Washington Post | The human toll of suicide bombings in Afghanistan Washington Post The Trump administration has not laid out its policy for Afghanistan, but senior U.S. military officials have urged increasing the current level of 8,400 advisory troops to prevent the insurgents from consolidating their territorial gains and to keep ... |
Original post:
The human toll of suicide bombings in Afghanistan - Washington Post
Gunmen wearing white lab coats stormed a military hospital in Afghanistan's capital on Wednesday, killing at least 30 people and wounding dozens in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
The attack on the 400-bed military facility, located near two civilian hospitals in Kabul's heavily-guarded diplomatic quarter, set off clashes with security forces that lasted several hours.
The brazen assault reflected the capability of militant groups in Afghanistan to stage large-scale and complex attacks in the heart of Kabul, underscoring the challenges the government continues to face to improve security for ordinary Afghans.
Gen. Dawlat Waziri, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said there were "more than 30 killed and more than 50 wounded" in the attack. Afghan forces battled the attackers floor by floor, he added. The ministry said the attackers were dressed like health workers.
According to Waziri, four gunmen were involved, including two suicide bombers who detonated their explosives vests once the group was inside the hospital.
The two other attackers were shot dead by security forces, the spokesman said. A member of the security forces was killed in the shootout and three other security officers were wounded. Along with the suicide vests, the attackers also had AK-47 rifles and hand grenades, Waziri said.
Obaidullah Barekzai, a lawmaker from southern Uruzgan province, said Wednesday's attack by the Islamic State group and other similar assaults, especially in the capital, are very concerning.
"This is not the first attack by the Islamic States group, they have carried out several bloody attacks in Kabul," he said.
The U.N. Security Council condemned "the heinous and cowardly terrorist attack" in the strongest terms and underlined the need to bring perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors to justice.
Council members reiterated that "any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed." They urged all countries "to combat by all means ... threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts."
The assault lasted for several hours, with Afghan helicopters circling over the hospital building, troops rappelling onto rooftops and security forces going floor-by-floor in a gunbattle with the attackers. By mid-afternoon, the attack was over and a clean-up operation was underway.
Abdul Qadir, a hospital worker who witnessed the attack, said an attacker in a white coat shot at him and his colleagues. Ghulam Azrat, another survivor, said he escaped through a fourth floor window after attackers killed two of his friends.
IS claimed the attack in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency.
An affiliate of the extremist group has carried out a number of attacks in Afghanistan in the last two years, and has clashed with the more powerful and well-established Taliban, who carried out another complex attack in Kabul last week.
Mohammad Nahim, a restaurant worker in Kabul, said he worries that IS militants are getting stronger. "Daesh has no mercy on the humanity," he added, using an Arabic name for the group.
Afghan security forces have struggled to combat both groups since the U.S. and NATO formally concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014, switching to an advisory and counterterrorism role.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani condemned Wednesday's attack during an address in honor of International Women's Day, calling it "an attack on all Afghan people and all Afghan women."
The foreign ministry in neighboring Pakistan condemned the Kabul attack, describing it as a "heinous terrorist attack" and expressing Islamabad's condolences to the victims.
The acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, Adele Khodr, warned in a statement that hospitals, medical staff and patients "must never be placed at risk, and under no circumstances be subject to attack" and urged all parties in the conflict to abide by and "respect all medical workers, clinics and hospitals in compliance with international law."
She said that in 2016, at least 41 attacks on health care facilities and workers were recorded across Afghanistan "an appalling catalogue of attacks that ultimately further hinders delivery of essential and life-saving health care to all Afghans across the country."
Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Originally posted here:
Islamic State gunmen in white lab coats kill 30 in Afghanistan hospital - Chicago Tribune
An Afghan refugee in a makeshift tent on the outskirts of Jalalabad, a city in eastern Afghanistan. Photograph: Ivan Flores
Afghanistan is starkly different from what Masooma had imagined. She was just a little girl when her family fled the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s. They left everything they owned behind to look for sanctuary in Pakistan and she has few memories of the place.
But when she found out six months ago that her family were going to be forcibly repatriated to a war-torn country her seven children had never set foot in and she had last seen 30 years ago, she tried to stay positive.
I had always wondered what life in our own country would be like - I looked forward to my homecoming.
When her family of 10 finally arrived in Afghanistan, any hope they had died. They were unable to return to the province where Masooma was born due to sustained conflict across the country. With no immediate family in Afghanistan to look out for them and little savings, they ended up in a tented settlement for displaced people. Her children have been out of school for six months as there are no schools near the settlement. Even if there was a school close by, they couldnt afford the fees, Masooma says, describing how even half a year after returning to Afghanistan her husband has been unable to find work.
The harsh reality is that so many other Afghan refugees are returning from Pakistan the labour market is simply flooded with more people than there are jobs. 250,000 have returned to Afghanistan in the last 10 months.
Her family and other returnees are not the only ones struggling. 600,000 Afghans were internally displaced due to conflict in 2016.
For Matthew Graydon, public information officer at International Organization for Migration (IOM), this should be a clear sign to the Pakistan government that Afghanistan is not safe enough for refugees to be returning. There are returnees who belong to districts they cant go back to due to fighting between the Taliban, Daesh and national forces. We are experiencing secondary displacement, or even a third level of displacement, he explains, adding that fresh conflict is forcing returnee families in some parts of the province to flee the IDP settlements where they previously found sanctuary.
Little thought has also been put into how the returnees - many who have either spent decades in Pakistan building a life or who were born there and thus feel little connection to Afghanistan - will integrate back into Afghan society.
We were poor but with the support of the community, we lived a happy life. And then, the police showed up at the mosque
37-year-old Abdul Qadir will not admit it, but his wife Hasiba says that he hasnt slept in a week. He spends a lot of time worrying about our future, and how we will afford the next months rent, she says. Qadir returned from Pakistan five months ago with his wife and eight children, most under the age of five. With the little savings they had, they rented a small one room space in Nangarhar, but five months after returning to Afghanistan, Nadir is still struggling to find a job.
Like many Afghan returnees from Pakistan, their lives were uprooted suddenly. In Pakistan, where he spent the last 25 years of his life, Qadir was an imam at a local mosque. We were poor but with the support of the community, we lived a happy life, Qadir recalls. And then five months ago, the police showed up at the mosque and took me with them. I was kept in detention for four nights and asked to leave immediately after they let me go, he says. They fled Pakistan the very next day.
If it were up to Hasiba, she wouldnt have left at all. Our neighbours in Pakistan were very kind and helpful. They were my friends and were like family to us.
But being an undocumented family meant there was little that anyone could do to protect them from the police who threatened to detain Qadir again if they didnt go. They helped us pack, that was all they could do. We left more than our homes behind; it feels as though we left part of our family behind, says Hasiba.
Qadirs family is not the only one to be pressured into fleeing the country by the police. In the last few months arrests and other forms of police harassment have been a common pressure tactic to get Afghans to leave.
Nearly all of them have been forced to leave against their will, says Graydon describing how 70,000 refugees returned to Afghanistan in just one month last year.
There are about 1.5 million documented and over a million undocumented Afghan refugees (pdf) in Pakistan, and for many years they have assimilated fairly easy into Pakistani community. But anti-refugee rhetoric has grown in the last year following a number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan, blamed on Afghans. Politicians started issuing threats last May, when Balochistans provincial home minister, Sarfaraz Khan Bugti, declared: Either the Afghan refugees can return voluntarily, with respect and dignity, or the people of Balochistan can humiliate them and throw them out of the country.
Relations between a war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan, which hosts the largest Afghan refugee population, have always been strained. Differences over how to tackle regional insurgency came to a head last summer with several days of deadly clashes at the Torkham border crossing, part of a long and porous border that has been a source of tension between the two countries for many years. In February, the Pakistani government closed it indefinitely.
It was when tension between the two nations was at a peak in September 2016 that Masoomas husband was arrested for not being able produce government-issued refugee documents. We had heard it happen to other people, but I didnt think it would happen to us, she says. As soon as my husband was detained, I knew we would be asked to leave the country. We had watched other Afghan families leave before us. A month later when her husband was released, the family were given less than two days to return to Afghanistan, leaving behind everything they had built over the last three decades.
We didnt have much; we are poor and lived in a rented house. But it was everything that we had made in all our lives. Our friends, our community we had to leave behind, she says.
I was raised with their people, their culture and traditions. I was extremely hurt when we were asked to leave, she added.
The future for all Afghan refugees is now uncertain, and aid agencies are not optimistic that the situation will improve. Even as trilateral talks between the two countries and the UN are scheduled to take place, organisations such as the IOM and the Norwegian Refugee Council are ramping up their capacities to assist the returnees. It is estimated that there will be over a million expected returnees from Pakistan as well as Iran, along with 450,000 IDPs for this year.
We are expecting a spike in the returnees once UNHCR resumes its allowance for the documented refugees, says Graydon referring to the cash scheme that the UN body offered returning Afghans, an allowance of $400 (326) per person, till they ran out of funding at the beginning of winter.
While it might seem strange that Afghans who have lived as refugees for decades would choose to return to a war-torn country for just $400, in Afghanistan that money could provide a decent financial cushion, and that it is enough of an incentive for some Afghans is also an indicator of the level of police and government harassment in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the families who have already returned continue to try and find their place in the conflict-ridden society they thought they had escaped for good decades earlier.
I miss my friends in Pakistan, says Masoomas 13-year-old daughter Basmina who was born in Pakistan and had never been to Afghanistan before. She understands a little about her status as an undocumented refugee. I dont belong to any country, she adds with sorrow. And so I dont think I will be able to see them again.
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.
Read more:
Forced repatriation to Afghanistan: 'We didn't think it would happen to us' - The Guardian
New York Times | Among Questions for Trump on Iran: What About American Prisoners? New York Times Equally uncertain are the fates of at least seven people in Iran, five of them American citizens. Four were imprisoned after the nuclear accord took effect and relaxed sanctions against Iran in exchange for its verifiable guarantees of peaceful nuclear ... New Iran Sanctions Risk the Threat of War |
Follow this link:
Among Questions for Trump on Iran: What About American Prisoners? - New York Times
US-based HIV expert Dr Kamiar Alaei: This order would only harm exchange of knowledge and science. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trumps revised executive order which keeps a blanket travel ban on all Iranians will punish a segment of Iranian society that is largely critical of the countrys regime, academics and analysts have warned.
The US president modified his previous travel ban on Monday by excluding Iraq from a previous list of seven predominantly Muslim countries. But nationals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are still subjected to restricting measures that include a suspension of visa issuance for at least 90 days.
In Iran, the main victims of Trumps order are likely to be highly talented students and academics, said Kamiar Alaei, an HIV specialist who was jailed for three years after visiting the US to attend academic conferences.
A lot of Iranian students have already been admitted to MA and PhD programmes and even have secured university funding but now cant come to this country, Alaei, who is currently the director of the global of institute for health and human rights at the State University of New York at Albany, told the Guardian.
Alaeis pioneering research on HIV treatment and prevention programmes earned international recognition, but he was held for three years in Tehrans notorious Evin prison after attending international HIV treatment programmes and conferences held in the US.
Trumps ban will have a similar chilling effect on international study, he warned.
University professors, scholars and doctors who engage in mutual academic work have also been hit. This order would only harm exchange of knowledge and science, he said.
Last year, 12,269 Iranian students studied in the US, according to data from the Institute of International Education, compared with 5,085 from the six other countries including Iraq, which has now been excluded.
You can hardly go to any American university and not find an Iranian scholar there. Iranian doctors also have a significant presence in the US medical sector across the whole country, said Alaei.
Eighty-eight percent of Iranian students in the US are studying either an MA or a PhD degree. Per capita by city, Tehran comes third in the list of foreign students studying postgraduate degrees in the US, Alaei said.
According to Alaei, most Iranians who succeed in obtaining a visa are either students, scholars or those visiting relatives. They belong to a segment of Iranian society that either have a problem with the ruling establishment in Iran or are willing to have a free society, he said. This order harms those who can actually make positive changes in Iran.
Saeed Barzin, a London-based seasoned Iran watcher, echoed Alaei, saying that unlike sanctions targeting Irans military machine, the executive order will alienate the countrys middle class, which is generally perceived to be highly critical of the ruling system.
This travel ban will instigate enmity and grudge between the two nations, he said. When we are talking about sanctions, for example, people recognise that they are in place targeting the Revolutionary Guards, but this ban is different it is targeting everyone and people know that. This travel ban wont result in people blaming the Iranian government, it will result in people blaming the US because its unfair and discriminatory.
Barzin said people in Iran cannot understand why the countries that produced most 9/11 terrorists are not targeted, while all Iranians are. American officials said they would differentiate between the Iranian state and the Iranian people, [but] this order shows the complete opposite.
The 90-day ban is widely expected to extend indefinitely for Iranians because Tehran is unlikely to cooperate with Washington in counter-terror efforts.
In Washington, the state departments spokesman, Mark Toner, tied himself in knots on Tuesday to explain this paradox. When pressed on the presumed target of the order, he said: This is not about the Iranian people, its not directed to them, but when youre considering the safety and security of the American people here in the United States, you have to hold them in a different class.
Jamal Abdi, policy director at the National Iranian American Council, said there has been a spike in hate crimes against people believed to be Muslim or Middle Eastern. Last month, it emerged that a man charged with first-degree murder for shooting an Indian man in a Missouri restaurant had told a 911 dispatcher that he had shot two Iranian people.
Make no mistake: The new Muslim ban is still an unconstitutional ban that targets individuals based on their religion and nationality. And it is still a ban that undermines rather than enhances Americas security, Abdi said.
Donald Trump is turning the American dream into the American nightmare. There are already countless stories of Iranian Americans who have had to cancel weddings, who havent been able to have their parents visit to meet their newborn grandchildren in America, and who dont know when they will see their parents and siblings and friends again. There are stories of Iranian students, hopeful about the opportunity to study in the US and make their contribution to this country, who are now in indefinite limbo.
Additional reporting by Julian Borger
Read the rest here:
Trump travel ban will hit Iranian critics of regime hardest, analysts warn - The Guardian