Afghanistan
Bangladesh to provide Tk 1 crore grant to Afghanistan through UN OCHA
Bangladesh will provide Tk 1 crore to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) as grant considering the current acute food and other crises in Afghanistan.
With the approval and direction of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has taken necessary steps to transfer the money to the UN OCHA fund.
The Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations in New York, on behalf of the government of Bangladesh, will send the grant to a special fund set up by the UN OCHA for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan.
Also read:WHO DG announces Global Health Leaders Awards
Relevant works in this regard are currently underway, said the MoFA, adding that the money will be spent through the UN OCHA for the vulnerable people of Afghanistan.
The grant is a true reflection of the prime minister's policy of regional brotherhood, integrated development of South Asia and cooperation towards all, MoFA said.
The image of Bangladesh abroad is expected to be brighter following the grant provided by the government of Bangladesh, it said.
Pulitzer Prizes award Washington Post for Jan. 6 coverage
The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize in public service journalism Monday for its coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, an attack on democracy that was a shocking start to a tumultuous year that also saw the end of the United States’ longest war, in Afghanistan.
The Post’s extensive reporting, published in a sophisticated interactive series, found numerous problems and failures in political systems and security before, during and after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in the newspaper’s own backyard.
The “compellingly told and vividly presented account" gave the public “a thorough and unflinching understanding of one of the nation’s darkest days," said Marjorie Miller, administrator of the prizes, in announcing the award.
Five Getty Images photographers were awarded one of the two prizes in breaking news photography for their coverage of the riot.
The other prize awarded in breaking news photography went to Los Angeles Times correspondent and photographer Marcus Yam, for work related to the fall of Kabul.
The U.S. pullout and resurrection of the Taliban’s grip on Afghanistan permeated across categories, with The New York Times winning in the international reporting category for reporting challenging official accounts of civilian deaths from U.S. airstrikes in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also read: Slain photographer in Afghanistan among Pulitzer winners
The Pulitzer Prizes, administered by Columbia University and considered the most prestigious in American journalism, recognize work in 15 journalism categories and seven arts categories. This year’s awards, which were livestreamed, honored work produced in 2021. The winner of the public service award receives a gold medal, while winners of each of the other categories get $15,000.
The intersection of health, safety and infrastructure played a prominent role among the winning projects.
The Tampa Bay Times won the investigative reporting award for “Poisoned,” its in-depth look into a polluting lead factory. The Miami Herald took the breaking news award for its work covering the deadly Surfside condo tower collapse, while The Better Government Association and the Chicago Tribune won the local reporting award for “Deadly Fires, Broken Promises,” the watchdog and newspaper’s examination of a lack of enforcement of fire safety standards.
“As a newsroom, we poured our hearts into the breaking news and the ongoing daily coverage, and subsequent investigative coverage, of the Champlain Towers South condominium collapse story,” The Miami Herald's executive editor, Monica Richardson, wrote in a statement. “It was our story to tell because the people and the families in Surfside who were impacted by this unthinkable tragedy are a part of our community.”
Elsewhere in Florida, Tampa Bay Times' editor and vice president Mark Katches mirrored that sentiment, calling his newspaper's win “a testament to the importance of a vital local newsroom like the Times.”
Also read: Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian photojournalist killed in Afghanistan
The prize for explanatory reporting went to Quanta Magazine, with the board highlighting the work of Natalie Wolchover, for a long-form piece about the James Webb space telescope, a $10 billion engineering effort to gain a better understanding about the origins of the universe.
The New York Times also won in the national reporting category, for a project looking at police traffic stops that ended in fatalities, and Salamishah Tillet, a contributing critic-at-large at the Times, won the criticism award.
A story that used graphics in comic form to tell the story of Zumrat Dawut, a Uyghur woman who said she was persecuted and detained by the Chinese government as part of systemic abuses against her community, brought the illustrated reporting and commentary prize to Fahmida Azim, Anthony Del Col, Josh Adams and Walt Hickey of Insider.
Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic won the award for feature writing, for a piece marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks through a family's grief.
Melinda Henneberger of The Kansas City Star won for commentary, for columns about a retired police detective accused of sexual abuse and those who said they were assaulted calling for justice.
The editorial writing prize went to Lisa Falkenberg, Michael Lindenberger, Joe Holley and Luis Carrasco of the Houston Chronicle, for pieces that called for voting reforms and exposed voter suppression tactics.
The staffs of Futuro Media and PRX took the audio reporting prize for the profile of a man who had been in prison for 30 years and was re-entering the outside world.
The prize for feature photography went to Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo, Amit Dave and Danish Siddiqui of Reuters for photos of the COVID-19 toll in India. Siddiqui, 38, who won a 2018 Pulitzer in the same category, was killed in Afghanistan in July while documenting fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban.
The Pulitzer Prizes also awarded a special citation to journalists of Ukraine, acknowledging their “courage, endurance and commitment” in covering the ongoing Russian invasion that began earlier this year. Last August, the Pulitzer board granted a special citation to Afghan journalists who risked their safety to help produce news stories and images from their own war-torn country.
Slain photographer in Afghanistan among Pulitzer winners
A Reuters photographer who was killed while covering fighting in Afghanistan was part of a team that took home the Pulitzer for feature photography.
Danish Siddiqui and his colleagues Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo and Amit Dave won for images depicting the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
Also read: Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian photojournalist killed in Afghanistan
Their work, which was moved from the breaking photography category by the judges, “balanced intimacy and devastation, while offering viewers a heightened sense of place,” the committee wrote.
Siddiqui, 38, had been embedded with Afghan special forces in July and was killed as the commando unit battled for control of a crossing on the border between southern Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Also read: Teen who recorded Floyd s arrest, death wins Pulitzer nod
Afghanistan's Taliban order women to cover up head to toe
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Saturday ordered all Afghan women to wear head-to-toe clothing in public — a sharp, hard-line pivot that confirmed the worst fears of rights activists and was bound to further complicate Taliban dealings with an already distrustful international community.
The decree says that women should leave the home only when necessary, and that male relatives would face punishment — starting with a summons and escalating up to court hearings and jail time — for women's dress code violations.
It was the latest in a series of repressive edicts issued by the Taliban leadership, not all of which have been implemented. Last month, for example, the Taliban forbade women to travel alone, but after a day of opposition, that has since been silently ignored.
On Sunday in the capital, Kabul, many women on the street were wearing the same large shawls as before. Women also arrived unaccompanied at Kabul International Airport, while in the city women boarded small buses alone.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said it was deeply concerned with what appeared to be a formal directive that would be implemented and enforced, adding that it would seek clarifications from the Taliban about the decision.
READ: Afghanistan's Taliban order women to wear burqa in public
“This decision contradicts numerous assurances regarding respect for and protection of all Afghans’ human rights, including those of women and girls, that had been provided to the international community by Taliban representatives during discussions and negotiations over the past decade,” it said in a statement.
The decree, which calls for women to only show their eyes and recommends they wear the head-to-toe burqa, evoked similar restrictions on women during the Taliban's previous rule between 1996 and 2001.
“We want our sisters to live with dignity and safety,” said Khalid Hanafi, acting minister for the Taliban’s vice and virtue ministry.
The Taliban previously decided against reopening schools to girls above grade 6, reneging on an earlier promise and opting to appease their hard-line base at the expense of further alienating the international community. But this decree does not have widespread support among a leadership that's divided between pragmatists and the hard-liners.
That decision disrupted efforts by the Taliban to win recognition from potential international donors at a time when the country is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis.
“For all dignified Afghan women wearing Hijab is necessary and the best Hijab is chadori (the head-to-toe burqa) which is part of our tradition and is respectful,” said Shir Mohammad, an official from the vice and virtue ministry in a statement.
“Those women who are not too old or young must cover their face, except the eyes,” he said. “Islamic principles and Islamic ideology are more important to us than anything else."
Senior Afghanistan researcher Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch urged the international community to put coordinated pressure on the Taliban.
“(It is) far past time for a serious and strategic response to the Taliban’s escalating assault on women’s rights," she wrote on Twitter.
The Taliban were ousted in 2001 by a U.S.-led coalition for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and returned to power in the waning days of America’s chaotic departure last year.
The White House National Security Council condemned the Taliban's Saturday decree and urged them to reverse it.
"We are discussing this with other countries and partners. The legitimacy and support that the Taliban seeks from the international community depend entirely on their conduct, specifically their ability to back stated commitments with actions,” it said in a statement.
Since taking power last August, the Taliban leadership has been squabbling among themselves as they struggle to transition from war to governing. It has pit hard-liners against the more pragmatic among them.
A spokeswoman from Pangea, an Italian non-governmental organization that has assisted women for years in Afghanistan, said the new decree would be particularly difficult for them to swallow since they had lived in relative freedom until the Taliban takeover.
“In the last 20 years, they have had the awareness of human rights, and in the span of a few months have lost them," Silvia Redigolo said by telephone. “It’s dramatic to (now) have a life that doesn’t exist.”
Infuriating many Afghans is the knowledge that many of the Taliban of the younger generation, like Sirajuddin Haqqani, are educating their girls in Pakistan, while in Afghanistan women and girls have been targeted by their repressive edicts since taking power. Haqqani is a U.N.-designated terrorist and head of the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for some of the deadliest attacks during the 20-year U.S.-led invasion.
Girls have been banned from school beyond grade 6 in most of the country since the Taliban’s return. Universities opened earlier this year in much of the country, but since taking power the Taliban edicts have been erratic. While a handful of provinces continued to provide education to all, most provinces closed educational institutions for girls and women.
The religiously driven Taliban administration fears that going forward with enrolling girls beyond the the sixth grade could alienate their rural base, Hashmi said.
In Kabul, private schools and universities have operated uninterrupted.
Weapons seized in N. Afghanistan
Afghanistan's security forces have seized weapons in the northern Baghlan province, the Afghan caretaker government confirmed on Sunday.
The confiscated weapons that were found following an intelligence operation in Baghlan-e-Markazi district included 18 assault rifles, two rocket-propelled grenade launchers, a landmine, and a large quantity of ammunition, the government said in a statement.
READ: 13 killed in N. Afghanistan clashes, including pro-gov't local leader
"No one has been arrested in connection with the case so far," the statement added.
The Taliban-led caretaker government has ordered security forces to confiscate weapons from outside security organizations.
Afghanistan's Taliban order women to wear burqa in public
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Saturday ordered all Afghan women to wear the all-covering burqa in public, a sharp hard-line pivot that confirmed the worst fears of rights activists and was bound to further complicate Taliban dealings with an already distrustful international community.
The decree evoked similar restrictions on women during the Taliban's previous hard-line rule between 1996 and 2001.
“We want our sisters to live with dignity and safety,” said Khalid Hanafi, acting minister for the Taliban’s vice and virtue ministry.
The Taliban previously decided against reopening schools to girls above grade 6, reneging on an earlier promise and opting to appease their hard-line base at the expense of further alienating the international community.
READ: Militants in Afghanistan strike Pakistan army post, kill 3
That decision disrupted efforts by the Taliban to win recognition from potential international donors at a time when the country is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis.
“For all dignified Afghan women wearing Hajib is necessary and the best Hajib is chadori (the head-to-toe burqa) which is part of our tradition and is respectful,” said Shir Mohammad, an official from the vice and virtue ministry in a statement.
The decree added if women had no important work outside it is better for them to stay at home. “Islamic principles and Islamic ideology are more important to us than anything else,” Hanafi said.
Militants in Afghanistan strike Pakistan army post, kill 3
Militants in Afghanistan fired heavy weapons across the border into a Pakistani military outpost overnight, killing three personnel, the army said Saturday, in the latest violence to rattle the volatile region.
A firefight ensued with the militants firing toward the army post in Pakistan's rugged North Waziristan region, and several were killed, the statement said. There was no immediate way to independently confirm details of the attack.
It comes as Afghanistan is reeling from a series of explosions in recent days, including the bombing of a mosque in northern Kunduz province on Friday that killed 33 people, including several students of an adjacent religious school or madrassa.
Also read: Pakistan warns neighbor Afghanistan not to shelter militants
That includes an attack Thursday on the Abdul Rahim Shaheed school in Kabul that killed seven children. It re-opened on Saturday, with children remembering their fallen classmates with roses.
The striking increase in attacks in Afghanistan — as well as in neighboring Pakistan — highlights the growing security challenge facing Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, who swept to power last August in the closing days of the chaotic withdrawal of American and NATO troops ending their 20-year war.
Even as their harsh religiously motivated edicts, which seemed reminiscent of their late 1990s rule, drew harsh criticism, their seemingly heavy-handed approach to security brought early expectations of improved safety.
However a vicious Islamic State affiliate known as the Islamic State in Khorasn Province, or IS-K — which claimed the recent spate of attacks in Afghanistan as well as a growing number in neighboring Pakistan — is proving an intractable challenge.
IS-K took responsibility for a series of attacks across Afghanistan on Thursday, most of which targeted the country's minority Shiites who the radical Sunni Muslim group revile as heretics.
Also read: Pakistan to work with Afghanistan, other neighbors to combat terrorism: army chief
Still, the IS-K, which is an enemy of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, is not the only militant organization in Afghanistan contributing to the security dilemma facing Kabul's religiously driven government.
The violent Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or (TTP) — which the United Nations says numbers around 10,000 in Afghanistan — has stepped up its assault on Pakistan's military outposts from its Afghan hideouts. Even the upstart IS-K has taken responsibility for some of the attacks targeting Pakistani military personnel, damaging relations between the two countries.
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have promised no militant group would use its soil as a base to attack another country, but Kabul has yet to arrest or hand over any TTP leaders in Afghanistan to Pakistan. Other militant groups also operating in Afghanistan include China's militant Uighurs of East Turkistan Movement, which seeks independence for northwest China, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).
Some of the groups are loosely allied to the IS-K , while others act more independently, but on Saturday Pakistan's military statement warned Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to do more.
“Pakistan strongly condemns the use of Afghan soil by terrorists for activities against Pakistan and expects that the Afghan Government will not allow conduct of such activities, in future,” said the Pakistan military statement.
After seven of its troops were killed in an ambush earlier this month, Pakistan on April 16 retaliated with bombing raids inside Afghanistan that locals in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province said killed dozens of refugees. The United Nations Education Fund (UNICEF) confirmed 20 children were killed in the strikes in Afghanistan's border provinces of Khost and Kunar.
At the Abdul Rahim Shaheed School, which was among the IS-K targets in the Thursday attacks, school principal Ghulam Haider Husseini handed roses to each student as they arrived.
He also gave students a pen saying “it is our pen who will bring about a change in this situation.”
Afghanistan's Taliban announce ban on poppy production
Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban announced a ban Sunday on poppy production, even as farmers across the country began harvesting the bright red flower that produces the opium used to make heroin.
The order warns farmers that their crops will be burned and they can be jailed if they proceed with the harvest. The ban is reminiscent of the Taliban's previous rule in the late 1990s when the religion-driven movement outlawed poppy production. At that time, the ban was staggered and implemented countrywide within two years. The U.N. verified that production had been eradicated in most of the country.
However, after their ouster in 2001 farmers in many parts of the country reportedly plowed over their wheat fields — which had been almost impossible to bring to market because of the lack of roads and infrastructure — and returned to poppy production.
During the last years of the Taliban rule, wheat was rotting in fields because the farmers were unable to bring it to market to be sold and ground into flour.
Poppies are the main source of income for millions of small farmers and day laborers who can earn upwards of $300 a month harvesting them and extracting the opium.
Today, Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium and in 2021, before the Taliban takeover, produced more than 6,000 tons of opium, which a report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said could potentially yield 320 tons of pure heroin.
Also read: With eye to China investment, Taliban now preserve Buddhas
Afghanistan produces more opium than all opium-producing countries combined and last year was the sixth straight year of record opium harvests. That's the case even as the U.S. and international community was spending billions of dollars to eradicate poppy production. The Taliban reportedly made millions of dollars charging taxes on farmers and middle men to move their drugs outside Afghanistan and senior officials of the U.S.-backed government were implicated in the flourishing drug trade.
Washington spent more than $8 billion trying to eradicate poppy production in Afghanistan during its nearly 20-year war, which ended with the return of the Taliban in August.
Nearly 80% of heroin produced from Afghan opium production reaches Europe through Central Asia and Pakistan.
In desperately poor Afghanistan the ban on poppy production will further impoverish its poorest citizens.
According to a U.N. report in 2021, income from opiates in Afghanistan was a whopping $1.8 to $2.7 billion, more than 7% of the country's GDP. The same report said “illicit drug supply chains outside Afghanistan” make much more.
The Taliban's ban comes as the country faces a humanitarian crisis that spurred the U.N. to ask for $4.4 billion last month as 95% of Afghans do not have enough to eat. The ban, while hitting drug production houses hard, will likely devastate the small farmer who relies on his opium production to survive. It's difficult to know how the Taliban rulers will be able to create substitute crops and financing for Afghanistan's farmers as their economy is in free fall and international development money has stopped.
Poppy production and income are often used as a form of banking among Afghanistan's poorest who use the promise of the next year's harvest to buy staples such as flour, sugar, cooking oil and heating oil.
Also read: Taliban blocked unaccompanied women from flights
The decree also outlawed the “transportation, trade, export and import of all types of narcotics such as alcohol, heroin, tablet K, hashish ... drug manufacturing factories in Afghanistan. are strictly banned.”
When the Taliban last ruled, they employed village elders and mosque clerics to enforce the ban and in villages that ignored the ban, the Taliban arrested the elders and clerics, as well as the offending farmer. As a result the elders and clerics were incentivized to prevent poppy production in their areas.
Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid announced the ban at a news conference in the capital.
Pakistan to work with Afghanistan, other neighbors to combat terrorism: army chief
Pakistan is working with the Afghan caretaker government and other neighbors to ensure that terrorist groups are no longer allowed to use the territory of one country against another, Pakistani Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa said on Saturday.
"We are committed to preserving our gains against terrorism and a peaceful and prosperous West and South Asia is our goal," Bajwa said at the Islamabad Security Dialogue.
He said the conflict in Afghanistan for decades has created negative externalities and spillover effects, which have adversely impacted Pakistan's economy, society and security, adding that Pakistan continues to work closely with the international community to pursue peace and stability in Afghanistan.
The army chief said it is the collective responsibility of the international community towards the people of Afghanistan to ensure that timely and adequate humanitarian aid flows into the country.
Instead of imposing sanctions which have never worked, the world must incentivize Afghans for their positive behavioral change, he added.
READ: Pakistan's parliament adjourns debate on embattled premier
"Unfortunately, lack of financial flows and continued sanctions are creating a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan," he said at the two-day security dialogue.
Pakistan believes that peace and stability in the wider region are prerequisites for achieving shared regional prosperity and development, the army chief said.
Regarding Pakistan-U.S. relations, Bajwa said Pakistan wants to strengthen ties with the United States, but not at the cost of others.
"Pakistan is positioning itself as a melting pot for a positive global economic interest through our focus on connectivity, development and friendship," he said.
2 killed, 8 injured in car bomb blast in western Afghanistan
At least two people were killed and eight others wounded in a car bomb blast in Afghanistan's western province of Herat on Friday, a provincial public health official confirmed.
"Based on initial information, two were killed and eight wounded in the car bomb blast. The injured were admitted to a regional hospital in provincial capital Herat city...," Mirwais Jalali, physician-in-chief of Herat Regional Hospital, told Xinhua.
The wounded were receiving treatment in an intensive care unit, he said.
READ: 4 Afghan children killed in unexploded ordnance blast: gov't
The incident occurred in Jebraheel locality of Herat city around Friday evening, a provincial security source told Xinhua earlier.
He said the Taliban security forces have cordoned off the area for precautionary measures.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.
Afghanistan's Taliban-led administration has vowed to crack down on the outlaws and criminals to ensure law and order in the Asian country.