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reasonsforhope · 1 year

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Odd jobs are few and far between in Nearobo. Peter knows because every day he walks the streets of his village in south-east Liberia looking for one. In a good month, he might make $20 (£16.70). That’s hardly enough to feed himself, let alone his children.

But today things are looking up. As part of an innovative new donation scheme, Peter receives $40 (£33.40) per month for a minimum of three years. No paperwork. No requests for receipts. No catch of any kind, in fact. Just hard cash transferred straight to his mobile phone.

The 59-year-old casual labourer plans to use the money to buy materials for a new home for himself and his family, he says. “Although it is going to take long, I will continue until my house is completed.”

The scheme is part of a new-look approach to development assistance that, if taken to scale, could potentially turn the £156bn international aid industry on its head.

At least, so says Rory Stewart, the former UK foreign secretary turned podcaster-in-chief (he co-hosts ‘The Rest is Politics’ with Alastair Campbell, a surprise hit which has topped the Apple podcast charts virtually every week since it launched a year ago). From his new base in Amman, Jordan, Stewart heads up GiveDirectly – the world’s fastest growing nonproft – who are behind the initiative.

“It’s a rather radical, simple idea to help people out of extreme poverty. We deliver the cash directly … there’s no middleman and no government getting in the way.”

It feels like an odd statement from someone who has spent much of his life in government service: first as a junior diplomat for eight years (during which he penned a bestselling book about dodging Taliban bullets and hungry wolves whilst walking across Afghanistan), followed by almost a decade as a politician at Westminster.

Pictured: Rory Stewart and GiveDirectly’s Ivan Ntwali talk with a refugee household in Rwanda. Image: GiveDirectly

His enthusiasm is even more surprising given his initial caution. During his various ministerial stints at the UK’s department for international development (including three months as secretary of state), he was an out-and-out “cash sceptic.”

Giving away money with no strings attached was, he felt at the time, an impossible sell to tax-paying voters. What’s stopping recipients spending it down the pub? Or investing in a hair-brained business venture?

Quite a lot it turns out. No one knows the value of money more than those who don’t have any, he argues. Give an impoverished mother-of-four $40 (£33.40) cash and, 99 times out of 100, she’ll spend it on something useful: repairs to the house, say, or school fees for her kids...

By virtue of GiveDirectly’s model, participants can spend their money on whatever they choose, but the charity’s research indicates that most goes towards food, medical and education expenses, durables, home improvement and social events.

On the flipside, Stewart also has numerous examples of well-funded aid projects that deliver next to nothing. A decade ago, the then United Nations general secretary Ban Ki-moon estimated that 30 per cent of aid money disappears in corruption. There is little to suggest much has changed.

The aid industry doesn’t need corrupt officials to see its funds evaporate, however; it has its own voluminous bureaucracy. Stewart recalls once visiting a $40,000 (£33,560) water and sanitation project in a school in an unnamed African country. The ‘deliverables’ were two brick latrines and five red buckets for storing water...

The beauty of direct giving, he stresses, is not just that it annuls opportunities for thievery and red tape; it also frees the world’s poorest individuals from the well-meaning but, very often, misplaced guidance of donors. An aid expert in Brussels or Washington DC may well have a PhD in development economics, but who is best to judge what a single mother in a Kinshasa slum needs most and how to obtain it most cheaply: the expert with her degree, or the mother with her hungry children?

Empowering recipients to decide for themselves helps end the kind of “mad world” where aid agencies pay to ship wheat from Idaho, US, to Antananarivo, Madagascar, only for local people to sell it in order to buy what they really want, Stewart reasons.

“So often, these communities are having to turn the goods we send them into cash anyway, but just in a very inefficient and wasteful fashion … instead [with direct cash transfers] they are given the choice and freedom in how to spend it.”

Pictured: Villagers in Kilif, Kenya, at a public meeting about the GiveDirectly programme. Image: GiveDirectly

Is the system perfect? No, clearly not. Stewart concedes that opportunities for fraud and coercion exist. To minimise these risks, GiveDirectly employs field officers to meet face-to-face with recipients, as well as a team of telephone handlers and internal auditors to follow up on reports of irregularity.

By his reckoning, however, the biggest impediment to direct giving really taking off is donor reticence. At present, only 2 per cent of official aid is given direct in cash. Stewart thinks it should be closer to 60 or 70 per cent...

‘My children will not have to beg anymore’

Happiness Kadzmila from Malawi enrolled on GiveDirectly’s Basic Income project last summer. She will now receive $50 (£41) a month for a year ($600/£496 in total).

What are the biggest hardships you’ve faced in life?

I am a divorced mother of four children. I got divorced in 2020 while I was eight months pregnant with my last-born child. Since then, I have been depending on working on other people’s farms. I get paid $0.49 (£0.43), or a plate of maize flour per day. As a result, it has been a challenge to feed my children, buy clothes for them, and to pay their school fees My firstborn child is in year 4, the school charges $0.69 (£0.61) per day for her. My second is in year 3, I pay $0.49 (£0.43) for him. There were days when I would have no food in my home, and my children would go to my neighbours’ homes to beg for food. This made me feel sorry for my children as a mother.

What does receiving this money mean for you?

I was so happy the day I received cash amounting to $51.75 (£43.56) from GiveDirectly. I used the money to buy maize at $9.88 (£8.32). My children will not have to go to our neighbours to beg for food anymore. I also bought a sheep at $34.58 (£29.10). I will be selling sheep in future when they multiply. I also bought lotion and soap at $1.88 (£1.58).

How will you spend your future payments?

I plan to renovate my house. I have always admired those who sleep in houses made of a roof with iron sheets because they do not have to think of fetching grass every year for a new roof. I will also start a business selling doughnuts to sustain my income after I receive my last transfer. I did not know that an organisation like GiveDirectly would come to help me this way All I can say to those who are giving us this money is ‘thank you’."

-via Positive News, 3/3/23

More and More People to Help

In addition to their universal basic income programs, GiveDirectly also has dedicated programs where you can donate to emergency disaster relief, people living under the protracted civil war and human rights disaster in Yemen, refugees, and survivors of the Syria-Turkey earthquake.

They have also commissioned a number of large-scale, third-party studies on the effectiveness of their numerous universal basic income models. Find these and other projects here.

#charity #donations #foreign aid #extreme poverty #poverty #economic inequality #africa #yemen #syria #turkey #malawi #kenya #rwanda #refugees #refugee crisis #givedirectly #universal basic income #good news #hope

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 8 months

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By: Brice Laemle

Published: Sep 5, 2023

Charlie Hebdo is back on crusading for freedom of expression. While the Danish government presented a bill to Parliament on Friday, September 1, banning public defacing of religious objects, the secular satirical French weekly is criticizing Copenhagen's decision to reinstate the crime of blasphemy. The subject will feature on the front page of the Wednesday, September 6, issue.

The newspaper is launching an appeal to "warn citizens committed to democratic values" alongside eight Scandinavian media outlets. Among them, seven Norwegian newspapers and online sites and one Danish media outlet are criticizing the return of this 334-year-old law, which was repealed in 2017.

In recent months, there has been one controversy after another in northern Europe, with Iraqi political refugees repeatedly burning Qurans in front of the press. The Scandinavian far right is exultant at other similar degradations carried out within its ranks. The emotion that swept through the Muslim world at these images of book burning led, for example, to a hundred people attacking the Swedish embassy in Baghdad on July 20.

'An outrageous law'

Against this backdrop of heightened tensions, Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard has championed a law designed to "prohibit the inappropriate treatment of objects of significant religious significance to a religious community." Anyone publicly desecrating a Bible, Torah, Quran or religious symbols such as a crucifix will soon face a fine or up to two years imprisonment.

For the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, who were targeted by an Islamist attack on January 7, 2015, this "ad hoc legislation" is worrying. "It's serious that a European country should decide to reinstate a medieval offense," warned the publication's director, Riss, who sees it as all the more symbolically important given that Denmark was the scene of the Muhammad cartoons affair in 2005.

"In doing this, the Danish government is bowing to pressure from Muslim countries," complained Gérard Biard, the weekly's editor-in-chief. "With this scandalous law, the Danish government is being dictated to by authoritarian regimes such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Taliban Afghanistan. The vagueness surrounding this bill, which in reality concerns only the Quran, leaves the door open to all interpretations and therefore all penalties," even though the Danish minister of justice has assured that the law will not cover cartoons.

By embarking on this new battle, and at the risk of being accused of encouraging book-burners, Charlie Hebdo will surprise neither its supporters nor its detractors. "We're not trying to export French-style secularism but to support freedom of expression, which is threatened by this law. Everyone has the right to practise their religion, it's not about the Quran, it's about fighting religious fundamentalism," Riss said. The newspaper is currently in difficulty. Only 17,000 copies were sold on newsstands per week in August, compared with 20,000 in January 2023 and 25,000 in May 2022. Subscribers still hover around 30,000, but this is 3,000 fewer than nine months ago, and 7,000 fewer than in May 2022.

[ Via: https://archive.is/TsBUi ]

Never set a precedent of complying with religious demands.

Unless it's a demand for secularism.

#islam #charlie hebdo #denmark #quran #quran burning #blasphemy #blasphemy laws #religion #freedom of speec #free speech #freedom of expression #religion is a mental illness

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seethesound · 9 months

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681 days since the Taliban banned girls from going to school and 221 days since they banned women from going to university.

This is the Taliban’s barbaric reasoning for why they won’t allow women and girls to study in Afghanistan. Joe Biden and American military leaders need to be tried for war crimes for the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. They have sent billions to Ukraine but done nothing for these girls and women.

A teenage girl ended her life last week by hanging herself at her home in Afghanistan's rugged central province of Bamyan, Anadolu has reported. Her family refrained from disclosing any details about her death, but a neighbour told local media that she was particularly distressed about not being able to go to school, a result of the Taliban administration's ban on education for women and girls.

A day later, in another part of Afghanistan, a 23-year-old woman shot herself. According to local media reports, she took the step as an escape from an abusive household to which she was confined.

Social media accounts of Afghan news outlets are teeming with such reports of women committing suicide. Activists say that there has been a surge ever since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. With concrete figures hard to find, rights groups fear that the issue and numbers are vastly underreported.

According to local channel Tolo News, there were 250 suicide attempts in the country last year; 188 of them were women. Maryam Marof Arwin, who heads Afghanistan Women and Children Strengthen Welfare Organisation, said that the local NGO receives reports of at least nine to eleven suicides by women every month, many of them young girls. However, the actual number could be in the hundreds, she told Anadolu.

“Most of the suicides are in places such as Takhar, Kunduz, Bamyan, Badghis, Faryab, Mazar-i-Sharif, and other rural areas," said Arwin. She cited two main factors for the underreporting of the issue: reluctance on the families' part and pressure from the Taliban. "The Taliban tries to suppress reports of suicides. Most of the time it doesn't allow the media to publish these reports. But we are seeing an increase in the number of suicides, and we are worried about the situation of women, especially girls."

The main reason for the spike in suicides among women is their deteriorating living standards in Afghanistan, say activists. Depression is rampant, they claim, particularly due to the ban on education and employment, which is aggravating the already dire economic conditions of scores of families mired in poverty. Other factors include forced marriages, domestic violence and the general lack of any social life.

The former deputy speaker of Afghanistan's Parliament, Fawzia Koofi, told the UN Human Rights Council last year that Afghan women were taking their lives out of desperation. "Every day, there are at least one or two women who commit suicide for the lack of opportunity, for the mental health, for the pressure they are under," she said. "The fact that girls as young as nine years old are being sold, not only because of economic pressure, but because of the fact that there is no hope for them, for their family, it is not normal."

More recently, a June report by UN-appointed rights experts warned of systematic "gender apartheid" and "gender persecution" in Afghanistan under the Taliban. "Grave, systematic and institutionalised discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of Taliban ideology and rule, which also gives rise to concerns that it may be responsible for gender apartheid," UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett told the council in Geneva.

The interim Taliban administration, however, rejected the claims. Spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid accused the "UN and some Western institutions and governments" of spreading "propaganda that does not reflect reality."

However, activists disagree. Due to the curbs imposed by the Taliban, they say, many women, including widows and those with no men in their families, have been left with no means to earn and survive.

“These women were actually responsible for supporting their families. The Taliban took away their jobs and they are now jobless," said Hamid Samar, the founder of ZAN TV, the first channel to broadcast specifically for Afghanistan's women. "They're at home now and worrying about how they will feed their families."

#words of truth #true words #mahsa amini #words to live by #protect the school girls of iran #protect the children of afghanistan #iran protests #protect women #stand with the women of the middle east #stand with the children of herat city #stand for the women of the muslim world #stand with the children of afghanistan #stand with the children of iran #stand with the women of iran #stand with the women of afghanistan #let them learn #afghanistan holocaust #burn the hijab

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ausetkmt · 6 months

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Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans

Former President Donald Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up people living in the United States without legal permission on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.

The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.

Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a COVID-19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — although this time, he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

He plans to scour the country for immigrants living here without legal permission and deport people by the millions per year.

To help speed mass deportations, Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due-process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.

To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.

In a public reference to his plans, Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September, “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur — “Operation Wetback.”

The constellation of Trump’s 2025 plans amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of immigrants living in the country without legal permission would be banned from the U.S. or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.

Such a scale of planned removals would raise logistical, financial and diplomatic challenges and would be vigorously challenged in court. But there is no mistaking the breadth and ambition of the shift Trump is eyeing.

In a second Trump presidency, the visas of foreign students who participated in anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian protests would be canceled. U.S. consular officials abroad will be directed to expand ideological screening of visa applicants to block people the Trump administration considers to have undesirable attitudes. People who were granted temporary protected status because they are from certain countries deemed unsafe, allowing them to lawfully live and work in the United States, would have that status revoked.

Similarly, numerous people who have been allowed to live in the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons would also lose that status and be kicked out, including tens of thousands of the Afghans who were evacuated amid the 2021 Taliban takeover and allowed to enter the United States. Afghans holding special visas granted to people who helped U.S. forces would be revetted to see if they really did.

And Trump would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to parents living in the country without legal permission — by proclaiming that policy to be the new position of the government and by ordering agencies to cease issuing citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards and passports to them. That policy’s legal legitimacy, like nearly all of Trump’s plans, would be virtually certain to end up before the Supreme Court.

In interviews with The New York Times, several Trump advisers gave the most expansive and detailed description yet of Trump’s immigration agenda in a potential second term. In particular, Trump’s campaign referred questions for this article to Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s first-term immigration policies who remains close to him and is expected to serve in a senior role in a second administration.

All of the steps Trump advisers are preparing, Miller contended in a wide-ranging interview, rely on existing statutes; while the Trump team would likely seek a revamp of immigration laws, the plan was crafted to need no new substantive legislation. And while acknowledging that lawsuits would arise to challenge nearly every one of them, he portrayed the Trump team’s daunting array of tactics as a “blitz” designed to overwhelm immigrant rights lawyers.

“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error. Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Miller said, adding, “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”

Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice advocacy group that repeatedly fought the Trump administration, said the Trump team’s plans relied on “xenophobic demagoguery” that appeals to his hardest-core political base.

“Americans should understand these policy proposals are an authoritarian, often illegal, agenda that would rip apart nearly every aspect of American life — tanking the economy, violating the basic civil rights of millions of immigrants and native-born Americans alike,” Schulte said.

The Tools to Exploit

Since Trump left office, the political environment on immigration has moved in his direction. He is also more capable now of exploiting that environment if he is reelected than he was when he first won election as an outsider.

The ebbing of the COVID-19 pandemic and resumption of travel flows have helped stir a global migrant crisis, with millions of Venezuelans and Central Americans fleeing turmoil and Africans arriving in Latin American countries before continuing their journey north. Amid the record numbers of migrants at the southern border and beyond it in cities like New York and Chicago, voters are frustrated, and even some Democrats are calling for tougher action against immigrants and pressuring the White House to better manage the crisis.

Trump and his advisers see the opening and now know better how to seize it. The aides Trump relied upon in the chaotic early days of his first term were sometimes at odds and lacked experience in how to manipulate the levers of federal power. By the end of his first term, Cabinet officials and lawyers who sought to restrain some of his actions — like his Homeland Security secretary and chief of staff, John Kelly — had been fired, and those who stuck with him had learned much.

In a second term, Trump plans to install a team that will not restrain him.

Since much of Trump’s first-term immigration crackdown was tied up in the courts, the legal environment has tilted in his favor: His four years of judicial appointments left behind federal appellate courts and a Supreme Court that are far more conservative than the courts that heard challenges to his first-term policies.

The fight over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals provides an illustration.

DACA is an Obama-era program that shields from deportation and grants work permits to people who were brought unlawfully to the United States as children. Trump tried to end it, but the Supreme Court blocked him on procedural grounds in June 2020.

Miller said Trump would try again to end DACA. And the 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court that blocked the last attempt no longer exists: A few months after the DACA ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and Trump replaced her with a sixth conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Trump’s rhetoric has more than kept up with his increasingly extreme agenda on immigration.

His stoking of fear and anger toward immigrants — pushing for a border wall and calling Mexicans rapists — fueled his 2016 takeover of the Republican Party. As president, he privately mused about developing a militarized border like Israel’s, asked whether migrants crossing the border could be shot in the legs and wanted a proposed border wall topped with flesh-piercing spikes and painted black to burn migrants’ skin.

As he has campaigned for the party’s third straight presidential nomination, his anti-immigrant tone has only grown harsher. In a recent interview with a right-wing website, Trump claimed without evidence that foreign leaders were deliberately emptying their “insane asylums” to send the patients across America’s southern border as migrants. He said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” And at a rally Wednesday in Florida, he compared them to the fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, saying, “That’s what’s coming into our country right now.”

Trump had similarly vowed to carry out mass deportations when running for office in 2016, but the government only managed several hundred thousand removals per year under his presidency, on par with other recent administrations. If they get another opportunity, Trump and his team are determined to achieve annual numbers in the millions.

Keeping People Out

Trump’s immigration plan is to pick up where he left off and then go much further. He would not only revive some of the policies that were criticized as draconian during his presidency, many of which the Biden White House ended, but also expand and toughen them.

One example centers on expanding first-term policies aimed at keeping people out of the country. Trump plans to suspend the nation’s refugee program and once again categorically ban visitors from troubled countries, reinstating a version of his ban on travel from several mostly Muslim-majority countries, which President Joe Biden called discriminatory and ended on his first day in office.

Trump would also use coercive diplomacy to induce other nations to help, including by making cooperation a condition of any other bilateral engagement, Miller said. For example, a second Trump administration would seek to reestablish an agreement with Mexico that asylum-seekers remain there while their claims are processed. (It is not clear that Mexico would agree; a Mexican court has said that deal violated human rights.)

Trump would also push to revive “safe third country” agreements with several nations in Central America and try to expand them to Africa, Asia and South America. Under such deals, countries agree to take would-be asylum-seekers from specific other nations and let them apply for asylum there instead.

While such arrangements have traditionally only covered migrants who had previously passed through a third country, federal law does not require that limit, and a second Trump administration would seek to make those deals without it, in part as a deterrent to migrants making what the Trump team views as illegitimate asylum claims.

At the same time, Miller said, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would invoke the public health emergency powers law known as Title 42 to again refuse to hear any asylum claims by people arriving at the southern border. The Trump administration had internally discussed that idea early in Trump’s term, but some Cabinet secretaries pushed back, arguing that there was no public health emergency that would legally justify it. The administration ultimately implemented it during the coronavirus pandemic.

Saying the idea has since gained acceptance in practice — Biden initially kept the policy — Miller said Trump would invoke Title 42, citing “severe strains of the flu, tuberculosis, scabies, other respiratory illnesses like RSV and so on, or just a general issue of mass migration being a public health threat and conveying a variety of communicable diseases.”

Trump and his aides have not yet said whether they would reenact one of the most contentious deterrents to unauthorized immigration that he pursued as president: separating children from their parents, which led to trauma among migrants and difficulties in reuniting families. When pressed, Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out reviving the policy. After an outcry over the practice, Trump ended it in 2018, and a judge later blocked the government from putting it back into effect.

Mass Deportations

Soon after Trump announced his 2024 campaign for president last November, he met with Tom Homan, who ran ICE for the first year and a half of the Trump administration and was an early proponent of separating families to deter migrants.

In an interview, Homan recalled that in that meeting, he “agreed to come back” in a second term and would “help to organize and run the largest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

Trump advisers’ vision of abrupt mass deportations would be a recipe for social and economic turmoil, disrupting the housing market and major industries including agriculture and the service sector.

Miller cast such disruption in a favorable light.

“Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs,” he said. “Americans will also celebrate the fact that our nation’s laws are now being applied equally and that one select group is no longer magically exempt.”

One planned step to overcome the legal and logistical hurdles would be to significantly expand a form of fast-track deportations known as “expedited removal.” It denies immigrants living in the country without legal permission the usual hearings and opportunity to file appeals, which can take months or years — especially when people are not in custody — and has led to a large backlog. A 1996 law says people can be subject to expedited removal for up to two years after arriving, but to date, the executive branch has used it more cautiously, swiftly expelling people picked up near the border soon after crossing.

The Trump administration tried to expand the use of expedited removal, but a court blocked it, and then the Biden team canceled the expansion. It remains unclear whether the Supreme Court will rule that it is constitutional to use the law against people who have been living for a significant period in the United States and express fear of persecution if sent home.

Trump has also said he would invoke an archaic law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without due process. That law allows for summary deportation of people from countries with which the United States is at war, that have invaded the United States or that have engaged in “predatory incursions.”

The Supreme Court has upheld past uses of that law in wartime. But its text seems to require a link to the actions of a foreign government, so it is not clear whether the justices will allow a president to stretch it to encompass drug cartel activity.

More broadly, Miller said a new Trump administration would shift from the ICE practice of arresting specific people to carrying out workplace raids and other sweeps in public places aimed at arresting scores of immigrants living in the country without legal permission all at once.

To make the process of finding and deporting immigrants already living inside the country without legal permission “radically more quick and efficient,” he said, the Trump team would bring in “the right kinds of attorneys and the right kinds of policy thinkers” willing to carry out such ideas.

And because of the magnitude of arrests and deportations being contemplated, they plan to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for immigrants as their cases progress and they wait to be flown to other countries.

Miller said the new camps would likely be built “on open land in Texas near the border.” He said the military would construct them under the authority and control of the Department of Homeland Security. While he cautioned that there were no specific blueprints yet, he said the camps would look professional and similar to other facilities for migrants that have been built near the border.

Such camps could also enable the government to speed up the pace and volume of deportations of people who have lived in the United States without legal permission for years and so are not subject to fast-track removal. If pursuing a long-shot effort to win permission to remain in the country would mean staying locked up in the interim, some may give up and voluntarily accept removal without going through the full process.

The use of these camps, he said, would likely be focused more on single adults because the government cannot indefinitely hold children under a long-standing court order known as the Flores settlement. So any families brought to the facilities would have to be moved in and out more quickly, Miller said.

The Trump administration tried to overturn the Flores settlement, but the Supreme Court did not resolve the matter before Trump’s term ended. Miller said the Trump team would try again.

To increase the number of agents available for ICE sweeps, Miller said, officials from other federal law enforcement agencies would be temporarily reassigned, and state National Guard troops and local police officers, at least from willing Republican-led states, would be deputized for immigration control efforts.

While a law known as the Posse Comitatus Act generally forbids the use of the armed forces for law enforcement purposes, another law called the Insurrection Act creates an exception. Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act at the border, enabling the use of federal troops to apprehend migrants, Miller said.

“Bottom line,” he said, “President Trump will do whatever it takes.”

#US Immigration #immigration issues #trump #Sweeping Raids #Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans #deportations #forced deportations #illegal migration #gop #lies #posse comitatus act

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beardedmrbean · 9 months

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Afghanistan's Taliban rulers on Tuesday celebrated the second anniversary of their return to power.

The group took over the Afghan capital Kabul on August 15, 2021. The US-backed government collapsed and much of its leadership, including former President Ashraf Ghani, went into exile.

So far, no country has recognized the Taliban's government in Afghanistan.

Taliban mark 'Independence Day'

Taliban authorities held official events across the country, celebrating what they called "Afghanistan's Independence day from the US occupation."

US-led forces overthrew the Taliban-led Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 2001 and withdrew 20 years later.

"On the second anniversary of the conquest of Kabul, we would like to congratulate the mujahid (holy warrior) nation of Afghanistan and ask them to thank Almighty Allah for this great victory," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

"The conquest of Kabul proved once again that no one can control the proud nation of Afghanistan and guarantee their stay in this country," the Taliban government said in a statement.

Taliban spokesperson to DW: 'How can we be against women?'

Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen denied that the de facto rulers of Afghanistan were anti-woman in comments to DW News Asia.

"How can we be against women?" he said. "They are our mothers, wives, daughters, sisters."

Taliban authorities have imposed a number of restrictions on women, including enforcing a strict dress code in public, barring them from gyms and parks, and keeping women out of secondary and tertiary education.

Shaheen insisted that the Taliban have not denied women the right to education.

He said that the Taliban would reopen schools and universities to girls and women, but did not provide a timeline for this. "There is a committee set up to create an Islamic environment for that," he said.

Shaheen argued that the Islamist group is supporting women's progress by allowing them to study nursing and specialize as doctors.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have allowed for the continued existence female medical professionals so that women do not have to be treated by male staff.

The UN has accused the Taliban of practicing gender apartheid. On Tuesday, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, said that Taliban rule has "upturned" the lives of Afghan women.

"It's been two years since the Taliban took over in Afghanistan. Two years that upturned the lives of Afghan women and girls, their rights and futures," she said in a statement.

German NGO: Humanitarian situation 'dramatic'

Despite a decrease in fighting, Afghanistan has been grappling with a major humanitarian crisis since the withdrawal of US-led forces and a number of international aid organizations.

The Asia Regional Director of the German humanitarian NGO Welthungerhilfe, Elke Gottschalk, has described the situation in Afghanistan as "dramatic."

She said that 17 million people in the country are threatened by hunger and 29 million people are dependent on humanitarian aid. "You can see this on every street corner," she said in remarks to German public broadcaster ARD.

Afghanistan has a total population of around 42 million.

The country's Taliban rulers imposed a ban on women working in NGOs in 2022, which Gottschalk said brought about additional complications.

She said that while 20% of Welthungerhilfe employees are women, each of these positions had to be negotiated separately and approved by the Taliban.

The head of the Kabul office of Caritas International, Stefan Recker, told Deutschlandfunk radio that two women were still working for the organization but were not allowed to work in the office.

Recker said that the situation in the country was desperate and many people wanted to flee. However, he said he was hopeful because of the improved security situation and the decrease in street crime.

#nunyas news #wonder if they've sent biden a thank you card

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mariacallous · 9 months

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The United Nations is the custodian of billions of dollars of international assistance meant for the hungry and needy of Afghanistan, where around half the population is said to depend on outside help just to stay alive. Yet the agencies entrusted with delivering that aid have been “effectively infiltrated” by the terrorist-run Taliban, who regard foreign charity as just another revenue stream, according to a report prepared for the U.S. government that has not yet been made public.

Tapping into charities and international aid to siphon money is nothing terribly new for the Taliban, who have been doing so since their first rise to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. But that approach has taken on extra significance since the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021, when terrorists, drug traffickers, and illegal traders were catapulted to power. The result has been fewer opportunities for Taliban leaders, and rank-and-file fighters, to cash in on illicit activity, making the collection plate grab all the more vital.

The detailed, and devastating, analysis of Afghanistan’s political and economic situation two years after the fall of Kabul was commissioned by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. government arm for foreign aid, and obtained by Foreign Policy. The report confirms that aid is being systematically diverted through Taliban-controlled hands and raises serious questions about the presence in Afghanistan of U.N. agencies charged with delivering that aid to those who need it.

The “Taliban appear to view the UN system as yet another revenue stream, one which their movement will seek to monopolize and centralize control over,” the report says.

The report casts doubt on the world body’s ability to control the flow of aid, including about $2 billion from the United States alone since Aug. 15, 2021, when the Islamic Republic collapsed. And it comes as concern is growing that Western governments, including the Biden administration, favor moving toward recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate authority in Afghanistan, rather than attempting to hold them to account for brutal policies that have trampled the Afghan people and again transformed the country into a haven for global terrorism.

With at least 19 agencies present in Afghanistan, the U.N. has effectively been operating illegally since a December edict from the Taliban banned the employment of women in NGOs; nondiscrimination is fundamental to the U.N. Charter. The USAID report says many nongovernmental organizations are now paying women to stay home, while the Taliban have ordered them to send their male relatives to ostensibly work in their place, even as the displaced women continue to do the heavy lifting. Afghanistan represents the biggest single-country appeal, for $3.2 billion this year (down from an earlier $4.6 billion), though the U.N. complains that, amid reports of corruption and complicity, it has received less than a quarter of the money. The United States is the biggest financial supporter of the U.N.

Donor reluctance to stump up the cash is understandable, given the contents of the report, which was submitted to USAID in May by the U.S. Institute of Peace. It flies in the face of claims that the Taliban are no longer the unreconstructed and unaccountable group that ran Afghanistan into the ground between 1996 and 2001. Assertions from U.N. and government officials that rifts within the Taliban could be exploited to force a reversal on policies such as confining women to their homes and banning girls from secondary education are also debunked; the report concludes that “the Taliban remain strongly, surprisingly cohesive.” Just as the political center of gravity has shifted south from Kabul to Kandahar, the decision-making power has drifted more into the orbit of Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada—there is little meaningful opposition.

The playbook of Taliban interference with foreign aid includes intimidation and coercion of local U.N. staff and, as with other NGOs, pushing for “ever-increasing degrees of credit and control over the delivery of aid, especially the more tangible forms of aid,” the report says. NGOs are forced to sign memoranda of understanding with ministries that are being taken over by agents of the Taliban’s secret service, the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI). The GDI official responsible for oversight of NGOs is believed to be responsible for a massacre of opponents in Nangarhar, according to the report.

The Taliban recipe for overcoming opposition, like the Romans and British before them, has been to divide and conquer, and it still pays dividends—in an aid-flooded Afghanistan, handsome ones. The report notes that U.N. agencies and NGOs lack collective bargaining power as they enter bilateral agreements complying with conditions for Taliban oversight and control. This “removed much of the leverage other agencies had once the precedent of acquiescence was set,” the report says.

The report also sheds some light on Taliban finances, describing the group as adept at tax collection and basic budget management—some iffy diversions by the supreme leader aside—thanks in part to the retention of a large core of Republic-era civil servants. Despite the collapse of Afghanistan’s economy, Taliban revenues of about $2 billion a year are roughly what the old government managed. What’s less clear is where that money goes. The report estimates that about 40 percent of the national budget is allocated to the security sector, as former military commanders, who retain control over “men with guns,” are a critical constituency. The rest is rather more opaque.

The “Taliban are clearly generating income—but it isn’t at all clear what they are spending it on,” the report says.

In the meantime, as much as the Taliban remain reluctant to actually become a competent governing body, they are happy to be seen as such. That is one reason why NGOs that deliver high-profile goods and services such as health care are much more likely to be tolerated by the Taliban than civil society groups that deliver things that either smack of Western influence or can’t be packed in the back of a truck. The problem with the Taliban’s control of money is that it insulates them from any of the innumerable, and so far futile, calls to lessen their oppression of women or add some inclusivity to their government or fully rehabilitate former political opponents.

“The myriad means of profiting from engagement with the UN system and the aid sector, aside from formal taxation, mean that even though the investment amounts are greatly reduced from the 20 years of U.S.-led intervention, foreign aid is a major economic prize to be contested,” the report says.

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the-real-zhora-salome · 1 month

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The Taliban’s announcement that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death has been enabled by the international community’s silence, human rights groups have said.

Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Women’s Window of Hope, said the announcement had condemned Afghan women to return to the darkest days of Taliban rule in the 1990s.

“With this announcement by the Taliban leader, a new chapter of private punishments has begun and Afghan women are experiencing the depths of loneliness,” Arefi said.

“Now, no one is standing beside them to save them from Taliban punishments. The international community has chosen to remain silent in the face of these violations of women’s rights.”

The Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, announced at the weekend that the group would begin enforcing its interpretation of sharia law in Afghanistan, including reintroducing the public flogging and stoning of women for adultery.

In an audio broadcast on the Taliban-controlled Radio Television Afghanistan last Saturday, Akhundzada said: “We will flog the women … we will stone them to death in public [for adultery].

“You may call it a violation of women’s rights when we publicly stone or flog them for committing adultery because they conflict with your democratic principles,” he said, adding: “[But] I represent Allah, and you represent Satan.”

He justified the move as a continuation of the Taliban’s struggle against western influences. “The Taliban’s work did not end with the takeover of Kabul, it has only just begun,” he said.

The news was met by horror but not surprise by Afghan women’s right groups, who say the dismantling of any remaining rights and protection for the country’s 14 million women and girls is now almost complete.

Sahar Fetrat, an Afghan researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “Two years ago, they didn’t have the courage they have today to vow stoning women to death in public; now they do.

“They tested their draconian policies one by one, and have reached this point because there is no one to hold them accountable for the abuses. Through the bodies of Afghan women, the Taliban demand and command moral and societal orders. We should all be warned that if not stopped, more and more will come.”

Since taking power, in August 2021, the Taliban has dissolved the western-backed constitution of Afghanistan and suspended existing criminal and penal codes, replacing them with their rigid and fundamentalist interpretation of sharia law. They also banned female lawyers and judges, targeting many of them for their work under the previous government.

Samira Hamidi, an Afghan activist and campaigner at Amnesty International, said: “In the past two and half years, the Taliban has dismantled institutions that were providing services to Afghan women.

“However, their leader’s latest endorsement of women’s public stoning to death is a flagrant violation of international human rights laws, including Cedaw [the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women].”

Hamidi said Afghan women were now in effect powerless to defend themselves from persecution and injustice.

In the past year alone, Taliban-appointed judges ordered 417 public floggings and executions, according to Afghan Witness, a research group monitoring human rights in Afghanistan. Of these, 57 were women.

Most recently, in February, the Taliban executed people in public at stadiums in Jawzjan and Ghazni provinces. The militant group has urged people to attend executions and punishments as a “lesson” but banned filming or photography.

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milkyway-ashes · 5 months

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Hey, it’s your secret rockstar santa again! Idk if orange juice is a seasonal drink, but I’ll take it lol.

Also good picks for the albums! Today, I invite you to go on a rant about something you’ve been meaning to go on a rant about.

ahhhh, a super kind santa who's got the nerves for my rants <333333

honestly, it's a while that I haven't got anything to go on a rant about (not that I'm living my happiest life. there's just nothing too serious going on for now) :]

but uhh, I've been hearing some news and seeing some banners in my town recently that I wish more people talked about it and stopped it from continuing 🥲

well, as a matter of fact, there are lots and lots of Afghan refugees living in Iran who've been migrating here since the early days of the Taliban's presence in Afghanistan.

even though their life as a refugee has always had its difficult moments, they've somehow built with it and the new generation of these Afghans are even born in Iran! they've been going to school and college and they've been working here, just like us!

but a while ago, government announced (and has put into action) a new law which limits the Afghans' activities.

for example, the process to get a permission to work in Iran or buying a house has become more complicated and challenging for them. and even if an Afghan has the permission to work, they can only and only work on a farm that's owned by an Iranian!!! (the government is firing all Afghans from other working places)

plus, they must have their residence card with themselves everywhere they go. because the police can stop them in the street anytime and check if they have a card or not.

and btw, Iran's subdivided into 31 ostans (aka provinces) and by now, Afghans are banned from entering 16 of these ostans!

I just don't get why this should be happening. these Afghans do us no harm and this is literally RACISM against them 😭

the town that I live in is full of Afghans and it really hurts when I walk past one of them and know that they'd probably wish to be in my place right now 😭😭

I can't stand this AT ALL. I used to have some Afghan friends at elementary school and it's a long time that idk where they are anymore, but I do want them to be able to have their own big dreams for future, just like I or other Iranian teenagers can have >:(

#sorry santa i was too angry :((((#setia's mailbox #srs23 #rant

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zvaigzdelasas · 1 year

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[VOA is US State Media]

The Islamist Taliban government has defended banning FM radio broadcasts from two U.S.-funded news media, including the Voice of America, in Afghanistan, alleging they were offending local laws.

The ban on VOA and Azadi Radio, an Afghan extension of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, or RFE/RL, went into effect Thursday, a day after the Taliban’s ministry of information and culture said it had received complaints about programing content but shared no specifics.[...]

"VOA and Azadi Radio failed to adhere to these laws, were found as repeat offenders, failed to show professionalism and were therefore shut down," Balkhi said.

RFE/RL and VOA used the same FM frequencies for round the clock broadcasts in Dari and Pashto languages. VOA’s mediumwave and shortwave transmissions broadcast on transmitters based outside the country will continue to reach Afghan listeners.

In March, the Taliban stopped VOA’s Ashna TV news shows, which had been broadcast on Afghan National Television, Tolo, Tolo News and Lamar for a decade, VOA Pashto reported.

Many VOA programs are anchored by women. The Taliban have banned women from appearing on television without covering their faces.

On Thursday, U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees RFE/RL and VOA, said the Taliban ban will not deter its journalistic mission.

1 Dec 22

#us #afghanistan

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visitafghanistan · 1 year

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Ariana Afghan Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-10 On the eve of British withdrawal “west of Suez” in the late 1950s, several nations that previously relied on British airline services began setting up their own flag carriers. The kingdom of Afghanistan was no different, and in January 1955, Aryana Airlines was established, with the government of Afghanistan owning a controlling interest. Operations began shortly thereafter with a fleet of three Douglas DC-3s. In 1957, Pan American Airways bought a 49% share in Aryana, which was subsequently renamed Ariana Afghan Airlines as it began expanding its routes with the help of Pan American. To further expand its fleet, Ariana was given $1.1 million in US aid. In 1967, the Afghani government split off Ariana’s domestic routes to a new airline, Bakhtar Alwatana. Ariana then relied on three Boeing 727s and a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 for international routes. The Soviet-Afghan War (1980-1988) hurt Ariana, but it was able to continue its international routes, though it was forced to sell the DC-10 under Soviet pressure to buy Tupolev Tu-154s. Bakhtar took over Ariana in 1985, but this was short-lived; once the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988, Bakhtar ceased operations and became Ariana Afghan once more. The collapse of the civil order in Afghanistan after the takeover of the Taliban had a similar effect on Ariana. UN sanctions reduced Ariana to domestic operations in Afghanistan and flights to Pakistan and Dubai; making matters worse was Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network using Ariana as essentially a courier and transportation service. Al-Qaeda terrorists, using false Ariana employment papers, were able to gain access to several nations to commit terrorist acts, including the 1999 Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings. Following the September 11 attacks and the United States’ subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, most of Ariana’s surviving fleet was destroyed in October 2001 by airstrikes on Kabul airport. With the Taliban removed from power, UN restrictions on Ariana Afghan were lifted, and Air India donated three Airbus A300s for international operations; Ariana relied on its surviving 727s for domestic operations, and later acquired A310s as well. Ariana resumed international flights in 2002. However, in 2006, the EU banned Ariana from flying to Europe, citing maintenance and security concerns. As of this writing, the ban has yet to be lifted, and with Afghanistan’s continued political turmoil, Ariana’s future remains in doubt. YA-LAS was delivered to Ariana in 1979 and flew with them until 1985, when it was sold to British Caledonian. It was converted to a cargo aircraft and started a new career with Centurion Air Cargo from 2004 to 2010, was retired, and was last known to be in storage at Opa-Locka Airport in 2016.

#Ariana Afghan Airlines #DC-10

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underthewingsofthblackeagle · 1 year

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2022 - Afghanistan ... while the world looks away.

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The Taliban in Afghanistan has further clamped down on human rights in the country. In the latest blow, the Taliban's supreme leader has ordered judges to fully enforce Sharia or Islamic Law. It is an edict that could see the return of public floggings, executions and stonings for certain crimes. Women especially could be at the receiving end of many of these punishments. During their previous rule in the mid-nineties, the Taliban routinely stoned women for the crime of adultery. Last week, the group banned women from entering parks, gyms and public baths. The ban adds to a slew of curtailments to freedom Afghan women already face, as the Taliban ratchets up restrictions on public life after its return to power in August 2021. Since the chaotic withdrawal of NATO forces paved the way for the Taliban's comeback last year, Afghanistan's new hardline rulers have deprived girls of getting a secondary education. The group made its U-turn on indications it would open all girls' high schools in March. Taliban authorities have also suppressed activists who have protested for women's rights to education, work and freedom, and there has been an increase in murders of women that go unpunished. The group has also told women they should not leave the home without a male relative and must cover their faces.

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Ever since the Taliban came to power, the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan have continuously shrinked. The chance that most teenage girls will be able to return to school is dwindling by the day. Under increasing economic pressure, some parents have had to marry off their daughters - often to men much older than their age.

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At the onset of the second winter under Taliban rule, Afghan families face a grim choice between warming their homes or eating. But many can't afford either, as an increase in malnutrition and pneumonia cases among children indicates.

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Afghanistan's Taliban rulers won't allow women to join their cabinet, but they have no qualms meeting a woman cabinet minister from another Islamic country. Pakistan's deputy foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar was in Kabul earlier in the week to meet her opposite number in the Taliban. The Taliban happy to greet her at the airport and then sit across the table from her. An Afghan woman doing the same would be unthinkable. Among other things, Taliban rule has seen most Afghan women prevented from going back to their jobs and girls prevented from returning to secondary school. Women human rights activists have been arrested and tortured. Parwana Nijrabi spent 24 days in jail after being arrested for participating in a women's rights protest in Kabul in mid-January this year. She's now in Germany as a refugee and spoke to DW News about her experience in prison.

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Three major aid groups have suspended their operations in Afghanistan, saying they can't work without their female staff. This follows an order by the country's Taliban government telling all humanitarian organizations to stop employing women. The ban comes just days after the group barred women from attending universities.

#Afghanistan #Human Rights #Women Rights #The West looks away #Betrayl of Western Values

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everydayafghanistan · 2 years

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Yesterday marked one year since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and 332 days since they banned education for the vast majority of secondary school girls across the country, first citing a “technical issue” related to uniforms and this last week, citing “religious issues” and “cultural sensitivities.” Many of the country’s religious scholars say it’s a political decision rather than an Islamic one. It's unclear if and when high school girls will be allowed to go back again. Today, their younger sisters go to class without them. After 40 years of war, some girls are receiving their first education with schools opening in areas where they never existed before. In some, the Taliban’s daughters are receiving their first education. 15 year old girls are in first grade, learning the alphabet alongside 5 year olds. A raft of cultural and logistical obstacles had stopped the students' older sisters and mothers from attending school before. Now, these girls teach their mothers what they have learnt in their classes. As always, no two situations are the same in Afghanistan. They differ from province to province and district to district. But one thing is clear, these girls are glad to be here. After grade 6, these girls’ futures will be in the hands of Afghanistan’s new government, and it will be infinitely more difficult without the tools they need to find their paths forward. There remains no sensical justification for the ban on their older sisters' education. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world to ban girls from receiving an education. #Kunar #Afghanistan Photo & words by Lynzy Billing @lynzybilling in July 2022. #everydaykunar #school #afghan #girls #letafghangirlslearn #reportage #reportagespotlight #photojournalism #afghanwomen #everydayafghanistan #afghangirl #everydayeverywhere #everydayasia #reportagephotography (at Kunar) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChUraipNOg_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#kunar #afghanistan #everydaykunar #school #afghan #girls #letafghangirlslearn #reportage #reportagespotlight #photojournalism #afghanwomen #everydayafghanistan #afghangirl #everydayeverywhere #everydayasia #reportagephotography

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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Published: Dec 21, 2022

The Taliban have banned women from universities in Afghanistan, sparking international condemnation and despair among young people in the country.

The higher education minister announced the regression on Tuesday, saying it would take immediate effect.

The ban further restricts women's education - girls have already been excluded from secondary schools since the Taliban returned last year.

Some women staged protests in the capital Kabul on Wednesday.

"Today we come out on the streets of Kabul to raise our voices against the closure of the girls' universities," protesters from the Afghanistan Women's Unity and Solidarity group said.

The small demonstrations were quickly shut down by Taliban officials.

Female students have told the BBC of their anguish. "They destroyed the only bridge that could connect me with my future," one Kabul University student said.

"How can I react? I believed that I could study and change my future or bring the light to my life but they destroyed it."

Another student told the BBC she was a woman who had "lost everything".

She had been studying Sharia Islamic law and argued the Taliban's order contradicted "the rights that Islam and Allah have given us".

"They have to go to other Islamic countries and see that their actions are not Islamic," she told the BBC.

The United Nations and several countries have condemned the order, which takes Afghanistan back to the Taliban's first period of rule when girls could not receive formal education.

The UN's Special Rapporteur to Afghanistan said it was "a new low further violating the right to equal education and deepens the erasure of women from Afghan society."

The US said such a move would "come with consequences for the Taliban".

"The Taliban cannot expect to be a legitimate member of the international community until they respect the rights of all in Afghanistan," said Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement.

"No country can thrive when half of its population is held back."

Western countries have demanded all year that the Taliban improve female education if they wish to be formally recognised as Afghanistan's government.

However in neighbouring Pakistan, the foreign minister said while he was "disappointed" by the Taliban's decision, he still advocated engagement.

"I still think the easiest path to our goal - despite having a lot of setbacks when it comes to women's education and other things - is through Kabul and through the interim government," said Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

The Taliban had promised a softer rule after seizing power last year following the US' withdrawal from the country. However the hardline Islamists have continued to roll back women's rights and freedoms in the country.

The Taliban's leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and his inner circle have been against modern education - particularly for girls and women.

There has been opposition to this stance from more moderate officials, and analysts say this issue has been a point of factional division all year.

Yet on Tuesday, the education ministry said its scholars had evaluated the university curriculum and environment, and attendance for girls would be suspended "until a suitable environment" was provided.

It added that it would soon provide such a setting and "citizens should not be worried".

However in March, the Taliban had promised to re-open some high schools for girls but then cancelled the move on the day they were due to return.

The crackdown also follows a wave of new restrictions on women in recent months. In November, women were banned from parks, gyms and public baths in the capital.

A university lecturer and Afghan activist in the US said the Taliban had completed their isolation of women by suspending university for them.

"This was the last thing the Taliban could do. Afghanistan is not a country for women but instead a cage for women," Humaira Qaderi told the BBC.

The Taliban had just three months ago allowed thousands of girls and women to sit university entrance exams in most provinces across the country.

But there were restrictions on the subjects they could apply for, with engineering, economics, veterinary science and agriculture blocked and journalism severely restricted.

Prior to Tuesday's announcement, universities had already been operating under discriminatory rules for women since the Taliban takeover in 2021.

There were gender segregated entrances and classrooms, and female students could only be taught by women professors or old men.

However, women were still getting education. Unesco noted on Tuesday that from 2001 and 2018 - the period between Taliban rule - the rate of female attendance in higher education had increased 20 times.

Several women have told the BBC they gave up after the Taliban regained rule because of "too many difficulties".

Issue splits Taliban

Analysis by Yogita Limaye, BBC South Asia correspondent

There has been speculation for over a month now that the Taliban government would ban university education for women.

One female student predicted it a few weeks ago. "One day we will wake up and they will say girls are banned from universities," she had said.

And so, while many Afghans might have expected that sooner or later this decision would be taken, it still comes as a shock.

Last month women were barred from parks, gyms and swimming pools. In March this year, the Taliban government did not deliver on its commitment to open secondary schools for girls.

From conversations with Taliban leaders over the past year, it is evident that there is disagreement within the Taliban on the issue of girls' education.

Off the record, some Taliban members have repeatedly said they are hopeful and working to try and ensure girls get an education.

Girls were allowed to sit for graduation exams for secondary schools two weeks ago, in 31 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, even though they haven't been allowed to be in school for more than a year.

That provided a glimmer of hope, which has now been extinguished.

Iran has shown what's possible when the citizens have had enough of authoritarian regimes.

#Afghanistan #Islamic Republic of Afghanistan #islam #islamic regime #Taliban #islamic misogyny #religion #Shabnam Nasimi #religion is a mental illness

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notwiselybuttoowell · 2 years

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The Taliban have launched construction work on a tourism complex just metres from the cliff that held the Bamiyan Buddha statues, which archeologists and experts warn could cause permanent damage to the sensitive world heritage site.

The project aims to “rebuild” a historic bazaar, which was destroyed in the civil war of the 1990s. Under the Taliban blueprint, the area will become a tourism centre with restaurants, guesthouses, parking, public toilets and handicraft and grocery shops.

But the ruined bazaar is itself a historic site that may sit on top of older ruins, and it is also close to the fragile cliff of Buddhist monastery caves that is one of Afghanistan’s greatest treasures.

“This old bazaar is in the archaeological buffer zone of the world heritage site and Unesco [the UN agency that manages the listings] has never been in favour of reusing this place,” said a diplomat with expertise in heritage issues in Afghanistan, who asked to remain anonymous.

“On the contrary, these buildings are located in the middle of an archaeological zone, and the buildings themselves are in some way part of the late 19th- and early 20th-century heritage and therefore their reconstruction is sensitive.”

In 2001, the Taliban destroyed two giant statues that had towered over the valley for more than a millennium, but the niches where they stood, and surviving cave frescos and other remains still make the site one of global importance.

The main road through Bamiyan was re-routed years ago to limit vibrations and fumes from traffic. This new plan would bring a heavy influx of people and vehicles back into a fragile area, officially designated a protected zone.

Mawlawi Saifurrahman Mohammadi, the provincial director for information and culture [...] said over 20 strict building controls had been fixed to respect the sensitive nature of the site. They include limiting buildings to a single storey, restricting the use of concrete for drains and pavements, and controlling the type of stones and plaster used.

He said the project had been signed off by Unesco, the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural agency. “[The central government] negotiated with Unesco and they sent us back a guideline on how to do it.”

But Unesco, which monitors world heritage sites and has been working at Bamiyan for decades, said it had not been consulted on the project, and had not given its approval to rebuilding the bazaar. It warned in a statement that the building could affect conservation work.

“Unesco has neither requested nor been associated with this project, which is located in the heart of the archaeological zone and could be problematic for the proper conservation of the world heritage site,” it said in a statement.

Heritage experts from Bamiyan also said they were alarmed at the destructive potential of the plan.

“This is a very restricted area, nobody is allowed to do any construction here, but the Taliban have decided to rebuild,” said one official who asked not to be named criticising the government. “I worked here in the past and I know the value of the site.

Bamiyan governor Abdullah Sarhadi [...] said he decided to launch the reconstruction after the owners of the shops came to petition him. They said they had effectively been robbed of their land when it was marked a heritage area and rebuilding banned.

“We should not let people have their land taken away here,” he said. “People could not get their [rightful] property, now it’s time they get it back.”

In tacit recognition of the area’s potential archeological value however, Mohammadi said the government would reserve the right to reclaim the bazaar area for archeological excavation in future.

#bamiyan #bamiyan buddhas #world heritage #UNESCO #Afghanistan #taliban #archeology #buddhism

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