Ariana: Health sources have reported that two suspected cases of monkeypox were identified and recorded on Saturday at a Covid-19 Hospital in Nimroz Province. Sources in the province say the two incidents were recorded among migrants deported from Iran. Click here to read more (external link).
8am: The head of the Taliban’s Virtue Promotion, Mawlawi Abdul Rahman, has ordered the province’s urban transportation services not to give ride women alone in cars, rickshaws, and bikes. According to him, carrying women alone in cars causes moral corruption. Click here to read more (external link).
May 28, 2022
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in Afghanistan said that 16 children have been killed in the country in only the last two days.
Mohamed Ag Ayoya, the UNICEF representative in Afghanistan, stated in a tweet on Friday, May 27, that violence against children should be stopped immediately, in addition to informing people about the surge in violence against children.
“In the past two days 16 children were killed in attacks in Kabul & Mazar-e-Sharif and one other in Uruzgan due to unexploded remnants of war,” he wrote.
The UNICEF representative offered condolences to the families of the deceased children and stated that children should not pay the price for conflicts that are unrelated to them. He continued to call for children protection.
Mohamed Ag Ayoya made the remarks following a series of explosions in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif that killed and maimed a lot of children.
The UNICEF called the escalation of violence against children in western Kabul schools and educational institutions a disaster that brazenly violated children’s rights.
Meanwhile, UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, said 1.1 million children this year are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting, nearly double the number in 2018 and up from just under 1 million last year.
Severe wasting is the most lethal type of malnutrition, in which food is so lacking that a child’s immune system is compromised, according to UNICEF. They become vulnerable to multiple bouts of disease and eventually they become so weak they can’t absorb nutrients.
The numbers of children under 5 being admitted into health facilities with severe acute malnutrition have steadily mounted, from 16,000 in March 2020 to 18,000 in March 2021, then leaping to 28,000 in March 2022, the UNICEF representative in Afghanistan, Mohamed Ag Ayoya, wrote in a tweet last week.
Hit by one of its worst droughts in decades and torn by years of war, Afghanistan was already facing a hunger emergency; but the Taliban takeover in August threw the country into crisis. Many development agencies pulled out and international sanctions cut off billions in finances for the government, collapsing the economy.
Millions were plunged into poverty, struggling to afford food for their families. By the end of last year, half the population of around 38 million lived under the poverty line, according to UN figures. As the economy continues to crumble and prices mount, that could rise this year to as high as 97% of the population by mid-2022, according to the UN Development Program.
Aamaj: Bakhtar News Agency reported that head of information and culture of Taliban in Panjshir, Mawlawi Nasrullah Malekzada, claimed that security is ensured in center and all districts of this province, and no security related incident has taken place in past 24 hours. Malekzada also rejected the casualties of Taliban in Panjshir. Click here to read more (external link).
Yaqoob
Ariana: The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has denied reports that an assassination attempt was made on the life of acting minister of defense, Mawlawi Mohammad Yaquob Mujahid, during his visit to Nangarhar. Reports emerged Saturday that an attempt had been made on Mujahid’s life. The reports emerged after a video went viral on social media. In the video, the deputy minister is seen addressing a gathering of people when a scuffle breaks out. The acting’s minister’s bodyguards quickly surround him and lead him to safety. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
Al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri
8am: The United Nations has recently reported that relations between al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders have recently become closer. According to the report, al-Qaeda has gained more freedom with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has renewed his allegiance to Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, according to a 25-page report recently released by the United Nations. Click here to read more (external link).
Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada
8am: The title of Amir al-mu’minin has no jurisprudential justification and the Taliban do not have the required knowledge to justify their supreme leader’s title. Amir al-mu’minin means the ruler of all believers on earth. Political terminology for Muslims developed during the first three to four centuries of Islamic empire expansion. Click here to read more (external link).
Anas Haqqani
Ariana: Speaking in an interview with Indian TV channel CNN-News18, Haqqani said that India can open up with its policy of peace and development as it had with the previous government, and for this, the doors of IEA are open. He said that cricket brings India and Afghanistan together and spreads happiness among the people of both countries. Click here to read more (external link).
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
May 27, 2022
The Taliban has tried to stem the flow of Afghans attempting to escape economic ruin and persecution. But, despite an official ban, the smuggling of undocumented migrants to neighboring Iran and Pakistan continues to rise with the help of Taliban border guards and officials willing to look the other way.
As Afghanistan’s economy collapses, its citizens continue to leave the country en masse in a trend that began to rise with the announced withdrawal of foreign forces in the spring of 2021 and which spiked after the Taliban seized power in August.
Iran, a major destination country, has clamped down by beefing up security along its 900-kilometer border with Afghanistan and deporting tens of thousands of Afghans.
Taliban authorities in the southwestern province of Nimroz, which abuts Afghanistan’s borders with Iran and Pakistan and serves as a major migration hub, have banned human smuggling in an effort to stem the outflow.
But smugglers tell RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi that the hurdles are nothing that cannot be overcome by bribing Taliban guards and officials willing to look the other way to keep business booming.
Mahmud, who provided only his first name, says he makes about $800 a month smuggling up to 150 people per week out of the country by way of an arduous and dangerous journey that starts in Zaranj, the capital of Nimroz, and eventually ends in Iran.
Buses drop off thousands of Afghans a day in Zaranj, where the 36-year-old Mahmud awaits to shuttle them out of the country.
“We fit about 20 people in each vehicle, and the Taliban charges 1,000 afghanis (about $11) per car,” said Mahmud of his operation, which employs several workers and three vans.
From Zaranj, they travel to Pakistan, where more payoffs are made to begin the second leg of the trip.
“We get to the Pakistani border at noon,” where Pakistani drivers are paid the equivalent of around $20 to take the migrants in their cars and another $30 is paid to a business partner to ensure the undocumented migrants are allowed to cross, Mahmud told Radio Azadi.
From there his customers are taken through the deserts of Pakistan’s Balochistan Province to begin their trek through the Mashkel Mountains hugging the border with Iran.
“There are two roads there, one with a seven-hour walk and the other with a seventeen-hour walk,” Mahmud said.
‘Many Are Injured And Killed’
Upon reaching the Iranian border, more danger and bribes await on the other side, as well as a formidable border fence constructed by Iran about 15 years ago and heightened security ordered by Tehran after the Taliban takeover.
“Iranian cars are there, and they take passengers in their cars for 2 million [Iranian tomans, or about $65),” he said of the easiest way to cross into Iran.
“There is another way, over the border wall, but many are injured and killed by border guards,” Mahmud added. “The way over the wall is very dangerous, and costs 7 million ($230).”
The Taliban, which has urged Afghans not to leave the country, has tried to cut off migration routes and authorities in Nimroz have issued bans against the smuggling of people to Iran.
Mawlawi Sardar Mohammad Ayubi, the Taliban’s police chief in Nimroz, recently announced a local ban on illegal immigration in an audiotape released by the province’s Information and Culture Department.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takur, meanwhile, told Radio Azadi that he had officially sent a letter to all provincial police headquarters prohibiting the human-smuggling trade. “Orders have been issued to prevent illegal travel,” he said.
The Taliban authorities did not respond to questions from Radio Azadi asking about reports that members of the Taliban were accepting bribes to circumvent the official orders.
From April 9 to May 6, nearly 230,000 Afghans flowed out of the country, mostly bound for neighboring Iran and Pakistan, according to the latest statistics from the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).
In the past year, more than 1.6 million Afghans crossed into Iran, according to the IOM, the vast majority of them undocumented migrants who seek work there or who intend to use Iran as a jumping-off point to migrate to Turkey and Europe.
Iran, which is mired in its own economic crisis amid skyrocketing inflation and rising food prices, has expressed alarm at the number of undocumented Afghans on its soil, putting the number at some 5 million people.
Shortly after the Taliban took power in Kabul, Iran’s Interior Ministry announced that it would no longer allow entrance to Afghan refugees, citing difficult economic conditions. Since then, Tehran has deported tens of thousands of undocumented Afghans.
According to IOM statistics, the number of Afghans moving from Iran to Afghanistan was only slightly lower than the number of Afghans moving to Iran from May 2021 to April 2022, and has at times exceeded the figure.
In April, for example, more than 91,000 Afghans moved from Iran to Afghanistan compared to 45,000 Afghans moving from Afghanistan to Iran. Of the 6,922 Afghans who returned to Afghanistan from Iran from April 30 to May 6, according to the IOM, 3,910 were deported.
Stark Reality
On May 26, Afghanistan’s Hasht-e Subh daily cited local sources in Nimroz Province as saying that 7,000 migrants had been deported from Iran in the past week, including 257 families.
Ahmad Khaledi, a 26-year-old resident of Afghanistan’s northern province of Sar-e Pol, is among those who was successfully smuggled to Iran.
He told Radio Azadi that he paid a small fortune in his quest to work in Iran.
“I had 50,000 afghanis ($590) with me and I wanted to go to Iran,” Khaledi said, adding that when he approached a smuggler he was told that “for Iran you must pay 5 million Iranian tomans ($164).”
He made the payment and began his exodus by car, but was caught by the Taliban along the way and had to pay a bribe to be allowed to continue.
Eventually, he reached the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan, just kilometers from the Pakistani border, and from there he eventually moved on to the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Not everyone is so lucky. Some illegal migrants have been detained, beaten, or even killed along the way by criminal gangs and border guards.
And even if they do reach Iran, they have no legal status and face the stark reality that they may be sent back to the place they were trying to flee at great cost.
Massud, a farmer in the northern province of Kapisa who only gave Radio Azadi his first name, sold his cows and calves to pay smugglers in Nimroz Province for his ticket out of Afghanistan.
He made it to Iran, he said, but “we encountered a lot of problems on the way.” After paying a smuggler in Iran to get him to the central city of Isfahan, he got a factory job through a contact.
But Massud says he returned to Afghanistan empty-handed after he was caught by Iranian police and deported.