Rise in forced marriages, maternal mortality, and early childbirths in Afghanistan

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Khaama: In its latest report, the United Nations has examined the devastating consequences of the ban on girls’ education, revealing that these prohibitions and other restrictions have affected all aspects of the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan. The report, published on Saturday, May 25, on the UN Women website, shows that following the imposition of restrictions on the freedoms of women and girls, particularly the ban on girls’ education, what is termed “forced marriage” has increased by 25%. Click here to read more (external link).

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Devastating Floods and Taliban Indifference: Ghor Residents Take Action to Reopen Roads

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8am: It’s been over a week since the devastating floods hit Ghor province. During this time, the Taliban have made no efforts to clean up Firozkoh City, rescue trapped individuals, or recover belongings from the mud. Consequently, many rural roads remain impassable. Residents, faced with the Taliban’s indifference to relief efforts, have taken matters into their own hands, using basic tools. Some residents estimate that the recent floods have destroyed nearly 10,000 homes, over 3,000 shops, and thousands of acres of farmland, leading to the deaths of hundreds of livestock. Additionally, the Herat-Ghor highway remains shut due to flood-induced road damage. Click here to read more (external link).

Kyrgyzstan Cites Rise In Terrorist Activities In Northern Afghanistan

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Afghanistan International: Kamchybek Tashiev, the head of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security, reported a significant increase in terrorist groups operating in northern Afghanistan during a security conference in Bishkek. The Russian state news agency TASS reported on Friday that during the CIS security chiefs’ meeting in Bishkek, Tashiev underscored the severity of the threat, noting that the concentration of terrorists in Afghanistan’s northern provinces is now so significant that it jeopardises the integrity of the CIS’s southern borders. Click here to read more (external link).

UN warns of more flooding in Afghanistan

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Roshan Noorzai
Waheed Faizi
VOA News
May 23, 2024

As the United Nations warns of more “intensive” floods affecting food security in Afghanistan in the coming months, experts say the country needs long-term planning to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.

The U.N. said that floods in the northeastern and northwestern provinces in the past two weeks have affected more than 80,000 people in the country.

Local Taliban officials in the western province of Ghor said Thursday that last week’s flood in the province killed at least 50 people and damaged more than 4,000 houses and shops.

According to the U.N., floods on May 10 and 11 in the northeastern provinces of Badakhshan, Takhar and Baghlan killed 347 people and injured 1,651. The floods destroyed 7,800 houses, killed nearly 14,000 livestock and destroyed about 24,000 hectares of land in the three provinces.

The worsening climate crisis has brought about “the erratic weather pattern,” which has “become the norm” in the country, according to the World Food Program.

“The affected people are living in districts with higher food insecurity,” said Ziauddin Safi, a spokesperson for WFP in Afghanistan, adding that “the floods are caused by unusual rainfall after a dry winter that left the ground too hard to absorb the rain caused by climate crisis.”

“Unfortunately, WFP expects more floods in the future,” Safi added.

Afghanistan remains one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change, though it has one of the lowest greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the INFORM Risk Index 2023, the country is ranked fourth on the list of countries most at risk of a crisis.

Afghanistan is also one of the most vulnerable and least prepared countries on the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index.

Najibullah Sadid, an Afghan water specialist at the University of Stuttgart in Germany, told VOA that Afghanistan needs a long-term plan to mitigate the effects of climate change but that the country lacks resources.

“Unfortunately, without international economic support, implementing projects [to mitigate the effects of climate change] in Afghanistan is impossible,” Sadid said.

He added that Afghanistan needs support from the U.N. Green Climate Fund and Loss and Damage Fund for Developing Countries.

Sadid said that Afghanistan has no capacity to prepare communities in the face of challenges caused by climate change.

Sadruddin Fakhruddin, a former Afghan official at the Ministry of Agriculture, told VOA that most of the affected people in the provinces depend on agriculture, and the floods “washed away the agricultural land and destroyed the irrigation system.”

WFP has called for an additional $14.5 million to assist flood-affected people with “emergency food and nutrition assistance and resilience-building projects.”

Even before the recent floods, the country was facing a humanitarian crisis.

WFP had requested $670 million for the first six months of 2024 to reach some 16 million people who needed food assistance in Afghanistan.

According to the U.N., 4 million people, including 3.2 million children under the age of 5, are malnourished in Afghanistan.

“Acute malnutrition is above emergency thresholds in 25 out of 34 provinces, and is expected to worsen, with almost half of children under 5 and a quarter of pregnant and breastfeeding women needing life-saving nutrition support in the next 12 months,” according to WFP.

“Women and children were disproportionately affected by the floods as they were inside their homes during the heavy rains, while men sheltered in public buildings such as mosques,” said the Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group and the Women Advisory Group to the Humanitarian Country Team.

Fakhruddin said better management of resources is needed in the long term to mitigate the adverse effects of natural disasters in Afghanistan.

“In the short term, food security would be important; however, in the long term, issues such as reforestation, land and water management would need to be addressed.”

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Taliban’s Morality Police in Jaghori District Handed Over Hazara Market to Pashtuns

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8am: Some residents of Jaghori district in Ghazni province claim that a Taliban’s morality police official has expelled at least 50 Hazara street vendors from the Sang-e-Masha bazaar and handed it over to Pashtuns from Muqur district in Ghazni province and Shinkay district in Zabul province. They assert their dismay at the extensive interference and harassment by the Taliban’s morality police. Residents emphasize that this Taliban entity has imposed strict restrictions on personal and collective livelihoods in the district, openly meddling in the official affairs of government offices under their control. Click here to read more (external link).

China pressures Afghanistan’s Taliban to stop attacks on its interests in Pakistan, dangles economic carrot

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SCMP: Chinese diplomats were forced into action by Pakistan’s failure to prevent a surge in such terrorist attacks launched from Afghanistan, Beijing has proposed investments in Afghanistan if Kabul could restrain the militants responsible for the attacks, analysts say. Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban Arrests Afghan Activist For Third Time In Kabul

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Afghanistan International: On Wednesday, the Taliban arrested Noor Agha Ibrahimi, an activist, in Kabul, for the third time. He has been previously detained on charges of collaborating with the National Resistance Front. A source close to Ibrahimi’s family told Afghanistan International that they do not know his current whereabouts. Ibrahimi was first arrested during the early days of the Taliban’s return to power, but was released after some time when the Taliban could not prove his collaboration with the National Resistance Front (NRF). Click here to read more (external link).

New SIGAR Report: Taliban Benefit from US Aid

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8am: The Taliban’s utilization of humanitarian aid presents one of the challenging issues for countries assisting Afghanistan under the rule of this group. Citizens of these countries urge their governments not to allow their taxes to fall into the hands of the Taliban and other terrorist groups. Some countries providing humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan have expressed concerns about the Taliban’s access to this aid. Among them, the United States has consistently stated that its aid is distributed in Afghanistan without the Taliban’s involvement, but SIGAR has reported in multiple instances that the Taliban benefit from US aid. According to its recent report, SIGAR stated that American cooperating organizations have provided more than $10 million directly to the Taliban, benefiting the group. Click here to read more (external link).