The Afghanistan disaster movie continues to roll, one year after US withdrawal

One year after the Taliban took over the country, Afghans are paying a high cost for the militants’ return to power in Afghanistan. (AFP/File Photo)
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Updated 14 August 2022
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The Afghanistan disaster movie continues to roll, one year after US withdrawal

  • Aid-dependent economy remains in free fall since the Taliban takeover of the war-ravaged country
  • Prices of food and other essentials have soared as drought compounds financial collapse

KABUL: When the Taliban captured Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, amid the withdrawal of US-led forces from Afghanistan, the group’s stunning return to power marked the end of two decades of warfare, which had killed tens of thousands of Afghans on their own soil. 

One year on, with the country pauperized and isolated on the world stage under its new leadership, life for ordinary Afghans has changed — largely for the worse.

During their first stint in power, from 1996 until late-2001, the Taliban declared an Islamic emirate, imposing a strict interpretation of Islamic law, enforced with brutal public punishments and executions. 

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Women and girls were removed from public life, prevented from working or receiving an education, and even barred from leaving the house without the all-enveloping niqab and a male relative to chaperone them.

In Oct. 2001, US-led forces invaded Afghanistan and removed the Taliban from power, accusing the group of sheltering Osama bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda leader deemed responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US that killed almost 3,000 people.




Edi Maa holding her baby receiving treatment for malnutrition at a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) nutrition centre in Herat. (AFP)

What followed were 20 blood-soaked years of fighting between the NATO-backed Afghan national forces and Taliban guerrilla fighters intent on retaking power.

While under the Western-backed administration, Afghanistan made progress with the emergence of independent media and a growing number of girls going to school and university. 

However, in many regions beyond the big cities, Afghans knew only war, depriving them of the many development projects implemented elsewhere by foreign donors.

Now that US-led forces have withdrawn and the Taliban has traded guerrilla warfare for the day-to-day running of the country, security has greatly improved.




During their first stint in power, from 1996 until late-2001, the Taliban declared an Islamic emirate, imposing a strict interpretation of Islamic law, enforced with brutal public punishments and executions. (AFP)

“We only saw war in the past several years. Every day, we lived in fear. Now it’s calm and we feel safe,” Mohammad Khalil, a 69-year-old farmer in northwest Balkh province, told Arab News. “We can finally breathe.”

But the uneasy peace has come at a cost.

Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy has been in free fall since the Taliban returned to power. Billions of dollars in foreign assistance have been suspended and some $9.5 billion in Afghan central bank assets parked overseas have been frozen.

Denied international recognition, with aid suspended and the financial system in paralysis, the UN says that Afghanistan faces humanitarian catastrophe. About 20 percent of the country’s 38 million population are already on the brink of famine.

Afghanistan: One year since the Taliban takeover

Aug. 15, 2021 - Taliban campaign culminates with the fall of Kabul.

Aug. 30 - The last US troops depart Kabul airport after evacuating more than 120,000 people over 17 days.

September - A new interim government is unveiled. The Taliban bring back the feared religious police.

October - More than 120 people are killed in two Daesh-claimed mosque blasts in Kandahar and Kunduz.

Jan. 2022 - Deprived of aid, Afghanistan is plunged into a deep economic and humanitarian crisis.

March - The Taliban block secondary school girls from returning to class. Government employees must grow beards.

May - Women and girls are ordered to wear the hijab and cover their faces when in public. Women are banned from making long-distance journeys alone.

June - More than 1,000 people killed and thousands left homeless in a massive earthquake.

August - The US announces the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri in a drone strike on his Kabul hideout.

The price of essential commodities has soared as the value of the Afghan currency has plummeted. A continuing drought has further aggravated the situation in rural areas.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies estimates about 70 percent of Afghan families are unable to meet their basic food needs.

“Most of the time we eat bread and drink tea or just water. We can’t get meat, fruit or even vegetables for the children. Only a few people have goats or cows to feed the children with milk,” Khalil said.

In the capital, Kabul, food is widely available, but few can afford a vaied and nutritious diet.

“There are plenty of food items in the market, but we don’t have the money to buy them,” Mohammad Barat, a 52-year-old daily wage earner, told Arab News.

The looming catastrophe is not only one of shocking levels of poverty, but also lost hope and opportunities.

Tens of thousands of Afghans fled the country over several chaotic days last August, when US forces and their coalition partners hastily airlifted Afghans from Kabul airport. Many others, including professionals, have since followed in their footsteps.

“Doctors are leaving, engineers are leaving, professors and experts are also leaving the country,” Abdul Hamid, a student at Kabul University, told Arab News. “There’s no hope for a better future.”

Those who worked for the deposed Western-backed administration have been removed from public life, particularly women, who are now forced to wear face coverings, banned from making long-distance journeys alone, and prevented from working in most sectors beyond health and education.




Women face a growing number of restrictions in their daily lives; right, Taliban fighters in Kandahar celebrate the US withdrawal. (AFP)

Education, too, has been strictly limited for women, even though allowing girls into schools and colleges has been one of the international community’s core demands since the Taliban retook control of the country.

In mid-March, after months of uncertainty, the Taliban said that they would allow girls to return to school. However, when they arrived at schools around the country to resume studies, those above the age of 13 were ordered to return home.

In a last-minute decision, the Taliban had announced that high schools would remain closed for girls until a plan was ready to receive them in accordance with Islamic law.

Almost half a year later, teenage girls fear they will not return to the classroom anytime soon.

“There’s no reason for banning girls from school,” Amal, an 11th grade student at Rabia Balkhi High School in Kabul, told Arab News. “They just don’t want us to get an education.”




Now that US-led forces have withdrawn and the Taliban has traded guerrilla warfare for the day-to-day running of the country, security has greatly improved. (AFP)

Despite repeated hints by the predominantly Pashtun, Islamic fundamentalist group that experience and the passage of time have softened its rough edges, the streets of Kabul increasingly resemble the Taliban-governed pre-2002 era.

Since the restoration of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which enforces the group’s austere interpretation of Islam, traditional clothing, turbans and burqas have replaced suits and jeans, which only a year ago had been considered normal attire in the Afghan capital.

Key symbols of the nation’s identity are also changing, with the white and black banner of the Taliban now appearing on government buildings and in public spaces, gradually replacing Afghanistan’s tricolor, despite earlier pledges it would not be changed.  

For some, the replacement of the old national flag is more than symbolic, and is indicative of the Taliban’s hijacking of the country. 

“It doesn’t represent any government or regime. The Taliban could keep both,” Shah Rahim, a 43-year-old resident of Kabul, told Arab News. 

“The flag is a representation of our nation, our values and our history.”

 

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Macron blasts ‘ineffective’ UK Rwanda deportation law

Updated 25 April 2024
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Macron blasts ‘ineffective’ UK Rwanda deportation law

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said Britain’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was “ineffective” and showed “cynicism” while praising the two countries’ cooperation on defense.

“I don’t believe in the model ... which would involve finding third countries on the African continent or elsewhere where we’d send people who arrive on our soil illegally, who don’t come from these countries,” Macron said.

“We’re creating a geopolitics of cynicism which betrays our values and will build new dependencies, and which will prove completely ineffective,” he added in a wide-ranging speech on the future of the European Union at Paris’ Sorbonne University.

British MPs on Tuesday passed a law providing for undocumented asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda, where their asylum claims would be processed and where they would stay if the claims succeed.

The law is a flagship policy for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government, which badly lags the opposition Labour Party in the polls, with an election expected within months.

Britain pays Paris to support policing of France’s northern coast, which aims to prevent migrants from setting off for perilous crossings in small boats.

Five people, including one child, were killed in an attempted crossing Tuesday, bringing the toll on the route so far this year to 15 — already higher than the 12 deaths in 2023.

But Macron had warm words for London when he praised the two NATO allies’ bilateral military cooperation, which endured through the contentious years of Britain’s departure from the EU.

“The British are deep natural allies (for France), and the treaties that bind us together ... lay a solid foundation,” he said.

“We have to follow them up and strengthen them because Brexit has not affected this relationship,” Macron added.

The president also said France should seek similar “partnerships” with fellow EU members.


US alarmed by signs of ‘imminent military offensive’ in Darfur

Updated 25 April 2024
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US alarmed by signs of ‘imminent military offensive’ in Darfur

WASHINGTON: The US has warned of a looming rebel military offensive on the Sudanese city of El-Fasher. This humanitarian hub appears to be at the center of a newly opening front in the country’s civil war.

After a year of fighting between the armed forces of Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces, under Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, millions have been displaced in the northeastern African country.

Until recently, El-Fasher — the last Darfur state capital not under RSF control — had been relatively unaffected by the fighting, hosting a large number of refugees.

But since mid-April, bombardments and clashes have been reported in the city and surrounding villages. The US “calls on all armed forces in Sudan to immediately cease attacks in El-Fasher,” the State Department said.

“We are alarmed by indications of an imminent offensive by the Rapid Support Forces and its affiliated militias,” it said, adding that “an offensive against El-Fasher city would subject civilians to extreme danger.”

After several days of “arbitrary shelling and airstrikes” in the city and its outskirts, a pro-democracy lawyers’ committee reported last week that at least 25 civilians had been killed.

Clashes in the eastern and northern parts of the city have already resulted in 36,000 displaced people, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

As the war enters its second year, the UN and US have warned the breakdown of the fragile peace in El-Fasher would be catastrophic.

The city functions as the main humanitarian hub in the vast western region of Darfur, home to around a quarter of Sudan’s 48 million people and the site of harrowing violence during this and previous conflicts.

The State Department said it had seen “credible reports” that the RSF and affiliated militias had razed multiple villages west of the city, while it condemned “reported indiscriminate aerial bombardments” in the region by Sudan’s armed forces.


Death toll in migrant boat capsize off Djibouti rises to 24: UN agency

Updated 25 April 2024
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Death toll in migrant boat capsize off Djibouti rises to 24: UN agency

  • 20 remain missing after the boat carrying at least 77 migrants, including children, capsized near the town of Obock

NAIROBI: The death toll from a migrant boat disaster off Djibouti this week has risen to 24, the UN’s migration agency said, highlighting a sharp increase in the number of people returning from Yemen to the Horn of Africa nation this year.

The capsize on Monday was the second fatal maritime accident in two weeks off Djibouti, which lies on the perilous so-called Eastern Migration Route from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.

At least 24 people died, and 20 remain missing after the boat carrying at least 77 migrants, including children, capsized near the town of Obock, the International Organization for Migration said.

It said 33 survivors were being cared for at an IOM center in Obock and that local authorities are conducting search and rescue operations in the hope of finding more people alive.

Addis Ababa’s ambassador to Djibouti had said those on the boat were Ethiopian migrants.

Another vessel also carrying mainly Ethiopian migrants sank in the same area on April 8, with a death toll of at least 38.

“The occurrence of two such tragedies within two weeks highlights the dangers faced by children, women, and men migrating through irregular routes, underscoring the importance of establishing safe and legal pathways for migration,” IOM chief of mission in Djibouti, Tanja Pacifico, said.

The IOM said it had recorded a total of 1,350 deaths on the Eastern Route since 2014, not including this year.

In 2023 alone, it said it documented at least 698 deaths along the route, including 105 lost at sea.

The agency believed the people on both ill-fated vessels were attempting to return from Yemen to Djibouti.

Each year, tens of thousands of African migrants brave the Eastern Route across the Red Sea to reach Gulf nations, escape conflict or natural disaster, or seek better economic opportunities.

However, many are unsuccessful and “thousands are stranded in Yemen where they experience extremely harsh conditions,” the IOM said.

Since the start of 2024, the agency said 3,682 migrants have left Yemen for Djibouti, more than double the figure for the same period last year.


155 killed in Tanzania as heavy rains lash East Africa

Updated 25 April 2024
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155 killed in Tanzania as heavy rains lash East Africa

  • Kenyan president convenes emergency multi-agency meeting to respond to crisis after floods cause chaos

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania: At least 155 people have died in Tanzania as torrential rains linked to El Nino triggered flooding and landslides, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said on Thursday.

Tanzania and other countries in East Africa — a region highly vulnerable to climate change — have been pounded by heavier than usual rainfall during the current rainy season, with dozens of deaths also reported in Kenya.

Majaliwa said the rains have affected more than 51,000 households and 200,000 people, with 155 fatalities and 236 injuries.

“The heavy El Nino rains, accompanied by strong winds, floods, and landslides in various parts of the country, have caused significant damage,” Majaliwa told parliament in Tanzania’s capital, Dodoma.

He added: “These include loss of life, destruction of crops, homes, citizens’ property, and infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and railways.”

El Nino is a naturally occurring climate pattern typically associated with increased heat worldwide, drought in some parts of the world, and heavy rains elsewhere. 

It can have a devastating impact on East Africa.

In Burundi, around 96,000 people have been displaced by months of relentless rains.

In addition, about 45 people have been killed in Kenya since the start of the rainy season in March, including 13 who lost their lives in flash floods in the capital, Nairobi, this week.

Kenyan President William Ruto convened an emergency multi-agency meeting on Thursday to respond to the crisis after torrential rains triggered floods that caused chaos across the city, blocking roads and bridges and engulfing homes in slum districts.

Kenyans have been warned to stay on alert, with more heavy rains forecast across the country. Officials said people living in the most vulnerable areas would be relocated.

“The government ... will do whatever it takes, apply all the required resources in terms of money and personnel to make sure that lives are not lost and the people of Kenya are protected from this disaster,” Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua told a press briefing.

Meanwhile, the UN humanitarian response agency OCHA said in an update this week that in Somalia, the Gu (April to June) rains are intensifying, with flash floods reported since April 19.

It said four people had been reportedly killed, and at least 134 families or more than 800 people were affected or displaced across the country.

Late last year, more than 300 people died in torrential rains and floods in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia just as the region was trying to recover from its worst drought in four decades that left millions of people hungry.

From October 1997 to January 1998, massive floods caused more than 6,000 deaths in five countries in the region.

In March, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization said that El Nino, which peaked in December, was one of the five strongest ever recorded.

Though the weather pattern is gradually weakening, its impact will continue over the coming months by fueling the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, it said.

Therefore, the WMO said in a quarterly update that “above normal temperatures are predicted over almost all land areas between March and May.”


‘Uncommitted’ organizers will join campus protesters in Michigan over Gaza

Updated 25 April 2024
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‘Uncommitted’ organizers will join campus protesters in Michigan over Gaza

  • Student protests in the US over the war in Gaza have intensified and expanded over the past week
  • Democrats have become increasingly uneasy over the US support for Israel as the death toll and destruction climb in Gaza

WASHINGTON: Organizers behind the “uncommitted” political movement against President Joe Biden’s staunch support for Israel’s war against Hamas will travel to the University of Michigan’s campus on Thursday to join students protesting the war.
Student protests in the US over the war in Gaza have intensified and expanded over the past week after police first arrested students at Columbia, with so-called Gaza solidarity encampments established at colleges, including Yale, and New York University. Police have been called in to several campuses to arrest hundreds of student demonstrators.
Uncommitted organizers will travel to the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, they told Reuters, bringing together a political movement that’s disrupted Biden events and amassed hundreds of thousands of votes in Democratic primaries and a student movement that’s drawn students and faculty of various backgrounds.
Biden won Michigan by less than a 3 percent margin in 2020.
Democrats have become increasingly uneasy over the US support for Israel as the death toll and destruction climb in Gaza. A growing revolt inside the Democratic base signifies the challenge Biden faces in bringing together the coalition he needs to defeat Republican frontrunner and former President Donald Trump.
“President Biden is choosing to put his hands over his ears and ignore the hundreds of thousands of people who have already come out against the war at the ballot box,” said Abbas Alawieh, a prominent “Uncommitted” organizer, who is going to Ann Arbor with Layla Elabed, another Michigan organizer.
“Signing into law more money for Israel is sending a clear message to uncommitted voters, young voters that he doesn’t care to engage seriously with our demands to end this war,” he said, referring to the $26 billion in new aid Biden recently approved.
Alawieh said the uncommitted movement has not been coordinating with student groups so far. “We have an electoral focus, but we certainly see the demands of student protesters, who are calling for peace,” he said.
On campuses where protests have broken out, students have issued calls for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to US military assistance for Israel, university divestment from arms suppliers and other companies profiting from the war, and amnesty for students and faculty members who have been disciplined or fired for protesting.
Biden told reporters on Monday that he condemned both “antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt has said the president “shares the goal for an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East. He’s working tirelessly to that end.”
Trump called the campus protest situation “a mess” as he walked into his criminal trial in New York.
The uncommitted movement amassed sizable vote totals in Michigan, Minnesota and Hawaii primaries and had won 25 delegates as of the beginning of April. They are preparing to target the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, where Biden is expected to be nominated.
Polls show Biden and Trump running neck-and-neck ahead of their Nov. 5 election rematch nationally. Biden’s 2020 victory was due to narrow wins in key swing states like Michigan.