HRW Calls For ‘Better Pathways’ For At-Risk Afghans

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
October 21, 2021

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is calling on United Nations agencies and governments to increase their support for Afghans at risk who are seeking to flee their homeland or have already fled and are now in countries neighboring Afghanistan, transit countries, and countries of resettlement.

In a new policy briefing paper released on October 21, the New York-based human rights watchdog urged UN agencies and governments hosting Afghan refugees and asylum seekers to “focus on increasing refugee resettlement and building better pathways to safe and durable solutions for Afghans needing protection.”

“These include those eligible for family reunification visas or special visas available because of their past work in Afghanistan,” it added.

Since the Taliban seized control of most of Afghanistan in August, many Afghans are at grave risk of reprisal by the hard-line Islamist group, including human rights defenders, women’s rights activists, media workers, judges, and others who previously held official administrative and security positions.

These Afghans “are depending on governments to respect the right to seek asylum,” Bill Frelick, refugee and migrant rights director at HRW, said in a statement.

“Responding effectively to this humanitarian crisis demands refugee and migration policies that are generous, rights-respecting, and culturally sensitive.”

HRW’s call comes after Amnesty International said that Afghans at risk of Taliban reprisals face “formidable obstacles” to seeking safety outside Afghanistan.

The human rights group based in London described how neighboring countries have “closed their borders to Afghans without travel documents, leaving many with no choice but to make irregular crossings.”

Countries across Europe and Central Asia have subjected Afghans to pushbacks, detention, and deportation instead of granting them protection, it also said.

HRW said countries should establish “an orderly departure program” for Afghans seeking to flee, open their borders to asylum seekers, and suspend deportations or returns of Afghans indefinitely.

Governments should also review asylum cases of Afghan asylum seekers that have previously been rejected.

HRW noted that Afghans seeking to flee now have fewer options to depart their country after Pakistan’s national carrier canceled flights between Kabul and Islamabad. However, the private Afghan carrier Kam Airways and Qatar Airways continue to operate limited flights out of Afghanistan.

Governments should also pressure the Taliban-led administration to allow Afghans to exercise their right to leave Afghanistan, according to the group, which cited refugees as saying they had been “harassed, beaten, and extorted by Taliban officials” as they attempted to leave the war-torn country.

HRW also documented abuses against people associated with the former government, including former security forces personnel and members of the judiciary.

“Afghans have many reasons to flee and fear,” Frelick said, adding: “It’s now in the hands of governments around the world to give them reason to hope.”

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Pakistani Taliban Attacks Kill Several Members Of Pakistan’s Security Forces

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TTP Flag

Radio Mashaal
October 20, 2021

At least five members of the Pakistani security forces were killed in attacks in the northwest of the country on October 20.

Two soldiers and two police officers were killed when their vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb in the region of Bajaur near the Afghan border, local police chief, Abdul Samad Khan, told journalists.

Khan said a search operation has been launched in the area.

The Pakistani Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement.

Bajaur, which shares a border with Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, was one of the strongholds of Islamist militants linked to Al-Qaeda before they were pushed back in a series of Pakistani military offensives.

Separately, gunmen attacked a Pakistani Army check post in the same region, killing one soldier, according to a military statement on October 20.

Last week, the TTP claimed a bomb attack on a local political leader in Lower Dir, a district near Bajaur.

The TTP is a separate militant group from the Afghan Taliban, which toppled the Western-backed government in Kabul in mid-August.

However, Pakistan’s militant groups are often interlinked with those across the border in Afghanistan and both follow the same hardline Sunni Islam as its Afghan counterparts.

With reporting by dpa

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

With aid slow to enter Afghanistan, public health facilities are turning many patients away

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Washington Post: Since August, when Taliban militants took power in the country, conditions have deteriorated further. International donors suspended aid that had funded the bulk of public services in Afghanistan, concerned that the new rulers would severely curtail human rights and revive cruel punishments for those who disobeyed their religious dictates. The hospital’s budget was slashed, and many staffers resigned. Click here to read more (external link).

Moscow Hosts Taliban For International Talks On Afghanistan

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Lavrov

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
October 20, 2021

Russia is hosting a high-level Taliban delegation for talks attended by officials from China, Pakistan, and eight other countries, as Moscow seeks to assert its influence on Central Asia amid worries about instability or violence spilling from Afghanistan into the region.

The October 20 conference in Moscow is one of the Taliban’s most significant international meetings since the militants seized control of Kabul from the internationally recognized government in mid-August.

Addressing the gathering, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia recognised Taliban’s “efforts to stabilize the military and political situation and set up work of the state apparatus,” as terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda were trying to “take advantage” of instability.

Moscow considers the formation of a “truly inclusive” government government in Kabul as the only way to bring “stable peace” to the country, Lavrov also said.

The Taliban delegation at the talks, in which the United States is not participating, is headed by the group’s acting Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi and also includes acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said one of the aims of the meeting was to consolidate the “efforts of the international community to prevent a humanitarian crisis” in the aftermath of the Taliban’s takeover.

The formation of an “inclusive government” in Kabul would be on the agenda, it said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the group would ask the participants for economic assistance and political support.

“Naturally, the conference will focus on economic and political issues, as well as on the problems of security in the region and in Afghanistan,” Mujahid said.

The Russian ambassador to Kabul, Dmitry Zhirnov, told journalists that the issue of recognizing the Taliban-led government won’t be discussed at the meeting.

Moscow moved to engage with the Taliban, hosting its representatives in Moscow several times in recent years, but has stopped short of recognizing the group, which is considered a banned terrorist organization within Russia.

Russia and Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors have been wary of an increase of drug trafficking and other security threats emanating from the war-torn country and the potential for tens of thousands of refugees to pour over the border.

In response, Russia staged military drills alongside ex-Soviet countries neighboring Afghanistan and reinforced equipment at a military base in Tajikistan.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the Islamic State (IS) extremist group had about 2,000 militants in northern Afghanistan, and claimed that the alleged IS fighters planned to move between ex-Soviet Central Asian countries disguised as refugees in order to stir up religious and ethnic discord.

Moscow fought a disastrous war in Afghanistan in the 1980s that killed up to 2 million Afghans, forced 7 million more from their homes, and led to the deaths of more than 14,000 Soviet troops.

With reporting by AFP and TASS

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Related

Afghan Teen, Sole Breadwinner For Family Of 30, Waits Desperately To See If Taliban Will Help

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By Ron Synovitz
RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
October 19, 2021

Like hundreds of families in Ghor Province who once survived on payments from Afghanistan’s former government, 14-year-old Ahmad Zia and his relatives have been devastated by the Taliban’s seizure of power.

The men in Ahmad Zia’s extended family were members of an ethnic-Tajik Popular Uprising Force that fought the Taliban for years near their village of Qats on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Firuzkoh.

The Taliban retaliated against them in 2019, killing Ahmad Zia’s father and his three uncles while they were working on a nearby farm.

Then-12-year-old Ahmad Zia became the eldest male member of his extended family, forcing him to earn an income for his widowed mother, aunts, and their 24 children.

Ahmad Zia worked for nearly two years as a water bearer for Afghan security forces who were stationed at strategic positions in the remote mountains overlooking their village.

He earned about $60 a month filling plastic water jugs from a creek near his home and strapping them onto the backs of three donkeys.

He would then trek four kilometers up into the mountains — sometimes in sub-zero temperatures and often within range of fighting — to supply the Afghan Army outposts.

He also helped his mother, Bibi Asma, wash soldiers’ clothes that he brought back down from the mountains.

This meager income was supplemented by payments from the former Afghan government’s Martyrs and Disabled Ministry.

Now, all of the paltry sources of income for Ahmad Zia and his family are gone.

There is no work for Ahmad Zia. Payments from the ministry stopped when the government in Kabul collapsed on August 15.

The local Taliban authorities will not let Ahmad Zia’s mother or aunts work, either, refusing to even allow women in Ghor to work in their fields alongside male relatives as they have done for years.

Women in Ahmad Zia’s district are not allowed to leave their homes without being accompanied by an adult male relative as a chaperon.

“Our situation is very bad. We have no money,” Ahmad Zia tells RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “I was the only breadwinner in the house. I was earning money for 30 people by myself.”

“I don’t know what I will do now,” he says. “I wanted to go to Iran to work and to support my family. But the border with Iran is closed now.”

“We have asked the Taliban to help us,” Ahmad Zia says. “But my only hope is in God.”

Doubtful Taliban Promises

Maulvi Shams Ullah Tariqat, Ghor’s Taliban-appointed deputy governor, claims the Taliban is planning to disperse humanitarian aid to the families of war victims.

But the financial holdings of the Afghan government at banks in other countries — which total more than $9 billion — have been frozen since August when the Taliban seized power.

The Taliban leadership in Kabul says that if those funds are not released to them soon, a humanitarian catastrophe will unleash a new wave of Afghan refugees westward.

However, Western governments say they will not release those assets to the Taliban unless it proves it has changed since its brutal rule from 1996 to 2001, when it was an international pariah notorious for massacring ethnic minorities, including ethnic Tajiks and Hazara.

The Afghanistan Analysts network describes Ghor as a multi-ethnic and multi-tribal society that is fragmented by acute rivalries, extreme poverty, and a proliferation of weapons.

Residents of the predominantly ethnic-Tajik districts around Ghor’s provincial capital say they doubt they will receive aid from the Pashtun-dominated Taliban, even if the Taliban-led government had the funds.

They note that the Taliban has failed to keep its promises not to retaliate against Afghans who worked for the former Afghan government — continuing to persecute people in Ghor and other parts of the country.

Hussain Haikimi, a civil activist from Ghor, says the Taliban is now seeking vengeance against ethnic Tajiks and Hazara who had fought against them.

He says that despite a general amnesty announced by the Taliban leadership in Kabul, Taliban forces act arbitrarily in Ghor and follow the command of their own local leaders.

Hakimi says the Taliban’s declaration of amnesty is a ruse aimed at deceiving the Afghan people and the international community.

Human Rights Watch says the Taliban has continued to target and kill people who worked for the former Afghan government or actively supported its security forces.

Abdul Samad Amiri, the acting head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) office in Ghor, was abducted and shot dead in September while traveling on the Kabul-Ghor highway. The AIHRC blames Amiri’s kidnapping and murder on Taliban gunmen.

Retribution attacks have also targeted former members of various local Popular Uprising Forces — a rag-tag mix of volunteer militia fighters who were not part of the former government’s military but fought against the Taliban with whatever weapons they could muster.

Ghor Province was one of the first places where uprising forces emerged about a decade ago.

On October 14, the Taliban reportedly killed a former Afghan lawmaker from Ghor, Ahmad Khan, who led Popular Uprising Forces in his home district of Dawlat-Yar.

According to more recent reports, residents in the Maidan Bazarek area in the central part of Ghor say Taliban gunmen have been going house to house in two villages — Qandsang and Shurak — to demand “blood money” from relatives of those who had fought against the Taliban.

Those developments have dimmed the waning hopes of Ahmad Zia’s family.

“The [previous] government used to help us, but now that government has fallen,” Bibi Asam, Ahmad Zia’s mother, tells RFE/RL. “Now we are waiting to see what this new [Taliban-led] government will do, whether it will help or not.”

“We are four families,” Bibi Asam says. “Which of us should this boy [Ahmad Zia] take care of first? Should he focus on getting firewood, shoes [for the children], or other things like food?”

Written by Ron Synovitz based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.