Afghanistan
Afghan girls face uncertain future after 1 year of no school
For most teenage girls in Afghanistan, it’s been a year since they set foot in a classroom. With no sign the ruling Taliban will allow them back to school, some are trying to find ways to keep education from stalling for a generation of young women.
At a house in Kabul, dozens gathered on a recent day for classes in an informal school set up by Sodaba Nazhand. She and her sister teach English, science and math to girls who should be in secondary school.
“When the Taliban wanted to take away the rights of education and the rights of work from women, I wanted to stand against their decision by teaching these girls,” Nazhand told The Associated Press.
Hers is one of a number of underground schools in operation since the Taliban took over the country a year ago and banned girls from continuing their education past the sixth grade. While the Taliban have permitted women to continue attending universities, this exception will become irrelevant when there are no more girls graduating from high schools.
“There is no way to fill this gap, and this situation is very sad and concerning,” Nazhand said.
The relief agency Save the Children interviewed nearly 1,700 boys and girls between the ages of 9 and 17 in seven provinces to assess the impact of the education restrictions.
The survey, conducted in May and June and released Wednesday, found that more than 45% of girls are not going to school, compared with 20% of boys. It also found that 26% of girls are showing signs of depression, compared with 16% of boys.
Also read: Amnesty: Taliban crackdown on rights is 'suffocating' women
Nearly the entire population of Afghanistan was thrown into poverty and millions were left unable to feed their families when the world cut off financing in response to the Taliban takeover.
Teachers, parents and experts all warn that the country's multiple crises, including the devastating collapse of the economy, are proving especially damaging to girls. The Taliban have restricted women’s work, encouraged them to stay at home and issued dress codes requiring them to cover their faces, except for their eyes, though the codes are not always enforced.
The international community is demanding that the Taliban open schools for all girls, and the U.S. and EU have created plans to pay salaries directly to Afghanistan’s teachers, keeping the sector going without putting the funds through the Taliban.
But the question of girls’ education appears to have been tangled in behind-the-scenes differences among the Taliban. Some in the movement support returning girls to school — whether because they see no religious objection to it or because they want to improve ties with the world. Others, especially rural, tribal elders who make up the backbone of the movement, staunchly oppose it.
During their first time ruling Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban imposed much stricter restrictions on women, banning school for all girls, barring women from work and requiring them to wear an all-encompassing burka if they went outside.
Also read: Afghan man charged in killing of 2 Muslims in Albuquerque
In the 20 years after the Taliban were driven from power in 2001, an entire generation of women returned to school and work, particularly in urban areas. Seemingly acknowledging those changes, the Taliban reassured Afghans when they seized control again last year that they would not return to the heavy hand of the past.
Officials have publicly insisted that they will allow teen girls back into school, but say time is needed to set up logistics for strict gender segregation to ensure an “Islamic framework.”
Hopes were raised in March: Just before the new school year was to begin, the Taliban Education Ministry proclaimed everyone would be allowed back. But on March 23, the day of the reopening, the decision was suddenly reversed, surprising even ministry officials. It appeared that at the last minute, the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, bowed to the opposition.
Shekiba Qaderi, a 16-year-old, recalled how she showed up that day, ready to start the 10th grade. She and all her classmates were laughing and excited, until a teacher came in and told them to go home. The girls broke into tears, she said. “That was the worst moment in our lives.”
Since then, she’s been trying to keep up with studies at home, reading her textbooks, novels and history books. She’s studying English through movies and YouTube videos.
The unequal access to education cuts through families. Shekiba and a younger sister can’t go to her school, but her two brothers can. Her older sister is at a private university studying law. But that is little comfort, said their father, Mohammad Shah Qaderi. Most of the professors have left the country, bringing down the quality of the education.
Even if the young woman gets a university degree, “what is the benefit?" asked Qaderi, a 58-year-old retired government employee.
"She won’t have a job. The Taliban won’t allow her to work,” he said.
Qaderi said he has always wanted his children to get a higher education. Now that may be impossible, so he’s thinking of leaving Afghanistan for the first time after riding out years of war.
“I can’t see them growing in front of my eyes with no education; it is just not acceptable to me,” he said.
Underground schools present another alternative, though with limitations.
A month after the Taliban takeover, Nazhand started teaching street children to read with informal outdoor classes in a park in her neighborhood. Women who couldn’t read or write joined them, she said. Some time later, a benefactor who saw her in the park rented a house for her to hold classes in, and bought tables and chairs. Once she was operating inside, Nazhand included teen girls who were no longer allowed to go to public school.
Now there are about 250 students, including 50 or 60 schoolgirls above sixth grade.
“I am not only teaching them school subjects, but also trying to teach them how to fight and stand for their rights,” Nazhand said. The Taliban haven’t changed from their first time in power in the late 1990s, she said. “These are the same Taliban, but we shouldn’t be the same women of those years. We must struggle: by writing, by raising our voice, by any way possible.”
Nazhand's school, and others like it, are technically illegal under the Taliban’s current restrictions, but so far they haven’t shut hers down. At least one other person operating a school declined to speak to reporters, however, fearing possible repercussions.
Despite her unwavering commitment, Nazhand worries about her school's future. Her benefactor paid for six months’ rent on the house, but he died recently, and she doesn’t have any way to keep paying for rent or supplies.
For students, the underground schools are a lifeline.
“It is so hard when you can’t go to school,” said one of them, Dunya Arbabzada. “Whenever I pass by my school and see the closed door ... it’s so upsetting for me.”
Taliban: 2 civilians killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan
A bomb hidden in a cart went off on Friday near a mosque in a minority Shiite neighborhood of the Afghan capital, killing two civilians and wounding another three, a Taliban official said.
According to Khalid Zadran, the Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Kabul police chief, the attack happened in western Kabul, in the Sar-e Karez area. There were fears the casualty numbers could rise after further reports come in.
Read: Taliban under scrutiny as US kills al-Qaida leader in Kabul
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but blame is likely to fall on the Islamic State group, which has targeted Afghanistan’s minority Shiites in large-scale attacks in the past.
The regional affiliate of IS, known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, has increased attacks on mosques and minorities across the country since the Taliban seized power last August. It has been operating in Afghanistan since 2014.
IS is seen as the greatest security challenge facing the country’s Taliban rulers. Following their takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban have launched a sweeping crackdown against the IS headquarters in the country's east.
On Wednesday, in a gunbattle between the Taliban and IS gunmen killed five, including two Taliban fighters. The fighting erupted near the Sakhi shrine in the Karti Sakhi neighborhood as people were busy preparing for Ashoura, which commemorates the 7th century death in battle of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
Al-Zawahri's path went from Cairo clinic to top of al-Qaida
The doors of jihad opened for Ayman al-Zawahri as a young doctor in a Cairo clinic, when a visitor arrived with a tempting offer: a chance to treat Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
With that offer in 1980, al-Zawahri embarked on a life that over three decades took him to the top of the most feared terrorist group in the world, al-Qaida, after the death of Osama bin Laden.
Already an experienced militant who had sought the overthrow of Egypt’s “infidel” regime since the age of 15, al-Zawahri took a trip to the Afghan war zone that was just a few weeks long, but it opened his eyes to new possibilities.
What he saw was “the training course preparing Muslim mujahedeen youth to launch their upcoming battle with the great power that would rule the world: America,” he wrote in a 2001 biography-cum-manifesto.
Also read: Biden: Killing of al-Qaida leader is long-sought 'justice'
Al-Zawahri, 71, was killed over the weekend by a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan. President Joe Biden announced the death Monday evening.
The strike is likely to lead to greater disarray within the organization than did bin Laden’s death in 2011, since it is far less clear who his successor would be.
Al-Zawahri was crucial in turning the jihadi movement to target the United States as the right-hand man to bin Laden, the young Saudi millionaire he met in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Under their leadership, the al-Qaida terror network carried out the deadliest attack ever on American soil, the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.
The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon made bin Laden America’s Enemy No. 1. But he likely could never have carried it out without his deputy.
While bin Laden came from a privileged background in a prominent Saudi family, al-Zawahri had the experience of an underground revolutionary. Bin Laden provided al-Qaida with charisma and money, but al-Zawahri brought tactics and organizational skills needed to forge militants into a network of cells in countries around the world.
“Bin Laden always looked up to him,” said terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University.
Also read: Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri killed in US missile attack
When the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan demolished al-Qaida’s safe haven and scattered, killed and captured its members, al-Zawahri ensured al-Qaida’s survival. He rebuilt its leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and installed allies as lieutenants in key positions.
He also became the movement’s public face, putting out a constant stream of video messages while bin Laden largely hid.
With his thick beard, heavy-rimmed glasses and a prominent bruise on his forehead from prostration in prayer, he was notoriously prickly and pedantic. He picked ideological fights with critics within the jihadi camp, wagging his finger scoldingly in his videos. Even some key figures in al-Qaida’s central leadership were put off, calling him overly controlling, secretive and divisive — a contrast to bin Laden, whose soft-spoken presence many militants described in adoring, almost spiritual terms.
Yet he reshaped the organization from a centralized planner of terror attacks into the head of a franchise chain. He led the creation of a network of autonomous branches around the region, including in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, North Africa, Somalia and Asia.
In the decade after 9/11, al-Qaida inspired or had a direct hand in attacks in all those areas as well as Europe, Pakistan and Turkey, including the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the 2005 transit bombings in London. More recently, the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen has proven itself capable of plotting attacks on U.S. soil with an attempted 2009 bombing of an American passenger jet and an attempted package bomb the following year.
After Bin Laden was killed in a U.S. raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, al-Qaida proclaimed al-Zawahri its paramount leader less than two months later.
The jihad against America “does not halt with the death of a commander or leader,” he said.
The 2011 Arab Spring uprisings around the Mideast threatened a major blow to al-Qaida, showing that jihad was not the only way to get rid of Arab autocrats. It was mainly pro-democracy liberals and leftists who led the uprising that toppled Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, the longtime goal al-Zawahri failed to achieve.
But al-Zawahri sought to co-opt the wave of uprisings, insisting that they would have been impossible if the 9/11 attacks had not weakened America. And he urged Islamic hard-liners to take over in the nations where leaders had fallen.
Al-Zawahri was born June 19, 1951, the son of an upper-middle-class family of doctors and scholars in the Cairo suburb of Maadi.
From an early age, he was enflamed by the radical writings of Sayed Qutb, the Egyptian Islamist who taught that Arab regimes were “infidel” and should be replaced by Islamic rule.
In the 1970s, as he earned his medical degree as a surgeon, he was active in militant circles. He merged his own militant cell with others to form the group Islamic Jihad and began trying to infiltrate the military — at one point even storing weapons in his private clinic.
Then came the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat by Islamic Jihad militants. The slaying was carried out by a different cell in the group — and al-Zawahri has written that he learned of the plot only hours before the assassination. But he was arrested along with hundreds of other militants and served three years in prison.
After his release in 1984, al-Zawahri returned to Afghanistan and joined the Arab militants from across the Middle East fighting alongside the Afghans against the Soviets. He courted bin Laden, who became a heroic figure for his financial support of the mujahedeen.
Al-Zawahri followed bin Laden to his new base in Sudan, and from there he led a reassembled Islamic Jihad group in a violent campaign of bombings aimed at toppling Egypt’s U.S.-allied government.
The Egyptian movement failed. But al-Zawahri would bring to al-Qaida the tactics that he honed in Islamic Jihad.
He promoted the use of suicide bombings, to become al-Qaida’s hallmark. He plotted a 1995 suicide car bombing of Egypt’s embassy in Islamabad that killed 16 people — presaging the more devastating 1998 al-Qaida bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200, attacks al-Zawahri was indicted for in the United States.
In 1996, Sudan expelled bin Laden, who took his fighters back to Afghanistan, where they found a safe haven under the radical Taliban regime. Once more, al-Zawahri followed.
Bangladesh sends help to quake-hit Afghanistan
Bangladesh has sent humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, where a strong earthquake claimed over 1,000 lives last month.
A C130-J aircraft of the Bangladesh Air Force took off with emergency relief materials, including medicines, blankets, dry food and tents, on Tuesday and will hand them over to the Afghan government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a release.
Also read: Destruction everywhere, help scarce after Afghanistan quake
The powerful earthquake hit eastern Afghanistan on June 22, killing over a thousand people and injuring more than 2,000 others. The quake flattened hundreds of homes, triggering food, water, housing and medicine crisis.
Attacker killed by security forces while targeting mini bus in Afghanistan
Unknown armed men targeted a mini-bus of the army corps in Herat city, the capital of western Afghanistan's Herat province, on Monday.
One attacker was killed by security forces on the spot, the provincial head of information and culture Naemul Haq Haqani said.
Read: India landslide death toll rises to 42
"No civilian has been hurt in the attack and only the attacker was killed by security forces," Haqani said on social media.
Confirming the incident, the provincial police spokesman Mahmoud Shah Rasouli said the attack took place in Police District 4 of Herat city.
Destruction everywhere, help scarce after Afghanistan quake
When the ground heaved from last week’s earthquake in Afghanistan, Nahim Gul’s stone-and-mud house collapsed on top of him.
He clawed through the rubble in the pre-dawn darkness, choking on dust as he searched for his father and two sisters. He doesn't know how many hours of digging passed before he caught a glimpse of their bodies under the ruins. They were dead.
Read: Deadly quake a new blow to Afghans reeling from poverty
Now, days after a 6 magnitude quake that devastated a remote region of southeast Afghanistan and killed at least 1,150 people and injured hundreds more, Gul sees destruction everywhere and help in short supply. His niece and nephew were also killed in the quake, crushed by the walls of their house.
“I don’t know what will happen to us or how we should restart our lives,” Gul told The Associated Press on Sunday, his hands bruised and his shoulder injured. “We don’t have any money to rebuild.”
It’s a fear shared among thousands in the impoverished villages where the fury of the quake has fallen most heavily — in Paktika and Khost provinces, along the jagged mountains that straddle the country’s border with Pakistan.
Those who were barely scraping by have lost everything. Many have yet to be visited by aid groups, which are struggling to reach the afflicted area on rutted roads — some made impassable by landslides and damage.
Aware of its constraints, the cash-strapped Taliban have called for foreign assistance. The United Nations and an array of international aid groups and countries have mobilized to send help.
China pledged Saturday to send nearly $7.5 million in emergency humanitarian aid, joining nations including Iran, Pakistan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in dispatching a planeload of tents, towels, beds and other badly needed supplies to the quake-hit area.
U.N. Deputy Special Representative Ramiz Alakbarov toured the affected Paktika province on Saturday to assess the damage and distribute food, medicine and tents. U.N. helicopters and trucks laden with bread, flour, rice and blankets have trickled into the stricken areas.
But the relief effort remains patchy due to funding and access constraints. The Taliban, which seized power last August from a government sustained for 20 years by a U.S.-led military coalition, appears overwhelmed by the logistical complexities of issues like debris removal in what is shaping up to be a major test of its capacity to govern.
Villagers have dug out their dead loved ones with their bare hands, buried them in mass graves and slept in the woods despite the rain. Nearly 800 families are living out in the open, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian coordination organization OCHA.
Read: Death toll from Afghanistan’s quake rises to 1,150 people
Gul received a tent and blankets from a local charity in the Gayan district, but he and his surviving relatives have had to fend for themselves. Terrified as the earth still rumbles from aftershocks like one on Friday that claimed five more lives, he said his children in Gayan refuse to go indoors.
The earthquake was the latest calamity to convulse Afghanistan, which has been reeling from a dire economic crisis since the Taliban took control of the country as the U.S. and its NATO allies were withdrawing their forces. Foreign aid — a mainstay of Afghanistan's economy for decades — stopped practically overnight.
World governments piled on sanctions, halted bank transfers and paralyzed trade, refusing to recognize the Taliban government and demanding they allow a more inclusive rule and respect human rights. The Biden administration cut off the Taliban's access to $7 billion in foreign currency reserves held in the United States.
The former insurgents have resisted the pressure, imposing restrictions on the freedoms of women and girls that recall their first time in power in the late 1990s.
Now, around half the country’s 39 million people are facing life-threatening levels of food insecurity because of poverty. Most civil servants, including doctors, nurses and teachers, have not been paid for months.
U.N. agencies and other remaining organizations have scrambled to keep Afghanistan from the brink of starvation with a humanitarian program that has fed millions and kept the medical system afloat. But with international donors lagging, U.N. agencies face a $3 billion funding shortfall this year.
Reeling from war and impoverished long before the Taliban takeover, the far-flung areas hit by last Wednesday’s earthquake are particularly ill-equipped to cope.
Some local businessmen have swung into action. The Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Investment said on Sunday it had raised over $1.5 million for Pakitka and Khost provinces.
Still, for those whose homes have been obliterated, the help may not be enough.
“We have nothing left,” Gul said.
Afghans bury dead, dig for survivors of devastating quake
Villagers rushed to bury the dead Thursday and dug by hand through the rubble of their homes in search of survivors of a powerful earthquake in eastern Afghanistan that state media reported killed 1,000 people. Residents appeared to be largely on their own to deal with the aftermath as their new Taliban-led government and the international aid community struggled to bring in help.
Under a leaden sky in Paktika province, the epicenter of Wednesday’s earthquake where hundreds of homes have been destroyed, men dug several long trenches on a mountainside overlooking their village. They prayed over around 100 bodies wrapped in blankets and then buried them.
In villages across Gayan district, toured by Associated Press journalists for hours Thursday, families who had spent the previous rainy night out in the open lifted pieces of timber of collapsed roofs and pulled away stones by hand, looking for missing loved ones. Taliban fighters circulated in vehicles in the area, but only a few were seen helping dig through rubble.
There was little sign of heavy equipment — only one bulldozer was spotted being transported. Ambulances circulated, but little other help to the living was evident.
Many international aid agencies withdrew from Afghanistan when the Taliban seized power nearly 10 months ago. Those that remain are scrambling to get medical supplies, food and tents to the remote quake-struck area, using shoddy mountain roads made worse by damage and rains.
“We ask from the Islamic Emirate and the whole country to come forward and help us,” said a survivor who gave his name as Hakimullah. “We are with nothing and have nothing, not even a tent to live in.”
Read: Survivors dig by hand after Afghanistan quake killing 1,000
The scenes underscored how the magnitude 6 quake has struck a country that was already nearly on its knees from multiple humanitarian crises.
The quake took the lives of 1,000 people, according to the state-run Bakhtar News Agency, which also reported an estimated 1,500 more were injured. In the first independent count, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said around 770 people had been killed in Paktika and neighboring Khost province.
It’s not clear how the totals were arrived at, given the difficulties of accessing and communicating with the affected villages. Either grim toll would make the quake Afghanistan’s deadliest in two decades, and officials continued to warn the number could still rise.
Since the Taliban took over in August amid the U.S and NATO withdrawal, the world pulled back financing and development aid that had been keeping the country afloat. The economy collapsed, leaving millions unable to afford food; many medical facilities shut down, making treatment harder to find. Nearly half the population of 38 million faces crisis levels of food insecurity.
Many aid and development agencies also left after the Taliban seizure of power. The U.N. and remaining agencies said they were moving blankets, food, tents, and medical teams to the area.
But they are over-stretched, and U.N. agencies are facing a $3 billion funding shortfall for Afghanistan this year. That means there will be difficult decisions about who gets aid, said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the United Nations’ refugee agency.
Local medical centers, already struggling to deal with malnutrition cases, were now overwhelmed with people injured by the quake, said Adnan Junaid, the International Rescue Committee vice president for Asia.
“The toll this disaster will have on the local communities ... is catastrophic, and the impact the earthquake will have on the already stretched humanitarian response in Afghanistan is a grave cause for concern,” Junaid said.
The Defense Ministry, which leads the Taliban emergency effort, said it sent 22 helicopter flights on Wednesday transporting wounded and taking supplies, along with several more Thursday.
Still, the Taliban’s resources have been gutted by the economic crisis. Made up of insurgents who fought for 20 years against the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban have also struggled to make the transition to governing.
Read: Afghan aid auditor accuses State, USAID of withholding info
On Wednesday, a U.N. official said the government had not requested that the world body mobilize international search-and-rescue teams or obtain equipment from neighboring countries, despite a rare plea from the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzadah, for help from the world.
Trucks of food and other necessities arrived from Pakistan, and planes full of humanitarian aid landed from Iran and Qatar, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on Twitter. India said it sent a technical team to its embassy in Kabul to coordinate the delivery of humanitarian assistance, but it didn't give details on the team or the relief material being sent.
Pakistan also opened several nearby border crossings to allow those affected by the disaster to cross, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sherif said in a call with the Taliban Prime Minister Mullah Hasan Akhund.
Obtaining more direct international help may be more difficult: Many countries, including the U.S., funnel humanitarian aid to Afghanistan through the U.N. and other organizations to avoid putting money in the Taliban’s hands, wary of dealing with the group, which has issued a flurry of repressive edicts curtailing the rights of women and girls and the press.
Germany, Norway and several other countries announced they were sending aid for the quake, but underscored that they would work only through U.N. agencies, not with the Taliban.
In a news bulletin Thursday, Afghanistan state television made a point to acknowledge that President Joe Biden of the United States — their one-time enemy — offered condolences over the earthquake and had promised aid. Biden on Wednesday ordered the U.S. international aid agency and its partners to “assess” options for helping the victims, a White House statement said.
U.N. deputy special representative for Afghanistan, Ramiz Alakbarov, told the U.N. Security Council in a video briefing he intends to visit quake-hit areas on Friday and “to meet with affected families, first-hand responders, including women’s civil society groups who are working to ensure that assistance reaches women and girls, and to support overall relief efforts.”
In Paktika province, the quake shook a region of deep poverty, where residents scrape out in a living in the few fertile areas among the rough mountains. Roads are so difficult that some villages in Gayan District took a full day to reach from Kabul, though it is only 175 kilometers (110 miles away.)
One 6-year-old boy in Gayan wept as he said his parents, two sisters and a brother were all dead. He had fled the ruins of his own home and took refuge with the neighbors.
While modern buildings withstand magnitude 6 earthquakes elsewhere, Afghanistan’s mud-brick homes and landslide-prone mountains make such quakes more dangerous.
One man, Rahim Jan, stood inside the few standing mud-brick walls of his home with the toppled roof timbers all around him.
“It is destroyed completely, all my belongings are gone,” he said. “I have lost 12 members of my family in this house.”
Survivors dig by hand after Afghanistan quake killing 1,000
Survivors dug by hand Thursday through villages in eastern Afghanistan reduced to rubble by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 1,000 people, as the Taliban and the international community that fled their takeover struggled to aid the disaster's victims.
In Paktika province's hard-hit Gayan district, villagers stood atop the mud bricks that once was a home there. Others carefully walked through dirt alleyways, gripping onto damaged walls with exposed timber beams to make their way.
The quake was Afghanistan’s deadliest in two decades, and officials said the toll could rise. An estimated 1,500 others were reported injured, the state-run news agency said.
Read: Afghanistan quake kills 1,000 people, deadliest in decades
The disaster inflicted by the 6 magnitude quake heaps more misery on a country where millions face increasing hunger and poverty and the health system has been crumbling since the Taliban retook power nearly 10 months ago amid the U.S. and NATO withdrawal. The takeover led to a cutoff of vital international financing, and most of the world has shunned the Taliban government.
How — and whether the Taliban allow — the world to offer aid remains in question as rescuers without heavy equipment dug through rubble with their bare hands.
“We ask from the Islamic Emirate and the whole country to come forward and help us," said a survivor who gave his name as Hakimullah. "We are with nothing and have nothing, not even a tent to live in.”
The full extent of the destruction among the villages tucked in the mountains was slow in coming to light. The roads, which are rutted and difficult to travel in the best of circumstances, may have been badly damaged, and landslides from recent rains made access even more difficult.
While modern buildings withstand magnitude 6 earthquakes elsewhere, Afghanistan's mud-and-brick homes and landslide-prone mountains make such temblors even more dangerous.
Rescuers rushed in by helicopter, but the relief effort could be hindered by the exodus of many international aid agencies from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover last August. Moreover, most governments are wary of dealing directly with the Taliban.
In a sign of the muddled workings between the Taliban and the rest of the world, the Taliban had not formally requested that the U.N. mobilize international search-and-rescue teams or obtain equipment from neighboring countries to supplement the few dozen ambulances and several helicopters sent in by Afghan authorities, said Ramiz Alakbarov, the U.N. deputy special representative to Afghanistan.
Still, officials from multiple U.N. agencies said the Taliban were giving them full access to the area.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on Twitter that eight trucks of food and other necessities from Pakistan arrived in Paktika. He also said Thursday that two planes of humanitarian aid from Iran and another from Qatar had arrived in the country.
Read: Afghan aid auditor accuses State, USAID of withholding info
Obtaining more direct international help may be more difficult: Many countries, including the U.S., funnel humanitarian aid to Afghanistan through the U.N. and other such organizations to avoid putting money in the Taliban’s hands.
The quake was centered in Paktika province, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of the city of Khost, according to neighboring Pakistan’s Meteorological Department. Experts put its depth at just 10 kilometers (6 miles). Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage.
The death toll reported by the Bakhtar news agency was equal to that of a quake in 2002 in northern Afghanistan. Those are the deadliest since 1998, when an earthquake that was also 6.1 in magnitude and subsequent tremors in the remote northeast killed at least 4,500 people.
Wednesday’s quake took place in a region prone to landslides, with many older, weaker buildings.
In neighboring Khost province's Speray district, which also sustained serious damage, men stood atop what once was a mud home. The quake had ripped open its timber beams. People sat outside under a makeshift tent made of a blanket that blew in the breeze.
Survivors quickly prepared the district's dead, including children and an infant, for burial. Officials fear more dead will be found in the coming days.
“It is hard to gather all the exact information because it is mountainous area,” said Sultan Mahmood, Speray district's chief. "The information that we have is what we have gathered from the residents of these areas.”
Ukraine expects EU-wide support for candidacy to join bloc
A Ukrainian official overseeing the country’s push to join the European Union said Wednesday that she’s “100%” certain all 27 EU nations will approve Ukraine's EU candidacy during a summit this week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed similar optimism, calling it a “crucial moment” for Ukraine. Ukraine’s membership bid is the top order of business for EU leaders meeting in Brussels.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna said the decision could come as soon as Thursday, when the leaders' summit starts.
Stefanishyna said the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark had been skeptical about starting accession talks with Ukraine while it is fighting Russia’s invasion but are now supportive. Asked how confident she was that Ukraine would be accepted as an EU candidate, she said: “The day before the summit starts, I can say 100%.”
Read: EXPLAINER: What’s next after Russia reduced gas to Europe?
The EU’s executive arm threw its weight behind Ukraine’s candidacy last week. Stefanishyna described the European Commission's endorsement as “a game-changer” that had taken the ground out from under “the legs of those most hesitating."
EU candidate status, which can be granted only if the existing member countries agree unanimously, is the first step toward membership. It does not provide any security guarantees or an automatic right to join the bloc.
Ukraine's full membership will depend on whether the war-torn country can satisfy political and economic conditions. Potential newcomers need to demonstrate that they meet standards on democratic principles and must absorb 80,000 pages of rules covering everything from trade and immigration to fertilizers and the rule of law.
Stefanishyna told the AP that she think Ukraine could be an EU member within years, not the decades that some European officials have forecast.
“We’re already very much integrated in the European Union,” she said. “We want to be a strong and competitive member state, so it may take from two to 10 years.”
To help candidates, the bloc can provide technical and financial assistance. European officials have said that Ukraine has already implemented about 70% of the EU rules, norms and standards, but have also pointed to corruption and the need for deep political and economic reforms.
In a virtual talk to Canadian university students on Wednesday, Zelenskyy described the Brussels summit as “two decisive days” that he, like Stefanishyna, thinks will result in approval of Ukraine's EU candidacy.
“That is a very crucial moment for us, for some people in my team are saying this is like going into the light from the darkness," the Ukrainian president said through an interpreter. "In terms of our army and society, this is a big motivator, a big motivational factor for the unity and victory of the Ukrainian people.”
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said he spoke with Zelenskyy on Wednesday and guaranteed him that Belgium would support Ukraine’s candidate status.
“Considerable efforts will be needed, especially in the fight against corruption and the establishment of an effective rule of law," De Cross said. "But I am convinced that it is precisely the (post-war) reconstruction of Ukraine that will provide opportunities to take important steps forward.”
Zelenskyy said he spoke with a total of 11 EU leaders Wednesday, following calls with nine the day before, in another indication of how important EU candidacy is for Ukraine.
In other developments:
— Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said a Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier accompanying him appear to have been “coldly executed” during the first weeks of the war as they searched in Russian-occupied woods for a missing camera drone. The group sent investigators to the woods north of the capital, Kyiv, where the bodies of Maks Levin and serviceman Oleksiy Chernyshov were found April 1. The group said its team counted 14 bullet holes in the burned hulk of their car and found litter seemingly left by Russian soldiers.
— Zelenskyy said Russian forces were carrying out very heavy air and artillery strikes in the eastern Donbas. “Step by step they want to destroy all of the Donbas. All of it," he said in his nightly video address. Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzianyk said in some battles, for every artillery shell Ukrainian forces fire, the Russian army fires at least six. Zelenskyy appealed to Western countries to speed up deliveries of heavy weapons “to stop this diabolical armada.”
Read:‘It’s just hell there’: Russia still pounds eastern Ukraine
— Russian forces captured three villages in the Luhansk region, one of two that make up the Donbas, Gov. Serhiy Haidai told The Associated Press on Wednesday. He said the villages are near Lysychansk, the last city in Luhansk still fully under Ukrainian control. The Russians have also taken a strategic coal village, Toshkivka, enabling them to intensify attacks, Haidai said.
— Russian forces continued shelling Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and nearby towns, killing 10 people, including five women in the village of Pryshyb, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. He said Russian forces are advancing through the area around Pryshyb as they target Sloviansk, a Ukrainian-held city in the Donbas.
— All four of the medium-range rocket systems that the U.S. provided to Ukraine several weeks ago are now in the country in the hands of Ukrainian forces but it is not clear if they have used them yet, a U.S. defense official said. The High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems will give the Ukrainians greater precision in targeting Russian assets. The rockets generally can travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers). The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military details.
— The Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that Russian forces killed up to 500 Ukrainian servicemen in strikes Tuesday against a shipbuilding plant in Mykolaiv. Zelenskyy said the Russians fired seven missiles at Mykolaiv, wounding five people. He gave no details about what was hit. The Russian military also claimed Ukrainian forces evacuated up to 30 wounded and eight dead American and British fighters from near Mykolaivka, a town in the Donetsk region. There was no confirmation of this by Ukraine.
— Satellite images of Snake Island appear to show damage from a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-occupied island in the Black Sea. The Maxar Technologies images taken Tuesday show three new scorched areas that were not there four days earlier. Russia and Ukraine offer conflicting accounts of the attack. The Ukrainian military’s southern command said it inflicted “significant losses” on Russian troops in an attack using “various forces and methods of destruction,” while the Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses successfully repelled the Ukrainian assault. Russian forces captured the small rocky island in the first days of the war and have used it to strengthen their control over the northwestern part of the sea.
— Russian officials said a drone strike caused a fire at the largest oil refinery in southern Russia on Wednesday. The blaze engulfed a piece of machinery at the Novoshakhtinsk plant in the Rostov-on-Don region. Authorities said dozens of firefighters quickly contained the fire and no one was hurt. Ukrainian authorities have not confirmed the strike.
— Turkey’s defense ministry said Wednesday that a Turkish ship was allowed to leave the Russian-occupied Azov Sea port of Mariupol following talks between Turkish and Russian defense ministry officials. A ministry statement said a Turkish freighter, Azov Concord, was the first foreign ship to be allowed to leave Mariupol. The ministry did not say what the freighter was carrying. The war has halted critical grain exports by sea.
— French armed forces conducted a surprise military exercise in Estonia, deploying more than 100 paratroopers in the Baltic country, the French defense ministry said Wednesday. The exercise in Estonia, a NATO member that neighbors Russia, was executed as an act of “strategic solidarity” during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Afghan aid auditor accuses State, USAID of withholding info
The congressionally mandated watchdog for U.S. assistance to Afghanistan is accusing the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development of illegally withholding information from it about the American withdrawal from the country last year and current policy.
Amid a spat over what the Biden administration believes to have been an overly critical report about the American pullout, the Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction, John Sopko, said the State Department and USAID were refusing to cooperate with his staff in violation of the law that created the office.
Read: Afghanistan quake kills 1,000 people, deadliest in decades
The allegations were made by in separate letters from Sopko to lawmakers and to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and USAID Administrator Samantha Power, and by Sopko's general counsel to the top lawyers for each agency. The letters were obtained by The Associated Press.
The State Department did not deny it had cut off cooperation with the watchdog. But it complained that the special inspector had not given the administration a chance to respond to its latest report covering the withdrawal that was released last month.
The department said the report was unfairly negative and did not represent the administration's view of the events surrounding the collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban takeover.
In his letters, Sopko was blunt, seeking immediate action from Congress, Blinken and Power to restore the cooperation his office has had with their agencies in the past.
“I respectfully request that you direct State and USAID officials to cease their illegal obstruction of SIGAR’s oversight work and to provide the requested information and assistance without further delay,” he wrote to Blinken and Power.
Sopko said his staff had requested numerous documents and interviews with officials who were involved in the chaotic withdrawal and aftermath last July but had been stonewalled for several months. He said those requests involved information about the evacuation and resettlement of Afghan nationals as well as ongoing humanitarian aid and questions about whether that assistance might be transferred to the Taliban.
Read: 1.1 million Afghan children could face severe malnutrition
“It is now evident that offices and staff who have cooperated with similar requests in the past were being silenced or overruled by officials opposed to SIGAR’s independent oversight,” Sopko wrote.
The State Department said both it and USAID remain committed to assisting SIGAR's mission and would respond to the watchdog's allegations. But the department said it “had concerns about how some of SIGAR’s requests for information relate to their statutory jurisdiction."
The department said it had responded to a SIGAR complaint in April by pointing out that much of the information it was requesting was already being provided to Congress and an internal review of Afghanistan policy being conducted by all agencies in the administration.
State Department spokesman Ned Price did not have a direct response to the allegations in Sopko's letters but voiced the administration's unhappiness with SIGAR's last report, which concluded that the withdrawal had been poorly managed and that the collapse of the Afghan government and military had not been correctly predicted.
“Our view is that the report does not reflect the consensus view of the State Department or the U.S. government," Price told reporters. "Many parts of the U.S. government, including the State Department, have unique insights and developments in Afghanistan last year that were not captured in the report and we don’t concur with many aspects of the report.”
In addition, Price said the special inspector did not seek State Department input while drafting the April report and did not give the department the opportunity to review the draft before it was published.