Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Lily Hamourtziadou, Birmingham City University The Taliban recently announced it will establish a battalion of suicide attackers as part of the national army of Afghanistan. These “martyrdom brigades” will be “under the control of the ministry of defence and will be used for special operations,” according to Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. This was condemned as “horrific and appalling” by Shaharzad …

Michael Reynolds/EPA/AAP Azadah Raz Mohammad, The University of Melbourne and Jenna Sapiano, Monash University As the Taliban takes control of the country, Afghanistan has again become an extremely dangerous place to be a woman. Even before the fall of Kabul on Sunday, the situation was rapidly deteriorating, exacerbated by the planned withdrawal of all foreign military personnel and declining international …

M Niaz Asadullah, University of Malaya Since the return of the Taliban to power, concern has been growing over the “Islamisation” of Afghan society – including the education sector. Many fear that either schools will be shut down or girls will be excluded. This could reverse 20 years of progress in narrowing the gender gap in school enrolment. There have …

Weeda Mehran, University of Exeter Afghanistan is in a major humanitarian crisis: the health sector is failing, the economy is collapsing, and amid the COVID pandemic, famine is inflicting ever-larger numbers of casualties. According to the most recent report by the UN World Food Programme, more than half of the resident population of 38 million are facing acute hunger and …

International Committee of the Red Cross rehabilitation center staff members assist a Taliban member on Oct. 11, 2021, in Kabul, Afghanistan. Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images Mohammad Qadam Shah, Seattle Pacific University The government of Afghanistan and that country’s economy relied heavily on foreign aid until the U.S. withdrawal. That support is on hold, although the United States and its …

Evacuees from Kabul on their way to Poland via Uzbekistan. Marcin Obara / EPA-EFE Brad K. Blitz, UCL The testimony of a whistleblower about the UK’s withdrawal from Afghanistan describes an ill-equipped, chaotic evacuation. Raphael Marshall, a former Foreign Office diplomat, suggested that out of an estimated 75,000-150,000 people who applied for evacuation under the Leave Outside the Rules scheme, …

The author has an evening cuppa while searching for a lost convoy of medical supplies – in remote Zibok district (1996). © Sippi Azarbaijani Moghaddam, Author provided Sippi Azarbaijani Moghaddam, University of St Andrews It was April 1995, and I was preparing to travel to Afghanistan for my first volunteer post with a UK charity. I had travelled to London …

Mariagiulia Giuffré, Edge Hill University At least 27 people have drowned in the English Channel attempting to cross in a small boat. There were three children, seven women, one of whom was pregnant, and 17 men. Although a joint search and rescue operation was seemingly launched in the narrow maritime area between the UK and France (which is only 20 …

Liana Semchuk, University of Oxford The migrant crisis on Belarus’s western border has escalated rapidly in recent days, forcing Poland and Lithuania to declare a state of emergency and close the borders with their neighbour. With 15,000 Polish border security personnel on one side of the barbed wire fence and an estimated 4,000 migrants desperately trying to get through into …

LEONID SCHEGLOV/ BELTA / HANDOUT / EPA Sascha-Dominik (Dov) Bachmann, University of Canberra For months, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has been accused of using illegal migrants as a tool to punish the European Union for imposing sanctions on his regime. In July, Belarus loosened its restrictions on visas and increased flights on its state-run airline from the Middle East, allowing …