working for the United Nations.

UAE Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh said over 90 countries from around the world co-sponsored the resolution including many Muslim nations and some from Afghanistan’s neighborhood “which makes our fundamental message today even more significant: the world will not sit by silently as women in Afghanistan are erased from society.”

Pressure mounted for a legally binding Security Council resolution addressing the Taliban’s crackdown on women and girls after the U.N. ban.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the Taliban ban “a violation of the inalienable fundamental human rights of women” and Afghanistan’s obligations under international human rights law, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Female staff members are essential to executing life-saving U.N. operations on the ground, Dujarric said, stressing that out of Afghanistan’s population of about 40 million people, “we’re trying to reach 23 million men, women and children with humanitarian aid.”

The U.N. has warned that the ban could cripple desperately needed aid deliveries, and lead to a U.N. pullout from Afghanistan.

Since April 5, the 3,300 Afghans employed by the U.N. — 2,700 men and 600 women — have stayed home, but Dujarric has said they continue to work and will be paid. The U.N.’s 600-strong international staff, including 200 women, is not affected by the Taliban ban.

Roza Otunbayeva, a former president and foreign minister of the Kyrgyz Republic who heads the U.N. political mission in Afghanistan known as UNAMA, responded to the Taliban’s ban on Afghan women working for the 193-nation world body by ordering an operational review of the U.N.’s presence in the country, which will last until May 5.

Before the review is completed, secretary-general Guterres will host an international meeting on Afghanistan in Doha, the capital of Qatar, on May 1-2. U.N. spokesman Dujarric said last week that the closed meeting will be attended by envoys on Afghanistan from various countries with the aim of seeking a “durable way forward” for the country.

His announcement followed an April 17 speech at Princeton University by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, who led a high-ranking U.N. delegation to meetings with Taliban ministers in January, previewing the Doha meeting.

“Out of that, we hope that we’ll find those baby steps to put us back on the pathway to recognition (of the Taliban), a principled recognition,” Mohammed said. “Is it possible? I don’t know. (But) that discussion has to happen. The Taliban clearly want recognition, and that’s the leverage we have.”

The UAE’s Nusseibeh said the resolution sends a clear signal to the Doha meeting from the international community and the Security Council: Women and girls play an essential role in every society, including Afghanistan, humanitarian access must not be gender-based, and political engagement and dialogue are the only way forward.

While the resolution focuses on the Taliban crackdown on women and girls, it also underscores that it is critical for all Afghan parties, the region and the wider international community to hold talks to reach a political settlement and restore peace and stability “in the country, the region and beyond.”

The resolution reaffirms the U.N.’s support for “a peaceful, stable, prosperous and inclusive Afghanistan” and for an “inclusive Afghan-led and Afghan-owned determination of the country’s political future and development path.”

It also recognizes the many challenges Afghanistan faces, stresses the urgent need to address “the dire economic and humanitarian situation” in the country, and reiterates that women are essential to the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The Taliban have ignored numerous appeals from the U.N. and many countries, including the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, to restore the rights of girls and women. But Japan’s U.N. Ambassador Kimihiro Ishikane said “we need to keep reaching out to them” so the message can start resonating.

Nusseibeh said at some point the Taliban will want to be part of the international community, and when they do “I think it’s clear what the conditions and the requirements are.”

This story was published on April 27, 2023. It is being republished to correct the U.N. Secretary-General’s reference to Taliban ban, instead of U.N. ban.

Source: AP News

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The Taliban said Friday that their decision to bar local women from working for the United Nations was an “internal social matter of Afghanistan” that all countries should respect.

The statement came a day after the 15-member U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the ban and demanding Taliban leaders swiftly end their restrictions on Afghan women’s access to education and work.

The resolution, co-sponsored by more than 90 countries, expressed “deep concern at the increasing erosion of respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms” of Afghan women and girls by the Taliban.

“While taking note of the condemnation of the decision to restrict Afghan women from working with the U.N., we stress that … this is an internal social matter of Afghanistan that does not impact outside states,” the Taliban Foreign Ministry said Friday.

“We remain committed to ensuring all rights of Afghan women while emphasizing that diversity must be respected and not politicized,” the statement added. It hailed parts of Thursday’s U.N. resolution, including “the principle of Afghan-led and Afghan-owned right to self-determination.”

The Taliban insisted, however, the humanitarian crisis in war-ravaged Afghanistan “is man-made, driven by economic restrictions” on the country.

“The path to a post-conflict recovery requires the unconditional removal of U.N., multilateral, and unilateral sanctions and restrictions on the country, in addition to the provision of humanitarian and development assistance to the country,” the statement said.

Leader rejects easing restrictions

The Taliban reclaimed power in August 2021 from the then-internationally backed government in Kabul as the United States and NATO troops withdrew after almost two decades of involvement in the Afghan war.

The U.S. and other Western nations froze more than $9 billion in Afghan central bank foreign reserves after the Taliban takeover and imposed financial and banking sector sanctions on the country. Washington has since transferred a portion of the frozen resources held in the U.S. to a trust fund in Switzerland to be used strictly for Afghan relief efforts.

Hibatullah Akhundzada, the reclusive Taliban chief, has imposed his strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, to govern strife-torn impoverished Afghanistan. He has issued a series of edicts banning girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and barring most Afghan women from public life and work nationwide.

Akhundzada has rejected calls for easing restrictions on Afghan women, saying he would not allow foreign interference in his Islamic governance.

Last December, the male-only Taliban administration banned female employees of nongovernmental organizations from workplaces and extended it earlier this month to Afghan women working with the U.N.

‘Reinvigorate international engagement’

The U.N. resolution against Taliban bans on women came as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres plans to host a closed-door meeting of special envoys on Afghanistan from several countries in Doha, Qatar, on Monday to discuss what should be done in the aftermath of the intensifying Taliban crackdown on women.

On Friday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York that Guterres “has not extended an invitation to the de facto (Taliban) authorities” to attend the two-day meeting in the Gulf state.

Dujarric stressed that recognizing the Taliban would not be “an issue on the table.” He shared no further details about the event.

“As we’ve said, the purpose of the meeting is to reinvigorate international engagement around common objectives for a durable way forward on Afghanistan. To reach unity or commonality of a message — such as human rights — particularly on the issue of women and girls; inclusive governance, countering terrorism, drug trafficking,” Dujarric said.

Thursday’s U.N. resolution recognized and stressed the need to address “the dire economic and humanitarian situation” facing Afghanistan, including through efforts to restore the country’s banking and financial systems.

Afghanistan is the largest humanitarian emergency in the world. U.N. officials estimate 6 million people are one step from famine-like conditions, while more than 28 million more need assistance after years of war and natural disasters.

Source: VOA News

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Trouble appears to be brewing on Afghanistan’s border with the remote Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, or GBAO, in eastern Tajikistan.

Or at least it appears to be.

As is often the way in Tajikistan, relying on the official narrative for a sense of the unfolding events is proving more confounding than enlightening.

On April 28, Khovar state news agency reported that a high-ranking security services officer was earlier that day killed during an armed clash with an alleged gang of drug smugglers trying to cross into Tajik territory.

The State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, said in a statement that three of the attackers dumped drugs, weapons and ammunition and fled back into Afghanistan, but that another three Tajik accomplices had been detained. The haul of abandoned items is said to have comprised 45 kilograms of heroin, one Kalashnikov assault rifle with four magazines, 74 cartridges, night-vision goggles, and $10,000 in cash.

RFE/RL’s Tajik service, Radioi Ozodi, named the killed officer as Komron Rajabzoda, the head of the GKNB in the capital of GBAO, Khorog. If this detail is confirmed, Rajabzoda will be highest-ranking GKNB officer to have been killed in the line of duty in the mountainous Pamirs region since General Abdullo Nazarov, the then-head of the regional branch of the GKNB, was stabbed to death in 2012.

Earlier in the week, video images of another clash along the border in eastern Tajikistan circulated on social media.

In a subsequent account, the GKNB said that two people it claimed were members of a militant group had early on April 26 crossed into Tajikistan in the vicinity of Yazgulom, in the GBAO’s Vanj district, with the intention of carrying out a terrorist act. The same statement said both individuals were killed in an anti-terrorist operation.

In its own statement, the Foreign Ministry implied that the attackers were operating at the behest of an unspecified organization. 

“Both terrorists were neutralized by the law enforcement agencies … Their insidious plan was thwarted, as were the intentions of their patrons,” the ministry said. 

Bomdod, a Prague-based news website focused on Tajik current affairs, cited its own unnamed sources as saying that six people had filtered across the border and that two were known to be Tajik citizens. The outlet cited sources as saying that while two men were killed, another four members of the same group fled the scene and had gone into hiding. The group is suspected to be made up of members of the Jamaat Ansarullah militant group, Bomdod quoted its sources as saying.

None of these details could be independently verified.

There is yet more backstory, however. On April 20 or thereabouts, the Embassy of Afghanistan in the capital, Dushanbe, which is still run by avowed opponents of the regime now in charge of Kabul, held a ceremony in memory of Afghan fighters and leaders killed by the Taliban.

A flurry of indignant social media activity ensued among sympathizers of the Taliban regime. One Twitter user with almost 35,000 followers wrote in a Pashtun-language post, without providing evidence, that the government of Tajikistan was hatching a plot to mount an attack on Afghanistan. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has made little secret of his dislike of the Taliban, but he has at no point even suggested that he was prepared to engage in armed conflict with his militant neighbors to the south.

In the event, however, the incursion appears to have gone in the other direction. Another seemingly Afghan Twitter user claimed on April 23 to have been informed by unnamed sources that a “group of [four] Tajik terrorists” had entered Tajikistan and that they were being hunted down by the authorities. This tweet was posted three days prior to the date that Tajik GKNB said the alleged Jamaat Ansarullah cell had made its incursion.

Accounts of an incursion taking place on April 23 were also relayed by Bomdod and Azda.tv, a news website linked to the opposition-in-exile. The reporting of those outlets hinted at a less illustrious performance by GKNB. Their articles suggested that four of the people crossing the border had managed to flee and that the security services were doing house-to-house searches in a vain attempt to locate them.

It is not clear that those reputed fugitives have been captured, nor is it known why the GKNB has sought to convey the impression this clash took place three days after the real date.

Various bits of footage shared online have done little to clarify the chronology of events. One shows what appears to be a gunfight taking place in the daytime somewhere in the Vanj district. It is not clear when the footage was filmed. In another clip, an 18-year-old resident of the same area tells the person filming, apparently a soldier, that two unknown people turned up at his home – one of them speaking Yazghulyam, a Pamiri language, while the other spoke in Tajik – and asked for bread. The man said the pair were carrying automatic rifles.

The strange and unexplained aspects of these episodes have prompted some critics of the secretive and authoritarian government to question the official narrative. Anora Sarkorova, a Tajik journalist based in Europe, speculated that the government may be growing concerned at the sustained international criticism leveled at it over the intense security crackdown it has unleashed against people in the Pamirs, a population ethnically distinct from the majority Tajiks, over the past two years.

Casting doubt on the accuracy of the GKNB’s statement, Sarkorova suggested, without providing evidence, that claims of a militant attack may have been fabricated.

“The regime is capable of drawing up any report, filming any video with fake terrorists and pretend weapons,” she wrote on her Telegram account. “They have been filming this same movie in Tajikistan for years now.”

Source: Eurasia Net

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Some House Foreign Affairs Committee members appeared grossly dissatisfied with a briefing on the State Department’s Afghanistan dissent cable, with one representative going so far as to call it “insulting” to the fallen or forgotten Americans in Kabul.  

“Today’s briefing by the State Department wasn’t only insufficient and incomplete, it was an insult to the fallen in Afghanistan and every American who was abandoned there by Joe Biden,” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told Fox News Digital in exclusive comments. 

“What we read today puts the lie to everything Joe Biden has said,” he added, stressing that the Biden Administration “has never told the truth about what they knew and when they knew it.”

The dissent cable is a notice signed by some 23 staffers and diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and sent out in July 13, 2021 using the special “dissent channel,” which allows department officials to issue warnings or express contrarian views to senior officials. 

The House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) has repeatedly asked the State Department for access to the communication, which warned that the Taliban had made rapid territorial gains and urged the officials to commence an airlift operation immediately for Afghans who helped the U.S., The Wall Street Journal first reported. 

The notice also called for tougher language to describe atrocities committed by the Taliban, according to one source with knowledge of the cable. The document also predicted with “eerie foresight” what would happen only a month later, another source said. 

Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican from California

The withdrawal, which occurred against the chaos of the Taliban pressing on Kabul as the U.S. rushed to pull out its last troops and American citizens in the country, included the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers and 170 Afghan civilians during a bombing at the airport. 

The administration also left hundreds of Americans behind despite promises that troops would remain until “all” Americans had left safely. 

The HFAC has made an incredible and unprecedented effort to bring this classified document to light and examine it, but it has met expected and tremendous pushback from the administration. HFAC Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, eventually issued a subpoena last month to force U.S. State Secretary Antony Blinken to testify before the committee. 

In this image from video provided by Omar Haidari taken on Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021, shows a baby being lifted across a wall at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan by U.S. soldiers.

“We have made multiple good faith attempts to find common ground so we could see this critical piece of information,” McCaul said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Secretary Blinken has refused to provide the Dissent Cable and his response to the cable, forcing me to issue my first subpoena as chairman of this committee.”

U.S. Marines provide assistance at an Evacuation Control Checkpoint during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan

The department claimed and assured the committee it was doing everything it could to turn over “all the information that this committee is looking for,” but the eventual concession, which allowed a briefing on the document, proved outright dissatisfactory for some members. 

In this Aug. 21, 2021, image provided by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. service members guide evacuees aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III

“The Biden administration has never told the truth about what they knew and when they knew it, and now we know why,” Issa said. “They hesitated when they should have acted, panicked when they should have remained calm, and covered up their historic dereliction of duty.” 

“This administration has stonewalled the Congress and hidden the truth from the American people. That ends now,” he added. 

Ambassador James F. Jeffrey, previously the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq during the Obama administration and special representative for Syria engagement during the Trump administration, earlier this month urged the State Department to provide the cable to congress for review. 

The 13 U.S. Marines killed in Kabul airport terror attack arrive at Dover Air Base. (Jason Minto/U.S. Air Force

“The issues here are too important — and the Biden administration has signaled it is unlikely to voluntarily provide full disclosure — to inhibit a full airing of what went wrong, if only to preclude doing the same thing again,” Jeffrey wrote in a post for Just Security.

“Furthermore, I believe release of the dissent cable, as an exception, and with appropriate redaction, would encourage, not inhibit, this important State Department accountability process,” he added. 

Source: FOX News

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During his trip to Turkey, Mr. Karzai has also met with a number of Afghan politicians in Turkey including Mohammad Mohaqeq and Abdul Karim Khalili.

Turkey maintained its embassy in Afghanistan after Western countries withdrew following the Taliban takeover, and has urged those countries to step up engagement Turkey maintained its embassy in Afghanistan after Western countries withdrew following the Taliban takeover, and has urged those countries to step up engagement.

The country said to fully work with the Taliban only if they form a more inclusive administration.

Ankara also called on the Taliban-led interim government in Afghanistan to allow girls of all ages to attend school after the decision to suspend education for female students after the sixth grade – Aghanstan times

Source : The Pakistan Observer

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