Dr Nader Alemi, who opened the country’s first private psychiatric hospital, had received death threats before being taken on his way home from work last week
One of Afghanistan’s most prominent psychiatrists has been abducted on his way home from work by a group of armed men.
Dr Nader Alemi, 66, who opened the country’s first private psychiatric hospital in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, was stopped by seven men in a white car last week, said his family.
Continue reading...Former Afghan government’s ambassador in Greece appalled by Athens’ media blitz against ‘illegal migrant flows’
In other times, Mirwais Samadi would have welcomed a campaign to deter his compatriots from opting to become illegal migrants and embarking on the often dangerous trek from Afghanistan to Europe.
By far the worst part of his job as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Athens – apart from the strange limbo he has found himself in representing a nation whose leaders he refuses to recognise – is notifying families back home of loved ones who died along the way. Invariably they are the victims of smuggling networks motivated solely by profit.
Continue reading...Leeds United have offered support but players face return to Taliban regime unless accepted soon
The UK government is being asked to urgently resettle female players from Afghanistan’s junior football team who fled the Taliban and have been offered a new life with Leeds United.
The 35 young women – many of whom are in their teens – their families and football coaches are in Lahore, Pakistan, on 30-day visas. But the 136-strong group face returning to Afghanistan unless they are accepted by a third country soon – they have to leave Pakistan by 12 October.
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Germany
Continue reading...Joe Biden meets leaders of Australia, India and Japan in latest effort to cement US leadership in Asia
US president Joe Biden and the leaders of Australia, India and Japan highlighted their Quad group’s role in safeguarding a stable, democratic Indo-Pacific in a veiled dig at rival China.
The first in-person summit of the Quad held on Friday marked Biden’s latest effort to cement US leadership in Asia in the face of a rising China.
Continue reading...Attackers dressed as lawyers opened fire and killed Jitendra ‘Gogi’ Maan before police shot them dead
One of India’s most notorious gangsters has been shot dead in a Delhi courtroom after members of a rival gang disguised themselves in lawyers’ cloaks and opened fire.
The shooting took place as Jitendra Maan, alias Gogi”, previously one of Delhi’s most wanted men, entered the court to face murder and extortion charges. Police returned fire, according to officials, killing two gunmen.
Continue reading...Analysis: the west tried to impose its alien values and it is time to try a new approach, as Joe Biden has indicated
Some years ago, in Afghanistan, the anthropologist Scott Atran asked a Taliban fighter what it would take to stop the fighting, because families on both sides were crying. The fighter replied: “Leave our country and the crying will stop.”
The crying may not have stopped, but the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan without an air force, heavy arms or expensive training, against US-backed Afghan government forces that outnumbered them four to one. In doing so, they have taken an important step closer to realising their stated goal, which is the creation of an Islamic emirate governed according to their interpretation of sharia law.
Continue reading...Nooruddin Turabi, in charge of Afghan prisons, says executions and removal of hands will restart, but possibly not in public
The Taliban will resume executions and the amputation of hands for criminals they convict, in a return to their harsh version of Islamic justice.
According to a senior official – a veteran leader of the hardline Islamist group who was in charge of justice during its previous period in power – executions would not necessarily take place in public as they did before.
Continue reading...As sea levels rise, growers are employing innovative methods to adapt to saline soils
Like millions of people across Bangladesh, Anita Bala, 45, relies on a small plot of land to feed her family.
But for years nothing would grow. Her husband farmed shrimp in the salty ponds on their land, but the surrounding ground was barren. Bala’s efforts to cultivate beans and pulses failed repeatedly. Eventually she gave up.
Continue reading...Female taekwondo and karate trainers are forced to practise in secret since the Taliban takeover and fear they may never compete again
On the morning of 15 August, when the Taliban were at the gates of Kabul, Soraya, a martial arts trainer in the Afghan capital, woke up with a sense of dread. “It was as though the sun had lost its colour,” she says. That day she taught what would be her last karate class at the gym she had started to teach women self-defence skills. “By 11am we had to say our goodbyes to our students. We didn’t know when we would see each other again,” she says.
Soraya is passionate about martial arts and its potential to transform women’s minds and bodies. “Sport has no gender; it is about good health. I haven’t read anywhere in Qur’an that prevents women from participating in sports to stay healthy,” she says.
Continue reading...Special rapporteur says children as young as 20 weeks old are being seized by military in bid to force suspects to hand themselves in
Myanmar’s military junta is systematically abducting the relatives of people it is seeking to arrest, including children as young as 20 weeks old, according the UN special rapporteur for the country.
Tom Andrews told the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday that conditions in the country have continued to deteriorate and that “current efforts by the international community to stop the downward spiral of events in Myanmar are simply not working”.
Continue reading...Refusal to recognise vaccines given across Latin America, Africa and south Asia has been denounced as ‘discriminatory’
England’s Covid travel rules and refusal to recognise vaccines administered across huge swaths of the world have sparked outrage and bewilderment across Latin America, Africa and south Asia, with critics denouncing what they called an illogical and discriminatory policy.
The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, described England’s rules, unveiled last Friday, as “a new simplified system for international travel”. “The purpose is to make it easier for people to travel,” Shapps said.
Continue reading...As a child in Afghanistan, she pretended to be a boy in order to get an education, before starting her own women’s news agency. Now living in Britain, her fight continues
Just over a month ago, Zahra Joya left her house in Kabul to walk to her office, as she had been doing every day. From this small office, Joya, a journalist, ran Rukhshana Media, the news agency she founded last year to report on the stories of women and girls across Afghanistan. By the time she returned home in the afternoon, however, men with guns were on street corners and her sisters were shut inside their house, shaking with fear. In just a few hours, normal life had been obliterated.
“Right to the end, on that afternoon of 15 August, I couldn’t believe what was happening,” she says. “It was like a bad dream. Even on that day, it just seemed impossible that the Taliban could come to power so quickly, wipe away 20 years and drag us all back to the past.”
Continue reading...After years caught in the crossfire between the Taliban and security forces, farmers in Kandahar face a new threat, as water sources dry up
The war in Afghanistan might be over but farmers in Kandahar’s Arghandab valley face a new enemy: drought.
It has hardly rained for two years, a drought so severe that some farmers are questioning how much longer they can live off the land.
Continue reading...Gay and trans people in Afghanistan already faced stigma, but now even a call from an unknown number sparks fear
Laila, a transgender woman in Afghanistan, rubs her eyes to wipe tears away. “I am terrified. It’s like a nightmare. I don’t feel safe even in my room. I’m scared of the Taliban. When I see them I feel they will know who I am and they will come to beat me, kick me or send me to prison.”
After the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, Laila is far from an isolated case. Rehmat, a gay man, said: “Our lives are in danger. We are afraid of having mobile phones. I get afraid when I receive calls from unknown numbers, worried that it might be the Taliban.”
Continue reading...The US photographer’s image of Sharbat Gula captured the story of a country, its people and refugees across the world. Thirty six years on, another picture tells a similar tale – but also one of hope
On 1 September, a young Afghan girl stood in line with her family at a US base in Sicily waiting to board a flight to Philadelphia. She is about nine years old and is one of more than 100,000 people evacuated from Kabul by allied forces after the Taliban took control of the country in August.
Her photo, taken for the Guardian by Italian photojournalist Alessio Mamo and featured on the front page of the UK print edition, resembles the Afghan Girl by American photographer Steve McCurry. McCurry’s portrait, of a Pashtun child, Sharbat Gula, which appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic, became the symbol, not only of Afghanistan, but of displaced refugees across the world.
Continue reading...Photojournalist Stefanie Glinski reports from Kabul on the events of the past four weeks and the capital’s new rulers
Above its tightly clustered houses and peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains, Kabul’s blue skies were once dotted with countless colourful kites, flown by children from the hilltops or their rooftops. Since the Taliban took the Afghan capital a month ago, they have disappeared.
Continue reading...Only those who cannot be replaced by men may remain, in further sign of Taliban’s hardline rule over Afghans
Female employees in the Kabul city government have been told to stay home, with work only allowed for those who cannot be replaced by men, the interim mayor of Afghanistan’s capital said on Sunday, detailing the latest restrictions on women by the new Taliban rulers.
The decision to prevent most female city workers from returning to their jobs is another sign that the Taliban, who overran Kabul last month, are enforcing their harsh interpretation of Islam despite initial promises by some that they would be tolerant and inclusive. Under their previous rule in the 1990s, the Taliban barred girls and women from schools, jobs and public life.
Continue reading...Initial reports suggest a Taliban convoy may have been targeted in the ISKP’s stronghold region
At least three people have been killed and more than 18 people injured in three explosions in Jalalabad in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province.
It is reported that the intended target may have been a passing convoy of the Taliban in the provincial capital. It is the first attack in the province since the Taliban came into power in mid-August.
Continue reading...Civilian deaths in US drone strike deal blow to credibility of chairman of the joint chiefs of staff when he needs it most
Three days after a US drone obliterated a car in a Kabul street, General Mark Milley, shrugged off reports of civilian casualties, insisting it was a “righteous strike”.
On Friday that word came back to haunt America’s top general when the Pentagon was forced to admit that all 10 dead had been civilians, seven of them children. The drone had hit the wrong white Toyota Corolla.
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