Month: July 2024

Islamabad — The Taliban government in Afghanistan indicated Wednesday that it would consider releasing two U.S. prisoners in exchange for Afghans held in the United States.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief Taliban spokesman, told reporters in Kabul that the idea of a prisoner release was discussed in his meeting with U.S. officials in Doha, Qatar this week, just as the two sides brought it up it in their previous meetings.

“Afghanistan’s conditions must be met. We have our citizens who are imprisoned in the U.S. and Guantanamo,” Mujahid stated. “We should free our prisoners in exchange for them. Just as their prisoners are important to America, Afghans are equally important to us,” he added.

The spokesman did not share any details about Afghan detainees, including those being held at the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

Mujahid spoke in the Afghan capital shortly after returning from Doha, where he led a Taliban delegation at a rare two-day U.N.-hosted meeting with international envoys on Afghanistan, which ended on Monday.

U.S. officials also attended the U.N. conference in the Qatari capital.

On Tuesday, a State Department spokesperson in Washington confirmed that U.S. special envoys on Afghanistan Thomas West and Rina Amiri met Taliban representatives in Doha.

“So during these meetings, special representative West pressed for the immediate and unconditional release of U.S. citizens unjustly detained in Afghanistan, noting that these detentions impede progress in the Taliban’s own desire for international recognition,” Vedant Patel told reporters.

The Taliban say the two Americans are among “several foreign nationals” currently imprisoned in Afghanistan for allegedly violating local immigration and other laws.

U.S. officials and relatives have identified one of the detainees as Ryan Corbett, while the identity of the second person has not been disclosed.

Corbett was taken into custody in August 2022, a year after the fundamentalist Taliban returned to power in Kabul following the withdrawal of U.S.-led Western troops after nearly 20 years of involvement in the Afghan war.

Corbett’s family and U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly urged U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to do more to secure his safe and early release. Since his detention, Corbett has been able to call his wife and their three children.

Corbett and his family had lived in Afghanistan for years before being evacuated during the August 2021 Taliban takeover. He ran and supervised humanitarian projects for nongovernmental organizations, focusing on health and education.

Corbett returned to Afghanistan twice in 2022 and was detained by the Taliban on his second trip but has not been charged with any crimes, according to his family.

Relatives and activists say a third U.S. national, Mahmood Habibi, is also among foreigners in custody, but the Taliban refuse to acknowledge that they are holding him.

In March, a resolution was submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives calling for Habibi’s immediate release. The resolution, which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, stated that Habibi was arrested in August 2022 outside his home while in the country for business.

He was detained by the Taliban intelligence agency on suspicion of being involved in a U.S. drone strike that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the fugitive al-Qaida network chief, in Kabul.

The Taliban protested the strike, saying it was a breach of the 2020 Doha agreement they signed with the U.S., which paved the way for Washington to withdraw from the longest U.S. war in history.

The former insurgent group also pledged in line with the terms of the agreement not to harbor transnational militant groups, including al-Qaida, seeking to attack America and its allies.

No country has recognized the Taliban government, citing human rights concerns and bans on Afghan women’s access to education and work.

The U.N. meeting in Doha was aimed at increasing, facilitating, and coordinating the world’s engagement with the Taliban in the wake of deepening economic and humanitarian troubles facing war-torn, impoverished Afghanistan.

The two-day session ended without the Taliban making any pledges to remove their restrictions on women or winning concessions from the international community.

“Afghanistan cannot return to the international fold or fully develop economically and socially if it is deprived of the contributions and potential of half its population,” Rosemary DiCarlo, U.N. undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, told reporters at the end of the meeting on Monday. She presided over the gathering on behalf of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Mujahid, while speaking in Kabul Wednesday, reiterated that their rules about women are an internal Afghan matter and said foreign nations or organizations have nothing to do with it.
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Astana — Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are due to meet on Wednesday at a summit of a Eurasian security and defense club seen by Moscow and Beijing as an instrument to counter the influence of the United States and its allies.

Putin and the Chinese president have expanded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a club founded in 2001 with Russia, China and Central Asian powers, to include India, Iran and Pakistan as a counterweight to the West.

Putin will hold a series of bilateral meetings on Wednesday on the sidelines of the July 3-4 SCO summit in the Kazakh capital, Astana, the Kremlin said.

He is due to meet Xi, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and the leaders of Azerbaijan, Mongolia and Pakistan before an informal dinner hosted by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

India said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is expected in Moscow later this month, will not attend. He is sending Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar instead.

Russia and China regard the SCO, which promotes common approaches to external security threats such as drug trafficking and focuses on countering any domestic instability, as a means to project their influence across Asia.

“The leaders of the SCO member countries will discuss the current state and prospects for further deepening multifaceted cooperation within the organization and improving its activities,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

At last year’s virtual summit, the group issued a statement critical of what it called the negative impact of “unilateral and unlimited expansion of global missile defense systems by certain countries or groups of countries”, without directly referring to NATO expansion and Western military assistance to Ukraine.

‘No limits’ partnership

China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing, days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine. Since then, Xi and Putin have deepened their partnership.

Xi and Putin believe the U.S.-dominated post-Cold War era is crumbling. 

The United States casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat. U.S. President Joe Biden says this century will be defined by an existential contest between democracies and autocracies.

The U.S. views Xi and Putin as authoritarian rulers who have quashed free speech and exerted tight control at home over the media and courts. Biden has referred to Xi as a “dictator” and said Putin is a “killer” and a “crazy SOB.” Beijing and Moscow have scolded Biden over the comments.

The SCO traces its history back to 1996 when its forerunner was founded as a way to coordinate efforts against external threats such as drug trafficking and has traditionally focused on combating any internal instability.

Belarus will attend the summit for the first time as a full member of the organization, the Kremlin said.

Other states engage in discussions with the group including Bahrain, Cambodia, Egypt, Kuwait, Myanmar, Nepal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected in Astana for the summit. 
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islamabad — A new study has revealed that recent floods in Pakistan have substantially weakened its societal resilience in coping with and recovering from such disasters as the threat from climate change continues to grow.

The London-headquartered independent global charity Lloyd’s Register Foundation said Tuesday the findings are part of the latest edition of their flagship World Risk Poll Resilience Index.

The study also highlighted that the number of Pakistanis who have experienced a disaster in the past five years has more than doubled since 2021, increasing from 11% to 27%.

“This increase has been driven primarily by the extensive floods that hit the country in 2022, affecting regions containing around 15% of the population,” the study said.

The report noted that community and society resilience scores declined sharply in the regions most affected by the floods, particularly in the southern Sindh province.

“These scores declined because people reported losing confidence in the support of the government, community and infrastructure — at a national level, those who said their government cared ‘not at all’ about them and their well-being rose from 60% in 2021 to almost three-quarters [72%] in 2023.”

Meanwhile, the country’s already low individual and household resilience levels failed to improve, with Pakistan ranking in the bottom 10 globally for both resilience scores, according to the report.

Nancy Hey, the director of evidence and insight at Lloyd’s Register Foundation, urged policymakers in Pakistan to prioritize rebuilding and strengthening the resilience of the most affected communities.

She said this would better prepare them to face natural hazards and other potential causes of disasters in the wake of the growing threat of climate change.

“For residents of Pakistan, catastrophic flooding is largely responsible for the doubling in disaster experience since 2021. This may have led to a ‘reality check’ for residents in terms of how prepared they feel for such events, with community and societal resilience particularly negatively affected,” Hey said.

In 2022, Pakistan’s southern and southwestern regions experienced devastating floods triggered by climate change-induced unusually heavy monsoon rains, killing more than 1,700 people, affecting 33 million others, and submerging approximately one-third of Pakistan.

The South Asian nation of about 245 million contributes less than 1% to global carbon emissions but bears the brunt of climate change.

The country’s weather patterns have changed dramatically in recent years, and it officially “ranks fifth among the countries most affected by global warming.”

April was recorded as the wettest month in Pakistan since 1961, with more than double the usual monthly rainfall, killing scores of people and destroying property as well as farmland.

In May and June, Pakistan experienced relatively hotter heat waves, with temperatures in some districts rising to more than 52 degrees Celsius for days. The hot weather prompted authorities in May to temporarily shut down education for half of Pakistan’s schoolchildren to protect them from heatstroke and dehydration.

The United Nations has warned that an estimated 200,000 Pakistanis could be affected by the coming monsoon season and flash floods, as national weather forecasters project above-normal rainfall.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif reviewed preparations for the monsoon season at a special meeting Tuesday and formed “a high-level committee” to handle potential emergencies, his office said in a statement.

National Disaster Management Authority officials told the meeting that all relevant institutions and Pakistani troops remain on “high alert” in vulnerable districts. They were quoted as saying that “adequate stocks” of boats, tents, drainage pumps, medicines and other essential items were available for people in areas prone to rain-related disasters.”
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