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In early March, Afghanistans foreign minister, Mawlavi Amir Khan Muttaqi, met with Kazakh Ambassador to Afghanistan Alimkhan Yessengeldiyev and agreed to expand bilateral cooperation in the transport sector. High on the agenda was developing the railway system in Afghanistan. Muttaqi requested technical support from Kazakhstan for new rail line construction.

Kazakhstan has expressed interest in participating in the reconstruction and development of Afghanistans infrastructure, especially in the areas of transport, energy, and agriculture. This comes amid efforts to reconnect Afghanistan to world trade and Kazakhstans attempts to become a mediator in the region. An informal meeting between Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was held prior to the Muttaqi-Yessengeldiyev agreement, and Afghanistan was central to their discussion.

Afghanistan is the third largest buyer of Kazakh grain. The Afghan market traditionally occupies a significant share in the export of grain and flour from Kazakhstan. In 2022 Kazakhstan exported 1.36 million tonnes of wheat flour to Afghanistan, 52 percent more than in 2021, according to APK-Inform, a Central Asian agricultural analytical site.

In 2018 a rail route from Kazakhstan to Afghanistan was opened for traffic. The Kostanay-Bolashak-Serhetabad (Turkmenistan) rail route is more than 3,500 kilometers long. It traverses through the Kazakh city of Bolashak and the Turkmen city of Serhetabad, where it crosses the border with Afghanistan to Herat.

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In 2022 plans were discussed between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan for the construction of a grain terminal and elevator at the Turkmen-Afghan border. This grain supply route via Turkmenistan is being promoted by Kazakhstan because it bypasses Uzbekistan, which according to KazAgro, the national grain operator, has traditionally imposed high rates for the transit of grain through Uzbekistan to Afghanistan. However, no Kazakh railroads have been laid yet in Afghanistan. Uzbekistan has been the only country so far that has built and managed a railway line in Afghanistan.

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Advancing this cross-border transport development is necessary to prevent a humanitarian crisis and economic collapse in Afghanistan. Indeed the Afghan issue has created a tricky new reality for Kazakhstan and the region as a whole. Central Asian governments see Afghanistan as both a threat and an opportunity.

Underpinning this perception is Afghanistans position at the heart of the region. This has resulted in concerted efforts by countries to align their policy in engaging with Afghanistan.

With Russias war in Ukraine and Western sanctions on Russia, as well as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Central Asia has been forced to make its own contingency plans when it comes to security and trade. In light of this, Kazakhstan and the other Central Asia republics have pursued a strategy with Afghanistan based on the assumption that cooperation and engagement would promote stability. One way they have been going about this is by opening up and testing transport corridors through the country. An example of this is the Uzbek-led Trans-Afghan railway project.

For Kazakhstan, supporting economic development along the north-south axis would see Afghanistan becoming a bridge, not a barrier. In this vision, Kazakhstan hopes to be the convener, facilitator, and engine for change by prying open physical and diplomatic bottlenecks.

The benefits attained through cooperation between Afghanistan and Kazakhstan are obvious for all to see. There is a mutual interest on both sides for cooperation, as the Taliban cannot afford long-term isolation. Economic gains from expanded trade and investment would help diversify Kazakhstans transport corridors and bolster Afghanistans integration efforts with the wider regional and international community.

That said, Kazakh interests in Afghanistan are challenged by the extreme domestic fragility of the country and the risk of sanctions. Security has remained a key concern in the region, and despite Taliban assurances terrorist activity remains high and widespread.

This has been a key issue for Kazakhstan and has been reflected in Kazakhstans efforts to request external support on the Afghan issue. Through the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Kazakhstan has been airing its concerns over the unstable situation in Afghanistan and has suggested that the CSTO should increase its focus on securing Central Asias southern borders. Other Central Asian countries have expressed the same concern, and the Afghan issue has brought them together. However, fault lines have emerged, with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan both vying for the mediator role of the region and adopting their own way of working with the Taliban.

With pressure from sanctions, any type of economic interaction with the Taliban government poses a reputational risk to Kazakhstans relations with the West. Given the size of Western involvement in Kazakhstan, particularly in its oil and gas sector, this is something that would need to be considered by the Kazakh government.

All that said, transport development is seen as key to both Kazakhstan and Afghanistans economic future. Security will continue to be a challenge but without cooperation between Kazakhstan and Afghanistan, the prospects for stability in Central Asia are fairly slim. The spillover effect that could result from an isolated and vulnerable Afghanistan is a risk that Kazakhstan would want to avoid given the January 2022 protests. Kazakhstan must play a key role in restoring trade and communications, and in transforming Afghanistan into a route for licit rather than illicit trade between Central Asia and South Asia.

Much remains to be done, however, and Kazakhstan as well as the other Central Asian states will continue to act in and around Afghanistan, pursuing their national interests as they see them. Looking ahead, Kazakhstan should pursue its desire for cooperation with eyes wide open to make certain that in the process of seeking peace and economic benefit, they do not achieve just the opposite.

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Kazakhstan and Afghanistan Seek to Realign Bilateral Ties - The Diplomat

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised women in Afghanistan and Iran for standing up for freedoms as he spoke Tuesday at an event highlighting the role of women in democracy.

Blinken praised women who have protested in Iran in response to the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini last year, saying they have courageously demonstrated under great threat to themselves, to call for woman, life, and freedom.

And in Afghanistan, Blinken said women are fighting for a better future in their country despite efforts by the Taliban to erase them from daily life.

The United States stands in solidarity with these women and all who are working for womens full, free, and equal participation around the world. Through our diplomacy, were committed to supporting them and advancing gender equality worldwide, Blinken said.

The top U.S. diplomat said women face these challenges not only in autocracies, but also in far too many places where they lack equal opportunities to study and work.

Women journalists, advocates, politicians, and others are subject to persistent online harassment and abuse. Women who are victims of violence often do not have equal access to justice. Women are subject to discrimination that often puts them at a disadvantage whether through double standards they face in the workplace, in access to reproductive rights, or in nationality laws, which can result in barriers to accessing education, health care, and property for themselves and for their families, Blinken said.

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Blinken Highlights Perseverance of Women in Afghanistan, Iran in Fighting for Rights - Voice of America - VOA News

Photograph Source: Petty Officer 1st Class John Collins Public Domain

Being the scapegoat of tribal lore cast out with the heavy weight of sins remains a popular political motif. Supposedly noble soldiers, by way of example, are punished for not adhering to the rules of war. In breaching the codes of killing and the protocols of acceptable murder, they are banished from a realm supposedly wrapped in law. In doing so, commanding officers, policy makers and politicians are left, purified, their dirt shed.

In the context of war crimes, the subordinate and the minion often take centre stage, heaped upon with sins like a tribal scapegoat and sent out into the metaphorical, prison wild. For the moment, such a figure is Australian Special Air Service trooper Oliver Jordan Schulz. That he is the sole figure so far is not going to impress the fair minded, though there may be others to follow.

In a joint statement between the Office of the Special Investigator and the Australian Federal Police, Schulz is alleged to have murdered an Afghan man during the course of his deployment in Afghanistan with the Australian Defence Force. He is being charged with one count of War Crime, specifically murder under the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth). The ABC reports that the victim was Dad Mohammad, slain in May 2012 in central Uruzgan province as he lay helpless in a wheat field.

Speaking in the Downing Centre local court on March 28, magistrate Jennifer Atkinson made a number of remarks. The executed man was quiet and not resisting. Schulz turns towards the Afghan man and shoots towards him three times. The man appears to go limp after the first shot.

Mohammad, according to the allegations against the defendant, was not taking an active part in the hostilities. The defendant knew, or was reckless as to the factual circumstances establishing that the person was not taking an active part in the hostilities.

The OSI was established to pursue the findings of the 2020 Brereton Report, also known by its lengthier title as the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Forces Afghanistan Inquiry Report. Sharing joint responsibility with the AFP, the office is charged with investigating allegations of criminal offences under Australian law, arising from or related to any breaches of the Laws of Armed Conflict, by members of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) in Afghanistan from 2005 and 2016.

The prosecution of Schulz is clearly designed to prevent the prying eyes from personnel based at the International Criminal Court. As a few legal authorities have written, It seems certain that Australia would not want ICC scrutiny of its conduct in Afghanistan nor the embarrassment of the ICC stepping in to prosecute Australian military personnel.

The prosecution is already attracting international attention. According to Human Rights Watch, it provides an important opportunity for authorities to uphold the rule of law by ensuring respect for the fair trial rights of the accused, including the presumption of innocence of any individual charged with criminal offense, and ensuring accountability for war crimes. It also sows the seeds of concern among the soldiers of other military forces deployed to Afghanistan during that same period.

The nagging worry here is that the military and political higher-ups are going to be given a convenient, well-oiled exoneration. Exonerated, the politicos and deskbound army wonks, who made critical decisions thousands of miles away, will be exempt, professing ignorance about the activities of a few bad apples in the Special Forces. Never mind why those apples were there in the first place.

The law will not necessarily be of much help here, beyond targeting the lower elements of foot soldiery. Doctrines of command responsibility require an adequate formulation of the guilty mind, otherwise known as mens rea. The pressing point in such a context is assessing what standard of knowledge is relevant: strict liability, constructive knowledge (that the commanders ought to have known about the crimes), or actual knowledge?

As Douglas Guilfoyle has observed, both the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Australian law tend to exclude strict liability and actual knowledge, yet contain different formulations of what falls between. In a co-authored piece, Guilfoyle also notes that international law generally attaches liability to commanders who, given the circumstances, should have known crimes were being or had been committed.

The Brereton Report has done a remarkable disservice in shielding the chain of command in terms of operational awareness, and makes no mention of the political process that led to the deployment of such soldiers in Afghanistan in the first place. As the report improbably asserts, there was no evidence that there was knowledge of, or reckless indifference to, the commission of war crimes, on the part of commanders at troop/platoon, squadron/company or Task Group Headquarters level, let alone at higher levels such as Joint Operations Command, or Australian Defence Command. Nor was there any failure at any of those levels to take reasonable and practical steps that would have prevented or detected the commission of war crimes.

The practice of frequently rotating commanders above the patrol level in the Afghanistan theatre, and the nature of how information was compartmentalised, have served to ignore culpability for practices in the field of battle.

This is not to say that a number of senior officers are not concerned by what Schulzs trial promises. As The Australian reports, citing a military source, Individuals who were commanding the soldier, right up the chain of command for as high as the defence team can justify, should reasonably expect to be called into court. The defence team could then point to various chain-of-command deficiencies, among them the practice of repeatedly redeploying special service soldiers despite concerns about their state of mind.

Exposing such practices, and their source, would not only be fitting but just. We are otherwise faced with that convenient and all too regular spectacle: that of a soldier punished in isolation from the war machine that emboldened him to kill in the first place.

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Calculated Exoneration: Command Responsibility and War Crimes ... - CounterPunch

In deeply patriarchal and repressive societies like Afghanistan women have always been subjected to gender-based discrimination and violence. This was the case before the Taliban came to power but it has become much worse since and women, who were already underrepresented in the media industry, are suffering immeasurably.

The dwindling community of female journalists has reached a concerning level. Soon after the Talibans coup they started a crackdown on all journalists. There were raids on the houses of journalists, arrests, detentions, intimidation and harassment.

In addition to direct threats, the Taliban started to systematically harass women in the media to make it difficult for them to work. The Taliban introduced strict dress codes, including making the veil mandatory. The ban on long-distance travel of women without a male guardian has made field work for women impossible. Women have also been banned from appearing on TV shows. The Taliban effectively want us to completely disappear from the media landscape.

Due to these barbaric laws many women have lost their jobs and many have fled the country. Those women who were the sole earners in the family are now living in destitution.

The outflux of women with essential skills has created a brain drain in Afghanistan. Years of progress with regards to media development, women empowerment and capacity building of women in media has been undone by the Taliban in merely two years. All the women journalists who toiled for years and built up their skills despite the difficulties are now either confined to the home or in exile in miserable situations. Unfortunately some have lost their lives in attempts to seek shelter. A female senior Pashto journalist, Torpekai Amarkhel, drowned with her family in a boat sailing them to Italy just a few weeks ago.

Amarkhels asylum case for Australia was in process. But due to the long, arduous, slow and chaotic process of filling and requesting asylum or refugee status in developed countries, journalists in distress are opting for perilous and illegal means of immigration. Its a response coming from extreme desperation and frustration. Western countries must try to understand this and must make the visa process easy, fast and efficient.

Within Afghanistan, peoples desperation is being exploited for financial gain. Acquiring essential travel documents is being aggravated by long delays, tough requirements and chaotic procedures, which has meant the opening of illegal channels to mint more money from helpless people running for their lives. For example the average fees for a passport right now is at least $3000 and fees for a Pakistani visa is $1200. This makes the legal evacuation from Afghanistan for those journalists at risk almost impossible, forcing them to opt for illegal channels. For those taking this route the outcomes can be awful. In many instances people are arrested and detained in neighbouring countries.

In exile the Afghan journalists are unable to continue their journalistic work due to a myriad of issues, such as lack of opportunities in the countries of temporary residence, language barriers, legal barriers and discrimination against Afghans. The result? Women journalists in exile are either forced to stay at home or they are forced to do menial work to simply make end meets. Theyre out of work, gaps in their career growing. Some are now quitting the industry and switching careers.

The situation is stifling for male journalists too. The heart-wrenching stories of Afghan journalists are sadly countless. A journalist who worked alongside me in a media outlet recently posted on Twitter and other social media platforms about selling one of his kidneys to get some money to support himself and his family in exile in Pakistan. Another journalist from Afghanistan trashed all his academic and professional documents out of frustration at his joblessness and inability to get any humanitarian support. And another journalist, a senior one with a strong track record in the industry, has become a cobbler working in the streets.

In order to save the community of journalists in general, and women journalists in particular, the world must act. Western countries must open their doors so that we can access work, education and free speech and expression which we have been denied in our own country. But everyone can help protect Afghan journalists and create opportunities for them within Afghanistan and in exile. Engage with Afghan journalists through fellowships, scholarships, workshops, training and other opportunities to save the media from dying. And finally pressurise the Taliban to reverse their barbaric decisions that have created a gender-based apartheid and is pushing generations of Afghans back to the stone age.

Excerpt from:
The harsh reality for Afghanistan's journalists - Index on Censorship

More than eighteen months after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on 15 August 2021, it is time to assess the level of threat deriving from the jihadist groups based in the country.

One should always bear in mind that all of these groups were present in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover and they have not expanded significantly since. All that changed is the regime in Kabul.

Even in terms of counter-terrorism, there are not many obvious changes, given that after the US withdrew the bulk of its forces in 2014, operations against jihadist groups have been limited to drone and air strikes and that the Afghan security forces were contributing little, absorbed as they were in a fight for survival against the Taliban.

After an apparent lull of a few months after the total withdrawal in the summer of 2021, US drones have reappeared on Afghanistans skies, in all likelihood following a basing agreement with Pakistan, even if the Pakistani authorities deny it. Indeed, it was at the end of July 2022 that finally, the US managed to nab Ayman al-Zawahiri with a drone strike in Kabul.

This report, therefore, is not merely about the threat represented by Afghanistan-based jihadist groups to European and Middle Eastern countries, but also about the level of that threat, compared to what it was before 15 August 2021.

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European Eye on Radicalization aims to publish a diversity of perspectives and as such does not endorse the opinions expressed by contributors. The views expressed in this article represent the author alone.

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Afghanistan Under the Taliban: The Global Jihadist Threat to Europe ... - European Eye on Radicalization