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).
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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.
William Gallo
Lee Juhyun
VOA News
June 14, 2022
ULSAN, SOUTH KOREA — Muhamad Anwar, who until last year worked as a nurse in Kabul, admits he could be the world’s least likely person to be assembling parts for ship engines — and in Ulsan, South Korea, of all places.
“To be honest, up to this point I had never even used a screwdriver,” said Anwar, a soft-spoken, middle-aged man who had also never considered life in Korea until the Taliban swept through his country last summer.
“Within a week, everything changed,” explained Anwar, who fled with his wife, two daughters and three sons, all of whom brought “only a pair of clothes — nothing else.”
They are among the 391 Afghan evacuees allowed to enter South Korea last year — an unusually large number for a country that admitted only 79 refugees in 2019, the year before the coronavirus pandemic slowed global movement.
The Afghans, who had worked for South Korea’s embassy in Kabul or affiliated aid organizations, were designated as “special contributors,” a more domestically palatable concept than “refugees.”
The Afghan evacuees face unique opportunities and challenges in South Korea, which has long seen itself as ethnically homogenous. Although the country has slowly begun to accept more foreigners, non-Koreans sometimes feel unwelcome — especially Muslims, who are at times the target of explicitly bigoted protests.
New life in a ‘Hyundai town’
Like many of the Afghan “special contributors,” Anwar settled in the southeastern coastal city of Ulsan, which is often described as a “Hyundai town.” A city of 1.1 million people with a skyline dotted by giant cranes, Ulsan boasts the world’s largest car manufacturing plant and its largest shipyard. Both are run by subsidiaries of the massive Hyundai conglomerate.
Many Ulsan residents not only work at Hyundai factories, they shop at Hyundai department stores, send their children to Hyundai schools, receive medical treatment at Hyundai hospitals and root for Ulsan Hyundai FC, the town’s professional soccer team.
After six months of cultural orientation, the Afghan evacuees in Ulsan were given jobs at a subcontractor for the shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries. Anwar’s family lives in company housing — an older but recently renovated five-level apartment building. In the evenings, the building is brightened by the sound of Afghan children chasing each other around a makeshift playground, which consists of a soccer goal and a basketball hoop. Anwar jokes that the building, which houses about 30 Afghan families, sometimes feels like a small Afghan village.
Sitting inside his three-bedroom apartment, which is simply furnished but spacious by South Korean standards, Anwar is quick to point out that his family is fortunate. “Society is peaceful. Our kids go to school. I have a job. We are in such a good situation now,” he said.
Challenges
But for the Afghan evacuees, life in South Korea can be challenging in the most basic ways.
Language is a major barrier. Sometimes when Anwar’s Korean-speaking coworkers ask for a tool, such as a hammer, he has to stop and think, “Now what is a hammer?” Sometimes he hands them the wrong tool, prompting good-natured laughter.
Korean food is also unfamiliar. Many of the Afghan children bring their own lunches to school. Others eat school-provided meals, except for the meat, which isn’t halal. But eating Korean lunches raises another practical barrier: how to use chopsticks. One of the Anwar daughters jokes that her schoolteachers double as “chopstick tutors.”
School is especially challenging. After all, how is a Korean-speaking public school supposed to educate dozens of children who speak only the tiniest bit of Korean? In Ulsan, public school officials are solving the problem by having the Afghan children spend a few hours each day learning Korean in their own dedicated classes.
Progress is steady but there’s a long way to go. During a recent class at an Ulsan middle school, VOA watched as three Afghan girls struggled with even the most basic Korean sentences, such as “I ride the bus” or “Korean is hard.” But language teacher Seo Jeong-sook is impressed by how much the students had learned in a month. “They are quite motivated,” she said. “And they are learning very fast.”
For the rest of the school day, the Afghan kids attend the same classes as their Korean peers. They are paired with “helper buddies,” Korean classmates who explain the teacher’s instructions and other basic information using a mix of broken English, broken Korean, and nonverbal gestures.
Parent protests
Certain problems are thornier. When word broke out that Ulsan schools would host a large percentage of the Afghans, some local parents were outraged, even forming protests outside an elementary school. In interviews with local media, some parents said they were concerned about their children’s safety, while others expressed fears about being subjected to Islamic culture.
The protests eventually subsided following two meetings with Ulsan school officials, who assured the Korean parents their children’s education would not be affected. But the incident remains distressing for the Afghan parents, even if many are reluctant to discuss it.
Asked how he felt about Koreans forming protests over the mere presence of his young children, Anwar acknowledges it was difficult but quickly pivots to his gratitude that all of his children — even the girls — can get an education.
“We need to tolerate it. Why? Because this is not our country. This is Korea. Made by Korea and built by Koreans,” he said.
“But also, I have never ever directly met any people who are opposed to our presence or the presence of our children,” he said. “We only heard about this through the media.”
Throughout the conversation, Anwar’s wife had been listening quietly as she sat on the couch next to her husband and youngest child, a 10-year-old boy who attends the elementary school where the protests were held. When asked about the situation, her eyes fill with tears.
“We were so stressed,” she said, recounting how she sometimes accompanied her children on their way to school out of concern for their safety.
“But now the situation has changed. Now it’s OK,” she said, wiping her eyes.
‘We must overcome’
The situation improved partly because of Roh Ok-hee, the superintendent of the Ulsan Education Office, who attended the two tense public meetings with Korean parents. Many of the problems arose from South Koreans’ lack of familiarity with Islamic culture, she explained in an interview with VOA.
“These people came here to escape Taliban violence, but we did not fully appreciate this. We had a preconception of women in Islamic culture, so parents were worried,” Roh said.
In preparation for the Afghan students’ arrival, Roh says her office provided multicultural sensitivity training for teachers. The district tried to provide similar classes for students, but some Korean parents objected – a decision she warns could have long-term ramifications.
“We already live in a multicultural, global era, and we should acknowledge that,” she said. “If we use this opportunity well, there will be many new ways to open up.”
One of the Korean parents’ main complaints is that the school is using limited resources to accommodate the Afghan students, which they fear could lower the overall education quality for their own kids. But Roh rejects that argument.
“Even if there are certain expenses right now, it’s better to learn how to live together. If we can’t do that, then the problems of the future, such as increased conflicts in society, will cost much, much more,” she said.
In the meantime, the Anwar family is eager to make a new life in Korea. Along with the other Afghan evacuees, they were given long-term residency visas. They have no plans to leave.
“I think we have left our country for good,” Anwar said with a sigh. Despite the challenges, he is optimistic. “It’s not easy, but we must overcome.”
Note: The names of the Afghan evacuees have been changed to protect their privacy.
8am: Locals have confirmed that fierce clashes have broken out between the National Resistance Front (NRF) forces and Taliban fighters in northern Takhar province. According to independent sources, an estimated 60 Taliban fighters carried out an operation on an NRF base yesterday morning in the village of Spanj, Chal district, Takhar province. Sources told Hasht-e Subh on Tuesday (June 14th) that three Taliban fighters have been killed and two Taliban and one member of the NRF were wounded during the clash. Click here to read more (external link).
India Today: An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the richter scale jolted the Afghanistan-Tajikstan border on Tuesday, June 14. The earthquake occurred in SouthEast of Fayzabad in Afghanistan at 1:05 pm, as per the National Centre for Seismology (NCS). Click here to read more (external link).
The Economic Times (India): When the Taliban seized Kabul 10 months ago, Abdul Ahad Habibi was Afghanistan’s first secretary at the permanent mission in Geneva looking after its affairs in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Even after the change of guard, the Afghan diplomat with three of his colleagues continued to stay back in the Swiss town, claiming that they were the real representatives of Afghanistan. While talking to ET, Habibi terms Taliban as “barbarians” who have been on a killing spree… Click here to read more (external link).
UNFPA: As the country continues to face an unprecedented crisis that has greatly impacted on its health system, health facilities are striving to ensure that reproductive health services remain accessible to women, including those suffering from obstetric fistula. These women include Aisha*, a 35-year-old mother of three from Ghazni province, who has had five expensive but unsuccessful surgeries to repair her fistula. Since having the fistula 12 years ago, Aisha lived in shame and was despised even by her own family. Click here to read more (external link).
Tolo News: “The fire was controlled, thirty acres of land were burned, the charred trees were not totally damaged, and just the leaves and branches of the trees were burned,” Mesbahuddin Mohsen, a spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock, stated. However, several residents in Khost province say that the fires have not yet been put out. “There’s a huge fire.” We put out the fire many times, but a strong wind blew, and the fire flared up again,” said Abdul Hadi, a Khost resident. Click here to read more (external link).