Tolo News: ARY, a Pakistani media outlet, cited a report of the country’s Counter Terrorism Department that claimed 92 terrorists who were arrested for their alleged involvement in terror incidents in two years were Afghan nationals, and “terrorists of Afghan origin carried out 50 terror attacks in 2023 across Pakistan.” Click here to read more (external link).
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8am: Sources in Badghis province claim that Taliban commanders and fighters allocate humanitarian aid in specific areas of the province, or distribute this aid to the families of their fighters who were killed in previous conflicts. According to them, the distribution of aid in this province is not fair, benefiting only the residents of Taliban-controlled villages and the relatives of the Taliban. Click here to read more (external link).
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
December 23, 2023
ISLAMABAD — Only 12 children around the world have been paralyzed by wild poliovirus so far this year, all of them in Pakistan and Afghanistan — with six reported in each.
They are the last two countries in which the highly infectious disease still exists.
Moreover, the World Health Organization has warned that the countries’ vaccination programs continue to miss a large number of children, posing a significant risk to gains made against the crippling wild Type 1 poliovirus.
In addition, Pakistan’s campaign to repatriate undocumented Afghans has increased the risk of cross-border poliovirus spread and spread within the two countries, the WHO said in a statement Friday.
Since mid-September, nearly half a million Afghans have returned to Afghanistan, escaping the crackdown on foreigners living illegally in Pakistan. The number of returning Afghans is expected to reach 1.7 million.
Pakistani officials have reported a sharp increase in environmental detections lately, documenting 60 positive samples since September and bringing the year’s total to 82.
Samples have been found in major cities, including Quetta, Karachi, Peshawar, Rawalpindi and the national capital, Islamabad, the WHO said.
It said political instability, insecurity in some areas and vaccination boycotts continue to hinder anti-polio efforts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, whose capital is Peshawar. The province borders Afghanistan, and four of this year’s six reported polio infections were in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The rest were detected in Karachi, the country’s most populous southern port city, which had recorded zero cases in the last two years. Officials said both polio cases are children from Afghan refugee families.
Pakistan, with a population of about 241 million, came close to eradicating polio in 2021, when it reported only one case of paralysis from the virus. However, the country saw a spike in 2022, with 20 confirmed cases of infection.
Afghanistan has not reported new polio cases since August, and the virus has been cornered in its eastern Nangarhar border province, which reported all six infections this year.
The WHO cited an improvement in the quality of the vaccination campaign in the eastern regions of Afghanistan.
It noted in its Friday statement, though, that difficulties remain in various southern provinces, where almost 200,000 children are yet to be reached during the vaccination campaign.
“Any setback in Afghanistan poses a risk to the program in Pakistan due to high population movement,” the U.N. health agency said.
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8am: According to the sources, all the individuals sentenced to prison by the Taliban court are students and university students. As of now, the Taliban has not officially commented on this matter. It is worth mentioning that the Taliban have prohibited the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Jamiat Eslah, and the Muslim Youth Organization in Afghanistan. Click here to read more (external link).
Photo: Akmal Dawi/IRIN
Ariana: The National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) says over the past month, the air quality in Kabul city has deteriorated and become more polluted. NEPA officials said that the lack of electricity, extensive use of unrefined coal and burning of plastic are major factors of air pollution in the capital. Kabul is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Click here to read more (external link).
Khaama: The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) announced that the Afghanistan national U19 team will join a tri-series with India and host South Africa, enhancing international cricket participation. This series is set to take place in Johannesburg from December 29, 2023, to January 10, 2024, acting as a precursor to the ICC Men’s U19 Cricket World Cup 2024. The matches will be held at the Old Edwardians Cricket Club. Click here to read more (external link).
Heather Barr
Khaama: The head of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch reacted to reports about the education of girls in religious schools, stating that these schools are not an ‘acceptable substitute’ for public schools. Heather Barr said it seems Roza Otunbayeva is ‘ready for a major and deeply harmful compromise’ in the absence of Afghan girls. This senior Human Rights Watch official added on the social media platform X that for a country whose children learn only ‘extremist teachings,’ there is no future. Previously, Roza Otunbayeva, the United Nations Special Representative in Afghanistan, had said that she had received ‘more evidence’ showing that more girls are being educated in religious schools. Click here to read more (external link).
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Ayaz Gul
VOA News
December 21, 2023
ISLAMABAD — The United States and human rights defenders Thursday renewed a call for Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban to allow female students to return to universities and ensure that women have access to education at all levels.
This week marks one year since the exclusively male Taliban government abruptly suspended women’s attendance in public and private higher education institutions, making impoverished Afghanistan the only country in the world to officially ban girls from education from grade seven onward.
Thomas West, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, called the yearlong university education ban “indefensible.”
He wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the crisis-hit South Asian nation “needs a generation of future female doctors, engineers, business leaders, educators to grow & prosper & stand on its own feet.”
“For the sake of Afghanistan’s future and our own interests in a stable region, we must keep women’s access to education at all levels at the very center of our priorities,” West added.
The Taliban returned to power in August 2021 and imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law, placing sweeping restrictions on Afghan women’s access to education and work.
The Islamist rulers have dismissed international criticism of their policies, saying they are aligned with local culture and Islamic law.
Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women, girls, and human rights, questioned the Taliban’s claims Thursday and blasted de facto rulers for stripping half the country’s population of their basic rights.
“We must all stand firmly with the Afghan people, particularly women & girls, as they call on us to counter these policies and remember that they are not borne of Afghan culture, but of Taliban ideology,” Amiri wrote on X.
Taliban Higher Education Minister Nada Mohammad Nadim told a graduation ceremony for hundreds of male students at the main university in the Afghan capital, Kabul, that his government is committed to developing and progressing education in the country.
Nadim did not elaborate or discuss matters related to female higher education, which his ministry suspended last year.
“Foreigners offer suggestions for the development of Afghanistan; in reality, they do not want the country’s development,” the Taliban minister said in an apparent response to international criticism.
Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, a charitable organization, blamed what it called “gender apartheid policies” of the Taliban for directly contributing to worsening humanitarian conditions in the country, reeling from years of war and natural disasters.
The United Nations says nearly two-thirds of Afghans need food and other aid.
“Excluding half the population from accessing higher education is a grave abuse of human rights, but will also debilitate Afghanistan’s economic future by cutting off the supply of educated professionals the country needs not just to develop and advance, but just to function,” said Lauryn Oates, executive director of the organization.
“This, and other discriminatory policies, are taking the country backward and causing irreparable harm,” she added in the statement released in connection with the ban on female university education. It also invited Canadian and other foreign higher education institutions to open their doors to Afghan women.
Roza Otunbayeva, U.N. special envoy in the country, told a Security Council meeting Wednesday that her mission is seeking to verify reports that the Taliban are allowing girls of all ages to study at traditionally boys-only Islamic religious schools, known as madrassas.
The envoy said the United Nations is receiving “more and more anecdotal evidence” that girls can study at madrassas. “It is not entirely clear, however, what constitutes a madrassa, if there is a standardized curriculum that allows modern education subjects, and how many girls are able to study in madrassas,” Otunbayeva said.
She said Taliban education authorities “continue to tell us that they are working on creating conditions to allow girls to return to school. But time is passing while a generation of girls is falling behind.”
“The quality of education in Afghanistan is a growing concern. The international community has rightly focused on the need to reverse the ban on girls’ education, but the deteriorating quality of education and access to it is affecting boys as well,” Otunbayeva said.
She said the lack of progress in resolving human rights issues is a key factor behind the current impasse between the Taliban and other countries.
No nation has formally recognized the Taliban government, citing its harsh treatment of women and other human rights concerns. The U.N. has also turned down Taliban demands to allow their nominee to represent Afghanistan at the world body.
“Accepting and working to uphold the international norms and standards, as set out in the U.N. treaties that Afghanistan has ratified, will continue to be a nonnegotiable condition for a seat at the United Nations,” Otunbayeva told the Wednesday meeting.
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