Pakistan said Thursday that a military counterterrorism raid in a remote region near Afghanistan’s border had killed at least 11 militants linked to a banned militant organization. 

The “intelligence-based operation” in the South Waziristan district “successfully foiled a high-profile terrorist activity,” a military statement said. 

Security sources said the slain men, including suicide bombers and a key commander, were members of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or the Pakistani Taliban, waging terrorism in Pakistan, mostly targeting security forces and civilians. 

The TTP has killed hundreds of people, including security forces, in the last year. More than 40 Pakistani security forces were killed in December alone, which turned out to be the deadliest month in a decade of terrorist violence in the country. 

The TTP, designated as a global terrorist organization by the United States, is a Pakistani offshoot and close ally of Afghanistan’s ruling Islamist Taliban.  

Pakistan has maintained that fugitive TTP leaders and commanders are directing terrorist attacks from the Afghan side of the border, saying the Taliban rulers are not stopping them in line with their counterterrorism pledges.  

The rising violence in Pakistan has strained its otherwise better ties with the Taliban administration in Kabul.  

On Thursday, foreign ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, while addressing a regular news conference, rejected speculation that her country was contemplating cross-border airstrikes against TTP Afghan hideouts. 

“I would like to say that Pakistan is a responsible member of the United Nations, and as a responsible member of the United Nations, it subscribes to and will always uphold the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter, which include territorial integrity and political independence of states,” Baloch said.  

She reiterated that Islamabad would continue to support Afghans “in their quest for a unified, independent and sovereign Afghanistan that is at peace with itself and its neighbors.” 

Early this week, the Taliban defense ministry warned Islamabad against indulging in any cross-border action, rejecting allegations that Kabul was allowing anyone to use Afghan soil against Pakistan or any other country.
…

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban signed their first international agreement with a Chinese petroleum company Thursday to extract and develop oil reserves in the country’s north. 

Senior Taliban officials and China’s ambassador to Kabul, Wang Yu, witnessed the televised signing ceremony in the Afghan capital, marking the first major foreign investment deal in Afghanistan since the Islamist group seized power in August 2021.  

Taliban mining minister Shahabuddin Dilawar told the event the contract with the Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co (CAPEIC) would bring $150 million a year in Chinese investment for the extraction of oil in the Amu river basin. 

The deal covers an area of 4,500 square kilometers collectively in northern Saripol, Jowzjan and Faryab provinces, creating job opportunities for around 3,000 Afghans, he said. 

Dilawar stated that the Chinese investment is expected to increase to $540 million in three years for the 25-year contract. He added the Taliban administration will have a 20% partnership in the project, with a provision to increase it to 75%.

The Chinese ambassador hailed the “successful” signing ceremony, calling it a good start for promoting bilateral relations between Beijing and Kabul. 

“The Amu Darya [River] oil project is an important project of practical cooperation between China and Afghanistan,” Wang said. 

“The progress of this project has created a model for China-Afghanistan cooperation in major projects in energy and other fields,” he said. 

Wang urged the Chinese company to “strictly abide by the laws of Afghanistan” while fulfilling its responsibilities and obligations in line with the contract.

“At the same time, I also believe and hope that the Afghan side take practical and effective measures to ensure a smooth and secure operation of the project … so as to enhance confidence for more foreign investors to develop their business and Afghanistan.”

The Chinese state-owned National Petroleum Corp signed a similar contract with the U.S.-backed former Afghan government to extract oil at the Amu Darya basin. 

Dilawar asserted the previous contract could not be executed because it had “lots of problems.” He did not explain and said his administration redrafted the document to address the issues and it was resigned with the CAPEIC on Thursday.

The Taliban minister said the crude oil would be processed inside Afghanistan under the deal, suggesting the Chinese company would build a refinery in the country.

Afghanistan’s untapped resources are estimated to be more than $1 trillion. Foreign investors have shown interest in exploring them but decades of conflicts in the South Asian nation have discouraged such initiatives. 

Violence has significantly subsided since the Taliban took over the country 16 months ago when the then-internationally-backed government in Kabul collapsed and all the U.S.-led international forces withdrew from the country after almost 20 years of war. 

But the global community has not yet granted legitimacy to the Taliban government over human rights concerns, especially their restrictions on Afghan women’s access to work and education. 

China has also not formally recognized the Taliban, but it has vowed to support and work with the Islamist rulers on economic development of Afghanistan.

“[China] respects the independence choice made by the Afghan people and respects the religious beliefs and national customs of Afghanistan,” Wang noted in his speech Thursday. “China never interfered in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, never seeks self-interest for the so-called spheres of influence in Afghanistan.

While China, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, Turkey and several other regional countries kept their embassies in Kabul open after the Taliban takeover, Washington and Western nations at large swiftly moved their Afghan diplomatic missions to Doha, Qatar.
…

Afghanistan’s Taliban said Thursday their special forces had killed 11 Islamic State group operatives and captured seven others in overnight raids against the group’s hideouts in Kabul and elsewhere in the country.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed in a statement the militants had played a central role in organizing recent attacks in the Afghan capital, including a deadly raid on a hotel housing Chinese nationals, an armed attack on Pakistan’s embassy and a suicide bombing of the city military airport.

“The security forces’ action destroyed three Daesh shelters in Kabul and Zaranj,” Mujahid said, referring to the capital of southeastern Nimroze province, while providing details of Wednesday’s raids. He used an Arabic acronym for Islamic State’s Afghan chapter, known as IS-Khorasan.

“Foreign Daesh members were also among the dead,” Mujahid added, noting the network of militants was also involved in transferring foreign IS-Khorasan members to Afghanistan.

“A large quantity of small arms, hand grenades, mines, suicide vests and explosives were seized by security forces. A number of suspects were also taken into custody for further investigation,” he said. VOA could not independently verify the claims.

The Taliban spokesman said a separate overnight raid in eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, resulted in the killing of three IS-Khorasan operatives, including an important commander.

The December 12 attack on Kabul’s Longan hotel killed or wounded several Taliban forces, while China confirmed five of its nationals had also suffered injuries.

Pakistan said the December 2 attack on Islamabad’s embassy in the Afghan capital was aimed at assassinating Ubaid ur Rehman Nizamani, the chief Pakistani diplomat in the country. Nizamani escaped unharmed in the shooting incident, but his Pakistani security guard was injured.

IS-Khorasan claimed responsibility for both attacks.

The group also took credit for plotting last Sunday’s deadly suicide bombing of the military airport, claiming it was carried out by a fighter who had participated and survived the raid on the hotel where Chinese nationals were staying.

The militant group posted on Telegram that the airport attack killed 20 people and wounded 30 others. Taliban officials disputed those figures but have not shared official casualty toll to date.

The repeated attacks in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan have raised questions about claims that Taliban security forces have degraded the presence of IS-Khorasan in the country.

Last week, a car bomb in the northeastern Badakhshan border province killed the Taliban regional police chief and his two guards. IS-Khorasan took responsibility for plotting that attack in the provincial capital, Fayzabad.
…

The Taliban have said that a court on Thursday is expected to issue a ruling on whether licenses should be revoked for several media outlets.

Abdul Haq Hammad, a spokesperson for the Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture, told Voice of America the move is focused on 10 media outlets and news agencies deemed to be spreading “propaganda and rumors against” the regime.

If the court rules to revoke the licenses, the media outlets will no longer be able to work in the country.

“They will not be able to open their office or have reporters in the country. This will be illegal,” Hammad said.

But Afghan journalists and media associations see the move as an attempt to further curtail press freedom. Conditions for media have deteriorated since the Taliban’s return to power, with news outlets shuttering, and a large number of female journalists leaving the profession.

Hammad did not name the outlets in question but said that they work from outside Afghanistan.

Several organizations moved their operations outside the country after the Taliban took power in August 2021. But many use local staff or freelancers to report on events inside the country.

A person with knowledge of the case, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, told VOA the Taliban took a “unilateral decision” in referring the media outlets to the court without first seeking approval from the Media Violation Commission.

The joint media and government body is tasked with investigating media violations and can issue fines to journalists or news outlets.

The unnamed individual told VOA that the Taliban sent a letter to the court saying the Media Violation Commission had referred the case. But, he said, “the commission does not have the authority to revoke licenses.”

Taliban spokesperson Hammad said that the move was based on the media law.

Curbs on media

Journalists and media analysts who spoke with VOA say the Taliban are selective in how they use the media law.

“They implement the law based on their preferences,” Gul Mohammad Graan, president of the Afghan chapter of the South Asian Association of Reporters Club and Journalists Forum, told VOA.

“In practice, they do not care about the law, particularly the media law,” said Graan, adding that the Taliban “impose pressure and restrictions on media outlets that are critical of them.”

Overall, the situation for press freedom in Afghanistan is “concerning,” Graan said.

Media rights groups have said the country’s journalists face violence, censorship and economic hardship.

Figures from the Ministry of Information and Culture, under the Taliban, show 165 radio and 55 TV stations currently in operation. Before their takeover, media watchdogs estimated that Afghanistan had more than 540 media outlets.

Calling for licenses to be revoked is part of “systematic censorship,” Sharif Hassanyar, head of the Norway-based Chashm News Network, said.

“The situation could make the international media cease their operations [in Afghanistan] and create problems for [local] media,” said Hassanyar, who used to be head of Ariana News, one of the country’s largest media groups.

The Taliban have already banned FM broadcasts from VOA and its sister network Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty over claims that their broadcasts had violated local laws.

Ghulam Jelani Zwak, an Afghan journalist who used to be head of Kabul News Television, told VOA the pressure is mounting. “Day by day, restrictions and problems increase [for media],” he said.

Zwak said that the new restrictions signal that the Taliban want to have media under their control.

“They do not want independent media to operate in Afghanistan,” said Zwak.

Waheed Faizi from VOA’s Afghan Service contributed to this report, which originated in VOA’s Afghan Service.
…

The United States has been assessing the impact of the Afghan Taliban’s ban on the employment of women by nongovernmental organizations while pondering policy options that may be unveiled soon.

“We’re committed to standing up for women wherever their rights are threatened, including in Afghanistan, as unfortunately we continue to see deepen and get worse,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday at the launch of the first U.S. Strategy on Global Women’s Economic Security.

Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly urged the Taliban to reverse bans preventing women from working for NGOs and attending public and private universities, warning of costs.

On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department said Washington was examining “specific consequences that can be levied against the Taliban,” but it did not give details.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters at the briefing that the U.S. was working with like-minded partners around the world to “devise an appropriate set of consequences that register our condemnation” of the Taliban while supporting the Afghan people.

Price added that the U.S. policy response would be careful not to further imperil the humanitarian well-being of the Afghan people.

The Taliban want better relations with the rest of the world and have publicly asked countries to invest in Afghanistan. But, the U.S. said, the Taliban are under a “faulty illusion” that they can have it both ways — that they can deprive Afghan women of rights while hoping to strengthen ties with other countries.

Education bans

Throughout 2022, the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan introduced and enforced some of the worst gender-based discriminatory policies seen anywhere.

In late December, the Taliban banned women from universities, further restricting women’s education. Shortly after the returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban excluded girls from secondary schools.

Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is the only country where girls are banned from schools because of their gender.

On December 24, the Taliban issued an order barring foreign and domestic humanitarian organizations in Afghanistan from employing women. Any group that fails to comply will have its license revoked. A coalition of 11 NGOs has had to suspend operations in Afghan as a result, according to the State Department.

“This is political. This is not religious,” Rina Amiri, U.S. special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights, told VOA’s Deewa Service in a recent Skype interview.

“Every Muslim majority representative that I spoke to in the world — whether it’s Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Malaysia — every country that I’ve spoken to has said what the Taliban is doing is hurting the image of Islam everywhere,” Amiri said.

Some see the Taliban’s decision to ban women’s education as a sign of an internal rift.

“It’s a hard-line element within the Taliban that is seeking to consolidate its power and to project that power,” Amiri said.

On Wednesday, the State Department unveiled its interagency strategy to advance women’s economic security globally. The goal is to promote equal access to education, innovation and quality jobs for women and girls worldwide.

“Closing the gender gap in the global workforce could unleash an additional contribution of $5.3 trillion to global GDP [gross domestic product], increasing economic security and prosperity for all,” the State Department said.

U.S. government agencies will formulate individual action plans within six months of Wednesday’s release of the strategy that will inform U.S. foreign policy, international programming and development assistance.

American officials said the U.S. would continue to support Afghan women through the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund, which invests in local and civil society partners around the world.  

VOA’s Deewa Service contributed to this report.
…

A banned alliance of militant groups waging terrorism in Pakistan threatened Wednesday that it would unleash attacks on the country’s political leadership for declaring war on the outfit to allegedly “appease” the United States.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, issued the warning explicitly to the leaders of the two major partners in the ruling coalition, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). The PML-N is headed by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and the PPP by Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

The TTP, listed as a global terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations at large, has lately carried out almost daily attacks, killing hundreds of Pakistani security forces and civilians.

The militant warning came after Sharif chaired a meeting Monday of the National Security Committee (NSC), the country’s highest security-related forum comprising political and military leadership and vowed that terrorism “will be dealt with full force of the state.”

Pakistani officials say the TTP, an offshoot and ally of Afghanistan’s ruling Islamist Taliban, has unleashed its recent wave of terrorist attacks from across the Afghan side of the border. The NSC meeting also issued a subtle warning to Taliban rulers, saying “no country will be allowed to provide sanctuaries and facilitation to terrorists.”

On Tuesday, a U.S. State Department spokesperson backed Pakistan’s renewed resolve against terrorism and again urged the Afghan Taliban to deliver on their counterterrorism pledges.

“The Pakistani people have suffered tremendously from terrorist attacks. Pakistan has a right to defend itself from terrorism,” Ned Price told reporters in Washington.

“We continue to call on the Taliban to uphold the very commitment they have made to see to it that Afghan soil is never again used as a launchpad for international terrorist attacks,” he said.

“These are among the very commitments that the Taliban have been unable or unwilling to fulfill to date,” Price said.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said this week that Afghanistan harbored an “overwhelming presence” of TTP members.

“We have been requesting the Taliban ever since they returned to power (in Kabul) to stop the TTP from plotting terrorist activities in Pakistan,” Asif told local media Monday. He said Islamabad hopes the rulers in Kabul would help rein in the terrorists.

A spokesman for the Taliban administration Tuesday rejected Pakistani allegations as “false” and “regrettable.” Zabihullah Mujahid said that his government, which is yet to be given legitimacy by the world, wants peaceful relations with all neighboring countries, including Pakistan, to promote Afghan as well as regional peace and stability.

The Taliban reclaimed power in August 2021 as U.S.-led troops withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of involvement in war.

TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud and commanders have taken refuge on the Afghan side of the border after fleeing counterterrorism military operations in Pakistan.

Officials in Islamabad say the militants have been roaming freely in Afghanistan and directing cross-border terrorism with greater freedom since the Taliban takeover.
…

A banned alliance of militant groups waging terrorism in Pakistan threatened Wednesday that it would unleash attacks on the country’s political leadership for declaring war on the outfit to allegedly “appease” the United States.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, issued the warning explicitly to the leaders of the two major partners in the ruling coalition, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). The PML-N is headed by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and the PPP by Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

The TTP, listed as a global terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations at large, has lately carried out almost daily attacks, killing hundreds of Pakistani security forces and civilians.

The militant warning came after Sharif chaired a meeting Monday of the National Security Committee (NSC), the country’s highest security-related forum comprising political and military leadership and vowed that terrorism “will be dealt with full force of the state.”

Pakistani officials say the TTP, an offshoot and ally of Afghanistan’s ruling Islamist Taliban, has unleashed its recent wave of terrorist attacks from across the Afghan side of the border. The NSC meeting also issued a subtle warning to Taliban rulers, saying “no country will be allowed to provide sanctuaries and facilitation to terrorists.”

On Tuesday, a U.S. State Department spokesperson backed Pakistan’s renewed resolve against terrorism and again urged the Afghan Taliban to deliver on their counterterrorism pledges.

“The Pakistani people have suffered tremendously from terrorist attacks. Pakistan has a right to defend itself from terrorism,” Ned Price told reporters in Washington.

“We continue to call on the Taliban to uphold the very commitment they have made to see to it that Afghan soil is never again used as a launchpad for international terrorist attacks,” he said.

“These are among the very commitments that the Taliban have been unable or unwilling to fulfill to date,” Price said.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said this week that Afghanistan harbored an “overwhelming presence” of TTP members.

“We have been requesting the Taliban ever since they returned to power (in Kabul) to stop the TTP from plotting terrorist activities in Pakistan,” Asif told local media Monday. He said Islamabad hopes the rulers in Kabul would help rein in the terrorists.

A spokesman for the Taliban administration Tuesday rejected Pakistani allegations as “false” and “regrettable.” Zabihullah Mujahid said that his government, which is yet to be given legitimacy by the world, wants peaceful relations with all neighboring countries, including Pakistan, to promote Afghan as well as regional peace and stability.

The Taliban reclaimed power in August 2021 as U.S.-led troops withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of involvement in war.

TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud and commanders have taken refuge on the Afghan side of the border after fleeing counterterrorism military operations in Pakistan.

Officials in Islamabad say the militants have been roaming freely in Afghanistan and directing cross-border terrorism with greater freedom since the Taliban takeover.
…

Ten people have died in explosions and shootings that occurred in recent days in Indian-controlled Kashmir, local officials said.

Two children — a 5-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl — were killed, and five other civilians were injured in a bomb blast in Rajouri district on Monday. A day earlier, four people were killed in the shooting by unidentified armed assailants on civilian homes in Dangri village, according to the local police.

On Wednesday, fighting at a security checkpoint in Jammu city left four attackers dead, officials said.

The attacks have taken place in the mostly Hindu-populated parts of Kashmir.

Manoj Sinha, the New Delhi-appointed lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir, has announced ex-gratia (sympathy) payments of about $12,000 for the next of kin of each civilian killed in the recent attacks.

The violence has prompted protests in Rajouri and other parts of Kashmir as Indian officials pledge swift action against the rebels.

Meanwhile, some people have protested against power outages in different parts of Kashmir.

India stripped Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in India, of its constitutional autonomy in 2019 by bringing it under direct federal administration and deploying about 500,000 forces to quell anti-Indian rebels in the region.

Last year, more than 170 suspected rebels and 26 Indian security forces were killed in Kashmir.

New Delhi blames neighboring Pakistan for supporting anti-Indian rebels in Kashmir, a charge that Pakistani officials have rejected.

Last month, Indian authorities confirmed seizing the properties of several Kashmiri Muslim leaders who oppose Indian rule in Kashmir.

Since their emergence as two separate states, Pakistan and India have remained in bitter acrimony over the status of Kashmir. The two nuclear-armed neighbors have fought several times over Kashmir.

Some information in this story was taken from Agence France-Presse.
…

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif says a new wave of terrorist attacks in his country is originating in Afghanistan and he has urged that nation’s Taliban rulers to stop it in line with their counterterrorism pledges.

Asif’s assertions come as a spate of terrorist attacks in Pakistan has killed hundreds of people, mostly security forces, in recent months. An outlawed alliance of militant groups, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or the Pakistani Taliban, has claimed responsibility for much of the violence. 

“They are coming from across the Afghan side of the border to carry out these activities. They may have sleeper cells here [in Pakistan], but their overwhelming presence is on Afghanistan’s soil,” Asif told the local Geo news TV channel late Monday.

He spoke after attending an hours-long meeting of the National Security Committee, the country’s highest security-related forum comprising political and military leadership, which reviewed the rise in terrorist attacks. It issued a subtle warning to the Afghan Taliban.

“The forum concluded that no country will be allowed to provide sanctuaries and facilitation to terrorists and Pakistan reserves all rights in that respect to safeguard her people,” said a post-meeting statement without naming Afghanistan.

Asif recounted that the Taliban pledged in a February 2020 deal signed with the United States in Doha, Qatar, they would not allow the use of Afghan soil for terrorism against any country.

“We have been requesting the Taliban ever since they returned to power to stop the TTP from plotting terrorist activities in Pakistan,” Asif noted.

“This is your obligation under the Doha agreement and this is also Kabul’s obligation or duty towards our brotherly, neighborly relations,” the minister said. “We hope that they will rein in and control this new wave of terrorism against Pakistan, which is stemming from their territory.”

A spokesman for the Taliban administration Tuesday responded to Islamabad’s assertions, calling them “false” and “regrettable.”

Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that Afghanistan wants peaceful relations with all its neighbors, including Pakistan, to promote internal as well as regional peace and stability.

“The Islamic Emirate is trying its best to ensure that the territory of Afghanistan is not used against Pakistan or any other country,” Mujahid said, using the official title for the Taliban government, which has yet to be recognized by the world.

“We are committed to this goal, but the Pakistani side also has a responsibility to resolve the situation, avoid baseless talks and provocative ideas, because such talks and mistrust are not in the interest of any side,” Mujahid said.

The TTP, designated as a global terrorist organization, is a Pakistani offshoot and close ally of the Afghan Taliban.

After its emergence in Pakistan’s volatile border regions in 2007, the group sheltered and provided personnel for the Islamist Taliban insurgency against the United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Taliban reclaimed power in Kabul in August 2021 as the then-Afghan government and its security forces collapsed and all U.S.-led troops withdrew from the country after 20 years of involvement in war. 

TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud and his commanders have long taken shelter in Afghanistan after fleeing counterterrorism military operations in Pakistan. But Pakistani officials maintain the militants have been roaming freely in Kabul and operating with greater freedom out of their Afghan bases since the Taliban takeover.

Mehsud routinely issues media statements through his spokesman, directing TTP cross-border deployments and praising terrorist attacks.

The violence claimed by or blamed on the TTP and other militant groups killed almost 1,000 Pakistanis, including nearly 300 security forces, in some 376 terrorist attacks in 2022.

The Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies, a nongovernmental organization, documented the details in its annual report, noting that most of the attacks have occurred in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces, both lining Pakistan’s nearly 2,600-kilometer border with Afghanistan.

The report said that more than 40 security forces were killed in December alone, making it the deadliest month in a decade of terrorist violence in Pakistan. 

 
…

Pakistan’s political and military leadership Monday vowed that no nation will be allowed to shelter militants who stage attacks against the country — an apparent reference to neighboring Afghanistan. 

The statement came amid a spike in attacks by the militant Pakistani Taliban, many of whom are hiding in neighboring Afghanistan. The attacks are on the rise across Pakistan, especially in the northwest near the Afghan border. 

The announcement came at the end of a lengthy meeting of Pakistan’s National Security Committee, which was attended by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, the newly appointed army chief General Asim Munir and other officials. 

According to a government statement, the committee vowed that there will be “zero tolerance for terrorism in Pakistan” and that militants will be dealt with using the “full force of the state.” 

The announcement came two weeks after Pakistan’s special forces killed more than two dozen detainees linked to the Pakistani Taliban in a raid after they overpowered guards at a counterterrorism center in the northwest and killed three hostages. Before launching the rescue operation, the detainees had demanded safe passage to Afghanistan, a demand the government rejected. 

The Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, are separate from, but allied with, the Afghan Taliban. The Afghan Taliban seized power last year as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final weeks of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war. 

The takeover of Afghanistan emboldened TTP fighters who have stepped up attacks on Pakistani security forces since November when they unilaterally ended a monthslong cease-fire with Pakistan’s government. The increasing militant violence has strained relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, who had brokered the cease-fire in May. 

 
…

The United Nations said its envoy to Afghanistan had pressed the Taliban rulers Monday to reverse bans on work and education for women and girls to prevent further isolation of the crisis-ridden country.

Markus Potzel, the acting head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), conveyed the international community’s call in a meeting in Kabul with Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani.

“The ban on Afghan women aid workers will deepen the humanitarian crisis creating greater economic misery and further Afghanistan’s isolation,” UNAMA wrote on Twitter after the meeting.

Late last year, the men-only Taliban administration ordered national and foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to immediately suspend Afghan female staff for allegedly not wearing the Islamic hijab and breaching mandatory gender segregation at work.

The global community swiftly denounced the move, saying it would have “immediate life-threatening consequences” for all Afghans. 

Haqqani’s office confirmed in a post-meeting statement that Potzel shared his concerns about the education of girls and the imposition of other restrictions.

The statement quoted the influential Taliban minister as telling the U.N. delegation “that efforts are being made to solve the problems,” and that “a reasonable and permanent solution is being worked on which is compatible with Sharia rules and the culture of our people.”

Haqqani maintained that the Taliban leadership “thinks for the well-being of the people and is committed to it.”

The restriction on women aid workers has prompted the U.N. to temporarily halt some “time-critical” programs, and several of the largest foreign NGOs have suspended their operations, saying they cannot reach the millions of children, women and men in need of assistance without female staff.

The Taliban already have rejected calls for reversing the NGO ban and other restrictions on women as meddling in Afghan domestic matters, saying Islamic law or Shariah-based governance mandates them.

“In line with a general Islamic Emirate edict seeking implementation of Shariah in the country, it is mandatory for women not to go to NGO offices, just like government institutions, which have been functioning without women for the past year-and-a-half,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA on Friday.

The U.N. estimates about 28 million people – more than half the population – including 14 million children, are in need of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. About 97% of Afghans are at risk of falling below the poverty line this year, with more than 1 million children younger than 5 acutely malnourished.

“The ban comes at a time when over 28 million people require aid to survive as the country grapples with risk of famine conditions, economic decline, entrenched poverty and a brutal winter,” warned the U.N. office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Afghanistan in a statement Monday.

The Taliban have imposed sweeping restrictions on women since taking over Afghanistan in August 2021. In the run-up to the December 20 ban on women NGO workers, the hardline rulers abruptly banned female students from accessing universities and other institutions of higher learning.

The move effectively imposed a complete ban on girls’ education in the country after the Taliban in March barred teenage girls from attending secondary schools.

The Taliban require women to wear hijabs when in public and avoid road trips beyond a certain distance without a male relative accompanying them. Women are not allowed to go to public places such as parks, gyms and public bath facilities.   

 
…

Islamic State on Monday claimed responsibility for an attack on Taliban forces in Kabul.

The militant group said on Telegram that the attack on Sunday had killed 20 people and wounded 30.

A spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban-run interior ministry said an explosion outside the military airport in the capital Kabul had caused multiple casualties.

The interior ministry denied the casualty figures claimed by Islamic State and said it would release the official death toll.

Islamic State has claimed several high-profile attacks in Kabul, including the storming of a hotel that caters to Chinese businessmen and a shooting at Pakistan’s embassy that Islamabad called an assassination attempt against its ambassador, who escaped unharmed.
…

Officials say at least five people were killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir in a 24-hour period.  

On Sunday, four people were killed and at least five were injured after gunmen opened fire on a row of houses in the Rajouri district.

A child was killed Monday and at least four people were injured in a blast near the houses attacked on Sunday. The source of the blast was not immediately clear.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir has been hotly contested for decades by both India and Pakistan. Both claim the territory in full.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press. 
…

A bomb exploded near a checkpoint at Kabul’s military airport Sunday morning killing and wounding “several” people, a Taliban official said, the first deadly blast of 2023 in Afghanistan. 

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the regional affiliate of the Islamic State group — known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province — has increased its attacks since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Targets have included Taliban patrols and members of Afghanistan’s Shiite minority. 

The military airport is around 200 meters (219 yards) from the civilian airport and close to the Interior Ministry, itself the site of a suicide bombing in October that killed at least four people. 

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor said the blast left several people dead and wounded. He gave no exact figures or further information about the bombing, saying details of an investigation will be shared later. 

Although Taliban security forces prevented photography and filming directly at the blast site, the checkpoint appeared damaged but intact. It is on Airport Road, which leads to high-security neighborhoods housing government ministries, foreign embassies and the presidential palace. 

A spokesperson for the Kabul police chief, Khalid Zadran, was not immediately available for comment.  
…

A senior U.N. official in Afghanistan met the deputy prime minister of the Taliban-led government Sunday to discuss a ban on women working for non-governmental groups that Afghan authorities have announced in a series of measures rolling back women’s rights.

The decision by the Taliban government to bar women from NGO work has prompted major international aid agencies to suspend operations in the country. The ban has raised fears that people will be deprived of food, education, health care and other critical services, as over half of Afghanistan’s population needs urgent humanitarian assistance.

Aid agencies have warned the ban will have catastrophic consequences and “hundreds and thousands” of Afghans will die because of the Taliban decision.

The deputy head of the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan, Markus Potzel, met Maulvi Abdul Salam Hanafi in the capital Kabul to discuss the ban, as well as other measures including barring women from universities.

“Banning women from working in nongovernmental organizations, denying girls and women from education and training, harms millions of people in Afghanistan and prevents the delivery of vital aid to Afghan men, women and children,” the U.N. mission said.

Potzel is the latest U.N. official to meet the Taliban’s leadership amid mounting international concern over the curtailing of women’s freedoms in Afghanistan.

Last Monday, the acting head of the U.N. mission Ramiz Alakbarov met Economy Minister Qari Din Mohammed Hanif.

Hanif issued the NGO ban Dec. 24, allegedly because women weren’t wearing the Islamic headscarf, or hijab, correctly. He said any organization found not complying with the order will have its license revoked.

Aid agencies have been providing essential services and support in the face of a worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

The Taliban takeover in 2021, as U.S. and NATO forces were in the final weeks of their pullout after 20 years of war, sent Afghanistan’s economy into a tailspin and transformed the country, driving millions into poverty and hunger. Foreign aid stopped almost overnight.

Sanctions on the Taliban rulers, including a halt on bank transfers and the freezing of billions in Afghanistan’s foreign assets have already restricted access to global institutions. Funds from aid agencies helped prop up the country’s aid-dependent economy before the Taliban takeover.

U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths is due to visit Afghanistan to discuss the ban.

Potzel’s meeting with Hanafi came as a U.N. survey showed that a third of NGOs headed by women in Afghanistan have been forced to stop 70% of their activities due to the ban and around a third have stopped all their activities.

The U.N. Women’s Department said 86% of the 151 organizations surveyed have either stopped or are functioning partially.

It also said the lack of women in the distribution of aid has had a significant impact on the Afghan population.
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After nearly 20 years of war, the United States and its allies left Afghanistan in August 2021, evacuating nearly 130,000 people in the chaotic last weeks in Kabul.

Through Operation Allies Welcome, about 88,500 Afghan nationals arrived in the U.S. and resettled in communities across the country.

But seven months later, the Biden administration faced another humanitarian challenge. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sparked another refugee crisis. Since the start of the war, more than 7.8 million refugees have fled Ukraine.

Although the U.S. was quick to announce a response for Ukrainian refugees, both Ukrainians and Afghans must navigate the same U.S. immigration system.

Here’s a look at the U.S. immigration realities for Afghans and Ukrainians, and the various paths they have used to enter the United States.

Afghans

The U.S. has welcomed more than 88,500 Afghans through Operation Allies Welcome, a program that coordinated efforts to resettle vulnerable Afghans.

These Afghans were evacuated on U.S. flights in July and August 2021 and mainly have received a short-term immigration protection known as humanitarian parole.

Humanitarian parole is given to those hoping to enter the U.S. under emergency circumstances. While it does not automatically lead to permanent residency, parolees can apply for legal status through the asylum process or other forms of sponsorship, if available, once they’re in the U.S.

Of the nearly 88,500 Afghans who had entered the U.S. as of mid-June, at least 77,500 received humanitarian parole. The remaining 11,000 is a mix of visa holders.

Afghans still in Afghanistan who are hoping to receive a visa must travel to a U.S. embassy—the closest are in Qatar, Pakistan or the United Arab Emirates—for an interview.

Or they can apply to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for humanitarian parole, the safest way is online. But they must pay a $575 fee and prove they were persecuted by the Taliban. The fee applies to everyone seeking humanitarian parole. Applicants can ask for a fee waiver but need to show proof of financial hardship to the U.S. government.

More than 40,000 Afghans living outside the U.S. have submitted humanitarian parole applications since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. About 500 of those applications have been approved.

According to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), fewer than 5,000 of the 40,000 cases were fully adjudicated by mid-June 2022, and 297 were approved.

Nine months after the military withdrawal, the Biden administration designated Afghanistan for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which provides legal status in the U.S. and protection from deportation for up to 18 months. It also provides work permits for people to work legally in the country. And it can be extended.

But it does not lead to permanent residence.

Some Afghans were allowed to continue the process for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), a decade-old immigrant visa program that helps military interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government to come to the U.S. with a direct pathway to permanent residency.

The State Department has hired more staff members to process SIVs, but the MPI says adjudication remains slow.

Since the start of the Biden administration through November 1, 2022, the State Department has issued nearly 19,000 SIVs to principal applicants and their eligible family members.

There are about 15,000 SIV principal applicants who are waiting for their visa interview, the step before being issued an SIV. About 48,000 individuals have submitted all documents and are waiting to be processed.

Ukrainians

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, it started an exodus not seen since World War II.

Initially, there was not a clear path for Ukrainians to quickly come to the U.S. Though most Ukrainians were seeking refuge in other countries in Europe, some pursued safety in the U.S.

Some Ukrainians entered the county on existing U.S. visas. But more than 20,000 Ukrainians traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border and requested asylum. Many of those did not have a U.S. visa.

Two months after Russia’s invasion, the Biden administration designated Ukraine for Temporary Protected Status and applied it to Ukrainians in the U.S. since April 11. The White House also agreed to admit up to 100,000 of the more than 7 million Ukrainians who fled Ukraine.

On April 21, 2022, the U.S. announced the Uniting for Ukraine program to provide a pathway for Ukrainian citizens outside the U.S. to stay in the U.S. for two years on humanitarian parole.

Uniting for Ukraine also allows U.S. citizens, green card residents and others with certain other immigration statuses to support Ukrainian refugees.

To apply, Ukrainians must have been a resident of Ukraine as of Feb. 11, 2022, and there is no application fee.

After launching Uniting for Ukraine, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would no longer allow Ukrainians to enter the country through the U.S.-Mexico border by humanitarian parole.

Ukrainians already in the U.S. as of April 11 cannot apply for humanitarian parole under the program. They can, however, apply for TPS or the asylum program.

As of late November, the U.S. has allowed more than 180,000 Ukrainians to stay in the U.S. for a period of time through humanitarian parole, TPS or other forms of family sponsorship.

Afghans and Ukrainians

Both Afghans and Ukrainians can apply for admission to the U.S. refugee program.

Additionally, family members of Afghans or Ukrainians can file a petition to bring their loved ones to the U.S. They must be a citizen or a green card holder, and the process covers only direct relatives.

Afghans and Ukrainian who received humanitarian parole can apply for asylum unless another, long-term immigration protection is available to them.
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The Afghan woman ran down the street toward her friend’s apartment as soon as she heard the news: the White House had publicly weighed in on her family’s case.

Surely her child, who she says was abducted by a U.S. Marine more than a year ago, would now be returned, she thought. She was so excited that it was only after she’d arrived that she realized she wasn’t wearing any shoes.

“We thought within one week she’d be back to us,” the woman told The Associated Press.

Yet two months after an AP report on the high-stakes legal fight over the child raised alarms at the highest levels of government, from the White House to the Taliban, the baby remains with U.S. Marine Corps Major Joshua Mast and his family. The Masts claim in court documents that they legally adopted the child, and that the Afghan couple’s accusations are “outrageous” and “unmerited.”

“We are all concerned with the well-being of this child who is at the heart of this matter,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre after the AP detailed the child’s plight in October.

Last month, the U.S. Justice Department filed a motion to intervene in the legal wrangling over the fate of the child, arguing that Mast’s adoption should never have been granted. The government has said Mast’s attempts to take the child directly conflicted with a U.S. foreign policy decision to reunite the orphan with her Afghan family. They asked that the case be moved from a rural Virginia court to federal court but were denied by Presiding Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Moore.

Additionally, federal authorities say multiple investigations are underway.

“We all just want resolution for this child, whatever it’s going to be, so her childhood doesn’t continue to be in limbo,” said Samantha Freed, a court-appointed attorney assigned to look after the best interests of the child. “We need to get this right now. There are no do-overs.”

The legal fight has taken more than a year, and Freed is worried it could take months — maybe even years — more. The child is now 3 ½ years old. The Afghan family spoke with the AP on condition of remaining anonymous out of fear for their safety and concerns for their relatives back in Afghanistan.

Mast became enchanted with the child while on temporary assignment in Afghanistan in late 2019. Just a few months old, the infant had survived a Special Operations raid that killed her parents and five siblings, according to court records.

As she recovered from injuries in a U.S. military hospital, the Afghan government and the International Committee of the Red Cross identified her relatives, and through meetings with the State Department, arranged for their reunification. The child’s cousin and his wife — young newlyweds without children yet of their own — wept when they first saw her, they said: Taking her in and raising her was the greatest honor of their lives.

Nonetheless, Mast — despite orders from military officials to stop intervening — was determined to take her home to the United States. He used his status in the military, appealed to political connections in the Trump administration and convinced the small-town Virginia court to skip some of the usual safeguards that govern international adoptions.

Finally, when the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan last summer, he helped the family get to the United States. After they arrived, they say, he took their baby from them at the Fort Pickett Virginia Army National Guard base. They haven’t seen her since and are suing to get her back.

The Afghan woman gave birth to a daughter just weeks after the girl they’d been raising was taken from them. Every time they buy an outfit or a present for their daughter, they buy a second matching one for the child they pray will come back to them soon.

The Masts did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Stepping out from a recent hearing, Joshua Mast told AP they’ve been advised not to speak publicly.

In court filings, Mast says he acted “admirably” to bring the child to the United States and care for her with his wife. They say they’ve given her “a loving home” and have “done nothing but ensure she receives the medical care she requires, at great personal expense and sacrifice.” Mast celebrated his adoption of the child, whose Afghan family is Muslim, as an act of Christian faith.

The toddler’s future is now set to be decided in a sealed, secret court case in rural Virginia — in the same courthouse that granted Mast custody. The federal government has described that custody order as “unlawful,” “improper” and “deeply flawed and incorrect” because it was based on a promise that Afghanistan would waive jurisdiction over the child, which never happened.

The day Mast and his wife Stephanie Mast were granted a final adoption, the child was 7,000 miles away with the Afghan couple who knew nothing about it.

In court, Mast, still an active-duty Marine, cast doubt on whether the Afghan couple is related to her at all. They argue that the little girl is “an orphan of war and a victim of terrorism, rescued under tragic circumstances from the battlefield.” They say she is a “stateless minor” because she was recovered from a compound Mast says was used by foreign fighters not from Afghanistan.

The case has been consumed by a procedural question: Does the Afghan family — who raised the child for a year and a half — have a right under Virginia law to even challenge the adoption? 

Judge Moore ruled in November that the Afghan family does have legal standing; the Masts’ appeal is under review.

The child’s Afghan relatives, currently in Texas, believe the U.S. government should be doing more to help them, because numerous federal agencies were involved in the ordeal.

“The government is not doing their job as they should,” said the Afghan woman. “And in this process, we are suffering.”

A State Department official said one of the agency’s own social workers stood with Mast when he took the baby at Fort Pickett, but “had no awareness of the U.S. Embassy’s previous involvement in reuniting the child with her next of kin in Afghanistan.” The official described how the U.S. had worked hard in Afghanistan to unite the child with her relatives.

“We recognize the human dimension of this situation,” said the official.

The Defense Department said in a statement that the decision to reunite the child with her family was in keeping with the U.S. government’s foreign obligations, as well as international law principles that mandate family reunification of children displaced in war. The Defense Department said it is aware that Mast “took custody” of the child but declined to comment further.

The Afghan couple pleaded for help from the tangle of agencies at Fort Pickett: the military, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the police. Some didn’t believe them, some said there was nothing they could do, some tried to intervene to no avail.

The couple eventually reached Martha Jenkins, an attorney volunteering at the base.

“When I first heard their story, I thought there must be something lost in translation — how could this be true?” said Jenkins. She contacted authorities.

Almost two months after they lost the child, Virginia State Police dispatch records obtained by the AP show “an advocate” called to report what had happened.

“The family is on Fort Pickett, they are requesting an investigation to the validity of the adoption and if it was done under false pretenses,” wrote the dispatcher. The record notes that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI were involved.

Jenkins, who was in Virginia temporarily, called every Virginia adoption attorney she could find until she reached Elizabeth Vaughan.

“It was very surprising to me that no one helped them,” said Vaughan, who offered to represent the Afghan couple for free. “I don’t think they had a lot of the paperwork Americans like to see when someone’s proving that they have custody. But there are laws about people, trusted adults, who arrive with a child. So much more investigating should have been done.”

A Marine Corps spokesperson wrote in a statement that they are fully cooperating with federal law enforcement investigations, including at least one focused on the alleged unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material. In emails Mast sent asking for help bringing the child from Afghanistan, now submitted as exhibitions in court, he referenced reading classified documents about the raid that killed the girl’s family.

Investigators and prosecutors declined to comment, citing the ongoing inquiries.

On the other side of the globe, the Taliban issued a statement saying it “will seriously pursue this issue with American authorities so that the said child is returned to her relatives.”

Now every night before bed, the Afghan couple scroll through an album of 117 photos of the year and half they spent raising her — a sassy child with big bright eyes, who loved to dress up in shiny colors and gold bangle bracelets. There’s a photo of the child wearing a black and green tunic and tiny gold sandals, nestled on the young Afghan man’s lap, smiling mischievously at the camera. In one video, she runs alongside the man in their old Afghan neighborhood, bouncing down the sidewalk to keep up with his stride.

They’ll soon be moving to a new two-bedroom apartment. There, they say, the little girl’s room will be ready for her, whenever she comes home.
…

The Taliban have consolidated power and overseen an enormous improvement in security across Afghanistan this year. At the same time, the Islamist rulers have failed to gain formal international recognition and sanctions relief by refusing to remove restrictions on women’s freedoms to public life and education.

The insurgent group returned to power in mid-August 2021 as the United States and NATO-led Western allies completed their military withdrawal after two decades of involvement in the war with the Taliban.

More than 16 months into renewed Taliban rule, fears of an economic collapse, widespread famine and massive migration of Afghans stemming from U.S. sanctions and suspension of foreign aid seem to have eased.

The lack of crisis is largely attributed to a series of exemptions granted by President Joe Biden in the U.S. sanctions and to the delivery of emergency humanitarian assistance by Western allies.

A Taliban crackdown on corruption, a marked reduction in violence and an unprecedented increase in coal exports to neighboring Pakistan have also contributed to slowing Afghanistan’s economic free fall and stabilizing the conflict-torn nation.

But the Taliban regime continues to face severe criticism for its human rights record, especially for its treatment of women.

New restrictions on women in public

Norway hosted Taliban diplomats in January for meetings with European delegates on Afghan humanitarian and human rights issues. The initiative generated hopes the Islamist Taliban would live up to their pledges of ensuring women’s freedoms and opening schools for girls in return for Western economic cooperation.

But the developments in the months that followed strained an already fragile relationship between the Taliban and the outside world. The new regime in Kabul, known as the Islamic Emirate, began curtailing women’s freedoms in breach of repeated commitments.

Hibatullah Akhudzada, the reclusive Taliban supreme leader, abruptly decided against allowing teenage girls to resume classes when public secondary schools across the country reopened in March.

Afghanistan’s rulers continued to tighten restrictions on women, banning them from public places, including parks, bath houses, and gyms. Women are required to cover their faces in public and can attend health facilities or undertake road travel beyond a certain distance only if accompanied by male chaperones. Most female government staff say they have effectively been confined to their homes or rendered unemployed.

The United Nations and Western governments have persistently decried women’s exclusion from public life as a “human rights crisis” in Afghanistan and called for reversing the rules.

“The country’s economic and social stability and the Taliban’s domestic and international legitimacy depend enormously on their treatment of Afghanistan’s mothers and daughters,” Thomas West, the U.S. special Afghan representative, told Taliban Defense Minister Mohammed Yaqub in a December meeting in Abu Dhabi.

The Taliban have also curbed media freedoms and space for civil society activists to operate has increasingly shrunk.

In a rare mid-year speech, Akhundzada rebuked international outcry and calls for him to remove curbs on women and girls.

“I am not here to fulfill your [foreigners’] wishes, nor are they acceptable to me. I cannot compromise on Sharia [Islamic law] to work with you or even move a step forward,” he told an all-male gathering of thousands of religious clerics in the Afghan capital.

Floggings, executions return

Akhundzada also directed Taliban courts toward the end of the year to begin applying Islamic law to criminal justice, leading to public floggings of dozens of Afghans, including women, in crowded sports stadiums for allegedly committing “moral crimes” such as adultery and theft.

In December, the Taliban staged their first public execution of a convicted murderer, effectively reviving the practices of the previous Taliban rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

The reversion to harsh punishments drew international outrage but Taliban rulers rejected the outcry as “reprehensible” and an “insult” to their religious beliefs.

Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Anniken Huitfeldt told an event in Oslo this past week that her government believes in continued engagement with authorities in Kabul in order to ensure much-need aid reaches Afghans.

“On many levels women are basically erased from public life. This is a human right crisis,” Huitfeldt told an event in Oslo this past week. She defended her government’s decision to host the Taliban meetings in January and to advocate continued engagement with them, saying there is no alternative to dialogue in order to help the Afghan people.

“But the Taliban have not delivered on their promises. They have not opened the schools for girls. They have not moved towards a representative government. They do not respect human rights, as illustrated most recently by the public execution,” Huitfeldt said.

Taliban foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi defended his government’s policies and stressed the need for other countries to work toward bridging the mutual trust deficit.

“It is imperative the West revisit its policy of collective punishment and allow Afghans their most basic human right — the right to life,” Balkhi told VOA in written comments.

“After experiencing half a century of crisis and violence caused by foreign interference and great power politics, Afghans must be given an opportunity to rebuild their lives and heal their trauma through assistance, cooperation and integration so trust deficits can be narrowed and a way forward forged in tandem with the world,” Balkhi added.

Taliban hardliners in control

Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at Washington’s Wilson Center, says he is not optimistic the Taliban and the international community will come to an understanding next year. He says the Taliban polices are being driven by the religious hardliners, including Akhundzada, who have the upper hand within the ruling group.

“The trend lines are not good, and the Taliban appear to be intensifying the draconian policies that so concern the international community,” Kugelman stated.

“And the Taliban don’t care about reconciliation, recognition, and assistance from the international community. Unless the Taliban’s internal dynamics change next year in a way that allows the moderates to gain more control over policy, I doubt much will change, sadly,” he added.

Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan official and political commentator, says the Taliban leadership is using the strictest interpretation of Sharia to please hardliners, in an effort to avoid creation of splinter groups within the movement.

“However, it gives the wrong image of the Islamic faith overall. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation [the Muslim-majority nations’ grouping] has also been reluctant to extend recognition to the Taliban regime so long as the teenage girls’ schools remain closed,” Farhadi said.

“Needless to say, Western countries are not interested in having Taliban regimes’ representatives and emissaries sitting as ambassadors in their own capitals,” Farhadi said.

Taliban leaders dismiss as Western media propaganda reports of rifts in their ranks.

The Islamist rulers take credit for ending years of war in the country, but they have not been able to counter growing terrorist attacks by ISIS-K, the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State group. ISIS-K has staged high-profile deadly bombings in recent months targeting Taliban members, the Afghan Shiite minority community, Russian and Pakistani diplomatic missions as well Chinese nationals in the country.

Balkhi rejected the criticism of their counterterrorism actions and renewed his government’s resolve to not allow anyone to use Afghan soil against other countries.

“The Islamic Emirate has been far more effective in combatting ISIS than any other state through adoption of sound policies, preemptive operations and quick reaction to incidents,” he said.

The Taliban are also battling a low-level insurgency, known as the National Resistance Front or NRF, which is active in parts of northern Panjshir province and surrounding areas. The insurgent leadership is believed to be operating out of bases in neighboring Tajikistan, but they have not been able to pose much of a threat to the Kabul regime.

The international community has also discouraged continuation of violence, fearing it could spark another Afghan civil war and eventually create space for increased transnational terrorist activities.

Norway’s Huitfeldt also noted in her December 12 speech in Oslo the Islamic State group “poses an even greater threat” in Afghanistan and it can spread internationally over time if not contained.

“We must not look away. History has taught us that it’s unwise to give up on Afghanistan. No one will be safe if the country descends into civil war or becomes a base for terrorism. That would hurt both the Afghan people and the international community.”

 
…

The Taliban leadership in Afghanistan remained unmoved Friday by relentless global calls to remove a ban on women humanitarian workers, insisting their Islamic law or Shariah-based governance mandates it.

The hard-line rulers ordered international and national nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) last Saturday to immediately suspend Afghan female staff for allegedly not observing Islamic hijab and breaching mandatory gender segregation at work.

The ban has prompted the United Nations to temporarily halt some “time-critical” programs, and several of the largest foreign NGOs in Afghanistan have suspended their operations, saying they cannot reach the millions of children, women and men in need of assistance without female staff.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief Taliban spokesman, defended the ban Friday, arguing that it is strictly in accordance with Islamic law. He told VOA by phone that female government employees working in “unnecessary fields” were ordered to stay at home soon after the Taliban seized power in August 2021.

“The Islamic Emirate has now reached a conclusion that women do not need to work in NGOs in areas where there is no need for them,” Mujahid said, using the official title for his men-only Taliban administration in Kabul.

“In line with a general Islamic Emirate edict seeking implementation of Shariah in the country, it is mandatory for women not to go to NGO offices, just like government institutions, which have been functioning without women for the past year-and-a-half.”

Mujahid argued that Taliban authorities are responsible for the safety and security of all Afghans but that they are unable to do so for women working in NGOs because they are independent of government control.

Barring health and a couple of other departments, female government staff have largely been confined to their homes since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Mujahid asserted the women are still being paid salaries.

Early last week, the Taliban abruptly barred female students from attending universities until further notice. The move effectively imposed a complete ban on girls’ education in Afghanistan after the Islamist rulers in March banned teenage girls from attending secondary schools across the country.

A group of independent U.N. experts in a statement Friday denounced the Taliban’s order barring women from working in NGOs as an “outrageous violation” of women’s rights.

“The ban on women working in NGOs not only deprives women workers of their fundamental rights and livelihood, but also prevents them from supporting their communities. It will further push women out of jobs and completely erase them from the public sphere,” the group lamented in a statement.

Ramiz Alakbarov, the U.N. resident coordinator in Afghanistan, told reporters in New York on Thursday that it would not stop providing humanitarian aid to millions of Afghans despite the ban on women NGO workers, citing “absolutely enormous” humanitarian needs in the South Asian nation.

“Let me make it very clear that the United Nations and humanitarian partners are very committed to the delivery of life-saving services to the people of Afghanistan,” Alakbarov said.

He acknowledged that it is not possible to deliver humanitarian aid, particularly delivery of health services to women and girls, without the participation of female workers, but he stressed “it’s important that we continue to stay and deliver.”

U.N. and other aid agencies estimate about 28 million people – more than half the population – including 14 million children, are in need of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. About 97% of Afghans are at risk of falling below the poverty line this year, with more than 1 million children younger than 5 acutely malnourished.

Alakbarov said that the U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator and other U.N. officials will visit Afghanistan in the coming weeks to discuss the issues with the Taliban rulers and find solutions.

“We are working under one thing only, and that is resolution of the bottleneck and getting negotiations going so the women can go back to work and girls can go back to school, based on an understanding that this is an absolutely essential right of other people,” Alakbarov said.

“I believe from my interaction with the Taliban, the best way of coming to the solution is not a pressure. It is a dialogue. This movement has not responded well to the pressure in the past,” he cautioned.

The international community has not yet formally recognized the Taliban administration, mainly over human rights concerns and the treatment of women.
…

Security concerns continue to dominate China’s policy toward Afghanistan more than a year after the United States and NATO pulled out of the Central Asian country.

China has stepped in and engaged with the new Taliban government, promising trade and investment. But Beijing has concerns over the potential spillover of militants from Afghanistan into China’s western Xinjiang region, the security of its infrastructure projects in the region and its citizens in Afghanistan.

On December 12, the Islamic State Khorasan Province, an affiliate of Islamic State, claimed an attack at a Kabul hotel frequented by Chinese nationals.

The Chinese government responded by advising its citizens and companies “to leave and evacuate the country as soon as possible.” During a regular press conference, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said China was “deeply shocked” and called on the “Afghan interim government to take strong and resolute measures to ensure the security of Chinese nationals, institutions and projects in Afghanistan.”

One day before the attack, Taliban spokesperson Abdul Qahar Balkhi, in a tweet, said providing security to the foreign embassies in Kabul is “the priority” for the Taliban.

Balkhi said the Chinese ambassador had called on the Taliban “to pay attention” to the security of Beijing’s diplomatic mission in Kabul.

The Taliban reassured the Chinese that the Taliban “will not allow anyone to use Afghanistan’s soil against another country,” Balkhi added.

Security concerns

“Primarily Chinese interests in Afghanistan are still security issues and specifically preventing any breach of militancy into the Uyghur areas of China,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization.

During the Taliban’s first rule in Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, the group harbored a number of foreign extremist groups, including Uyghur militants.

A 2021 U.N. report assessing threats in Afghanistan found that Uyghur militants of the Turkistan Islamic Party, widely accepted as an alias of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), have been active in both Afghanistan and Syria.

“Many Member States assess that it seeks to establish a Uighur state in Xinjiang, China, and towards that goal, facilitates the movement of fighters from Afghanistan to China,” the report noted.

Felbab-Brown told VOA that China is concerned not only about Uyghur militancy but about “the safety of BRI investments” in Central Asia and Pakistan.

BRI refers to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Launched in 2013, it is an infrastructure and investment vision, aimed at expanding China’s trade routes globally by land and sea.

Chinese officials, who met the Taliban on a number of occasions, said Afghanistan should take “resolute” measures to crack down on “all terrorist forces, including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement” (ETIM).

The ETIM was founded in Pakistan by a Uyghur religious figure, Hasan Mahsum, in 1997. The leader reportedly led a few dozen Uyghur militants in the border region around Afghanistan and Pakistan before being killed by a Pakistani army drone in 2003. The U.S. removed the ETIM from its terror list in 2020, but China continues to say the ETIM is a threat.

Relationship but not recognition

Beijing had been cultivating a relationship with the Taliban for years before the fall of Kabul, and China is one of the few countries that has kept its embassy open since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021.

But the former Afghan ambassador to China, Javid Ahmad Qaem, said he “has not seen any major developments in the China-Taliban relations in the past year.”

“China has not recognized the Taliban, and there is no major change in the diplomatic or economic relations between the two,” Qaem added.

No country has recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan since it seized control 16 months ago.

BRI and trade

“China wants to have its influence in the region,” said Qaem. “Absolutely, it is part of their BRI policy to have its influence in the region and to have friendly governments [in the region].”

After a June 22 earthquake in southeast Afghanistan killed more than 1,000 people, China announced $8 million in aid. Beijing’s ambassador to Kabul, Wang Yu, said in July that his country has “long-term reconstruction plans” for Afghanistan, prioritizing trade followed by investment and agriculture.

In September, a new corridor between China and Afghanistan, running through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, was opened.

“Today, the first shipment of commercial goods through the new economic corridor from China to Afghanistan via Uzbekistan & Kyrgyzstan reached Hairatan on the Afghanistan Railway. It took less than 10 days, which shortens our distance,” wrote the Chinese ambassador on social media.

Khan Jan Alokozai, vice president of the Afghan Chamber of Commerce, told VOA that the new corridor will provide alternate routes to the existing land corridor, via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

In October, an air corridor was opened via UAE to transport Afghan pine nuts to China.

Alokozai, however, said, “The main issue is not having the routes, but it is finding a market for our products.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in a meeting with the Taliban’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, in July, said China is prepared to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan, as a part the BRI.

“China hopes to push the alignment of the Belt and Road Initiative with the development strategies of Afghanistan, support the extension of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan, and share China’s development opportunities,” said a Chinese foreign ministry statement issued on July 29.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), is a part of the BRI and was launched in 2013. It is a corridor linking Pakistan’s Gwadar port to Kashgar, in Xinjiang, China.

Because of insecurity, said Qaem, Afghanistan was “not part of the plan though its location is important for regional connectivity.”

As security concerns continue to plague Afghanistan, “I do not think that the environment would be ready in the near future,” he said in reference to a sobering outlook for future Chinese investments.

Frustration

Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute and a visiting senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told VOA while China is concerned about the threats emanating from Afghanistan, the Taliban are “frustrated” by Chinese economic and development promises.

“On the one hand, the Taliban are frustrated that they’re finding themselves caught in the same situation that the republic government was caught in with the Chinese which is basically talk of big investments, but nothing actually materialized from a Chinese perspective,” said Pantucci.

In 2016, China signed a BRI agreement with the former Afghan government and promised to fund $100 million in projects, but no BRI projects have been implemented in Afghanistan.

While China has provided humanitarian aid, such as the help after this year’s earthquake, “Chinese assistance cannot be compared to billions of dollars of U.S. and European aid in the past 20 years,” said Hamidullah Farooqi, a former Afghan minister and chancellor of Kabul University.

“If the Taliban think that China will provide aid or invest in Afghanistan’s infrastructure as the Western countries did in the 20 years, then they are mistaken,” Farooqi added.
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Following reports over the past weeks of dozens of Rohingya refugees being feared drowned after having jumped into the sea from their boats, it appears now that at least 46 have made it to Thailand this week.

The Thai Maritime Enforcement Command Center reported on its Facebook page Sunday that some Thai fishermen had rescued three Rohingya boys from the sea that morning. From a boat carrying “around 100 Rohingya refugees, three jumped into the sea” and came closer to the fishing boat seeking help, the Facebook post said.

A Thai tourist boat saved another Rohingya teenager from drowning after he was found swimming toward the boat, seeking help, Chris Lewa, director of Rohingya support and movement group Arakan Project, told VOA Friday, pointing to a video shot in the past few days.

“We also have the information that a group of around 42 Rohingya is being detained at a local police station after they were arrested in Phuket,” she said, noting that Phuket, an island, is not usually on the land route of the smugglers who transport Rohingya groups to Malaysia.

However, several Bangladesh- and Malaysia-based Rohingyas told VOA that they believed that the roughly 42 arrested in Phuket on Tuesday were from a group of 70-80 who jumped overboard from their boat around Dec. 23.

Mohammad Zubair, who lives in Malaysia, said that he was “dead sure” that his cousin jumped from a boat along with others when their boat was close to Phuket.

“My cousin Mohammad Enatullah was on a land-and-sea route, when he left the [refugee] camp in Bangladesh and set out for Malaysia. From Myanmar, he boarded a boat on December 13 that carried around 200 Rohingya. I stayed in regular touch with him over a mobile phone on the boat,” Zubair told VOA.

Apart from taking a direct sea route, some people smugglers take Rohingya first from Bangladesh to Myanmar by small boats. They travel overland in Myanmar, before taking boats again to reach Thailand. From Thailand they cross the border and enter Malaysia by road. They do not pass through Phuket using this route.

Zubair added that on Dec. 22 his cousin called him, saying his boat was moving very slowly and that food and water had run out, but he hoped they would land in Indonesia or Malaysia soon.

“When I called the mobile phone on December 24, a Rohingya man on the boat said that along with over 70 people, all men, my cousin had jumped into the sea on December 23 when they were close to an island. When I called the phone again later that day, another Rohingya said that my cousin and others had swum toward the island and had apparently managed to reach there. After December 25, despite many attempts I could not reach that phone,” he said.

He said that he was convinced that the boat was close to southern Thailand, where Phuket is located. He also said he believes hunger and thirst forced the men to jump overboard and attempt to reach the Thai island in search of food and water.

Thai police have not so far announced the arrest of the roughly 42 Rohingya.

As the aid groups said this week that more Rohingya from Bangladesh were still in the sea trying to reach Indonesia and Malaysia, people from the group of 174 who washed ashore on a disabled boat in Indonesia Monday said that at least 20 men from their boat jumped in the sea and drowned.

Lewa said mental stress also drives some Rohingyas to jump overboard on their way to Malaysia.

“In the past weeks, many Rohingyas jumped overboard even when no other boat was in sight to rescue them,” she said.

“This appears to be a psychological urge observed in other cases and regions where people in distress experience severe mental stress in the face of fear and desperation, for which they have a tendency to throw themselves at sea as a form of suicide.”

Zubair said that he hopes his cousin is alive.

“Many drowned after jumping into the sea. I hope, my cousin is lucky and has escaped death in the sea,” he said.
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Across the United States and many other Western countries, the threat from Islamist terror groups has been increasingly overshadowed by the threats from other extremist groups, some of whom have proven to be more deadly in recent years.

But despite a rise in far-right and white-supremacist-driven terrorist threats, counterterrorism officials have been careful not to overlook the still persistent threat from groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida.

“Jihadism is, yes, it is the main threat right now still in the Netherlands,” Netherlands Justice and Security Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius said in response to a question from VOA during a visit to Washington in late November.

“Now you see the threat. You see still the ideology,” she said. “But the firm organization and the level of organization, also in Europe and in our country, that’s breaking down.”

Targeting IS and al-Qaida leadership

One reason for the breakdown – both the Islamic State, known as IS, ISIS or Daesh, and al-Qaida suffered significant setbacks in 2022.

“It was certainly a year of decapitations,” Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former senior United Nations counterterrorism official, told VOA.

Despite concerns about a possible IS resurgence, the United States dealt the terror group a “significant blow” when its leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, blew himself up following a nighttime raid by U.S. special forces.

Less than eight months later, IS was hit again, losing Abu Ibrahim’s replacement, Abu al-Hassan, after a raid by rebels with the Free Syrian Army.

In between, a series of operations by the U.S., partners such as the Syrian Democratic Forces, and allies such as Turkey, kept the pressure up, contributing to the death or capture of at least 10 key IS leaders in 2022.

Already, the U.S. appears to be cracking Islamic State’s defenses, with officials telling VOA they have information on the group’s new leader, known only by the nom-de-guerre, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi. 

Should the U.S. be able to track him down, the impact could reverberate across the jihadi world.

“That starts to look like they have a real problem,” Fitton-Brown, the former counterterrorism official, told VOA.

“It’s as if the thread of wool (is) just being pulled and pulled and the sweater is coming to pieces, and they can’t seem to stop it,” he said. “At what point does this actually sort of weaken the brand to the point where … it’s where people, that people cease to actually want to identify with it because it starts to stink of failure?”

Setback for Al-Qaida

Al-Qaida also was dealt a considerable setback in August, when a U.S. drone strike killed its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri in his residential compound in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“Justice has been delivered,” U.S. President Joe Biden said, announcing al-Zawahiri’s death to the world. “No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.”

Since then, al-Qaida leadership has been somewhat quiet, its succession plans strained, with al-Zawahiri’s likely successor stuck in Iran.

And Western fears about the terror threat emanating from Afghanistan have yet to materialize, with top U.S. counterterrorism officials saying that the IS affiliate there, IS-Khorasan, like al-Qaida, has been sufficiently weakened that it cannot make good on its desire to launch attacks against the West.

Instead, the nexus of the jihadi terror threat continues to shift elsewhere.

Countering terror threat from Africa

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a forum in California earlier this month that the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, (AQAP) remains the most dangerous and the most capable of attacking the West.

Not far behind is al-Qaida’s Somali affiliate known as al-Shabab, which has been financially supporting al-Qaida’s core leadership, and which has long harbored a desire to strike at U.S. and Western targets in Africa and beyond.

“The number one I would say probably that we’re most concerned about is the threat of al-Shabab in East Africa,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs Chidi Blyden told VOA during a virtual briefing this month with the Defense Writers Group in Washington.

“We have partnered with the Somalis to ensure that we are trying to degrade their capability to hurt the partners in the region, as well as their intent or capability to be able to have attacks outside of their current location,” Blyden said.

To help counter al-Shabab, the U.S. earlier this year decided it was necessary to keep a “small, persistent presence” of about 500 U.S. troops in Somalia – a move welcomed by the new Somali government.

But other terror groups, including al-Qaida and IS affiliates the Sahel have also made gains.

“There’s a conglomeration of violent extremist organizations that are in the Sahel that are also of concern to us,” Blyden said. “Their impact on populations in the Sahel and surrounding coastal West African countries is something that we are working with our partners to try and understand more.”

The past year also saw some countries, such as France, begin pulling some of their counterterrorism forces out of the region.

Some experts fear, as a result, more problems are likely.

“The probability that an al-Qaida group conducts an international terrorist attack continues to rise as the regional branches strengthen and counterterrorism pressure lifts,” Katherine Zimmerman, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA via email.

“Even with the intelligence capabilities the U.S. has—and they are many—the risk that such an attack slips through is slightly higher because of shifts in counterterrorism resources as the global terrorism threat has changed,” she said. “It seems as the U.S. footprint shrinks in counterterrorism theaters, so too, does the visibility.”
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India has stepped up surveillance and is preparing its health system for a possible surge in cases of COVID-19 following a spike in infections in China.

Experts, however, are optimistic that with a large part of its population vaccinated or exposed to the virus, India, which has reported the world’s second-highest number of infections, may escape another deadly wave of the pandemic.

The government has made it mandatory for travelers arriving from China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand to produce a negative test report and ordered random testing of 2% of passengers on international flights to India.

The health ministry has asked states to ensure that hospitals are prepared to handle a possible influx of cases and are equipped with adequate supplies of oxygen and ventilators. Officials say the country will also increase the genome sequencing that makes it possible to detect new strains of the virus.

India has not reimposed mask mandates that were relaxed earlier this year but last week Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to return to COVID-appropriate behavior and don masks. Authorities are also calling on those who have not taken vaccines to get the shots.

India has been hit with three waves of the pandemic — the deadliest one occurred in the summer of 2021 when the country grappled with a massive shortage of hospital beds and oxygen and reported tens of thousands of deaths.

But the pandemic has waned in the world’s second most populous country and in recent months, India has been reporting the lowest number of infections since it began. The country presently has about 3,500 cases.

Concerns however have resurfaced following the surge in cases of COVID-19 in China since it relaxed its zero-COVID policy this month. Domestic media reports on Thursday quoted health ministry officials as saying that India may experience a spike in cases over the next month. They pointed to the trend of India being hit about 30-35 days after an outbreak in East Asia.

Still, public health experts are hopeful that India is no longer as vulnerable to the virus as it was at the start of the pandemic in 2020.

“India has a fair amount of immunity both from exposure of a large section of the population to the virus and high immunization rates,” according to K. Srinath Reddy, head of the Public Health Foundation of India. “More than 90% of the adults are vaccinated with two doses and more than 50% of adults have taken a booster dose. So even if cases rise, the likelihood of a severe wave resulting in hospitalization and deaths is very unlikely.”

Other experts concur with that view.

“The government is being cautious and that is good. But I don’t expect any major spread of the present virus driving infections in China or any other variant because a lot of people were infected during the three waves of the pandemic,” according to virologist, T. Jacob John. “India will not have a major problem because of the immunity it has gained over the last three years.”

However, as the country celebrates the holiday season, and people pack markets, restaurants, flights and tourist destinations, experts are reiterating the call to wear masks in public places and crowded areas.

“We need to be alert for a more deadly non-omicron variant emerging. While we may consider it a low probability, we will need to watch out. People should protect themselves against infection,” according to Reddy.

India has reported about 44 million infections so far and about half a million deaths. Several experts however have said that those numbers may not be an accurate count of the devastation wrought by the pandemic in the country of 1.4 billion.
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The United Nations said Wednesday that some “time-critical” programs in Afghanistan have temporarily stopped and warned many other activities will also likely need to be paused because of a ban by the Taliban-led administration on women aid workers.

U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths, the heads of U.N. agencies and several aid groups said in a joint statement that women’s “participation in aid delivery is not negotiable and must continue,” calling on the authorities to reverse the decision.

“Banning women from humanitarian work has immediate life-threatening consequences for all Afghans. Already, some time-critical programs have had to stop temporarily due to lack of female staff,” read the statement.

“We cannot ignore the operational constraints now facing us as a humanitarian community,” it said. “We will endeavor to continue lifesaving, time-critical activities. … But we foresee that many activities will need to be paused as we cannot deliver principled humanitarian assistance without female aid workers.”

The ban on female aid workers was announced by the Islamist Taliban-led administration Saturday. It follows a ban imposed last week on women attending universities. Girls were stopped from attending high school in March.

“No country can afford to exclude half of its population from contributing to society,” said the statement, which was also signed by the heads of UNICEF, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, the U.N. Development Program, and the U.N. high commissioners for refugees and human rights.

Separately, 12 countries and the EU jointly called on the Taliban to reverse the ban on female aid workers and allow women and girls to return to school.

The statement was issued by the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain, the United States and the EU.

The ban on female aid workers “puts at risk millions of Afghans who depend on humanitarian assistance for their survival,” the statement said.

Four major global groups, whose humanitarian aid has reached millions of Afghans, said on Sunday that they were suspending operations because they were unable to run their programs without female staff.

The U.N. statement said the ban on female aid workers “comes at a time when more than 28 million people in Afghanistan … require assistance to survive as the country grapples with the risk of famine conditions, economic decline, entrenched poverty and a brutal winter.”

The U.N. agencies and aid groups, which included World Vision International, CARE International, Save the Children U.S., Mercy Corps and InterAction, pledged to “remain resolute in our commitment to deliver independent, principled, lifesaving assistance to all the women, men and children who need it.”

The Taliban seized power in August last year. They largely banned education of girls when last in power two decades ago but had said their policies had changed. The Taliban-led administration has not been recognized internationally. 
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