AFP: Nearly 1,700 journalists have been killed worldwide over the past two decades between 2003 and 2022, an average of more than 80 a year, according to an analysis published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Click here to read more (external link).
8am: Nomads claim that one of their members was injured 15 years ago in Bukhara village of Nawur district and he blames local people for his injuries. But residents said that the person was wounded in the war against former ANDSF forces. Sources added that locals are not able to pay this amount of money for a deed that has not been committed by them. Click here to read more (external link).
Rashid Khan
Ariana: Rashid Khan, Afghanistan’s Cricketing Wizard, has been appointed as AfghanAtalan’s Captain for the T20I format, replacing the senior all-rounder Mohammad Nabi, after he stepped down from the role after the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia. Mirwais Ashraf, the chairman of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, said Thursday that Rashid is a massive name in Afghanistan Cricket. “He has colossal experience of playing the format around the world which will help him take the team to a new level in the format”. Click here to read more (external link).
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
December 29, 2022
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan said Thursday that at least three of its soldiers were killed in clashes with “terrorists” near the volatile border with Afghanistan.
An army statement reported the “intense” shootout in Kurram border district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province had also left two militants dead. The statement said the slain men were “actively involved” in attacks on security forces but gave no further details.
Residents and local journalists said the pre-dawn gunfight erupted after militants from across the Afghan side of the border raided a Pakistani outpost and inflicted heavy casualties on the troops. The veracity of the claims could not be independently verified.
No group has taken responsibility.
The Pakistani border province has experienced almost daily militant attacks in recent months, with most of them aimed at security forces.
The outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, has taken credit for much of the violence.
The TTP, which the United States has declared a global terrorist organization, is known as a Pakistani offshoot and an ally of Afghanistan’s ruling Islamist Taliban.
Islamabad maintains the TTP leadership has long taken refuge in the conflict-torn neighboring country and has been directing cross-border attacks from there.
Pakistani officials say TTP leaders and commanders have been operating out of their Afghan sanctuaries with greater operational freedom since 2021, when the Taliban seized power in Kabul and all U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan.
“We are engaged with Afghan authorities on issues related to security and border management,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told a regular news briefing in the Pakistani capital Thursday.
“Afghanistan has given certain assurances, and we hope the promises made will be honored,” she said.
The Taliban administration maintains it is not allowing any group to threaten other countries, including Pakistan, from Afghan soil. Kabul brokered and hosted several rounds of talks between Pakistani and TTP negotiators.
The group’s Afghan-based fugitive chief, Noor Wali Mehsud, also took part in the discussions but the process fell apart in November when the TTP terminated a unilateral truce with the Pakistani government, accusing it of not honoring the terms of engagement.
The group has since intensified attacks in Pakistan. It also claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Islamabad that killed a police officer and wounded 10 people last week.
The attack prompted the U.S. embassy to warn its staff against visiting Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel over the holidays, saying, “Unknown individuals are plotting to attack Americans.”
TTP and separatist ethnic Baluch insurgents have also taken credit for a recent spate of attacks in southwestern Baluchistan province, which also shares a border with Afghanistan.
December 2022 has turned out to be the deadliest month in a decade for Pakistani security forces, leaving at least 40 personnel dead and dozens wounded, according to official statements and local media reports.
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
December 29, 2022
Afghan women have found a strong supporter as they protest against the Taliban banning women from universities — men.
Hundreds of male professors and students, as well as husbands and fathers, are publicly airing their opposition to the latest restriction imposed by the Taliban against their “sisters.”
While women are leading the charge and taking the brunt of the ensuing crackdown as they demonstrate for their rights, men have protested the Taliban’s December 20 decision to ban women from state and private universities with walkouts, resignations, and street demonstrations.
Such open support from men is unusual in Afghanistan’s deeply patriarchal and conservative society, and speaks volumes about public discontent as the Taliban gradually restores the most draconian aspects of its brutal rule in the 1990s.
The protests by both women and men began immediately after the Taliban announced the university ban, the latest restriction it has imposed against women since it seized power in August 2021. Just days later, the militant group banned Afghan women from working for NGOs operating in Afghanistan.
In Nangarhar, male students at a medical school in the eastern province walked out of their classes en masse on December 21 and said they would refuse to take exams until women’s access to their university was reinstated.
There were similar walkouts of male students at the Afghan Pamir Higher Education Institute in the capital, Kabul.
In southern Kandahar Province, around 600 male students at Mirwais Neka University walked out of their classes to protest the ban.
In the provincial capital, also called Kandahar, male students who walked out of their university classes were reportedly beaten by Taliban fighters, as evidenced by videos sent to RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.
“Teach everyone or no one,” a protest slogan born in Nangarhar, quickly spread to provinces around the country, including Herat, Logar, and Takhar.
Ahmad Ehsan Sangar, the president and founder of the Afghan Social Organization activist group, was a participant in street protests in eastern Logar Province this week that were violently dispersed.
“We raised our voices at night with many slogans and were attacked by the Taliban,” Sangar told Radio Azadi. “Our location was identified, and the Taliban searched for us. As a leader, I will stand by my fighting sisters. We want a free country, and we want a country where women and men have equal rights.”
Another male resident of Logar Province, who spoke to Radio Azadi on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, said he joined residents who were driven from the streets but then took to their rooftops to shout their support for the education of girls and women in Afghanistan.
“We hate illiteracy and misery. We want to be literate and our generation to be literate,” he said. “The Taliban came and fired at us, and finally we went up to our roofs and chanted.”
Prominent male personalities have also publicly supported women and their right to pursue a university education.
Among them are several cricket players, who have used the popularity of their sport in Afghanistan as a platform to express solidarity with female students.
And on live national television, Ismail Mashal, a university professor from Kabul, ripped up his academic degrees while appearing on the private TOLOnews channel.
“I don’t need these diplomas anymore because my country is no place for education,” Mashal declared. “If my sister and my mother cannot study, then I don’t accept this education.”
Dozens of other male academics have also reportedly resigned from Afghan universities, where women had previously been allowed to study by the Taliban, although while segregated from male teachers and students.
Women have continued to lead the way on the streets and in chants of “Allahu Akbar” and “education is our right” that have broken the nighttime silence in Kabul and other cities.
One woman in southeastern Ghazni Province, who spoke to Radio Azadi on condition of anonymity, said she joined the chants of “teach everyone or no one” in the hope that the message will be taken seriously by the Taliban and the world as a whole.
“We hope that this growing demonstration will continue to expand so that our voices can be heard,” she said.
Afghan women and girls have suffered significant losses of personal liberties since the Taliban returned to power. Despite the hard-line Islamist group’s pledge to respect women’s rights, girls were almost immediately barred from attending school past the sixth grade.
In the Taliban’s first year of power, women were ordered to wear the all-encompassing burqa, and in recent months women have been banned from entering public places such as parks, bathhouses, and gyms.
Receiving word that they would no longer be able to attend university left many female students in tears.
And those who took to the streets were shown no mercy by the authorities, with the Taliban violently breaking up even small demonstrations in cities around the country.
In the western city of Herat, water cannons were used to hammer home the point that no dissent by women would be tolerated.
University education as a whole was already suffering from a brain drain since the Taliban’s return to power. At Herat University alone, some 70 percent of the institution’s lecturers dissatisfied about teaching restrictions, the diminished quality of education, and the halving of their salaries are believed to have left, often for abroad.
The ban on women’s university education has only added to the international outcry about the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls.
But amid the controversy, the Taliban has doubled down.
Nida Mohammad Nadim, the Taliban’s minister of higher education who signed off on the ban on women’s education, this week said that the militants were not interested in the “progress and civilization” of the Afghan people and that nothing — not even a nuclear strike — would make them change course.
Related
8am: Two Taliban fighters have been killed by unidentified gunmen in two separate incidents in Kapisa. In the first incident, the driver of the chief of the Taliban’s appeals prosecutor’s office was killed and his wife was wounded after being shot by unknown gunmen. The incident took place on Tuesday in the village of Rig-e Rawan vicinity of the 2nd district of Kohistan. Click here to read more (external link).
VOA News
December 28, 2022
Nazrana Ghaffar Yousufzai
Roshan Noorzai
Twenty-one-year-old Zamzama Ghazal was at her sister’s graduation ceremony when she heard about the Taliban’s ban on women’s university education.
“It was a painful sight,” said Ghazal, a fourth-year medical student at Shifa University in Kabul. “Instead of celebration, there were tears and grieving. All girls were crying, hugging, and consoling each other.”
Ghazal wanted to be a physician as her home country is in “dire need of female doctors.”
“It was my childhood dream to become a doctor. We had many hurdles. There were financial problems. The culture was not very supportive. But I was able to finish school and get into medical school.”
But she “now feels helpless,” after the Taliban, the de facto rulers of the country, last week ordered public and private universities to suspend women’s access to universities until “further notice.”
“We have worked tirelessly to get an education. Now, we are deprived of our only hope in this country,” said Ghazal.
Taliban defend ban
The Taliban’s higher education minister defended the ban, saying that female university students “failed to comply” with gender-segregated classes and dress codes.
“We have instructed girls to wear hijab but they failed to comply. Instead, they wore dresses like they were going to wedding parties,” Neda Mohammad Nadeem told the Taliban-run state television.
“Girls were studying agriculture and engineering in defiance of Afghan honor and Islam,” he added.
The Taliban’s decision to suspend girls’ university education is the latest blow to the women’s rights gains of the past two decades in Afghanistan.
After taking power in August 2021, the Taliban banned girls from secondary education and barred women from long-distance travel without a male chaperone, working outside, and going to public parks.
The Taliban ordered national and international NGOs on Saturday to immediately suspend female employees from work “until further notice.”
Protests continue
Dozens of Afghan women’s rights activists and girl students Thursday staged a protest in some of the major cities in Afghanistan, demanding women’s access to education and employment.
Afghan women have protested the Taliban`s repressive rules regarding them since the group seized power in 2021.
There were also reports that male students boycotted exams after their female colleagues were not allowed to enter universities due to the ban on women’s university education. Dozens of teachers have resigned in response to the Taliban’s edict.
Gains erased
Hamid Obaidi, a former spokesperson for Afghanistan’s ministry of higher education, told VOA that before the Taliban’s takeover, about 450,000 female students were enrolled at 39 public and 128 private universities.
He said women accounted for 33% of the students, 14% of teaching staff and up to 20% of employees at the institutions of higher education.
“The ministry planned to increase the number of women to … 50% by 2025 in the higher education institutions,” Obaidi said. “Unfortunately, the Taliban returned, and once again the gates of schools and universities are shut on women.”
Shabnam Salihi, an Afghan women’s rights activist, said the Taliban’s ban will take its toll on women in Afghanistan.
“Stripping off women their fundamental right to education and learning will push them towards severe depression and mental health issues,” Salihi told VOA. “Women have been expressing their hopelessness and anger.”
International condemnation
Salihi also said the Taliban’s repression of women has “political motives.”
“The Taliban use Afghan women’s fundamental rights as a bargaining chip in its negotiation with the international community,” she said.
No country recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government although the group controls all parts of the country.
The international community has called on the Taliban to uphold their promises of respecting human rights, including girls’ education.
The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday condemned the Taliban’s new bans on women’s university education and work for humanitarian agencies.
The United States has also condemned new bans enforced by the Taliban, saying that it is looking into additional measures to further isolate the group for its “appallingly bad” decision to ban girls’ university education.
“My leadership in Washington is taking a look at a range of actions to signal how the Taliban are following the wrong path,” Karen Decker, head of the U.S. diplomatic mission to Afghanistan, told journalists in a video conversation from her office in Doha, Qatar.
Ghazal, the young medical student, urged the international community to put further pressure on the Taliban regarding women’s education.
“We can’t do anything but hope that the international community will use its leverage over the Taliban to reopen schools and universities,” she said.
This story originated in VOA’s Pashto service.
Related
Tolo News: The deputy minister of interior Noor Jalal Jalali said on Wednesday that 27 new districts have been formed at the people’s will and based on the order of the Islamic Emirate’s leader. Analysts said that the current government should think about solving the country’s key issues instead of creating new districts. Afghanistan now has 364 districts in 34 provinces. With the creation of additional districts, that number will rise to 391. Click here to read more (external link).