Pakistan watches with caution as old ally Taliban gets closer to India
Al Jazeera: From the 1980s when it backed the mujahideen against the Soviet Union through the first two decades of the 21st century, Pakistan was a primary backer of the Taliban, many of whose leaders found shelter on Pakistani soil. India, by contrast, viewed the group as a Pakistani proxy, shuttering its embassy in Kabul after the Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan in 1996. It blamed the Taliban and its current allies in the government, including the Haqqanis, for repeatedly attacking Indian diplomatic missions in Afghanistan — the embassy in 2008 and 2009, and the Indian consulates in Jalalabad in 2013, Herat in 2014 and Mazar-i-Sharif in 2015. Yet, a decade later, those equations no longer stand. Click here to read more (external link).
The Taliban made me marry my boss: how one word led to a forced marriage
The Guardian (UK): It was a normal summer morning in July last year when 19-year-old Samira* made her way to the carpet-weaving shop where she worked in Kabul to pick up her wages. She had no way of knowing that in just a few hours, her life as she knew it would be over. She would end the day in a Taliban police station, a victim of forced marriage with her entire future decided for her by a group of strangers with guns. Click here to read more (external link).
Afghan Currency Tumbles Amid Growing Calls for U.S. Financial Aid Cessation
Afghanistan International: Amid growing calls for the cutting U.S. financial aid to Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the Afghanistan currency has once again depreciated against the U.S. dollar. On Sunday, one U.S. dollar was traded at 74 Afghanis in Afghanistan’s currency markets. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, in a press conference on Tuesday, January 7, condemned the decision of President Joe Biden’s administration to send funds to the Taliban-led government, calling it unacceptable and stressing the need to halt these payments. Click here to read more (external link).
Hyena rescued and released in Nagarhar, Afghanistan
Khaama: According to Bakhtar News Agency on Monday, January 13, the hyena had been captured in the Kashkot area of Khogyani district, Nangarhar, by local nomads to prevent potential harm. After being handed over to the department, it was set free in its natural habitat. Hyenas are rare in Afghanistan and are primarily found in the desert and arid regions, especially in the eastern and southeastern parts of the country. Click here to read more (external link).
As Land Mines Kill More Afghans, Deminers Face Funding Crisis
Deminer (file photo)
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi and Abubakar Siddique
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
January 12, 2025
Shah Agha is one of more than 100,000 Afghans living with injuries caused by land mines. He lost his leg to a mine during the anti-Soviet war in the 1980s in his native Kunduz Province in northern Afghanistan. In 2015, another unexploded weapon injured him again.
“My life is miserable,” he told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “I am always in need of help.”
Noor, who goes by only one name, lost both his legs to a mine blast. The Kabul resident says disabled Afghans cannot access education, jobs, or even move freely.
“Both our society and the government do little to give us our rights,” he said.
Agha and Noor are among the hundreds of Afghans killed and maimed every year by land mines left behind during more than four decades of war.
Mine-clearing agencies in Afghanistan, one of the most mine-infested countries globally, now fear an even larger number of Afghans will soon become victims of land mines.
Calls To End Aid
They say the clearing of killer munitions that still litter large swaths of Afghanistan could soon stop amid calls to end aid to the country ruled by the extremist Taliban group.
Ahead of his inauguration this month, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly criticized Washington’s assistance to Afghanistan.
The United States is the leading donor for humanitarian operations in Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in the country after the final U.S. military withdrawal from the country in August 2021.
“Deaths and injuries, especially among children and women, will increase,” Shahabuddin Hakimi, head of the Mine Detection Center (MDC), an Afghan demining NGO, told Radio Azadi.
Since 1989, over 45,000 Afghans have been killed by land mines, according to the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS). Deminers have so far cleared over 3,000 square kilometers of some 14 million pieces of unexploded ordnance, including 764,000 antipersonnel mines and more than 33,460 anti-vehicle mines.
Casualties ‘Set To Increase’
UNMAS estimates land mines still threaten more than 1,700 communities spread across Afghanistan, where over 1,200 square kilometers of territory still needs to be cleared of unexploded munitions.
Hakimi said that a decline in funding has forced the MDC to cease nearly 80 percent of its operations during the past year.
He says the lack of demining has already increased the number casualties from land mines to 60 per month. In previous years, Afghans suffered an average of 50 mine-related casualties per month — one of the highest rates in the world.
“These casualties are set to increase this year as refugees return from Iran and Pakistan and internally displaced populations return to their homes,” Hakimi said.
An estimated 2 million Afghans have been forced to return from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, which have been hosting millions of Afghans since the decadelong Soviet invasion of their country that began in December 1979.
The end of fighting after the Taliban’s return to power has prompted hundreds of thousands more displaced Afghans to return to their homes across the country.
Last year, 455 Afghan civilians were killed or injured by 234 land mine blasts, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. These include 359 children, indicating they constitute nearly 80 percent of the victims of explosive hazards.
“Currently, mine action is among the most underfunded sectors in Afghanistan, said a spokesperson of the HALO Trust, a British charity and one of the leading demining groups in Afghanistan.”[The country] no longer has the resources needed to stem the problem.”
The spokesperson said that, over the past two years, funding for mine action has halved, forcing demining groups to dramatically reduce their workforce.
Today, only 3,000 of the 15,000 Afghan deminers working before the Taliban returned to power are still clearing dangerous explosives. According to the HALO Trust, more than 40 percent of Afghan deminers lost their jobs over the past two years.
“The country is facing a paradox of reduced donor support and increase in humanitarian need and rising poverty,” the spokesperson said.
Humanitarian Crisis
According to the UN, Afghanistan has one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, with more than half of its 40 million population in need of assistance.
Yet the Taliban’s restrictions on women and new humanitarian crises elsewhere have prompted Western donors to cut aid to the country.
Kabul lost all its development assistance, which funded most of its government expenses after the Taliban toppled the pro-Western Afghan Republic.
The country is now in danger of losing more humanitarian aid. On January 7, Trump accused President Joe Biden of paying “billions of dollars to essentially the Taliban in Afghanistan.”
In a letter to the U.S. president-elect on January 2, Republican Congressman Tim Burchett urged him to stop cash aid to Afghanistan, some of which he alleged was going to the Taliban.
Copyright (c) 2025. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
Is 2025 The Year Chinese Investments Take Off In Afghanistan?
After a year of unprecedented trade and breaking ground on high-profile mining projects in 2024, there’s new momentum for Beijing’s growing role in Afghanistan and deepening ties with the Taliban. But can the hard-line group finally calm China’s longstanding security concerns and unleash a wave of much-needed investment?
Malala Yousafzai asks Muslim leaders to reject Taliban’s treatment of Afghan women openly
Malala Yousafzai
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
January 12, 2025
ISLAMABAD — Nobel Peace Prize laurate Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders Sunday not to “legitimize” Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, accusing them of being the “perpetrators of gender apartheid” and calling for accountability.
Yousafzai spoke at the closing session of a Pakistan-hosted international summit on girls’ education in Muslim communities around the world, sharply criticizing the hardline Taliban government for imposing sweeping curbs on Afghan women’s access to education and employment.
“For the past three-and-a-half years, the Taliban have ripped away the right to learn from every Afghan girl. They have weaponized our faith to justify it,” the education activist stated.
“The Taliban are explicit about their mission. They want to eliminate women and girls from every aspect of public life and erase them from society,” she said. “Simply put, the Taliban do not see women as human beings. They cloak their crimes in cultural and religious justification.”
The Taliban swept back to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, imposing their strict interpretation of Islamic law, known as Sharia, that the United Nations has labeled as “gender apartheid.”
Afghan girls are entirely banned from attending school beyond the sixth grade. Women are prohibited from public and private workplaces except for a few departments, such as health, immigration, and police.
The Muslim World League, or MWL, co-hosted the two-day conference in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, bringing together ministers, education officials, and scholars from nearly 50 Muslim-majority countries and representatives from the United Nations and non-governmental organizations.
“I have a message for everyone in this room,” Yousafzai said. “As Muslim leaders, now is the time to raise your voice and use your power. You can show true leadership; you can show true Islam,” she told the gathering.
“Afghan women and girls must be free to shape their own future. The very loudest champions of their cause must be fellow Muslims, leaders such as yourselves,” she added. Yousafzai sought a united voice from Muslim scholars to openly challenge and denounce the Taliban’s “oppressive laws.”
Taliban officials did not immediately comment on the criticism. They vehemently defend their governance, saying it is aligned with Sharia and culture in Afghanistan.
A conference declaration issued Sunday condemned “extremist ideologies” and religious edicts, known as fatwas, that are rooted in cultural norms obstructing girls’ education as a “grave misuse of religious principles to legitimize policies of deprivation and exclusion.”
The declaration noted that anyone who rejects or opposes Islamic principles mandating equal education for men and women “is considered outside the framework of the Islamic Ummah’s (Islamic world’s) concepts and cannot be regarded as part of it. “It is essential to disavow their ideology, whether they are an individual, an institution, or an entity—public or private,” the statement said.
The multi-page declaration did not mention Afghanistan, the only country where girls are banned from seeking secondary school education and beyond.
Pakistani officials said that the Taliban government in Kabul had been formally invited to attend the global summit, but Islamabad did not receive a response.
Speaking at the opening session on Saturday, Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, the MWL secretary-general, stressed that men and women must acquire education as mandated by Islam.
“The Islamic world is united in its belief that those who oppose women’s education are misguided and do not represent true Islam,” Al-Issa responded when asked if the outcome of the summit could encourage the Taliban to relax restrictions on Afghan women and girls.
Nonetheless, the Saudi scholar clarified that the gathering in Islamabad was not directed at any specific community or country.
“We have simply tried to address the concerns of those who oppose women’s education and conveyed our message that there are no restrictions in Islam regarding education for girls,” Al-Issa stated, without naming the Taliban.
Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, attended the summit, telling a panel that leaders of Islamic countries need to support Afghan girls.
“I really call on all these ministers … who came from all over the world, to offer scholarships, to have online education, to have all sorts of education for them. This is the task of the day,” she said.
No country has recognized the Taliban government primarily over its curbs on Afghan women and girls.
While the United States and the West at large have refused to engage with the de facto Afghan leaders diplomatically and relocated their embassies from the country, neighboring and regional countries, including China, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia, have retained their diplomatic missions in Kabul and maintain close contacts with the Taliban.
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Tolo News in Dari – January 12, 2025
Afghanistan names squad for ICC Champions Trophy 2025
Ariana: Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) on Sunday announced the national team’s squad for the upcoming ICC Champions Trophy, which is scheduled to be played from February 19 to March 9 this year in Pakistan and UAE. Afghanistan’s prolific top-order batter, Ibrahim Zadran, who was away from action due to an ankle injury, has returned to the squad. Click here to read more (external link).