Whether spinning a dozen soccer balls at once or balancing one on a pole while riding a motorcycle, Jamshid Naimi believes he’s bound for stardom. For now, he’s an Afghan refugee who shows off his freestyle skills on the streets of Iran. But one day he hopes to become famous.
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8am: A Bagram district resident recounted, “The Taliban informed homeowners in the district that we will demolish the walls of your gardens because attacks on us originate from this area. Furthermore, the Taliban instructed residents that anyone visiting their house as a guest should provide us with their name, father’s name, location, and a brief profile.” Click here to read more (external link).
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The Guardian (UK): The Taliban is causing “irreversible damage” to Afghanistan’s education system through the reintroduction of corporal punishment, curriculum changes and the use of unqualified teachers to replace women, most of whom have been barred from schools, Human Rights Watch has warned. Click here to read more (external link).
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Amnesty: The International Criminal Court (ICC) must prioritize and accelerate the delivery of justice for victims of crimes committed by the Taliban, as well as by other actors in Afghanistan before the 2021 takeover, said Amnesty International today, during the ICC’s annual Assembly of States Parties conference, which this year is held in New York from 4-14 December. Click here to read more (external link).
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
December 6, 2023
ISLAMABAD — A Pakistani diplomat said Wednesday that nearly 450,000 Afghan nationals returned to their home country since his government announced two months ago that it would deport all undocumented foreigners.
Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s special envoy to Afghanistan, shared the latest data while addressing a seminar in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. He spoke on a day the United Nations renewed its warning that Afghans returning from Pakistan “face a precarious, uncertain future” in their crisis-hit and impoverished nation.
The Pakistani government says its crackdown is primarily targeting an estimated 1.7 million Afghans who have overstayed their visas or do not possess any document to justify their stay in the country.
“Those who have been asked to leave are the illegal immigrants here. They don’t enjoy the refugee status,” Durrani stressed. “So, almost 450,000 [Afghans] have left. They knew that they were illegal stayers here in Pakistan.”
Those subjects of the deportation drive include close to 700,000 people who took refuge in Pakistan after the withdrawal of the United States and NATO troops from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Durrani clarified again, however, that nearly 2.3 million documented Afghan nationals, including 1.4 legal refugees, hosted by his country are not being asked to leave.
The envoy rejected international criticism of the “lawful” expulsions, saying countries around the world routinely deport foreigners who breach their immigration laws. “It [deportation] becomes legal there in Europe or elsewhere but doesn’t become legal here in Pakistan,” he said. “I think we need to remove this confusion.”
Washington is pressing Islamabad to prevent the deportation of approximately 25,000 “vulnerable” individuals who fled the Taliban’s August 2021 takeover in Afghanistan and could be eligible for relocation to or resettlement in the United States.
Julieta Valls Noyes, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, discussed the resettlement of the Afghan refugees with Pakistani officials during her visit to Islamabad this week, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement Wednesday.
It stated that Noyes “discussed how both countries can work together to accelerate the processing of Afghan nationals eligible for relocation or resettlement in the United States, expressed the U.S. desire to continue working with the government of Pakistan as we process individuals in U.S. resettlement pathways, and encouraged upholding international humanitarian principles, including non-refoulment, and protecting vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers.”
Noyes also met with U.N. officials in Islamabad and “heard directly from Afghan refugees on the concerns most important to them,” said the embassy statement.
A Pakistani official privy to the Noyes’ discussions with counterparts in Islamabad told VOA on Tuesday the United States did not oppose Islamabad’s deportation of illegal Afghan nationals but requested the process be slowed down during winter.
Meanwhile, the U.N. World Food Program said Wednesday that returnees are unsure how they will survive a devastating winter in Afghanistan, where more than 6 million people are already internally displaced nationwide.
“These families arrive at the worst of times and face a bleak future in a country where one-third of people do not know where their next meal will come from,” said Hsiao-Wei Lee, the WFP country director. “Leaving behind their homes and livelihoods, they return to start over in a country that gives them few economic opportunities and where many struggle to survive.”
The WFP said it urgently needs $26.3 million to support 1 million returnees from Pakistan arriving in Afghanistan and help them through the winter and into the first months of next year.
In his Wednesday speech, Durrani cited growing terrorist attacks in the country, among other factors, for unleashing the crackdown on undocumented Afghan and other foreign nationals. He said fugitive militants linked to the anti-state Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, are plotting the bloodshed from their sanctuaries on Afghan soil.
“The TTP’s enhanced attacks on Pakistan while using Afghan soil have been a serious source of concern for Pakistan,” the envoy reiterated. He reported a 65% increase in TTP attacks in the country’s border areas this year, saying suicide bombings shot up 500% during the same period.
“Another worrying aspect of these attacks has been the involvement of Afghans. Out of 24 attacks by the TTP, 14 were Afghan nationals,” Durrani said.
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Ayaz Gul
VOA News
December 5, 2023
ISLAMABAD — Pakistani officials said Tuesday that the United States did not object to Islamabad’s deportation of Afghan nationals who are illegally residing in the country but requested the process be slowed down during winter.
The crackdown on undocumented foreigners, including 1.7 million Afghans, came under discussion at a meeting with a visiting U.S. delegation led by Julieta Valls Noyes, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
A Pakistani official privy to the talks said that the U.S. side sought to prevent the deportation of around 25,000 “vulnerable” individuals who fled the Taliban’s August 2021 takeover in neighboring Afghanistan and could be eligible for relocation to or resettlement in the United States.
“The government of Pakistan doesn’t want to deport any vulnerable Afghan, irrespective of whether someone appears on the U.S. prospective resettlement list or any other country,” the official told VOA on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share details of the talks publicly.
“Pakistan is concerned over the lengthy resettlement process the U.S. has adopted,” he said. “One thing is clear: The U.S. didn’t oppose Pakistan’s deportation policy. It, however, pleaded for going slow during the harsh winters,” the Pakistani official told VOA.
VOA reached out to the State Department to seek a response to Pakistani assertions that Washington is not opposed to the deportations of Afghans but did not get a response immediately.
Neither Pakistani nor U.S. officials formally released details of the meeting Noyes held with Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s special representative on Afghanistan.
“Good to visit Pakistani Foreign Ministry and see Special Representative for Afghanistan @AsifDurrani20 again today for discussion on Afghan refugees, protection, and resettlement,” Noyes said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Durrani also shared a few details about his talks with the U.S. delegation on his X social media platform. “We discussed issues concerning Afghan refugees and their resettlement,” he said.
A pre-visit U.S. State Department statement said that during her four-day visit, Noyes would meet with government officials and nongovernmental and international organization partners to “discuss shared efforts to protect vulnerable individuals and accelerate safe, efficient relocation and resettlement of Afghan refugees in the U.S. immigration pipelines.”
Official data shows that Pakistan’s deportation drive has forced more than 400,000 people to return to Afghanistan since mid-September.
The United Nations and global human rights groups have criticized the crackdown and urged Islamabad to urgently halt it, noting that Afghanistan suffers from a dire humanitarian crisis stemming from years of war and natural disasters.
Pakistani authorities defend the deportation drive, linking a recent surge in deadly, nationwide terrorist attacks to the undocumented Afghan population.
In a separate statement on X, Noyes said she held an “important conversation” with representatives of the U.N. refugee agency in Islamabad and discussed “our shared commitment to support vulnerable Afghans in Pakistan.”
American and NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021 when the then-insurgent Taliban seized power from a Washington-backed government in Kabul. They also evacuated tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with the international military mission during its two-decades-long presence in the country, fearing they would face Taliban reprisals.
Pakistan’s otherwise close relations with the Taliban government have come under severe strain over the deportation drive.
De facto Afghan authorities have denounced the policy as unjust and inhumane, saying it has ended the goodwill the neighboring country earned for hosting millions of refugees from conflict-torn Afghanistan over the past four decades.
The Pakistani government says the country still hosts more than 2.2 million documented Afghans, including 1.4 million legal refugees. They are not the subjects of the ongoing crackdown.
Ismail Khan
8am: It could be inferred from Ismail Khan’s statements that he seems determined in the fight against the Taliban. He emphasized the formation of a real correlation between the opposing forces of the Taliban, calling the formation of a non-Taliban government an important need of Afghanistan. He even stated that Salahuddin Rabbani and Atta Mohammad Noor were not the leaders of the Jamiat-e-Islami Party since, according to him, in today’s times, there should be unity to fight against the Taliban, not that it was a prisoner of internal conflicts. Ismail Khan noted that if the Taliban do not agree to the creation of an inclusive government, the resistance will overcome the tyranny. This jihadist leader called it almost unlikely for the world to officially recognize the Taliban, citing that the countries that supported the Taliban until yesterday are now ashamed of the group’s performance. This Jamiat-e-Islami member underlined that not only Iran, but the world is weary of the Taliban, meaning that serious steps may be taken against this group. Click here to read more (external link).
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Malala Yousafzai
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
December 5, 2023
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai decried Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers in a speech on December 5 and called on the international community to make gender apartheid a crime against humanity.
In a speech marking the 10th anniversary of the death of Nelson Mandela, Yousafzai told the audience in Johannesburg, South Africa, that since returning to power in August 2021, Taliban militants have made “girlhood illegal,” causing many to despair over a lack of freedoms.
“Just two years ago, women in Afghanistan were working, serving in leadership positions, running ministries, traveling freely. Girls of all ages were playing soccer and cricket and learning in schools. Though all was not perfect, there was progress,” she said of the almost two decades between Taliban rule, when international forces provided security to allow governments to rule.
But, she added, that since the U.S.-led troops pulled out in August 2021, the Taliban rulers who seized power “quickly began the systematic oppression of girls and women” by enacting more than 80 decrees and edicts restricting women’s rights — including barring girls from pursuing a high-school education — in the name of their “false visions.”
“In effect, the Taliban have made girlhood illegal, and it is taking a toll,” Yousafzai said.
Eleven years ago, Yousafzai, then 15, was shot in the head on her school bus by the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) extremist group, which has pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban, though the two groups have separate operation and command structures.
The attack on Yousafzai, who had become a target for her campaign for girls’ education, sent shock waves across the predominately Muslim country and provoked international outrage.
At 17, she became the youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize when she won the award in 2014 along with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi.
In her speech honoring Mandela’s legacy, Yousafzai said that while the Taliban’s restrictions of the lives of girls and women made global headlines at first, “the world has turned its back” since and it is “imperative to call the regime in Afghanistan what it really is: a gender apartheid.”
She said world leaders have an opportunity to make a stand on the issue by including gender apartheid in a new UN crimes against humanity treaty that is currently being debated at the United Nations.
“I call on every government in every country to make gender apartheid a crime against humanity,” she said.