Tolo News: The [Taliban] Ministry of Interior (MoI) denied the alleged reports of the beheading of three members of the Resistance Front and the killing of civilians in Panjshir province. This comes as 60 human rights defenders in a letter to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres claimed that the forces of the Islamic Emirate are targeting the Tajik ethnic group in Panjshir, Baghlan and Takhar provinces. Click here to read more (external link).
Ariana: Badakhshan officials confirmed Thursday that flash floods in the province have caused widespread destruction and financial losses across Zebak district. According to the head of Zebak development council, Fazal Ahmad Faizi, the worst hit areas in the district were Gul Khana, Dand, Dasht-e-Khan, Now Abad, and Khalkhan villages. He said the floods were triggered by heavy rainfall in the area. Click here to read more (external link).
8am: Sources on Wednesday (June 15th) said that a wedding party was being held in the new city of Faizabad, which was stormed by the Taliban’s virtue promoters. Taliban forces have forcefully prevented the wedding from taking place. According to sources, the Taliban claimed that the women attending the wedding party did not wear the hijab. Taliban fighters also justified that music has been played and women are dancing in the party. Click here to read more (external link).
Dostum
Foreign Policy: Exiled warlords, power brokers, and ethnic leaders who fled Afghanistan last year ahead of the Taliban’s victory are threatening civil war unless the Islamists start negotiating to let them return home and reclaim their power and authority as an alternative to the nihilistic rule of the terrorists currently in charge. The band that broke Afghanistan in the early 1990s and hobbled it for years after is, in other words, getting back together. Unlike their first time around in power—right after the Soviet pullout in 1989—this time the warlords might even seem appealing, so awful is the Taliban regime that took over in August of last year. Click here to read more (external link).
Kabulov
Tolo News: Russia’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, on Tuesday said that Moscow would make a decision on recognizing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan regardless of the opinion of the United States or any other country. In an interview with “Channel One Russia” Kabulov stated that the first step toward recognition of the Islamic Emirate would the formation of an inclusive political government in Afghanistan. Click here to read more (external link).
8am: The residents of Nimruz province have raised deep concerns over the significant increase in armed robberies in this province, saying the crime rate has dramatically increased since the Taliban took control of the country. It is not only Nimroz that has turned into a safe haven for thieves and criminals, harassing innocent civilians for the sack of stealing properties. Similar reports are being aired from across the country on a daily basis that the criminals have been given open-handed and there is no authority to take the accountability. In most cases, Taliban fighters are reported to be involved in the case and due to this, no follow-up is being done by the local Taliban senior members. Click here to read more (external link).
Ariana: Afghanistan spinners led by the debutant Noor Ahmad (4/10 in 4 overs) dominated the second inning of the third match to help Afghanistan defend the 125-run target by 35 runs and complete a 3-nill sweep in the T20I series against Zimbabwe on Tuesday. With this win, Afghanistan swept Zimbabwe 3-nill in the T20I series as well as went through a complete white-wash on their white-ball tour to Zimbabwe. Click here to read more (external link).
More Cricket News
8am: The Taliban’s move has no legal or logical justification. Students are admitted to universities after passing an entrance test – known as the Kankor Examination. Shifting students from one university to another is against the higher education law, and above all, it ignores the right of those students who have entered top universities with high scores on the entrance test. Click here to read more (external link).
RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi, RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal
June 14, 2022
Farhad Salehi, a resident of the western Herat Province, has been chasing a Pakistani visa for weeks. Like hundreds of thousands of his compatriots, he wants to escape the uncertainty brought on by the economic collapse that followed the Taliban’s seizure of power last year.
He first attempted official channels, applying directly to the Pakistani Embassy in the capital, Kabul. But after being denied a visa, he took a route often used by Afghans in a similar situation: the black market, where the business of providing permits to travel or live in the neighboring Muslim country is thriving.
“A very sick patient might get a visit visa by directly applying to the embassy,” Salehi told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “But others have to rely on the black market.”
So far, his efforts have been fruitless, despite having spent $500 in bribes to middlemen. But Salehi says there are visas available to those willing to pay the price.
“People can get a monthlong visa by paying $300, a five-month visa for $500, and $700 for a yearlong visa,” he claimed.
Some Afghans have said that Pakistani visas are being sold for over $1,000, a sum that is out of reach for most after the Taliban takeover destroyed livelihoods and the country’s economy spiraled into an extended crisis.
Even the legal path to getting a visa can be an expensive and exhausting process of cumbersome paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles that leads some to bribe officials through go-betweens to cut the red tape.
But there is no shortage of Afghans willing to do whatever it takes to flee from their homeland following the collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government in August.
Former government workers, rights campaigners, and journalists have told Radio Azadi they face constant harassment due to their past work, and have expressed fears of Taliban persecution.
Others have said they wish to escape the Taliban’s hard-line rule, which has banned women’s education and work and made it impossible for musicians and artists to practice their professions.
The economic free fall — aided by the loss of foreign aid and trade and a lingering drought — has shuttered businesses and left scant options for alternative livelihoods. And the dire health-care situation has forced many Afghans to look abroad to Pakistan for medical treatment.
Some seek to move away for good, ideally by obtaining asylum through the UN or by applying for Western visas upon reaching Islamabad, where they have access to diplomatic missions no longer available in Afghanistan, whose Taliban government is not recognized by any country.
The growing desperation among Afghans has opened new avenues for graft. One “commission agent,” as the Afghan intermediaries of the Pakistani Embassy are known on the street, told Radio Azadi that the difficulties of going through the formal process for travel documents have allowed bribery to flourish.
“The embassy doesn’t accept visa applications, but we can get them by bribing embassy staff,” he told Radio Azadi on condition of anonymity.
A senior official at the Pakistani Embassy in Kabul acknowledged the problem. He told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal that graft allegations have led to the dismissal of several embassy staffers this year.
“Due to complaints of bribes during the past three months, we fired 12 embassy staff,” he said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media.
He said a “thorough investigation” targeted employees who were “minting money from Afghans” who sought Pakistani visas.
Getting out of Afghanistan can be difficult even for those Afghans who have contacts who can help them settle abroad. Even getting an Afghan passport can be difficult, with the Taliban frequently closing the country’s lone passport office, and countries like the United States requiring face-to-face interviews for certain visas — an impossibility unless they can reach diplomatic offices in a third country.
In a June 6 statement, the Pakistani Embassy in Kabul said that most Afghans who are denied visas had failed to fill out their applications correctly.
“Invitation letters and other details including details of their stay in Pakistan are not properly filled out,” the letter said. “This is resulting in most applications being sent back for review.”
On June 12, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced that under a new visa policy for Afghans, Islamabad would issue transit visas that would allow them to enter the country legally to complete the paperwork for further international travel.
Sharif said the move was “part of our efforts to continue helping our Afghan brothers and sisters in their hour of need.” He called on the international community to “also lend a helping hand to the people of Afghanistan.”
Salman Sufi, an adviser to Sharif, said the transit visas would be limited to Afghans who have already been accepted for immigration elsewhere.
“Shehbaz has approved on-arrival visas for Afghan refugees who need to pass through Pakistan to reach their destination, which has approved their immigration,” he tweeted.
Under the new visa policy, Islamabad will issue a 30-day transit visa within 24 hours to Afghan nationals seeking to travel to a third country after their immigration is approved.
More than 100,000 Afghans have entered Pakistan on visas obtained after the Taliban takeover 10 months ago. They are mostly educated professionals looking to resettle in another country.
Before their arrival, Islamabad was already hosting an estimated 1.3 million documented refugees. Several hundred thousand more Afghans live in the country undocumented. So far this year, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) has recorded the return of some 34,000 Afghan refugees from Pakistan to Afghanistan.
Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Islamabad has become home to several million Afghan refugees, one of the world’s largest refugee populations. After the demise of the previous Taliban regime, which ruled from 1996 to 2001, more than 5 million Afghans voluntarily returned to their country from Pakistan over the course of nearly two decades, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.
Islamabad is not a signatory to international conventions on the rights of refugees. Its treatment of Afghan refugees during the past three decades has swung between generosity and discrimination, and Pakistan has faced widespread accusations by Afghan refugees of harassment, ill-treatment, arbitrary detentions, and forced returns to Afghanistan.