Afghan Ambassador To Spain Injured In Barcelona Mugging
Humayoon Rasaw
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 20, 2019
The Afghan ambassador to Spain has been mugged in Barcelona, police and diplomatic sources say, the latest in a string of high-profile robberies in Spain’s northeastern Mediterranean port.
The assailants attacked Humayoon Rasaw on a street in the center of the city on August 18, throwing him to the ground to steal his watch, a police spokeswoman said.
Rasaw, who was in Barcelona for celebrations marking Afghanistan’s national day, suffered a leg injury but “is fine,” an Afghan Embassy source said in Madrid.
Rasaw’s watch was worth 17,000 euros ($18,850), Spanish newspaper El Periodico reported.
Rasaw’s mugging comes as Barcelona, one of Europe’s most visited cities, has seen a sharp rise in crime, including several involving foreigners that have made global headlines.
In late June, Hyewon Kim, a South Korean woman who was part of an official government delegation, died after her purse was snatched, when she fell and seriously injured her head.
Earlier this month a Chinese man died in a fight outside a Barcelona nightclub.
The city of 1.6 million, Spain’s second-largest, has seen eight murders since July, an unusually high number in Spain, which has one of the lowest crime rates in Europe.
Robberies, especially those targeting tourists, have also risen.
Based on reporting by AFP and El Periodico
Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
1TV Afghanistan Dari News – August 19, 2019
Afghanistan sees boom in meth production as seizures of illegal drug more than double
The Telegraph (UK): Afghanistan is seeing a boom in methamphetamine drug production, potentially providing a new revenue stream for the Taliban in a country already notorious for opium and heroin. The United Nations said Afghan seizures of the powerful stimulant drug had increased exponentially in the past five years and then “gone off the scale” in 2019. Click here to read more (external link).
Inside Afghanistan: What Life Is Like, in Afghans’ Own Words
Gallup: Gallup will publish at least an article a week that reports on what Afghans are thinking on all these topics.
August 19: Law and Order
August 26: Food and Shelter
September 4: Institutions and Infrastructure
September 9: Good Jobs
September 16: Wellbeing
September 23: Brain Gain
Click here to read more (external link).
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Afghans Celebrate 100th Independence Day
Tolo News: Afghans across the country celebrated 100th Independence Day by holding gatherings in different provinces, mainly in Helmand, Balkh, Herat, Kabul, and Nangarhar. President Ashraf Ghani laid a wreath at the Azadi Memorial minaret on Independence Day before appearing at a ceremony at Darul Aman Palace. Click here to read more (external link).
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Dozens wounded in blasts on Afghanistan’s Independence Day
Press TV
August 19, 2019
A series of explosions have hit the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar during the country’s 100th anniversary of its independence, wounding dozens of people including women and children.
Afghan officials said at least 10 bombings struck restaurants and public squares in the provincial capital of Jalalabad on Monday, leaving at least 66 people injured.
“The explosions were caused by IEDs in different parts of the city and as groups of people were celebrating independence day,” Nangarhar governor’s spokesman Attaullah Khogyani said, referring to improvised explosive devices.
Health officials said 22 children were among the injured.
No group or individual has so far claimed responsibility for the blasts but both the Taliban militants and the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group are actively operating in the area.
In an Independence Day address in Kabul, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called on the international community to stand with Afghanistan to eradicate the “nest” of militants.
“Our fight against the Daesh will continue,” Ghani said. “The Taliban have laid the foundation for such brutal killings.”
This year’s celebrations, held on August 19, marked 100 years of Afghan independence from British influence.
The Monday bombings came a day after a deadly bomb attack claimed by Daesh left at least 63 people dead and scores of others injured in a wedding ceremony in Kabul.
The attacks came as the Taliban and the United States are in the final stages of a deal to reduce the US military presence in Afghanistan.
The possible agreement is to be reached in exchange for a Taliban commitment on security and peace talks with the Afghan government.
Ghani, whose administration has been left out of the talks, said last week that only Afghans had to decide their fate, and not outside powers even if they were allies. The president said peace was only possible with an agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
The Taliban militant group, which now controls or has influence in about half of Afghanistan’s territory, has held several rounds of direct talks with US officials in the Qatari capital since October. The militants say they do not recognize the government in Kabul.
The ongoing negotiations take place nearly 18 years after the US military invaded Afghanistan to overthrow a ruling Taliban regime.
About 20,000 foreign troops, mostly Americans, are based in Afghanistan. The exit of foreign troops from Afghanistan is a condition set by the Taliban to extend the talks.
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How Afghans Took On The British And Achieved Full Independence
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: It’s 100 years since the end of Afghanistan’s 1919 War of Independence, also known as the Third Anglo-Afghan War. Fought between Afghan and British-Indian forces, the conflict reestablished full Afghan independence after decades of British control over Afghan foreign policy.
1TV Afghanistan Dari News – August 18, 2019
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Afghan President Condemns ‘Barbaric’ Attack On Wedding Party
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 18, 2019
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has condemned as “barbaric” an attack on a wedding party in Kabul that killed at least 63 people and left 182 others injured and called an extraordinary security meeting to discuss ways to avoid such “lapses.”
The radical militant group Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the attack, although it has falsely asserted connections to bombings in the past and Afghan officials were initially silent on IS’s possible role.
The suspected suicide bombing, on a huge wedding reception at a hotel in western Kabul, was the deadliest attack in Kabul this year and came with Washington and the fundamentalist Taliban reportedly nearing a deal to end a nearly 18-year war.
“I strongly condemn the inhumane attack on the wedding hall in Kabul last night,” Ghani said in a tweet. “My top priority for now is to reach out to the families of victims of this barbaric attack. On behalf of the nation, I send my heartfelt condolences to the families of those who were martyred.”
The Afghan president also tweeted, “In response to this targeted attack I have called an extraordinary security meeting to review and prevent such security lapses.”
The UN secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan, Tadamichi Yamamoto, described the bombing as a “cowardly act of terror.”
“I condemn these deliberate attacks on civilians that signal a deliberate intent to spread fear among the population, which has already suffered too much,” Yamamoto, who also heads the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), said in a statement.
U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad took to Twitter to condemn the “heinous attack.”
“We must accelerate the Afghan Peace Process including intra-Afghan negotiations. Success here will put Afghans in a much stronger position to defeat” the IS group, he wrote in a separate tweet.
The Taliban had denied responsibility for the blast and condemned it as “forbidden and unjustifiable.”
But Ghani said that group at least shares blame.
“Taliban cannot absolve themselves of blame, for they provide platform for terrorists,” Ghani tweeted, adding a declaration of a period of mourning.
Later, multiple reports said IS or an IS affiliate in Afghanistan had issued a statement saying it carried out the attack to target “heretics.”
It reportedly said a suicide bomber struck the “large gathering” while other fighters “detonated a parked explosives-laden vehicle” once security forces arrived.
The bombing hit a district of the Afghan capital more populated by Shi’ites than many other parts of the city.
IS and its sympathizers and affiliates have repeatedly targeted Shi’a in addition to other victims since they became active in Afghanistan in 2015.
Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said women and children were among the wounded after the bomb struck at the Dubai City wedding hall on Kabul’s west side.
“Unfortunately, the blast caused civilian casualties,” he said.
“Around 1,200 guests were invited to the wedding,” Ahmad Omid, a survivor who said the gathering was for his father’s cousin, told AP. “I was with the groom in the other room when we heard the blast and then I couldn’t find anyone. Everyone was lying all around the hall.”
Weddings in Kabul’s big wedding halls are considered centers of community life that offer a brief respite from decades of war.
The explosion came a few days after the Eid al-Adha holiday ended and just before Afghanistan marks 100 years of independence.
On August 7, a car bomb exploded in the same section of Kabul, killing 14 people and wounding 145, mostly women, children, and other civilians.
Afghan security forces were said to have been the intended target in that attack.
Early on August 18, at least 10 civilians were said to have died when a roadside bomb struck a vehicle in the Dawlat Abad district of the northern Balkh Province, near the border with Turkmenistan, dpa reported, citing an Afghan police spokesman.
More than 3,800 civilians were killed or injuredduring the first six months of this year alone, according to UNAMA.
On August 16, the Afghan Taliban leader’s brother was killed in Pakistan from a bomb explosion inside a mosque.
Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada was not in the mosque when the bomb went off but his younger brother, Hafiz Ahmadullah, was among those killed, according to Afghan Islamic Press and Reuters.
“If someone thinks martyring our leaders would stop us from our goal they’re living in a fool’s paradise,” a senior Taliban leader told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location on August 17.
“We are close to our goals,” the Taliban figure said, referring to the talks with the United States.
The Afghan war — which ousted a mostly unrecognized Taliban government after that fundamentalist group’s allies from Al-Qaeda carried out the deadliest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil on September 11, 2001 — is the longest conflict in U.S. history.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Afghan Service, AP, Reuters, dpa, and Tolo News
Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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