KABUL: Afghanistan’s schools reopened Tuesday for the new academic year, but no classes were held as students were unaware of the start and hundreds of thousands of teenage girls remain barred from attending class.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are prohibited from going to secondary school.
Taliban authorities have imposed an austere interpretation of Islam since storming to power in August 2021 after the withdrawal of the US-led foreign forces that backed the previous governments.
The education ministry made no public announcement of the reopening of schools, several teachers and officials said.
“A letter issued by the minister of education was given to us by our principal to reopen the school today, but since no public announcement was made, no students came,” said Mohammad Osman Atayi, a teacher at the Saidal Naseri Boys High School in Kabul.
AFP journalists toured seven schools in Kabul and saw only a few teachers and primary students arriving — but no classes were held.
Schools also reopened in provinces including Herat, Kunduz, Ghazni and Badakhshan but no lessons were held there either, AFP correspondents reported.
Tuesday’s start of the new academic year coincided with Nowruz, the Persian New Year, celebrated widely in Afghanistan before the Taliban returned to power but now unacknowledged by the country’s new rulers.
Hundreds of thousands of teenage girls meanwhile remain barred from secondary school.
“The Taliban have snatched everything away from us,” said 15-year-old Sadaf Haidari, a resident of Kabul who should have started grade 11 this year.
“I am depressed and broken.”
The ban on girls’ secondary education came into effect in March last year, just hours after the education ministry reopened schools for both girls and boys.
Taliban leaders — who have also banned women from university education — have repeatedly claimed they will reopen secondary schools for girls once “conditions” have been met, from obtaining funding to remodeling the syllabus along Islamic lines.
The international community has made the right to education for women a key condition in negotiations over aid and recognition of the Taliban government.
No country has officially recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers.
Afghanistan under the Taliban government is the “most repressive country in the world” for women’s rights, the United Nations has said.
Women have been effectively squeezed out of public life — removed from most government jobs or are paid a fraction of their former salary to stay at home.
They are also barred from going to parks, fairs, gyms and public baths, and must cover up in public.
Afghanistan school year starts but no classes held
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Afghanistan school year starts but no classes held
- Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are prohibited from going to secondary school
- The education ministry made no public announcement of the reopening of schools
Deputy governor of northern Afghan province killed in car bomb attack
“Nissar Ahmad Ahmadi, with his driver, has been killed and six civilians were injured,” said the head of the provincial information office, Mahzudeen Ahmadi.
It was not clear who was behind the attack, which was the first known major blast in Afghanistan in several weeks.
The Taliban administration has been carrying out raids against members of Islamic State, which has had claimed several major attacks in urban centers, including Kabul.
Aid group NRC resumes work with female staff in Taliban heartland
- NRC chief says Taliban leaders in Kandahar had signaled a willingness to agree to an interim arrangement for female workers
- UN, aid groups in Afghanistan are trying to carve out exemptions for women to deliver aid, particularly in health and education
UNITED NATIONS: An international aid agency in Afghanistan has resumed operations in the southern province of Kandahar — the birthplace of the Taliban and home to its supreme spiritual leader — after its Afghan female staff were allowed to return to work.
The move comes after Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Secretary General Jan Egeland told Reuters last month that key Taliban leaders in Kandahar had signaled a willingness to agree to an interim arrangement for NRC female aid workers.
“I am glad to confirm that we have been able to resume most of our humanitarian operations in Kandahar as well as a number of other regions in Afghanistan,” Egeland, who was the UN aid chief from 2003-06, posted on Twitter on Monday.
“All our work is for women & men, girls & boys alike, & with equal participation of our female & male humanitarian colleagues,” Egeland wrote.
The Taliban administration was not immediately available for comment.
The Taliban seized power in August 2021 as US-led forces withdrew after 20 years of war. In April, Taliban authorities began enforcing a ban on Afghan women working for the UN after stopping women working for aid groups in December. UN and aid officials said the orders came from Taliban leaders in Kandahar.
The UN and aid groups have been trying to carve out exemptions for women to deliver aid, particularly in health and education. The Taliban administration has been promising since January a set of written guidelines to allow aid groups to operate with female staff.
Egeland said last month that when he complained that the guidelines were taking too long, Taliban officials in Kandahar suggested an interim arrangement could be agreed to allow Afghan women to return to work in the office and field.
The Taliban say they respect women’s rights in accordance with their strict interpretation of Islamic law. They have also tightened controls on women’s access to public life, barring women and girls from university and high school.
Ukraine accuses Russia of destroying major dam near Kherson, warns of widespread flooding
- Both sides blamed the other for destroying the dam
- President Volodymyr Zelensky called an emergency meeting to deal with the crisis
KYIV, Ukraine: Ukraine on Tuesday accused Russian forces of blowing up a major dam in a part of southern Ukraine they control, alerting residents further along the Dnipro River to evacuate and warning of flooding downstream. President Volodymyr Zelensky called an emergency meeting to deal with the crisis.
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry wrote on Telegram that the Kakhovka dam, had been blown up, and called for residents of 10 villages on the river’s right bank and parts of the city of Kherson downriver to gather essential documents and pets, turn off appliances, and leave, while cautioning against possible disinformation.
Footage from what appeared to be a monitoring camera overlooking the dam that was circulating on social media purported to show a flash, explosion and breakage of the dam.
Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, said in a video posted to Telegram shortly before 7 a.m. that “the Russian army has committed yet another act of terror,” and warned that water will reach “critical levels” within five hours.
Zelensky moved to convene an emergency meeting of the country’s security and defense council following the dam explosion, the council’s secretary, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote on Twitter.
Ukraine and Russia have previously accused each other of targeting the dam with attacks, and last October Zelensky predicted that Russia would destroy the dam in order to cause a flood.
Authorities, experts and residents have for months expressed concerns about water flows through — and over — the Kakhovka dam.
In February, water levels were so low that many feared a meltdown at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, whose cooling systems are supplied with water from the Kakhovka reservoir held up by the dam.
By mid-May, after heavy rains and snow melt, water levels rose beyond normal levels, flooding nearby villages. Satellite images showed water washing over damaged sluice gates.
Ukraine controls five of the six dams along the Dnipro River, which runs from its northern border with Belarus down to the Black Sea and is crucial for the entire country’s drinking water and power supply. The Kakhovka dam — the one furthest downstream in the Kherson region — is controlled by Russian forces.
Federal monitor: Too many people in New York City are stopped, searched and frisked illegally
- NYPD ‘s Neighborhood Safety Teams were engaging in ‘unconstitutional policing’ by stopping and frisking too many people without justification
NEW YORK: New York City’s reliance on the tactic known as “stop and frisk” as part of a new initiative to combat gun violence is harming communities of color and running afoul of the law, a court-appointed federal monitor reported Monday.
Monitor Mylan Denerstein said the NYPD ‘s Neighborhood Safety Teams — special units deployed in the past 14 months to seize guns in high-crime areas — were engaging in “unconstitutional policing” by stopping and frisking too many people without justification.
In one police precinct, Denerstein said, only 41 percent of stops, 32 percent of frisks and 26 percent of searches were lawful.
The Neighborhood Safety Teams, a replacement for the anti-crime units that the NYPD disbanded in 2021, operate in 34 areas that account for 80 percent of the city’s violent crime — largely communities of color. Of the people the teams have stopped, Denerstein said, 97 percent are Black or Hispanic.
A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said city officials “have serious concerns” with Denerstein’s methodology and that they only learned of her findings after news outlets reported on them.
The spokesperson, Fabien Levy, said shootings have fallen since the Neighborhood Safety Teams were created.
Officers assigned to the units “have enhanced training and oversight to ensure we are not only keeping New Yorkers safe, but protecting their civil liberties as well,” Levy said, adding that “any unconstitutional stop is unacceptable, and we will strive to do better for New Yorkers every day.”
Denerstein said she began her review after Adams announced in March 2022 that the NYPD was deploying Neighborhood Safety Teams in some precincts to combat gun violence. Team members, wearing modified uniforms and driving unmarked cars, conduct stops, frisks and searches in their assigned neighborhoods.
“Unfortunately, the results are disappointing,” Denerstein wrote.
Despite their training and experience, officers assigned to Neighborhood Safety Teams “overall appear to be stopping, frisking, and searching individuals at an unsatisfactory level of compliance. Too many people are stopped, frisked, and searched unlawfully.”
In 2013, a federal judge ruled that the NYPD had violated the civil rights of Black and Hispanic New Yorkers with stop and frisk, which was part of an effort to get guns and drugs off the street by frequently stopping and searching people on the street.
US District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled the stops were a form of indirect racial profiling. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, once a champion of the tactic, has since apologized for its use.
Since the ruling, the department claimed a sharp drop in stops, reporting an average of around 11,730 per year from 2016 to 2022, compared with a high of nearly 686,000 stops in 2011.
Black and Hispanic people continue to be the targets of the vast majority of stops, accounting for 89 percent of all stops in 2022, according to NYPD data compiled by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
UN, humanitarian agencies revise budget for Afghan aid plan down to $3.2 billion
- Aid officials and diplomats have warned of potential decline in funding to Afghanistan due to Taliban restrictions on female workers
- UN development agency in April predicted Afghan economy would contract, inflation would rise if there were a 30% drop in aid
The United Nations and humanitarian agencies have revised the budget for Afghanistan's aid plan for 2023 to $3.2 billion, down from $4.6 billion earlier in the year, the UN humanitarian office said on Monday.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement that a "changing operating context" in the wake of Taliban administration restrictions on female aid workers had contributed to the revised plan.
Taliban authorities have issued several orders barring many Afghan female NGO and United Nations employees from being able to work, which aid agencies have warned would severely hamper delivery in the religiously conservative nation.
"The recent bans on Afghan women working for... NGOs and the UN have added yet another layer of complexity to what is already an incredibly challenging protection environment, and further constrained the operational capacity of partners," the UN statement said.
Afghanistan remains one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, the statement added, with more than two-thirds of the population in need of humanitarian assistance.
Some humanitarian officials and diplomats have warned of a potential decline in funding to the war-ravaged nation due to the Taliban restrictions on female workers and donor governments assessing competing global crises and economic priorities.
It was not clear how much of the revised budget would be funded by foreign donors.
Global humanitarian appeals often fall short of the total amount requested. In 2022, the humanitarian response plan was budgeted at $4.4 billion and received around $3.2 billion. The UN says the number of people in need has grown since last year.
The United Nations' development agency in April predicted Afghanistan's economy would contract and inflation would rise if there were a 30% drop in aid.
