DW: Rights groups say hundreds of Afghans fled to neighboring Uzbekistan to escape the Taliban. But, without official refugee status in the Central Asian country, they are vulnerable and could face deportation. Click here to read more (external link).
Watchdog finds no misconduct in mistaken Afghan airstrike
Pentagon
AP: An independent Pentagon review has concluded that the U.S. drone strike that killed innocent Kabul civilians and children in the final days of the Afghanistan war was not caused by misconduct or negligence, and it doesn’t recommend any disciplinary action, The Associated Press has learned. Click here to read more (external link).
Pakistan, Tehrik-e Taliban Hold Secret Talks Over Cease-Fire
TTP Flag
By Daud Khattak
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
November 3, 2021
Pakistan is holding secret talks with the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) extremist group over a cease-fire, sources have told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal.
That is despite the TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, publicly denying a claim by Islamabad last month that the sides were in negotiations.
Pakistani military officials and representatives of the TTP have been meeting in neighboring Afghanistan to negotiate a truce, said sources with knowledge of the TTP’s policies.
The talks have been mediated by the Taliban’s Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the notorious Haqqani network, the lethal arm of the Taliban, the sources added. The network is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization and Haqqani is among the FBI’s most-wanted fugitives.
The Afghan militants, who seized power of the war-torn country in August, have links with both Islamabad and the TTP.
A cease-fire agreement could pave the way for formal talks over a negotiated end to the TTP’s 14-year insurgency in Pakistan, where thousands of people have been killed in militant attacks and clashes between the TTP and the military.
“They have been engaged in talks for two weeks,” said a source familiar with the negotiations, describing the talks as “hectic.”
Pakistan’s ambassador to Kabul, Mansour Ahmad Khan, told RFE/RL on November 2 that he did not know of any talks. But he did not reject the possibility of talks with the TTP.
The negotiations come as the TTP has intensified its attacks in recent months in northwestern Pakistan, its former stronghold. A massive Pakistani Army offensive in 2014 drove out the militants from the country’s tribal belt and across the border to Afghanistan.
Forced from its strongholds, debilitated by the death of successive leaders, and riven internally, the TTP was seen as a largely spent force. But the militant group has reemerged over the past year, unifying squabbling factions and unleashing a spate of deadly attacks in Pakistan.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said on October 1 that his government was in talks with “some” factions of the TTP on a “reconciliation process.”
Khan told Turkish state broadcaster TRT that his government was willing to “forgive” TTP militants if a cease-fire deal was reached.
When asked if the Afghan Taliban was facilitating the process, Khan said that “the talks are taking place in Afghanistan, so in that sense yes.”
One the same day, a faction of the TTP ordered its fighters to observe a cease-fire until October 20. The Hafiz Gul Bahadar faction directed its fighters to observe a cease-fire for 20 days and halt all their operations against the Pakistani government and security forces.
But the TTP leadership quickly issued a statement rejecting Khan’s claims. The militant group said it was united and there were no divisions in its ranks. The TTP’s spokesperson also called on the group’s fighters to continue attacks.
Sources told RFE/RL that representatives of the TTP have held several meetings with Pakistan intelligence officials in Afghanistan in recent weeks. The TTP has been represented by close associates of Noor Wali Mehsud, who has headed the group since 2018.
“The two sides are fine-tuning their demands and conditions for a cease-fire,” said one of the sources.
Among the TTP’s demands is the release of 100 fighters in Pakistani prisons. In return, the government has demanded a nationwide truce.
“Once the cease-fire is agreed, the Pakistani security forces will not take action against the TTP and the TTP will not carry out attacks on the security forces or civilians,” one source said.
The source said that government negotiators had told the TTP that they could visit their homes in Pakistan but would have to be unarmed. Many members of the TTP are Pashtuns from the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which straddles the border with Afghanistan.
The TTP has also demanded the implementation of Islamic Shar’ia law in Pakistan’s tribal region, a demand that observers say is unlikely to be met.
Since the emergence of the TTP in 2007, Islamabad has signed peace deals with several factions. But none of the agreements has lasted, and most were followed by an uptick in violence.
This is the not the first time that Khan, whose Tehrik-e Insaf (PTI) party came to power in 2018, has reached out to the TTP.
In 2013, when Khan was part of the opposition, he urged the government to launch talks with the TTP and allow the militants to open an office in Pakistan just as the Afghan Taliban had opened an office in the Gulf state of Qatar.
In 2014, the TTP demanded Khan be included in the committee formed by then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for holding talks with the militant group. Khan declined the offer.
With peace efforts breaking down, the Pakistani Army in June 2014 launched a large-scale offensive against TTP militants, many of whom fled to Afghanistan.
In December that year, the TTP attacked a military-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar in December 2014, killing 147 people, most of them students. It was one of the deadliest militant attacks in Pakistan’s history.
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.
Afghanistan loses cricket match against India
The Indian Express: India beat Afghanistan by 66 runs in their Super 12 match of T20 World Cup here on Wednesday to keep their slim chance of reaching semifinals alive. Openers Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul hit half centuries to help India post 210 for 2 after being invited to bat and then restricted Afghanistan to 144 for 7 in their 20 overs. Click here to read more (external link).
Afghanistan’s buzkashi season begins, with Taliban at the reins
Buzkashi (file photo)
Al Jazeera: Banned under the Taliban’s regime of 1996 to 2001 for being “immoral”, there were fears the ancient game would again be barred after the group seized power in August this year. But not only have Taliban fighters gathered in the crowd after Friday prayers to watch this showpiece buzkashi tournament, a local commander is taking part as well, and Mohammad’s club is captained by a district governor. Click here to read more (external link).
‘If You Don’t Have Money, You Have Sisters’: Afghan Men Use Taliban Rule to Settle Scores
WSJ: A week after the Taliban swept to power in August, a businessman who had become an official in Afghanistan’s new government turned up at Ayesha’s home. He demanded the family hand over Ayesha and her four sisters to repay what he said was a $250,000 debt owed by her brother. Click here to read more (external link).
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Tolo News in Dari – November 3, 2021
Afghanistan’s Health-Care System In ‘Free Fall’ As Punishing Winter Looms
By Michael Scollon
RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
November 3, 2021
A punishing winter looms for many Afghans who are already dealing with the effects of a devastating humanitarian crisis and an economic crunch brought on by the Taliban takeover, the withdrawal of foreign forces, and suspension of international funding.
The state health-care system, propped up by foreign aid for two decades, was hurting even before the Taliban seized power in mid-August, with many health-care workers going unpaid for months. Now the system is trying to stave off total collapse.
“The situation is dire,” Khan, a resident of the eastern province of Kunar, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “We are on the eve of winter and disease is spreading.”
Like many both at home and abroad, Khan called on foreign countries and aid groups not to abandon the country.
The main problem affecting Afghanistan’s health-care sector is the loss of financial aid, according to Patricia Gossman, associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division.
“There is no money to pay health-care workers. There is no money to buy medicines,” said Gossman, who added that the system was “already weak” under the previous government. “With former donors blocking aid — not humanitarian aid, but actual cash to pay salaries — the health-care situation is in a free fall like the rest of the economy.”
Hundreds of health facilities have been shuttered in Afghanistan since the Taliban toppled the internationally recognized government in Kabul.
Abdul Bari Omari, the Taliban’s caretaker deputy director of public health, told RFE/RL in October that nearly 90 percent of the sector was dependent on foreign aid, which led to the closure of 2,300 health centers when that aid was cut off.
Urgent appeals for more funds by NGOs and the United Nations have resulted in pledges of more than $1 billion, and outside states and aid groups have delivered much-needed medical supplies. But there is no clear path for the distribution of the funds and supplies, and billions of dollars held by Afghanistan’s previous government remain frozen in the United States.
Many have turned to outside organizations that continue to provide health services in Afghanistan, such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which has worked in the country for 70 years, and Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
Representatives of both organizations say they saw the departure of some staff and an uptick in patients following the Taliban takeover, and cite malnutrition as a deadly concern.
Christophe Garnier, a MSF project coordinator, said the organization’s therapeutic feeding centers in the western city of Herat and the southern city of Lashkar Gah were operating at twice their capacity and maternity units were helping more than 55 women a month deliver babies in the eastern city of Khost and more than 60 per day in Lashkar Gah.
“There are several factors that explain why we are seeing so many patients but perhaps the biggest problem is that other health facilities aren’t functioning, so people have few other places to seek health care,” Garnier said in e-mailed comments from Afghanistan. “Now the situation has slightly stabilized, many organizations have returned, but the health system is still struggling.”
Garnier singled out financial measures taken against the Taliban’s acting government, including the freezing of nearly $9 billion in Afghan assets held in the United States, as having “paralyzed the country’s banking system and pushed the country toward economic and institutional collapse.”
Sam Mort, chief of communication, advocacy, and civic engagement for UNICEF Afghanistan, said that the organization is urgently scaling up its humanitarian response to the crisis in Afghanistan. Mort said in e-mailed comments from Afghanistan that most of UNICEF’s team is physically back at work in the country, including women, and that new staffers are being hired.
Mort said that the organization was well equipped to deal with the challenges experienced in Afghanistan in recent months and was able to distribute supplies to Afghans displaced by fighting, water to areas heavily hit by drought, therapeutic food to combat malnutrition, and mobile health teams to provide health services.
But the challenges remain immense and complex, Mort said.
“More than 600,000 people are displaced; there is drought; winter is approaching; there are outbreaks of measles and acute watery diarrhea, food and fuel prices are rising, and around 20 million people will face acute food insecurity this month,” Mort said.
“And when food insecurity spikes, so too does severe acute malnutrition,” which he said could lead to the deaths of 1 million children under the age of 5.
Following a visit to Kabul in mid-October, UNICEF deputy executive director Omar Abdi, expressed shock at the conditions he saw.
Abdi based some of his observations on his visit to the capital’s 360-bed Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, which is dealing with staff shortages after many medical workers fled the country or took other work due to a lack of payment.
“I visited the children’s hospital and was shocked to see how packed it was with malnourished children, some of them babies,” Abdi said.
Abdi noted that even before the Taliban takeover at least 10 million children in Afghanistan were in need of humanitarian assistance, and listed polio and measles as sources of concern in addition to acute malnutrition.
RFE/RL has documented many complaints from citizens about the state of public health care, including at Indira Gandhi Hospital.
Shirin Gul said her granddaughter recently died after the hospital was unprepared to treat her heart condition.
“There were no services or supplies at the hospital,” Gul said, adding that she had to go elsewhere just to obtain medicine.
Meanwhile, officials at the state-run Afghan-Japan Hospital in Kabul — the only active hospital for the treatment of COVID-19 patients in Afghanistan — told RFE/RL that employees had not been paid in three months.
As fears mount of a fourth wave of coronavirus infections, chief physician Tariq Ahmad Akbari said that the facility was short of funds to buy medicine, oxygen, and even food for patients.
Akbari said the hospital was sending requests for financial assistance to authorities and institutions both within and outside the country, and that if the pleas are not answered the hospital might be forced to close.
UNICEF’S Mort said that finding a way to pay health workers stands among the biggest challenges in Afghanistan because such professionals could be forced to look for other work to support themselves.
“To ensure delivery of essential medical aid, we urgently need the health system operational, health workers paid, and facilities open and well stocked,” Mort said.
MSF’s Garnier said that during a recent visit to a displaced persons camp near Herat, community leaders expressed concerns about the upcoming winter.
“This community has no work, no income, no land, no home, and no food,” Garnier said. “They are very worried about what will happen in the winter, when they already don’t know what they will eat today.”
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.
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Taliban Bans Use Of Foreign Currencies In Afghanistan
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
November 2, 2021
The Taliban has announced a ban on the use of foreign currencies in Afghanistan, threatening further disruption to an economy pushed to the brink of collapse following the hard-line Islamic group’s takeover in August.
From now on, anyone using foreign currency for domestic business will be prosecuted, the Taliban said in a statement shared with journalists on November 2.
“The economic situation and national interests in the country require that all Afghans use the afghani currency in every transaction,” the statement said.
The national currency, the afghani, has dramatically depreciated since the Taliban overthrew the internationally backed government in mid-August.
Many transactions inside the war-torn, drought-stricken country are conducted in U.S. dollars, while border areas use the currency of neighboring countries such as Pakistan for trade.
With Afghanistan’s economy in a parlous state with most aid cut off as winter nears, food prices rising, and unemployment spiking, the Taliban is seeking international recognition and is pressing for the release of billions of dollars of frozen Afghan assets parked abroad.
Afghanistan was heavily dependent on international funding for the last 20 years, with three-quarters of the entire public spending budget coming from aid.
In an effort to try and contain the spiraling humanitarian crisis, the international community has announced support packages for Afghanistan and its neighbors.
With reporting by AFP and Reuters
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.
Turkmenistan Talks TAPI Pipeline With Taliban, But Should Ashgabat Instead Be Looking To Send Gas To Europe?
Bruce Pannier
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
November 2, 2021
Building a natural-gas pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India (TAPI) was the main topic of conversation when Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov went to Kabul to meet with the Taliban’s interim government on October 30-31.
Since coming to power 15 years ago, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has been fixated on completing TAPI. But the authoritarian ruler’s attention might be better turned to the Trans-Caspian Pipeline (TCP), which looks more attractive to its European market than ever before.
Due to a lack of pipelines connecting Turkmenistan to other markets, this period of record gas prices on world markets is quietly passing the Central Asian country by — a shame for cash-strapped Ashgabat and its destitute citizens since it holds the fourth-largest proven reserves of natural gas on the planet.
A Salesman In Kabul
Meredov met with Taliban acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, acting Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, and acting Defense Minister Mawlawi Muhammad Yaqoob, the son of deceased Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
Atop the agenda of their meetings was — as Muttaqi said of his meeting with Meredov — “Important issues such as TAPI, railroads, and electricity.”
Yaqoob tweeted: “I am directly responsible for overseeing the security of the TAPI project…[and] we will not hesitate to make any sacrifices for the implementation of this national project.”
TAPI was an important issue when Turkmen officials met with former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government as well as that of his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, and with representatives of the Taliban when it ruled the country in the late 1990s.
The Afghan government has been promising since 2010 to create a special force of some 7,000 troops to guard the TAPI pipeline.
The Taliban even promised to guard TAPI in 2018 when they were battling government forces.
The pipeline aims to carry some 33 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas from fields in Turkmenistan more than 1,800 kilometers through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India.
Pakistan and India would each receive 14 bcm and Afghanistan would receive 5 bcm, which would be a huge increase for Afghanistan compared to the country’s recent annual use of less than 200 million cubic meters.
Additionally, it was reported during Meredov’s recent meeting with Taliban representatives that Afghanistan could earn some $500 million in transit fees annually, though Meredov said in November 2017 that Afghanistan would earn some $1 billion from transit fees.
When the price of gas briefly shot to more than $1,000 per 1,000 cubic meters in October this year, officials in Turkmenistan must have broken out in a sweat.
Twenty-five years ago, Turkmen officials were trying to get their only gas customer at that time — Russia — to pay $40 per 1,000 cubic meters instead of $32.
But even if the security situation in Afghanistan becomes more stable under the Taliban, there are still significant problems with financing the approximately 775-kilometer stretch of TAPI through Afghanistan.
The estimated cost of the total project is some $10 billion, though that estimate is a decade old.
In a recent article for the Atlantic Council, former U.S. Ambassador to Turkmenistan Steve Mann wrote that even with an improvement in security inside Afghanistan, “the ascent of the Taliban will do nothing to address the project’s dire flaws, including financing, bankability, and pipeline ownership and operation.”
He added that “On top of that, the severe [economic] sanctions on the Taliban introduce a new deal-breaker.”
Pakistan has sought to renegotiate the price of Turkmen gas from TAPI several times in recent years and Turkmenistan reportedly agreed in 2020 to consider lowering prices.
India might now be out of the project entirely as New Delhi’s relations with Islamabad have never been good and are even worse with the Taliban.
The Kazakh and Uzbek foreign ministers have also visited Kabul since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in mid-August, and Meredov’s visit may have also been aimed at firming Turkmenistan’s ties with the new Afghan authorities.
Pivot To The TCP?
But it is odd that Turkmenistan is making an effort to revive TAPI while the possibilities of constructing the TCP seem to have improved significantly.
The TCP aims to carry some 30 bcm from Turkmenistan across the bottom of the Caspian Sea to the pipeline network in Azerbaijan and eventually to Europe.
The European Union has been hoping for years to see the project realized as part of its Southern Gas Corridor (SGC).
With the record gas prices at the moment and fears that the EU is becoming too dependent on Russia as Nord Stream 2 reaches completion, a boost in gas volumes from a different supplier should be seen by the EU and Turkmenistan as a golden opportunity — especially as some of the key obstacles to the TCP’s construction have been removed.
One was the dispute between Turkmenistan, on the east side of the Caspian, and Azerbaijan, on the west side, over three oil and gas fields located halfway between the two countries in the middle of the sea.
That decades-old dispute was resolved in January.
There was also the problem of needing a pipeline that stretched from Azerbaijan to Europe, but the 1,841-kilometer Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) that runs through Turkey was completed in 2018.
The TANAP project foresees expanding pipeline capacity to some 60 bcm annually.
But Azerbaijan does not have enough gas to provide such a volume, so TANAP would have to include Turkmen gas to reach that level.
The SGC pipeline network was completed at the end of 2020, and gas from Azerbaijan’s Caspian field Shah Deniz 2 is already being supplied through the SGC and TANAP to Greece, Albania, and — via the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline — to Italy.
All that is needed is to build the roughly 300-kilometer TCP at an estimated cost that ranges from $5 billion to $8 billion.
A U.S. company called Trans Caspian Resources just proposed an option that would carry smaller volumes of gas but be operational within two years.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Turkmenistan Alan Mustard attended the recent Oil and Gas of Turkmenistan International Conference and suggested an alternative: the Caspian Connector. It could carry some 10-12 bcm of gas annually and, using existing infrastructure, be built for $500-$800 million.
But one major obstacle remains.
Russia and Iran have raised environmental concerns over the construction of a pipeline along the bottom of the Caspian Sea, despite the fact that Kazakhstan has already done so in the northern part of the Caspian. And Russia has constructed longer and deeper pipelines across the bottom of the Black Sea to Turkey and, in the case of Nord Stream 1 and 2, across the bottom of the Baltic Sea (some 1,222 kilometers), making the two lines the longest underwater pipelines in the world.
There was little, however, that Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan could do in the face of Russian and Iranian resistance.
Turkey is a rising power in the world again with its influential roles in the conflicts in Libya and Syria, not to mention the military support it gave Azerbaijan during the recent conflict with Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh. It has even recently supplied armed drones to Ukraine, one of which Kyiv recently used to destroy some artillery of the Russia-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.
Ankara has shown its willingness to stand up to Moscow and Tehran, and if Turkey increases its public support for the TCP that could convince Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan to move forward with the project.
But obtaining Ankara’s support might be the problem for Turkmenistan.
Turkmen officials are urging Turkish authorities to shut down protests in Turkey against the Turkmen government that are led by migrant laborers. It is also seeking to have the activists deported to Turkmenistan.
Ankara was apparently upset when one Turkmen protester was forced into the Turkmen Consulate in Istanbul and beaten in early August.
The Turkish government has been sensitive to such incidents since Saudi journalist and activist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.
There is speculation that Turkey’s reluctance to shut down anti-Turkmen government protests on Turkish territory has led to Ashgabat’s hesitancy in accepting Ankara’s offer to join the Turkic Council, which comprises Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.
But Turkmenistan needs to move on its proposed gas pipelines if the country is ever going to cash in on its extensive gas reserves.
While TAPI seems no closer to being realized than it was 25 years ago, the TCP or some form of it — with a guaranteed market of paying customers — could be completed in the near future.
RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, contributed to this report.