Ariana: The United Nations aims to kick start this month a system to swap millions of aid dollars for Afghan currency in a plan to stem humanitarian and economic crises and bypass blacklisted Taliban leaders, according to an internal U.N. note seen by Reuters. Click here to read more (external link).
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8am: The Ministry of Public Health published updates of Covid-19 cases, reporting that at least 16 patients infected by coronavirus have died across the country in the past two days. The figures elucidate that five Covid-19 patients died in Kabul and Logar provinces only. Click here to read more (external link).
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By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
Abubakar Siddique
February 11, 2022
Shamalgah was once a bustling agricultural village that housed hundreds of residents of the Bala Bulk district of Afghanistan’s western Farah Province. But their pastoral existence was shattered when fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan National Army placed the community squarely in the line of fire.
The fighting ended as Afghan security forces fell to the Taliban advance on the capital, but the legacy of war is evident in Shamalgah and other villages of Bala Bulk.
Most of Shamalgah’s fruit orchards and mud-brick houses lie in ruins, leaving many residents homeless and their livelihoods at risk. And with the country facing a major humanitarian crisis and economic meltdown six months into the Taliban’s rule, there is little hope of rebuilding what was anytime soon.
Mohammad Ismail, like others in Shamalgah, says their properties were either razed or destroyed by shelling as the forces of the previous government tried to deny cover to Taliban forces.
“The [former Afghan] government destroyed my house because they claimed the Taliban shot at their forces from it,” says Mohammad Ismail, a middle-aged resident of Shamalgah.
Ismail says many residents they were forced to flee their homes a few days before Eid al-Fitr, which marked the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in May.
“I now live at someone else’s house,” he told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “Rebuilding the house will cost up to 400,000 afghanis ($4,000),” he added. “I am penniless and do not have that kind of money.”
Sayed Daud, another Shamalgah resident, says his extended family’s two homes were flattened during the fighting last year.
“Houses across this region lie in ruins,” he said. “We have no means to reconstruct, which would cost at least 600,000 afghanis ($6,000) each.”
Bala Buluk lies some 50 kilometers west of the provincial capital, Farah. Home to 80,000 residents, the rural region is still reeling from the aftermath of years of firefights, suicide bombings, night raids, airstrikes, and ambushes between the Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters. The Afghan troops mostly hunkered down in trenches and posts ringed by sandbags, while the lightly armed Taliban attacked them in hit-and-run ambushes.
Shamalgah is one of the nearly half a dozen villages ruined by fighting in Bala Buluk. Tens of thousands of the district’s residents are among more than 3.5 million Afghans displaced inside their country by fighting and drought. The majority of Bala Buluk residents were displaced in the months leading up to the collapse of the Afghan government on August 15; more than half a million Afghans were displaced by fighting in rural regions in early 2021 alone.
The prospects of receiving help or compensation for the damages incurred by the fighting are dim. More than 23 million Afghans face starvation, and trade, foreign aid, and investment are at a standstill. With the focus now on Afghanistan’s unprecedented economic and humanitarian crisis, there is little chance that funds will be diverted for reconstruction.
“We lost two houses and a fruit orchard,” Abdul Karim, a young farmer in Shamalgah, told Radio Azadi. He says the properties were everything they had. “No one has done anything to help us yet.”
He says the warring sides did not care about residents’ welfare. “The government forces built a post inside our orchard, and they demolished our houses after coming under fire,” he said.
The Taliban and members of the fallen government, meanwhile, blame each other for ruining the lives and livelihoods of so many citizens.
“The real culprits of this war were those fighters who were using civilian houses as cover for attacking the security forces,” one former Afghan Army officer told Radio Azadi.
The Taliban, in turn, denies tormenting civilians and accuses Afghan and foreign forces of targeting civilians or destroying their properties in operations against the Taliban.
In Bala Buluk, residents have yet to gain any reassurances.
“Most people here are not able to build a single room, let alone reconstruct entire houses,” Karim said. “No one has shown any concern about our ordeal.”
Adam Khan, an elderly local resident, says that rising inflation prompted by a rapid economic collapse squeezes locals hard.
“Without help, we will not be able to rebuild anything,” he told Radio Azadi.
Qari Abdul Baseer heads the Taliban-led government’s provincial disaster management authority. He told Radio Azadi that his office had received nearly 6,000 applications from Bala Buluk residents, and all have asked for help in rebuilding their homes.
“We have shared their pleas with the ministry [in Kabul]. We will act on whatever decisions they make,” he said.
It is not clear where the Taliban-led government would find the money. Its nearly six-month-old government is not recognized by any country, and U.S. and UN sanctions on Taliban leaders have prompted donors to suspend all aid to the militants’ government. Aid agencies are employing creative means to bypass the Taliban authorities while attempting to deliver humanitarian assistance directly to vulnerable Afghans.
In Bala Buluk and elsewhere, war-weary and starving Afghans are desperate.
“It is high time for everyone to extend a helping hand to us,” said Ismail as he stood amid the ruins of his house.
8am: The Ministry of Energy and Water has announced that the 1972 agreement on the Helmand River between Iran and Afghanistan is feasible. The Helmand River water agreement was signed in 1972 between Mohammad Musa Shafiq and Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, the then prime ministers of the country and Iran. Click here to read more (external link).
8am: One person was killed and 14 others were injured in an explosion at the Qala-e-Naw mosque in Badghis province, security sources confirm. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. It is worth mentioning that the increase in criminal crimes and such attacks in recent days has worried the citizens of the country. Click here to read more (external link).
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
February 11, 2022
U.S. President Joe Biden has signed an executive order that will free up some $7 billion in Afghan reserves that were frozen after the Taliban took control of the country in mid-August.
The United States will set up a trust fund in the coming months to administer half the $7 billion, a White House official said on February 11. The remaining $3.5 billion in will stay in the United States and be used to fund ongoing litigation by U.S. victims of terrorism, including for claims against the Taliban by the families of victims of the September 11 attacks.
Biden’s order addresses “the widespread humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan — including the urgent needs of the people of Afghanistan for food security, livelihoods support, water, sanitation, health, hygiene, shelter and settlement assistance, and COVID-19-related assistance, among other basic human needs — and the potential for a deepening economic collapse in Afghanistan,” Biden said in a letter to House Speaker Nance Pelosi (Democrat-California).
Biden said the preservation of Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) accounts held in U.S. financial institutions “is of the utmost importance to addressing this national emergency and the welfare of the people of Afghanistan.”
Biden’s order requires financial institutions to transfer Afghan Central Bank funds to a consolidated account at the New York Federal Reserve. U.S. officials say the overwhelming majority of frozen Afghan assets in the United States are proceeds of aid provided over two decades by U.S. and other donors.
The White House has come under pressure to release the funds to help Afghans, who are in the midst of an economic and financial crisis has threatened more than half of the country’s population with famine.
Taliban officials are holding talks this week in Geneva with international organizations on opening access to vital humanitarian aid which is being withheld as the de facto government in Kabul has yet to be recognized by any government around the world over concerns about human rights and freedoms.
Afghanistan has more than $9 billion in reserves, including just over $7 billion in reserves held in the United States. The remainder is mainly held in Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, and Qatar.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
February 11, 2022
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says two journalists working for the agency have been detained along with several Afghan workers.
“Two journalists on assignment with the UNHCR and Afghan nationals working with them have been detained in Kabul. We are doing our utmost to resolve the situation, in coordination with others,” the UN’s refugee agency said in a tweet on February 11.
“We will make no further comment given the nature of the situation,” it added.
The Taliban has yet to comment on the report.
After the Taliban took over the country last August in the wake of the withdrawal of international forces, the de facto government has been criticized for failing to allow for an independent media.
No country has formally recognized the government, but talks aimed at easing the war-torn country’s humanitarian crisis have been taking place this week in Geneva.
Afghanistan’s economy has been stalled by sanctions and a halt in development funding since the militants took over the country.
With reporting by Reuters
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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
February 10, 2022
Afghan refugees have staged a protest at a facility in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), demanding that they be sent to the United States.
Thousands of Afghans were evacuated to the U.A.E. and have been housed at tightly controlled sites in the Persian Gulf state since the hard-line Islamist Taliban group seized control of their home country in mid-August 2021.
The U.A.E. agreed to take Afghans on a temporary basis until their applications were approved for transit to third countries, including the United States.
However, the process has dragged on, leaving them at the U.A.E. sites six months later.
The February 10 protest included men, women, and children, according to a Reuters photographer.
One protester told Reuters by phone that some Afghans were detained by U.A.E. authorities as the demonstrations began.
U.A.E. and the U.S. Embassy did not immediately comment on the situation.
It is not clear how many Afghans remain in the U.A.E.
Based on reporting by Reuters
Friends and relatives of Afghan female activist Tamana Paryani say she and her three sisters Shafiqa, Zarghona, and Karima were arrested on January 19 by the Taliban after they took part in a Kabul protest. Before disappearing, Paryani posted a video on social media asking for help and said Taliban militants had showed up at her home. Taliban officials denied the sisters — the youngest of whom is only 13 — have been arrested and claimed the video was fake.
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