BERLIN: Thousands of people in Berlin on Thursday demonstrated against Germany’s military support for Ukraine as it battles to hold back invading Russian troops.
Participants answered a call by a radical left-wing collective to gather in the German capital and brandished placards reading “Negotiations! No weapons!,” “No to war” and “Pacifism is not naive.” Some also held anti-American signs.
One of their main demands was for Germany to stop sending weapons to Ukraine, which Kyiv desperately needs to defend itself from Russian aggression.
The protest came one week ahead of the first state visit by a US president to the European country since Ronald Reagan in 1985.
Joe Biden is also expected to meet with Ukraine’s allies to discuss military support to the war-torn nation, at the US army base in Ramstein, western Germany.
Far-left populist leader Sahra Wagenknecht, who attended the Berlin protest, has long called for an end to weapon deliveries to Kyiv and opposes a plan to deploy US long-range missiles in Germany.
Germany has been the second-largest contributor of military aid to Ukraine after the United States, but plans to halve its budget for that aid next year.
Wagenknecht’s pro-Russia, anti-NATO stance has contributed to her party’s positive results in three eastern state elections, securing 12 percent of the vote in Brandenburg.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in September stunned the political establishment by winning its first-ever parliamentary vote — in the eastern state of Thuringia — and coming a close second in neighboring Saxony.
The AfD’s platform relied on its usual discourse against asylum-seekers, multiculturalism and Islam, but also on critiques of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s policy of unconditional support for Ukraine.
The state leaders of Saxony and Brandenburg, where AfD came in second, as well as the head of the conservatives in Thuringia, have called for a ceasefire in Ukraine, in an article expected to be published on Friday in the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung newspaper.
Germany and the European Union’s dioplomatic efforts so far have been “too indecisive,” they said, urging Berlin to bring Russia to the negotiating table.
Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support
https://arab.news/488rz
Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support
Afghan barbers under pressure as morality police take on short beards
KABUL: Barbers in Afghanistan risk detention for trimming men’s beards too short, they told AFP, as the Taliban authorities enforce their strict interpretation of Islamic law with increasing zeal.
Last month, the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said it was now “obligatory” to grow beards longer than a fist, doubling down on an earlier order.
Minister Khalid Hanafi said it was the government’s “responsibility to guide the nation to have an appearance according to sharia,” or Islamic law.
Officials tasked with promoting virtue “are obliged to implement the Islamic system,” he said.
With ministry officials patrolling city streets to ensure the rule is followed, the men interviewed by AFP all spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
In the southeastern province of Ghazni, a 30-year-old barber said he was detained for three nights after officials found out that one of his employees had given a client a Western-style haircut.
“First, I was held in a cold hall. Later, after I insisted on being released, they transferred me to a cold (shipping) container,” he said.
He was eventually released without charge and continues to work, but usually hides with his clients when the patrols pass by.
“The thing is that no one can argue or question” the ministry officials, the barber said.
“Everyone fears them.”
He added that in some cases where both a barber and clients were detained, “the clients have been let out, but they kept the barber” in custody.
Last year, three barbers in Kunar province were jailed for three to five months for breaching the ministry’s rules, according to a UN report.
‘Personal space’
Alongside the uptick in enforcement, the religious affairs ministry has also issued stricter orders.
In an eight-page guide to imams issued in November, prayer leaders were told to describe shaving beards as a “major sin” in their sermons.
The religious affairs ministry’s arguments against trimming state that by shaving their beards, men were “trying to look like women.”
The orders have also reached universities — where only men study because women have been banned.
A 22-year-old Kabul University student said lecturers “have warned us... that if we don’t have a proper Islamic appearance, which includes beards and head covering, they will deduct our marks.”
In the capital Kabul, a 25-year-old barber lamented that “there are a lot of restrictions” which go against his young clients’ preference for closer shaves.
“Barbers are private businesses, beards and heads are something personal, they should be able to cut the way they want,” he said.
Hanafi, the virtue propagation minister, has dismissed such arguments, saying last month that telling men “to grow a beard according to sharia” cannot be considered “invading the personal space.”
Business slump
In Afghanistan, the majority are practicing Muslims, but before the Taliban authorities returned to power in 2021, residents of major cities could choose their own appearance.
In areas where Taliban fighters were battling US-backed forces, men would grow beards either out of fear or by choice.
As fewer and fewer men opt for a close shave, the 25-year-old Kabul barber said he was already losing business.
Many civil servants, for example, “used to sort their hair a couple of times a week, but now, most of them have grown beards, they don’t show up even in a month,” he said.
A 50-year-old barber in Kabul said morality patrols “visit and check every day.”
In one incident this month, the barber said that an officer came into the shop and asked: “Why did you cut the hair like this?“
“After trying to explain that he is a child, he told us: ‘No, do Islamic hair, not English hair’.”
