Patrick Shanahan
1TV: The United States will transfer $600 million to building border wall from an account meant for Afghan security forces, it has been reported. Acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has approved the transfer of $1.5 billion from a variety of sources to build more than 80 miles of barriers on the border with Mexico. Click here to read more (external link).
Mena Mangal
By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan
May 11, 2019
KABUL — Afghan officials say prominent former television journalist Mena Mangal has been shot dead in Kabul.
Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Raimi said Mangal was shot dead in Kabul’s 8th district early on May 11 as she was waiting for a car.
Witnesses to the shooting near Kabul’s Karte Naw market told RFE/RL that two men appeared on a motorcycle and fired four shots into the air to disperse passersby. They then fired two shots that hit Mangal in the chest.
Mangal’s relatives confirmed that she had been waiting for a ride to take her to her job as a cultural adviser to the Wolesi Jirga, the lower chamber of Afghanistan’s parliament.
The gunmen then fled the scene.
Police spokesman Ferdows Faramarz told RFE/RL that “all aspects of the case” were under investigation, adding that Mangal’s father had named a possible suspect.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killing.
Mangal worked for more than a decade as a presenter for the private Ariana TV, the private TOLO Pashto-language television channel Lamar, and the private national television broadcaster Shamshad TV.
She also ran popular social-media pages that discussed the rights of Afghan women to work and for Afghan girls to go to school.
Mangal had written extensively about being forced into an arranged marriage in 2017 and the process she had to go through to obtain a divorce, which was confirmed in early May.
Mangal had posted recently on her social-media pages that she was receiving death threats from unknown sources.
Relatives told RFE/RL that there were “problems” with her former in-laws.
Police spokesman Raimi said a special police unit was investigating Mangal’s killing.
Raimi said Mangal’s assailants escaped from the scene after the shooting.
Afghan Taliban leaders have said at recent peace talks with U.S. negotiators that they are no longer insisting on their notorious ban against girls’ education and employment for women.
But Afghan women’s rights activists are wary about that claim and have expressed concerns that a peace deal with the Taliban could foster a return of Taliban-era repressions.
Tolo News: Rahmat Shah hit 113 while Hashmatullah Shahidi and Mohammad Shahzad made half-centuries as Afghanistan defeated Scotland by two runs in a rain-hit ODI on Friday. Afghanistan are one of just 10 teams taking part in the World Cup which gets underway in England and Wales on May 30. Click here to read more (external link).
Khalilzad
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
May 10, 2019
The U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan said on May 10 that “faster progress” is needed in peace talks with the Taliban as another round of discussions between the two sides came to an end.
Zalmay Khalilzad said “steady but slow progress” was made in the round of discussions held in Doha, the capital of Qatar, that ended on May 9, the “pace” of which Khalilzad said is not “sufficient when so much conflict rages and innocent people die.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in a May 9 statement, called the current round of talks “positive,” with both sides discussing topics including the full withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan and ensuring that Afghanistan is not used as a base to harm other countries.
Mujahid spoke of “progress” on some points but said others had “yet to be finalized.”
The talks were led by Khalilzad and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the Taliban’s political office in Doha.
The discussions are aimed at finding a possible political solution to the almost 18-year-old Afghan conflict — the longest war in U.S. history.
Washington has been in contact with the Taliban since July.
The Taliban has so far refused to directly talk with the Afghan government, which the militants call a “puppet regime.”
A call by an Afghan grand council, or Loya Jirga, for an immediate and permanent cease-fire beginning with the holy month of Ramadan, which started on May 5, was rejected by the militant group.
On May 8, Afghan officials said five police officers, one security guard, and three civilians were killed in a Taliban attack on Counterpart International, a nonprofit organization that works together with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo strongly condemned the attack.
Pompeo said Counterpart International runs programs encouraging peaceful dialogue and opportunities for women, among other initiatives.
“This violent attack is a senseless assault on the noble values that the organizations like Counterpart support, such as service to others, education, and inclusion,” Pompeo said in a statement issued on May 9.
With reporting by dpa, AP, and AFP
Related
TRT World: It is doubtful that their operations in Afghanistan will stop, even after a possible peace deal with the Taliban. The CIA backs both militias and other ones similar to them, and as history taught us, the intelligence services often doing what they want. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
1TV: Squeezed by US sanctions, Iran on Wednesday warned that it may tell Afghan refugees to leave the country. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said that more than 3 million Afghans are living in Iran with 2 million having been employed, IRNA reported. He said that the refugees remove 3 to 5 billion euros annually from Iran. Click here to read more (external link).
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
May 9, 2019
A European Council watchdog committee has accused German police of mistreating an Afghan man being deported back to his homeland by squeezing his genitals.
“To ill-treat a person by squeezing the genitals, a technique which is clearly aimed at inflicting severe pain to gain compliance, is both excessive and inappropriate,” the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) said in a report released on May 9.
The committee said it had observed on a 2018 flight that a German federal police officer used the method on an Afghan man who was resisting being returned, while another officer held him with an arm around his neck so “the returnee started struggling to breathe.”
The committee recommended “immediate action to end the application of these two techniques.”
Berlin said it had sent the recommendation to federal police to take action.
The August 14, 2018 charter flight carried 46 Afghans from Munich to Kabul after their asylum requests had been denied.
CPT representatives were also on the flight, along with German police officers.
Based on reporting by AP and AFP
BBC News: Hungary tried and failed to deport three Afghan families to Afghanistan on Tuesday, in a move that rights groups say is a breach of international law. It was intended to prove the right-wing Fidesz government’s resolve to fight what it calls “illegal migrants”. However, the European Court of Human Rights intervened in one family’s case. The mother of the second family fainted and was taken to hospital, while the third chose to be deported to nearby Serbia rather than Afghanistan. Click here to read more (external link).