The UN children’s fund said education for every child is ‘the foundation for growth in Afghanistan’
…

Several major Wall Street banks have begun offering to facilitate trades in Russian debt in recent days, according to bank documents seen by Reuters, giving investors another chance to dispose of assets widely seen in the West as toxic. 

Most U.S. and European banks had pulled back from the market in June after the Treasury Department banned U.S. investors from purchasing any Russian security as part of economic sanctions to punish Moscow for invading Ukraine, according to an investor who holds Russian securities and two banking sources. 

Following subsequent guidelines from the Treasury in July that allowed U.S. holders to wind down their positions, the largest Wall Street firms have cautiously returned to the market for Russian government and corporate bonds, according to emails, client notes and other communications from six banks as well as interviews with the sources. 

The banks that are in the market now include JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N, Bank of America Corp BAC.N, Citigroup Inc C.N, Deutsche Bank AG DBKGn.DE, Barclays Plc BARC.L and Jefferies Financial Group Inc JEF.N, the documents show. 

The return of the largest Wall Street firms, the details of the trades they are offering to facilitate, and the precautions they are taking to avoid breaching sanctions are reported here for the first time. 

Bank of America, Barclays, Citi and JPMorgan declined to comment. 

A Jefferies spokesperson said it was “working within global sanctions guidelines to facilitate our clients’ needs to navigate this complicated situation.” 

A source close to Deutsche Bank said the bank trades bonds for clients on a request-only and case-by-case basis to further manage down its Russia risk exposure or that of its non-U.S. clients, but won’t do any new business outside of these two categories. 

Stranded assets 

Some $40 billion of Russian sovereign bonds were outstanding before Russia began what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine in February. Roughly half was held by foreign funds. Many investors got stranded with Russian assets, as their value plummeted, buyers disappeared and sanctions made trading hard. 

In May, two U.S. lawmakers asked JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs Group Inc GS.N for information about trades in Russian debt, saying they may undermine sanctions.  

The following month the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control banned U.S. money managers from buying any Russian debt or stocks in secondary markets, prompting banks to pull back. 

Regulators have since taken steps to help ease the pain for investors. 

The Treasury provided further guidance on July 22 to help settle default insurance payments on Russian bonds. It also clarified that banks could facilitate, clear and settle transactions of Russian securities if this helped U.S. holders wind down their positions.  

Separately, European regulators have also eased rules to allow investors to deal with Russian assets by allowing them to put them into so-called side pockets on a case-by-case basis. 

The price of some Russian bonds has jumped alongside the renewed trading activity since late July. That could make the trades more attractive to investors and also help companies that sold protection against Russian default. 

For example, U.S. bond manager PIMCO — which was on the hook for a payout of around $1 billion after Russia defaulted on its dollar debt in June — could now save around $300 million, one investor estimated. PIMCO declined to comment. 

“There’s some bid emerging for both local and external bonds for the first time in a while,” said Gabriele Foa, portfolio manager of the Global Credit Opportunities Fund at Algebris, who follows the market for Russian securities. “Some banks and brokers are using this bid to facilitate divestment of Russian positions for investors that want to get out.” 

Reuters could not establish who was buying the bonds. 

Lots of rules 

Some banks are offering to trade Russian sovereign and corporate bonds, and some are offering to facilitate trades in bonds denominated in both roubles and U.S. dollars, according to the documents and the investor who holds Russian securities. But they are also demanding additional paperwork from clients and remain averse to taking on risk. 

In a research update to clients on Wednesday, for example, Bank of America declared in capital letters in red: “Bank of America is now facilitating divestment of Russian sovereign and select corporate bonds.” 

But it added that it would be acting as “riskless principal on client facilitation trades,” meaning a situation where a dealer buys a bond and immediately resells it. It also warned there were “a lot of rules around the process” which remained subject to “protocol and attestation.” 

The approaches also differ among banks. In some cases, for example, banks are offering clients to help divest their holdings as well as other types of trades that would reduce exposure to Russian assets, while others are limiting trades to asset disposals only. 

At times they are asking investors to sign documents prior to trade execution that would allow the banks to cancel trades if settlement does not go through and risks leaving the banks with Russian paper on their books, according to one of the documents and the investor. 

One bank warned clients that settlements would take longer than usual. 
…

A year after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, prominent Afghan rights activist Sima Samar is still heartbroken over what happened to her country.

Samar, a former minister of women’s affairs and the first chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, left Kabul in July 2021 for the United States on her first trip after the COVID-19 pandemic, never expecting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to flee the country and the Taliban to take power for the second time soon after on Aug. 15.

“I think it’s a sad anniversary for the majority of people of my country,” Samar said, particularly for the women “who don’t have enough food, who do not know what is the tomorrow for them.”

A visiting scholar at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Kennedy School at Harvard, Samar has written the first draft of an autobiography and is working on a policy paper on customary law relating to Afghan women. She is also trying to get a Green Card, but she said, “I honestly cannot orient myself, where I am, and what I’m doing.”

She wishes she could go home — but she can’t.

Unapologetic human rights advocate

In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Samar recalled a Taliban news conference a few days after they took power when they said if people apologized for past actions they would be forgiven.

“And I said, I should be apologizing because I started schools for the people?” said Samar, a member of Afghanistan’s long-persecuted Hazara minority. “I should apologize because I started hospitals and clinics in Afghanistan? I should apologize because I tried to stop torture of the Taliban? I should apologize to advocate against the death penalty, including (for) the Taliban leadership?”

“All my life I fought for life as a doctor,” she said. “So, I cannot change and support the death penalty. I shouldn’t apologize for those principles of human rights and be punished.”

Samar became an activist as a 23-year-old medical student with an infant son. In 1984, the then-communist government arrested her activist husband, and she never saw him again. She fled to Pakistan with her young son and worked as a doctor for Afghan refugees and started several clinics to care for Afghan women and girls.

Samar remembered the Taliban’s previous rule in the late 1990s, when they largely confined women to their homes, banned television and music, and held public executions. A U.S.-led invasion drove the Taliban from power months after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which al-Qaida orchestrated from Afghanistan while being sheltered by the Taliban.

After the Taliban’s ouster, Samar returned to Afghanistan, moving into the top women’s rights and human rights positions, and over the next 20 years schools and universities were opened for girls, women entered the workforce and politics and became judges.

But Samar said in an AP interview in April 2021 — four months before the Taliban’s second takeover of the country — that the gains were fragile and human rights activists had many enemies in Afghanistan, from militants and warlords to those who wanted to stifle criticism or challenge their power.

Samar said the Afghan government and leadership, especially Ghani, were mainly responsible for the Taliban sweeping into Kabul and taking power. But she also put blame on Afghans “because we were very divided.”

Call for unity, inclusion

In every speech and interview Samar gave nationally and internationally over the years, she said Afghans had to be united and inclusive, and “we have to have the people’s support. Otherwise, we will lose.”

As chair of the Human Rights Commission, she said she repeatedly faced criticism that she was trying to impose Western values on Afghanistan.

“And I kept saying, human rights is not Western values. As a human being, everyone needs to have a shelter … access to education and health services, to security,” she said.

Since their takeover, the Taliban have limited girls’ public education to just six years, restricted women’s work, encouraged them to stay at home, and issued dress codes requiring them to cover their faces.

Samar urged international pressure not only to allow all girls to attend secondary school and university, but to ensure all human rights which are interlinked. And she stressed the importance of education for young boys, who without any schooling, job or skills could be at risk of getting involved in opium production, weapons smuggling or in violence.

She also urged the international community to continue humanitarian programs which are critical to save lives but said they should focus on food-for-work or cash-for-work to end peoples’ total dependency and give them “self-confidence and dignity.”

Samar said Afghan society has changed over the past two decades, with more access to technology, rising education levels among the young and some experience with elections, even if they weren’t free and fair.

She said such achievements leave the possibility of positive change in the future. “Those are the issues that they (the Taliban) cannot control,” she said. “They would like to, but they cannot do it.”

Samar said she hoped for eventual accountability and justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity. “Otherwise, we feel the culture of impunity everywhere, everywhere — and the invasion of Russia to Ukraine is a repetition of Afghanistan’s case,” she said.

Her hope for Afghan women is that they can “live with dignity rather than being a slave of people.”
…

On the eve of the anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Kabul, Afghanistan’s former president on Sunday defended what he said was a split-second decision to flee, saying he wanted to avoid the humiliation of surrender to the insurgents.

Ashraf Ghani also told CNN that on the morning of Aug. 15, 2021, with the Taliban at the gates of the Afghan capital, he was the last one at the presidential palace after his guards had disappeared. He said the defense minister told him earlier that day that Kabul could not be defended.

Ghani had previously sought to justify his actions on the day Kabul fell but offered more details Sunday. He alleged that one of the cooks in the palace had been offered $100,000 to poison him and that he felt his immediate environment was no longer safe.

“The reason I left was because I did not want to give the Taliban and their supporters the pleasure of yet again humiliating an Afghan president and making him sign over the legitimacy of the government,” he said. “I have never been afraid.”

Critics say Ghani’s sudden and secret departure Aug. 15 left the city rudderless as U.S. and NATO forces were in the final stages of their chaotic withdrawal from the country after 20 years.

Ghani also denied persistent allegations that he took tens of millions of dollars in cash with him as he and other officials fled in helicopters.

In a report issued last week, a congressional watchdog said it’s unlikely Ghani and his senior advisers transported that much cash on the escape helicopters.

“The hurried nature of their departure, the emphasis on passengers over cargo, the payload and performance limitations of the helicopters, and the consistent alignment in detailed accounts from witnesses on the ground and in the air all suggest that there was little more than $500,000 in cash on board the helicopters,” wrote the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which has tried to monitor the massive U.S. spending in the country over the years.

The agency added, “It remains a strong possibility that significant amounts of U.S. currency disappeared from Afghan government property in the chaos of the Taliban takeover, including millions from the presidential palace” and the vault of the National Directorate of Security. The report, however, said the watchdog was unable to determine how much money was stolen and by whom.

In the end, the Taliban seized the capital without significant fighting last August, capping a weekslong military blitz in which they rapidly captured provincial capitals without much resistance from the increasingly demoralized Afghan security forces.

In the year since the takeover, the former insurgents have imposed significant restrictions on girls and women, limiting their access to education and work, despite initial promises to the contrary. The Taliban have remained internationally isolated and largely cut off from the flow of international aid enjoyed by the Ghani government. The Taliban have struggled to govern and halt the sharp economic decline that has pushed millions more Afghans into poverty and even hunger.

Despite those challenges, the Taliban-led government planned several events Monday to mark the anniversary, including speeches by Taliban officials and several sports events.
…

Nine global human rights organizations have urged U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to publicly call for an immediate halt to serious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and torture, in Bangladesh, during her visit to the south Asian nation this week.

Bachelet arrived Sunday and during her five-day visit, she will meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, other senior government officials and representatives of the national human rights commission and civil society groups. She will also visit the Rohingya refugee camps in the district of Cox’s Bazar and meet the refugees, NGOs and local officials, a statement from her office said.

Subjected to ethnic violence in neighboring Myanmar, minority Rohingya Muslims have for decades escaped persecution and economic hardship by fleeing to Bangladesh. More than 1.2 million Rohingya refugees now live, mostly in congested shanty colonies, in Cox’s Bazar.

During Bachelet’s visit, the government will seek to “highlight the country’s achievements” in the field of human rights, Shahriar Alam, the junior foreign minister of Bangladesh, said.   

In the past decade, international human rights organizations have published dozens of reports alleging that the police, army, paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion, or RAB, and other security agencies in Bangladesh were involved in extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The RAB is an elite force.

According to the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission, between 2009 and June 2022, at least 2,658 people were killed extrajudicially and 619 were victims of enforced disappearance.  

In December [2021], the United States imposed human-rights-related sanctions on the RAB and six of its former and current officers, noting they were responsible for hundreds of the enforced disappearances and killings.

Bangladeshi authorities deny that the government forces were behind the abuses.  

After the global rights groups urged Bachelet to call for an end to rights abuses in Bangladesh, a statement from the country’s foreign ministry Saturday said some “politically motivated” quarters were politicizing the human rights agenda to “put undue pressure” on the government.  

“Instead of doing this, everyone should engage in sincere dialogue and cooperation to address the human rights issues,” the statement said.

In an August 10 statement, the nine global rights organizations said, “Hundreds of Bangladeshis have been forcibly disappeared, tortured, and killed” since Hasina took office in 2009.  

“High Commissioner Bachelet should encourage the Bangladesh government to create an independent commission of inquiry to investigate all allegations of enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings and custodial deaths,” the statement said.  

Bachelet “should call for an end to the ongoing harassment of human rights defenders and organizations so that they can carry out their work freely and without fear of reprisals.”

The statement from the rights groups also noted how the Hasina-led government has cracked down on opposition political activists and dissidents.  

“If the high commissioner fails to clearly condemn these abuses and seek reform, the ruling Awami League could use her silence to legitimize its abuses and undermine activists,” it said.  

In her meetings with Prime Minister Hasina, High Commissioner Bachelet should not hold back when discussing the huge human rights problems in Bangladesh, Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of the group Human Rights Watch, told VOA.

“She must speak up publicly on the myriad human rights abuses committed daily in Bangladesh by the government and its security forces, starting by demanding the immediate dissolution of the rights-abusing Rapid Action Battalion, which has a long history of torture and extrajudicial executions,” Robertson said.  

“Bachelet should also strongly press the Bangladesh government to end its harassment, intimidation, arrests and jailing of peaceful political opponents, civil society activists, and journalists who dare criticize the prime minister and the ruling party.”  

Families of the victims want Bachelet to raise the issue of the enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killings with the government officials, too.

Afroza Islam Ankhi, a co-founder of Mayer Daak, a platform which represents families of the victims of enforced disappearance, said that the security agencies began threatening and harassing victims’ families instead of investigating the cases impartially.  

“The families of the victims began facing an increased level of intimidation after the U.S. sanctions were imposed on RAB. Politicization has destroyed the state institutions like the judiciary, law-enforcement agencies and the national human rights commission. So, the victims cannot get justice,” Ankhi told VOA.  

Her brother, a leader from the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, remains missing after he was allegedly abducted by RAB in 2013.

“Now someone as highly placed as the U.N. high commissioner of human rights is visiting Bangladesh and she will meet the Bangladeshi high officials. We hope she will be able to take us closer to justice.” 
…

A year into their rule, armed political opposition to the Taliban remains persistent but sporadic, concentrated mostly in northern Afghanistan, and possibly fueled by the Taliban refusal to form an inclusive government and give other entities a share in power. 

“The Taliban continue to hold power almost exclusively. The emergence and persistence of an armed opposition is in large part due to political exclusion,” Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations’ deputy special representative for Afghanistan told the Security Council in June.   

The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, the main group opposing Taliban militarily, tried to carve out a stronghold in its historic base Panjshir valley last year when the Taliban took the country over in a near Blitzkrieg but could not hold out for long. 

“The opposition group is very weak. It only survived two or three weeks in Panjshir valley. So, I think, the Taliban is unfortunately in a stronger position,” said Peter Bergen, vice president for global studies and a fellow at New America, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.       

The NRFA is led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of famed anti-Taliban military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who followers called the Lion of Panjshir. The older Massoud commanded the Northern Alliance and, according to Bergen, received support from several countries including Tajikistan, Iran, Russia, and the United States.      

His son, however, has received nothing from these countries, or any other country for that matter, so far. 

“The Taliban are in a stronger position than they were before 9/11,” Bergen, who has written seven books on terrorism and extremism, told VOA.    

Al-Qaida assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud just two days before the attacks on the United States in September of 2001 that led to the invasion of Afghanistan.      

US weapons         

The weapons and equipment left behind in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Afghanistan last year and the collapse of the Western-backed republic in the country has also put Taliban in a stronger position and allowed them to use these weapons to further strengthen their grasp on power in the country. 

According to the U.S. authorities, the Taliban now have access to weapons worth tens of billions of dollars.      

An Afghan security analyst who, for security reasons, asked not to be named, told VOA, the Taliban are already using these weapons to suppress the armed opposition in the north.         

“The Taliban have the upper hand in terms of military equipment, because according to U.S. officials, modern weapons worth $85 billion have fallen into the hands of this group,” the analyst said.

Bergen said armed opposition to the Taliban is difficult without support from other countries and organizations.       

“I do not see any evidence that outside countries are really supporting the opposition movements,” he said.   

Western diplomats in the region told VOA there is no appetite for supporting an armed resistance against the Taliban.       

Potential failure       

Rand Corporation analyst Idrees Rahmani, who closely follows developments in Afghanistan, seconds Bergen’s assessment and warns that the anti-Taliban opposition will fail if it does not receive foreign support.   

“Every war is won by its logistics and financial support,” Rahmani said.

“Neither Russia nor Iran or Tajikistan are willing to match the support that Taliban are receiving. India alone might not have the interest to invest in their [armed opposition] cause,” Rahmani added.         

Symbolism         

Gianni Koskinas, a senior fellow with the International Security Program at New America, a Washington-based think tank, said he believes the NRFA’s initial fight against the Taliban was more symbolic than real.  He said it all boils down to the NRFA’s long-term strategy.   

“With ISIS [the Islamic State group] as a bigger threat, the Taliban will concentrate on countering this group over the NRFA,” Koskinas said.

“Rather than rushing to failure, the NRFA must take the time to rebuild and establish defensive safe zones, not try to expand territory prematurely,” he added.        

Koskinas, who worked in Afghanistan for years, said he believes that with safe zones and a sanctuary for persecuted former Afghan national security and defense forces, who were disenfranchised after the departure of former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani from the country, the NRFA can really change the military situation its advantage.   

‌”NRFA must create zones outside of Panjshir. This will take time, patience, intelligence, strategy, nuance, and sacrifices,” he added.        

Taliban Recognition  

While the armed opposition has not been able to secure outside support, the Taliban, too, have been unable to gain recognition almost a year into their return to power following a bloody two-decade war that changed them from an insurgent force into a de facto state actor. Even Pakistan, deemed by some as Taliban’s close ally, has not yet hinted at formally recognizing the group as a state actor in Afghanistan.   

Pakistani officials have said in recent months that they told the Taliban government that Islamabad will extend diplomatic recognition only after other nations do.         

In early July, the United States also said no foreign government is contemplating legitimacy for Taliban rule in Afghanistan.        

Donald Lu, U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia said that there is a global consensus when it comes to Taliban recognition.      

“I think there’s actually a global consensus to include Moscow and Beijing and Iran, that it’s too early to look at recognition,” Lu told VOA in a recent interview.           

“Yes, some countries are beginning a very slow process of normalization of relations [with the Taliban]. No one is talking about formal recognition,” he added.   

Pockets of resistance    

The NRFA’s armed groups are militarily active in northern Panjshir province, the neighboring Baghlan province’s Andarab and Khost wa Fereng districts and in the Warsaj district of northern Takhar province.   

There have been reported clashes between the Taliban and NRFA in pockets of the north, with both sides claiming that they caused heavy causalities to the opposing side.      

The NRFA’s media wing has been very active and regularly claims that they have killed, injured, and captured Taliban members, but Taliban officials deny these claims as “baseless.”          

For this story VOA has reached out to Taliban officials for comment. They declined to talk about this issue.      

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, however, has denied clashes between the Taliban and NRFA fighters in Panjshir Province and Andarab area in the past, alleging that “the issues reported by some rebel circles on social media are baseless.”        

“No one should worry. Thousands of forces of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan are present in Panjshir, Takhar and other areas. The enemy will not be allowed to make any move,” Mujahid tweeted in Dari, one of the main languages of Afghanistan, in early May of this year.       

NRFA’s side          

Despite skepticism of some western experts and analysts, and the denial from Taliban about NRFA’s activities and potential, the group has projected confidence and optimism about its struggle.      

“The Taliban remain a terrorist group. Afghans definitely cooperate with the NRF. We have the support of the people of the country,” Sibghatullah Ahmadi, NRFA’s spokesperson told VOA.         

“The resources the Taliban have at their disposal are not more than the resources of the communist government [Soviet Union backed government in the 80s], but the people of Afghanistan were determined and overthrew the communist government,” Ahmadi added.     

Front line accounts   

Major Gen. Jalaluddin Yaftaly, Former Commanding General of the 203 Corp of the former Afghan security forces, told VOA that he is actively leading fighters in north of Afghanistan.        

“Our overall goal is to continue our struggle until our people and nation are rescued from oppression and tyranny,” Yaftaly told VOA.     

“If God makes us victorious and enables us to retake Afghanistan, our government will be a federal and decentralized system,” he added.          

Jamal Andarabi, who uses this pseudonym for security reasons, is a local commander of 15 to 20 armed men in Andarab district of northern Baghlan province spoke with VOA from Andarab area where men under his command actively engage the Taliban.         

“We fight against terrorists to defend our language, ethnicity, geography and ethnic values,” he said.        

“The Taliban, with all the equipment they have, have been defeated in the last few days’ armed clashes [in Andarab district]. We are victorious in the battlefield,” he added.      

Bergen, of Global Strategies, said that the odds favor the Taliban now as they exercise monopoly over the use of force and control almost the entire country. But things could change if the Taliban make the wrong move and Western security is threatened by terror groups emanating from Afghanistan.

VOA Afghan Service contributed to this story.
…

One year after the Taliban’s return to power, the Islamist group’s efforts to manage an economy already beset by drought, the COVID-19 pandemic, and waning confidence in the government it toppled, have largely proven fruitless.

In Afghanistan’s final fiscal year before Ashraf Ghani’s Western-backed coalition government collapsed — 2020-21 — 75% of public expenditures from the country’s $5.5 billion annual budget was drawn from foreign aid. But as the United States exited, international civilian and security aid was abruptly cut off and the new rulers were sanctioned.

The U.S. commandeered the majority of the country’s foreign currency reserves, freezing about $7 billion held in the United States by Kabul’s central bank, linking its release to improvement of women’s rights and the formation of an inclusive government.

While the Taliban and numerous other countries have demanded release of the Afghan-owned reserves, aid initiatives that benefit the Afghan people directly have continued unabated, especially to alleviate suffering caused by food insecurity and natural disasters. Since April 2020, for example, the number of Afghans facing acute food shortages has nearly doubled to 20 million — more than half of the country’s 38.9 million population.

USAID and other international donors have provided bridge funding in the short term to avoid a complete collapse of Afghanistan’s public health system.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that donors contributed $1.67 billion for Afghanistan humanitarian assistance programs in 2021, of which the United States contributed the largest amount, over $425 million. In January 2022, the White House announced an additional $308 million in U.S. humanitarian aid.

The Taliban, however, have proven surprisingly adept at revenue collection, raising $840 million between December 2021 and June 2022, a large share of which (56%) was from customs revenue collection, as well as through the export of coal and fruits to Pakistan.

According to The Economist, researcher David Mansfield, who has studied Afghanistan’s illicit economy for 25 years, estimates the group made between $27.5 million and $35 million annually by taxing the drug trade and about $245 million at checkpoints along main roads, where Taliban fighters extorted fees from truckers moving food and fuel.

As a result, the Taliban’s budget for the current fiscal year — 2022-23 — amounts to $2.6 billion.

Education

Although U.S. and Taliban officials have exchanged proposals for the release of the billions of dollars frozen abroad into a trust fund, significant differences between the sides remain. One sticking point is the Taliban’s commitment to secure Afghans’ rights to education and free speech within parameters of Islamic law.

Immediately after taking over, the Taliban sought to assuage international concerns about the rights of Afghan women, insisting the Islamic Emirate is committed to the rights of women within the framework of sharia law.

The group’s Ministry of Education promised that girls’ secondary schools from grades 7-12 would reopen at the start of the spring semester in March 2022. However, the Taliban abruptly shifted course on March 23, citing a need for additional planning time to designate gender-separated facilities. To date, secondary schoolgirls in most parts of the country are waiting for a decision, while boys’ schools reopened almost immediately after the fall of President Ghani’s administration.

Some families, however, are managing to send their daughters to school. Even as girls’ high schools turned students away in Kabul, some were able to return to classes for the start of the spring semester in the northern cities of Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif. There were also reports from Nawabad in Ghazni province about lessons continuing at schools run by a Swedish NGO called the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA).

There are also several private undertakings aimed at subverting the governmental ban, such as secret schools run by activists like Pashtana Durrani, who told VOA, “I hold four classes for 400 girls in four different regions in two languages.”

These discrepancies seem indicative of what some observers describe as the new government’s largely erratic policymaking as it struggles to adopt a uniform, nationwide approach to key issues, as well as divisions within the Taliban ranks.

When the Taliban were last in power around 5,000 Afghan girls were enrolled in school. By 2018, the number had jumped to 3.8 million.

There were also UNESCO reports of widespread corruption across the school sector.

Media, other freedoms

In their first press conference after seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban said it would welcome a “free and independent press.”

But over the following month, it issued a series of media directives that critics said, in some cases, amounted to prior censorship.

Female journalists are banned from working at state-run media and those in privately run media outlets can appear only with their faces covered; journalists in some provinces must seek permission from local officials before reporting; and with media companies banned from broadcasting music or popular soap operas and entertainment programs, and sources of advertising revenue cut off, many outlets closed.

Afghanistan dropped to 156 out of 180 countries on the RSF World Press Freedom Index, with Reporters Without Borders saying the return to power of the Taliban “has had serious repercussions for the respect of press freedom and the safety of journalists, especially women.”

Apart from media restrictions, a three-day conference of Taliban leadership decided in March that men who work at government jobs must wear beards and Islamic dress to work, that city parks must be gender segregated, and that woman may not travel by air without an accompanying male relative, or mehram. The Taliban also ordered shopkeepers to remove the heads of all mannequins, calling them un-Islamic.

The provincial branch of the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice also banned women from bathhouses in Balkh and Herat provinces. For many of the women in these provinces, their only access to a bath were these hammams.

Foreign relations, internal security

Internally, the Taliban’s greatest threat comes from the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) and al-Qaida.

While the number of bombings has dropped across the country since the Taliban seized power, a school bomb blast killed at least six people in April. There also was a string of bomb attacks in May 2022, some of which the Islamic State claimed responsibility. A Sikh temple was targeted in Kabul in June, killing two and injuring seven, and a bomb blast at a cricket match in Kabul in July left two dead.

On the international front, the Taliban has not been recognized by any country as yet, but the Taliban leadership was invited to an international conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, that included delegates from 30 other countries, including the EU, the U.S. and representatives of the United Nations.

Western governments, however, insist on seeing the Taliban improve its record on women’s and human rights, as well as inclusivity in government, before they can engage in any meaningful way and give the Taliban official recognition.

China has maintained direct communication with the Taliban administration, and both sides have met on several occasions, bilaterally and internationally, to discuss plans for Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Beijing also has been active in various international, multilateral and bilateral talks on Afghan issues with regional governments and international powers.

International organizations like the Aga Khan Development Network continue their work on improving historical structures, parks and structural facilities.

This story originated in VOA’s Urdu service.
…

Afghanistan’s Taliban have declared Monday a “national holiday” to mark one year since they retook power from the then international-backed government amid the precipitous withdrawal of the United States and NATO troops.

The Taliban takeover was swift, hardly facing any resistance from U.S.-trained security forces of the ousted Afghan government and enabling the insurgents to enter the capital, Kabul, on August 15 after overrunning the rest of the country.

“August 15 is a national holiday in the country to mark the first anniversary of the victory of the Afghan jihad [holy war] against the American and its allies’ occupation,” said a brief Taliban announcement Sunday.

U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from the country after almost 20 years of war with the Taliban.

The Islamist group had agreed not to allow Afghanistan to be used by transnational terrorists, including al-Qaida, to target America and its allies. The group also pledged they would respect rights of all Afghans, including women, and not bring back the harsh polices of their previous government in Kabul from 1996-2001.

But since retaking power, the hardline group’s men-only government has significantly rolled back women’s right to work and education and placed restrictions on civil liberties, saying they are in line with Afghan culture and Sharia or Islamic law.

The killing of fugitive al-Qaida leader Aymen al-Zawahiri in a U.S. drone attack last month against his safe house in the heart of the Afghan capital has raised questions about the Taliban’s counterterrorism guarantees.

The Taliban condemned the strike, saying they were not aware of al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul and promised to conduct a “serious” and “comprehensive” investigation into the matter.

The human rights and terrorism-related concerns have so far kept the international community from recognizing the Taliban government and lifting economic sanctions on the group.

The curbs, aid groups say, have deepened an already bad humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan stemming from years of war and persistent drought.

Taliban defend policies

Taliban Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said on the eve of the anniversary of their return to power that their “nascent government” has quickly brought security to the country and it “has begun treading the path of peace, stability and prosperity.”

Balkhi told VOA in a detailed interview that relevant ministries are making all possible efforts and have effectively addressed urgent domestic economic challenges like stabilizing the local currency, creating jobs through increased trade and transit activities.

“It is now for foreign countries, specifically the United States, to do their part in alleviating the pain of Afghans by lifting all unilateral economic sanctions to let the banking and economic sector function optimally,” he added.

Balkhi renewed the demand for Washington to unblock Afghan central bank’s foreign cash reserves, largely held in the U.S., to enable Kabul to stabilize the national economy and encourage foreign investments in the country.

U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in February aimed at unfreezing half of the $7 billion for humanitarian aid to benefit the Afghan people. The rest would be held for ongoing terrorism-related lawsuits in U.S. courts against the Taliban.

Balkhi urged Muslim countries and the world at large to recognize the Taliban government “if they truly seek an Afghanistan that can realize its full potential as a partner in peace, stability and prosperity.”

He dismissed international criticism of restrictions the Taliban have placed on women and claimed no crackdown was underway against media or civil liberties in Afghanistan.

“Just as we do not interfere in the internal affairs of others, we also demand other states not interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and to show respect for a people that are trying to heal organically after decades of foreign imposed prescriptions.”

Deteriorating human rights

The United Nations and global human rights groups in their repeated assessments concluded that the Taliban takeover has seen daily and continuous deterioration in every aspect of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

On Saturday, Taliban security forces in Kabul fired shots into the air and beat women protesters demanding the right to education, work and political participation. The violence received strong condemnation from domestic and international rights activists.

The Taliban have barred most teenage girls from resuming secondary school and women employed in the public sector have been told to stay at home, except for those who work for the ministries of education, health and a few others. They have ordered women to use face coverings in public and banned them from traveling alone beyond 72 kilometers.

The hardline group after taking power in Afghanistan announced, “amnesty for all,” including foreign government and security officials. But critics remain skeptical whether the Taliban have upheld the pledge, citing targeted killings of former officials and other violence against civilians.

Balkhi argued the amnesty was being enforced across the country and noted, however, that “some cases of homicide” had been registered with the ministry of interior. He said “some culprits” had been brought to justice and others were still under investigation.

“These isolated cases have not deterred hundreds of thousands of former administration employees not only staying put but also being integrated into the workforce. Furthermore, hundreds of notorious figures that had earlier left the country have returned to resume their normal lives through the efforts of (a special) reconciliation and return committee,” he said.
…

Gul Agha Jalali used to spend his nights planting bombs — hoping to target an Afghan government soldier or, better still, a foreign serviceman.

These days, the 23-year-old Taliban member is studying English and has enrolled in a computer science course in the capital, Kabul.

“When our country was occupied by infidels, we needed bombs, mortars and guns,” says Jalali, an employee at the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation.

Now there is a greater need for education, he told AFP.

Since the Taliban swept back to power in August last year, hundreds of fighters have returned to school — either on their own or pushed by their commanders. 

The word “Taliban” actually means “students” in Arabic, and the hardline Islamist movement’s name stems from the religious schools in southern Afghanistan it emerged from in the 1990s.

Most Taliban fighters were educated in these madrassas, where studies are largely limited to the Koran and other Islamic themes.

Many conservative Afghan clerics — particularly among the Taliban — are sceptical of more modern education, apart from subjects than can be applied practically, such as engineering or medicine.

“The world is evolving, we need technology and development,” said Jalali, who planted bombs for five years but is now among a dozen Taliban studying computers at the transport ministry.

‘Motivated mujahideen’

The desire of fighters like Jalali to go back to school showed Afghans yearned for education, government spokesman Bilal Karimi said.

“Many motivated mujahideen who had not completed their studies reached out to educational institutions and are now studying their favorite courses,” he told AFP.

But education is a hugely problematic issue in the country, with secondary school girls barred from classes since the Taliban returned to power — and no sign of them being allowed back despite promises from some in the leadership. 

While the earlier curriculum largely remains the same, studies on music and sculpture have been scrapped at schools and universities, which are suffering a paucity of teachers and lecturers following an exodus of Afghanistan’s educated elite.

But some Taliban students, like Jalali, have big plans.

Kabul’s Muslim Institute has a student body of around 3,000 — half of them women — and includes some 300 Taliban fighters, many distinctive with their bushy beards and turbans.

On a recent tour, AFP saw one Taliban fighter retrieve a pistol from a locker room at the end of his lessons — an incongruous sight in a pastel-colored room adorned with posters of smiling co-ed students.

“When they arrive, they hand over their weapons. They don’t use force or take advantage of their position,” said an institute official who asked not to be named.

Desire to study

Amanullah Mubariz was 18 when he joined the Taliban but never gave up his desire to study.

“I applied to a university in India, but I failed my English test,” said Mubariz, now 25, declining to reveal his current position in the Taliban.

“That’s why I enrolled here,” he said, referring to the Muslim Institute.

Mohammad Sabir, in contrast, is happy to admit he works for the Taliban’s intelligence agency despite also being a student at the private Dawat University.

“I resumed my studies this year after the victory of the Islamic Emirate,” he says, his long hair and eyes lined with traditional kohl eyeliner peeking out from beneath a white turban.

Like Jalali, he paused his education to join the Taliban and also planted bombs and carried out ambushes with his brother in Wardak province.

All the Taliban students AFP spoke to said they wanted to use their education to help develop the country, so how do they feel about girls being deprived of that opportunity?

“Personally, as a young man, a student and a member of the Emirate, I think that they have the right to education,” said Mubariz.

“They can serve our country the way we are doing.”

“This country needs them as much as it needs us,” added Jalali.
…

Every sunset on the India-Pakistan border, crowds go wild, and soldiers goose-step in a chest-puffing theatrical ritual symbolizing the countries’ antipathy 75 years after independence, but the display ends with a brisk, brotherly handshake.

Several hours before the ceremony, enthusiastic spectators begin trickling into sitting areas on either side of chunky iron gates separating the nuclear-armed Asian rivals at the Attari-Wagah frontier.

So close that they can see the faces of people on the other side, energetic masters of ceremony and ear-splitting nationalistic songs chivvy up the crowds as Indian and Pakistani flags sway atop immense poles.

On the Indian side there is space for 25,000 spectators — more than on the other side — chanting “India Zindabad” (“long live India”) as a group of women perform with flags and dance wildly to the patriotic playlist.

Then the soldiers arrive, stomping up to the gate, kicking their legs up — the Indians in red-fanned hats and khaki uniforms, the Pakistanis in a dapper black.

The climax is when the gates open. One tall Indian soldier twirls his moustache with menacing intent and flexes his biceps, with equally lofty Pakistani soldiers standing just a couple of feet away.

Then the ceremony, officially known as Beating Retreat, draws to a close with the lowering of the flags and a handshake. The flags are folded, and the massive iron gates clunk shut.

“My blood is boiling. I also want to join the Indian army. Today’s show has filled me with nationalism,” said Mangilal Vishnoi, 22, who traveled from Rajasthan to watch the ceremony with his friends.

Bloody history

India and Pakistan, which celebrate 75 years of independence from Britain next week, share deep cultural and linguistic links, but their history has been mired in violence and bloodshed.

They were partitioned in 1947 into predominantly Hindu India and Muslim-majority Pakistan against the backdrop of communal massacres and the movement of millions of people.

The countries have since fought three wars, two of them over the disputed region of Kashmir, as well as other military clashes.

The latest conflict was in 2019 when India carried out airstrikes inside Pakistan in retaliation for a suicide bombing in Kashmir that killed 40 paramilitaries.

Pakistan launched its own raid the next day and later shot down an Indian fighter jet and captured its pilot, taking the archrivals to the brink of war.

The daily border ritual, which began in 1959, has largely endured, surviving innumerable diplomatic flare-ups and military skirmishes.

It is supposed to be a symbol of cooperation but most of the spectators AFP spoke to said they felt a strong sense of rivalry.

“India and Pakistan can never be friends. Even if they extend an arm of friendship, they will soon stab us behind the back,” said Harsh Sharma, 26, on the Indian side.

“It was like watching an India-Pakistan cricket game. There was so much drama and action,” said housewife Nisha Soni, 25, who had Indian tricolor flags painted on her cheeks.

“In the end I will say India won. We were louder and better in every way.”
…

Sri Lanka said Saturday it has agreed that the Chinese survey vessel Yuan Wang 5 can dock at its southernmost port, the Chinese-run Hambantota on August 16, despite security concerns raised by neighboring India and the United States. 

Foreign security analysts describe the Yuan Wang 5 as one of China’s latest generation space-tracking ships, used to monitor satellite, rocket and intercontinental ballistic missile launches. 

Both China and India have tried to expand their influence in Sri Lanka, which is facing its worst economic crisis in its post-independence history. 

India has provided more help to Sri Lanka this year than any other nation. But it fears its bigger and more powerful rival China will use the Hambantota port near the main Asia-Europe shipping route as a military base. 

Sri Lanka formally handed over commercial activities at the port to a Chinese company in 2017 on a 99-year lease after struggling to repay its debt. 

The Pentagon says Yuan Wang ships are operated by the Strategic Support Force of the People’s Liberation Army. 

On Friday, India rejected claims it has put pressure on Sri Lanka to turn the vessel away. 

“We reject categorically the ‘insinuation’ and such statement about India. Sri Lanka is a sovereign country and makes its own independent decisions,” Arindam Bagchi, a foreign ministry spokesman, said. 
…

A year into the Taliban’s de facto government in Afghanistan, the war-torn country has experienced an economic crisis that has worsened the already dire humanitarian situation there.

The economy collapsed after the Taliban seized power in August 2021 and the international community placed sanctions on the Islamist group and suspended non-humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.

“The sanctions and frozen assets, as well as drought, are contributing significantly, bringing hardships in the form of higher prices,” said Shah Mehrabi, a member of the Supreme Council of the Central Bank of Afghanistan and a professor of economics at Montgomery College in Maryland.

He added that the situation was compounded by increasing global energy and food prices that “are exacerbating the poverty for many ordinary Afghans.”

According to the United Nations, half of the Afghan population, about 19 million people, experience acute food insecurity. Ninety percent of the population faces insufficient food consumption.

The World Bank reported in July that the prices of consumer products such as diesel, flour, rice and sugar in Afghanistan increased 50% from the previous year.

Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis has economic causes, Mehrabi said. “It all boils down to how the economy has been affected since the new regime came into power.”

Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs in Afghanistan after the Taliban took control. Many businesses were closed, and most of the social services were suspended.  

Just two months after the fall of Kabul, the International Monetary Fund predicted the Afghan economy will contract up to 30% by the end of 2021, as nonhumanitarian aid was suspended and foreign assets were frozen.

“The resulting drop in living standards threatens to push millions into poverty and could lead to a humanitarian crisis,” IMF said in October 2021.

Humanitarian assistance

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, addressing a virtual pledging conference in March 2022, said that “without immediate action, we face a starvation and malnutrition crisis in Afghanistan.”

International donors pledged more than $2.4 billion in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, in addition to $1.2 billion that was pledged in September 2021.

The U.S. Treasury Department issued two licenses in September 2021 to authorize humanitarian activities and the delivery of food and medicine to Afghanistan.

In February, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order authorizing the use of $3.5 billion in Afghan central bank reserves for humanitarian purposes via a trust fund, while the remaining half was subject to ongoing litigation by U.S. victims of the September 11 attacks.

“We are urgently working to address concerns about the use of the licensed $3.5 billion in Afghan central bank reserves to ensure, to see to it, that they benefit the people of Afghanistan and not the Taliban,” Ned Price, U.S. State Department spokesperson, said in a news conference on July 19.  

Banking crisis

About $9 billion in the Afghan Central Bank assets — $7 billion in the U.S. and $2 billion in Europe — were frozen as part of the sanctions on the Taliban.

The group has urged the U.S. to “unconditionally” release the frozen assets of Afghanistan held in the U.S.

Mehrabi said that not having access to the reserves hurt Afghan businesses, as it resulted in a liquidity crisis in the banking sector there.

“The commercial banks do not have adequate, again, USD and Afghanis to be able to disburse for import or other purposes that ordinary Afghans or businesses would like to go ahead and engage in,” Mehrabi said.

Ahmad Wali Haqmal, the Taliban’s spokesperson for the Ministry of Finance, told VOA the sanctions on the banking system are the country’s key economic issue.

“Our main problem is the sanctions on our banking system. Most businessmen and ordinary people suffer because they cannot send money in and out [of Afghanistan]. This is a major problem that has to be solved,” he said.

A former employee of the Afghan Ministry of Finance told VOA the Taliban do not have the technical staff to run the economy.

“Most of the educated and skilled Afghans working in the ministry left the country, and the Taliban brought their own people with no skills and even education,” said the former employee of the Afghan Ministry of Finance, who requested anonymity for his safety.

He noted the Taliban are thinking “it is the 1990s when they could run the government on their own.”  

William Byrd, senior Afghanistan expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told VOA the situation is “completely” different from the 1990s when the Taliban were in power.

“The challenge for the Taliban in a way is much greater than it was in the 1990s, because the economy has developed in many ways. Social service is much developed since the ’90s, and there is a lot more room for decline and for things to go wrong,” Byrd emphasized.

International engagement

The donors are “facing a dilemma,” according to Roxanna Shapour of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, adding that they want to assist Afghanistan, but “they are not sure how to engage with the Taliban.”

Shapour noted that the international community does not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government. This “has made the economic and development assistance to the country difficult, and to an extent, impossible,” she said.

She pointed out that many countries provide humanitarian assistance, but it “would not help in changing the economic conditions. … I do not think that the economy is going to get better in the future,” she said.

The World Bank’s latest report stated that “Afghanistan will face a smaller economy, significantly higher rates of poverty and more limited economic opportunities for the 600,000 Afghans reaching working age every year.”  

“Afghanistan’s economic outlook is stark,” the World Bank report stated.

 This story originated in VOA’s Afghan Service.
…

Security forces in Kabul fired shots into the air and beat women protesting Taliban rule Saturday as dozens demanded the right to education, work and political participation on the eve of the first anniversary of the Islamist group’s takeover of Afghanistan.  

Rally participants chanted “we want work, bread, and freedom” as they marched toward the Education Ministry in the Afghan capital before Taliban forces responded violently to the rare anti-government rally.

“August 15 is a black day,” read a banner protesters were carrying as they demanded the right to work and political participation, chanting “Justice, justice.”  

Witness accounts and social media documented many women at the rally not wearing face veils.   

Some of the female protesters who took refuge in nearby shops were chased and beaten by security forces with their rifle butts, witnesses said.  

Heavy gunfire could be heard in social media video of the rally, with Taliban men assaulting female protesters. They also violently prevented Afghan journalists from covering the rally.

Amnesty international expressed concern on Twitter about reported use of “excessive force” by the Taliban to disperse women who were protesting peacefully.

Taliban officials did not immediately comment on the allegations.

The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan last August 15 from the internationally backed Afghan government as U.S.-led and NATO allies withdrew their troops from the country after almost 20 years of war with the Taliban.

The hardline group’s all-male interim government in Kabul has since significantly rolled back women’s rights to work and education, barring most teenage girls from resuming secondary school in a breach of promises the Taliban made to respect rights of all Afghans.

Women employed in the public sector have been told to stay at home, except for those who work for the ministries of education, health and a few others, and must use face coverings in public.

They have also banned women from traveling alone on long trips and require them to fully cover themselves, including their faces, in public.

The restrictions angered female activists and they initially staged small demonstrations against them, but the Taliban used violence and detained organizers, effectively deterring such rallies for months.  

The Taliban defend their policies as being in line with Afghan culture and Shariah or Islamic law.
…

Masoud, who did not want to share his family name for security reasons, is a former Afghan National Army colonel, and on August 15, 2021, when the Taliban took over Afghanistan, he was in uniform and at work. He shares his story of the day Kabul fell.
…

A member of Pakistan’s minority Ahmadi community was stabbed to death in central Punjab province Friday after refusing to chant slogans in praise of a far-right Islamic party.

Police identified the victim as 62-year-old Naseer Ahmad, saying they immediately took the assailant into custody. The fatal attack happened in Rabwah, home to the country’s long-persecuted minority community.

The chief spokesman for the minority group said the victim was waiting at the city’s main bus stop to travel to a graveyard to pay his respects, a ritual for many Ahmadis.

Saleem ud Din said a “religious fanatic” approached and asked Ahmad to raise slogans of a radical Islamic party. He repeatedly attacked Ahmad “with a dagger and killed him for not chanting the slogans,” he added.

The deceased was an active community member, the spokesman added, confirming the assailant had been arrested. Police officials said they had launched an investigation into the fatal stabbing incident.

Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim, but the Pakistani parliament declared them to be non-Muslim in 1974 and further amended its laws in 1984 to prohibit community members from “indirectly or directly posing as Muslims.” The minority sect is also barred from declaring or propagating its faith publicly and building places of worship in Pakistan.

The restrictions, critics say, have fomented both social and legal persecution of the community, leading to the killing of scores of Ahmadis across Pakistan, a Muslim-majority country of about 220 million.

The minority group blames radical Islamic leaders for often publicly denouncing Ahmadis and promising that their killing will earn a place in heaven.

Local and international rights groups have regularly expressed concern about the persecution of Ahmadis and criticized successive Pakistani governments for not doing enough to protect them.

“These repressive laws and policies largely contribute to the systemic and societal discrimination against Ahmadiyya [Ahmadi] Muslims in Pakistan — discrimination that government officials often publicly support and enflame,” the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom said last week. 

The independent bipartisan U.S. government entity, which monitors and reports on threats to religious freedom, said that Pakistani hardline clerics, religious groups, politicians and political parties often use anti-Ahmadi laws as a rallying point.  

“Officials’ use of fiery language incites violence and harassment of Ahmadis, including targeted killings, desecration of graves, demolition of Ahmadiyya mosques, unofficial boycotts of businesses, hate speech including from government officials, and online harassment,” it said.  

Pakistan is often under fire for crimes against members of its religious minorities, including Christians, Ahmadi and Shi’ite Muslims, and Hindus.
…

One year after the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan’s media face censorship, violence and economic hardship, with women’s voices largely silenced.

As the anniversary of the takeover approaches, journalists and media freedom groups including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) assessed the situation for the country’s once-vibrant media.

Separately, journalists who spoke with VOA described restrictive directives and those in remote provinces said conditions are harsher, including media outlets having to seek permission before publishing.

Female journalists are banned from state-run media outlets, and those in the private sector can appear on TV only if their faces are covered. Others say they come under intimidation to stop work.

With media no longer able to broadcast music or popular soap operas and entertainment programs, and sources of advertising revenue cut off, many outlets ceased work.

The Taliban’s rules restricted the free press and paved the way for “repression and persecution,” the media watchdog RSF found in a new report.

The Taliban show “no commitment to press freedom at all,” Pauline Ades-Mevel, a spokesperson for Paris-based RSF, told VOA. “They have taken some very harsh measures against journalists.”

The New York-based CPJ separately found Afghan journalists are “struggling to survive” under censorship, arrests, attacks and restrictions on women.

The result is fear and self-censorship, local watchdogs say.

Journalists “are afraid of the consequences of covering a news story,” a member of an Afghan media watchdog told VOA.

He added that journalists “don’t feel safe” working under the Taliban. “The media cannot operate freely when there is no freedom of expression.”

The Kabul-based advocate asked that neither he nor his organization be named for fear of reprisal.

Since August 2021, the Afghan watchdog he works for documented at least 183 cases of violence and more than 90 arrests. “The perpetrators of around 95% of these cases are the Taliban,” the watchdog representative said.

The advocate believes the true figure is higher but that journalists do not report incidents because the Taliban “make them promise not to share their cases.”

The Taliban, however, deny that journalists are at risk.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA, “In the past, many journalists were killed and many others were imprisoned or faced issues, but it was not like that last year.”

Media repression

For journalists in Afghanistan’s provinces, the restrictions are harsher. Journalists must seek permission to cover certain issues such as protests or security, and women are banned from working in the media.

“Before we cover a story, we have to inform the Taliban’s provincial authorities of the topic and get their permission,” said a journalist in southern Helmand province, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.

“Because of the censorship, we are not allowed to cover security issues,” he told VOA. Such measures, he said, “forced [journalists] to self-censor.”

Spokesperson Mujahid told VOA the directive was to help, not censor, media.

“It was said that the topic and report will be decided by the journalists, and we will help them to find their way [to report] and not face violence.”

The Taliban ordered local media not to broadcast any music or entertainment programs, including foreign soap operas.

But a more worrying aspect, rights advocates say, is the ban on women’s voices in radio.

“We are told that there should be no female voices in our programs,” the Helmand journalist said.

Media closures

In its assessment of the Taliban impact on Afghan media, RSF found only 328 out of 543 media outlets still active. Additionally, 7,098 journalists, including 76% of women working in media, have lost their jobs.

Taliban pressure on media coupled with the worsening economic situation in the country has brought about the closure of media outlets, said Ades-Mevel of RSF.

She told VOA that the situation in Afghanistan is “extremely worrying because we see more and more pressure and censorship taking place in the country.”

A further issue is uncertainty over media laws.

In February, the Taliban said they had no issues with the media law under the former government, and promised to revive the media violations commission to act as a platform for journalists to report attacks and jailings.

“But the Taliban have not fulfilled their promises,” said Gul Mohammad Gran, of the Federation of Journalists and Media Organizations of Afghanistan.

“The Taliban promised that security forces will not interfere in the affairs of media, and all the cases will be dealt with by the commissions,” said Gran. “Unfortunately, this was not the case.”

Gran said that the Taliban impose limitations on whatever is not in line with their views, and “imposes rules over media based on their personal desires and preferences.”

Spokesperson Mujahid told VOA that the Taliban have since reviewed and made amendments to the media law, which is waiting on final approval.

“We want them [the media] to operate in line with Afghanistan’s principles, Islamic values and national interest,” he said.

Mujahid said that the media violation commission would resume its work after the new law is enforced.

Support and training

Before the takeover, most news companies relied on support from international organizations and advertising revenue from the government or privately run companies.

The CPJ report said foreign assistance accounted for up to 45% of the Afghan economy. But with the takeover “that came to an abrupt halt.”

The international community needs to find “creative ways to support the continuing operation of media inside Afghanistan,” said Steven Butler, a senior program consultant at CPJ.

That, he added, could come in the form of financial assistance or training.

Journalists on the ground spoke of how economic hardship impacts their work.

“Unfortunately, our expenses are much greater than our income,” Zahid Shah Angar told VOA.

The founder of the Suli Paigham radio station in eastern Khost said most media outlets in his province have laid off staff.

“We cannot pay them. We lost our income,” he said.

Angar and other Afghan media organizations have been calling on international organizations to support media.

“We have had meetings with national and international organizations, but no one is helping us.”

If the problems are not solved, he said, more outlets will close in the coming months, bringing “grave consequences for journalism in Afghanistan.”

Zeba Khadem from VOA’s Afghan Service contributed to this story.
…

On July 21st, several dozen consular and diplomatic security officers of the U.S. State Department were given the agency’s prestigious Award for Heroism for assisting in the relocation of 124,000 people from Kabul in August 2021, including American citizens, legal permanent residents and tens of thousands of Afghan allies.

“They worked closely with the Department of Defense, and other key agencies, and provided the leadership structure that underpinned and facilitated the department’s operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport between August 15-30,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA.

One of the recipients, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity, likened the award ceremony to “group therapy” that helped put in context his feeling of helplessness during the grueling and dangerous two weeks of airlifting Americans and Afghans as Kabul swiftly fell to the Taliban.

“We really beat ourselves up,” he said. “You disproportionally look at what you couldn’t do, the lives you couldn’t save.”

After the operation ended, he said he worked through post-traumatic stress disorder therapy and spent much of the past year processing the sequence of events that capped the 20-year war with a chaotic withdrawal — bloodied by a suicide attack that killed 180 people, including 13 American troops — and left tens of thousands of Afghan allies behind.

He and others involved in the massive airlift expressed frustration at what they see as the administration’s lack of transparency on the lessons learned from the U.S. military pullout after the country fell so swiftly into the hands of the Taliban.

“I’m really angry that we did that. We put so many people in harm’s way,” he said. “How did that happen? There are so many things that failed leading up to it.”

After-action reports

The State and Defense departments are still conducting internal after-action reports on the withdrawal, according to U.S. officials.

“Once they’re done, we will give you the full — have the full picture in a way that will help inform future operations,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday. “It’s just still underway. Once we have that, we will — we will share our lessons.”

It’s unclear how much of the reports will be unclassified.

“We expect that the agencies will be able to share lessons learned, in a manner consistent with operational classification and security,” John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, told VOA during an August 5 briefing with reporters.

Ahead of the upcoming November midterm elections, the Biden administration appears reluctant to delve into details of what went wrong in the last phase of America’s longest war. The administration has largely stonewalled calls for more transparency, including from congressional Republicans who are demanding a full committee, unclassified hearing open to the public.

“We strongly believe the American people deserve to hear the significant amount of unclassified information about the relevant and important events before and after the disastrous withdrawal,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans said in a June statement.

Republicans have also accused the administration of not cooperating with the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), an agency that provides oversight on the $150 billion Afghanistan reconstruction funds and produces congressionally mandated quarterly audits.

“The Biden administration’s decision to withhold critical information from SIGAR based on shaky legal interpretations is just another transparent attempt to sweep President Biden’s chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan under the rug,” House Foreign Affairs Committee lead Republican Michael McCaul said in a June statement.

In response, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said SIGAR’s latest report on the collapse of the Afghan forces “does not reflect the consensus view” of the administration.

“Many parts of the U.S. government, including the State Department, have unique insights into developments in Afghanistan last year that were not captured in the report. And we don’t concur with many aspects of the report,” Price said.

Lessons from Afghan war

More broadly, there is a general disappointment from the rank-and-file members of the military that “there hasn’t been a more dedicated and resourced effort” to learn from the Afghan war, said Jonathan Schroden, director of the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the Center for Naval Analyses, a nonprofit military research group.

“It’s more important for long-term systemic learning and organizational learning. Revisiting in detail how did we end up in a situation where we had to do that withdrawal, to do an evacuation, is critically important,” he told VOA. “Right now, beyond what SIGAR is doing, there is no effort inside the U.S. government to do that systematically.”

The war in Afghanistan killed more than 2,400 U.S. troops and cost taxpayers $300 million every day for 20 years. A holistic, interagency study that identifies best practices and challenges at various U.S. government entities as well as across the entire operation is crucial, said Mark Jacobson, who helped organize evacuees during the withdrawal and served as a deputy NATO representative in Afghanistan.

Jacobson told VOA there is no interagency lessons-learned process from current and previous administrations, and when individual agencies conduct internal reviews, they are reluctant to share the findings. Often, he said, “avoiding embarrassment is more important than learning the right lessons.”

With the Afghan war spanning Democratic and Republican administrations, the U.S. loss there is “a bipartisan failure,” Schroden said, which means there may not be much appetite for either side to drive review efforts.

“This is a war we lost,” he said. “And it stings both sides of the political aisle pretty badly. And so, some amount of time is likely required to pass before people who were directly involved in the war are no longer in positions of power and it becomes less sensitive to actually look back at what happened and examine it critically.”

In December 2021, Congress established the Afghanistan War Commission, a nonpartisan, independent body tasked with examining all military, intelligence, diplomatic and development activities of the U.S., its allies and partners, from June 2001 to August 2021.

The commission’s 16 members, appointed in April, must submit their final report to appropriate congressional committees within three years of their first meeting and must make public an unclassified version of the undertaking.

Over-the-horizon capability

Administration officials said they will mark the anniversary by honoring “the service and sacrifice of those we lost as well as recognize the many people we saved” and focusing on how the “U.S. is on a stronger strategic footing” by ending the war. They highlighted the recent operation that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri as proof of Washington’s over-the-horizon capabilities.

The strike gave the administration a powerful counterterrorism-focused talking point, said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the South Asia Program at the Wilson Center. It enables them to say that “we’ve left, we’ve brought our troops home, we’ve removed them from harm’s way, but we continue to do everything we can to protect Americans the world over from the threat of terrorism,” he told VOA.

Kugelman said with no known U.S. counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan before the strike that killed al-Zawahiri, the perception was that Washington did not yet have over-the-horizon capacity.

“But we know that it is there now because of what happened with Zawahiri,” he said.

Another factor the White House can leverage to mitigate the political impact of the withdrawal anniversary is President Joe Biden’s “real leadership and deft alliance management” against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, said Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“That would lay to rest growing doubts about Biden’s judgment and competence in foreign policy and restored allies’ faith in U.S. leadership,” he told VOA. “Had Ukraine not occurred, it would have been a very difficult, a much more difficult anniversary.”

For their part, humanitarian groups are using the anniversary of the withdrawal to draw attention to the plight of the Afghan people facing staggering levels of poverty and desperation.

“Afghanistan stands at a precipice, with its people being punished for the Taliban’s takeover of the country,” Neil Turner, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s country director, said in a statement. “Despite repeated calls from humanitarian actors, nothing seems to have changed. Afghanistan’s foreign reserves remain frozen, the Afghan Central Bank is still not functional, and development assistance remains withdrawn.”

Refugee groups are also pushing the administration to speed up the relocation of Afghan allies still left in the country. Biden officials said in July there were 74,274 applicants in the Special Immigrant Visa pipeline, excluding their spouses and children.

VOA’s Cindy Saine and Aline Barros contributed to this report.
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A survey finds that Afghanistan has lost nearly 60 percent of its journalists, especially women reporters, and 40 percent of its national media outlets since the Taliban regained control of the country a year ago.

“All this has happened amid a deep economic crisis and crackdown on press freedom,” according to the survey published by Reporters Without Borders, a global media monitor group known by its French acronym RSF.

The findings have been released in connection with the radical Islamic group’s first year in power in Kabul.

The impoverished, war-torn South Asian nation has lost 219 of the 547 media outlets it used to have prior to August 15, 2021, when the Taliban seized the Afghan capital and subsequently installed an all-male interim government, RSF said. However, it noted that four new media outlets have since been created.

Of the 11,857 journalists tallied prior to the Taliban takeover, a total of 7,098 of them, 55 percent of whom were males, are no longer working in Afghanistan.

The survey noted that women have suffered most in “the carnage inflicted on Afghan journalism.” More than 76 percent of them have lost their jobs and disappeared completely from the media landscape in 11 of the country’s 34 provinces.

“Accusations of ‘immorality or conduct contrary to society’s values’ are widely used as pretexts for harassing women journalists and sending them home,” the report stated. Women TV presenters have been made to cover their faces while on camera.

“Journalism has been decimated during the past year in Afghanistan,” said RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire.

“Media and journalists are being subjected to iniquitous regulations that restrict media freedom and open the way to repression and persecution,” he lamented.

Deloire urged the Taliban to end the violence and harassment inflicted on media workers, and he said they must allow them to do their job unmolested.

Allegations denied

Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the Taliban foreign ministry spokesman, refuted allegations his government is cracking down on dissent or suppressing media freedom in the country.

“In line with international practices, all reporters and networks operating inside a country have to respect and follow the media laws of that country,” Balkhi told VOA.

“The new government of Afghanistan has not requested anything extra nor has it used heavy-handedness in dealing with the media,” he argued.

Last month, the Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, issued a new decree warning that “defaming and criticizing government officials without proof” and “spreading false news and rumors” are forbidden under Islam. It promised unspecified punishment for those who “slander” government employees.

The announcement by the highest Taliban official “is indicative of the determination to suppress press” Afghan media freedom, RSF said.

The survey also cited new economic constraints, such as the termination of international or national funding and the decline in advertising revenue as a result of the economic crisis, for some Afghan media to cease operating.

Of the 2,756 women journalists and media workers employed in Afghanistan prior to August 15, only 656 are still working, with 84.6 percent of them based in the Kabul region.

A large number of Afghan male and female journalists fled the country after the Taliban takeover and as the United States and NATO allies withdrew their troops in mid-August of last year.

Some women journalists, however, decided against leaving the country, RSF said. They include Mean Habib, the director of RouidadNews, a news agency based in the Afghan capital that she created after the August 15 leadership change in Kabul.

“I preferred to stay in my country to report the news and to defend what women had achieved during the past 20 years,” Habib told RSF.

She said living and working conditions for women journalists in Afghanistan had always been difficult, but they are experiencing an “unprecedented situation” under Taliban rule. Female media workers who have the opportunity to work are doing so for a “wretched salary,” Habib lamented.

“They do their duty to report the news on an empty stomach. They work in conditions that are physically and mentally violent and tiring, without any protection. Today, all the associations defending journalists’ rights are made up entirely of men, and work for men!”

Hafizullah Barakzai, who heads the Council of Journalists in Afghanistan, told RSF that the economy was the most important problem facing media outlets and workers. He noted that “the number of cases of violence has decreased compared with recent years, despite the increase in threats during the first months after August 15.”

In 2012, Afghanistan was ranked 150th out of 179 countries in RSF’s Press Freedom Index.

The global monitor group said that the country had risen to 122nd out of 180 countries by 2021, citing a dynamic media landscape and the adoption of legislation protecting journalists. “And in 2022, after losing nearly 40% of its media and more than half of its journalists, it has fallen to 156th.”
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Tourists are returning to the Kashmir Valley in record numbers, three years after the massive security lockdown that accompanied the revocation by New Delhi of the region’s special status. But other sectors of the economy still are struggling, and security remains a concern.

The economic life of India-administered Kashmir was stifled when India’s parliament abruptly moved on August 5, 2019, to remove the region’s political autonomy. Seeking to forestall a violent reaction, the federal government shut down the internet and other forms of communication for months and flooded security forces into what is now ruled as the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

Tourism to the valley, renowned worldwide for its scenic mountains and lakes, collapsed along with the general economy, and was slow to recover. Official figures show that just over 41,000 people visited Kashmir in all of 2020.

But the industry has rebounded spectacularly in recent months, with up to 10,000 people — mostly from other parts of India — arriving on some 100 flights a day to the airport in Srinagar. The federal government reported 10.6 million tourist visits in the first six months of this year.  

Authorities attribute the surge in part to the coronavirus pandemic, which has made foreign travel more difficult.

“People who would otherwise go to Europe and other countries preferred to come to Kashmir [while] restrictions were in force on international travel,” G.N. Itoo, director of Tourism Kashmir, said in an interview in April with VOA.

“Secondly we created good experiences like [the] houseboat festival, Sufi festival, winter carnival and many more, which created a buzz,” Itoo said. 

International businesses are also beginning to reconsider Kashmir. Delegates representing 33 companies from the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia attended a conference in Srinagar in March where investments totaling $380 million were promised.

Responding to a question in the upper house of parliament in New Delhi, Rakesh Sinha, a professor and member of parliament, said Jammu and Kashmir has received investment applications totaling $6.7 billion and that industrial land has been allotted for projects valued at $4.5 billion.  

‘Political coma’

But while the regional government has signed memoranda of understanding with several companies, none of that investment has yet materialized.

“I haven’t come across any company that would have either started their operations or implemented any project in the Kashmir Valley,” Tariq Rashid Ghani, president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Kashmir, told VOA.

Manoj Joshi, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, also remains skeptical.

“I don’t expect much foreign investments coming in. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, there is not too much Indian private investment coming in, either,” he told VOA. 

“The valley is in a state of political coma. It is sufficiently disturbed to prevent any private investor from taking the risk of investing north of the Banihal Pass,” which marks the entrance to the Kashmir Valley. 

Ghani said the flood of tourists has done little to lift other sectors of the economy, in large part because of heavy debts incurred as a result of the back-to-back lockdowns —first over the revocation in 2019 and then over the pandemic.

“There was huge liability on traders associated with tourism, and [they] had to repay loans. We had time and again appealed to the government for the interest waiver or restructuring of the loans, but that never happened,” Ghani lamented.

Other economic hurdles include the worldwide surge of inflation, which has not spared Kashmir. The central government’s National Statistical Office reported a 7.2% inflation rate for the region in June, slightly higher than the 7.01 rate recorded for the country as a whole.

And unemployment remains stubbornly high. The Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, an independent think tank, calculated the region’s unemployment rate in July at 20.2% the second highest of any state or union territory in India.

Nisar Ali, a Kashmir-based economist, told VOA he believes it may be a couple of years before the benefits of the government’s efforts to attract investment to the valley will be felt on the ground.

Problems with internet connectivity have also been a drag on economic recovery. According to the Software Freedom Law Center, an online legal services organization, the Kashmir Valley has had 287 internet cuts in the last five years, with 116 in 2020 alone. The longest, which coincided with the revocation of autonomy in 2019, lasted for 552 days.

Political unrest stemming from the revocation also persists.

The Jammu Kashmir National Conference party reported that its president, Farooq Abdullah, was briefly placed under house arrest after attending a meeting on August 5 where he was quoted as saying the 2019 revocation “marks [a] breach of trust” and is “not acceptable to us.”

A police spokesman called the allegations of Abdullah’s house arrest “completely baseless” and “fake news.”

The revocation was also protested by members of the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party, whose president, Mehbooba Mufti, marked the August 5 anniversary with a tweet saying India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s “malicious designs for J&K have unraveled” and that “the pattern of suppression & fear is now knocking at the door in rest of the country too.”

The low-level insurgency that has long kept Kashmiris on edge has continued, although at a reduced pace since the revocation, with 174 security forces and 110 civilians killed in incidents related to militancy since August 5, 2019, according to police. That is down from 290 security forces and 191 civilian deaths in the previous three years.

According to the South Asian Terrorism Portal, a database tracking terrorism and low-intensity warfare in South Asia, three security forces and three individuals identified as terrorists were killed in July, the lowest number for any month of this year.

However, three soldiers and two attackers were reported killed Thursday in a militant attack on an Indian army post ahead of India’s Independence Day celebrations.
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Former Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa arrived in Thailand on Thursday, according to three Reuters witnesses, as he seeks temporary shelter in a second Southeast Asian country after fleeing his island nation last month amid mass protests.

Rajapaksa arrived at Bangkok’s Don Muang airport on a chartered flight from Singapore after the city-state’s immigration authority said in a statement Thursday that he had left Singapore.

Rajapaksa is expected to stay temporarily in Thailand after fleeing Sri Lanka for Singapore on July 14. He resigned from office shortly afterward following unprecedented unrest over his government’s handling of the worst economic crisis in seven decades, and days after thousands of protesters stormed the president’s official residence and office.

Thai authorities said the former military officer, who is the first Sri Lankan head of state to quit midterm, had no intention of seeking political asylum and would only stay temporarily.

“This is a humanitarian issue and there is an agreement that it’s a temporary stay,” Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters on Wednesday. Rajapaksa could not participate in any political activities while in Thailand, Prayuth said.

Thailand’s Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai said the Sri Lankan government supported Rajapaksa’s trip to Thailand, adding that the former president’s diplomatic passport would allow him to stay for 90 days.

Rajapaksa has made no public appearances or comment since leaving Sri Lanka. Reuters was not able to immediately contact him.

Sri Lanka’s economic crisis is a result of several factors including COVID-19, which battered its tourism-reliant economy and slashed remittances from workers overseas, rising oil prices, populist tax cuts and a seven-month ban on the import of chemical fertilizers last year that devastated agriculture.
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Symphony of Courage tells the story of Farida and Zohra Ahmadi. They were the last students of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music to be evacuated from the country after the Taliban takeover last year. The Afghan National Institute of Music (ANIM) was the country’s only music school, and home to the world-renowned Zohra Orchestra – Afghanistan’s first all-female ensemble. ANIM’s director Dr. Ahmad Sarmast worked with an international team of philanthropists, politicians, and musicians to facilitate their evacuation. After a brief period in Doha, the group traveled together to Lisbon – their new home, where they can perform their music in a free and open society.
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A suicide bombing Thursday at a religious seminary in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, killed a prominent Taliban cleric known for his fiery speeches against Islamic State militants.

A spokesman for the ruling Taliban confirmed the assassination of Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani in what he said was a “brutal enemy attack.”

Bilal Karimi on Twitter described the slain cleric as “the country’s great academic personality.

Reports said the bomber, who had previously lost his leg, detonated explosives hidden in a plastic artificial limb. Taliban authorities said an investigation into the attack was underway.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State took responsibly for the deadly attack on Haqqani. In his speeches, the cleric would regularly challenge Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), an Afghan affiliate of the militant group fighting Taliban rule and carrying out bombings against the country’s minority Shi’ite Muslims.

ISIS-K emerged in Afghanistan in early 2015. It has intensified attacks across the country since the Taliban seized power almost a year ago.

Haqqani had previously survived two unclaimed assassination attempts, including one in neighboring Pakistan. In media interviews, the religious leader had suspected at the time ISIS-K was behind the attacks.

The religious leader, like many senior members of the Afghan Taliban, graduated from Darul UloomHaqqania, a major religious seminary near the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.
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A year after their forces swept through Afghanistan and surged to power, the Taliban still struggle to gain international recognition, even though several countries have engaged with the group in one way or another, especially to respond to an unfolding humanitarian crisis there.

Most recently, Afghanistan made headlines with the U.S. killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul’s residential district, complicating Taliban efforts for recognition.

The Taliban said they were not aware that al-Zawahiri was in Afghanistan.

They said the strike violated both international laws and last year’s deal with the United States on the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Doha Agreement signed in Qatar in February 2020 also called on the Taliban, the then-insurgent group, to keep transnational terrorists from operating in Afghanistan. The U.S. blamed the Taliban for violating the agreement.

“By hosting and sheltering the leader of al-Qaida in Kabul, the Taliban grossly violated the Doha Agreement and repeated assurances to the world that they would not allow Afghan territory to be used by terrorists to threaten the security of other countries,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on August 1. “They also betrayed the Afghan people and their own stated desire for recognition from and normalization with the international community.”

To date, no country has officially recognized the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Nowadays, however, the Taliban can count on a warmer reception in China, Russia and other countries that are on adversarial terms with the West.

Following months of overtures that included handing over the Afghan embassy in Moscow to Taliban representatives as recently as June, Russia hinted at the possibility of formal recognition.

“There is such a possibility,” Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s special envoy in Afghanistan, told Russian state television Channel One Russia. “Its conditions were determined by both the Russian president and foreign minister.” Kabulov further specified the formation of an “inclusive ethnopolitical government” as the first step required to be taken by the Taliban.

Similarly, China has allowed the Taliban to assume control of the Afghan embassy in Beijing. Furthermore, the Chinese have signaled interest in numerous economic initiatives regarding Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, most notably, financial support for the construction of a transnational railway across Afghanistan that would connect Uzbekistan to seaports in Pakistan.

“Beijing wants to be in a position where it is seen as mothering the Taliban regime both economically and politically,” Kabir Taneja, a fellow with the Strategic Studies program at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, told VOA.

The overtures come as China grapples with criticism of its treatment of its Muslim Uyghur minority and others in Xinjiang province. The United States, along with some other Western governments and rights groups, accuses Beijing of genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. China has repeatedly denied the accusations.

Experts say Pakistan also is trying to establish a relationship with the Taliban because of cascading security challenges.

Last year, the Pakistani political and security establishment appeared to openly back the Taliban as then-Prime Minister Imran Khan characterized the insurgent group’s return to power as breaking the “shackles of slavery.” Yet the initial sense of jubilation dissipated with the recognition of the dangers posed by the Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.

“It became obvious very early on that the Taliban’s ideological, organizational, tribal, and personal ties with the TTP, its fellow ideological traveler, would trump any feeling of gratitude it had toward Pakistan for supporting it — diplomatically, militarily, and institutionally — for the last 20 years,” said Claude Rakisits, a senior strategic analyst at the Australian National University. He said the security situation along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is worse than before.

Iran, meanwhile, has kept a relative distance from its eastern neighbor, exhibiting greater ambiguity toward the Taliban. Initial concerns emanating from clashes along the border between the Taliban and Iranian border guards have given way to a modus vivendi that appears to be based on mutually recognized interests. Led by Shia clerics, Iran ascribes to a brand of Islamic ideology that differs from the one embraced by the Sunni Taliban.

Meanwhile, Turkey, which has a majority Muslim population, maintains an embassy in Kabul, but the Taliban have no diplomatic presence in Turkey. Ankara, though, remains involved in economic projects in Afghanistan.

Turkey’s ambassador, Cihad Erginay, joined senior Taliban representatives to attend the recent completion by a Turkish construction company of the second phase of the Kajaki hydroelectric dam in Helmand province at a cost of about $160 million. In addition, Turkey is seeking stability in Afghanistan to stem the flow of Afghans entering Turkey via Iran.

In recent months, Turkish officials say more than 18,000 Afghans have been deported from Turkey.

The United Nations estimates that more than half of Afghanistan’s estimated 40 million population are suffering from acute hunger and urgently need humanitarian aid. Some 1.1 million Afghan children are suffering from malnutrition.

The already bad humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan worsened following the return of the Taliban to power a year ago this month in the wake of international financial sanctions on the group, pushing the national economy to the brink of collapse.

Ayaz Gul in Islamabad and Akmal Dawi contributed to this report.
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As India’s economy grew, the hum of factories turned the sleepy, dusty village of Manesar into a booming industrial hub, cranking out everything from cars and sinks to smartphones and tablets. But jobs have run scarce over the years, prompting more and more workers to line up along the road for work, desperate to earn money.

Every day, Sugna, a young woman in her early 20s who goes by her first name, comes with her husband and two children to the city’s labor chowk — a bazaar at the junction of four roads where hundreds of workers gather daily at daybreak to plead for work. It’s been days since she or her husband got work and she has only 5 rupees (6 cents) in hand.

Scenes like this are an everyday reality for millions of Indians, the most visible signs of economic distress in a country where raging unemployment is worsening insecurity and inequality between the rich and poor. It’s perhaps Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s biggest challenge as the country marks 75 years of independence from British rule on Monday.

“We get work only once or twice a week,” said Sugna, who says she earned barely 2,000 rupees ($25) in the past five months. “What should I do with a life like this? If I live like this, how will my children live any better?” Entire families leave their homes in India’s vast rural hinterlands to camp at such bazaars, found in nearly every city. Out of the many gathered in Manesar recently, only a lucky few got work for the day — digging roads, laying bricks and sweeping up trash for meager pay — about 80% of Indian workers toil in informal jobs including many who are self-employed.

India’s phenomenal transformation from an impoverished nation in 1947 into an emerging global power whose $3 trillion economy is Asia’s third largest has turned it into a major exporter of things like software and vaccines. Millions have escaped poverty into a growing, aspirational middle class as its high-skilled sectors have soared.

“It’s extraordinary — a poor country like India wasn’t expected to succeed in such sectors,” said Nimish Adhia, an economics professor at Manhattanville College. 

This year, the economy is forecast to expand at a 7.4% annual pace, according to the International Monetary Fund, making it one of the world’s fastest growing.

But even as India’s economy swells, so has joblessness. The unemployment rate remains at 7% to 8% in recent months. Only 40% of working age Indians are employed, down from 46% five years ago, the Center for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE) says.

“If you look at a poor person in 1947 and a poor person now, they are far more privileged today. However, if you look at it between the haves and the have nots, that chasm has grown,” said Gayathri Vasudevan, chairperson of LabourNet, a social enterprise.

“While India continues to grow well, that growth is not generating enough jobs — crucially, it is not creating enough good quality jobs,” said Mahesh Vyas, chief executive at CMIE. Only 20% of jobs in India are in the formal sector, with regular wages and security, while most others are precarious and low-quality with few to no benefits.

That’s partly because agriculture remains the mainstay, with about 40% of workers engaged in farming.

As workers lost jobs in cities during the pandemic, many flocked back to farms, pushing up the numbers. “This didn’t necessarily improve productivity — but you’re employed as a farmer. It’s disguised unemployment,” Vyas said.

With independence from Britain in 1947, the country’s leaders faced a formidable task: GDP was a mere 3% of the world’s total, literacy rates stood at 14% and the average life expectancy was 32 years, said Adhia.

By the most recent measures, literacy stands at 74% and life expectancy at 70 years. Dramatic progress came with historic reforms in the 1990s that swept away decades of socialist control over the economy and spurred remarkable growth.

The past few decades inspired comparisons to China as foreign investment poured in, exports thrived and new industries — like information technology — were born. But India, a latecomer to offshoring by Western multinationals, is struggling to create mass employment through manufacturing. And it faces new challenges in plotting a way forward.

Financing has tended to flow into profitable, capital intensive sectors like petrol, metal and chemicals. Industries employing large numbers of workers, like textiles and leather work, have faltered. This trend continued through the pandemic: despite Modi’s 2014 ‘Make in India’ pitch to turn the country into another factory floor for the world, manufacturing now employs around 30 million. In 2017, it employed 50 million, according to CMIE data.

As factory and private sector employment shrink, young jobseekers increasingly are targeting government jobs, coveted for their security, prestige and benefits.

Some, like 21-year-old Sahil Rajput, view such work as a way out of poverty. Rajput has been fervently preparing for a job in the army, working in a low-paid data-entry job to afford private coaching to become a soldier and support his unemployed parents.

But in June, the government overhauled military recruitment to cut costs and modernize, changing long-term postings into four-year contracts after which only 25% of recruits will be retained. That move triggered weeks of protests, with young people setting vehicles on fire.

Rajput knows he might not be able to get a permanent army job. “But I have no other options,” he said. “How can I dream of a future when my present is in tatters?”

The government is banking on technology, a rare bright spot, to create new jobs and opportunities. Two decades ago, India became an outsourcing powerhouse as companies and call centers boomed. An explosion of start-ups and digital innovation aims to recreate that success — “India is now home to 75,000 startups in the 75th year of independence and this is only the beginning,” Minister of Commerce, Piyush Goyal, tweeted recently. More than 740,000 jobs have been created via start-ups, a 110% jump over the last six years, his ministry said.

There’s still a long way to go, in educating and training a labor force qualified for such work. Another worry is the steady retreat of working women in India — from a high of nearly 27% in 2005 to just over 20% in 2021, according to World Bank data.

Meanwhile, the stopgap of farming appears increasingly precarious as climate change brings extreme temperatures, scorching crops.

Sajan Arora, a 28-year-old farmer in India’s breadbasket state of Punjab, can no longer depend on ancestral farmland his family has relied on to survive. He, his wife and seven-month-old daughter, plan to join family in Britain and find work there after selling some land.

“Agriculture has no way forward,” said Arora, saying he will do whatever work he can get, driving a taxi, working in a store or on a construction site.

He’s sad to leave his parents and childhood home behind, but believes the uncertainty of change offers “better prospects” than his current reality.

“If everything was right and well, why would we go? If we want a better life, we will have to leave,” he said.
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