United Nations
Rohingyas overjoyed at UN arrival in Bhasan Char
The Rohingyas in Bhasan Char have welcomed the decision of the United Nations (UN) to engage there in providing humanitarian support.
On Sunday, they brought out a procession expressing their joy over the signing of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Bangladesh government and the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.
They were seen joining the joyous procession peacefully holding placards that read "Welcome UN", "Welcome UNHCR", "Thank You UN," "We Are Happy at Bhasan Char 2021."
Head Rohingya leaders led the procession from 2:30pm to 3pm joined by over a thousand Rohingyas, said a source at Bhasan Char.
The procession that began from Shelter 9 ended at Rohingya Bazar, going through Hospital Road.
Bangladesh and the UN signed the formal document Saturday, ending a long wait for a much-sought UN engagement at Bhasan Char on the humanitarian front to support the Rohingyas there.
Secretary of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief Md Mohsin and Bangladesh Representative of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, Johannes van der Klaauw, signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) at the Secretariat.
Read: Crucial MoU on UN's operational engagement in Bhasan Char signed
Crucial MoU on UN's operational engagement in Bhasan Char signed
Bangladesh and the United Nations (UN) signed a formal document Saturday, ending a long wait for a much-sought UN engagement at Bhasan Char on the humanitarian front to support the Rohingyas there.
Secretary of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief Md Mohsin and Bangladesh Representative of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, Johannes van der Klaauw signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) at the secretariat.
State Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Dr M Enamur Rahman witnessed the signing ceremony as the chief guest. Parliamentary Standing Committee Chairman on Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief Capt AB Tajul Islam joined as special guest.
He said around 80,000 Rohingyas will be relocated to Bhasan Char from Cox’s Bazar camps within the next three months.
READ: MoU on UN's operational engagement in Bhasan Char Saturday
Enamur said they have finally taken a right decision and it will be very easier for humanitarian agencies to provide services following today's MoU signing.
The signing of the MoU demonstrates the UN's support to the government's massive investment there to ensure better living for the Rohingyas, officials said.
The MoU – signed by UNHCR on behalf of UN agencies working on the Rohingya response in Bangladesh – establishes a common protection and policy framework for the Rohingya humanitarian response on the island.
The MoU is a further expression of the government and people of Bangladesh’s generosity and support towards the Rohingya population until they can return safely and sustainably to Myanmar.
It is also a reconfirmation of the UN’s commitment to continue supporting Bangladesh in leading the humanitarian programme for almost 1.1 million Rohingya refugees in the country, said the UNHCR.
The agreement relating to Bhasan Char allows close cooperation between the government and the UN on services and activities to the benefit of the increasing numbers of Rohingya refugees living on the island, according to the UN refugee agency.
Right to healthy environment: States urged to take bold actions
United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet Friday called on states to take bold actions to give prompt and real effect to the right to a healthy environment, following a UN Human Rights Council's landmark decision.
The Human Rights Council recognised for the first time that having a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is indeed a human right, in its resolution 48/13.
The Council called on states to work together, and with other partners, to implement this newly recognised right.
At the same time, through a second resolution (48/14), the Council also increased its focus on the human rights impacts of climate change by establishing a Special Rapporteur dedicated specifically to the issue.
"The Human Rights Council's decisive action in recognising the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is about protecting people and the planet – the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. It is also about protecting the natural systems which are basic preconditions to the lives and livelihoods of all people, wherever they live," the High Commissioner said.
Read: Mohib's killing, Rohingya repatriation: Bachelet for redoubling global pressure on Myanmar
"Having long called for such a step, I am gratified that the Council's action today recognises environmental degradation and climate change as interconnected human rights crises."
"Bold action is now required to ensure this resolution on the right to a healthy environment serves as a springboard to push for transformative economic, social and environmental policies that will protect people and nature," she added.
At the beginning of the current session of the Human Rights Council, the High Commissioner described the triple planetary threats of climate change, pollution and nature loss as the single greatest human rights challenge of our era.
The resolution on a healthy environment acknowledges the damage inflicted by climate change and environmental destruction on millions of people across the world.
It also underlines that the most vulnerable segments of the population are more acutely impacted.
The issue will now pass on to the UN General Assembly for further consideration.
Bachelet paid tribute to the efforts of a diverse array of civil society organisations, including youth groups, national human rights institutions, indigenous peoples' organisations, businesses and many others worldwide who have been advocating for full international recognition of this right.
Read: Action must be taken now over Rohingyas' rights violations: Bachelet
She stressed the importance that the rights to participation, access to information and access to justice are also respected for the human right to a healthy environment to be fully realised.
Noting that an unprecedented number of environmental human rights defenders were reported killed last year, the High Commissioner urged states to take firm measures to protect and empower them.
"We must build on this momentum to move beyond the false separation of environmental action and protection of human rights. It is all too clear that neither goal can be achieved without the other, and to that end, a balanced, human rights-based approach to sustainable development must be ensured," she said.
Deal over UN's operational engagement in Bhasan Char likely on Saturday
Bangladesh and the United Nations are likely to sign a formal document on Saturday to find ways for UN engagement in Bhasan Char demonstrating support to the government’s massive investment there to ensure better living for Rohingyas, officials said.
“We’re expecting that the MoU will be signed on Saturday morning if there’s no last-minute change,” a senior official told UNB, mentioning that things are finalised.
However, he did not elaborate further what will be the nature of UN engagement in Bhasan Char and the specific areas of cooperation.
The numerous challenges associated with the temporary hosting of persecuted Rohingyas from Myanmar have compelled the government of Bangladesh to plan the relocation of 100,000 Rohingyas to Bhashan Char, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
So far, nearly 20,000 Rohingyas have moved to Bhasan Char since December last year in a number of groups.
Some 1642 Rohingyas were relocated to Bhashan Char on December 4, 2020, while the second batch, comprising 1,804 Rohingyas, had been transferred from Cox’s Bazar to Bhashan Char on December 29 last year.
On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said the operational engagement of the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, in Bhasan Char will begin soon. “Everything is final. It has been done as agreed.”
Read: Bhasan Char: an excellent example for a safe, sustainable, and resilient place for Rohingya relocation
Recognizing Bangladesh’s massive investment in Bhasan Char, UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh Mia Seppo said there has been, rather, a lot of negative coverage about Bhasan Char and it is important that they have somehow managed to move away from that.
She said they want to be partners in trying to create something so that everybody can live and the conversation that they are having now is important.
Regarding the proposed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to engage in Bhasan Char, Mia said there are protections and humanitarian imperatives and they are obviously looking to support the massive efforts of the government in Bhasan Char.
Taliban, ex-Afghan government dispute ends with no UN speech
The dispute between Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers and its former government over who should speak at the United Nations’ annual meeting of world leaders finally has an answer: no one.
The Taliban had challenged the credentials of the ambassador from Afghanistan’s former government, and asked to represent the country at this year’s General Assembly summit, which began Sept. 21 and ends Monday.
But all challenges to credentials must be heard by the assembly’s credentials committee, which generally meets in November and did not convene earlier to hear the challenge.
Read: World should recognise us as leaders of Afghanistan: Taliban
U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that as of Friday, Afghanistan’s currently recognized U.N. ambassador, Ghulam Isaczai, was listed as speaking for the country.
But, Dujarric told The Associated Press on Monday morning: “We were notified Saturday by the Afghan Mission that they would no longer be speaking.”
Afghanistan was scheduled to deliver the final address of the gathering of presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and ministers on Monday afternoon. But it was not on the list of speakers issued Monday morning.
A phone message seeking comment was left with Afghanistan’s U.N. mission.
The Taliban overran most of Afghanistan last month as U.S. and NATO forces were in the final stages of their chaotic withdrawal from the country after 20 years and argue that they are now in charge and have the right to represent the country at the United Nations. Isaczai represents former president Ashraf Ghani’s government.
Read:US, Pakistan face each other again on Afghanistan threats
In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the Taliban’s newly appointed foreign minister, Ameer Khan Muttaqi, said Ghani was “ousted” as of Aug. 15 and that countries across the world “no longer recognize him as president.”
Therefore, Muttaqi said, Isaczai no longer represents Afghanistan and the Taliban was nominating a new U.N. permanent representative, Mohammad Suhail Shaheen. He was a spokesperson for the Taliban during peace negotiations in Qatar.
“We have all the requirements needed for recognition of a government,” Shaheen told the AP last Wednesday. “So we hope the U.N., as a neutral world body, recognize the current government of Afghanistan.”
When the Taliban last ruled from 1996 to 2001, the U.N. refused to recognize their government and instead gave Afghanistan’s seat to the previous, warlord-dominated government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was killed by a suicide bomber in 2011. It was Rabbani’s government that brought Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, to Afghanistan from Sudan in 1996.
Read: Afghanistan’s Taliban want to address General Assembly: UN
The Taliban have said they want international recognition and financial help to rebuild the war-battered country. But the makeup of the new Taliban government poses a dilemma for the United Nations. Several of the interim ministers — including Muttaqi — are on the U.N.’s so-called blacklist of international terrorists and funders of terrorism.
When the credentials committee members do meet, they could use Taliban recognition as leverage to press for a more inclusive government that guarantees human rights, especially for girls who were barred from going to school during their previous rule, and women who weren’t able to work.
The committee’s members are the United States, Russia, China, Bahama, Bhutan, Chile, Namibia, Sierra Leone and Sweden.
US, Pakistan face each other again on Afghanistan threats
The Taliban’s takeover of Kabul has deepened the mutual distrust between the U.S. and Pakistan, putative allies who have tangled over Afghanistan. But both sides still need each other.
As the Biden administration looks for new ways to stop terrorist threats in Afghanistan, it probably will look again to Pakistan, which remains critical to U.S. intelligence and national security because of its proximity to Afghanistan and connections to the Taliban leaders now in charge.
Over two decades of war, American officials accused Pakistan of playing a double game by promising to fight terrorism and cooperate with Washington while cultivating the Taliban and other extremist groups that attacked U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Islamabad pointed to what it saw as failed promises of a supportive government in Kabul after the U.S. drove the Taliban from power after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as extremist groups took refuge in eastern Afghanistan and launched deadly attacks throughout Pakistan.
But the U.S. wants Pakistani cooperation in counterterrorism efforts and could seek permission to fly surveillance flights into Afghanistan or other intelligence cooperation. Pakistan wants U.S. military aid and good relations with Washington, even as its leaders openly celebrate the Taliban’s rise to power.
Read:Russia says it’s in sync with US, China, Pakistan on Taliban
“Over the last 20 years, Pakistan has been vital for various logistics purposes for the U.S. military. What’s really been troubling is that, unfortunately, there hasn’t been a lot of trust,” said U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat who is on the House Intelligence Committee. “I think the question is whether we can get over that history to arrive at a new understanding.”
Pakistan’s prime minister, in remarks Friday to the U.N. General Assembly, made clear there is a long way to go. Imran Khan tried to portray his country as the victim of American ungratefulness for its assistance in Afghanistan over the years. Instead of a mere “word of appreciation,” Pakistan has received blame, Khan said.
Former diplomats and intelligence officers from both countries say the possibilities for cooperation are severely limited by the events of the past two decades and Pakistan’s enduring competition with India.
The previous Afghan government, which was strongly backed by India, routinely accused Pakistan of harboring the Taliban. The new Taliban government includes officials that American officials have long believed are linked to Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence.
Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, said he understood “the temptation of officials in both countries to try and take advantage of the situation” and find common ground. But Haqqani said he expected Pakistan to give “all possible cooperation to the Taliban.”
“This has been a moment Pakistan has been waiting for 20 years,” said Haqqani, now at the Hudson Institute think tank. “They now feel that they have a satellite state.”
U.S. officials are trying to quickly build what President Joe Biden calls an “over the horizon” capacity to monitor and stop terrorist threats.
Without a partner country bordering Afghanistan, the U.S. has to fly surveillance drones long distances, limiting the time they can be used to watch over targets. The U.S. also lost most of its network of informants and intelligence partners in the now-deposed Afghan government, making it critical to find common ground with other governments that have more resources in the country.
Read: Don't isolate the Taliban, Pakistan urges
Pakistan could be helpful in that effort by allowing “overflight” rights for American spy planes from the Persian Gulf or permitting the U.S. to base surveillance or counterterrorism teams along its border with Afghanistan. There are few other options among Afghanistan’s neighbors. Iran is a U.S. adversary and Central Asian countries north of Afghanistan all face varying degrees of Russian influence.
There are no known agreements so far.
CIA Director William Burns visited Islamabad this month to meet with Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, Pakistan’s army chief, and Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, who leads the ISI, according to a Pakistani government statement. Burns and Hameed have separately visited Kabul in recent weeks to meet with Taliban leaders. The CIA declined to comment on the visits.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi noted this past week that Islamabad had cooperated with U.S. requests to facilitate peace talks before the Taliban takeover and that it had agreed to U.S. military requests throughout the war.
“We have often been criticized for not doing enough,” Qureshi told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “But we’ve not been appreciated enough for having done what was done.”
Qureshi would not directly answer whether Pakistan would allow the basing of surveillance equipment or overflight of drones.
“They don’t have to be physically there to share intelligence,” he said of the U.S. “There are smarter ways of doing it.”
The CIA and ISI have a long history in Afghanistan, dating to their shared goal of arming bands of mujahedeen — “freedom fighters” — against the Soviet Union’s occupation in the 1980s. The CIA sent weapons and money into Afghanistan through Pakistan.
Read: Afghanistan’s Taliban want to address General Assembly: UN
Those fighters included Osama bin Laden. Others would become leaders of the Taliban, which emerged victorious from a civil war in 1996 and gained control of most of the country. The Taliban gave refuge to bin Laden and other leaders of al-Qaida, which launched deadly attacks on Americans abroad in 1998 and then struck the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.
After 9/11, the U.S. immediately sought Pakistan’s cooperation in its fight against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Declassified cables published by George Washington University’s National Security Archive show officials in President George W. Bush’s administration made several demands of Pakistan, from intercepting arms shipments heading to al-Qaida to providing the U.S. with intelligence and permission to fly military and intelligence planes over its territory.
The CIA would carry out hundreds of drone strikes launched from Pakistan targeting al-Qaida leaders and others alleged to have ties to terrorist groups. Hundreds of civilians died in the strikes, according to figures kept by outside observers, leading to widespread protests and public anger in Pakistan.
Pakistan continued to be accused of harboring the Taliban after the U.S.-backed coalition drove the group from power in Kabul. And bin Laden was killed in 2011 by U.S. special forces in a secret raid on a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, home to the country’s military academy. The bin Laden operation led many in the U.S. to question whether Pakistan had harbored bin Laden and angered Pakistanis who felt the raid violated their sovereignty.
For years, CIA officials tried to confront their Pakistani counterparts after collecting more proof of Pakistani intelligence officers helping the Taliban move money and fighters into a then-growing insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan, said Douglas London, who oversaw the CIA’s counterterrorism operations in South Asia until 2018.
“They would say, ‘You just come to my office, tell me where the location is,’” he said. “They would just usually pay lip service to us and say they couldn’t confirm the intel.”
London, author of the forthcoming book “The Recruiter,” said he expected American intelligence would consider limited partnerships with Pakistan on mutual enemies such as al-Qaeda or Islamic State-Khorasan, which took responsibility for the deadly suicide attack outside the Kabul airport last month during the final days of the U.S. evacuation.
The risk, London said, is at times “your partner is as much of a threat to you as the enemy who you’re pursuing.”
Refugees in fear as sentiment turns against them in Turkey
Fatima Alzahra Shon thinks neighbors attacked her and her son in their Istanbul apartment building because she is Syrian.
The 32-year-old refugee from Aleppo was confronted on Sept. 1 by a Turkish woman who asked her what she was doing in “our” country. Shon replied, “Who are you to say that to me?” The situation quickly escalated.
A man came out of the Turkish woman’s apartment half-dressed, threatening to cut Shon and her family “into pieces,” she recalled. Another neighbor, a woman, joined in, shouting and hitting Shon. The group then pushed her down a flight of stairs. Shon said that when her 10-year-old son, Amr, tried to intervene, he was beaten as well.
Shon said she has no doubt about the motivation for the aggression: “Racism.”
Refugees fleeing the long conflict in Syria once were welcomed in neighboring Turkey with open arms, sympathy and compassion for fellow Muslims. But attitudes gradually hardened as the number of newcomers swelled over the past decade.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is now nearing a boiling point, fueled by Turkey’s economic woes. With unemployment high and the prices of food and housing skyrocketing, many Turks have turned their frustration toward the country’s roughly 5 million foreign residents, particularly the 3.7 million who fled the civil war in Syria.
In August, violence erupted in Ankara, the Turkish capital, as an angry mob vandalized Syrian businesses and homes in response to a the deadly stabbing of a Turkish teenager.
Turkey hosts the world’s largest refugee population, and many experts say that has come at a cost. Selim Sazak, a visiting international security researcher at Bilkent University in Ankara and an advisor to officials from the opposition IYI Party, compared the arrival of so many refugees to absorbing “a foreign state that’s ethnically, culturally, linguistically dissimilar.”
Read: Trump aides aim to build GOP opposition to Afghan refugees
“Everyone thought that it would be temporary,” Sazak said. “I think it’s only recently that the Turkish population understood that these people are not going back. They are only recently understanding that they have to become neighbors, economic competitors, colleagues with this foreign population.”
On a recent visit to Turkey, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi acknowledged that the high number of refugees had created social tensions, especially in the country’s big cities. He urged “donor countries and international organizations to do more to help Turkey.”
The prospect of a new influx of refugees following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has reinforced the unreceptive public mood. Videos purporting to show young Afghan men being smuggled into Turkey from Iran caused public outrage and led to calls for the government to safeguard the country’s borders.
The government says there are about 300,000 Afghans in Turkey, some of whom hope to continue their journeys to reach Europe.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who long defended an open-door policy toward refugees, recently recognized the public’s “unease” and vowed not to allow the country to become a “warehouse” for refugees. Erdogan’s government sent soldiers to Turkey’s eastern frontier with Iran to stem the expected flow of Afghans and is speeding up the construction of a border wall.
Read: California governor seeks $16.7M in aid for Afghan refugees
Immigration is expected to become a top campaign topic even though Turkey’s next general election is two years away. Both Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, and the nationalist IYI Party have promised to work on creating conditions that would allow the Syrian refugees’ return.
Following the anti-Syrian violence in the Altindag district of Ankara last month, Umit Ozdag, a right-wing politician who recently formed his own anti-immigrant party, visited the area wheeling an empty suitcase and saying the time has come for the refugees to “start packing.”
The riots broke out on Aug. 11, a day after a Turkish teenager was stabbed to death in a fight with a group of young Syrians. Hundreds of people chanting anti-immigrant slogans took to the streets, vandalized Syrian-run shops and hurled rocks at refugees’ homes.
A 30-year-old Syrian woman with four children who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals said her family locked themselves in their bathroom as an attacker climbed onto their balcony and tried to force the door open. The woman said the episode traumatized her 5-year-old daughter and the girl has trouble sleeping at night.
Some shops in the area remain closed, with traces of the disturbance still visible on their dented, metal shutters. Police have deployed multiple vehicles and a water cannon on the streets to prevent a repeat of the turmoil.
Syrians are often accused of failing to assimilate in Turkey, a country that has a complex relationship with the Arab world dating back to the Ottoman Empire. While majority Muslim like neighboring Arab countries, Turks trace their origins to nomadic warriors from central Asia and Turkish belongs to a different language group than Arabic.
Kerem Pasaoglu, a pastry shop owner in Istanbul, said he wants Syrians to go back to their country and is bothered that some shops a street over have signs written in Arabic instead of Turkish.
Read: EU ministers meet to discuss Afghanistan, refugees
“Just when we said we are getting used to Syrians or they will leave, now the Afghans coming is unfortunately very difficult for us,” he said.
Turkey’s foreign minister this month said Turkey is working with the United Nations’ refugee agency to safely return Syrians to their home country.
While the security situation has stabilized in many parts of Syria after a decade of war, forced conscription, indiscriminate detentions and forced disappearances continue to be reported. Earlier this month, Amnesty International said some Syrian refugees who returned home were subjected to detention, disappearance and torture at the hands of Syrian security forces, proving that going back to any part of the country is unsafe.
Shon said police in Istanbul showed little sympathy when she reported the attack by her neighbors. She said officers kept her at the station for hours, while the male neighbor who threatened and beat her was able to leave after giving a brief statement.
Shon fled Aleppo in 2012, when the city became a battleground between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters. She said the father of her children drowned while trying to make it to Europe. Now, she wonders whether Turkey is the right place for her and her children.
“I think of my children’s future. I try to support them in any way I can, but they have a lot of psychological issues now and I don’t know how to help them overcome it,” she said. “I don’t have the power anymore. I’m very tired.
Mia Seppo lauds Bangladesh’s Covid control
UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh Mia Seppo has appreciated the joint efforts in testing, tracing and treating patients, and thus keeping the pandemic under control in Bangladesh.
"I’ve been delighted to see how the support provided by the United Nations and our partners has enabled the government to employ innovative methods of testing, tracing and treating patients, and thus keeping the pandemic under control in Bangladesh,” she said.
When Covid-19 arrived in Bangladesh in March 2020, Mia said, there were serious concerns over how the country’s health system would be able to cope with the overwhelming challenges posed by the pandemic.
Read: Climate crisis no longer a looming crisis: Mia Seppo
She made the remarks after a delegation from the Government, United Nations, and NGO partners observed efforts to combat COVID-19 transmission in Dhaka.
Senior Secretary of the Health Services Division Lokman Hossain Miah and Additional Director General of DGHS, Prof Dr Nasima Sultana also joined the field mission.
The Senior Secretary praised the Government’s partners for their support in containing the pandemic in Bangladesh.
With funding provided by the World Bank Pandemic Emergency Funding Facility, USAID and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the United Kingdom (FCDO), the government of Bangladesh, several United Nations agencies (FAO, UNFPA, UNICEF, WFP and WHO), non-governmental and civil society organizations are conducting an innovative initiative to reduce the transmission of Covid-19 in communities across Bangladesh.
Read: World needs journalists more than ever: Mia Seppo
The programme – called the Community Support Team (CST) initiative – deploys teams of volunteers into low-income urban slum communities to help identify symptomatic Covid-19 cases and supports them and their families with home-based case management, hospital referral, telemedicine support, and screens for vulnerable individuals with pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and hypertension.
CST teams are also assisting households with on-the-spot vaccination registration and vaccine card printing.
The teams consist of local volunteers and trained community health workers from a variety of NGO partners, including BRAC, CDP, Himu, and Platform. CST members also distribute locally made cloth masks, provide counseling and guide communities on preventing the spread of the virus by maintaining strict health and safety measures.
Top Pakistan diplomat details Taliban plan
Be realistic. Show patience. Engage. And above all, don’t isolate. Those are the pillars of an approach emerging in Pakistan to deal with the fledgling government that is suddenly running the country next door once again — Afghanistan’s resurgent, often-volatile Taliban.
Pakistan’s government is proposing that the international community develop a road map that leads to diplomatic recognition of the Taliban — with incentives if they fulfill its requirements — and then sit down face to face and talk it out with the militia’s leaders.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi outlined the idea Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly’s meeting of world leaders.
“If they live up to those expectations, they would make it easier for themselves, they will get acceptability, which is required for recognition,” Qureshi told the AP. “At the same time, the international community has to realize: What’s the alternative? What are the options? This is the reality, and can they turn away from this reality?”
He said Pakistan “is in sync with the international community” in wanting to see a peaceful, stable Afghanistan with no space for terrorist elements to increase their foothold, and for the Taliban to ensure “that Afghan soil is never used again against any country.”
“But we are saying, be more realistic in your approach,” Qureshi said. “Try an innovative way of engaging with them. The way that they were being dealt with has not worked.”
Read: Saarc FMs' meet on UN assembly sidelines called off over Afghanistan
Expectations from the Taliban leadership could include an inclusive government and assurances for human rights, especially for women and girls, Qureshi said. In turn, he said, the Afghan government might be motivated by receiving development, economic and reconstruction aid to help recover from decades of war.
He urged the United States, the International Monetary Fund and other countries that have frozen Afghan government funds to immediately release the money so it can be used “for promoting normalcy in Afghanistan.” And he pledged that Pakistan is ready to play a “constructive, positive” role in opening communications channels with the Taliban because it, too, benefits from peace and stability.
This is the second time that the Taliban, who adhere to a strict version of Islam, have ruled Afghanistan. The first time, from 1996 to 2001, ended when they were ousted by a U.S.-led coalition after the 9/11 attacks, which were directed by Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan.
During that rule, Taliban leaders and police barred girls from school and prohibited women from working outside the home or leaving it without a male escort. After they were overthrown, Afghan women still faced challenges in the male-dominated society but increasingly stepped into powerful positions in government and numerous fields.
But when the U.S. withdrew its military from Afghanistan last month, the government collapsed and a new generation of the Taliban resurged, taking over almost immediately. In the weeks since, many countries have expressed disappointment that the Taliban’s interim government is not inclusive as its spokesman had promised.
While the new government has allowed young girls to attend school, it has not yet allowed older girls to return to secondary school, and most women to return to work despite a promise in April that women “can serve their society in the education, business, health and social fields while maintaining correct Islamic hijab.”
Pakistan, which shares a long border with Afghanistan, has a long and sometimes conflicted relationship with its neighbor that includes attempts to prevent terrorism there and, some say, also encouraging it. The Islamabad government has a fundamental vested interest in ensuring that whatever the new Afghanistan offers, it is not a threat to Pakistan.
Read: Afghanistan’s Taliban want to address General Assembly: UN
That, Qureshi says, requires a steady and calibrated approach.
“It has to be a realistic assessment, a pragmatic view on both sides, and that will set the tone for recognition eventually,” the Pakistani minister said. The good news, he said: The Taliban are listening, “and they are not insensitive to what is being said by neighbors and the international community.”
How does he know they’re listening? He says the interim government, drawn mostly from Afghanistan’s dominant Pashtun ethnic group, made some additions on Tuesday. It added representatives from the country’s ethnic minorities — Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, who are Shiite Muslims in the majority Sunni Muslim country.
“Yes, there are no women yet,” Qureshi said. “But let us let the situation evolve.”
He stressed that the Taliban must make decisions in coming days and weeks that will enhance their acceptability.
“What the international community can do, in my view, is sit together and work out a roadmap,” Qureshi said. “And if they fulfill those expectations, this is what the international community can do to help them stabilize their economy. This is the humanitarian assistance that can be provided. This is how they can help rebuild Afghanistan, reconstruction and so on and so forth.”
He added: “With this roadmap ahead, I think an international engagement can be more productive.”
On Wednesday night, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said after a meeting of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council that all five nations — the United States, China, Britain, Russia and France — want “an Afghanistan at peace, stable, where humanitarian aid can be distributed without problems or discrimination.”
He also described a hoped-for “Afghanistan where the rights of women and girls are respected, an Afghanistan that won’t be a sanctuary for terrorism, an Afghanistan where we have an inclusive government representing the different sectors of the population.”
Read: Fearful US residents in Afghanistan hiding out from Taliban
Qureshi said there are different forums where the international community can work out the best way to approach the situation. In the meantime, he asserted, things seem to be stabilizing. Less than six weeks after the Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, he said, Pakistan has received information that the law-and-order situation has improved, fighting has stopped and many internally displaced Afghans are going home.
“That’s a positive sign,” Qureshi said.
He said Pakistan hasn’t seen a new influx of Afghan refugees — a sensitive issue for Pakistanis, who are highly motivated to prevent it. A humanitarian crisis, a foundering economy and workers who return to jobs and school but aren’t getting salaries and don’t have money could cause Afghans to flee across the porous border into Pakistan, which has suffered economically from such arrivals over decades of conflict.
Qureshi prescribed patience and realism. After all, he says, every previous attempt to stabilize Afghanistan has failed, so don’t expect new efforts to produce immediate success with the Taliban. If the United States and its allies “could not convince them or eliminate them in two decades, how will you do it in the next two months or the next two years?” he wondered.
Asked whether he had a prediction of what Afghanistan might be like in six months, Qureshi turned the question back on his AP interviewer, replying: “Can you guarantee me U.S. behavior over the next six months?”
China, US unveil separate big steps to fight climate change
The two biggest economies and largest carbon polluters in the world announced separate financial attacks on climate change Tuesday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country will no longer fund coal-fired power plants abroad, surprising the world on climate for the second straight year at the U.N. General Assembly. That came hours after U.S. President Joe Biden announced a plan to double financial aid to poorer nations to $11.4 billion by 2024 so those countries could switch to cleaner energy and cope with global warming’s worsening impacts. That puts rich nations close to within reach of its long-promised but not realized goal of $100 billion a year in climate help for developing nations.
“This is an absolutely seminal moment,” said Xinyue Ma, an expert on energy development finance at Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center.
Read: Biden aims to enlist allies in tackling climate, COVID, more
This could provide some momentum going into major climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, in less than six weeks, experts said. Running up to the historic 2015 Paris climate deal, a joint U.S.-China agreement kickstarted successful negotiations. This time, with China-U.S. relations dicey, the two nations made their announcements separately, hours and thousands of miles apart.
“Today was a really good day for the world,” United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the upcoming climate negotiations, told Vice President Kamala Harris.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has made a frenetic push this week for bigger efforts to curb climate change called the two announcements welcome news, but said “we still have a long way to go” to make the Glasgow meeting successful.
Depending on when China’s new coal policy goes into effect, it could shutter 47 planned power plants in 20 developing countries that use the fuel that emits the most heat-trapping gases, about the same amount of coal power as from Germany, according to the European climate think-tank E3G.
“It’s a big deal. China was the only significant funder of overseas coal left. This announcement essentially ends all public support for coal globally,” said Joanna Lewis, an expert on China, energy and climate at Georgetown University. “This is the announcement many have been waiting for.”
From 2013 to 2019, data showed that China was financing 13% of coal-fired power capacity built outside China – “far and away the largest public financier,” said Kevin Gallagher, who directs the Boston University center. Japan and South Korea announced earlier this year that they were getting out of the coal-financing business.
With all three countries pulling out of financing coal abroad “that sends a signal to the global economy. This is a sector that’s fast becoming a stranded asset,” Gallagher said.
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