Category Archives: South and Central Asia

‘They came for my daughter’: Afghan single mothers face losing children under Taliban

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Life for single mothers in Afghanistan has always been marred by stigma and poverty. Now with the Taliban in control, what few protections they had have disappeared

The day after Mazar-i-Sharif, the provincial capital of Balkh province, fell to the Taliban on 14 August, gunmen came for Raihana’s* six-year-old daughter.

Widowed when her husband was murdered by Taliban forces in 2020, Raihana had been raising her child as a single mother. After her husband’s death she had fought her in-laws for custody of her daughter and won, thanks to the rights she had under Afghan civil law – which state that single women can keep their children if they can provide for them financially.

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‘Deeply rooted tradition’: one man’s long fight to end illegal dowries in India

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After 15 years campaigning, Satya Naresh believes it’s time for government action to stop the custom that causes a woman to die every hour through murder or suicide

For more than a decade, Satya Naresh has been trying to persuade India’s men to stop a wedding custom that he sees as one of the country’s worst social evils.

He wants men to declare: “I don’t want dowry”. The line is the name of the website he set up in 2006 as part of his campaign. Naresh wants Indian men not to expect the money, motorbike, sofa, TV, iPhone, gold jewellery or fridge that a future wife is expected to come with.

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What’s next for American foreign policy?

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Anniversary of 9/11 and fall of Kabul trigger questions over US interventionism

The 20th anniversary of 9/11 and its fallout was always going to be a moment of deep soul searching about what has been lost and learned.

But the retrospective, until a few weeks ago, risked having a historical, even sepia, quality as the attention of political leaders moved to a more contemporary set of threats – health pandemics, climate emergencies, Big Tech and great power competition, including the rise of China. The “war on terror”, after all, looked if not won, at least drawn. It was even possible Islamist terrorism was a temporary manageable phenomenon, increasingly confined to Africa and some lethal loners in European shopping centres.

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‘Like Game of Thrones’: how triple crisis on China’s borders will shape its global identity

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Analysis: China’s handling of troubles in Afghanistan, Myanmar and North Korea will differ to the west, and mould its identity as a global power

First it was North Korea. Then came Myanmar. Now it is Afghanistan. The three ongoing crises in China’s neighbourhood seem to have little in common. But for Beijing they pose the same question: how to deal with strategically important yet failing states on its border, and how will China’s response define its identity as a global power.

For many years China watchers in the west have been looking for clues to how a rising power will exercise its influence on the world stage through its involvement in Africa or its relations with the US. But the way China approaches the three neighbouring countries may provide a clearer picture.

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Taliban name Afghanistan’s new government

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Key positions given to figures who dominated 20-year battle against US-led coalition

The Taliban have named UN-sanctioned veteran Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund as the leader of Afghanistan’s new government, while giving key positions to figures who dominated the 20-year battle against the US-led coalition and its allies.

Chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference on Tuesday that Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar would be the deputy leader.

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Myanmar opposition announces ‘defensive war’ against junta

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Acting president of self-declared government calls on civilian armed groups to target military that seized power in February coup

Myanmar’s self-declared parallel government, which was set up by pro-democracy politicians, has announced a “defensive war” against the junta, calling for civilian armed groups to target the military and its assets.

Duwa Lashi La, the acting president of the National Unity Government (NUG), said Tuesday marked the beginning of a nationwide revolt. He warned people to avoid unnecessary travel and stock up on essentials.

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Afghanistan services collapsing and aid about to run out, says UN

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Unicef says hundreds of children have been separated from their families in chaos of Kabul evacuation

Access to food aid and other life-saving services in Afghanistan is close to running out, the United Nations has warned, as concern mounts that the country is facing a “looming humanitarian catastrophe”.

The grim assessment from the UN’s Office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs [OCHA] came amid an appeal for an extra $200m (£145m) in emergency funding in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover sparked a host of new issues.

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‘Our children are hungry’: economic crisis pushes Afghans to desperation

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Afghans forced to sell possessions on streets of Mazar-e-Sharif as fragile economy buckles under instability

Yasemeen sits in the back of an open trailer with a bundle of her family’s old clothes wrapped in scarves and some used notebooks already full of a child’s handwriting. The vehicle pulls over in a busy roundabout in central Mazar-e-Sharif, a city that until the Taliban takeover last month was known as the economic powerhouse of northern Afghanistan.

Now, it is a scene of desperation as Afghanistan’s economic crisis sends ordinary people like Yasemeen on to the street to sell their last possessions.

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Taliban claim victory over last resistance stronghold of Panjshir province – video

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Video released by the Taliban shows the militants raising their flag outside the governor's office in the capital of Panjshir province, the last major holdout since Kabul fell in August. The Taliban say they've captured the mountain valley where anti-Taliban militia and remnants of the regular Afghan army and special forces have been holding out. But an official from the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan has said the fight continues. 

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Biden under pressure as NGO says flights from Afghanistan blocked

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Marina LeGree claims group of Americans and at-risk Afghans prevented from flying for a week

Joe Biden’s administration is facing mounting pressure amid reports that several hundred people, including Americans, had been prevented for a week from flying out of an airport in northern Afghanistan.

Marina LeGree, the founder and executive director of a small American NGO active in Afghanistan, said 600 to 1,300 people, including girls from her group, had been waiting near the Mazar-i-Sharif airport for as long as a week amid confusion involving the Taliban and US officials.

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British veterans of Afghanistan war will feel vulnerable, says minister

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James Heappey, armed forces minister, says it is important to let veterans know their service was not in vain

British veterans of the conflict in Afghanistan will be feeling vulnerable and questioning whether their service was worth it as they witness the country fall to the Taliban once again, a UK government minister has said.

James Heappey, the armed forces minister and former British army officer, was forced to backtrack during media interviews on Monday over a claim he made that a soldier who served in Afghanistan had taken his own life in the last few days.

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‘Their future could be destroyed’: the global struggle for schooling after Covid closures

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Hundreds of millions of children fell behind around the world as schools closed during the pandemic. We look at four countries as pupils try to resume their education

Children’s mental health suffers as schools remain shut

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‘Lost generation’: education in quarter of countries at risk of collapse, study warns

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Covid, climate breakdown, poverty and war threaten return to school after pandemic kept 1.5bn children out of classes

The education of hundreds of millions of children is hanging by a thread as a result of an unprecedented intensity of threats including Covid 19 and the climate crisis, a report warned today.

As classrooms across much of the world prepare to reopen after the summer holidays, a quarter of countries – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa – have school systems that are at extreme or high risk of collapse, according to Save the Children.

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Four men arrested over violence at Kabul women’s rights march, say Taliban

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Spokesman says men ‘mistreated the women and a reporter’ but tells Afghans it is ‘not a time for protest’

The Taliban have arrested four men who hit protesters and held journalists at gunpoint to break up a women’s rights’ demonstration in Kabul on Saturday, the spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

The demonstration came amid fierce fighting in Panjshir valley, the last holdout of anti-Taliban forces from the fallen government, and as Afghanistan waits for the country’s new rulers to reveal how they plan to govern.

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Relatives of late Kashmir separatist leader charged under anti-terror law

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Son of Syed Ali Shah Geelani alleges police in Indian-controlled area snatched body and carried out burial without family present

Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir have charged family members of the late resistance leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani under an anti-terrorism law for wrapping his body in the Pakistani flag and raising anti-India slogans, officials said on Sunday.

Geelani, who died on Wednesday at the age of 91, was a leading figure in Kashmir’s defiance against New Delhi and had been under house arrest for years.

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Afghan musicians silently await their fate as Taliban’s ban looms

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Amid upheaval across the country, it remains unclear whether a new government will forbid music as it did 25 years ago

The shutters have been down all along Kharabat Street, the storied heart of Afghan musical life, since the Taliban swept into Kabul in mid-August.

Musicians have taken their instruments home, or crammed them into store rooms, waiting to see if the group will do the unthinkable again, and ban music as they did 25 years ago.

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Afghanistan: militia endure ‘heavy assaults’ from Taliban in Panjshir Valley

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Rebels say they are holding on despite celebratory gunfire in Kabul amid reports that hardliners have wiped out last pocket of resistance

Militia forces say they are enduring “heavy assaults” as they battle the Taliban in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, the final holdout against hardline Islamist control.

The Taliban face the enormous challenge of shifting gears from insurgent group to governing power, days after the US fully withdrew its troops and ended two decades of war.

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Evidence contradicts Taliban’s claim to respect women’s rights

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There are signs of a return to something worryingly close to the hardline restrictions of the past across Afghan life

When Taliban fighters moved into Herat city in western Afghanistan last month, one thing mattered more to some of them than the battle itself. As gunmen faced off around the governor’s office, a group of militants came to Shogofa’s* workplace and ordered all the women home.

“They hadn’t even taken all the city, but they came to our headquarters. The manager called an emergency meeting and they told all the women to leave,” she said.

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‘My homeland, my only love’: fleeing Afghans embrace 1998 song

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Lyrics to My Homeland strike powerful chord with new generation of refugees from war-torn country

As yet another generation of Afghans fled their homeland over the past fortnight, one song has resonated as a poignant anthem for the exodus.

My Homeland – Sarzamin i Man in Farsi – was written in 1998 by the singer Dawood Sarkhosh, who himself had to leave Afghanistan in the civil war that erupted following the Soviet withdrawal.

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