German Foreign Minister and Chancellor disagree on deporting Afghan refugees
Khaama: Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Foreign Minister, has criticized statements made by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser regarding the deportation of Afghan migrants. She added that this decision will not enhance security. According to reports, the Interior Minister made these comments on Friday, July 26, at an event covered by “Die Zeit” magazine in Hamburg. Without naming individuals, she emphasized that “if you make commitments that you cannot understand how to implement the next day, it cannot contribute to strengthening security.” Click here to read more (external link).
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Turkey deports Gul Mohammad Pahlawan, key commander tied to Marshal Dostum
Pahlawan
Khaama: Reports indicate that Turkey have reported Gul Mohammad Pahlawan, a military commander and former member of the Afghan parliament known for his anti-Taliban stance in northern Afghanistan, has been expelled from Turkey. According to sources, Pahlawan’s residency permit in Turkey has been revoked, leading him to travel to Iran. Sources further add that this Uzbek commander, who has fought against the Taliban for years, is currently residing in Iran following his expulsion from Turkey. Click here to read more (external link).
Study predicts historic decline in Afghan poppy cultivation in 2024
VOA News
Ayaz Gul
July 26, 2024
ISLAMABAD — New research suggests that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan will drop to record-low levels in 2024, due to the ban on the crop imposed by the Taliban government two years ago.
The findings, released this week by Alcis, a geospatial analytics firm, are based on high-resolution satellite mapping of 14 out of the 34 Afghan provinces.
“These 14 provinces were responsible for 92% of the country’s total poppy cultivation in 2022, cultivating 201,725 hectares out of a total of 219,978 hectares grown,” according to the study published on Thursday.
“In 2023, cultivation in these provinces had fallen to 15,648 hectares (50% of the crop that year), and in 2024, only 3,641 hectares of poppy were grown,” it said.
“This year, as in 2023, it is expected that poppy cultivation will be at close to historically low levels,” said Alcis.
The Afghan provinces in focus include Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Farah in the south and southwest and Nangarhar and Baghlan in the east and north.
The Taliban banned poppy cultivation and production eight months after the then-insurgent group reclaimed power from an internationally backed Afghan government in August 2021.
The following year, Afghanistan still supplied about 80% of the global illegal opiate demand and 95% of Europe’s heroin in 2022, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC. But the U.N. agency noted in its 2024 World Drug Report that the ban had reduced opium production in the impoverished country by 95%.
The Alcis study warns there are pockets of resistance to the Taliban’s ban, particularly in the remote, northeastern border province of Badakhshan.
“Widespread [poppy] cultivation persists” in the province, the study noted, and the Taliban’s eradication efforts have been met with violence, leaving at least five people, including three Taliban soldiers, dead in April.
“The events in Badakhshan and elsewhere, where farmers have responded to the ban by abandoning important cash crops, growing staple food crops such as wheat, and leaving land fallow, suggest the Taliban’s poppy ban is fragile and will become more difficult to enforce in the future,” Alcis cautioned.
The firm noted that without the income brought in by opium production, many Afghan farmers are struggling to earn a livelihood. It said without markets for cash-producing crops and an increase in non-farm opportunities, the Taliban may face “further unrest and further outmigration.”
The Taliban takeover has led to deepening economic troubles in Afghanistan, mainly attributed to international financial and banking sector sanctions. It has also exacerbated a long-running Afghan humanitarian crisis.
The country remains a global pariah largely because of the Taliban’s curbs on women’s access to education and work, deterring the international community from formally recognizing the de facto Afghan government and offering any financial aid.
On Tuesday, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told a national conference in Kabul that the drug ban had led to immense economic pressures and severe hardships for Afghans already reeling from the effects of years of war and natural disasters. He lamented the ongoing lack of international cooperation in response.
“The illegal production of drugs has ceased. The [more than 4 million] addicts [in Afghanistan] are now in need of medical treatment while the farmers need livelihoods and employment,” Muttaqi said.
“Regrettably, the international community has failed to fulfill its responsibility in this matter. Instead, they have imposed sanctions on Afghan trade, travel, and banking sectors in breach of the universal fundamental human rights,” he added.
Tolo News in Dari – July 26, 2024
US Congresswoman Introduces Bill To Designate Taliban As Terrorist Organisation
Afghanistan International: Nancy Mace, a US Congresswoman, has introduced a bill in the US Congress that would designate the Taliban as a “Foreign Terrorist Organisation”. The bill, known as the “Preventing the Recognition of Terrorist State Act,” aims to prevent the recognition of the Taliban. The Republican representative stated that freedom and justice demand rejecting tyranny and oppression in all its forms and that this bill will ensure the United States never recognises the terrorist regime of the Taliban. Click here to read more (external link).
Pashtuns in Pakistan oppose military offensive in borderlands
By Nafees Takar
VOA News
July 25, 2024
Washington — Militant attacks in Pakistan’s northwest have plagued the region for years, leading to tensions between some of the region’s civilian leaders and the Pakistani military.
Last month, the military announced the Azm-e-Istehkam or “Resolve for Stability” offensive would be an operation that cracks down on militants, but after a decade of similar interventions, many residents in the region are wary.
This week, a man recorded a video while standing next to debris from a girls school that militants blew up Monday night in a small village in the North Waziristan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He lamented how violent the province has become, especially compared with other, more peaceful parts of Pakistan.
“We never heard that a school was blown up in Punjab,” Pakistan’s most populous province and home to the majority of the country’s armed forces, he said.
Mohsin Dawar, the former chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Pakistan’s lower house, posted video of the destroyed school on the X platform with a comment, “The state stands by, complicit in the destruction.”
Monday’s destruction of the girls school was not unusual. Last week there were attacks on police stations, a hospital and an army base, all in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province about the same size as Iceland or South Korea.
After years of violence, the local Pashtun population is questioning why peace has not returned to the border region despite the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from neighboring Afghanistan.
The ongoing militant attacks have boosted support for a local rights movement, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement, which is leading a series of mass peace rallies aimed at holding Pakistan’s military accountable for its track record in combating terrorism.
The group is the major voice opposing the government’s plan to launch another military operation in the region to try to drive out militants and end the attacks.
The prospect of another military offensive has drawn opposition from residents, who remember the large-scale displacements that happened when the military launched offensives twice before in the last decade.
Army spokesperson Lieutenant General Ahmad Sharif on Monday blamed groups who oppose the new offensive for allegedly trying to sabotage the operation with a disinformation campaign.
He insisted the proposed Azm-e-Istehkam is aimed at destroying militant groups operating in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, two provinces that border Afghanistan, Iran and the strategic Arabian Sea, and also host several major Chinese-backed development projects.
Murad Ali, an academic at Malakand University in the nearby Swat Valley, says the region’s history of military offensives has left many skeptical of the army’s plans.
“It is a fact that [the] military also suffered in terms of sweat and blood in [the] fight against militants,” Ali said, but many in the Pashtun population doubt the capability of the military to eradicate militancy or suspect it is an “accomplice in perpetrating this hide and seek with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban.”
The army spokesman said security forces have lost 137 soldiers so far, including officers, in 2024 in the fight against militants.
Ahmad Kundi, an elected member of Pakhtunkhwa’s regional assembly, says over the years, the national government has sent a mixed message about how to combat militancy.
“One prime minister said negotiations with militants was a way forward and another prime minister opts for military operations, though it didn’t deliver in the past,” Kundi said.
Hamid Ullah in Peshawar contributed to this report.
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Taliban Detains Over 40 Hazaras In Uruzgan In Connection With Shia Cleric’s Murder
Afghanistan International: Several sources confirmed to Afghanistan International that Rahimi’s wife was the first person to enter the mosque after the attack and witnessed the assailants. According to sources, Rahimi’s wife reported that the attackers were from “Pashtun” ethnicity, but the Taliban members did not accept her testimony, insisting that since she is a woman, another woman’s testimony is needed to corroborate her statement. Sources stated that Taliban officials are trying to blame the murder of the Shia cleric on the Hazaras living in the area. They added that the group is attempting to pressure Rahimi’s family into testifying against the Hazaras. Earlier, residents of the Shashpar area reported that Rahimi’s murder was the 21st murder in the area over the past three years. Residents accuse the Taliban of being involved in the systematic killing of Hazaras. Click here to read more (external link).
Afghan Sisters Escape The Taliban To Achieve Olympic Dreams
Sisters Yulduz and Fariba Hashimi are set to become the first female cyclists from Afghanistan to compete in the Olympics. The siblings fled their country after the Taliban seized power in 2021 and cracked down on women’s rights, including banning women from participating in sports.
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China Breaks Ground On Massive Afghan Copper Mine After 16 Years Of Delays
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
July 25, 2024
Chinese engineers and the Taliban government officially started work on a massive project in Afghanistan to mine the world’s second-largest deposit of copper.
At the July 24 event at Mes Aynak, some 40 kilometers southeast of the capital, Kabul, Taliban officials along with Chinese businessmen and diplomats carried out a ribbon-cutting ceremony as work began on the construction of a road to the mining site.
A $3 billion deal signed in 2008 gave the Chinese state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) a 30-year mining concession, but combat between NATO-led troops and Taliban insurgents at the time delayed the project from moving forward for 16 years.
With violence waning since the Taliban’s 2021 takeover of power amid the withdrawal of foreign troops, the cash-strapped Taliban-installed government is eager to exploit the country’s vast and lucrative mineral deposits.
“The time wasted in the implementation of the project should be recuperated with speedy work,” Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar said at the ribbon-cutting event.
Taliban officials said it would likely be at least two years before the first copper was extracted by MCC while Chinese diplomats praised the progress as a sign of warming ties between Beijing and Kabul.
“The economic and trade relations between the two countries are becoming increasingly close,” said China’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Zhao Xing.
Since it seized power, the Taliban has faced the task of undertaking the reconstruction and development of a country devastated by decades of war.
But officials have also found their economy suffocated by Western sanctions and dealing with international isolation that has cut them off from receiving financial support.
China has been an exception for the Taliban government, with Beijing vowing to pursue deeper cooperation shortly after the group took control of Kabul.
Beijing has been particularly focused on exploiting Afghanistan’s extensive resource wealth, from oil and gas to rare-earth metals.
Mes Aynak remains one of the most attractive offerings for Chinese firms. The deposit is estimated to contain 11.5 million tons of copper ore, which is vital for electronics components and is surging in value due to its use in growing markets related to electric vehicles, renewable energy, and data centers.
According to a Brookings Institute report, Afghanistan sits on some 2.3 billion metric tons of iron ore and 1.4 million metric tons of rare-earth minerals, and the U.S. Geological Survey has calculated that the country is sitting on $1 trillion in untapped minerals, such as iron, gold, and lithium — an essential but scarce component in rechargeable batteries and other technologies.
Amir Mohammad Musazai, a retired professor from the Department of Geology and Mines at Kabul Polytechnic University, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi that mining Mes Aynak is likely to yield amounts of copper ore worth more than the $3 billion that was signed for the mining rights, given that nearby areas also hold large copper reserves that weren’t factored into the original plans.
While the groundbreaking event at Mes Aynak is a sign that Chinese resource ventures are moving forward in the country after decades of delays due to war, security concerns are still a major hurdle holding back more expansive projects, which often rely on Chinese engineers and other staff.
The July 24 ceremony was closely guarded by dozens of armed men and Taliban officials made assurances that they would protect staff at the mining project.
Chinese workers have increasingly become a target of attacks in the region, including a suicide attack that killed five Chinese enginners in Pakistan in March and a 2021 bombing that killed 13 people, including nine Chinese workers, at a dam project in the South Asian country.
In Afghanistan, at least five Chinese nationals were wounded when gunmen stormed a Kabul hotel popular with Beijing businessmen in 2022.