[AMUtv] A religious school catering exclusively to women and girls has commenced operations in Kabul, offering accommodation for up to 400 students.
Led by the Imamiyya Religious Scholars Council, the school champions women’s right to education. Students at the institution expressed their desire for regular schools to reopen as they consider attending such schools their only viable option.
For girls who refuse to let their education be interrupted, this specialized school, limited to four hundred students, represents their sole hope.
The council which advocates for the establishment of schools for girls hoped for a swift reopening of schools and universities.
"I hope that schools and universities are reopened to our dear daughters as soon as possible. And those women who need to work, a suitable working environment should be provided for them," Mohammad Hossein Jafari, the head of the council, told Amu on Sunday.
According to student Nargis, "All students, teachers, and staff members are women."
Under Taliban ...mindless ferocity in a turban... rule, girls beyond the sixth grade are prohibited from attending schools and universities remain closed to them as well. However, denial ain't just a river in Egypt... religious schools supervised or managed by the Taliban allow girls to continue their studies.
Zainab, a student, shared her motivation for enrolling, stating, "To avoid forgetting my lessons and to secure a future, I have enrolled here."
Farishta Mohammadi, another student, encouraged families to permit their daughters to join the madrassa, stating, "We’re studying the Koran as well, and I encourage other families to allow their daughters to join this madrassa."
These madrasas primarily focus on religious subjects. With regular schools closed, women and girls in Afghanistan view these institutions as an alternative for continuing their education. Nevertheless, their primary aspiration remains the reopening of schools and universities.
[BangkokPost] While the Taliban have erased most obvious vestiges of the US nation-building effort in Afghanistan, the cultural legacy of two decades of American occupation has been harder to stamp out
There's a glimmer of the old Kabul hiding in the new one -- if you know where to look.
It's there in the crowded snooker halls where young men in jeans hover around velvet tables and yell "nice shot" in English. It lives on in the dark rooms of video game dens where teenage boys lounge on couches playing Call of Duty and Fifa, posters of famous footballers plastered on the walls.
Continued on Page 49
#1
I was there in the early days. First trip was 19 Jan 2001 to about 31 Jan 2002. We hand pumped gas from 55 gallon drums on the main street. Kabul Airport was in shambles and we flew in to Bagram on... well you know. Slept in the Embassy w/broken windows and no running water. Travelled around to Herat, Mazar, and Kandahar w/Ambo. Many TDYs (6) and a year long assignment in 2014/15. Like many - left a part of me there.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
07/17/2023 7:16 Comments ||
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[ToloNews] The "Commission for the Return and Communications with Former Afghan Officials and Political Figures" said that in the past week, 15 members of the previous government, including political and military figures, returned to the country.
Ahmadullah Wasiq, the commission's spokesperson, told TOLOnews that over 600 Afghans living abroad, including high-ranking officials of the previous government, have filled out forms in order to return to Afghanistan.
"So far, 605 individuals have returned to their country, of which 15 people returned in the last week alone. These figures include former ministers, governors, deputies, and members of parliament," Wasiq said.
Meanwhile, ...back at the fist fight, Jake ducked another roundhouse, then parried with his left, then with his right, finally with his chin... some political figures who have returned to the country asked the current government to provide work to professionals in the country.
"The commission plan is very successful, but the government should provide work opportunities to those who come to the country based on their competence and professionalism," said Aziz Safi, the former secretary of the Kapisa Provincial Council in the previous government.
Other political figures who have returned to the country emphasize that the Islamic Emirate should further facilitate the return of the country's citizens.
"Those who have returned to the country should be in direct contact with the relevant institutions so that they can be used in a positive way," said Amanullah Ghalib, former head of Breshna Company.
"It would be good that a constitution is made in Afghanistan and the security institutions regulate the duties under their authority, as well as if the problem of caretakers as ministers is resolved and the rights of the Afghan people are clarified. Then, every political figure in Afghanistan will feel safe and consider the government to be their own," said Kamal Nasser Osoli, a former member of the house of representatives in the previous government.
According to the figures of the "Commission for the Return and Communications with Former Afghan Officials and Political Figures", 605 people have returned to the country since the beginning of the commission's activity.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] A representative of the Taliban movement (an organization whose activities are banned in the Russian Federation) was invited to Moscow to participate in a discussion of the situation in Afghanistan. This was announced on July 16 by Assistant Director for Public Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan Hafiz Zia Ahmad .
"Russian Ambassador Dmitry Zhirnov the day before [July 15] met with [Afghan Foreign Minister] Mavlawi Amir Khan Muttaki and provided information on the upcoming Moscow format meeting on Afghanistan, and also invited the Foreign Minister to take part in this meeting," Ahmad was quoted as saying by link to the message in the social network "Interfax".
According to him, at the July 15 meeting in Kabul, the head of the Afghan Foreign Ministry expressed his gratitude for the invitation to Moscow. Muttaki called the Moscow format an important platform for resolving the situation in Afghanistan.
Muttaki reminded Zhirnov that representatives of the Afghan government had already come to Moscow for talks in 2021, but last year the Moscow format meeting took place without them.
Regarding the meeting to which he was invited, the Afghan Foreign Minister told the Russian diplomat that this event should be used in the context of diplomatic relations.
The Taliban, an organization banned in Russia, has been in power in Afghanistan since August 2021. She came to power as a result of a coup d'état, which occurred against the backdrop of the departure of the American contingent from the republic.
In 2022, the Moscow format held a meeting in November, and in 2021 in October. At the talks in 2021, a delegation headed by Deputy Chairman of the Interim Government of Afghanistan Abdul Salam Hanafi came to Moscow .
According to the results of the meeting, the head of the third political department of the Afghan Foreign Ministry, Zakir Jalali , all participants in the meeting supported the decision on the need to unfreeze the assets of Afghanistan, which Washington froze.
The Moscow format includes Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It has been functioning as a platform for resolving the situation in Afghanistan since 2017.
[HODHODYEMENNEWS.NET] The UN vessel arrived Sunday at Hodeidah Port for pumping out oil from the Safer floating ship; tomorrow it will be officially received in the presence of the concerned authorities.
The Minister of Transport, Abdel Wahhab al-Durra, said that the ministry has prepared an integrated plan to secure work. "All necessary help will be available to the UN team, working on pumping out the oil on board the Safer ship," he said.
The 376-meter-long Safer floating ship, which has moored 4.8 nautical miles from Ras Issa port in Hodeidah 30 years ago, is a strategic destination for Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... i crude oil, flowing through a pumping pipe coming from Sector 18 in the Safer area in Ma’rib, and Sector 9 in Malik area in Shabwah.
It was converted from a tanker bearing the name "Isso Japan" that was manufactured in 1976, to a floating tank sold to Yemen in 1986. The tank can hold more than four million barrels of crude oil that is sold to foreign ships.
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[IsraelTimes] Elizabeth Tsurkov may have interviewed her Iraqi abductors in Baghdad for her research, Arab sources claim
The SE Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearl got himself killed similarly by Al Qaeda in Karachi in 2002.
Four months after the abduction of Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov in Iraq, new details emerged Sunday on the circumstances of her disappearance.
According to unnamed Arab sources quoted by Channel 12 news, Tsurkov initiated the meeting with her kidnappers as part of her doctoral research on Shiite movements in Iraq, focused on the movement of Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr.
Tsurkov has been missing since late March. Footage released by an Iraqi TV channel supposedly showed the moments before her abduction, as she was leaving the Ridha Alwan cafe in Baghdad’s Karada neighborhood, an area frequented by Westerners, in the company of a man.
Until now, it was not clear how the Shiite group accused of her abduction, the Kataeb Hezbollah militia — a distinct group from the Lebanese Hezbollah — had found out about the presence of an Israeli researcher in the country.
According to the report, it was Tsurkov herself who contacted a Shiite man named Ahmad Alawani, asking for a meeting with his cousin Muhammad Alawani, a bigwig in Kataeb Hezbollah.
During their second meeting with Tsurkov, the two men discovered that she was Israeli, and decided to kidnap her, according to the report. Following her abduction, attempts were apparently made to transfer her to Iran.
Tsurkov, a 36-year old Middle East analyst and a doctoral student at Princeton University, was said to have entered Iraq late last year on her Russian passport. She has been missing since March.
She was reportedly given personal warnings by Israeli officials about traveling to Iraq, in the months leading up to her abduction, following repeated her stays in the country.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that it holds Iraq accountable for her safety and fate, and accused Iraq’s Kataeb Hezbollah of holding her, but the pro-Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... armed faction has implied it was not involved in her disappearance. Kataeb Hezbollah is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, dozens of mostly Shiite militias that were integrated into Iraqi security forces in recent years.
Last week, Asharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic daily, reported that the kidnapping was carried out to pressure Israel to release an imprisoned Iranian operative.
[Dawn] Authorities in the BJP-controlled Maharashtra state have shut down an 800-year-old mosque for Moslem worshippers following a complaint by an RSS-linked Hindu group, The Wire said on Saturday.
It said the mosque in Jalgaon has suddenly become inaccessible to the community after the district collector passed an interim restraining order while hearing a complaint filed by the right-wing organization.
In the order, the collector also directed police deployment in the area. He asked the tehsildar to take charge of the mosque, which he described as "disputed".
The 800-year-old structure is an important place of worship in northern Maharashtra and a property registered under the Waqf Board.
While the collector’s order and his power to pass it have been challenged before the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court, Aslam (one name), a member of the Jumma Masjid Trust, fears that the unprecedented order marks the beginning of the communalisation of a centuries-old mosque in the state, said The Wire.
The mosque suddenly became a site of controversy because of the complaint filed by an unregistered organization called "Pandavwada Sangharsh Samiti". The complainant, Prasad Madhusudan Dandawate, moved a petition before the Jalgaon district collector Aman Mittal in mid-May.
Mr Dandawate, who is reportedly a member of the RSS and Bajrang Dal, claimed the mosque was built over a Hindu place of worship and should be taken over by the state authorities. The complainant also claims that the Jumma Masjid Trust has "illegally" encroached over the space.
A law passed after the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya prohibits damaging or reclaiming old monuments.
The Jumma Masjid Trust members said they were unaware of the claims made until they received a notice in June.
"By then, the collector had already been conducting hearings. In a restricted time, we were asked to defend our case. And on July 11, the collector simply passed a restraining order," Aslam, one of the ad hoc members of the trust committee, said.
Along with the mosque’s trust committee, the Waqf Board and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) were also issued notices.
The ASI has supported the trust’s claims that it is an ancient structure. It said that since the time the ASI was involved in 1986, prayers have been offered in the mosque.
The ASI stated that the mosque has been an open and accessible space for Moslems since time immemorial.
Moin Tahsildar, the CEO of the board, said the collector’s decision to issue a restraining order was outside his mandate and it infringed on the legal jurisdiction of the Waqf tribunal.
"We have challenged the interim order," Mr Tahsildar said.
The Masjid Trust, meanwhile, has moved the high court with documents that are from pre-independence times — including court orders from time to time and those passed by the British Indian government.
I don’t know if the lads are friskier than usual, or if the Dawn editors are looking for more stories to cheer up their readers during a very wet rainy season, but today there were two reports of attacks on minority places of worship in Pakistan.
[Dawn] The Hindu community in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... woke up on Saturday morning to find the old Mari Mata Temple Soldier Bazaar had been razed to the ground.
According to residents of the area, the operation took place while the area was without electricity late on Friday night. That’s when the diggers and a bulldozer arrived to do their work. While leaving the outer walls and the temple’s main gate intact, they demolished the entire inside structure.
The residents have also reported that they saw a police mobile there to provide ’cover’ to the men operating the machines.
They said that the Mari Mata Temple is located on Mukhi Chohitram Road, very near the Soldier Bazaar cop shoppe.
"It is a very old mandir," Shri Ram Nath Mishra Mahraj of another very old temple nearby, the Shri Punch Mukhi Hanuman Mandir, informed Dawn.
"It is said to have been built over 150 years ago. We have also heard of stories about old treasures buried in its courtyard," he said, adding that it covered about 400 to 500 square yards and there had been talk of the land grabbers having their eye on it for some time now.
"The mandir was under the management of the Madrasi Hindu community of Karachi and since it was being said that it was a very old and dangerous structure that might topple any day, the mandir management after much pressure reluctantly but temporarily moved most of their deities to a small room near the storm water drain until they could carry out some renovation work there," he said.
"But last night the Mari Mata Mandir was just flattened," he added.
A member of the Madrasi Hindu community, meanwhile, said that they were being forced to vacate by two persons, namely, Imran Hashmi and Rekha AKA Nagin Bai. There was also talk of the temple being sold off by the two named to another party for an amount of 70 million rupees and the buyers were looking to build a commercial building there. There was also a mention of some fake documents in the name of a person named ’Navaid’, allowing transfer of lease of the amenity plot to a commercial one.
The community has appealed to the Pakistain-Hindu Council, Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah and the Inspector General of Sindh police to take notice and look into the matter on an urgent basis.
[Dawn] A gang of dacoits attacked a place of worship — reportedly with "rocket launchers" —belonging to members of the Hindu community in Sindh’s Kashmore during the early hours of Sunday.
The assailants attacked a place of worship and adjoining homes belonging to the community in the jurisdiction of Ghouspur cop shoppe. They fired indiscriminately, prompting a police unit led by Kashmore-Kandhkot SSP Irfan Sammo to reach the scene.
The police official said that the dacoits fired "rocket launchers" at the place of worship, which was closed during the attack. He added that it opens annually for religious services conducted by the Bagri community.
"The suspects fled from the scene after the attack. Police are conducting a search operation in the area," he said.
SSP Sammo estimated that there were eight to nine button men, whom they were tracking in the riverine areas.
Meanwhile, ...back at the comedy club, Boogie ducked another tomato... Dr Suresh, a member of the Bagri community, said that the "rocket launchers" fired by the dacoits failed to explode, resulting in no loss of life.
He called on the police to protect the community, saying the incident had left the residents in a state of panic.
Chief Minister’s Special Assistant for Human Rights MPA Surendar Valasai said officials were gathering facts about the intended target of the firing.
"I have visited the spot and met the Hindu community. Inquiry into the matter and legal proceedings are being done," he told Dawn.com.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistain (HRCP) said it was alarmed by reports of "deteriorating law and order in the districts of Kashmore and Ghotki in Sindh, where some 30 members of the Hindu community — including women and kiddies — have allegedly been held hostage by organised criminal gangs".
"Moreover, we have received disturbing reports that these gangs have threatened to attack the community’s sites of worship, using high-grade weapons," the commission said, calling on the Sindh Home Department to investigate the matter without delay.
[IsraelTimes] Iranian authorities announce a new campaign to force women to wear the Islamic headscarf, and morality police return to the streets, 10 months after the death of a woman in their custody sparked nationwide protests.
The morality police had largely pulled back following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last September, as authorities struggled to contain mass protests calling for the overthrow of the theocracy that has ruled Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... for over four decades.
The protests largely died down earlier this year following a heavy crackdown in which over 500 protesters were killed and nearly 20,000 detained. But many women continued to flaunt the official dress code, especially in the capital, Tehran, and other cities.
The morality police were only rarely seen patrolling the streets, and in December, there were even some reports — later denied — that they had been disbanded.
Authorities insisted throughout the crisis that the rules had not changed. Iran’s holy manal rulers view the hijab as a key pillar of the Islamic revolution that brought them to power, and consider more casual dress a sign of Western decadence.
Today, Gen. Saeed Montazerolmahdi, a police front man, says the morality police would resume notifying and then detaining women not wearing a hijab in public. In Tehran, the men and women of the morality police can be seen patrolling the streets in marked vans.
[GatestoneInstitute] As repeatedly put by the "Supreme Guide," that [Iran's revolutionary] strategy has two key aims: driving the United States out of the Middle East, or "West Asia" that Khamenei has borrowed from Russian political lexicon, and wiping Israel off the world map. In pursuit of those aims, Tehran is forced to maintain increasingly costly surrogates in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and, more recently in a number of pro-Russian African states. The problem is that those surrogates don't want the Iranian national money, rial, and insist on getting crisp greenbacks. Thus, Iran needs a constant flow of American dollars, precisely the currency that they claim they want to dethrone as the global money. official rate today is about 42k Rial to the Dollar; Unofficial street rate is at least 48k Rial to the Dollar
That's a K as thousands? Ouch.
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/17/2023 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
