Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Fashion brands sign new deal on Bangladesh garment workers’ safety

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Campaigners and union leaders praise accord, which replaces one agreed after 2013 Rana Plaza fire

Campaigners have hailed a new agreement designed to protect garment workers in Bangladesh, signed by the likes of H&M and Inditex, which owns Zara and Bershka.

The accord replaces another agreement signed by more than 200 international fashion companies after the Rana Plaza factory fire in 2013, in which more than 1,100 people died. For the first time, these companies faced legal action if their health and safety standards were found lacking or if they did not address problems in an agreed time period. More than 38,000 inspections have been carried out since 2013, and nearly 200 factories have lost their contracts owing to poor safety standards.

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South Korea designates arriving Afghans as ‘persons of special merit’

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Seoul skirts fraught issue of refugees as it ‘fulfils moral responsibility’ and welcomes 391 newcomers

South Korea has welcomed the arrival of Afghans who supported its operations before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, designating them as “persons of special merit” instead of refugees in an apparent effort to defuse anti-migrant sentiment.

A military aircraft landed at Incheon airport west of Seoul in the afternoon, transporting 378 Afghans who had worked for South Korea’s embassy and other facilities in Afghanistan and their family members. A further 13 will arrive on a separate flight.

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Greece will not be ‘gateway’ to Europe for Afghans fleeing Taliban, say officials

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Athens calls for a united response, as refugees already in Lesbos hope their asylum claims will now be reconsidered

Greek officials have said that Greece will not become a “gateway” to Europe for Afghan asylum seekers and have called for a united response to predictions of an increase in refugee arrivals to the country.

Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has spoken to Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, about the developing situation in Afghanistan this week. Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi last week said: “We cannot have millions of people leaving Afghanistan and coming to the European Union … and certainly not through Greece.” The country has just completed a 25-mile (40km) wall along its land border with Turkey and installed an automated surveillance system with cameras, radars and drones.

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‘We were not aware of this visit’: Pentagon on US congressmen in Kabul during evacuation – video

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The Pentagon has responded to the unexpected arrival of two US Congress members in Kabul airport, in what the congressmen claimed was a fact-finding mission but critics have dismissed as grandstanding. “They certainly took time away from what we had planned to do that day,” said John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary.

Seth Moulton, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, and Peter Meijer, a Republican representative from Michigan, astonished state department and military officials in the Afghan capital when they flew in on Tuesday. 

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Evacuating Afghanistan: a visual guide to flights in and out of Kabul

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Flights stopped as the Taliban seized control, but numbers are back up and the vast majority of aircraft are now military

Kabul airport’s air traffic rebounded earlier this week due to an increase in military aircraft evacuating people, Guardian analysis has revealed.

Fewer than 15 aircraft arrived or departed each day between 16 and 19 August, according to data from Flightradar24.

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‘Don’t avert your eyes’: Afghan teachers urge world to defend girls’ education

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Educators say they fear reversal of hard-won progress as aid workers call for Taliban’s desire for international legitimacy to be used as leverage

Afghanistan’s only boarding school for girls has temporarily relocated to Rwanda, its co-founder has said, just days after a video of her burning class records to avoid Taliban recriminations was widely shared on social media.

Shabana Basij-Rasikh, who escaped Kabul with 250 students and staff, urged the world to “not avert your eyes” from the millions of girls left behind.

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Biden rejects allies’ pleas to keep troops in Afghanistan beyond end of August

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US president acknowledges that completing airlift by 31 August depends on Taliban continuing to cooperate

Joe Biden has rejected the pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops in Afghanistan for evacuation efforts beyond the end of the month, citing the growing threat of a terrorist attack.

In a move likely to fuel criticism that America is abandoning Afghan partners to the Taliban, the US president made clear that he is resolved to withdraw forces from Kabul airport by next Tuesday’s deadline.

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Biden pours salt into wounds of relations with Europe at G7 meeting

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Analysis: US president dashes hopes he might acknowledge damage done by handling of Afghan withdrawal

In the end it took only seven minutes for Joe Biden to pour salt into the wounds of his fractured relationship with European leaders, telling them firmly on a video call that he would not extend the 31 August deadline for US troops to stay in Kabul, as he had been asked by the French, Italians and most of all the British. The rebuff follows Biden’s earlier decision in July to insist on the August deadline previously set in 2020 by Donald Trump for the withdrawal, a decision the US president relayed to his EU colleagues as a fait accompli.

For Europe the episode has been a rude awakening, and a moment of sober reassessment. Only on 25 March Charles Michel had afforded Biden the chance to address a meeting of the European Council, the first foreign leader given the honour since Barack Obama 11 years earlier. Biden after all had said his foreign policy would only be as strong as his system of alliances, the true shield of the republic, and Europe would be at the heart of that system.

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Britain’s military must learn from its mistakes

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Britain’s armed forces are dodging responsibility for failings in Afghanistan and Iraq, argues Prof Paul Dixon. RC Pennington fears military history is doomed to repeat itself. Plus letters from Margaret Phelps, Diana Francis and Jim Golcher

Simon Akam is right, the military does want to ignore its failure in Afghanistan (Britain’s military will want to ignore its failure in Afghanistan. It must face reality, 22 August), but it does so by deflecting responsibility on to the politicians.

There is also a strong reluctance to publish books and articles that are critical of the military, even by those who served. All three books cited by Akam are by journalists who are ex-military.

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How the west will try to sway the Taliban

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Analysis: The prospect of aid, or the threat of sanctions, may not influence Afghanistan’s new leaders

After some inelegant flip-flopping, the UK and other G7 countries appear to be returning to a familiar combination of carrots and sticks such as humanitarian aid, international recognition and sanctions in an effort to retain a measure of influence over the Taliban.

The threat of sanctions was raised explicitly by the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, in the Daily Telegraph, even though Downing Street had earlier cautioned that such threats were unhelpful during the refugee airlift when maximum cooperation from the militants is required. In practice, the entire Taliban leadership is already subject to sanctions.

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Ukraine denies minister’s claims of hijacked Afghanistan evacuation flight

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Deputy foreign minster Yevhen Yenin said plane was diverted to Iran by armed attackers, which Iran has also denied

A Ukrainian minister has claimed a passenger jet meant to evacuate people fleeing Afghanistan to Ukraine was hijacked at gunpoint and flown instead to Iran, in an unconfirmed incident that was later denied by his own government.

Ukraine’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, Yevhen Yenin, said armed hijackers seized the plane at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai international airport, where a multinational evacuation is under way ahead of a 31 August deadline for foreign militaries to leave the country set by the Taliban.

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‘My crime is I fell in love’: should India rethink tough laws on underage sex?

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Laws intended to tackle child abuse are resulting in young men in consensual relationships being imprisoned. Activists argue a more nuanced approach is needed

Mani*, 21, began dating Noor*, 17, two years ago. They couldn’t see each other during the Covid lockdowns, but when restrictions began to ease, they would meet on the deserted banks of a canal in a small town in Tamil Nadu. The couple hoped to marry one day, but then Noor fell pregnant, and life turned into a nightmare.

Two months ago, Mani was charged with rape under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) law. After 48 days in jail, he was released on bail. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment.

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Afghanistan could start to run out of food by September, UN warns

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World Food Programme calls for urgent aid as chaos of Taliban takeover and second drought in three years create dire humanitarian situation

UN agencies have warned of food shortages to Afghanistan as early as September without urgent aid funding, as it emerged first aid supplies, including surgical equipment and severe malnutrition kits, were stuck due to restrictions at Kabul airport.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday the closure of the airport to commercial flights has held up key deliveries.

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Afghanistan: what does each nation hope to get out of the G7 meeting?

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Analysis: Tuesday’s meeting called by Boris Johnson may include postmortem on Joe Biden’s handling of crisis

The emergency meeting of G7 nations on Tuesday – called by Boris Johnson as this year’s chair of the G7 – is in essence a gathering of the vanquished but faces a threefold agenda: how to ensure as many Afghans as possible can leave Kabul, and whether the US is prepared to stay beyond the original 31 August deadline for the withdrawal of all US forces; how a resettlement programme can be coordinated for the medium term; and finally, how to encourage the Taliban to form an inclusive government, including by threatening sanctions or withholding recognition.

But each country will bring its own concerns and an ugly postmortem on Joe Biden’s handling of the crisis cannot be ruled out.

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UK scrambles to complete Kabul airlift as envoy flags risk of provoking Taliban

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Exclusive: Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan says continuing evacuations after 31 August could spark reaction from militants

Britain has begun a last-ditch scramble to get people out of Kabul amid warnings from the senior diplomat on the ground that staying past the current 31 August deadline may not be realistic and risks provoking the Taliban.

Speaking to MPs from Kabul, Sir Laurie Bristow, Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan, said trying to hold Kabul’s airport any longer would be fraught with risk. He was speaking before Tuesday’s G7 meeting, which is expected to discuss a request from the prime minister, Boris Johnson, to the US president, Joe Biden, to stay longer.

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Taliban says US troops staying beyond deadline ‘will provoke reaction’ – video

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Staying beyond the agreed deadline of 31 August would be 'extending occupation', Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said on Monday, and this would 'provoke a reaction'.

The comments were made after a firefight between unidentified gunmen and US, German and Afghan guards at the airport left one Afghan guard dead and three wounded. Thousands of soldiers have returned to the country to manage the airlifting of foreigners and Afghans who worked with western nations out of the Taliban-controlled country

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‘Devastating’: how UK’s foreign aid cuts could hurt the world’s poorest

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Data analysis highlights the human cost if thousands of overseas projects lose funding

Experts have warned of “devastating” consequences of the UK’s foreign aid cuts after Guardian analysis revealed the UK is cutting funding at a time when major recipient countries are at risk of becoming more politically unstable.

Thousands of activities providing life-saving support are being cut due to the government’s decision to reduce aid spending to 0.5% of gross national income.

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Biden: Afghanistan evacuations would always have been ‘hard and painful’

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President defends US exit but makes changes to airlift effort at Kabul airport after criticism over deaths and chaotic scenes

The evacuation of thousands of Americans and their Afghan allies from Kabul would have been “hard and painful no matter when it started or when we began”, Joe Biden insisted on Sunday, amid fierce criticism of his administration’s handling of the US withdrawal.

Related: Pentagon orders commercial airlines to help in Afghanistan evacuations

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Nosedive in UK-US relations is another casualty of Afghanistan’s fall

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Ministers are becoming openly critical of Joe Biden after being left in the dark about major decisions

So much for the special relationship. As the Afghanistan crisis has unfolded, it has precipitated a high-speed deterioration in Anglo-American relations.

What began as a muted disagreement on whether it was right for the US to withdraw militarily has reached the point where UK government sources are openly briefing against President Joe Biden as the situation in Kabul worsens.

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‘We lost everything’: Afghan wheelchair basketball team captain speaks out

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Nilofar Bayat begins rebuilding her life in Spain after days of fear for her life under Taliban rule

When the Taliban entered Kabul, Nilofar Bayat, the captain of Afghanistan’s female national wheelchair basketball team, knew she had to get out.

“There were so many videos of me playing basketball. I had been active in calling for women’s rights and the rights of women with disabilities,” she said. “If the Taliban found out all of this about me, I knew they would kill me.”

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