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As 2021 draws to a close, there is little doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to dominate and change our lives in unimaginable ways. The pandemic which is far from over is perhaps one of the few events that have adversely affected the entire world. So far it has caused a staggering 5,324,969 deaths globally and has left millions without jobs and livelihoods. The new Omicron variant once again, at the year's end is overwhelming countries. It's threatening the fragile new normal we were hoping for. And while the Pandemic rages and continues to leave death and devastation in its trail,here's a look at the biggest international news events that have irrevocably changed the world's history.

The most defining images of the desperation ofpeople were witnessed in Afghanistan. Lakhs thronging the Kabul airport and the country's land borders,hanging on to any vestige of hope that they could escape the return of the brutal Taliban. After 20 years the US' chaotic and violent pullout left the country in a state of complete disarray. The Taliban, the poster boys of right-wing Islamist terror, were quick to take control and return the country to a terrifying archaic rule. Today, Afghanistan is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis, with millions staring at starvation and the country being set back decades in terms of its economy. Female education and inclusivity have been ignored and the world has also failed Afghanistan's women.

The Coronavirus pandemic has seen a distinct anti-China sentiment across the world. China's lack of transparency, geo-political tensions, unwanted aggression on its neighbours and in the South China sea have led to a re-aligning of world powers. The United States of America whose previous Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe called China the greatest threat to America" has been at the forefront of an anti-China bloc. The AUKUS, formed in September which includes Australia, the United Kingdom and the US is seen as the most significant security arrangement between the three nations since World War Two. It's also seen as an attempt by world powers to draw a line in the sand and begin countering China's aggressive moves. Another regional alliance that's been formed is the QUAD. Initially put together as a loose grouping between India, Japan, Australia, and the US, it has in the past year taken a more formal structure. While it has a broad range of issues on its agenda, all member nations are wary of China's growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.

2021 has been a remarkable year for space exploration. We witnessed over 100 space missions this year and most of them were highly successful. The pinnacle of space exploration was perhaps the three missions to Mars. The UAE, US and China all managed to land their space crafts on the red planet. NASAs Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity helicopter have been exploring the Red Planet since touching down in February. 2021 was also the year when the world's richest took holidays in space,even if they were brief. Billionaire Jeff Bezos, his brother and two others travelled in a capsule with the biggest windows flown in space. The views of the Earth were stunning and when the capsule touched down after the 10-minute, 10-second flight, Jeff Bezos exclaimed: "Best day ever!" Billionaire Sir Richard Branson also successfully reached the edge of space onboard his Virgin Galactic rocket plane. Branson and his team of astronauts flew high above New Mexico in the US in the vehicle that his company had been developing for 17 years. The trip he said was the "experience of a lifetime".

Who would have ever imagined that the world's oldest democracy would witness scenes of absolute chaos and mayhem as hundreds of former US President Donald Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC. Lawmakers were forced to take shelter, the building was put into lockdown, the form US Vice President Mike Pence was evacuated and five people died. All this on the day when a joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes that would formalize then-President-elect Joe Biden's victory. Images of the insurrection shocked horrified and anguished Americans. And the deep political divisions that mark US politics stood exposed to the world. President-elect Joe Biden described the violence as "one of the darkest days in the history of our nation".

An intense heatwave in the Pacific Northwest lead to record temperatures in the US and Canada leaving over 400 people dead.Images of a submerged Germany and Belgium after flash floods left destruction and death in their wake,thousands displaced and hundreds dead in China's Henan after torrential rains swept through the province, intense landslides in Uttarakhand and flooding in parts of South India are all testaments to the rapid change in world's climate. Yet is enough being done to halt climate change? It was with that in mind that the UN summit COP 26 met in Glasgow this year. While the summit delivered on its primary goal of keeping alive the Paris Agreements aim to limit global warming to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, it failed to make significant progress on climate finance. Not just that a lot will depend on how countries individually act to bring down emissions and deliver on climate goals.

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Global events of 2021: US withdrawal from Afghanistan to COP 26; here's what went down - Republic World

The Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation on Tuesday said three radar systems are being installed in the country and their installation will be completed within one and a half months.

Imamuddin Ahmadi, spokesman of the ministry, said 12 radar systems valued at 112 million euros were bought from France. Three have been dispatched to the country and nine others will arrive in the future.

The three radar systems are being installed by a French company in Kabul, Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif.

The installation is ongoing, and the systems might start operating within one and a half months, Ahmadi said.

The ministry said the new radar systems are equipped with modern technology and can identify airplanes passing through Afghanistans airspace.

Meanwhile, a number of economic analysts said the modern radar systems will increase the international airlines trust in Afghanistans airspace which will result in an increase in air traffic and thus an increase in income of the country.

This can lead to an increase in air traffic in Afghanistans airspace and it can become a good revenue source, Abdul Nasir Reshtia, an economic analyst said.

Meanwhile, a number of former officials of the transport and civil aviation ministry said in the past many international airlines did not fly over Afghanistans airspace due to lack of safety in the airspace.

If the Islamic Emirate can use it optimally, increase capacities, gain the trust of international airlines and assure them over the airspaces safety, more airlines will fly over Afghan airspace, Imam Mohammad Varimach, the former deputy minister of transport ministry, said.

The Islamic Emirate said the new radar systems will be used for controlling the airspace and for tracking civil and military planes.

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Radar Systems to Be Installed Around Afghanistan - TOLOnews

About 12,000 Afghan refugees will begin 2022 in UK hotels as the government struggles to persuade enough councils to find permanent homes for the new arrivals, the Guardian has learned.

Of the 16,500 people airlifted from Afghanistan to the UK since August, over 4,000 individuals have either moved into a settled home or are in the process of being moved or matched to a suitable home, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The rest wait eagerly for news of where they will begin to rebuild their lives, though many say their hearts remain in Afghanistan, where they hope to return one day.

They will not be evenly distributed across the UK after the government decided not to force local authorities to rehouse the refugees. More than 300 local authorities in the UK have stepped up to offer permanent accommodation, according to a Home Office spokesperson.

According to the most recent figures, by the end of September, councils in Yorkshire and the Humber had welcomed 213 of the 770 Afghans resettled across the UK this year. Ninety-two of those were in Bradford, compared with just 24 across all the London councils. After Bradford, Edinburgh was the city to have resettled the most Afghans this year: 67.

As of 7 December, about 7,500 people had been relocated to the UK under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap), which offered sanctuary to any current or former UK government employees who faced intimidation or a threat to their life.

Operation Pitting, the Afghan airlift in August, brought 15,000 people to the UK. Since the evacuation, a further 1,500 people have followed.

More than 12,000 Afghan evacuees remained in bridging accommodation as of 22 December, according to sources at both the DWP and Home Office. At least 4,000 of those are in London, according to London Councils, the local government association for Greater London.

London council officials described the situation in hotels as chaos and expressed particular concern about the unsuitability of hotels in the long term to accommodate the large number of children currently living in them.

Many now have community ties with London, children have started school and as time goes by it will be harder to uproot them and move them to a different part of the country where there is a greater supply of affordable accommodation. While the government made housing grants available for the new arrivals, none of the Afghans who arrived in the UK after 31 August are eligible for these grants.

The vast majority of Afghan refugees stuck in hotels are not able to work yet because they do not have permanent addresses and cannot guarantee to an employer that they will not be shipped across the country with minimal notice.

Benafsha Yaqoobi, a visually impaired commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, who has been living in a four-star central London hotel since August, said the local council had advised some Afghans that they could not work while they were stuck in the hotels.

Some guests were very excited to have found jobs, only to be told they could not take them, she said, because it was not known where they would be relocated, they could end up in Scotland.

Living in a hotel for so long was hard, said Yaqoobi, who is sharing a room with her husband, Mehdi Salami, who is also visually impaired. For me, for all Afghan people who are here, its very difficult, especially with Covid increasing these days. In a hotel and living like this, its not easy.

When the Guardian spoke to Yaqoobi in September, she pleaded for world leaders to help more disabled people flee Afghanistan. She continues to be very worried about the disabled children she used to help with her charity, the Rahyab Organisation, who she had to leave behind, and hopes to begin studying for a PhD.

Three months on, she has struck up a friendship with Mozghan Shaban, a DWP employee originally from Afghanistan, who spent several weeks going from hotel to hotel in London helping the new arrivals apply for universal credit.

The DWP had processed more than 3,000 claims for universal credit, as of 3 December, covering more than 4,700 people. The government legislated to exempt those arriving under the Afghan relocation and resettlement schemes from the usual residency tests which restrict access to certain benefits upon arrival in the UK.

Shaban, whose family fled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, can speak Farsi, one of the main Afghan languages, and was well placed to help the new arrivals navigate British bureaucracy.

She is well known around the hotels for her jokes, reassuring the guests that they do not need to fear their new country the worst youll get is rain. She describes herself as a therapist, mum, sister who helps them understand British customs and culture and particularly gender roles.

Some of the families who have come here are very, very traditional, she said. Its quite customary for a girl or woman to stand up and offer her seat to, say, her brother or her father. Thats just a thing that we do out of respect, because in Afghanistan men are treated as gods and women, not so much.

She preempts cultural misunderstandings too: I had to explain to people that if they go out on the street, dont stare too much at a woman. And to explain that the LGBTQ community is quite large here.

She has been amazed by the Afghans positivity: The energy that they have for life is just so inspiring. Theyve been knocked out several times over decades and decades of war and they still get up and theyre still willing to rebuild the life in a completely different country, not knowing the language, not knowing the environment, not knowing anything.

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12,000 Afghan refugees to start new year stuck in UK hotels - The Guardian

Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, the US and its allies have watched and waited to see how the group would govern before deciding whether to recognize their leadership and lift financial sanctions. But as critical programs run out of funding and the threat of mass starvation looms, this approach is no longer tenable.

WASHINGTON, DC The Afghan economy is in free fall. Public-sector employees teachers, health-care workers, bureaucrats, police are not being paid, the currency has lost a fifth of its value, and shortages of food, medicines, and everyday products are growing. Even when these items are available, many households cannot afford to buy them.

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It was inevitable that the countrys takeover by the Taliban and the withdrawal of American and allied forces would leave most Afghans economically worse off and personally less free. Still, few anticipated the speed and scale of the humanitarian catastrophe now taking shape.

While the international community decides how to calibrate its response or if it should respond at all life in Afghanistan is becoming more difficult. Aid flows, which financed 75% of the countrys national budget before the Taliban seized power, have mostly dried up. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have halted their substantial funding. Afghanistans $7 billion of reserves in the United States have been frozen by President Joe Bidens administration. And fear of violating sanctions has stopped banks and businesses from engaging even in permitted activities.

In addition, education and health programs risk closure not because of decisions by the new government, but because they have no money. This, too reflects the international communitys indecision about how best to approach Afghanistan under the Taliban.

On one side, there are calls to respond urgently to the humanitarian crisis and continue to work to preserve the gains of the past two decades in human development, especially for women and girls. For this to happen, aid and trade need to keep flowing, and the international community must engage with the countrys new leaders. A small subset of this group would go further, arguing that the international community must accept the reality of the new government and work with it more broadly, just as it does with many other governments that represent objectionable policies and behavior.

On the other side are those who start from the premise that Afghanistan is now ruled by a party that has taken power by force. Moreover, the Talibans values and policies are fundamentally at odds with what the international community has promoted for the last two decades, and its early actions hold little promise of a smooth future relationship. For this camp, any action that helps bolster the popularity or effectiveness of the Talibans government, even as a collateral effect, crosses a red line.

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Those who are reluctant to provide aid want to be sure that any funds given to Afghanistan are not diverted to general expenditures that strengthen the new government. They also want to ensure that easing access to funding is matched by positive actions from the Afghan leadership. These are valid points, but they will not convince the 23 million Afghans at risk of starvation as the harsh winter approaches.

As images of widespread hunger force Afghanistan back into the global spotlight, the calls to increase financial support will be hard to resist. Those calls will be stronger if even a small fraction of desperate Afghans vote with their feet and trigger a new, massive refugee crisis. For some perspective, consider that nearly a third of Syrias pre-civil war population of 20 million became refugees, with an additional third internally displaced. Afghanistans population is close to 40 million.

The consequences of an imploding Afghanistan, with or without Taliban leadership, will not be contained within the countrys insecure and porous borders. At a minimum, Afghanistans neighbors will feel the effects of its economic, security, and humanitarian crises and they are not well positioned to manage these challenges.

Careful, considered work to loosen financial restrictions needs to start now, taking into account some consequential trade-offs. Two actions could provide near-term, targeted relief.

First, the US Treasury needs to clarify the scope and operation of financial sanctions for humanitarian and development work and to broaden the range of permitted activities. The Treasury should apply to Afghanistan the lessons from its own review of sanctions programs, which calls for greater precision and better targeting to avoid unintended consequences for civilian populations.

Second, the international community should allow a limited, monitored release of Afghanistans frozen reserves to pay for essential imports of food, fuel, and medicine. Access could start small and be audited independently, with an option to terminate in the event of misuse.

Both of these proposals can be implemented relatively quickly, and both have recent precedents specifically, in relations with Venezuela and Yemen.

When faced with difficult choices, there is a natural tendency to delay. These targeted measures will, of course, attract criticism from both those who think they fall short and those who believe they go too far. But opting for a middle path now is unambiguously better than delaying a decision in the hope that a more attractive option will emerge.

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Saving Afghanistan Despite the Taliban by Masood Ahmed - Project Syndicate

With the Taliban regime completing four months in power in Afghanistan next week, its leadership has conveyed to the US government that it would be ready with a roadmap for an inclusive government by the end of March 2022, News18.com has learnt.

Sources told News18 that Taliban leadership in the last meeting with the US State Departments Special Representative Thomas West has conveyed that that they need four months to conclude consultations with their top leadership to shape a roadmap for an inclusive government in the war-torn country.

Though sources added that this is just way of buying more time and it is to be seen if Taliban stood by its words. It is noteworthy that many countries, including India, have been of the view that an inclusive government should be formed in Afghanistan that represents the will of all the people of Afghanistan and has representation from all sections of their society, including major ethno-political forces in the country.

Turkey is providing space to the Resistance for talks

The Resistance leaders are regularly meeting in Turkey to chalk out a strategy to build pressure on the Taliban regime to form an inclusive government, and ensure human rights of the women, children and minority communities are upheld, sources said, adding that Salahuddin Rabbani, Ustad Sayyaf, former vice-President Sarwar Danish, Ustad Khalili, Mohammed Masoom Stanekzai, former vice-president Karim Khalili, former interior minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar, former Head of NDS Rahmatullah Nabil are in regular touch and are holding meetings in Turkey.

It may be small or big, but resistance is there from within and outside the country and soon Amrullah Saleh and Ahmed Masood may also travel to Turkey to hold talks with other resistance leaders, the sources said.

The motive is to put pressure on Taliban to form inclusive government through diplomatic means, developing international pressure and pressure within the country, they added.

Whats interesting to note is that though countries like Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan do not provide space for such consultations, Turkey is providing it, along with Iran.

Modalities being worked out for Indias humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan

Sources told News18 that India and Pakistan are engaged in working out the modalities for transporting 50 thousand MT Wheat and medicines to Afghanistan through the Wagah-Attari Border. The Afghan Trucks are allowed till Wagah and trade between India and Afghanistan is going on, they said, but added that these trucks are going back empty.

They also informed that Afghanistan diplomats have suggested that the trucks going empty could be put use to send assistance back to Afghanistan, but there is no agreement as of yet.

Meanwhile, sources in Afghanistan have suggested that Indian Government should also appoint a Special Representative for Afghanistan for having direct talks with Taliban leadership, like countries such as the US, China, Pakistan, Iran and Russia have done.

2,500 Afghan Students stuck in Afghanistan

With the fall of Afghanistan, over 2,500 Afgan students, who were studying in different educational institutions in India, remain stranded in the war-torn country. They are students of Delhi University, JNU, Jamia Islamia and other institutes and cannot travel to India as there are no direct flights, and their Indian visas revoked after the fall of Kabul. Afghanistan Envoy to India, Farid Mamundzay told News18, Its important to bring these 2,500 students to India to resume their studies and hopefully contribute the rebuilding of Afghanistan in the future.

Even with the Taliban taking over the country, the whole of Afghanistan is not Taliban, he added.

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Taliban to Present Roadmap for 'Inclusive Govt' in Afghanistan by March 2022 as 'Resistance' Talks Go On - News18