Tolo News: Afghan athlete Hussain Bakhsh Safari won a gold medal in contact jiu-jitsu in the 4th Asian Jiu-jitsu Championship 2019 in Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia and becomes the champion of contact jujitsu in this championship. The 4th Asian Jiu-jitsu Championship 2019 was attended by athletes from 24 Asian countries. Click here to read more (external link).
Other Sports News
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
July 18, 2019
Police in Slovakia are searching for four members of Afghanistan’s first all-female orchestra who disappeared from their hotel after participating in a local festival.
Zohra, a 35-member orchestra, performed at a concert on July 13 at the Pohoda Festival in the western town of Trencin, some 130 kilometers north of Bratislava, near the Czech border.
Four members went missing from their hotel on July 14, Slovak police said.
Pavol Kudlicka, a spokesperson for the Trencin regional police, said the musicians returned to their hotel after the concert but went missing the next morning.
“Due to legal reasons and the ongoing investigation, no names can be disclosed for now,” Kudlicka added.
Local Slovak media reported that some orchestra members had said that one of the girls had a cousin in Germany.
Some members of Zohra orchestra, named after the Persian goddess of music, are orphans or from poor families.
Many of the orchestra’s members have reportedly faced threats and attacks in their home country, even from their relatives.
Despite the disappearance, the orchestra, founded five years ago, played several concerts in western Slovakia this week.
They came to international prominence after performing at the closing of the World Economic Forum in Davos two years ago.
Based on reporting by AFP, cas.sk, and spectator.sme.sk
Hamid Karzai
Tolo News: “For people of Afghanistan peace means end of war, return to a peaceful life, life with dignity, a united nation, with stability and with independence, a country with best relationship with it’s neighbors and a soil with no extremist and no Daesh and other groups… We call this peace,” Karzai said. “We want to return to normal life and have relations with other countries including the US and western countries but not a country that is used for the interests of others under pretext of friendship… This is our definition from peace and if the US has this definition for us, we are completely supporting their process,” Karzai added. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan
July 18, 2019
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Taliban militants have stormed the police headquarters in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar after a suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at the entrance of the compound.
Baheer Ahmadi, a spokesman for Kandahar’s provincial governor, told RFE/RL that several gunmen entered the compound after the July 18 suicide bombing and were battling police and Afghan security forces within the facility late in the afternoon.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the bombing or from the follow-up attack by militants.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told RFE/RL by telephone from an unknown location that Taliban militants carried out the attack.
Afghan security forces across the country have been coming under nearly daily attacks by the Taliban.
The increase in violence comes despite reported progress in efforts by the United States to broker an end to Afghanistan’s nearly 18-year war.
With reporting by Reuters and TOLOnews
By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan
July 17, 2019
An Afghan regional governor said 25 members of the country’s elite commando units have been killed in fighting with the Taliban.
The incident, which occurred on July 15 in the northern province of Badghis, is the latest in which specially trained Afghan military units have suffered unusually high death tolls.
In comments to RFE/RL, Badghis Governor Abdul Ghaffar Malakzai blamed a lack of coordination as the main reason for the deaths of the commandos. He did not elaborate.
He also said that more than 20 Taliban militants were killed in the clashes.
Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said that at least 39 commandos were killed. He said that the militants also captured 16 soldiers.
Badghis, located along the border with Turkmenistan, has been the scene of frequent Taliban attacks.
On July 13, Taliban militants attacked a hotel in the provincial capital, Qal-e Naw, killing at least six people.
The fighting comes as the Afghan army continues to suffer from high casualties and desertion rates as it struggles to fend off the Taliban.
Trained by U.S. forces, the elite commando units are the army’s best fighters but number only around 20,000 and are overstretched. The United States has spent millions of dollars training and equipping the units over many years.
In November 2018, a 50-member commando unit was almost entirely wiped out during clashes with the Taliban in the southeastern province of Ghazni. In August, another unit was completely eliminated in fighting in the same province.
Other Security News
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
July 17, 2019
ISLAMABAD – An International relief agency says the Taliban has forced them to close dozens of clinics in an embattled central – eastern region of Afghanistan, depriving hundreds of thousands of people, particularly women and children, of receiving medical treatment and health services.
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) said in a statement issued Wednesday the insurgents’ action in the Wardak province had stemmed from last week’s deadly attack by Afghan security forces against one of the agency’s health clinics. It noted that the condemnable raid killed four people, including SCA doctors, and one employee is still missing.
“The Taliban forced SCA to close 42 out of 77 health facilities in six out of nine districts of Wardak province so far, and due to this closure, an estimated number of over 5,700 patients are affected on daily basis,” the aid agency lamented.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid justified their action, alleging the July 8th raid against the SCA hospital was jointly conducted by American and Afghan forces. He told VOA the relief agency’s health units have come under regular attack by pro-government forces but the SCA has not effectively protested nor has the Swedish government taken up the issue with Americans or the international community.
“On the request of an association of local clinics, doctors and paramedical staff in Wardak, we have contacted Sweden and urged them to take immediate steps to protect their health facilities as well as staff working on them. Until then, we have told SCA to close their clinics,” Mujahid said.
“If they (Sweden) fail to act accordingly, we (Taliban) will approach and seek help from other international charity organizations to take charge of these clinics to ensure the people in Wardak continue to receive medical treatment and health services,” he added.
The SCA country director, Sonny Mansson, denounced the insurgent move as an obvious violation of human rights and international humanitarian law.
“We demand immediate reopening of all health facilities for the people and we strongly urge all parties involved in conflict to refrain from such actions which deliberately puts civilian lives at risk”, he added.
The SCA had just days after the raid against its health clinic strongly condemned it as a serious violation of international humanitarian law and demanded an independent international investigation into the incident. The agency, however, had exclusively blamed Afghan forces for conducting the deadly raid.
Last week’s attack on the hospital was the second in three years. In 2016, security forces had raided the facility and dragged out two hospital patients along with their 15-year-old caretaker and later displayed their bodies.
The SCA operates in rural Afghanistan, including Taliban-controlled areas, with approximately 6,000 local staff around the country.
Ahmad Wali Massoud
Tolo News: Presidential candidate Ahmad Wali Massoud on Wednesday said that President Ashraf Ghani is trying to manipulate the elections so that he can remain in power for another term. “They [government officials] are distributing money [to the people] when they visit provinces. They collect stickers and signatures in every corner they go. They ask people to promise. They [government officials] appoint their favorites who are ready to commit fraud [in the elections],” Massoud said. Massoud’s running mate for first vice president, Farida Mohmand, said the incumbent government is “exploiting” the youths. “The national unity government promotes ethnic and racial issues among the youth which is totally in contrast to the ideology of the young generation,” she said. Click here to read more (external link).
Other Election Related News
Ariana: Pakistan opened its airspace for all civilian traffic including Afghan flights after over four months of closure on Tuesday. The Ministry of Transport says that though alternative ways were used for the flights from Afghanistan to India, Afghanistan lost 27 million dollars due to the closure of Pakistan’s airspace. Click here to read more (external link).