The Guardian (UK): Taliban fighters have stopped the sale of contraceptives in two of Afghanistan’s main cities, claiming their use by women is a western conspiracy to control the Muslim population. The Guardian has learned that the Taliban has been going door to door, threatening midwives and ordering pharmacies to clear their shelves of all birth control medicines and devices. “They came to my store twice with guns and threatened me not to keep contraceptive pills for sale. They are regularly checking every pharmacy in Kabul and we have stopped selling the products,” said one store owner in the city. Click here to read more (external link).
Avalanches kill 12 and destroy 50 dwellings in Afghanistan
Khaama: According to local officials, several avalanches have destroyed 50 homes and claimed the lives of at least 12 people in Badakhshan, a province in the northeastern part of Afghanistan. The incident occurred due to heavy snowfall in the Raghistan and Deraim districts of Badakhshan, a mountainous province bordering Tajikistan and Pakistan, the official added. Earlier last week, an avalanche hit a vehicle in Badakhshan province, resulting in two fatalities and six injuries. Click here to read more (external link).
Afghanistan as a Site of U.S.-China Competition
Lawfare: Despite the CCP’s concerted efforts to approach its relationship with the Taliban pragmatically, with economic incentives and a concrete security agenda, the reality of the current situation in Afghanistan is highly volatile. While blaming the U.S. and Western countries for the ongoing financial and humanitarian disaster in the country, the Taliban appear more focused on oppressing women’s and girls’ rights than on managing a modern economy and state. In 2021, Afghanistan ranked first of all countries worldwide on the Global Terrorism Index. This trend continued in 2022 under Taliban rule, with a string of deadly and devastating attacks targeting civilians, especially minorities. Click here to read more (external link).
Tolo News in Dari – February 17, 2023
Former MP Mursal Nabizada’s Killer Was Arrested: Kabul Police
Khaama: Kabul police on Friday announced that the killer of Mursal Nabizada, former member of the Parliament of Afghanistan was arrested. Khalid Zadran, the spokesperson of the Kabul police command said on Twitter that the murderer of Mural Nabizada and one of her security guards was arrested, and confessed to the crime. Mursal Nabizada was killed by unknown gunmen in her home in the Arzaan Qemat area in provincial district 12 of Kabul on January 14. Musral Nabizada was one of the few political figures who remained in Afghanistan and lived in Kabul after the Taliban seized power in August 2021. Click here to read more (external link).
AFPL: Sadaqat FC 16-3 Jawanan Khurasan; FC Asre Jadeed 4-4 Peroozi Panjshir
Ariana: Sadaqat FC defeated Jawanan Khurasan in a high-scoring match of this year’s Afghanistan Futsal Premier League (AFPL) in Kabul on Friday. Sadaqat FC scored 16 goals in the game, while their opponents Jawanan Khurasan scored three. The second match of the day between FC Asre Jadeed and Perrozi Panjshir ended in 4-4 in draw. Both the teams received equal points. Click here to read more (external link).
Other Sports News
Washington ‘Trying to Wrap Its Head Around’ Pakistan’s Security Situation, US Official Says
Sarah Zaman
VOA News
February 16, 2023
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — A top State Department official said the United States was prepared to work with Pakistan as the country assessed the renewed threat of terrorism. However, the official would not say whether Washington would support any Pakistani action against terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan.
Counselor Derek Chollet, one of the highest-ranking officials at the State Department, was in Islamabad on Thursday. During the visit, which was originally expected to last two days, Chollet met Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, and the country’s foreign secretary.
Chollet’s second visit in five months came as Pakistan faces near daily deadly terror attacks. A massive blast at a mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar last month killed more than 100 people, mostly police personnel.
Calling that a “significant” attack, Chollet said he was not ready to make a judgment about Pakistan’s security situation.
Instead, he said Washington was “trying to wrap its head around” how the threat had been evolving in Pakistan and was “very much following their [Pakistan’s] lead in terms of both the investigation and where that leads and ensuring that those who conducted these attacks are held accountable.”
Although an arm of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an ideological offshoot of the Afghan Taliban, took responsibility for the Peshawar attack, TTP’s central spokesperson denied involvement. Still, the banned militant group has been behind most of the recent terrorist activity in the country.
Islamabad accuses the Afghan Taliban of allowing the TTP to use its territory to plan attacks on Pakistan, a charge the Afghan regime rejects. TTP leadership also denies working from Afghanistan, instead claiming the group is attacking Pakistan from within.
Without naming Afghanistan, Pakistan’s National Security Council said early this year, “No country will be allowed to provide sanctuaries and facilitation to terrorists, and Pakistan reserves all rights in that respect to safeguard her people.”
Right of defense
Following the Pakistani NSC statement, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that “Pakistan has a right to defend itself” against terrorism.
Responding to VOA, Chollet would not say what kind of Pakistani counterterrorism action, including cross-border military strikes, Washington would support.
“I’m not going to get into hypotheticals about what we would support or not. … I don’t want to say … publicly … how that [Price’s statement] would apply in hypothetical situations,” Chollet said.
Instead, he said he was talking to his Pakistani counterparts about their needs and the help Washington could provide.
Last year, Pakistan conducted military strikes against alleged terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan, while the U.S. killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike in Kabul.
Chollet’s visit came as Pakistan and the U.S. engaged in Washington in a second round of midlevel defense talks. The first round was held in Pakistan in January 2021.
In Thursday’s weekly news briefing, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, spokesperson for Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said, “Pakistan is encouraged by the positive momentum in our relations with the United States and the engagement that is taking place both here and in Washington.”
U.S. military assistance to Pakistan, however, has been stalled since 2017, and Chollet made no announcement about a possible resumption.
As Pakistan negotiates with the International Monetary Fund to avoid defaulting on external loans and its foreign reserves plummet to dangerously low levels with inflation skyrocketing, the State Department counselor said the situation was “worrisome” for Washington.
Pakistan owes the largest chunk of its foreign loans to China, its closest ally. Chollet said that while debt owed to China was a concern around the world, the U.S. was not asking Pakistan to choose between Beijing and Washington.
“[We] talk to them about some of the perils we see in the closer relations with the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and the opportunities we think that come from closer relations with us and other like-minded countries. And frankly, they see that,” he said.
Despite Pakistan’s economic crisis, political instability and worsening security situation, Chollet noted ties with the country mattered.
“Not every ally, partner, is equal, but all of our relationships matter,” he said.
Chollet said Washington had learned “the hard way” in the past few years that there was “no problem out there that we can solve alone.”
Afghan Brothers Get Life Terms For Killing Sister In Germany
AFP: A German court on February 16 sentenced two Afghan brothers to life in prison for murdering their sister because they disapproved of her lifestyle. The victim, a 34-year-old mother of two identified as Maryam H., was found buried several weeks after going missing from her home in Berlin in July 2021. Surveillance video showed her brothers, Yousuf and Mahdi H., boarding a train dragging a heavy suitcase believed to have contained her body. The judge said the brothers killed the woman “because she was increasingly pulling away from [their] controlling influence.” Click here to read more (external link).
Impoverished Afghans Turn To Booming Crystal-Meth Industry To Eke Out A Living
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
Abubakar Siddique
February 16, 2023
A devastating humanitarian and economic crisis has forced millions of Afghans to find new sources of income.
A growing number of them have turned to the booming methamphetamine industry to eke out a living and stave off starvation.
Among them is Ahmad Wali, who lives in the remote province of Ghor in central Afghanistan. Wali is believed to be among the thousands of people who earn money by collecting ephedra, a wild herb that is used to make crystal meth.
“For now, it is our only source of income,” he told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “We collect it from the mountains and sell it in the city.”
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 worsened a major humanitarian crisis and triggered an economic collapse. Western donors abruptly cut off assistance to the heavily aid-dependent country and imposed sanctions on the new, unrecognized government.
An estimated 1 million Afghans have lost their jobs since the militant group seized power, joining the hundreds of thousands who were already unemployed.
‘Safety Net’
Harvesters sell ephedra, a common herb that is locally known as “oman,” in local markets for around $5 per kilogram. The buyers, most of them middlemen, then sell it on for a profit.
“I profit by buying it from the harvesters and selling it on to major [producers],” Noor Ahmad, a distributor from Ghor, told Radio Azadi.
The ephedra is then processed in the hundreds of meth labs that are believed to exist in Afghanistan to make meth. The drug, which has the appearance of white crystals, is then smuggled to neighboring countries, from where it eventually reaches Europe and North America.
The crystal-meth industry took off around 2017, when drug traffickers discovered that the native ephedra herb could be used to make ephedrine, the key ingredient in crystal meth.
For decades, Afghanistan has been the world’s biggest producer of opium. But experts say the country has also become a significant supplier of crystal meth.
The meth industry is booming despite the Taliban issuing a ban in December 2021 on the cultivation, production, and trafficking of all illicit narcotics.
Experts say the militant group has turned a blind eye to the lucrative drug trade. The cash-strapped Taliban government, they say, is unwilling to enforce its ban because illicit narcotics remains a major source of revenue.
The militants are also unable to provide alternative livelihoods for the tens of thousands of farmers who are dependent on the drug trade for survival, experts say.
“The narcotics industry and other informal aspects of the economy appear to be serving as a safety net for the vast numbers of Afghans thrust into poverty since the Taliban takeover,” Graeme Smith, an author on Afghanistan and a senior consultant for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, told RFE/RL.
Wahid Hamas, the spokesman for the Taliban’s governor of Ghor Province, said the authorities were serious about rooting out drugs in Afghanistan, which is home to an estimated 3.5 million addicts, a number that accounts for around 10 percent of the population.
Hamas said the group had seized tons of narcotics, arrested dozens of alleged traffickers, and destroyed drug labs since the ban was issued.
“That would mean depriving hungry people of livelihoods at the same time as foreign donors give less and less assistance,” Smith pointed out. “This double whammy could immiserate even more Afghans.”
International donors provided around $3 billion in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan in 2022, a figure that Smith says is unlikely to be matched this year.
‘Staggering’ Production
For years, the Taliban has taxed poppy farmers and been involved in the trafficking of narcotics to neighboring countries.
The United Nations estimated that the Afghan opium trade generated some $2.7 billion of income in 2021. A 2020 report commissioned by NATO said that the Taliban earned more than $400 million from the drug industry, although some experts believe such estimates are exaggerated.
Najib Ahmadi, a former senior Afghan counternarcotics official, says that during its insurgency the Taliban was against the production of meth and banned it in areas it controlled. The group, he says, feared that meth would undermine its income from taxing opium cultivation and heroin trafficking.
“[But] the production of meth has increased after the Taliban returned to power,” he said. “Meth is now being processed in all corners of the country.”
Ahmadi adds that most of the meth in Afghanistan was produced in the country’s western and northern provinces.
“The production of meth has been staggering since the Taliban captured power,” he said. “It now competes with opiates.”
Based on reporting by Radio Azadi reporters in Afghanistan and in the region whose names are being withheld for security reasons
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.
The Taliban are digging an enormous canal
The Economist: Taliban officials have started talking up a new canal under construction in the arid north of Afghanistan. The Islamist regime says some 5,500 people are working around the clock on the project, using over 3,300 bits of machinery. Once completed, the Qosh Tepa Canal will divert water from the Amu Darya river for irrigation. The river, once known as the Oxus, rises in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, flows into Uzbekistan and is one of the longest in Central Asia. The Taliban expects the project to turn 550,000 hectares of desert into much-needed farmland. Click here to read more (external link).