Afghan embassy in UK shutters after Taliban cuts ties

Afghan embassy in UK shutters after Taliban cuts ties
A photograph shows a notice stating “The Embassy of the Islamic State of Afghanistan is closed” left on the railings outside the Afghanistan Embassy in west London on September 27, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 27 September 2024
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Afghan embassy in UK shutters after Taliban cuts ties

Afghan embassy in UK shutters after Taliban cuts ties
  • Afghan embassy’s consular section in London closed on September 20, according to its website
  • UK does not recognize Taliban government, does not have formal diplomatic relations with the country

LONDON: Afghanistan’s embassy in London closed on Friday after Taliban authorities cut ties with diplomatic missions set up by the previous government in Kabul and fired its UK staff.
An AFP reporter saw a notice hung on the gate to the consular section reading: “The embassy of the Republic of Afghanistan is closed.”
No one answered the door but the country’s flag was still flying.
Afghan ambassador to the UK Zalmai Rassoul announced on social media earlier this month that the embassy would close “at the official request of the host country” on September 27.
The UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) denied that it was behind the closure.
“This decision was not made by the UK government,” a spokesperson said. “The State of Afghanistan decided to close the Afghan Embassy in London and dismiss its staff.
“We continue to support the people of Afghanistan and provide humanitarian assistance to those most in need.”
The FCDO has not indicated whether a new Afghan ambassador would be accredited in London.
The UK does not recognize the Taliban government as legitimate and does not have formal diplomatic relations with the country.
But in line with the United States and the European Union, London acknowledges that there is “no alternative to engaging pragmatically with the current administration of Afghanistan.”
The UK mission to Afghanistan is currently based in Doha.
The Afghan embassy’s consular section in London closed on September 20, according to its website.
On Friday, Rassoul reposted an X post in which the German ambassador to the UK said it was a “pleasure” to work with his Afghan counterpart over the years and condemned the “appalling situation for women and girls under the Taliban.”
Over the past three years, the Taliban has imposed an austere interpretation of Islam and progressively driven women out of public spaces.
Despite the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, embassies continued to operate with diplomatic staff loyal to the previous foreign-backed government.
At the end of July, the Taliban foreign affairs ministry said it “bears no responsibility” for credentials including passports and visas issued by missions out of step with Kabul’s new rulers.
These include Afghan embassies in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Canada and Australia.
The Taliban government has said Afghans living abroad should deal instead with missions affiliated with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — its self-styled name for the country since taking over.
The authorities have not been officially recognized by any country, but Pakistan, China and Russia are hosting Afghan embassies working on order from the Taliban government.
Diplomats at the UK embassy have reportedly been advised to leave the UK or apply for political asylum, according to the BBC.


Assad’s fall shows Russian military limited by Ukraine offensive

Assad’s fall shows Russian military limited by Ukraine offensive
Updated 19 sec ago
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Assad’s fall shows Russian military limited by Ukraine offensive

Assad’s fall shows Russian military limited by Ukraine offensive
  • Moscow’s inability to keep Assad in power suggests it is consumed with the Ukraine conflict, it said, “taxing Russia’s resources and capabilities, raising questions about the sustainability of its ongoing offensive in Ukraine”

MOSCOW: The collapse of Moscow ally Bashar Assad’s Syrian government has dealt a major blow to Russia’s image of global strength and laid bare the limits of its military reach as its Ukraine offensive drags on.
Moscow helped keep Assad in power when it intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015, but with its troops and firepower now concentrated on Ukraine, its ability to protect the iron-fisted ruler this time was limited.
Rebels swept into the capital Damascus after a lightning offensive that took less than two weeks to topple the regime and send Assad fleeing, with Russian news agencies reporting he had been granted asylum in Moscow.
It is now unclear if Russia can maintain control of its Mediterranean naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus or its air base in Hmeimim, threatening to dislodge Moscow’s strategic military presence in the region.
“Moscow does not have sufficient military forces, resources, influence and authority to intervene effectively by force outside the former Soviet Union,” analyst Ruslan Pukhov said in an opinion piece for the Russian daily Kommersant.
This became even more evident after 2022, with the outbreak of Moscow’s “protracted” offensive in Ukraine depleting Russia’s military capabilities, he said.
Days after rebel groups launched their offensive against Assad in late November, Russia announced it was responding with air strikes, helping the Syrian army in three northern provinces.
But it was clear that the intervention was limited.
“Attempts to maintain (Assad) would have ended in failure anyway. Russia has other priorities now, and resources are not infinite,” political analyst Fyodor Lukyanov told AFP.
The Kremlin said it was “surprised” by the sheer speed of the rebel attack.
Russia had invested huge financial resources in the country after helping Assad ward off rebel forces with deadly air strikes and devastating bombing campaigns in the latter half of the war.
It is now having to conduct “negotiations” with the same rebel groups it was targeting to secure the safety of its citizens and embassy staff, according to Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin.
“This is now the main goal — to ensure the safety of our people,” he told reporters on Monday.

Further aggravating matters, Russia faces the “most likely” prospect of having to withdraw from its military bases in the country, Lukyanov said.
The Russian naval base at Tartus allows it to sail warships directly into the Mediterranean Sea, while its air base at Hmeimim gives it quick access to skies above swathes of the Middle East.
These bases in Syria “play a role in Russia’s efforts to project power not only inside Syria but in the broader region, including in Libya, Sudan, and other parts of Africa,” the New York-based Soufan Center global security analysts said in a note.
If Russia loses this warm-water naval base and air base, it loses its military capabilities in the region and potentially further afield, analysts said.
“The damage to Moscow’s ability to manouevre in Africa and the Mediterranean may have a strategic impact on Russian influence across the world,” said R. Clarke Cooper, research fellow at the Atlantic Council tink tank.
After Assad was ousted, military bloggers in Moscow reacted with shock and dismay.
“I will not grieve for Syria any more than I would grieve for Izyum, Kherson or Kyiv,” Russian war correspondent Alexander Kots wrote on Telegram, referring to Ukrainian cities that Moscow retreated from during its nearly three-year offensive.
“The image of our country will depend entirely on the results of the Special Military Operation, (which is) more important than anything else at the moment,” he said, using the Kremlin’s term for the offensive.
But the fall of Assad, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, could weaken Moscow’s hand in any future negotiations on the Ukraine conflict, according to the Soufan Center.
Moscow’s inability to keep Assad in power suggests it is consumed with the Ukraine conflict, it said, “taxing Russia’s resources and capabilities, raising questions about the sustainability of its ongoing offensive in Ukraine.”

 


Despair grips Afghan women health care students facing ban

Afghan female students studying health studies walk along a street in Kabul on December 3, 2024. (AFP)
Afghan female students studying health studies walk along a street in Kabul on December 3, 2024. (AFP)
Updated 11 min 38 sec ago
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Despair grips Afghan women health care students facing ban

Afghan female students studying health studies walk along a street in Kabul on December 3, 2024. (AFP)
  • According to a source within the health ministry, 35,000 women are currently students in some 10 public and more than 150 private institutes offering two-year diplomas in subjects including nursing, midwifery, dentistry and laboratory work

KABUL: For Saja, studying nursing at a health care institute in Kabul was her last lifeline to make something of herself after women were banned from universities in Afghanistan two years ago.
But the Taliban government has crushed this ambition by ordering, according to multiple sources, the exclusion of Afghan women from medical training, sparking panic across institutions.
When she heard the news, Saja, who had been at university before women were barred, said it felt like “reliving the same nightmare.”
“This was my last hope to do something, to become something,” said Saja, not her real name.
“Everything has been taken away from us for the crime of being a girl.”
The authorities have made no official comment or confirmation, nor have they responded to the numerous condemnations and calls to reverse a decision that further blocks women’s access to education.
Since their 2021 return to power, the Taliban government has imposed reams of restrictions on women, making Afghanistan the only country to ban girls from education after primary school.
Directors and employees of health training centers have told AFP they were informed in recent days of the order, issued by the Taliban supreme leader and passed down verbally by the health ministry, to expel women students until further notice.
Institutes across the country — which many women had turned to after the university ban — were given a few days to organize final exams.
But without an explicit announcement or document clarifying the rules, confusion reigns.
Some institutions told AFP they would operate as normal until they received written orders, while others closed immediately or scrambled to hold exams before shuttering.
“Everyone is confused, and no one is sharing what is really happening,” said Saja, who was in her first year at a private institute.
“We have been given two or three exams each day... even though we already finished our exams a few months back,” said the 22-year-old, adding they had to pay fees to sit the exams.

“We received a lot of concerned messages from students and teachers wanting to know what is going on and asking ‘is there any hope?’” said the director of a Kabul private institute with 1,100 students, of which 700 were women.
“No one is happy,” he told AFP from his office steps away from women’s classrooms, where the last lesson on the board advised how to manage stress and depression in patients.
According to a source within the health ministry, 35,000 women are currently students in some 10 public and more than 150 private institutes offering two-year diplomas in subjects including nursing, midwifery, dentistry and laboratory work.
The Norwegian Afghanistan Committee (NAC) non-governmental organization, which trains 588 women in institutes managed in collaboration with the health ministry, was verbally informed classes were “temporarily suspended.”
This has to be taken “equally seriously as a written document,” said NAC country director Terje Magnusson Watterdal, adding that “there are a lot of people high up within the current government that are quite opposed to this decision.”
He hopes, at the minimum, public institutes will reopen to women.
International organizations like the United Nations, which has said Afghan women are victims of a “gender apartheid,” have already warned of devastating consequences of the plan, in a country where maternal and infant mortality are among the world’s highest.
If implemented, the reported new ban “will undoubtedly lead to unnecessary suffering, illness, and possibly deaths of Afghan women and children, now and in future generations, which could amount to femicide,” UN experts warned Monday.

Midwifery students are especially passionate about their studies, according to Magnusson Watterdal.
“So many of these young women have been motivated to become a midwife because they have lost a mother or an aunt or a sister in childbirth,” he said.
“It’s not just a profession that you choose, it’s a vocation. So, of course, there’s great desperation” among students and staff.
Small protests have been held in parts of Afghanistan, according to sources and images circulated on social media.
Assal, another student using a pseudonym, received an expedited diploma last week, but has little hope of finding a job in a country where unemployment is widespread and opportunities for women are increasingly limited.
“I wanted to practice medicine and study further,” the 20-year-old told AFP.
“They had already taken everything from us. Next thing we won’t even be allowed to breathe.”
 

 


Ukraine’s Zelensky boosts funding for drone deployment

Ukraine’s Zelensky boosts funding for drone deployment
Updated 11 min 49 sec ago
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Ukraine’s Zelensky boosts funding for drone deployment

Ukraine’s Zelensky boosts funding for drone deployment
  • Zelensky has increasingly focused on the deployment of drones in the war, which has extended over 33 months since Russia invaded in February 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday he had issued orders to increase funding for equipping the country’s brigades with new drones.
Zelensky, speaking in his nightly video address, said he had received a report from Pavlo Palisa, a former military commander and the president’s newly-appointed deputy chief of staff, to provide additional funding for drones.
“We recently approved a decision about the amount of such direct funds. But now I see that the amount is insufficient,” Zelensky said.
“I instructed the prime minister to increase financing for brigades in the coming days, to increase several times over.”
Zelensky has increasingly focused on the deployment of drones in the war, which has extended over 33 months since Russia invaded in February 2022.
In October, the president said Ukraine had already contracted to produce 1.5 million drones this year and was capable of ramping up production to four million annually.
Drone production was virtually non-existent in Ukraine before Russia’s invasion in February 2022.


Japan’s empress says the Nobel for atomic bombing survivors shows the need to push for peace

Japan’s empress says the Nobel for atomic bombing survivors shows the need to push for peace
Updated 09 December 2024
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Japan’s empress says the Nobel for atomic bombing survivors shows the need to push for peace

Japan’s empress says the Nobel for atomic bombing survivors shows the need to push for peace

TOKYO: Japanese Empress Masako said the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, an organization of survivors of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a key event of this year that impressed and reminded her of the importance of global peace efforts.

Masako, the wife of Emperor Naruhito, said she thought of the pain and suffering of the survivors and struggles of those who have long led the nuclear disarmament effort.

She “felt anew the importance for the people of the world to strive for mutual understanding and work together in order to build a peaceful world,” Masako said in a statement released by the Imperial Household Agency for her 61st birthday Monday.

Her comment comes one day before a group of 30 atomic bombing survivors will attend Tuesday’s Nobel prize award ceremony in Oslo.

Hidankyo was awarded for its decades-long activism against nuclear weapons. 

The 30 survivors, known as hibakusha, see the prize and the international attention as a last chance to get their message to younger generations.

Terumi Tanaka, a 91-year-old survivor of the Nagasaki bombing who will speak at the award ceremony, told reporters after arriving in Oslo that he planned to talk about the survivors’ campaign and their demand that nuclear weapons must be abolished.


‘Progress’ in talks with breakaway Sahel states, says Senegal president

‘Progress’ in talks with breakaway Sahel states, says Senegal president
Updated 09 December 2024
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‘Progress’ in talks with breakaway Sahel states, says Senegal president

‘Progress’ in talks with breakaway Sahel states, says Senegal president

DAKAR: Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has said he is “making progress” in a mediation mission with junta-led Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, after the trio announced their departure from regional bloc ECOWAS.

The three Sahel countries announced in January they were leaving the Economic Community of West African States, which they accused of being subservient to former colonial ruler France and failing to support them in their fight against jihadist violence.

Their departure becomes effective one year after the announcement, in January 2025, according to the bloc.

The trio have formed the Alliance of Sahel States after severing ties with France and pivoting toward Russia.

ECOWAS appointed Senegal’s Faye as a “facilitator” in July to get them to remain in the bloc.

“I am making progress with this mission,” Faye said on Sunday at the Doha Forum for political dialogue in Qatar.

“There is nothing today to prevent the Alliance of Sahel States from being maintained, since it is already there and is a response to the security situation facing these countries in particular,” he said.

“At the same time, this should not, in my view, mean the disintegration of ECOWAS,” he added.