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Afghan conductor Shogufa Safi has been named as one of the BBCs 100 women of 2021.She is the conductor of Zohra, Afghanistans first all-female orchestra, made up of 13 to 20-year-olds, many of whom are orphans or come from poverty. Zohra was previously based at the celebrated Afghanistan National Institute of Music, but all its musicians have recently been forced to flee the country with many leaving behind instruments. The school was closed down after the Taliban regained power earlier this year. Along with her colleagues, Safi escaped to Doha in Qatar.

Hope never fails, says Shogufa Safi. Even in the total darkness, I believe my baton will be a beacon of hope and light for Afghanistan.

The Zohra ensemble is named after a Persian goddess of music and were formed in 2016, with musicians from the Afghanistan National Institute of Musicians.

The orchestra plays a mix of Afghan and western classical music, and have played on many international stages. In 2017, the ensemble played world leaders out at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. The musicians came to the UK for the first time in 2019 to play with the London-based Orchestra of St Johns at the British Library and University of Oxford, bringing with them the instruments of their homeland.

Since being forced to flee Afghanistan earlier this year, the exiled Zohra musicians have reunited in Doha, performing to a live audience with their colleagues from the Afghanistan National Institute of Musicians.

Conductor of the Afghan National Orchestra Mohammed Qambar Nawshad leads musicians of the Afghanistan National Institute of Musicians (ANIM) and the Zohra Orchestra in a concert in the Qatari capital Doha on October 18, 2021

The Afghanistan National Institute of Music was founded in 2008 with international support, designed to bring music education to young Afghans. Under the Taliban regime, music had been under threat and ANIM had been a target, particularly due to its efforts to promote the education of girls. It was a trailblazing institution, providing music education to boys and girls in the same classrooms, which was a rarity in Afghanistan following the years of Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001. Both Afghan and western classical music was studied.

When the Taliban regained control in August 2021, the school fell silent and students made the journey from Kabul to Doha to escape the regime. The students are all fearful and concerned. They clearly understand that if they return to the school, they might face consequences or be punished for what theyve been doing, the schools founder and director, Dr Ahmad Sarmast, told the BBC in August.

The Afghanistan National Institute of Music was home to Zohra, which Shogufa Safi conducted.

The extent of a potential Taliban-enforced music ban has not been made clear, but Kabul residents are worried the country will revert to its 1996 status when the majority of playing and listening to music was outlawed.

The ANIM has been updating its supporters and donors on the airlifts of students, faculty, staff and family members to Qatar. The hope is for the school to be rebuilt in Portugal. The Zohra Orchestra has now also been evacuated to Doha.

Original post:
Why Shogufa Safi and Afghanistan's first all-female orchestra have been forced to flee their country - Classical-Music.com

Django Burgess plays at a previous Human Rights Day concert at Danbury.

DANBURY Multiple service organizations from Stokes Early College are bonding together to host a fundraiser to assist the victims of the disastrous U.S. exit from Afghanistan and the medical and hunger crises as a result.

The fundraiser, Human Rights Day Concert to Benefit Doctors Without Borders Medical Relief Program, will be an evening of entertainment starting at 6 p.m. this Friday at The Arts Place. Proceeds from the fundraiser will be donated to the Doctors Without Borders medical relief mission for the children and mothers of Afghanistan.

Performers from Stokes County will be singing and playing instruments for your entertainment. Those who have committed thus far are John Hartman and Kay Richey, Aili Harris, Jacob Harbour, Tim Sands, Django Burgess, Gus McGee, Karli Fowlkes and several other students and community members.

Many of the performers have been with us across the years some from the very first performance better than ten years ago at the Danbury Community Church.

This event is made possible by these professional musicians willingness to volunteer their time and efforts for a cause such as this; in the past, we have raised money for Doctors Without Borders campaigns in Syria, Bangladesh, Eastern Europe, Central Africa and Central America. This years focus on Afghanistan is a critical need because of the dire situation there after the rapid withdrawal of U.S. support.

Students from several different service organizations from Stokes Early College High School including the Amnesty International Club and Girl Up are sponsoring this event. Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 10 million people who take injustice personally and campaign for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all. It is independent of any political ideology, economic interest or religion. Amnesty International lobbies governments, and other powerful groups such as companies making sure they keep their promises and respect international law and mobilize millions of supporters around the world to campaign for change and to stand in defense of activists on the frontline.

Girl Up is a global movement to advance girls skills, rights, and opportunities to be leaders. Girl Up programming intentionally focuses on equity for girls and women who face systemic discrimination and bias in both public and private spheres worldwide. Its leadership development programs have impacted 95,000 girls through 5,000 Clubs in nearly 130 countries and all 50 states.

Young leaders are the heart of our movement working to advance gender equity, close the gender gap in leadership worldwide, and mobilize their communities to create social change and accelerate opportunities for girls globally.

Human Rights Day is observed every year on Dec. 10. It commemorates the day on which, in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Human rights are basic rights and freedoms that all people are entitled to regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, race, religion, language, or other status. Human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life, liberty and freedom of expression; and social, cultural and economic rights including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, and the right to work and receive an education. Human rights are protected and upheld by international and national laws and treaties.

The healthcare system in Afghanistan is at risk of collapsing across the whole country, including in Herat. Access to care was a major issue in Afghanistan well before the Taliban takeover, but today the situation has further degraded, as most international aid has been suspended, including the World Bank funding of the World Health Organizations basic and essential care programs covering Herats province. Health facilities in the area are either closing or reduced to providing minimum services with whatever residual resources are available. We have no idea what is going to happen to these facilities. People are jobless and poor, they cannot afford private care, some of the humanitarian organizations previously working in the area are yet to resume their activities in full.

In a nutshell, needs are everywhere and the system is failing. The Doctors Without Borders programs provide medical relief and assistance to those enduring the crises.

Original post:
Friday concert to benefit Afghanistan - The Stokes News

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan For decades, roughly a thousand families called the low-slung mud-walled neighborhood of Firqa home. Some moved in during the 1990s civil war, while others were provided housing under the previous government.

Soon after the Taliban takeover on Aug. 15, the new government told them all to get out.

Ghullam Farooq, 40, sat in the darkness of his shop in Firqa last month, describing how armed Taliban fighters came at night, expelling him at gunpoint from his home in the community, a neighborhood of Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan.

All the Taliban said was: Take your stuff and go, he said.

Those who fled or were forcibly removed were quickly replaced with Taliban commanders and fighters.

Thousands of Afghans are facing such traumatic dislocations as the new Taliban government uses property to compensate its fighters for years of military service, amid a crumbling economy and a lack of cash.

Over decades, after every period of upheaval in Afghanistan, property becomes a crucial form of wealth for those in power to reward followers. But this arbitrary redistribution also leaves thousands displaced and fuels endless disputes in a country where the land ownership system is so informal that few people hold any documentation for the ground they call their own.

Just as during past changes in government, distributing property to Taliban disciples in swaths of rural farmland and in desirable urban neighborhoods has turned into at least a short-term recourse to keep stability within the Taliban ranks.

Who has the guns gets the land, said Patricia Gossman, the associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch. Its an old, long continuing story.

In a largely pastoral nation split by rugged mountain ranges, dotted with deserts and little forest, land is one of the most important assets and a flashpoint, fueling blood feuds between neighbors, ethnic groups and warlords as power has changed hands. Conflicting legal systems dictating land ownership and a lack of documentation have further destabilized the property market through the generations.

Afghanistan Under Taliban Rule

With the departure of the U.S. military on Aug. 30, Afghanistan quickly fell back under control of the Taliban. Across the country, there is widespread anxiety about the future.

The country is slightly smaller in land area than Texas, with a population that has grown in past decades to around 39 million people. Yet, only one-eighth of Afghanistans land is farmable and shrinking under a crippling drought and changes wrought from climate change.

Todays land disputes in Afghanistan can be largely traced to the Soviet-backed regime that came to power in the late 1970s, which redistributed property across the country. This quickly fueled tensions as land was confiscated and given to the poor and landless under the banner of socialism.

Land redistribution continued to play out, first during the civil war in the early 1990s, and then under the rise of the Taliban. After the U.S. invasion in 2001, those same commanders who were once defeated by the Taliban went about distributing and stealing land once more, this time with the backing of the newly installed U.S.-supported government. American and NATO military forces contributed to the problem by seizing property for bases and doing little to compensate landowners.

Attempts by the Western-backed government over the past two decades to formalize land ownership and property rights ultimately proved futile as the incentives to take advantage of the system overwhelmed efforts to regularize it.

Now more than three months after the Talibans rise to power, its administrators are in a similar position, but with no official policy regarding land ownership.

We are still analyzing and investigating how to honor land deeds and titles for people, Bilal Karimi, a Taliban spokesman, said.

Local Taliban leaders have been seizing and reallocating property for years in districts they captured to reward fighters and the families of their dead with land to farm or sell for profit.

In 2019, when the Taliban arrived at Mullah Abdul Salams modest poppy farm in Musa Qala, in Helmand Province, he faced an impossible choice. Like many poor farmers in rural Afghanistan, he had no legal deed to prove he owned the ground he had cultivated for years.

So the Taliban gave him an ultimatum: Either pay a lump sum to keep his land or give it up.

We came early and we had the right to the land, Mr. Salam recalled, standing on the edge of his poppy field in Musa Qala, shovel in hand. It had to be ours.

For some time, the land in Musa Qala was unclaimed, undocumented and written off as unfarmable, except by a few farmers such as Mr. Salam. Then the ground became more fertile with the widespread growth of solar power that enabled farmers to run well pumps, at far lower expense than use of conventional fuel. The Taliban tried to strike a balance by allowing the poor farmers to remain at relatively small cost, while allocating unclaimed plots to its fighters.

Khoi, a brother of a Taliban fighter who goes by one name, was among the family members of the militants who received land in Musa Qala two years ago. Since then, he said, fellow Taliban veterans had profited by selling portions of the property gifted to them.

There is no more land for the Taliban to distribute here, if they could, they would, he said.

With no official guidance, Taliban officials have now resorted to the same practices throughout the country that carved up the area around Mr. Salams farm.

But as the Taliban distribute property, parts of the population have been left confused and angered by the actions of their new government, which suspiciously resemble the behavior of its predecessors.

In Takhar Province, a historically anti-Taliban stronghold in Afghanistans north, Taliban fighters have evicted people including some who had lived there for more than 40 years in several districts, saying the land was unfairly distributed by previous governments, said a former Afghan lawmaker on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation against her family.

Takhar residents, the former lawmaker said, have started to question whether Taliban administrators can run the country any more effectively than their predecessor, given how they are following the same practices as past governments.

The greatest issue for the Taliban going forward will be to deal with land documentation and legalization, said Fazal Muzhary, a former researcher at Afghanistan Analysts Network, a policy research group, who focused on land ownership in Afghanistan. So when the Taliban want to legalize or demarcate lands, they will also need to take back the lands from people who grabbed them in any period, in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s and so on. This will be very challenging for them.

In central Afghanistan, property disputes of another nature are playing out: the marginalization and displacement of ethnic minorities in order to seize their arable land. Taliban leaders have long persecuted and antagonized the Hazaras, a mostly Shiite minority, and in recent months, the new government has watched as local strongmen evicted hundreds of families.

In September, Nasrullah, 27, and his family fled their village in Daikundi Province, along with around 200 families who left nearly everything, he said.

Such displacements have upended more than a dozen villages in central Afghanistan, affecting more than 2,800 Hazaras, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

In recent weeks, local courts have overturned some seizures, allowing some families to return. But for most, the evictions have been traumatic.

In each village the Taliban put a checkpoint, and the people arent allowed to take anything but our clothes and some flour, said Nasrullah, who goes by one name, during an interview in September. But I brought only my clothes.

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar; Victor J. Blue from Kabul; Jim Huylebroek from Musa Qala; and Sami Sahakfrom Los Angeles.

Read the rest here:
In Afghanistan, Who Has the Guns Gets the Land - The New York Times

Essential services for women and girl survivors of gender-based violence in Afghanistan have been decimated following the Talibans takeover of the country, Amnesty International said today.

In 26 new interviews, survivors and service providers told Amnesty International that the Taliban closed shelters and released detainees from prison, including many convicted of gender-based violence offences.

Many survivors as well as shelter staff, lawyers, judges, government officials, and others involved in protective services are now at risk of violence and death.

Women and girl survivors of gender-based violence have essentially been abandoned in Afghanistan

Women and girl survivors of gender-based violence have essentially been abandoned in Afghanistan. Their network of support has been dismantled, and their places of refuge have all but disappeared, said Agns Callamard, Amnesty Internationals Secretary General.

It defies belief that the Taliban threw open prison doors across the country, with no thought of the risks that convicted perpetrators pose to the women and girls they victimized, and to those who worked on survivors behalf.

To protect women and girls from further violence, the Taliban must allow and support the reopening of shelters and the restoration of other protective services for survivors, reinstate the Ministry of Womens Affairs, and ensure that service providers can work freely and without fear of retaliation.

Amnesty International is calling on the international community to provide immediate and long-term funding for such protective services, evacuate survivors and service providers facing imminent danger, and urge the Taliban to uphold their obligations to women and girls, particularly those who survive or are at risk of gender-based violence.

On 26 and 29 November, Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen told Amnesty International via telephone: There is no place for violence against women and girls, according to the rules of Islam The women facing domestic violence can be referred to the courts, and the courts will hear their cases and their grievances will be addressed.

Amnesty International interviewed survivors and individuals involved in protective services in the provinces of Badghis, Bamiyan, Daikundi, Herat, Kabul, Kunduz, Nangarhar, Paktika, Sar-e Pul, and Takhar.

Before the Talibans takeover, many women and girl survivors had access to a nationwide network of shelters and services, including pro-bono legal representation, medical treatment, and psychosocial support.

Survivors were referred into the system from provincial and capital offices of the Ministry of Womens Affairs and the Human Rights Commission, as well as from shelters, hospitals, and police stations across the country.

The system wasfar from perfect, but served thousands of women each year in Afghanistan, where nine out of 10 women experience at least one form of intimate partner violence in their lifetime,according to UNAMA.

According to service providers, the most common cases of gender-based violence involved beating, rape, other forms of physical and sexual violence, and forced marriage. Survivors often needed urgent medical treatment.

One service provider who was based in Nangargar said: [The cases] were very extreme. We had a case where a man took the nails off his wifes fingers [One] man took a crowbar and peeled off his wifes skin There was one woman who faced a lot of abuse from her family. She couldnt even use the bathroom anymore.

As the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the system of protective services collapsed. Shelters were closed, and many were looted and appropriated by members of the Taliban. In some cases, Taliban members harassed or threatened staff.

My brother is my enemy, and my husband is my enemy

As shelters closed, staff were forced to send many women and girl survivors back to their families, and other survivors were forcibly removed by family members. Other survivors were forced to live with shelter staff members, on the street, or in other unsustainable situations.

Zeenat* was regularly beaten by her husband and brother before she took refuge in a shelter. When the Taliban arrived, she and several other women fled. They are now in hiding. She said: We came only with the clothes we were wearing. We dont have a heater, and we go to sleep hungry My brother is my enemy, and my husband is my enemy. If he sees me and my children, hell kill us I am sure they are looking for me because they know the shelter has closed.

One shelter director, currently in hiding with some survivors from her shelter, told Amnesty International: We dont have a proper place. We cant go out. We are so scared Please bring us out of here. If not, then you can wait for us to be killed.

As the Taliban advanced, they also systematically released detainees from prisons, many of whom had been convicted of gender-based violence offenses. Testimony from witnesses and others with first-hand knowledge, as well ascrediblemediareporting, indicate that members of the Taliban were responsible. A Taliban spokesperson denied this to Amnesty International, insisting the previous government had opened prisons.

A legal professional who specializes in gender-based violence said she had been involved in the conviction of more than 3,000 perpetrators of gender-based violence in the year preceding the Talibans takeover.

She said: Wherever [the Taliban] went, they freed the prisoners Can you imagine? More than 3,000 released, in all the provinces of Afghanistan, in one month.

Amnesty International also received credible reports that survivors have also been transferred by the Taliban into the detention system, including to Pul-e-Charkhi prison, near Kabul.

Many working within the system of protective services said that although they faced significant risks before the Talibans takeover, their lives are now in greater danger, and they are in desperate need of protection.

One service provider who was based in Badghis explained: All of these women who worked on this [the support system] now we need a shelter We live each day in anxiety and fear.

A service provider who was based in Nangarhar said: I am getting threats from the Taliban, ISIS, perpetrators and the family members on a daily basis.

Another service provider who was based in Bamiyan said: I was getting three calls each day from men who had escaped the prison. After I received a call from the Taliban as well, I switched to a new number.

These women were devastated to see the system they had painstakingly built collapse. A former judge told Amnesty International: For 20 years, I was working to build everything from scratch pushing, running, from this office to that office. I was trying to convince everyone, so that we have a framework in place to protect women It takes a lot of courage, a lot of sacrifice and energy to build something from nothing and then it becomes nothing again.

There is nowhere to turn for women and girls who have faced violence since the Talibans takeover. One psychologist who worked with gender-based violence survivors in Kabul told Amnesty International: The Taliban doesnt have any procedure of how to deal with these cases.

A prosecutor for cases involving gender-based violence explained: In the past, women could go to the Ministry of Womens Affairs. They could go alone and report their case. But now that women are not allowed to go anywhere without amahram[male guardian], this will make it really complicated.

Fariha* was regularly beaten by her husband and his relatives. She said: [My husband] would pick up whatever he could find, and he would hit me with it Whenever he beat me, his family would get together and watch It happened almost every day The first time he beat me with a wire I had bruises all over my body. My hands and my nails were scratched, all of them. After that, he beat me from my waist down only. Hed tell me, I will hit you in these places [your genitals and buttocks] that wont be seen.

Fariha was nine months pregnant when she spoke to Amnesty International, and desperately seeking a safe place to live. She added: Before, there was a shelter, and I went to that place. I requested that they take me in. They said its not running now, and we cant accept any new cases There are no options for me.

Adilia* was forced to marry an 80-year-old man at age seven. She said: I spent a year living with him, and he beat me every single day, saying, Why are you not getting pregnant?

Adilia fled, but was remarried and regularly subjected to beating and other forms of violence and abuse by her second husband and his relatives. When she spoke with Amnesty International, she had recently been transferred to one of the few shelters still in operation in Afghanistan.

She said: We are very scared now For how long are we going to stay? The Taliban came to the shelter at 12am, at 1am, and many times during the day. We told [them] this is a safe place for us, but they wouldnt believe us We are not safe anywhere anymore.

From 26 October to 24 November 2021, Amnesty International conducted telephone interviews with six survivors and 20 individuals involved in the system of protective services, including shelter directors and staff, prosecutors, judges, psychologists, doctors, and representatives of the Ministry of Womens Affairs.

Amnesty International also interviewed 18 local activists, journalists, representatives of NGOs and the United Nations, and other experts on gender-based violence in Afghanistan.

Note: *Names have been changed to protect identities.

Read more:
Afghanistan: Survivors of gender-based violence abandoned following Taliban takeover new research - Amnesty International

The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), currently stalled in the Senate,callsforan independentbipartisancongressionalcommission toconduct acomprehensiveexaminationofAmericas involvement in Afghanistan from 1996 to our withdrawal this summer.

That provision,introducedby Sen.Tammy DuckworthLadda (Tammy) Tammy DuckworthOvernight Defense & National Security Austin mandates vaccine for Guardsmen Biden signs four bills aimed at helping veterans Wisconsin senators ask outsiders not to exploit parade attack 'for their own political purposes' MORE (D-Ill.),Rep. Liz CheneyElizabeth (Liz) Lynn CheneyKevin McCarthy is hostage to the GOP's 'exotic wing' Jan. 6 panel faces new test as first witness pleads the Fifth Prosecutors say North Carolina woman deserves prison for bringing 14-year-old to Capitol riot MORE (R-Wyo.)and others,isa good one.No doubt we can glean valuable lessons by lookingat the totality of ourAfghanistan experience, includingourdiplomatic,militaryand intelligence activities inthat countryfrom the early 1990s to today.

Butthatsort ofthoughtful,exhaustive undertakingwould certainlytake months, probablyyears, to collect, analyzeandreport on.And we need some answers sooner than that. Specifically, we need to answer questions about our deeply troubling pullout in August.

Congressional commissions dont spring up overnight. TheRepublican and Democratic Party leadership andthechairs of thearmed services, intelligenceand foreign affairs/relationscommitteeswill need tofind andpick12 to 16qualifiedcommissioners,arrange fora suitablestaffdirectoror directors,find office spaceandstaffupwithcompetentresearchers. That alonewill takemonths and only then can the real work start.

Even asthiscommissiongetssituated andprepares to goabout itsimportanthistorical review,there is an urgentneed for another,shorter studyfocused solelyon what happenedin Afghanistanthis year.

Such anindependent,unclassifiedstudy (forbothpublic and private consumption) could be donein six monthsandwouldactuallyhave somethingusefulto say.

Despite the herculean work and heroism of our service members and other U.S. government professionals on the ground and in the air in Afghanistan and beyond, few would argue that the August withdrawal was an unqualifiedsuccess. Most would call it chaotic, at best,if not downright disastrous.

There are many questions that need to be answeredsoon. Among the most important:

How did theinteragencyprocess to quit Afghanistan unfold within theBidenadministration?Were there flaws in this process that could be improved uponto inform future contingencies?

Why did we decide to withdraw all U.S. forces, leavingus and our allies blind to potential counterterror threats?Were other options discussed in the interagencyand, if so,why werent they chosen?

Whatwas the intelligence communitysassessment of the situation andthe potentialfallout from the precipitouswithdrawal?

Why did we surrender Bagram Airfield, leaving U.S. forcesto rely on Hamid Karzai International Airportas the sole point of departure?Whatwas learnedfromthehastyevacuation?

And so on.

Both a long-term study ofU.S. involvement in Afghanistanfrom 1996 to 2021and a short-term study of our 2021 withdrawalhave merit. Theyshould be undertakenas soon as practicablewith the goal of improving our performance in future diplomatic and military contingencies.

Theseafter-actionstudiesarecriticaltouncovering anddiscerning the important, sometimes bitterlessons from Americas now-longest warfor not only reflectionbut implementationas needed across the challenging foreign policy landscape we face today.

The results will be vital to informingcurrent and future policymakers in Congress and the executivebranch so that better outcomes in the future are within grasp.

Equally important,the American people,who shouldered so much of the burden of this conflict,deserve answersto these questionsabout Afghanistan. Itstime for bipartisancongressionalaction torequire botha short-termand a long-termstudyof Americas involvement in Afghanistan.

PeterBrookesis a Heritage Foundation senior fellow,a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and aformercongressional commission member.

Link:
We must learn from the Afghanistan experience starting with the withdrawal | TheHill - The Hill