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Abdullah Hanif, alongside daughter Hadya as well as Jane Kennedy and Claire Prieur of the Newmarket Together Education Committee, show off a handmade quilt that will be part of an upcoming online auction fundraiser to help bring Hanifs brother and family to Canada from India. They are from Afghanistan, originally. June 13, 2022

Newmarket Together.

Its the community-minded motto behind efforts to bring to Newmarket an Afghan family who fled their homeland in the months leading up to the brutal Taliban regime regaining control of the country last year.

Samiullah Hanif, his wife, Brikhna, and their young children, Omar, Sahar, and Hera are in India but hope to join Samiullahs brother, Abdul Hanif, and his family in Newmarket.

The community is invited to help by participating in an online silent auction at Facebook.com/NewmarketTogether from June 24 to 26.

Residents can bid on dozens of items, from a night in a luxury hotel, Blue Jays tickets, Eagles Nest Golf Club passes and restaurant gift certificates, to sporting goods, tools, household items and gift baskets.

Because Samiullah and Brikhna arent able to work as refugees in India, money raised at the auction will allow Samiullah to put his time there to good use by taking courses to make him more job-ready when they arrive in Newmarket, auction organizer Jill Kellie said.

Samiullah studied economics in Afghanistan and earned his masters degree in business administration in India.

Any additional money raised through the auction will allow Samiullah to earn his chartered accountant credentials in Canada.

I was just thinking that the real story is how our investment now is going to reap such reward in the future. We have the ultra-generous and kind people of Newmarket giving now, we have Abdul volunteering while working two full-time jobs, while he and his beautiful wife manage family and home, Kellie said.

All while (they are) renovating their home in Newmarket to welcome another complete family of five that includes two hardworking adults and three young children.

While its difficult to know when his family will arrive in Canada, Abdul said the application process appears to be going well and discussions with a settlement worker he knows suggest they may be in Newmarket by the end of the year.

He remains in touch with his parents and sisters still in Afghanistan, which is isolated from the rest of the world and facing an uncertain future under the Taliban.

Millions of residents are struggling with severe poverty, malnutrition and lack of education for girls.

As his brother and family cope with some health concerns brought on by the extreme heat of India and lack of health coverage, Abdul said he, his brother and their families are grateful for support from the Newmarket community.

I see people with so much compassion in Newmarket, he said.

The response is very positive and it makes us see that the humanitarian part of our Newmarket is so commendable and people are so awesome to help. I appreciate, we all appreciate, this.

Claire Prieur and Jane Kennedy are two volunteers with Newmarket Together.

I think it is a way of doing something positive when so many in our world are facing the horrors of war and fanaticism. I know in the big picture it is not much but it is something, said Prieur, adding she has been touched by the dedication and commitment of Samiullah and Abdul and their families.

The support of our community and the donors adds to the sense of optimism. Without them we could not do this.

Prieur, Kennedy and other Newmarket Together volunteers have been involved in other humanitarian efforts over many years, including sponsoring Syrian and Vietnamese refugees, Terry Fox runs and the York Region Food Network.

Sometimes I am asked why I work so hard for this but, to be truthful, its not really work at all, Kennedy said.

Like the saying (goes), find a job you love and youll never have to work. I get to visit with my neighbours, spend time with a friend to go shopping, while helping with something that is really important and life-changing for a family which has been terrorized and uprooted from all they know. Tiring? Yes. Hard work? No way. What an opportunity for me to be part of this.

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: When reporter Lisa Queen learned of the Newmarket Together online auction, she thought it was chance to give an update on the community's efforts to bring an Afghan family to town.

Read more:
Newmarket Together: Community comes together to bring family who fled Afghanistan to brother in Newmarket - Toronto Star

After the last evacuation flights left Afghanistan, Homayra Yusufis family was one of many that scrambled to file applications to help their loved ones reach safety in the United States.

Well over half a year later, Yusufis 10 family members, like thousands of others still in danger now that the Taliban has taken over, are still waiting for an answer from the U.S. government.

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More than 41,000 such applications which would allow them to enter the U.S. temporarily under a special program called humanitarian parole are still pending for Afghans, according to statistics provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Of the roughly 4,180 who have received responses so far, only 280 have been approved. The other 3,900, or about 93 percent, were denied.

We hear stories day in and day out about humanitarian parole applicants who are being killed by the Taliban, said Yusufi. Thats just a reality.

The Biden administration has used that same legal process humanitarian parole in a different program designed specifically for Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion of their country. It has moved substantially faster, and with fewer requirements, to quickly grant Ukrainians entry to the United States.

More than 40,000 applications for the Uniting For Ukraine program have been approved since it was created in late April, according to DHS. More than 8,600 Ukrainians have already been paroled into the United States through that effort.

For Yusufi and others, the ease with which Ukrainians have been able to flee to the United States is evidence that their loved ones cases couldve been handled much differently and expediently by the U.S. government.

This demonstrates that when theres a political will, theres a way, said San Diego-based Yusufi. Its great that the Ukrainians are seeking safety and actually finding it. Thats amazing. I wish that other communities were treated similarly.

When asked about the disparity, a DHS spokesperson who spoke on the record but declined to be named pointed to the Afghans who were evacuated as U.S. troops withdrew in August.

The United States swiftly welcomed more than 79,000 Afghans through Operation Allies Welcome, an unprecedented historic effort, providing them with work authorization, immigration benefits, and other support as they begin their new lives in America and we are prepared to welcome additional Afghans over the coming weeks and months, the official said. We also continue to honor the Presidents commitment to Ukrainians fleeing Russias unprovoked war. More than 40,000 Ukrainian nationals have been authorized to travel to the United States to apply for parole since the launch of the Uniting for Ukraine process in April.

Yusufi, who was born in Afghanistan and has been in the United States since the early 1990s, works as deputy director of Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, a nonprofit that supports and empowers refugees and former refugees in the San Diego area. As U.S. troops left Afghanistan, she got involved with organizations and collectives trying to support Afghans grappling with the aftermath, and those left behind. In both roles, as well as in her personal life, Yusufi has kept a close watch on humanitarian parole applications as the picture grows bleaker.

The disparity in treatment, from Yusufis perspective, is a symptom of much broader issues with the way the United States handles situations of forced displacement around the world.

With few options left to them, some Afghans are deciding to try to make it to the U.S.-Mexico border to seek protection that way. The group is small relative to other nationalities seeking asylum at the southwest border Customs and Border Protection officers at ports of entry and Border Patrol agents together encountered 166 Afghans trying to come to the United States without documents so far in 2022, according to data provided by the agency. But that is more than double the total for all of 2021.

More than a hundred supporters, many of them Afghan, marched from the San Diego County Administration building to show their support for the Afghanistan National Resistance Front, an anti-Taliban military alliance, on Sept. 18, 2021.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Humanitarian parole has been used for decades to allow people into the United States quickly when they do not have visas to do so otherwise. Under the law, the reason can be for significant public benefit or humanitarian purposes.

In individual cases, that could mean a relative coming to the United States for a couple of weeks to attend a funeral or say goodbye to a dying loved one. Or, it could be someone needing to receive life-altering medical treatment only available in the U.S.

Generally, the person requesting parole must have a sponsor who agrees to cover any necessary costs during the persons visit including housing, food and medical care. There is also a $575 fee per person not per family. The applicant can request a fee waiver, but that can slow down the process, particularly if the waiver is denied.

Humanitarian parole has also been used in situations when groups of people need to be brought to the United States, often in association with military operations, according to Margaret Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Army who is now an immigration attorney.

Humanitarian parole was used in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Stock said. She also recalled the military using it to evacuate military family members from the Philippines when Mount Pinatubo erupted in the early 1990s.

Before the special immigrant visa program was created by Congress which allows people who worked for the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq to get green cards the Department of Defense would frequently request that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services parole such individuals who were in danger and needed to flee the country, Stock said.

Months before the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Stock testified in Congress that humanitarian parole would be the only way to quickly bring people to safety. As U.S. troops evacuated tens of thousands of Afghans in August, U.S. officials used humanitarian parole to give them temporary permission to enter the country.

Its a standard part of U.S. military planning for military operations to do mass evacuations involving parole, Stock said. The only legal authority thats fast is parole, so thats what they always use.

But in the case of Afghans, once U.S. troops pulled out, access to parole went with them.

In late August, USCIS set up a special website detailing how Afghans who had not been evacuated could apply for humanitarian parole.

Not wanting to risk delaying the applications because of the imminent danger their loved ones were in, families like Yusufis scraped together the money to pay the fees. For Yusufis family, that meant paying $5,750 to cover the 10 applications.

But they did not get the responses they anticipated.

According to allegations in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts on behalf of five other families, USCIS paused processing Afghan applications from early September to sometime in November. Then, USCIS adopted new, stricter standards that meant the vast majority of those applications would be denied, the federal complaint says.

Among the issues, USCIS decided that it could not process applications for Afghans still in Afghanistan because the U.S. consulate there was closed, and USCIS wanted them to have consular interviews where they would be fingerprinted and receive additional vetting as part of their screenings. But when some applicants tried traveling to Pakistan or Iran so that they could go to the U.S. consulates there, they were told that they were no longer in imminent danger and didnt qualify.

Ukrainian refugees are bused from the Deportivo Benito Juarez shelter to the Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana to enter the U.S. on April 6, 2022. Under a new program, Ukrainians dont need to ask for protection at the U.S.-Mexico border but can apply while in other countries and fly directly to the U.S.

(Carlos Moreno/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

However, under the Uniting for Ukraine program, Ukrainians can apply from Ukraine or elsewhere in the world. They do not have to pay any fees. They also do not have to go to consulates to get their paperwork; instead, it is emailed to them.

The most difficult part of the process for many Ukrainians is finding sponsors. Volunteers have set up Facebook groups to help U.S.-based families willing to sign the sponsorship forms to match with waiting Ukrainians.

Some Americans hesitated to sign the forms because of the potential financial responsibilities if, for example, someone is injured and has to go to an emergency room. But recently, Congress passed a bill that makes Ukrainians eligible for certain financial benefits, including Medicaid, that refugees typically receive for their first months in the United States. That lessens the financial obligations for sponsors.

Once Ukrainians find sponsors, the process often takes a matter of days.

The administration keeps creating a new program a new program for these people, a new program for these people, and theyre really all stopgap measures, Yusufi said. They demonstrate the inequities and racism within our immigration system rather than creating an equitable system that is sustainable and thorough and provides the actual long-term support that people fleeing from violence and fleeing for their lives need.

The big difference, said Laila Ayub an immigration attorney and cofounder of Project ANAR, an emergency response project to assist Afghans is that Uniting for Ukraine takes into account that Ukrainains are fleeing and in crisis while the Afghan parole process does not.

"(Uniting for Ukraine) just showed us all of the demands we have been making have been possible to implement, and theres not really a clear explanation for why the government hasnt done so yet, Ayub said.

A man from Ukraine sits among donated toys at a shelter in the Christian church Calvary San Diego for arriving Ukrainians on April 1, 2022.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

Shala Gafary, managing attorney of Project Afghan Legal Assistance for Human Rights First, sees several layers of reasons to explain why the U.S. government treats Ukrainians and Afghans fleeing their countries so differently.

There are the more obvious layers of racism in U.S. immigration policies, as well as in how the people fleeing are perceived by the public and the corresponding pressure for the government to react, when considering various humanitarian crises. But Gafary also points to the fact that Afghans have been fleeing their country for generations, adding to an indifference from the rest of the world.

The longer youre a marginalized, oppressed, targeted population, the more people get sick of you, and so the new population that people feel really sorry for because they, just yesterday, were shopping on Amazon or those silly lines that the media was using theres not the same empathy for them, Gafary said. The longer youre in conflict, the less people feel for you. Its really sad.

But the results of that indifference can be deadly.

A man identified in the Massachusetts lawsuit as Rasul applied for humanitarian parole for six of his family members in Afghanistan. He had already come to the United States after working for the military and had become a U.S. citizen.

He knew that because of his work, as well as that of several of the family members, they would likely be targeted by the Taliban.

If the community sees one family member as disloyal due to their connections to the United States, the entire family carries the perceived stain, the complaint explains.

As their parole applications languished, three of those family members were killed. Rasuls attorney notified USCIS and pushed for the agency to expedite the three surviving family members cases, the complaint says. But they are still waiting.

Adriana Lafaille, the ACLU staff attorney representing the five families in the lawsuit, including Rasuls, said that shes working to expedite the case as much as possible because she knows that the longer it takes, the higher the chances that more plaintiffs will be killed.

Its a continuing concern for us, Lafaille said. We have clients who are in hiding, and every day we worry about what will happen if theyre found.

And despite USCISs assertions that those who have made it to Iran or Pakistan are no longer in imminent danger, Gafary and other attorneys maintain that is not the case.

Gafary said she applied for roughly two dozen of her own family members to receive humanitarian parole. Among them, one of her cousins and his wife are both doctors trained by the United States, making them more likely to be targeted. To make matters worse, their high school-age son was kidnapped a few months before the Taliban took over the country. Though the police of the then-government caught and imprisoned the kidnappers, when the Taliban took control, the kidnappers went free.

Without any movement on their parole applications, Gafarys cousin and his family fled to Iran, where they are living undocumented and worry that they could be deported to their deaths at any moment. Iranians also discriminate against Afghans frequently, Gafary said.

Afghan children cant go to school with Iranian children, Gafary said. They get called garbage and filth every day on the street.

FILE - Families evacuated from Kabul, Afghanistan, walk through the terminal to board a bus after they arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport, in Chantilly, Va., Sept. 1, 2021.

(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

In a denial letter to an Afghan humanitarian parole applicant reviewed by the Union-Tribune, USCIS said that humanitarian parole is not intended to be used in place of the international refugee protection regime or resettlement through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

The U.S. response to refugee situations hinges on two processes, both created in the 1980 Refugee Act.

The first requires someone fleeing their country to go to a country where they can be recognized officially as a refugee through a screening process operated either by that country or the United Nations. Then, they go through years of additional screening and waiting to see if they will be resettled in the United States.

In the 1950s and 60s, the world, through the United Nations, established such refugee systems because of what happened to Jewish migrants fleeing the Nazi regime the same systems cited in the letter from USCIS that it said humanitarian parole is not meant to replace.

But while the Biden administration has promised to bring up to 125,000 new refugees to the United States this fiscal year, which ends in September, only about 12,600 have been allowed to arrive and begin new lives here, according to data from the State Department.

The other process is the asylum system the United States screening process to identify refugees who show up at its borders.

But accessing that asylum system generally requires getting physically onto U.S. soil, which is especially tricky for Afghans.

People from countries near the United States can move by land on often dangerous journeys to the border. And those in many other countries around the world can fly to somewhere in the Americas that doesnt require visas for their nationality and make that same trek.

But nearly every country in the world requires visas from Afghans, Gafary said, precisely because they have been refugees for so long.

Visa denials were also a big part of what Jewish migrants faced during the Holocaust. As a result, many were trapped in the places where they were being killed.

One family of Afghans facing threats from the Taliban managed against the odds to make it to the U.S.-Mexico border. But that was not enough to find protection in the United States.

Their relative, who is already a U.S. citizen after receiving a special immigrant visa for helping the military, had tried to sponsor their humanitarian parole applications, but they gave up on waiting in Afghanistan as their situation grew dire and headed to the Texas border to try, according to Stock, the attorney and retired military officer.

Twice, they were turned away from the United States at a port of entry, Stock said, with officials citing Title 42, a policy that has kept thousands from seeking asylum since the pandemic began.

While the family remains in Mexico and is unsure of their next steps, there may well be more Afghans who choose to try that path because they, too, are out of options.

Go here to read the rest:
Afghans face insurmountable challenges in fleeing to U.S., a stark contrast to arriving Ukrainians - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Chris Thompson-Lang spent 14 years in the military as a combat engineer, completing deployments in East Timor and Afghanistan.

It was an experience that would expose him to great harm and leave him indelibly changed.

"In Afghanistan, I was involved in the detection and removal of improvised explosive devices IEDs," he says.

Whenever an IED detonated, causing harm to those in the vicinity, Thompson-Lang felt responsible because he hadn't removed the device in time.

The trauma caused by witnessing injury and death among the people he was there to help had a lasting impact on his psychological state.

Thompson-Lang was eventually diagnosed with PTSD, major depressive disorder, substance misuse and alcohol misuse.

"It was yoga that brought me out of that," says Thompson-Lang, who retrained as a yoga teacher after he left the armed forces in 2015.

Typical responses to trauma include fight, flight or freeze, explains Thompson-Lang.

Studies using MRI imaging show how trauma either a one-off event or accumulative exposure alters the brain.

Changes to the amygdala the brain's "alarm centre" can heighten sensitivity to perceived threats.

Trauma can also diminish activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with executive functioning such as planning and decision-making.

"You've got oxygen, glucose [and] blood flow being redirected from the outer cortex in the brain into the central limbic system where you have the amygdala," says Thompson-Lang.

"It's really just the brain prioritising survival. Rationalising, logic, thinking, complex problem-solving become less important in a threat situation."

This state of hypervigilance has damaging health consequences.

"You're more often in fight and flight [modes], and that is driven by adrenaline and cortisol," Thompson-Lang explains.

"The production of the cortisol takes away from the body's ability to produce testosterone and oestrogen, and they're hormones that are required for health, growth and restoration."

All this means that yoga can be tremendously beneficial for people recovering from trauma but it might look a bit different from what you'd expect.

Walk into a regular yoga class and you'll often be greeted by music and the scent of essential oils wafting through the space.

During the class, your teacher might gently move your body to correct your posture.

A trauma-aware yoga class is different.

"We take a lot of stuff out of trauma-aware yoga, [for example]strong sensory inputs like oil, incense, candles, music, and we don't touch the participants," Thompson-Lang says.

To lead a trauma-aware yoga class, the teacher must understand the way trauma impacts the brain and the body, and "how those changes drive the way that the nervous system responds to sensory inputs or stimuli," he says.

"What we know about people who have experienced trauma is that their perception of threat changes. We're trying to reduce potential for triggering a stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system or the flight and fight response."

As well as removing potentially triggering stimuli, trauma-aware yogasupports participants in their recovery.

"By targeting the breath and using the breath to calm the nervous system, using movements that stimulate the circulation of hormones throughout the body, it gives the body the ability to heal," says Thompson-Lang.

"Not only physical injuries but also rewiring or undoing some of the damage that may have happened to the brain as a result of the traumatic experience."

"If you were to breathe in and never breathe out, that's what trauma is like," says Hannah Perkins, a trauma-aware yoga therapist who runs Love This Moment in Newcastle, New South Wales.

Perkins, who offers one-on-one sessions and group classes, says we accumulate stress in our bodies.

Unrelieved stress "can lead to chronic pain or psychological problems," she says. "Yoga is a practice that continually allows us to make contact with the body, relieve some of that stress and tensionand let it go."

Perkins is very conscious about creating a safe space for her clients.

"I very rarely put hands on people but if I were to, I would always ask for consent and check if that'sOK with the person," she says.

"I always offer suggestions rather than cues or instructions, and I'm always very invitational in my language, saying things like, 'you may like to do this'."

Perkins says for many, yoga is the ticket to peace and self acceptance.

"What I see in all my classes is people learning to love the body they're in and the life they have, starting to appreciate the present moment, not being locked in their fears or thoughts about the past, but also not feeling as threatened by the uncertainty of the future."

Like Thompson-Lang, Perkins was drawn to trauma-aware yoga through experiencing trauma herself. She grew up in a violent household, and she also underwent treatment for cancer in her twenties.

"Yoga practice has been a huge part of my healing," she says.

Today, yoga is part of Perkins' daily routine, "whether it's a full hour-long practice or ... it might be 10 minutes chanting in the bathroom."

She says she feels the best she has ever felt, even in the wake of two years made challenging by the pandemic.

"I wouldn't be able to live without this practice in my life because when something does happen that's stressful or challenging, I have tools and I'm aware enough to know that I need to do something to counter-balance that energy that's locked in the body."

When he came backfrom Afghanistan, Thompson-Lang struggled to adjust to life back in Australia.

The sound of his children crying triggered panic and disturbing flashbacks.

"I was at the point when I couldn't even be around my kids because if they were distressed at all, I would go into full fight and flight mode, and I just needed to get out," he says.

His family life suffered, and his marriage broke down.

Living alone in Canberra, he was drinking a lot. "Basically, I was working, drinking, sleeping, working, drinking, sleeping," he says.

One day, he was on his way to the pub with just $20 left in his pocket before the next payday.

"I was genuinely concerned that $20 wasn't enough to get me drunk enough to be able to sleep," he recalls. "I knew I needed to try something new."

At that moment, he spotted a sign on the street advertising 10 days of yoga for $20. "I walked in and that was it," he says.

"That first class was amazing. All I could focus on was the instructor, trying not to snap myself and trying to stay balanced. At the end of it, I went home and slept a little bit better, and I went back the next day."

Thompson-Lang finished the 10-day trial and signed up for another six months. "I bought myself a yoga mat, so I was pretty serious then," he says. "It pulled me out of such a bad place."

Thompson-Lang was eventually diagnosed with PTSD after a stint in hospital and received a medical discharge from the military.

He found the transition back to civilian life difficult. "It's challenging for everyone," he says. "We're in the middle of a Royal Commission into veteran suicide, right, and that was the reality for me at one point."

A lack of direction plus uncertainty around family and finances left him feeling dangerously low. "I got to the point when I seriously considered taking my life," he says.

"When I came out of hospital, when I couldn't work, the routine of going to yoga is what kept me going."

Through yoga, he learned to calm his nervous system.

"If I noticed I was starting to get a little bit heightened because of [my kids] crying or other sensory inputs, yoga gave me the tools to first notice it, and then to be able to do something with it using my breath, using postural alignment, using gentle stretching."

As a result, he was able to regain a relationship with his children, who are now 13 and 11.

He also believes yoga helped him overcome a cognitive impairment caused by his traumatic experiences in Afghanistan.

"I couldn't read a sheet of paper and remember what I'd read. I had to go back to the top, and it was extremely frustrating," he says. "It prevented me from being able to do anything effectively in my role as a leader in the military."

Now, he says, "I've regained that cognitive capacity and I'm back, leading a workforce larger than I ever have in the medical field."

In 2016, Thompson-Lang helped start Frontline Yoga, an organisation that provides support to first responders, emergency services and current and former members of the armed forces.

Frontline Yoga has recently announced a partnership with Invictus Australia as the organisation's official yoga provider, contributing activities to the ZERO600 fundraising and wellbeing campaign.

Thompson-Lang says yoga can serve as a valuable precursor to talk therapyfor people exposed to occupational trauma.

"If you're in that state of fight and flight, the brain's not functioning the way it normally does and it's hard to dig into complex problems without first addressing what's happening with the nervous system and bringing that part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, back online to be able to engage effectively with a therapist."

He says several of his yoga students have revealed that, like him, "they were contemplating suicide because of the level of distress and unease that was in their body.

"They said, 'you saved my life'. That's what drives us forward."

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Posted18 Jun 202218 Jun 2022Sat 18 Jun 2022 at 8:00pm, updated18 Jun 202218 Jun 2022Sat 18 Jun 2022 at 10:54pm

Continued here:
Chris Thompson-Lang came home from Afghanistan with PTSD. He says yoga saved his life - ABC News

Press Release Save The Children

New Zealanders are being asked to stand alongside girls in Afghanistan, many of whom are still struggling to access education since the transition of power last August. More than two months on from the Taliban extending its ban on secondary school

New Zealanders are being asked to stand alongside girls in Afghanistan, many of whom are still struggling to access education since the transition of power last August.

More than two months on from the Taliban extending its ban on secondary school girls attending classes, a new online campaign launched by Save the Children New Zealand asks Kiwis to share a message of hope for girls in Afghanistan.

Already, hundreds of Kiwis have signed up through the online portal, sending messages asking girls to stay strong: I want you to remember this, says one. Nothing stays the same, everything changes. Reach for the stars. You are important, your thoughts and feelings are valued.

To a special girl across the world from me, says another. Dont ever give up.

Save the Children Chief Executive Heidi Coetzee says education is a lifeline for all children, especially girls.

Without it they are at increased risk of violence, abuse and exploitation. There are many reasons why girls cannot access education in Afghanistan. Cultural traditions and womens role in society are the biggest challenges. Insecurity, poverty, poor infrastructure, inadequate learning materials and a lack of qualified female teachers are other barriers.

Our messages of hope provides a way to stand in solidarity with the girls in Afghanistan who are struggling to access their basic right to education and to show these girls they are not forgotten.

Ms Coetzee says the messages will be translated and delivered through a virtual platform to girls currently attending Save the Childrens community-based education classes. To ensure children still have access to education during the last 10 months, Save the Children has been running these classes and providing children and teachers with learning and classroom kits. The organisation has also been working with female secondary school graduates to support them to become teachers and to pass the university entrance exam.

It is now more than two months since the Taliban extended its ban on secondary school girls attending school. An analysis by Save the Children, UNICEF and its education cluster partners released last month showed the majority of secondary school girls around 850,000 out of 1.1 million were not attending classes.

Ms Coetzee says Save the Children is calling on the Taliban to allow girls of all ages back to school.

There is no issue that can justify the continuation of a policy that denies girls access to education. All children should have the chance to go to school, to learn and contribute to society.

To send a message of hope, go to: https://bit.ly/SCNZMessagesofHope

Content Sourced from scoop.co.nzOriginal url

Original post:
Community Scoop Reach For The Stars, You Are Important: Kiwis Send Messages Of Support To Girls In Afghanistan - Scoop

When the Taliban marched into Kabul on August 15, 2021, marking the end of forty years of conflict, I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, I thought, the bloodshed has ended. With the entire country now decisively in the hands of one central power for the first time since that brief period in the early 2000s, the international community would be in a position to support the new authorities in providing stable governance for the people of Afghanistan.

But that didnt happen. Instead, Western militaries immediately airlifted the vast majority of Kabuls middle class out of the countryless a brain drain than a cerebral durchfalland deprived Afghanistan of vital economic stakeholders. The situation was compounded by the wholesale shuttering of Western embassies which sent a strong message to the Taliban that the international community (and here I refer primarily to Western governments, as a number of international aid organizations remained in the country) was turning its back on Afghanistan once again. The World Bank immediately cut its funding to the healthcare sector, which rapidly began to collapse, and it was left to international aid agencies to fill the void, supporting hospitals and paying salaries to medical staff. As a final farewell, the United States slammed further sanctions on the Taliban and seized $10 billion of Afghanistans assets.

The tone for diplomatic interaction between the international community and the new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was set.

There has been much debate in recent years over whether the Taliban have really changed. A new term has emerged: Taliban 2.0, representing a kinder, more moderate face to the world. Many Afghans rejected this concept, claiming that the idea that the Taliban had changed was no more than dangerous propaganda. The simple fact is, however, that the Taliban have changed.

In the 1990s, the Taliban banned cameras, music, and televisions. Women were forced to wear the chadari (burqa) and men were compelled to grow long beards and wear turbans. Female education was banned. Criminals were punished according to the Islamic hudood, through amputations of limbs and public executions. The Taliban of 2021 arrived in Kabul with its foot soldiers taking selfies in amusement parks. While a recent edict imposed Islamic hijab on women, it stopped short of mandating the chadari (though, notably, several international media outlets erroneously reported otherwise). Men do not have to grow beards or wear turbans. And although the majority of girls secondary schools are closed, some in the north are open and primary schools and universities are open for female attendance throughout the country. The hudood has not been reintroduced.

In the 1990s, the Taliban was essentially an ethnic Pashtun phenomenon. In 1999, the Taliban massacred the ethnic Hazaras in their heartland of Bamyan. In 2021, however, the Taliban government includes an ethnic Uzbek, Abdul Salam Hanafi, as deputy prime minister. The chief of staff of the armed forces, Qari Fasihuddin, is an ethnic Tajik. Though no Hazara holds high office, a deputy health minister, Muhammad Hassan Ghyasi, is a Hazara, and there are Hazara Taliban on duty in Bamyan.

This is all evidence of a change in the Taliban. Small as these changes may be, they are significant and demonstrateabove all elsethat the Talibans ideology can adapt and evolve. Taliban 2.0 is real.

However, there seems to be a determination in the West to dismiss all of these changes and portray them as nothing more than cosmetic. Composed solely of Taliban, the government is hardly inclusive; the issue of secondary schooling for girls remains unresolved; and the edict on female dress caused international uproar hugely disproportionate to its effect on the ground, where Afghan women already comply with Islamic dress codes on a daily basis.

There is a fundamental problem in the interaction between the international community and the Taliban, amounting to a dialogue de sourdsa dialogue of the deaf. The international community makes demands of the Taliban: inclusive government; respect for womens rights; and the full reopening of girls schools. The Taliban makes requests of the international community: recognition of the Islamic Emirate; official diplomatic relations; and a seat at the United Nations (UN). The Taliban have banned the cultivation of opium poppy whichbearing in mind that 90 percent of the worlds heroin originates in Afghanistanshould be an internationally welcomed move. The policy was greeted by cynicism in the West. Neither party is getting what it wants.

More critically, the failure of what might be termed the internationalized wing of the Talibanpersonified by characters such as the former political leader Mullah Baradar and current Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqito gain any concessions from the West whatsoever is in serious danger of undermining their position. While Taliban 2.0 is real, Taliban 1.0 never went away. The former minister of justice, the one-eyed and one-legged Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, responsible for the enforcement of the hudood during the 1990s, has not been given a seat in the government, despite leading various Taliban commissions throughout the past two decades. Instead, he has been sidelined to the distinctly tame position of vice president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society. Turabi is just one of many waiting in the wings for a position more commensurate with his commitment and experience.

It is an open secret that the Taliban is a conglomerate of different factions and fault lines run horizontally and vertically through the movement. In simple terms, it is ideologically divided between Taliban 1.0 and Taliban 2.0, a fact picked up by the UN 1988 Taliban sanctions committee in its latest report. This largely accounts for the reversal of the decision in March to reopen girls secondary schools. I was personally wrong-footed when I read that the schools were to reopen since I could not see that the Taliban had gained anything from the West in order to predicate such a move. I even began to wonder if my understanding of the Taliban was fundamentally flawed. It was therefore more logical when, given the outraged shock of the international community, the decision was reversed.

The West is placing heavy emphasis on the importance of womens rights and girls education. These issues are used as a stick to beat the Taliban at (seemingly) every meeting they have with international diplomats. The continued emphasis on these two points inflates their importance on the negotiating table. To the Taliban, these issues appear to be High-Value Items for the international community, to be bargained carefully and only in exchange for High-Value Items the Taliban themselves desire. On more than one occasion, international diplomats have accused the Taliban of untrustworthiness and reneging on commitments. The implication is that while the West negotiates in good faith, the Taliban have a hidden agenda. The problem is that the Taliban think the same of the international community. It is no secret that the West would like the Taliban to change and much of the debate around the existence or otherwise of Taliban 2.0 revolves around the limited change that has been seen in the Talibans ideology. But how can the Taliban negotiate with a party whose explicit agenda is to change the nature of their rule? There is a Pashto proverb: Beating a donkey does not make it into a horse. Having fought for twenty years to regain power and once again assert their rule, the Taliban view the international communitys approach as an attempt to transform their stallion into a mule.

By placing such high value on certain issues, the Taliban suspect that the international community has a hidden agenda and that the veil (no pun intended) of womens rights is a Trojan horse for nefarious political intentions. The Taliban fear being outwitted by the very adversary they believe they defeated on the battlefield. There is, therefore, an appalling lack of trust between the parties. Negotiations devoid of any trust are unlikely to succeed.

Through continued and public berating and denunciation of the Taliban, the international community is undermining the very people it needs to empower: the Mullah Baradars and Amir Khan Muttaqis of Taliban 2.0. The unintended consequence of this is, equally, to empower the conservative hardliners of Taliban 1.0. Ultimately, one has to ask: is this the best the international community can do?

Having failed to effect real change for Afghans as a whole, Western governments tend to lapse back into their comfortable rhetoric by claiming that the Taliban havent changed, while maintaining blissful ignorance of their own role in bringing about that self-fulfilling prophecy. When I left Afghanistan in December 2021, I tweeted If you extend a hand to the Taliban, they will meet you half way. If you pressure them, their position will harden. I added that the window of opportunity is closing fast for the international community to effect positive change in the country.

Two weeks ago, the Taliban announced a new national budgetthe first in two decades funded solely by Afghanistan itself. Previous governments relied on international aid for up to 70 percent of the national budget, a vast amount of which notoriously ended up in the mansions and penthouses of Dubai. The ability of Afghanistan to fund itself should be applauded. Instead, the international community denounced the abolishing of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, without considering that Afghanistan, deprived of international aid and with a population on the verge of starvation, cannot afford to sustain the human rights body.

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The West Is Getting Afghanistan Wrong, Again - The National Interest Online