Taliban Allow Female Enrollment in State-Run Medical Institutes, Official Media Says
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
February 20, 2024
ISLAMABAD — The Taliban have reportedly allowed female high school graduates in Afghanistan to enroll in state-run medical institutes for the new academic year that begins in March.
The enrollment process has begun in more than a dozen Afghan provinces, following a directive from the Ministry of Public Health in Kabul, the Taliban-run official Bakhtar news agency said Tuesday. It provided no further information.
There was no immediate comment from de facto Afghan authorities on the ministry’s reported directive.
The Taliban have banned girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and barred women from working in public and private sectors since reclaiming power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
The reported health ministry directive could be a sign of relief for girls who graduated before the Taliban takeover to resume their education and pursue employment in the health sector, one of the few areas where women are still permitted to work.
Aid groups say the restrictions on women’s education and work have hurt an already fragile Afghan health sector as the country has not produced a single doctor for over a year.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned that Afghanistan faces a shortage of qualified health workers in general and women in particular.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated Tuesday that the Taliban must reverse “the outrageous ban on girls’ access to education and the ban on women’s employment.
“Women & girls must be able to fully & meaningfully participate in all aspects of Afghan life – from seats in classrooms to the tables where decisions are made,” Guterres wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
He made the statement a day after hosting an international conference in Qatar, where envoys from 25 countries, as well as the European Union, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, discussed engagement with Afghanistan’s de facto Taliban authorities.
Guterres stressed the need for girls’ education while briefing reporters on the conference’s outcomes in Doha, the capital of the Gulf state. He said it would be “inconceivable” for him if his three granddaughters could not attend secondary school and could not go on to university.
“I would like all the granddaughters and daughters in Afghanistan to enjoy exactly the same rights that my granddaughters will hopefully enjoy in my country,” said the secretary general.
In a report this month, Human Rights Watch warned that a sharp reduction in foreign financial and technical development has severely harmed the Afghan healthcare system.
The U.S.-based watchdog said the Taliban’s sweeping restrictions on women’s employment have fueled the crisis.
“Women have been banned from most civil service jobs, from employment with nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations except for specific positions in health care and education, and from some private sector jobs,” the report said.
It noted that the curbs on women and girls have “gravely impeded” their access to health services and have blocked almost all training of future female healthcare workers in Afghanistan.
Pakistan Firmly Asserts Durand Line Sovereignty in Face of Taliban’s Stark Rejection
Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai
Khaama: In a vivid manifestation of escalating tensions, Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s special envoy to Afghanistan, has emphatically dismissed the Taliban’s contentious stance on the Durand Line, underscoring Islamabad’s rigid position on the historic border dispute. This sharp exchange marks a significant heightening in the long-standing discord over the demarcation that has been a point of contention between Afghanistan and Pakistan for decades. Durrani articulated his staunch rebuttal in response to the inflammatory assertions made by Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Deputy Minister for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Taliban, who categorically stated Afghanistan’s refusal to recognize the Durand Line as the official boundary. Speaking to Afghanistan International in Doha, Durrani declared, “For Pakistan, the matter of the Durand Line is conclusively settled,” unequivocally affirming the line as the official and internationally recognized border separating the two nations. Click here to read more (external link).
The Taliban vowed to change Kabul. The city may be starting to change the Taliban.
Taliban militant (file photo)
WP: More than two years after Taliban fighters streamed into the Afghan capital, seizing power here and vowing to cleanse the country of Western decadence, many of them have come to embrace the benefits of urban life. Some Taliban members are already developing expensive taste. While officials in the new government initially went shopping for motorbikes, they are now increasingly interested in shiny Land Cruisers, vendors say. Click here to read more (external link).
Tolo News in Dari – February 19, 2024
Landslide In Afghanistan Kills At Least 5, Leaves 22 Trapped, Missing
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
February 19, 2024
An avalanche has killed at least five people and left 22 more trapped or missing amid heavy rainfall in a mountainous region of an eastern Afghan province, locals and a Taliban official said on February 19. The landslide in the Nurgram district of Nuristan Province destroyed as many as six homes, according to Gohar Rahman, a deputy district governor for Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government. Afghanistan has been hit by heavy rainfall following an extended drought that worsened the humanitarian crisis in a country already hard-hit by decades of war.
Copyright (c) 2024. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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Khalil Haqqani’s Claims and Atta Muhammad Nur’s Response: Allegiance or Troubled Dreams?
Atta Mohammad Noor
8am: Over the past two years, senior officials from the former Afghan government have repeatedly accused each other of playing a role in the downfall of the republic system. Many political leaders in key positions have pointed fingers at Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and his decision-making circle, blaming them for the failure to defend the republic and the subsequent surrender to the Taliban. In a recent development, however, a senior Taliban official and a member of the Haqqani network have shifted the blame towards Hamed Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah, Atta Muhammad Nur, and some other political figures, accusing them of collusion in the collapse of the previous government with the Taliban. Click here to read more (external link).
At Afghanistan Meeting, UN’s Guterres Pledges Work To Appoint Envoy
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
February 19, 2024
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on February 19 told a press conference at a two-day UN-sponsored meeting of more than two dozen nations but not including Taliban representatives in the Qatari capital to discuss the “evolving situation” in Afghanistan that he is starting consultations toward appointing a UN envoy to coordinate engagement between Kabul and the international community.
The Doha gathering is also aimed at discussing possible international engagement since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in mid-2021.
Guterres held closed-door sessions with the representatives of several nations and organizations on the meeting’s first day.
Mahbouba Seraj, a civil-society and women’s rights representative who is in Doha along with a number of other Afghan participants not affiliated with the Taliban-led government, told Radio Azadi that priority topics on day two would include the plight of women and girls under the Taliban.
She expressed hope that hers and other women’s voices will “finally be heard, that this issue will be followed up on, and indeed someone” will take up the cause of Afghan women, who are routinely discriminated against and isolated under the hard-line fundamentalist Taliban.
Girls above the sixth grade have been barred from attending school, universities are closed to women, and work in the nongovernmental sector and among most government bodies has been banned for women, in addition to other restrictions.
The Taliban leadership declined the invitation from the UN Department of Political Affairs and Peacebuilding (DPPA) to attend the gathering.
Guterres said the Taliban set unacceptable conditions for attending the meeting, including the barring of Afghan civil society members and de facto recognition of the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers.
“I received a letter with a set of conditions to be present in this meeting that were not acceptable,” Guterres told a news conference. “These conditions denied us the right to talk to other representatives of Afghan society and demanded a treatment that, to a large extent, would be similar to recognition.”
Russia also said via its embassy in Afghanistan that it wouldn’t send a delegation to the Qatari meeting.
Moscow said it was acting “at the request of the Afghan authorities” and would not join “so-called Afghan civil activists, whose selection, by the way, was conducted nontransparently behind Kabul’s back.”
Organizers said participants from 25 nations and groups would include those from “Afghanistan, the wider region, and beyond.”
“Other regional organizations working actively on Afghanistan such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the European Union, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization” were also expected to be there.
The Taliban-led government remains overwhelmingly unrecognized internationally since taking over following the withdrawal in mid-2021 of the U.S.-led international coalition that spent two decades in Afghanistan after the events of 9/11.
The Taliban’s Foreign Ministry on February 17 said that due to the nonacceptance of its demands, it did not consider participation in the Doha meeting to be fruitful, expressing anger over the planned appearance of non-Taliban Afghan representatives at the sessions. The Taliban has long had a representative office in Qatar.
The DPPA said the current session would “take place in the context of Security Council resolution 2721 (2023), which encourages member states to consider increasing international engagement in the country, with the objective of a ‘clear end state of an Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbors, fully reintegrated into the international community, and meeting international obligations.’”
The gathering is the second such meeting organized by the UN in the past year following a session in May 2023.
With reporting by AP
Copyright (c) 2024. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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International Envoys Discuss Afghan Engagement In Doha; Taliban Rejects Invite
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
February 18, 2024
Special envoys from more than two dozen countries gathered in the Qatari capital to discuss the “evolving situation” in Afghanistan and possible international engagement since the Taliban’s takeover of the country in mid-2021, organizers of the UN-led event said on February 18.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres held closed-door sessions with the representatives of several nations and organizations on the first day of the two-day meetings in Doha sponsored by the UN’s Department of Political Affairs and Peacebuilding (DPPA). No details of the meetings were immediately released.
Organizers said participants from 25 countries and groups would include those from “Afghanistan, the wider region, and beyond.”
“Other regional organizations working actively on Afghanistan such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the European Union, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization” would be there, a statement said.
The DPPA said the “de facto authorities” from Afghanistan had been invited, but the Taliban’s Foreign Ministry on February 17 said that due to the nonacceptance of its demands, it did not consider participation in the Doha meeting to be fruitful, expressing anger over the planned appearance of non-Taliban Afghan representatives at the sessions.
The Taliban has long had a representative office in Qatar.
Reports in the Afghan media said Lotfollah Najafizadeh on behalf of civil activists and Mahbubeh Siraj, Mitra Mehran, and Shah Gul Rezaee representing Afghan women’s rights groups were participating.
The DPPA said the current session would “take place in the context of Security Council resolution 2721 (2023), which encourages member states to consider increasing international engagement in the country, with the objective of a ‘clear end state of an Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbors, fully reintegrated into the international community, and meeting international obligations.’”
In an interview with RFE/RL, Nicholas Kay, a former British diplomat and NATO representative in Afghanistan, said he is not optimistic about the situation in the war-torn country as its Taliban leaders continue to restrict rights and freedoms, especially for females.
Kay, NATO’s senior civilian representative in Afghanistan in 2018-20, said he sees little potential for change in Afghanistan in the near future with the Taliban holding a tight grip on society.
“I think it’s tough days ahead for Afghans, unfortunately,” he told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi ahead the Doha sessions.
“I wish I could be more optimistic,” he said.
The gathering is the second such meeting organized by the UN in the past year following a session in May 2023.
Copyright (c) 2024. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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Afghan Province Orders Officials Not To Photograph Living Things
AFP: Authorities in the Afghan province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, ordered officials on February 18 not to take pictures or videos of “living things.” In a letter addressed to civilian and military officials, the provincial department of the interior directed them “to refrain from taking pictures of living things in your formal and informal gatherings, because it causes more harm than good.” Click here to read more (external link).