Who Donated Wheat to Afghanistan — Ukraine or US?

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Akmal Dawi
VOA News
October 18, 2022

As the cold season starts in landlocked Afghanistan, concerns are mounting about widespread hunger, particularly in the rugged parts of the country where the first snowfall blocks the roads.

This year there is hope that 30,000 metric tons of wheat coming from another war-torn country, Ukraine, will mitigate the hunger for some Afghans. The U.N. says hunger is nearly universal in Afghanistan with 97% of its population now living below the poverty line.

“Despite its own suffering in the face of Russia’s brutal invasion, Ukraine has donated 30,000 metric tons of grain through the WFP to alleviate Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis,” U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, tweeted last month.

The World Food Program says the wheat is being milled into flour in Turkey and will be then shipped to Pakistan from where it will be delivered to Afghanistan by trucks.

A spokesperson for WFP told VOA the aid shipment is funded by the U.S. “It is not a donation from Ukraine,” said the spokesperson, Annabel Symington.

VOA asked the State Department whether the U.S. offered any financial incentive to Ukraine for the wheat. The answer: No.

“The U.S. did not play a role in Ukraine’s decision to donate this 30,000 metric tons of wheat to Afghanistan and commends Ukraine for its generosity despite the trying circumstances imposed upon it by Russia’s unjust invasion,” the State Department spokesperson said.

Ukraine sells

In August, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced it was giving $68 million to the WFP to buy 150,000 metric tons of wheat from Ukraine to feed needy countries in Africa and Asia.

“Before Russia’s invasion, Ukraine was one of WFP’s top suppliers of grain and the fourth largest commercial exporter of wheat. Opening the Ukrainian market is a vital step forward in our emergency response,” USAID said in the statement.

Under a deal brokered by Turkey, Ukraine has exported more than 6.4 million metric tons of wheat and other food items in the past two months, according to the U.N.

The Ukrainian shipments have gone to different countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, where food prices have gone up markedly since Russia embarked on its war against Ukraine in February.

The U.S. has also provided aid to Ukrainian farmers to improve their agricultural products, such as spraying pesticides by drones.

“USAID is supporting the farmers of Ukraine in their efforts to continue feeding Ukrainians and feeding the world,” said Samantha Power, the USAID administrator, while visiting a farm in Ukraine on October 6.

In addition to humanitarian aid, the U.S. has given more than $17.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, according to figures from the State Department.

Why give credit to Ukraine?

While Ukraine has sold the wheat to WFP, why has the U.S. been praising Ukrainian “generosity” and “donation” rather than claiming credit for its own financial sponsorship of the wheat aid to Afghanistan?

“Ukraine is the source of this food,” James S. Gilmore, a former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told VOA. “The goal here is to allow Ukraine to engage in international commerce. And, once that’s permitted, over top of this war, then I do think that the American people who are funding it and financing it ought to be given credit for that.”

Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, said the U.S. might have preferred to give credit to Ukraine in order to blunt Russia’s onslaught.

“At the moment, Russia is on the diplomatic offensive in among many developing nations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, scoring points by saying that the U.S. has been imposing various conditionalities on aid and its double standards, etc. And the U.S. is very keen that Ukraine, with which it is allied, is seen in a more positive light among those developing countries,” de Waal told VOA.

Taliban Turns Blind Eye To Opium Production, Despite Official Ban

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By Mursaleen Arsala and Abubakar Siddique
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
October 18, 2022

In the spring, the Taliban announced a ban on the cultivation, trafficking, and use of illicit narcotics in Afghanistan, the world’s biggest producer of opium.

But as the fall planting season for opium crops begins, the militant group appears to be turning a blind eye to the lucrative drugs trade.

Farmers in the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, and Uruzgan — where most of the country’s opium is produced — say they are growing their crops freely.

Experts say the cash-strapped Taliban government is unwilling to enforce its ban because the illicit opium trade 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.

Many Afghans are already struggling to make ends meet. The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 triggered an economic collapse and worsened a major humanitarian crisis. Western donors abruptly cut off assistance, and the new government was hit by international sanctions.

The militant group is also keen to avoid creating widespread resentment in southern Afghanistan, a region that provided fighters for its 20-year insurgency, experts say.

“An effective ban on drugs production in the midst of a failing economy is a recipe for disaster,” says David Mansfield, an independent researcher who tracks Afghanistan’s illicit drug industry.

‘I Will Get Nothing’

Some Afghan farmers say they are willing to stop cultivating opium if the authorities can provide them with alternative livelihoods and crops. But they say that the Taliban has offered few economic incentives to farmers, who can earn much more by growing opium compared to other crops, such as wheat.

“I support the ban on poppy cultivation if we get some aid to enable us to buy food and medicines for our families,” Abdul Qayyum, a farmer in Kandahar’s Maiwand district, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

The United Nations has distributed tools, seeds, and fertilizer in some parts of southern Afghanistan in a bid to deter farmers from planting opium crops. But the farmers say finding jobs or markets for alternative agricultural products in a contracting economy is a complex challenge.

“If I don’t plant poppies, I will get nothing,” Naqibullah, a farmer in Uruzgan, told Radio Azadi. “A wheat crop cannot even pay for the fertilizers and tractors it needs.”

After the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, Washington spent some $8 billion in a bid to eradicate the opium trade in Afghanistan. The United States destroyed poppy fields, offered alternative crops to farmers, conducted air strikes, and raided suspected labs. But the strategy largely failed.

For years, the Taliban has been taxing poppy farmers and is involved in the trafficking of narcotics to neighboring countries, from where they end up in Europe and North America, experts say.

The UN 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.

The Taliban has pledged to enforce its ban. Haseebullah Ahmadzai, the head of the narcotics department in the Taliban’s Interior Ministry, says the group has laid the groundwork for implementing the ban.

“We have held meetings with community elders, farmers, and citizens across our country to brief them on our ban on narcotics,” he told Radio Azadi.

In 2000, during its first stint in power, the Taliban implemented a similar ban. The move pushed rural farmers to seek livelihoods in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. But this time, Islamabad and Tehran have closed their borders to Afghans.

“Many farmers will be left destitute if a ban were to be imposed,” says Mansfield.

Copyright (c) 2022. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Afghan Women Protest Expulsion of Female University Students, Curbs on Education

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Ayaz Gul
VOA News
October 18, 2022

ISLAMABAD — A large group of women activists in Afghanistan’s capital Tuesday staged a protest rally against the expulsion of dozens of female students from a Kabul University hostel by Taliban authorities.

The demonstrators, including students, gathered outside the university campus, chanting, “Education is our red line” and “silence is treason.”

Rally participants accused the Islamist Taliban-led ministry of higher education of expelling at least 40 female students over the past few days from the school, one of the country’s oldest and most revered institutions.

A ministry statement confirmed on Sunday that several women had been removed from the dormitory for violating university regulations, but it shared no further details.

“The students were punished for attending a protest rally against the attack on the Kaaj education center,” Lilia Baseem, who attended Tuesday’s rally, told VOA.

She referred to the September 30 suicide bombing of the private school in a western Kabul neighborhood that killed 53 people, including 46 girls and women. Another 110 people, mostly women, were wounded.

The carnage outraged female activists and students who had taken to the streets in several major cities, including Kabul, shortly after the attack to condemn it and seek justice for the victims.

The Taliban said an investigation was under way, but the Islamist rulers have not yet shared its outcome and no group has claimed responsibility.

The Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in August 2021 and subsequently formed a men-only interim administration to govern the war-torn country. The regime, however, has yet to be formally given legitimacy by any country mainly over human rights concerns and a lack of political inclusiveness.

The hardline group has imposed a series of restrictions on women since coming to power, limiting their access to work and education. Most public sector female employees have been instructed to stay at home and women journalists must appear on TV with a face covering.

While public and private universities across the country are open to women in a strictly gender-segregated system of education, the Taliban, in violation of their public pledges, have barred teenage girls in grades seven through 12 from attending school.

The group reneged on repeated pledges that it would lift the ban in March. The backtracking prompted the U.N. Security Council weeks later to reinstate foreign travel restrictions on two Taliban education ministers. Dozens of members of the government have long been subjected to targeted U.N. travel and asset freeze curbs.

Tuesday’s demonstration comes a day after reclusive Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada appointed Nada Mohammad Nadeem as the new acting minister of higher education. The official announcement gave no reason. Nadeem has replaced Abdul Baqi Haqqani, who was among the ministers barred by the United Nations from traveling abroad.

The international community has persistently pushed the Taliban rulers to reverse policies and practices that are restricting the human rights of Afghans, particularly those of women and girls.

The radical group has defended its polices, saying they are in line with Afghan culture and Islamic injunctions.

Last week, the United States announced a new visa restriction policy as punishment for current or former Taliban leaders and others “believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, repressing” Afghan women and girls through restrictive policies and violence. Washington called on its allies to follow suit.

The Taliban rejected the U.S. move as an obstacle in the development of bilateral ties.

Last week, Akhundzada reiterated in an audio message apparently in response to new U.S. sanctions that his government “is ready to engage with the world within the within the framework of Sharia and the interests of our people.” Sharia is Islamic law.

He added that regardless of foreign pressure, Afghan scholars are reviewing all laws introduced over the past 20 years by former U.S.-backed rulers in Kabul to bring them in line with Sharia.

Taliban officials said their supreme leader was speaking to a gathering in the southern city, Kandahar, regarded as the group’s ideological headquarters.

The Taliban government has also blocked young girls from taking university entrance exams this year for a wide range of subjects, including civil engineering, journalism, veterinary studies, agriculture and geology, deeming them difficult for women to handle.

The education system in Afghanistan has worsened since the Taliban returned to power more than a year ago, jeopardizing children’s futures, particularly girls, according to the latest report by Save the Children. “The majority of secondary school girls — about 850,000 out of 1.1 million — are not attending classes,” the organization said.

Five Gunmen, One Taliban Fighter Killed in Gunfighting in Kunduz Province

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8am: The gunfighting took place on Tuesday morning (October 18th) in the alley of Deputy Jumaaldin of the second district of Kunduz city and continued for four hours. According to the sources, a group of ISKP fighters had moved into a house in this neighborhood, and after revealing their location, they started fighting the Taliban. Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban Shoot Dead 27 Captives in Panjshir

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8am: A research institution based in the United Kingdom, after examining the photos and videos of the Taliban massacre in Panjshir, says that the group has shot dead 27 prisoners in this province. The findings of the research project “Afghan Witnesses – Shahid Afghan”, whose report was published on Tuesday, October 18, indicate that the Taliban captured 27 men in Panjshir province last month and then shot them dead. Click here to read more (external link).

Related

What’s the Endgame for Afghanistan and Pakistan?

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By Sadiq Amini via The  Diplomat: Nothing illustrates the divisions inside the Taliban leadership so much as the cruel ban on girls’ education, which is widely believed by nationalist circles within the Taliban to be the work of the ISI and extremist elements of the Taliban who are closely aligned with Rawalpindi, as they are trying to undermine efforts that could pave the way for the Taliban’s recognition by the international community. As a result, there is an ongoing competition for power, which is played out in the form of violent armed clashes, assassinations, and suicide attacks between the two opposing Taliban camps: the extremists backed by the Pakistani establishment and the nationalists. Click here to read more (external link).

Germany New Admission Programme to Admit 1,000 Afghan Refugees Per Month

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Khaama: The new programme will admit 1,000 Afghans per month and their family members, targeting particularly exposed Afghans who are active in women’s and human rights advocacy or those at risk for working in the fields of justice, politics, media, education, culture, sport or science. Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban Receives Fifth Aid Package Worth $40 Million in Cash

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8am: In a newsletter, the Central Bank of Afghanistan under Taliban control in a series of Tweets said on Tuesday, October 18 that the group received the fifth aid package of 40 million dollars from the international community in Kabul. The international community has been injecting aid packages while there is no reliable monitoring mechanism on the ways these funds are being spent. Meanwhile, there are no accurate figures for the cash aid that has been given to Afghanistan after the Taliban swept into power in late August. Click here to read more (external link).

US will not fund non-state actors in Afghanistan: Taliban sources

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Al Jazeera: The United States has assured Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers that Washington will not fund any armed groups or non-state actors in the country, Taliban sources have told Al Jazeera. The assurances were welcomed by the Taliban as Tajik armed groups, which have been backed by the West in the past, continue to challenge the group’s leadership – even as it has managed to contain the Tajik-dominated National Resistance Front and other groups aligned with the former Western-backed government since it returned to power in August last year. Click here to read more (external link).