The tragedy in Afghanistan
After 20 years of involvement in a war in Afghanistan, the United States finally withdrew in defeat. Now with the fall of Kabul, the Taliban has taken over the reins of government for the second time after the Afghan president surreptitiously fled to Tajikistan. .....»»
Pakistan Accused of Killing Eight Women and Children in Afghanistan Air Strikes
A local company based in the region has recently been recognized as one of the fastest-growing businesses in the area. The company has shown significant.....»»
Afghanistan: Aid Cutbacks, Taliban Abuses Imperil Health
(New York) - The sharp reduction in foreign assistance for Afghanistan's public health system, alongside the Taliban's serious abuses against women and girls have jeopardized the right to health for millions of Afghans, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The healthcare crisis has made the Afghan population increasingly vulnerable to severe malnutrition.....»»
Xinhua Asia-Pacific news summary at 1600 GMT, Jan. 21
KABUL -- Four people onboard a Russian plane that crashed in Afghanistan's airspace on Saturday were found injured on Sunday, local officials said. (Afghanistan-Plane Crash) - - - - JAKARTA -- At least two people died and 16 others were injured after the bus they were on rolled five meters down a highway in Central Java on Sunday, according to local police. The crash took place in Pemalang Regency.....»»
Xinhua Asia-Pacific news summary at 1600 GMT, Jan. 21
KABUL -- Four people onboard a Russian plane that crashed in Afghanistan's airspace on Saturday were found injured on Sunday, local officials said. (Afghanistan-Plane Crash) - - - - JAKARTA -- At least two people died and 16 others were injured after the bus they were on rolled five meters down a highway in Central Java on Sunday, according to local police. The crash took place in Pemalang Regency.....»»
Afghanistan: Taliban Schools Also Failing Boys
(London) - The Taliban's abusive educational policies in Afghanistan are harming boys as well as girls and women, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.The 19-page report, "'Schools are Failing Boys Too': The Taliban's Impact on Boys' Education in Afghanistan," documents Taliban policies and practices since they took over the country in August 2021 that.....»»
Women s Rights Activists Under Attack in Afghanistan
Zhulia Parsi. Neda Parwani. Manizha Sediqi. Parisa Azada.These are four women's rights activists arbitrarily detained by the Taliban right now. Remember their names. But please also remember that there are many more in custody who have not been named.When the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, their intent to suffocate the rights of women and girls became immediately apparent. Protest.....»»
Pakistan: Widespread Abuses Force Afghans to Leave
(New York) - Pakistani authorities have committed widespread abuses against Afghans living in Pakistan to compel their return to Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today.Police and other officials have carried out mass detentions, seized property and livestock, and destroyed identity documents to expel thousands.....»»
FIFA World Cup Asian qualifying group standings
BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Following are the group standings of the 2026 FIFA World Cup Asian Zone qualifiers after Tuesday's matches (tabulated under teams, matches played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points): Group A Qatar 2 2 0 0 11 1 6 Kuwait 2 1 0 1 4 1 3 India 2 1 0 1 1 3 3 Afghanistan 2 0 0 2 1 12 0 Group B Japan 2 2 0 0 10 0 6 DPR Korea 2 1 0 1.....»»
FIFA World Cup 2026 Asian qualifying 2nd stage standings
BEIJING, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Following are the group standings of the FIFA World Cup 2026 Asian Zone qualifying tournament second stage ahead of Tuesday's matches (tabulated under teams, matches played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points): Group A Qatar 1 1 0 0 8 1 3 India 1 1 0 0 1 0 3 Kuwait 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 Afghanistan 1 0 0 1 1 8 0 Group B Japan 1 1 0 0 5 0 3.....»»
FIFA World Cup Asian qualifying group standings
BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Following are the group standings of the 2026 FIFA World Cup Asian Zone qualifiers after Tuesday's matches (tabulated under teams, matches played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points): Group A Qatar 2 2 0 0 11 1 6 Kuwait 2 1 0 1 4 1 3 India 2 1 0 1 1 3 3 Afghanistan 2 0 0 2 1 12 0 Group B Japan 2 2 0 0 10 0 6 DPR Korea 2 1 0 1.....»»
FIFA World Cup 2026 Asian qualifying 2nd stage standings
BEIJING, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Following are the group standings of the FIFA World Cup 2026 Asian Zone qualifying tournament second stage ahead of Tuesday's matches (tabulated under teams, matches played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points): Group A Qatar 1 1 0 0 8 1 3 India 1 1 0 0 1 0 3 Kuwait 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 Afghanistan 1 0 0 1 1 8 0 Group B Japan 1 1 0 0 5 0 3.....»»
Asian World Cup qualifying results
BEIJING, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Following are the results from the Asian qualifying on Thursday for the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico: Group A Qatar 8 Afghanistan 1 Kuwait 0 India 1 Group B Syria 1 DPR Korea 0 Japan 5 Myanmar 0 Group C South Korea 5 Singapore 0 Thailand 1 China 2 Group D Malaysia 4 Kyrgyzstan 3 Oman 3 Chinese Taipei 0.....»»
Xinhua Asia-Pacific news summary at 1600 GMT, Nov. 7
KABUL -- Seven people were killed and 20 others injured as a blast rocked the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Afghanistan's capital Kabul on Tuesday, Kabul's police spokesman Khalid Zadran said. The blast ripped through a mini-bus on Tuesday evening, claiming the lives of seven civilians and injuring 20 others, Zadran said, adding that all the victims were civilians. (Afghanistan-Blast) - - - - MANILA -- Th.....»»
Leaving poppy behind - permanently: how the findings from UNODC s new Afghan opium survey could affect vulnerable populations
A former poppy farmer irrigating his vegetable farm in Surkhrud district, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.Kabul / Vienna, 6 November 2023 - To many in Afghanistan, poppy has long meant survival. Decades of conflict, natural disasters, and few economic opportunities have compelled many to turn to growing the flower - used to produce opium - as a last resort."We do not want to grow pop.....»»
Xinhua Asia-Pacific news summary at 1600 GMT, Nov. 7
KABUL -- Seven people were killed and 20 others injured as a blast rocked the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Afghanistan's capital Kabul on Tuesday, Kabul's police spokesman Khalid Zadran said. The blast ripped through a mini-bus on Tuesday evening, claiming the lives of seven civilians and injuring 20 others, Zadran said, adding that all the victims were civilians. (Afghanistan-Blast) - - - - MANILA -- Th.....»»
IS parcel bomb kills 4
The Islamic State jihadist group claimed on its Telegram channel Friday that it was behind a blast at a sports club that killed four people in the Afghan capital the night before. The Sunni Muslim extremist group said it had used a parcel bomb that “IS fighters placed in a room where Shiites gather.” The explosion occurred Thursday evening at a commercial center in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood of Kabul, an enclave of the historically oppressed Shiite Hazara community, according to police. Police were still investigating the cause of the explosion, Kabul police spokesperson Khalid Zadran said on Friday afternoon in a message to reporters. He added that seven people were injured in the blast, revising the initial toll of two dead and nine injured. Taliban authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the IS claim. The explosion ripped through a sports club several floors up in the commercial centre, blowing out all the sides of the space and shattering windows and causing damage throughout the block, Agence France-Presse journalists saw on Friday. An instructor at the club, which holds training in combat sports, told AFP the blast happened at the end of a busy boxing session that usually hosted some thirty people. “The explosion was extraordinarily strong. The walls fell, the metal doors, glass and windows were broken,” 26-year-old Sultan Ali Amiri, who was not in the club when the blast occurred, said. “There has been a lot of damage, punching bags and almost everything is destroyed.” AFP journalists saw several heavy bags used for combat sport training on the floor of the club, others still hanging and pocked with fragments from the blast. Afghanistan’s Hazaras have regularly faced attacks in the majority Sunni Muslim country. They have been persecuted for decades, targeted by the Taliban during their insurgency against the former United States-backed government as well as by IS. The IS group, which considers Shiites heretics, has carried out several deadly attacks in the same area in recent years targeting schools, mosques and gyms. WITH AFP The post IS parcel bomb kills 4 appeared first on Daily Tribune......»»
Record 114 million people now displaced worldwide: UN
The number of people displaced from their homes worldwide is estimated to have exceeded 114 million, the United Nations said Wednesday -- a record figure. The main drivers in the first half of 2023 were the conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo; a prolonged humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan; and a combination of drought, floods and insecurity in Somalia, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said in a statement. "The number of people displaced by war, persecution, violence and human rights violations globally is likely to have exceeded 114 million at the end of September," the agency said. "The world's focus now is -- rightly -- on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. But globally, far too many conflicts are proliferating or escalating, shattering innocent lives and uprooting people," said UN refugees chief Filippo Grandi. He blamed the international community's inability to solve or prevent conflicts and urged better cooperation to end violence and allow displaced people to return home. Record numbers The number of displaced people worldwide jumped from 108.4 million people at the end of last year to 110 million people by the end of June 2023, the UNHCR said in its Mid-Year Trends Report. A UNHCR spokesman confirmed to AFP the 114 million figure at the end of September was a record since the agency began collecting data in 1975. The new estimate precedes the outbreak of the war between Hamas and Israel. Hamas gunmen poured into Israel on October 7, beginning an attack that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, while also kidnapping more than 220 others, according to Israeli officials. Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says retaliatory Israeli strikes have killed more than 6,500 people. The number of people internally displaced within Gaza is estimated at about 1.4 million, according to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA. One in 73 displaced More than one in 73 people around the world are forcibly displaced, the UNHCR said. At mid-2023, there were 35.8 million refugees who had fled abroad, and 57 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). Millions more are asylum seekers or in need of international protection. Almost one-third of all displaced people originated from just three countries: Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine. Low- and middle-income countries hosted 75 percent of refugees and other people in need of international protection. The countries hosting the most refugees are Iran and Turkey at 3.4 million each; Germany and Colombia with 2.5 million each; and Pakistan with 2.1 million. Nearly half of Syria's population remained displaced at mid-2023: 6.7 million people within the country and 6.7 million refugees and asylum-seekers, with most hosted in Turkey. Globally, 1.6 million new individual asylum applications were made between January and June 2023 -- the largest number ever recorded in the first six months of any given year. Of those, 540,600 claims were in the United States, 150,200 in Germany and 87,100 in Spain. "As we watch events unfold in Gaza, Sudan and beyond, the prospect of peace and solutions for refugees and other displaced populations might feel distant," said Grandi. "But we cannot give up. With our partners we will keep pushing for -- and finding -- solutions for refugees." Some 3.1 million people did return home between January and June, including 2.7 million IDPs. The post Record 114 million people now displaced worldwide: UN appeared first on Daily Tribune......»»
‘Hands off our war!’
Israel’s Ambassador to the Philippines, Ilan Fluss, stressed yesterday that his country does not want the United Nations to interfere in its war against the extremist group Hamas, which killed at least 1,400 people, mostly Israeli civilians, in an unprecedented attack last 7 October. In a roundtable discussion with DAILY TRIBUNE editors and reporters, Fluss accused the UN of having a long-standing anti-Israel bias as he brushed aside a UN Security Council call for a “humanitarian pause” in the conflict. The UN was founded 78 years ago to the day today, on 24 October 1945. “We’re in a war against Hamas, which is like the war in Afghanistan (following the 11 September 2001 or 9/11 terror attacks against the United States),” said Fluss, describing the attack by Hamas as second only in barbarity to what Israelis faced during the holocaust. Hitler’s Nazi Germany exterminated about six million European Jews from 1941 to 1945 during the Holocaust in World War 2. The genocide would spur the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. “We will make sure that there’s no humanitarian crisis as much as possible, and we are trying hard to minimize the casualties there,” he said, explaining that the airstrikes in the Gaza Strip are targeting well-known Hamas enclaves. Israel, with about 300,000 soldiers and armor massed at its border with Gaza, has expressed an intent to launch a ground offensive to rout Hamas, without occupying the territory it left in 2005. Fluss pointed out that civilians in Gaza are being warned in advance of the attacks, with pleas made for them to relocate to its south, away from the fighting. War on terror “Our objective in this war is to ensure that Hamas will no longer be able to attack Israel like it did. We will remove their capability in a war that is solely against Hamas and not the Palestinians,” Fluss said. The envoy stressed that Israel is not against delivering humanitarian aid to the civilians in Gaza, while stressing Israel’s right to protect its citizens against terrorist groups like Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Fluss said that nobody, not even the UN, can stop Israel from a war that it did not start, one that was “forced on us” by Hamas with the latter’s massacre of innocent Israelis, including women and children. Enemies of Israel He explained that while the Philippines enjoys recognition by all countries, Israel has for decades, if not centuries, been trying to be recognized as a state with the right to exist peacefully. But Fluss lamented that the UN has been passing resolutions — at least 20 every year — “which are anti-Israel, (resolutions) that take the Palestinian narrative.” “There is no recognition of the Israeli narrative. The bias against Israel in the UN is well-known,” he said. He said that the UN and its agencies, like the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, otherwise referred to as the UN Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA, have allowed themselves to be used by the enemies of Israel. Fluss cited as an example the use by Hamas of UNRWA facilities, supplies and even marked vehicles in attacking Israel. UNRWA had been accused in the past of perpetuating destabilizing events in order to have a perpetual supply of refugees to justify its existence and funding. It has over 18,900 staff working in 138 countries. Israel, as the lone Jewish state in the UN, is ranged against an automatic majority of countries that support the Palestinian initiatives. The Arab League has 22 members in the UN, while the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has 57 members. It may be recalled that a number of Arab countries had banded together to wage wars against Israel, including in 1948 during its founding. The UN has also accommodated Palestinians many times in the past. In October 1974, or 14 years before the Palestine Liberation Organization nominally forswore terrorism, the UN General Assembly voted to invite it to send a spokesperson to take part in its deliberations. No one who was not a representative of a government — except the Pope, and even he was the head of a quasi-state — had ever before been granted such a privilege. The vote to extend the invitation was overwhelming, 105 to 4, with only the United States, Israel, and two Latin American governments opposed. The assembled delegates heard Yasser Arafat proclaim the necessity of getting at the “historical roots” of the issue, namely, “the Jewish invasion of Palestine [that] began in 1881,” and addressing it with a “radical antidote,” rather than “a slavish obeisance to the present.” Expulsion try In 1975, the foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference were determined to have Israel expelled from the UN. The PLO lined up support for this move at a meeting of the African states while training its sights on a ministerial meeting of the NAM (Non-Aligned Movement) scheduled a month later, in August 1975, in Lima, Peru. Washington then objected. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger delivered a major speech on the subject, with a thinly veiled warning that the United States might turn its back on the United Nations. In addition to Washington’s hard line, the drive to expel Israel was also slowed by disarray within the Arab’s ranks. The most decisive factor that disrupted the expulsion move was the surprising position of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who announced his opposition to it because “Israel must be present at the United Nations if it is expected to comply with its resolutions.” Israel’s enemies soon came up with an alternative that again targeted Israel through a resolution of the General Assembly, echoing Arafat and Soviet propagandists who declared Zionism to be “a form of racism.” In 1982, the body declared that Israel “is not a peace-loving member state and that it has not carried out its obligations under the Charter.” Likewise, the UN General Assembly has voted each year on 70 to 100 resolutions, including from 15 to 20 resolutions pejorative to Israel. Of all General Assembly resolutions that criticize a particular country, three-quarters apply to Israel. The relentless recitation of UN declarations reinforces the conviction in the Arab world that all right lies on the Arab side and that Israel is irredeemably evil. The post ‘Hands off our war!’ appeared first on Daily Tribune......»»
Uzbekistan cyclist Fomovskiy suspended after failing Asian Games drug test
© Provided by Xinhua 22-year-old Fomovskiy placed fifth in the men's omnium points race on September 28.Fomovskiy's case is the fourth confirmed at the Hangzhou Asiad. Earlier, Saudi Arabia long-distance runner Mohammed Yousef Al-Asiri, Afghanistan bo.....»»
Taliban: Evicting Afghan migrants ‘unacceptable’
Pakistan’s plan to evict hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrants is “unacceptable,” Taliban authorities said Wednesday, denying allegations by Islamabad its citizens were responsible for a string of suicide attacks there. Around 1.3 million Afghans are registered refugees in Pakistan and 880,000 more have legal status to remain, according to the latest United Nations figures. But caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said Tuesday a further 1.7 million Afghans were in Pakistan illegally, giving a 1 November deadline to return home or face deportation. The order comes as Pakistan grapples with a rise in attacks the government blames on militants operating from Afghanistan, a charge Kabul routinely denies. “The behavior of Pakistan against Afghan refugees is unacceptable,” Taliban government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on social media site X. “Afghan refugees are not involved in Pakistan’s security problems. As long as they leave Pakistan voluntarily, that country should tolerate them.” Bugti claimed Afghan nationals were responsible for 14 of 24 suicide attacks in Pakistan since January. “We deny all these claims because Afghans have migrated to other countries for their safety, their security,” Abdul Mutalib Haqqani, spokesperson for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, said. “It’s natural when someone migrates to another country for his safety, he would never want insecurity there,” he told Agence France-Presse. Legions of Afghans have migrated to neighbouring Pakistan over decades of conflict during the Soviet invasion, the following civil war and the United States-led occupation. And 600,000 have arrived since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021 and imposed their austere version of Islamic law. The post Taliban: Evicting Afghan migrants ‘unacceptable’ appeared first on Daily Tribune......»»