Pakistan said Saturday it will host a conference of foreign ministers from Islamic countries later this month in a bid to avert a looming humanitarian and economic crisis in Afghanistan.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore that the “extraordinary session” of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation is being arranged in Islamabad for December 19 at the request of its current chair, Saudi Arabia.  

He said the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain along with the European Union, the World Bank and representatives of relevant United Nations relief agencies will also be invited.

“The objective of arranging the conference is to draw the international attention to the humanitarian crisis that is neither in the interest of Afghanistan nor the world at large, and can only be averted through collective efforts,” Qureshi said.

“We will also try to mobilize international resources because we need them to avert the crisis,” he said.

The United Nations estimates 22.8 million people, more than half of Afghanistan’s population, are experiencing high levels of acute food shortages stemming from years of war, a severe drought and high levels of poverty.

“To abandon Afghanistan at this stage would be a historic mistake,” Qureshi warned. “Instability could give way to renewed conflict, it could trigger an exodus of refugees to neighboring countries and to you [the West] as well,” he said.

The foreign minister said his government will also invite a high-level delegation from Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban to the OIC meeting and related gatherings in Islamabad.

“We want them to come and directly share the ground situation and their concerns with the participants. The international community and other countries will also be able to share their assessments with them [the Taliban]. We think it can be a helpful exercise,” Qureshi added.  

The OIC-led conference will be the biggest international gathering on Afghanistan since the Taliban took over the country in mid-August on the heels of a U.S.-led foreign troop exit after 20 years.

However, the global community has not yet recognized the Taliban government because of human rights and terrorism concerns.

Washington and European countries have imposed stringent economic sanctions on the Taliban and blocked the Islamist group’s access to billions of dollars in Afghan foreign assets as well as development assistance.  

The sanctions raised prospects of an economic collapse and worsened the humanitarian emergency. The lack of diplomatic recognition of the Taliban government in Kabul has undermined delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.  

Pakistan has already dispatched humanitarian assistance, including food and medicine to Afghanistan, also pledging to send 50,000 tons of wheat. Islamabad has allowed rival India to send 50,000 tons of wheat in humanitarian assistance to neighboring Afghanistan through Pakistani territory.
…

Through clouds of billowing dust, two men circle each other warily before one plunges forward, grabbing his rival’s clothing and, after a brief struggle, deftly tackling him to the ground.

The crowd, arrayed in a circle around them, some sitting on the ground, others standing or clambering onto the backs of rickshaws for a better view in a park in the Afghan capital, erupts in cheers. Victor and vanquished smile good-naturedly, embracing briefly before some of the spectators press banknotes into the winner’s hand. 

The scene is one played out each week after Friday prayers in the sprawling Chaman-e-Huzori park in downtown Kabul, where men — mainly from Afghanistan’s northern provinces — gather to watch and to compete in pahlawani, a traditional form of wrestling. 

Although the Taliban, who took over Afghanistan in mid-August, had previously banned sports when they ruled the country in the 1990s, pahlawani had been exempt even then. Now, just over three months into their new rule of the country, a handful of Taliban police attended the Friday matches as security guards.

The matches are simple affairs. There is no arena other than the broad circle formed by the spectators. The competitors, barefoot in the dust, all use the same tunics, one blue and one white, passed from one athlete to the next for each match. Each competitor represents his province, with the name and province announced to the spectators by the referee.

Each match has four rounds, and the winner is the first who can flip his opponent onto his back. A referee officiates, while judges among the crowd deliver their verdicts in cases when there is no obvious winner. Many end in ties.

“We provide this facility so our people can have some enjoyment,” said Juma Khan, a 58-year-old judge and deputy director of last Friday’s event. A security guard at a market during the day, the former wrestling athlete has been judging competitions for the past 12 years, he said. Just like his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather before him. “It’s our culture.”

Most athletes and spectators spend two to three months in the Afghan capital working — as manual laborers or in hotels, restaurants and markets — before heading back home to their families for a few weeks. 

Pahlawani provides a few hours of much anticipated entertainment. The men gather in the dust-blown field that is Chaman-e-Huzori park at around 2 p.m. every Friday and stay until sunset, with around 10 to 20 young men coming forward from the crowd to compete.

Then, as the sun sets behind Tapai Maranjan hill in the background, the competitors are finished. In the blink of an eye, as billowing dust swirls around speeding rickshaws, their horns blaring, the crowd melts away for another week.
…

As the world races to vaccinate billions more people against COVID-19 while the virus’ new omicron variant spreads, India is testing using drones to deliver vaccines to people in mountainous Jammu and Kashmir, where more than 70% of the population lives in rural areas.

It typically takes a couple hours by road to deliver vaccines from one of the region’s main medical centers in Jammu to a hospital located in Marh, a village in mountains nearby. Last month, officials said the delivery took just 20 minutes by the “Octacopter” drone.

Doctors say immunization campaigns have long been challenged by the region’s mountains and weather, which can thwart efforts to reach those living in remote areas.

Director of Health Services Jammu, Dr. Renu Sharma, told VOA that the trial last month delivering 200 doses gave hope that drones could be a useful delivery option.

“If the project is given [approved] it will be very helpful for remote areas especially in Jammu division given the difficult terrain,” Sharma said.

Other parts of Kashmir remain inaccessible for vehicles at times, making drones a better option.

“The areas like Sikardar, Safaid Aab, and Marno are challenging especially in winters. It takes us six to eight hours on foot from Dawar to reach to these areas,” Bashir Ahmad Peroo, a health worker from Gurez area, told VOA.

A spokesperson for the Directorate of Health Services Kashmir, Dr. Mir Mushtaq, told VOA that doctors now often stock enough medicine in the summer to last the local population all winter. Drones could help bolster supplies during the cold months.

Its creators say the Octacopter can carry a payload of 10 kilograms, with a range of 20 kilometers, and a maximum speed of 36 kph.

India’s CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories developed the Octocopter drones and the country’s minister of state for science and technology, Dr. Jitendra Singh, said they hope they will be able to deliver more than just COVID-19 vaccines, including medical supplies, equipment, and critical packages to remote communities.

Indian health statistics indicate more than 4,400 people have died from coronavirus in Jammu and Kashmir, and doctors say since late last month there has been a rise in the number of new positive tests each day, making the vaccination campaign ever more important. 

 
…

Pakistani mountaineer Shehroze Kashif faced many dangers climbing the planet’s tallest peaks, but his toughest moment came when he passed the corpse of his hero on the savage slopes of K2.

Kashif was 19 years and 138 days old when in July he became the youngest person to summit both Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, and K2, the second-highest.

It was on K2, just below the infamous stretch known as the Bottleneck, that he passed the bodies of Iceland’s John Snorri, Chile’s Juan Pablo Mohr and Pakistani climbing legend Ali Sadpara.

“The most emotional moment for me was going on past those climbers, the dead body of Pakistan’s national hero,” Kashif told AFP in an interview.

Many Pakistanis have crucial roles as high-altitude porters, but Sadpara was one of the few to break into the elite ranks of mostly Western climbers who have long dominated headlines in mountaineering.

He was declared missing along with Snorri and Mohr on Feb. 5.

It was more than five months before their bodies were found, on July 26, and Kashif made his summit push as dawn broke the next morning.

“I got emotional, thinking that they had come with the same passion I had,” Kashif said.

“But then I thought, why not fulfil their unfulfilled dream? And I took their dream with me.”

Savage Mountain

This month,  Guinness World Records officially declared him the youngest person to climb K2 and the youngest to climb both the world’s two highest mountains.

Kashif summited Everest, which at 8,849 meters is Earth’s tallest peak, in May.

But the 8,611-meter K2 — known as the “Savage Mountain” and located near Pakistan’s border with China — is the more brutal summit.

They are “poles apart,” Kashif said, calling K2 a “beast.”

In winter, winds can blow at more than 200 kph and temperatures can drop to minus 60 degrees Celsius.

Kashif suffered snow blindness and frostbite — and said he was lucky his big toe was not amputated.

“My energy was too low, it was a difficult time. … One wrong step and you are history,” he told AFP from his home in Lahore, the subtropical, low-altitude Punjabi city where he was born.

‘Blessings of God’

Kashif was first entranced by the mountains at 11 years old when he spotted the scenic 3,885-meter Himalayan peak Makra while on holiday with his father in northern Pakistan.

“It all started there,” he said.

While standing on top of the world he felt “chosen” — a feeling that he described leaving on the peak, “so others coming behind you can also feel it.”

Now, he said, Everest and K2 are not enough.

He plans to become the youngest person to climb the world’s 14 highest mountains, the only peaks on the planet that are above 8,000 meters.

All lie in Asia, in the Himalayas or the Karakoram range, and five are in Pakistan.

Only around 40 people in history are believed to have climbed all 14. But it can be difficult to verify summit claims and some experts said there could be even fewer.

The youngest is Mingma Gyabu “David” Sherpa, of Nepal, who Guinness World Records said summited them all by age 30.

Kashif still has 10 to go.

He has also climbed Manaslu in Nepal and Broad Peak in Pakistan, the eighth- and 12th-highest mountains respectively — and has given himself until 2024 to summit the rest.

He is well aware of the dangers.

Pakistan mourned the loss of Sadpara, but Kashif also lost a friend, Pakistani-Swiss climber Abdul Waraich, on Everest in May.

Still, he refuses to contemplate an urban life at sea level.

“I think mountains are blessings of God,” he said.

“I feel tired looking at all these concrete buildings, garbage and pollution. I just go where I feel most alive, and I feel mountains are the most suitable place for me.” 

 
…

The U.N. refugee agency warns humanitarian needs in Afghanistan are rising to epic proportions as winter sets in and millions of Afghans face a crisis of hunger and starvation.

Temperatures in Afghanistan are beginning to plunge below freezing and are expected to drop to minus 25 degrees Celsius. The U.N. refugee agency warns some 3.5 million Afghans forcibly displaced by conflict and war are ill-prepared to survive the bitter cold.

UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch says many displaced families lack insulated shelters, warm clothes, and fuel for heating. He says they do not have enough food and they lack medical supplies and other essential relief.

“The humanitarian crisis is escalating daily in Afghanistan. Hunger in the country has reached truly unprecedented levels. Nearly 23 million people—that is 55 percent of the population—are facing extreme levels of hunger, and nearly nine million of them are at risk of famine,” Baloch says.

He recently returned from a lengthy stay in Afghanistan. While there, he says he witnessed heartbreaking scenes of destitution and desperation.

The U.N. spokesman says he has met single mothers with no shelter or food for their children. He says he has met elderly people who have been displaced and are left to take care of orphaned grandchildren. “One single mother that I met, she has a six-month-old baby, a 12-year-old son, a 10-year-old daughter, and two parents to look after because the husband died in the fighting. So, she has to take care of the full family…Her children go hungry. So, the two kids, the 12-year-old and the 10-year-old—they have to work.”

Baloch says malnutrition levels are soaring, with many children ending up in hospitals. He says the condition of some three million malnourished children is very concerning. He warns one million of those children are at imminent risk of dying if they do not urgently receive the support they need.

This year, the UNHCR has assisted some 700,000 displaced Afghans across the country. It currently is reaching nearly 60,000 people every week. Baloch says the race is on to reach more before the winter snows cut off access to many.

He says further support is urgently needed for the UNHCR to continue delivering lifesaving aid this winter and throughout the coming year. The funding needs for this ongoing humanitarian operation, he says, amount to nearly $375 million.
…

A Muslim mob in eastern Pakistan lynched a Sri Lankan man Friday before burning his body for allegedly insulting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Police identified the victim as Priyantha Diyawadana, saying he was working as an export manager at a private sports equipment factory in Sialkot, an industrial city in the country’s most populous Punjab province.

A co-worker reportedly accused the slain foreigner of desecrating and removing posters from factory walls bearing the name of the Prophet Muhammad before informing others about the alleged blasphemy act.

Witnesses and area police officers said factory workers quickly gathered in large numbers and fatally attacked Diyawadana inside the facility.

“They later dragged his body to a nearby road and torched it,” Hasaan Khawar, the Punjab government spokesman, told reporters, while sharing details of the incident.

He said police had launched a high-level investigation into the attack and sent Diyawadana’s body to a local hospital for autopsy.

Khawar said police had already rounded up about 50 people in connection with the violence and security camera video was being used to identify other suspects.

Prime Minister Imran Khan denounced the incident, ordering provincial authorities to quickly investigate and bring those responsible to justice.

Blasphemy is a highly sensitive matter in the predominantly Muslim nation and mob attacks on alleged blasphemers are common, but such violence against foreigners is extremely rare.

Insulting Islam or the Prophet Muhammad carries the death penalty in Pakistan, where mere blasphemy allegations often provoke mob violence and lynching of suspects.

Critics of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws say accusations of insulting Islam are often used to intimidate religious minorities and settle personal scores in the country.

Earlier this week, a mob of thousands of people stormed and burned a police station in the northwestern Pakistani city of Charsadda in an abortive attempt to grab and lynch a mentally unstable detainee accused of desecrating Islam’s holy book, the Quran.

Last month, the United States designated Pakistan, along with nine other countries, as violators of religious freedom, for “having engaged in or tolerated systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.”

The U.S. State Department compiles an annual list of such countries. Other nations listed this year are Russia, China, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Eritrea, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Pakistan rejected the designation as “arbitrary” and the outcome of a “selective assessment,” saying it was against the realities on the ground and raised “serious doubts about the credibility” of the U.S. exercise.
…

Afghanistan’s Taliban government Friday issued a decree on women’s rights, saying women cannot be married off against their will or given away in exchange for peace or to settle feuds.

The religious directive comes as the hardline Islamist group, which took over the conflict-torn country in August, faces international pressure to commit to upholding human rights, especially those of women.

“Adult women’s consent is necessary during Nekah/marriage. No one can force women to marry by coercion or pressure,” said the decree, released to media by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

The Nekah is the Muslim wedding ceremony.

“A woman is not a property, but a noble and free human being; no one can give her to anyone in exchange for peace deal … or to end animosity,” it said, adding that widows must have a share of their late husband’s property.

Mujahid said the Taliban leadership has instructed all relevant Afghan institutions, religious scholars and tribal elders across the country to enforce the rules and promote public awareness about them to prevent “the ongoing oppression” against women.

The decree asked the Supreme Court to issue instructions to all courts across Afghanistan to take into account the rules when deciding cases related to women’s rights, especially those of widows.

The Taliban edict made no mention of girls’ education or women being able to work outside the home.

The ruling Islamist group allowed boys to return to school in September, but girls in many Afghan provinces are still waiting to resume their classes, a situation strongly criticized by domestic and foreign observers.

Taliban leaders have said all Afghan girls will be able to return to school by the new education year starting in March, saying they are making arrangements to put in place a “safe environment” for girls’ education and to make sure there are enough funds available to pay over 200,000 teachers.

The Taliban had previously ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, banning women from leaving the home unless accompanied by a male relative and wore a burqa or veil, covering their full face and head. Young girls were also barred from receiving an education.

Since their return to power in Kabul more than three months ago, the Taliban have repeatedly assured the outside world that they would not reintroduce their previous hardline rule in the country.

The United States and European countries have frozen billions of dollars in Afghan central bank funds and nonhumanitarian aid since the Taliban takeover of the country.

The sanctions have plunged Afghanistan into an economic upheaval, where millions of people already face acute hunger due to years of war, high levels of poverty, and a prolonged drought.

The release of the funds and granting diplomatic recognition to the new Afghan rulers have been linked to women’s rights and governing the country through an inclusive political system, where all segments of the Afghan society have their representation.

Taliban leaders in talks with U.S. officials in Qatar earlier this week again asked for those funds to be released, defending their government as representative of all Afghans. 

Analysts such as former Afghan government official Torek Farhadi remain skeptical about Taliban claims.

“This government is not inclusive. There are no women in it. At the decision-making level, there are no youth and experts. Those who are not Taliban, are not part of the government. The rights of women have yet to be clarified,” he said. 
…

Police complaints filed against an Indian comedian for a monologue he gave on the different facets of India, along with the cancelation of a series of shows that were to be given by two other comics have raised concerns about a growing climate of intolerance in India.

Stand-up comedy has become hugely popular in recent years in a country where young, savvy audiences are growing. However, a swelling tide of nationalism has also brought comedians under fire for jokes that poked fun at politicians, appeared to demean the country, or made references to religion or national icons.

The latest uproar was triggered by a six-minute speech given by one of India’s top comedians, Vir Das, in Washington in November at the end of a show.

He said that he came not from one India but two Indias. “I come from an India where we worship women by day and gang rape them at night,” he said.

“I come from an India where we take pride in being vegetarian, and yet run over the farmers who grow our vegetables,” went another line referring to the deaths of eight people in October when a car linked to a federal minister allegedly ran over several people during a protest of controversial farm laws.

As the speech went viral on social media, many hit out at him for what they said was vilifying the country while others supported him for the hard-hitting satire.

Two people associated with the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party filed police complaints against him – Aditya Jha, a party spokesperson in Delhi, and Ashutosh Dubey, a lawyer who said he is associated with the party. They accused the comedian of making derogatory statements against India and Indian women and maligning India’s image internationally.

Another comedian, Munawar Faruqui, hinted at quitting comedy after his latest show, which was to be given in Bengaluru last Sunday, was canceled after police told organizers it could “disturb public peace and harmony, which may lead to law-and-order problems.”

It was the latest of a dozen shows canceled in various cities during the last two months after Hindu right-wing groups threatened the organizers.

“Hate won, an artist has lost,” Faruqui said on Instagram.

Earlier this year, the comedian was jailed for more than a month over a joke about Hindu gods that he had apparently practiced in rehearsal but did not tell onstage.

Saying that the police had “disgraced” themselves by shutting down his shows, The Indian Express newspaper said in an editorial that, “Faruqui and the show’s organizers found they could not depend on what is taken for granted in functional democracies — that the state would defend their right to stage a show against a mob.” The newspaper said that “The political class, irrespective of the party in office, has silently allowed this campaign to grow louder.”

Another comic, Kunal Kamra, said Thursday that his shows in Bengaluru scheduled for later this month had also been canceled, apparently due to threats made to shut down the venue if he performed. The comedian has been critical of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He shrugs aside the cancelations, saying “I don’t see myself as a victim. Whatever experience a comedian goes through, it is all to get a better insight, get a better joke.”

‘Outrage culture’

But Kamra said the new climate is causing problems for younger comedians.

“They tell me they have to figure out what kind of comedians they have to become to remain sellable without facing these kind of hurdles,” he said.

In the present atmosphere, he said, some comedians even want to run their jokes past lawyers.

Many blame the targeting of comedians on what they call a growing “outrage culture.”

“This intolerance gets highlighted because of social media, so more people want to add their opinion and validate that outrage. And what happens is that often jokes are taken out of context,” said Balram Singh Ghai, who runs The Habitat, a venue in Mumbai that has hosted many stand-up comics and other entertainers.

Ghai has experienced the outrage culture firsthand.

In 2017, his venue was targeted by a mob that misunderstood a joke by a stand-up comic that referred to a 17th century king, Shivaji, now seen as a symbol of Hindu identity. In 2020, about a dozen people barged into the venue, again protesting over another stand-up comedian’s reference to the same king.

“They cannot find the artiste so they target the brick-and-mortar venue,” he said.

He is not deterred at hosting more shows saying that “we have to hold ground.”

There is concern, though, that the space for political and social satire is shrinking in the world’s most populous democracy, putting entertainers under pressure.

“Rulers the world over seldom liked jokes targeting them, but we have very humorless people in power,” said author and political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.

“They constantly require people to get angry. And stand-up comics have vast reach, so they are targeted,” he said.

Following the backlash that Vir Das’ speech on the different facets of India triggered, he defended his show saying his intention was to remind that India, despite its issues, was “great.”

“The video is a satire about the duality of two very separate Indias that do different things. Like any nation, it has light and dark, good and evil within it. None of this is a secret,” he said in a statement. 
…

India has detected two cases of the omicron variant in the southern state of Karnataka, health officials said on Thursday, and urged people to get vaccinated as the country braces to deal with the new threat.

Two men, 46 and 66, who tested positive for the new coronavirus variant had come from overseas. Officials did not disclose whether they were Indian or foreign nationals to protect their privacy.

They said the infected persons had “mild symptoms” and all those who had been in contact with them have been traced and are being tested for the variant that is causing global concern.

“We need not panic, but awareness is the need of the hour,” Balram Bhargava, the head of the Indian Council of Medical Research told a news conference.

The omicron variant has been found in India at a time when coronavirus cases have reduced dramatically in the country after it was ravaged by a deadly second wave caused by the highly transmissible delta variant in April and May.

The World Health Organization has warned that omicron poses a high infection risk around the globe.

On Wednesday, India put on hold plans to restart international flights from December 15, although it has not imposed a blanket travel ban on any country.

It has also tightened testing and quarantine norms for travelers from overseas—those arriving from countries identified as “at risk” will be tested on arrival and cannot leave the airport without their test results.

Mumbai, one of the cities that was worst hit by the pandemic, has imposed mandatory weeklong quarantines for passengers coming from “at risk” countries.

“We are immediately checking suspicious cases and conducting genome sequencing,” Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya told Parliament on Tuesday. “We have learned a lot during the COVID crisis. Today, we have a lot of resources and laboratories. We can manage any situation.”

The government, however, has indicated that it is not contemplating any drastic curbs in the wake of the omicron variant arriving in India, where a strict lockdown last year had decimated the economy.

But officials are urging people to get inoculated. “Vaccination is the most critical tool to fight this virus and this is a tool we have in plenty,” Lav Agarwal, joint health secretary said referring to the millions of vaccine doses being produced in the country.

Although there has been no widespread vaccine hesitancy in India, public health experts say that the drastic reduction in cases in recent months had led to complacency among many people, who are not coming forth to get their second doses. While 49% of Indians are fully inoculated, as many as 84% in the country of 1.3 billion have only got one shot.

India is not yet administering the vaccine to those under 18 or giving booster shots, saying the first priority is to ensure that all eligible people first get vaccinated.

For days now, India, which is the world’s second worst-hit country by the pandemic, has been reporting less than 10,000 new infections a day. But public health experts warned that the arrival of the new variant in India would mean that the number of cases would rise.

“The variant was bound to slip through sooner or later, because travel bans don’t work,” said Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. “There will be some pressure on the health system, and plans are being made to ramp up hospital capacity. But although it is too early to say, so far most of the indications are that omicron is only causing mild illness.”

Experts are still assessing the new variant for risk of higher transmission and how it reacts to vaccines.
…

The United Nations is appealing for a record $41 billion to help 183 million of the world’s most vulnerable people suffering from multiple crises, including poverty, hunger, conflict, and the impact of COVID-19.

U.N. officials report an estimated 274 million people worldwide will require emergency aid and protection next year. This is a 17-percent increase from 2021.

U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths cites long lasting conflicts, political instability, failing economies, climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic as the main drivers of need.

“There are 45 million people at risk of famine worldwide. One percent of humanity is displaced, and it would be no surprise to all of us that women and girls continue to suffer the most, just as civilians continue to suffer the most in war,” he said.

Griffiths said humanitarian aid can limit the worst consequences of existing and emerging crises. For example, he said U.N. aid brought back half a million people from the brink of famine in South Sudan this year. He said aid agencies delivered health care for 10 million people in Yemen and helped vaccinate millions of others against killer diseases in Myanmar.

While aid does save lives, he notes it is no solution. He said humanitarian aid does not replace development assistance.

“And we see in many countries—Afghanistan is just one most recent example. Humanitarian assistance is not a remedy for the people of Afghanistan. It is not the way to stabilize societies. One of the tragedies of the situation in Ethiopia that we see now as a result of that conflict, is the erosion of the development gains over the last 40 years,” he said.

Griffiths considers the crisis in Ethiopia to be the most alarming in terms of immediate emergency needs. He notes nine million people in northern Ethiopia’s Amhara, Afar and Tigray regions are seriously short of food.

Of those, he says five million people in Tigray are suffering from acute hunger, with 400,000 on the verge of famine. He said he is very worried about the rebel military advance on the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, warning it will have a seismic effect on the rest of the country, engulfing the entire region.
…

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban criticized the United Nations Thursday for postponing a decision on who would represent the country at the world body.

“This decision is not based on legal rules and justice because they have deprived the people of Afghanistan of their legitimate right,” Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s permanent representative-designate to the U.N., said in a statement posted on Twitter.

“We hope that this right is handed over to the representative of the government of Afghanistan in the near future so that we can be in a position to resolve issues of the people of Afghanistan effectively and efficiently and maintain positive interaction with the world,” Shaheen wrote.

The U.N. Credentials Committee, which approves each member state’s representation, held closed-door discussions Wednesday on the requests by the Taliban and military junta ruling Myanmar to replace the envoys of the governments they had ousted.

“The committee has decided to defer its decision of the credentials in these two situations,” Swedish U.N. Ambassador Anna Karin Enestrom, who heads the nine-member committee, told reporters following members’ closed-door discussions.

The decision means the Taliban and Myanmar’s junta will not be allowed to represent their countries for now at the United Nations.

The Islamist Taliban seized power in mid-August from the Western-backed previous Afghan government as the United States and allied troops withdrew from the country after two decades of war.

Myanmar’s military junta seized power in a coup in February. 

Neither regime has received international recognition as both are considered pariahs by the world at large.

The international community is pressing the Taliban to install an inclusive government and protect rights of women as well as Afghan minorities.

The interim all-male Taliban government mostly consists of members of the hardline group and some of them are on U.N. sanctions lists. The hardline group dismisses criticism of its government as unjust and calls it representative of all Afghans.

The United States and European countries imposed stringent economic sanctions on the Taliban after they took control of the country and blocked the group’s access to billions of dollars in Afghan foreign assets.

The punitive action has plunged Afghanistan into economic upheavals, worsening a humanitarian crisis that stems from years of war, poverty and a prolonged drought.

The lack of legitimacy recognition of the Taliban government is hampering global efforts to send urgently needed humanitarian assistance to the country where the U.N. estimates nearly 23 million Afghans will suffer from acute hunger this winter.
…

Afghanistan’s Taliban and Iran confirmed Wednesday that clashes had broken out between the border security forces of the two countries, but neither side reported any casualties.

In a late-night statement, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said “a misunderstanding at the local level” triggered the conflict near the Afghan border province of Nimruz. 

Mujahid said “the situation is now under control with the understanding of both sides.” He added that Taliban leaders have issued the “necessary instructions” to prevent such misunderstandings from happening again. 

Iran’s media blamed the Taliban for starting the conflict by opening fire on an Iranian post earlier Wednesday over confusion about the border demarcation. 

“The clashes stopped, and Iran is discussing the matter with the Taliban,” the Tasnim News Agency said.

The news agency rejected as false the reports that the Taliban had captured an Iranian border post during the armed conflict. 

The Afghanistan-Iran border has active informal crossings that smugglers use for international human and drug trafficking, which is a source of bilateral tensions. 

Aid agencies say more than 300,000 Afghans have fled to Iran using these illegal routes since the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August. 

Tehran has maintained good relations and close contacts with the new Taliban government in Afghanistan. 

Iran is among the few countries, including China, Russia, Pakistan and Turkey, that has kept its embassy open in Kabul after the Islamist group seized control of the war-torn country from the Western-backed former Afghan government three months ago. 

 
…

The U.N. committee that approves the credentials of representatives at the world body decided Wednesday to postpone a decision on who will represent Myanmar and Afghanistan.

“I can confirm the Credentials Committee had its meeting to consider credentials of U.N. member states, including Afghanistan and Myanmar,” Swedish U.N. Ambassador Anna Karin Enestrom, who heads the nine-member committee, told reporters following members’ closed-door discussions. “The committee has decided to defer its decision of the credentials in these two situations.”

She said a report that will go to the General Assembly will be made public, but she declined to say when.

Myanmar’s military junta, which seized power in a coup on February 1, wants to replace the envoy of the democratically elected government with one of its own. Afghanistan’s Taliban, who took power after the previous government collapsed, seek to do the same. For now, they will not get to name their own envoys.

Neither group has received international recognition as those countries’ formal governments, complicating the committee’s decision process.

Nine countries sit on the Credentials Committee. The current members are the Bahamas, Bhutan, Chile, China, Namibia, Russia, Sierra Leone, Sweden and the United States. The committee’s decisions are normally reached by consensus.
…

India has announced precautionary measures to further mitigate the spread of COVID-19 amid the emergence of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, which has now appeared in nearly 25 countries, including the United States.

While India has not yet reported any cases of the new variant, the country said it was not weakening its fight against COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The Ministry of Health issued new guidelines, which took effect Wednesday, for international travelers. Ahead of arrival in India, they will have to upload a record of their travel history from the past 14 days to an online portal. They will also have to upload proof of a negative RT-PCR test, which would be taken 72 hours before their journey.

Passengers arriving from countries designated as “at risk” by the ministry, which include all European countries, South Africa, Brazil and China, among others, will have to take another COVID-19 test and wait for results before leaving the airport or boarding a connecting flight.

Passengers who test positive will have to quarantine for seven days and retest on the eighth day after arrival.

Six test positive

Following the instatement of these guidelines, six passengers, out of nearly 3,500 on 11 international flights from “at risk” countries, tested positive for COVID-19, according to a press release from the Health Ministry.

It is not clear when scheduled commercial international flights will resume. According to a notice released by the directorate general of civil aviation in response to the omicron variant, these flights will restart in “due course.”

Increased testing is also a priority across the country. On Tuesday, the Health Ministry directed states to conduct more COVID-19 testing, after testing decreased the prior week, according to the Reuters news agency.

Tests per day

Around 1 million tests have been conducted each day across the country in the past few weeks, but Reuters reported that this was less than half the testing capacity.

The Health Ministry warned state governments that this decline in testing would be problematic for the country’s fight against the pandemic.

In a letter to the northeastern state of Nagaland, which decreased testing by over a third in two months, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote that decreased testing would make it “very difficult to determine the true level of infection spread in a geography,” according to Reuters.

“With a majority of countries seeing multiple surges in COVID cases in recent times and a few developed countries facing even fourth and fifth waves despite high levels of COVID vaccination, there is a need for continued vigil given the unpredictable and contagious nature of the disease,” Bhushan wrote.

Some cities have also postponed the opening of schools to mitigate the virus’s spread. Reuters reported that the Mumbai municipal corporation announced it was delaying schools’ reopening for younger children until December 15. The city of Pune is also holding off students’ return to school.

Active cases decline

Currently, there are 99,023 active cases of COVID-19 in India, a decrease of 1,520 from Tuesday, according to data from the Health Ministry. Deaths, however, increased by 267, bringing the death toll to 469,247.

More than 1.2 billion vaccines have been distributed across the country.

The situation in India has improved dramatically since April and May, when the delta variant of the coronavirus ripped through the country, creating a massive second wave of the virus’s spread.

At the height of the delta variant’s spread, more than 400,000 new cases were being reported daily. The situation severely strained the country’s health systems, and the deaths of loved ones became a part of everyday life.

India’s new daily case average has since fallen, to 8,716 new infections, according to Reuters. This average is just 2% of the highest daily average that was reported on May 8.

Despite the improvement, India’s total infections rose to 34.6 million on Tuesday.
…

High school girls are sitting at home almost everywhere in Afghanistan, forbidden to attend class by the Taliban rulers. But there’s one major exception.

For weeks, girls in the western province of Herat have been back in high school classrooms — the fruit of a unique, concerted effort by teachers and parents to persuade local Taliban administrators to allow them to reopen.

Taliban officials never formally approved the reopening after the lobbying campaign, but they also didn’t prevent it either when teachers and parents started classes on their own in early October.

“Parents, students and teachers joined hand in hand to do this,” said Mohammed Saber Meshaal, the head of the Herat teachers’ union who helped organize the campaign. “This is the only place where community activists and teachers took the risk of staying and talking to the Taliban.”

The success in Herat highlights a significant difference in the Taliban’s current rule over Afghanistan from their previous one in the late 1990s. Back then, the militants were uncompromising in their hard-line ideology, banning women from public life and work and barring all girls from education. They used force and brutal punishments to enforce the rules.

This time, they appear to recognize they cannot be as ruthless in an Afghanistan that has changed dramatically in the past 20 years. They have imposed some old rules but have been ambiguous about what is allowed and what is not. The ambiguity might aim to avoid alienating the public as the Taliban wrestle with a near-total economic collapse, a shutdown in international funding, an alarming rise in hunger and a dangerous insurgency by Islamic State group militants.

That has left small margins where Afghans can try to push back.

When the Taliban seized power in August, most schools were closed because of COVID-19. Under heavy international pressure, the Taliban soon reopened schools for girls in grades 1-6, along with boys’ schools at all levels.

But they have not allowed girls in grades 7-12 to return, saying they must first ensure classes are held in an “Islamic manner.” The Taliban also barred most women from government jobs, their largest place of employment.

In Herat province, however, teachers quickly began to organize.

“When the Taliban came, we were very worried, because of everything before,” said Basira Basiratkhah, principal of the Tajrobawai Girls School in Herat, the provincial capital.

Teachers union officials met with the Taliban governor and head of the education department. They didn’t raise issue of girls schools at first, focusing on building a relationship until “the Taliban came to see that we represent the community,” Meshaal said.

When teachers did ask for a reopening, Taliban officials balked, saying they could not allow it without an order from the government in Kabul. The teachers kept pressing. About 40 female principals, including Basiratkhah, met with senior Taliban education officials in September to address their main concerns.

“We assured them that the classes are segregated, with only women teachers, and the girls wear proper hijab,” Basiratkhah said. “We don’t need to change anything. We are Muslims and we already observe everything Islam requires.”

By October, the teachers felt they had the Taliban’s tacit agreement not to stand in the way. Teachers began spreading the word on Facebook pages and messaging app channels that girls’ high schools would reopen Oct. 3. Parents created a telephone chain to pass along the news, and students told classmates.

Mastoura, who has two daughters attending Tajrobawai in the first and eighth grades, called other parents, urging them to bring their girls to school. Some worried the Taliban would harass the girls or that militants might attack. Mastoura and other women still escort their daughters to school daily.

“We had concerns, and we have them still,” said Mastoura, who like many Afghans uses one name. “But daughters must get an education. Without education, your life is held back.”

Fadieh Ismailzadeh, a 14-year-old in the ninth grade, said she cried with happiness at the news. “We had lost all hope that schools would reopen,” she said.

Not all the students showed up when the doors opened at Tajrobawai. But as parents became more confident, classes filled after a few days, Basiratkhah said. About 3,900 students are in grades 1-12.

On a recent day, girls in a 10th grade chemistry class took notes as a teacher explained the elements that make up water. Lines of younger students marched through the halls to the schoolyard.

Shehabeddin Saqeb, the Taliban education director for Herat province, insists the group has no problem with girls going to school.

“We openly tell everyone that they should come to school,” he told The Associated Press. “The schools are open without any problem. We never issued any official order saying high-school aged girls should not go to school.”

Herat is the only place where girls’ high schools are open across the province, although schools also have reopened in a few individual districts in northern Afghanistan, including the city of Mazar-e Sharif.

Meshaal pointed to changes within the Taliban, saying some factions are more open. “They understand that people will resist on the subject of education.”

He said the Taliban are not corrupt, unlike the ousted, internationally backed government.

“With the previous government, if we proposed something for the good of the schools, they would throw the idea into the trash because they couldn’t profit from it,” he said.

“The Taliban spent all their time in the mountains fighting. They don’t know administration. So when we meet them, we try to give them advice and, after negotiations, they start to come around,” he said.

Still, teachers are struggling. Like other government employees, they have not been paid for months. The education department has not provided funding for other needs like maintenance and supplies, Meshaal said.

And the opening of girls’ high school in Herat remains an exception. Other parts of the country have had less success.

Teachers in the southern city of Kandahar approached local Taliban officials about reopening girls’ high schools but were refused, said Fahima Popal, principal of Hino No. 1 High School for girls. Officials said they could do nothing without orders from the central Education Ministry. In the meantime, Popal said parents have been asking her when their daughters can return to class.

“We hope that one day we’ll have good news for them,” Popal said. But she said she believes it is better to wait for the central government to act rather than repeat the Herat experiment. If provincial authorities allow a reopening, the ministry could reverse their decision, which “would hurt students and teachers,” she said.

A full return of girls is a top demand of the international community and likely must take place before U.N. agencies will agree to pay teachers’ salaries directly.

So far, the Taliban have refused to set a timetable and most schools are starting a winter break until March. In a speech Saturday, Taliban Prime Minister Mohammed Hassan Akhund insisted “women are already getting an education,” adding only: “There is hope to broaden it, as God allows.”
…

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and the United States wrapped up two days of meetings in Qatar on Tuesday, with the Islamist group saying its delegates urged U.S. officials to unfreeze Afghan state assets and remove sanctions. 

The discussions took place amid growing appeals by aid groups to international donors to scale up financial aid to Afghanistan, where the United Nations says more than half the population is suffering from acute hunger this winter. 

U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West and Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi led their respective delegations at the talks in Doha, the Qatari capital. 

Taliban Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said the two sides discussed and exchanged views on political, economic, health, education, security and humanitarian issues. 

“The Afghan side assured them about security, urged immediate unconditional unfreezing of Afghan reserves, ending of sanctions & blacklists, & disconnecting humanitarian issues from political considerations,” Balkhi tweeted. “Overall the sessions were positive and both sides agreed to continue such meetings moving forward.” 

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. side on the outcome of the talks.

Washington had said in the run-up to the Doha meeting that the focus of the talks would be counterterrorism, safe passage for U.S. citizens and at-risk Afghans, humanitarian assistance and the economic situation of the country. 

The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan from the Western-backed former government in August as U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from the country after 20 years. It prompted Washington and allied countries to suspend financial assistance, freeze some $9.5 billon in Afghan central bank assets and impose stringent sanctions on the Taliban. 

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund also halted financial aid programs for Kabul.

The abrupt disruption of foreign development support has plunged the Afghan economy into free-fall, with the financial sector choked government employees remain unpaid, including those in health and education sectors, and trade activities almost halted.

The Taliban have warned the deepening economic crisis could prompt a mass exodus and refugee problems for the world if economic sanctions are not lifted and Afghan assets remain frozen. 

The international community has not recognized the Taliban interim government, citing a lack of inclusivity and human rights as well as terrorism concerns.

The Islamist group insists its administration has brought peace and security to most of Afghanistan in a short period of time and it is determined to work with the international community to move the poverty-stricken country toward economic stability.

But critics are skeptical about those assurances, citing reports of revenge killings of former officials by Taliban forces and restrictions imposed on female participation in Afghan television programs.

 
…

ccording to the group Human Rights Watch, the Taliban have carried out hundreds of summary executions and forced disappearances in a series of revenge attacks since seizing power in Afghanistan in August following the withdrawal of Western forces. Henry Ridgwell reports.
…

Taliban forces have carried out more than 100 summary executions and forced disappearances in just four Afghan provinces, in a series of revenge attacks since the militant group seized power in August following the withdrawal of Western forces, according to Human Rights Watch. 

The attacks were documented in Ghazni, Helmand, Kandahar, and Kunduz provinces between August and the end of October, but it’s believed such incidents have occurred across Afghanistan.

“They were targeting the people they had fought with. And many of the cases we investigated were people really on the front lines, people who were known to the Taliban in particular localities,” said report author Patricia Gossman, in an interview with VOA.

Revenge 

She said the attacks have taken place despite Taliban promises that they would not seek revenge.

“They offered an amnesty; they have claimed this from their senior officials in Kabul. But what we see on the ground is in fact it doesn’t apply, at least for some people. They are deliberately going after people either based on personal relationships and enmities or because of the role they played,” Gossman said.

Researchers gathered evidence from 67 in-person and telephone interviews with witnesses, relatives, former government officials and Taliban officials.

Employment records 

The report says the Taliban used employment records left behind by the former government to identify people for arrest and execution.

“What started out maybe as a kind of rush maybe of initial revenge killings in the first weeks, now seems to be much more deliberate. It’s spread to other provinces and it seems part of maybe a strategy to ensure that there isn’t any opposition remobilizing against them,” Gossman told VOA. 

Human Rights Watch notes that the Taliban leadership directed members of surrendering Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) units to register with them in order to receive a letter guaranteeing their safety. “However, the Taliban have used these screenings to detain and summarily execute or forcibly disappear individuals within days of their registration, leaving their bodies for their relatives or communities to find,” the report says.

It cites the death of Baz Muhammad, who had been employed in Kandahar province by the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the former Afghan state intelligence agency. 

“Around September 30, Taliban forces came to his house in Kandahar city and arrested him; relatives later found his body. The murder, about 45 days after the Taliban had taken over the country, suggests that senior officials ordered or were at least aware of the killing,” the report says.

Night raids

Human Rights Watch accused previous Afghan governments of using enforced disappearances against their opponents, including Taliban fighters and supporters. They accuse the Taliban of engaging in similar tactics. “[They] have also engaged in abusive search operations, including night raids, to apprehend and, at times, forcibly disappear suspected former civilian and security force officials,” according to the report.

It also accuses the Taliban of targeting people they accuse of supporting the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), an affiliate of the Islamic State terror group. 

Taliban response

The Taliban told Human Rights Watch that they have dismissed those responsible for abuses but did not provide any further details or evidence. 

In a speech aired on state media Saturday, the Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Hassan Akhund – who claims to be Afghanistan’s prime minister – accused former government officials of stirring up trouble. 

“Nation, be vigilant. Those left over from the previous government in hiding are making remarks and are causing anxiety, misleading the people to distrust their government. Nation, be vigilant, that the enemy does not overrun us again, defiant of our holy government, our security,” Akhund said.

Human Rights Watch is calling for continued United Nations scrutiny and investigation of abuses committed by the Taliban. 

Humanitarian disaster 

The United States, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund froze Afghan central bank assets worth $9.5 billion and blocked cash shipments to the country after the Taliban forcibly seized power on August 15 from the internationally recognized government of President Ashraf Ghani. 

Aid agencies warn of an impending humanitarian disaster with millions unpaid or out of work, basic services on the brink of collapse, and many Afghans forced to flee their homes. 

“We fear and predict that up to 23 million Afghans will be in crisis or [need] emergency levels of food insecurity. This will likely worsen indeed over the winter,” Deborah Lyons, the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, warned earlier in November.
…

Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Monday they had arrested around 30 people in connection with an overnight mob assault on a police station aimed at grabbing and lynching a mentally unstable detainee accused of insulting Islam.

Witnesses and police said thousands of protesters stormed the police station in Charsadda, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Sunday evening and burned the facility along with several nearby security outposts after police refused to hand over the blasphemy suspect.

The mob attack forced police officers to abandon the installation and flee to safety along with the detainee, district police chief Asif Bahadur Khan told reporters Monday.

A video circulating on social media showed the police station burning.

The alleged blasphemer was taken into police custody earlier in the day on charges he desecrated Islam’s holy book, the Quran. Khan said an investigation was underway into the charges against the detainee, but he declined to share further details.

Residents said tension was still high in the Pakistani district amid heavy police deployment to deter further unrest. Khan said they had also engaged local Islamic clerics to help defuse the tension and urge demonstrators to let the law decide the fate of the alleged blasphemer.

Insulting Islam or its Prophet Mohammad carries the death penalty in Pakistan, where mere blasphemy allegations often provoke mob violence and lynching of suspects.

In 2017, a mob of students at a university in Mardan district, next to Charsadda, attacked and killed a fellow student, Mohammad Mashal, after accusing him of sharing blasphemous content on Facebook.

Critics of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws say accusations of insulting Islam are often used to intimidate religious minorities and settle personal scores in the pre-dominantly Muslim country.

Earlier this month the United States designated Pakistan, along with nine other countries, as violators of religious freedom, saying they have “engaged in or tolerated systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.”

The U.S. secretary of state compiles a list of such countries each year. Other countries listed this year are Russia, China, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Eritrea, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Pakistan rejected the U.S. designation as “arbitrary” and the outcome of a “selective assessment”, saying it was against the realities on the ground and raised “serious doubts about the credibility” of the exercise “Such subjective designations do not contribute towards promoting the cause of religious freedom world-wide,” it added.  
…

The leaders of several Asian countries called for boosting their economic ties and pledged to provide assistance to Afghanistan during a summit in Turkmenistan on Sunday.

The countries, which are part of the 10-member Economic Cooperation Organization that includes Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and six ex-Soviet nations, called for removing trade barriers and developing new transport corridors across the region. They also voiced concerns about the situation in Afghanistan, which has been taken over by the Taliban, and promised to help stabilize the country.

Speaking at the summit, Pakistan’s President Arif Alvi pointed at the threat of Afghanistan’s economic and financial collapse, saying the Islamic world needs to pool efforts to help avert a “catastrophe that could foment chaos and conflict.” He said countries in the region need to move quickly to help rebuild the Afghan economy, shore up the country’s health care and education systems and offer humanitarian assistance.

He noted that the stabilization of Afghanistan would allow the implementation of long-stalled infrastructure projects, including a gas pipeline, railways and power grids linking countries in the region.

Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov emphasized that those projects would help offer “colossal cooperation prospects and help attract foreign investment,” strongly benefiting Afghanistan and its neighbors.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan noted the importance of rebuilding Afghanistan’s economy, saying that the country’s meltdown could trigger a massive refugee exodus that would affect the entire region. He said Turkish humanitarian groups have stepped up efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to the Afghan people.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also offered help, saying that Afghanistan desperately needs food, fuel and financial assistance as the winter looms.

On the sidelines of the summit, officials from Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkmenistan signed a trilateral deal on natural gas deliveries from gas-rich Turkmenistan to Iran and onto Azerbaijan.
…

The world’s largest vaccine maker, the Serum Institute of India has resumed exports of coronavirus vaccines to COVAX the partnership that is distributing vaccines to developing countries. The resumption of exports comes at a critical time when a new variant found in South Africa is causing concern around the world.

India suspended exports of vaccines in March this year following a severe surge in infections during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic as it used its stocks to ramp up its domestic inoculation program.

The first shipments went out Friday.

“This will go a long way in restoring vaccine supply equality in the world,” Serum Institute chief executive Adar Poonawalla said on Twitter.

The company said in a press statement that said that it expects the supply of vaccines to COVAX to increase substantially in early 2022. The Serum Institute of India was expected to be one of the main suppliers to the vaccine sharing facility which was created to ensure global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines after the outbreak of the pandemic.

The Serum Institute linked the resumption of exports to surpassing its target of producing 1 billion doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine by the end of this year – it has produced 1.25 billion doses so far.

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which leads the COVAX program along with the World Health Organization, called the restart of exports from India an important development “as it enters its busiest period yet for shipping vaccines to participating economies.”

The export curbs by India were a huge setback to efforts by COVAX, which had been relying on supplies of the affordable and easy to store AstraZeneca vaccine from India’s Serum Institute to distribute to low-income countries. The vaccine is called Covishield in India.

“While COVAX’s portfolio is now much more diversified than it was earlier this year when we received our first SII deliveries, COVISHIELD remains an important product which has the potential to help us protect hundreds of millions of people in the months ahead,” according to Seth Berkley, chief executive of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.

India has allowed exports to resume as its vaccination program makes substantial progress and vaccine supplies improve – about 80% of the country has received one dose and about 40% is fully vaccinated. Cases of coronavirus have also reduced dramatically – on Friday, India reported about 9,000 cases.

However, a new variant found in South Africa, dubbed omicron, is causing widespread concern and has prompted experts in India to caution against complacency. Designated a variant of concern by the World Health Organization, omicron has already been found in Belgium, Botswana, Israel and Hong Kong and has prompted several countries, including the United States and Britain to impose travel curbs.

India has said it is scaling up screening of passengers from overseas. At a meeting held Saturday to review the pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked officials to review plans to ease international travel restrictions.

“In light of the new variant, we remain vigilant with a focus on containment and ensuring increased second dose coverage,” he tweeted. 
…

The U.S. soldiers called them “Caroline’ guys.” They transformed farms in a war zone – risking their lives for the program she built, sharing her belief that something as simple as apple trees could change the world. 

The university-educated Afghans helped turn land in an overgrazed, drought-stricken and impoverished region in eastern Afghanistan into verdant gardens and orchards that still feed local families today. 

In the process, the 12 agricultural specialists, all traditional Afghan men, formed a deep, unexpected bond with their boss, an American woman who worked as a U.S. Department of Agriculture adviser in the region for two years. 

Now Caroline Clarin is trying to save them one by one, doing it all from the 1910 Minnesota farmhouse she shares with her wife, drawing from retirement funds to help a group of men who share her love of farming. 

Clarin has helped get five of her former employees and their families into the U.S. since 2017, while her wife has helped them rebuild their lives in America. 

Since the Taliban seized power in August, texts from those remaining have grown more urgent and Clarin says she can “feel the panic increasing” as winter approaches and food shortages grow. She has stepped up her efforts, working endless hours, diligently tracking their visa applications. She calls senators to apply pressure so they don’t languish like the thousands of other visa applications in the backlogged system for Afghans who supported the U.S. government during the long war. 

She’ driven by fear her team will be killed by the Taliban, though the new government has promised not to retaliate against Afghans who helped the U.S.. She also wants to give them a future. 

Since U.S. forces withdrew, more than 70,000 Afghans have come to the United States and thousands are languishing at U.S. military bases as resettlement agencies struggle to keep up. 

Clarin knows she cannot save everyone, but she’ determined to help those she can. 

After she left Afghanistan in 2011, she was consumed by anger over her program being gutted as the U.S. government changed its priorities. 

“When I got on the plane, it was like leaving my family on the helipad,” she said. “I felt like I deserted them.” 

The most recent of her friends to escape was Ihsanullah Patan, a horticulturist who waited seven years for a special immigrant visa. After he texted her that two of his close friends had just been killed, Clarin withdrew $6,000 from a retirement fund to get him and his family on a commercial flight to Minnesota before the Taliban took control of the country this summer. 

When Clarin picked them up at the airport in Minneapolis at midnight for the three-hour drive back to Fergus Falls, she was consumed with joy. 

“It was like my son came home,” she said. 

Patan arrived in Minnesota with saffron, Afghan almonds, and 5 kilos (11 pounds) of Afghan green tea to share. He also gave Clarin and her wife, Sheril Raymond, seeds of Afghanistan’ tender leeks for their garden. 

He was the first member to join Clarin’ team after she was sent to Paktika province. A confident, young university graduate, Patan spelled out what was needed in the region. It would become the basis of her program: Seeds, trees and the skills to plant gardens and orchards. 

Patan considers Clarin and her wife family. His three sons and daughter call them their “aunties.” 

In fact, he’ decided to live in nearby Fergus Falls, a town of 14,000, instead of moving to a larger city with an Afghan transplant community. 

Surrounded by farmland stretching to the North Dakota border, the town’ skyline is dominated by grain elevators and the spires of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, a reflection of the region’ Scandinavian roots. 

The only other Afghan family in town is his cousin’. Sami Massoodi, who has a degree in livestock management, also worked for Clarin’ team in Afghanistan and arrived in 2017. He and his family lived on their farm before they got established in Fergus Falls. 

“In Fergus Falls, they have really good people, really friendly people,” Patan said as he drives his minivan down the tree-lined streets to pick up his 5-year-old daughter at a Head Start program. 

It is a place where neighbors pay unannounced visits to say “hi” and people greet the postmaster by name. It is also staunchly Republican. Fergus Falls is the county seat of Otter Tail County, which voted twice for former President Donald Trump. 

But people in town say friendships and family take precedence over political views, and there is broad empathy for the struggle of immigrants since many people’ parents, grandparents or great grandparents came from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. 

Only months after they arrived, the Patan family already feels at home in large part because of Raymond. 

She helped enroll their kids in school, find a dentist for 9-year-old Sala’ infected tooth, and sign Patan up for car insurance, something that was new for the 35-year-old. 

She lined up English classes and state and federal services for new immigrants. She drove Patan an hour to the nearest testing site for a driver’ license. After he failed twice because his English was not proficient enough, he asked if there was a test in his native Pashto language, like in Virginia and California. There wasn’t. So Raymond found a site, another hour away, that would allow him to review his errors. On his third try, he passed. 

Clarin has tracked down a sheep on craigslist for Eid, while Raymond watched YouTube videos on how to slaughter livestock according to halal principles, since the closest halal butcher is an hour away in Fargo, North Dakota. 

For Patan, they have been a comfort in a strange place. 

“When we are going to their house, we feel like we went to Afghanistan and we are going to meet our close relatives,” he said. 

He longs for his homeland, the family festivities. Patan’ wife makes their traditional dishes still, like Bolani Afghani, a fried, vegetable-filled flatbread that Clarin enjoyed with him in Afghanistan. 

Over there, Patan and her team were the ones helping her feel at home. 

It was the longest she and Raymond had been apart since they started dating in 1988. 

Raymond, who cares for the chickens, pigs and other animals on their farm, would do video calls often, staying online even after Clarin had fallen asleep. 

Two years after Clarin returned, they married in August 2013 when same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota. 

Homosexuality is still widely seen as taboo and indecent in Afghanistan, where same-sex relations are illegal. 

Yet, none of the Afghan families have asked about their marriage or expressed judgment, the couple said. 

Patan calls them his “sisters.” 

“We have a lot of respect for them,” he said.

Both Clarin and Patan speak passionately about farming, describing in detail how to get a good apple crop and ward off disease. 

Clarin arranged for the U.S. military to take her team in convoys to remote areas to train farmers, empowering Afghans to teach each other skills. They lined canals to ensure clean water. They worked with farmers to plant trees and build stone barriers to control flooding. They distributed seeds to 1,200 families, who have since shared seeds with more people. 

The program trained about 5,000 farmers in Paktika from 2009 to 2011. They provided growers hoop-houses, apple trees, pruning equipment and small grants. They taught farmers tangible solutions, including using buckets with drip lines to irrigate gardens and conserve water. 

The Taliban tried to sabotage the trust they built with farmers, Clarin said. Once, an explosive blew up in a red bucket like the ones they used for irrigation. 

Patan has stayed in contact with some of the farmers in Paktika and proudly shows photos on his iPhone of the tiny stems he distributed that are now trees several feet tall. One farmer texted him to say his harvest is feeding his family as millions of others in the country face severe hunger. 

That offers some solace after seeing his homeland fall to the Taliban. It feels good he said to know his work left something lasting and that “the people can still benefit from it. We educated one generation and those fathers will tell it to their sons.” 

Patan misses his career back in Afghanistan. Most U.S. employers do not recognize degrees from Afghan universities so he plans to return to school to earn a U.S. degree. For now, he is training to be a commercial truck driver, a field flush with opportunities: There were 21 job openings in the area when he started his classes this month. 

He wants a local truck route to stay close to home, but it will still be challenging for his family. His wife, Sediqa, does not speak English, nor does she know how to read or write, and does not feel comfortable going out by herself. 

She also does not drive. 

When she started learning English online, she was at “ground zero,” said her teacher, Sara Sundberg at Minnesota State Community and Technical College. 

“When she came, she didn’t know what to do with a pencil. We had to show her. She held it kind of like a Henna tube,” said Sundberg, holding together her thumb and index finger tightly at the tip as if squeezing something. 

Five months later, her handwriting is “meticulous,” and her pronunciation is excellent, Sundberg said. She’ even learning to say Minnesota with the long “oooo.” 

“I’m teaching her how to communicate with the community and I want people to understand her,” Sundberg said. “Everything is brand new for her.” 

Sediqa is slowly gaining confidence in speaking with her teacher, but with others she is silent, smiling and staying back with her children. 

Everything is new for their children, too. Patan’ sons befriended a neighbor boy and jumped for the first time on a trampoline. 

His oldest son, Maiwan, decorated his first pumpkin, while his two younger sons wore their traditional Afghan clothes because their teachers told them that on the Friday before Halloween the kids could “dress up,” something that was lost in translation but went unnoticed as the other kids excitedly showed them their costumes. 

They look forward to the weekends with their “aunties” at the farm. 

On a warm October Saturday, Clarin jogged next to 12-year-old Maiwan driving a small tractor as Ali and his 9-year-old brother, Sala, dug in the dirt for worms with their cousins, giggling and chatting incessantly in Pashto. 

“They are kinda free,” Patan says of his kids now, recalling how bomb blasts in Kabul caused them to miss school more than once. 

They still carry the trauma. When fireworks were shot off for Fourth of July this summer, Patan called his cousin in a panic and asked if Fergus Falls was being bombed.

Clarin has vowed to get all her guys out. 

Since the Taliban took control of the country in August, she has been starting most days around 3 a.m. when she quietly makes her way to her basement office, hours before she heads to her job in Fergus Falls as a U.S. Department of Agriculture wetlands restoration engineer. 

Stacks of passport photos, recommendation letters, visa applications and other paperwork cover the tables, her desk and the top of a freezer. Across the hall, Raymond has prepared a guest room for the next Afghan family they get out. 

Besides the guys from her program still in Afghanistan, she is aiding other Afghans, including several women. “Why US government did this to us? Why did they leave us behind?,” one texts. Desperate pleas for help from more Afghans keep popping up in her phone as word spreads of her efforts. 

“My sister said, ‘You got your own little Underground Railroad in the basement,'” Clarin said. 

So far, the couple has spent just under $10,000 since May. That includes the airfare for the Patan family, a contribution toward the family’ used minivan, and fees for five applications for humanitarian parole for families still in Afghanistan. 

Raymond keeps the tally in a notebook. 

“It does make me a little nervous because we’ve lived on the edge for so long,” said 57-year-old Raymond, who sews her dresses, knits hats, and bakes bread. 

“So I work another year before retiring,” Clarin, 55, answers with a shrug. 

Two other Afghan families Clarin helped chose to settle in Austin, Texas, and San Diego, partly because in both places there are mosques, halal butcher shops and established Afghan communities. None of that exists in Fergus Falls. They also wanted to avoid Minnesota’ winters where wind chill temperatures a few years ago dropped to as low as 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, (-45 degrees Celsius), something Patan was shocked to learn. 

But Patan knows there are drawbacks to cities. Another former member of Clarin’ team who moved to California recently returned to Minnesota after complaining about the crime in Sacramento. They now live about an hour away but close to Fargo, where there is a mosque. 

Patan, who speaks Dari and Pashto, translates documents for Clarin for the visa applications. He worries about his former colleagues, who remain his close friends.

“I hope that one day they can also come here and we will make a big Afghan kind-of-family over here,” he said. “All of them want to come here to Fergus.” 

Raymond worries more than Clarin about money, and she finds the government fee of $575 per application for humanitarian parole outrageous. 

But she also acknowledges they cannot step back now. 

“When we bring in a family, they become our family,” she said. 
…

Russia, China and India expressed concern Friday at the worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and the spread of drug trafficking from the war-ravaged country.

The foreign ministers of the three regional powers at a virtual trilateral meeting reviewed, among other issues, the Afghan crisis. The collapse of the Western-backed government in Kabul and return to power of the Islamist Taliban in August have plunged Afghanistan into an unprecedented economic crisis.

“The ministers noted rising concerns regarding dramatic change of the situation in Afghanistan,” said a joint statement released following the meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, India’s S Jaishankar and China’s Wang Yi. 

“Expressing concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, the ministers called for immediate and unhindered humanitarian assistance to be provided to Afghanistan,” the communique said.

It called on the Taliban to take action in accordance with the results of all the recently held international and regional formats of interaction on Afghanistan and respect the outcomes of the relevant United Nations resolutions.

The statement apparently referred to global calls for the ruling Islamist group to respect human rights, especially those of Afghan women and minorities, govern the country through an inclusive political system, and fight terrorism as well as narcotics. 

“The ministers expressed their determination to counter the spread of illicit drug trafficking in opiates and methamphetamines from Afghanistan and beyond, which pose a serious threat to regional security and stability and provide funding for terrorist organizations,” it added.

US-Taliban talks

Friday’s talks among Moscow, Beijing and New Delhi came on the eve of a new round of talks between the United States and the Taliban in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West and Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi will lead their respective teams at two days of meetings starting Saturday.

A Taliban foreign ministry spokesman tweeted ahead of the talks that Muttaqi and his high-powered delegation would visit Doha on November 27-29. He said the discussions with U.S. interlocutors would cover “political issues, frozen assets, humanitarian aid, education, health, security and reopening of embassies in Kabul, other relevant issues.”

The international community has not recognized the Taliban, citing human rights and terrorism concerns.

Washington and European countries have halted non-humanitarian aid to Kabul and blocked the Islamist group’s access to billions of dollars in Afghan central bank assets, largely held in the U.S. Federal Reserve.

U.S. envoy West told VOA on Tuesday that it was not as simple for Washington as the Taliban might think to unfreeze the Afghan central bank assets.

“There are very complicated legal reasons, as well as judicial reasons, for why that money is not moving from particular banks into other places. I think it’s important also to recognize that there are an additional $2 billion worth of foreign reserves located outside of the United States. That money, likewise, has not moved, for similar reasons,” West explained.

Critics and aid workers say the sanctions have plunged Afghanistan into economic upheavals and deteriorated the humanitarian crisis, stemming from years of war, high levels of poverty, rampant corruption and a prolonged drought.

The U.N. estimates nearly 23 million Afghans, or more than 60% of the country’s population, suffer from acute food shortages, and it says urgent humanitarian aid is needed to prevent a catastrophe in the country. 
…

 India, the world’s second most populous country, has reached a key demographic milestone as birth rates drop below replacement level, according to a government survey. That means, although India’s population is still on track to overtake China’s sometime this decade, its growth has begun to slow.   

That is welcome news for a country where a burgeoning population, around 1.38 billion at present, has long been seen as a hinderance to development and a huge strain on resources.   

India’s National Family Health Survey, released this week, shows the country’s 2019 to 2021 fertility rate dropped to 2.0. That is considered a key threshold for declining numbers — countries where less than 2.1 children are born per woman indicate that a generation is not producing enough children to replace itself and marks the first key step in an eventual reduction in population.  

“It’s taken the wind out of the misconception that India’s population is exploding and we need a two-child norm policy as proposed by some policymakers,” says Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India. “We are well towards stabilizing our population, so instead of blaming population for our ills, we have to accelerate the gains made and focus on investing in health, education and skills for young people.”  

Significant progress has been made in recent years to reduce fertility rates, according to researchers, it stood at 2.2 in 2015. They point to declining levels of poverty and improved family health services that helped increase the use of contraceptives in the country, including in its vast rural areas.  

Experts says key contributors were an improvement in socio-economic conditions for millions over the last two decades, a higher age of marriage for many women and a shift toward urbanization – the urban fertility rate at 1.6 shows that women living in cities appear to be opting for smaller families.  

“It is a very good sign for a populous country like India,” said Sanjay Kumar Mohanty, head of population policies at the Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Studies. “It means that we no longer need to make an extra effort to lower the population, except in states where it is still relatively high. It does not need to be a priority concern.”    

India’s rapidly growing population has long posed a challenge – it has increased nearly four times since it gained independence in 1947, when it was home to about 350 million people.   

Much of the population was added by lesser developed, poorer northern states with lower education levels, while southern states, where literacy levels improved more swiftly, slowed their population growth rates faster.  

Although three populous northern Indian states, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh, and two northeastern states, Meghalaya and Manipur, still have a higher birth rate compared to the rest of the country, they are also making progress, according to public health experts.  

“Seven years ago, the government began focusing on high fertility districts in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and worked with women. That really made an impact,” says Muttreja. “Also, I think girls and women have become much more aspirational and want to have fewer children. They want to invest in themselves and the children. The key going ahead will be women’s education because that is undoubtedly the best contraceptive pill.” 

India has run a voluntary family welfare program for decades, but coercive methods aimed at curbing the population were used briefly in the 1970s when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government carried out a controversial mass sterilization program.  

In recent years, demographics have emerged as a polarizing issue with Hindu groups pointing to a higher birth rate among Muslims, the country’s largest minority.   

Earlier this year, India’s largest states, Uttar Pradesh and Assam, both ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, unveiled controversial bills for curbing population growth. The proposed legislation would deny government jobs, promotions, subsidies and the right to contest local elections to anyone who has more than two children. Other states ruled by the BJP have said they were also mulling similar legislation to push for smaller families.   

In an editorial, the Indian Express newspaper said the survey’s recent findings “were a resounding repudiation of politicians and policymakers who have, of late, been crying hoarse about population explosion.” 

There were some other positive results. India, where a deep-seated preference for boys has skewed the gender ratio at birth and led to concerns about its “missing girls,” now has 929 girls born for 1000 boys, up marginally from 919 five years ago.   

The United Nations has forecast that India will edge past China by 2027, but if the lowered fertility rates persist, the date when India will become the world’s most populous nation could be delayed, according to demographers. 
…