Pakistan Blast Injures 7, Including Children

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Sarah Zaman
VOA News
December 5, 2023

ISLAMABAD — A roadside blast caused by a remote-controlled improvised explosive device, or IED, wounded seven people Tuesday, including four children in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

According to area police, a preliminary investigation of the site found that 4 kilograms of explosives were concealed in a concrete block. Images from the site show the blast shattered windows of a nearby building.

Authorities said the wounded children, aged between six and 17, have been identified as Afghan nationals. Hospital authorities said none of the injured were in school uniform, indicating that the wounded were not school children.

“I am a roadside vendor and I had just arrived at the spot when a blast happened,” Javed Khan, a wounded 17-year-old who had come to sell potato chips told VOA’s Deewa Service. Khan said the injured children were his relatives. Hospital authorities say one 6-year-old is in critical condition.

The area where the incident occurred just after 9 a.m. has several educational institutions nearby, including the Army Public School that terrorists attacked nine years ago, this month. Around 150 people, mostly children, were killed in that brazen attack that shocked the nation.

Speaking to media near the site of Tuesday’s blast, Kashif Abbasi, a senior officer with Peshawar Police said the target was most likely a police vehicle that was on a routine patrol.

“As soon as the police mobile [patrol vehicle] drove by the site, the IED blast occurred,” Abbasi said.

Nearly two months before Tuesday’s attack, a similar incident in the area killed a soldier and injured six others.

So far, no group has claimed responsibility.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has seen a marked rise in terror incidents, most targeting security personnel, since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul two years ago.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an ideological offshoot of the Afghan Taliban routinely claims responsibility.

Pakistan accuses Kabul’s de facto government of inaction against TTP terrorists it alleges have moved their operational bases to Afghanistan. Islamabad is currently expelling hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals residing without proper documents.

The government in Kabul denies providing safe haven to cross-border terrorists.

VOA Deewa Service stringer Usman Khan contributed to this reportBlowback,

Leader of Pakistan Ethnic Rights Group Detained

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Manzoor Pashteen

VOA News
December 5, 2023

The leader of a Pakistan ethnic group has been detained after authorities said armed men in his vehicle opened fire on police.

Raja Athar Abbas, the deputy commissioner of the northcentral city of Chaman, which sits on the border with Afghanistan, said that Manzoor Pashteen was arrested in connection with the shooting incident, as well as for violating a ban on entering Balochistan province.

Pashteen is the head and co-founder of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, a loose network of Pashtun activists demanding equal rights and protections for minority Pashtuns in Pakistan.

The PTM issued a statement alleging Pashteen’s vehicle was fired at by law enforcement agencies while he was traveling from Chaman to the nearby city of Turbat, where he was scheduled to address a protest. The statement said one woman is being treated at a hospital after she was injured in the shooting.

The PTM says Pashteen and his entourage returned to Chaman and surrendered to authorities.

Pashtuns make up about 15% to 18% of Pakistan’s population, mostly in the insurgency- and counterinsurgency-stricken province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa along the porous border with Afghanistan.

Members and supporters of the PTM claim that their leaders are incarcerated, harassed and even eliminated by government forces.

Several of them have been arrested over the past two years for making incendiary remarks against state institutions.

“There is no justice for Pashtuns in Pakistan,” Pashteen told VOA last year. “When we demand our rights, equal rights, and protest against this colonial-like treatment of our people, we’re thrown [in]to jails indefinitely.”

Some information for this report came from VOA’s Akmal Dawi.

Hazara Community under Taliban Rule: 13 Lives Lost in One Month in Herat Province

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8am: In the last two years, the Taliban have consistently asserted the establishment of comprehensive security across Afghanistan. Despite this claim, the group has not only carried out targeted killings of former government security forces and political opponents but has also orchestrated numerous attacks against Hazara Shia positions, resulting in hundreds of casualties. Recently, Herat has witnessed a wave of deliberate and organized assassinations targeting the Hazara community. Reports indicate that in the past month alone, 13 individuals, including religious scholars and ethnic leaders, have fallen victim to public murders. Notably, the victims comprise five Shia religious scholars, a former jihadist commander, and a prominent ethnic figure—all assassinated in Herat. Surprisingly, the Taliban have neither pursued nor prosecuted any perpetrators responsible for these killings. Residents of the Jebrael township in Herat province, predominantly Hazara and Shia, express concerns over the escalating targeted assassinations, alleging that these killings are part of an ongoing “Hazaras’ genocide.” Click here to read more (external link).

Related

Defiant in betrayal, Afghanistan’s pro-democracy leaders still see a future without the Taliban

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The Independent (UK): Ex-warlords, resistance fighters, diplomats and politicians gather together united by a single cause: how to oust the ultra-fundamentalist group that threatens regional stability and treats women as a subservient class. Click here to read more (external link).

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Afghans Banned From 16 Provinces In Iran As Forced Exodus Continues

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By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
December 4, 2023

Iran has banned millions of Afghan refugees and migrants in the country from living in, traveling to, or seeking employment in just over half of the country’s 31 provinces.

On December 3, Hamzeh Soleimani, the director-general of citizenship and foreign nationals affairs of the western Kermanshah Province, confirmed the ban was in place in 16 provinces nationwide.

“Numerous construction projects, greenhouses and livestock farms underwent inspection under the plan. [This led] to the arrest and expulsion of Afghan workers from the province,” he said.

Iranian media have identified 15 of the 16 provinces, including Kermanshah, East Azarbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan, Kurdistan, Hamedan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Sistan-Baluchistan, Ilam, Lorestan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Kahgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad, and Hormozgan.

In October, Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi reiterated that Tehran would deport all “illegal” migrants, most of whom are Afghan nationals who fled war, persecution, and poverty.

Tehran estimates that more than 5 million Afghans currently live in the country. Iranian officials now want to deport at least half of them because they do not have the documents to remain in the country.

During the past few months, the rate of Afghans deported from Iran has steadily increased despite efforts by Afghanistan’s Taliban-run government to persuade Tehran to give the Afghans more time before embarking on a mass expulsion campaign like Pakistan.

Islamabad is currently deporting thousands of impoverished Afghans daily as part of its campaign to expel more than 1.7 million “undocumented foreigners.”

In Iran, Afghans say their life is becoming more complicated with each passing day.

“The situation of Afghan refugees across Iran is very worrying,” Sharif Mateen, an Afghan refugee, told RFE/RL’s Azadi Radio.

“Police are arresting everyone irrespective of whether they have documents or not. They are then taken to repatriation camps,” he added.

Iran has hosted millions of Afghans for more than four decades, but Tehran has often complained of the lack of international aid for hosting them.

More than 70 percent of the 3.6 million Afghans who left their country after the Taliban seized back power in August 2021 fled to Iran.

Data show most are educated, middle-class Afghans who served in the fallen pro-Western Afghan republic’s security forces or civil bureaucracy.

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Iran warns of global threat from Afghanistan’s drug production

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Khaama: The Secretary-General of Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters has rejected the Taliban’s claim about a reduction in poppy cultivation, stating that the statistics indicate an increase in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. Following the dissemination of this report and the Taliban’s claim of a significant reduction in poppy cultivation, Iranian authorities have repeatedly rejected this claim. Earlier, the spokesperson for Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters stated that the income of Afghan farmers from poppy cultivation and narcotic production had tripled in the past year. Click here to read more (external link).

House-to-House Inspection Initiated in Badakhshan Province on the Orders of Taliban’s Military Command Chief

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8am: According to local sources speaking to Hasht-e Subh Daily on Monday, December 4th, one day after the visit of Fasehuddin Fetrat, the Taliban’s Military Command Chief, to Badakhshan, houses in the city are being inspected under his orders. Unpleasant and insulting confrontations with residents have been reported in some instances. The initiative is said to be a response to the rocket attack on Qari Wasil’s residence and the commander affiliated with Fasehuddin. Click here to read more (external link).

Karzai and the Issue of Opposing the Overthrow of the Taliban Regime

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Hamid Karzai

8am: Karzai’s statement that “the world should not remove the Taliban from power by force” has been interpreted as support for the Taliban… The history of the government under the leadership of Karzai in dealing with the Taliban and their prisoners has strengthened the suspicion that Karzai’s recent statements are aimed at normalizing the Taliban and supporting this group. Click here to read more (external link).