On the evacuation of a U.S. military refugees’ visas as a result of “broken promises” by Biden
Last year, President Biden vowed that Afghans who helped the U.S. military “are not going to be left behind.” But since the U.S. left Afghanistan in August 2021, Sanaullah says he has been living on nothing but “broken promises.”
By the time they had the plan, he said one of the guys who was living in the same building with him told him. He says he escaped by climbing through the window. NPR uses his first name for security reasons.
“I know other people — just business owners — who got evacuated, but … I’m still waiting. He says that he doesn’t understand the disconnected process. “I’m so frustrated and so disappointed. I didn’t think that it could happen.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/03/1121053865/afghanistan-refugees-visas
After the Taliban Takeover, Afghans for a Better Tomorrow (Asiqada) – How the Taliban Put The U.S. Back On The Plane
Many Afghans are reaching out to advocacy organizations for advice on how to leave their country. Arash Azizzada, the co- director of Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, is one of the people responding to emails and calls.
The application for SIV was approved three months ago, because all the documents were accepted. He says his interview for a U.S. visa will be held in Islamabad next month. Visa interviews take place in neighboring Pakistan because the U.S. shut its embassy in Kabul last year.
Former employees of the previous government and military interpreters are not the only ones at risk since activists, journalists and other people who work for the government are all subject to being jailed, beaten and disappeared.
Before the Taliban takeover, she was studying journalism. She says that her dream of being a journalist in her own country was washed away by the Taliban’s ban on women studying in most universities. So she has shifted her focus to architecture because she thinks she’ll have a better chance of working as an architect in Afghanistan.
But in September, she suffered another setback. She was told by the Malaysian agency processing her paperwork that her passport, which was valid for another 13 months, needed to be valid for over 18 months in order to receive her study visa.
Some 120 students were at the airport in August ready to board a flight. The males were the only ones allowed to travel. 60 female students were held back by the Taliban and told to go home.
A 19-year-old student with a history of activism was one of the people denied boarding because of her fears that her scholarship may be revoked.
“We went to the airport, everything was going normal, and then suddenly, the Taliban came and took our tickets and our passports and they said, ‘You don’t have a male guardian. She asked, “where are you studying?”
But the whole system was put under pressure because of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department all scrambling to catch up.
Last summer, the number of requests for humanitarian parole visas from all nationalities increased dramatically. But between July 1, 2021, and Sept. 1 of this year, the number of applications jumped to more than 49,500 from Afghan nationals alone — 70% of those applications came from people still in Afghanistan. 410 Afghan nationals outside the US have been conditionally approved after being conditionally approved 9,800 applications have been denied.
Another spokesperson for the State Department tells NPR that staff has been added to U.S. embassies in Qatar, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. The visa flow for Afghans isn’t going as well as it could.
The United States will begin to resettle Afghans in the new fiscal year, as a result of the start of the White House’s Operation Enduring Welcome. The aim, according to DHS, is to encourage resettlement that is long-term rather than the temporary humanitarian parole.
Meanwhile, funding for the Afghan Adjustment Act, a bill intended to cut some of the red tape out of the immigration process and ease the way to permanent residency for Afghan evacuees who are already in the U.S., was cut out of the government spending bill that passed on Friday. $3 billion was included for Afghan resettling efforts.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/03/1121053865/afghanistan-refugees-visas
Interaction between the Taliban and the U.S. and the Afghan splintering group: a close look at what is happening in Afghanistan
“I try to figure out how to deliver the worst news in the world,” says Azizzada. There are 75,000 principal applicants ahead of you. It’s good to waiting through years and years of bureaucratic paperwork and the American government doesn’t seem interested in fixing it.
If the U.S. is not going to open the embassy in Kabul, he urged the White House to cut red tape, but at the moment in-person interviews are the only option for humanitarian parole applications.
The State Department official and the CIA deputy director were sent to Doha for the talks with the Taliban delegation that included their head of intelligence.
In October, the US held its first in-person talks with the Taliban. The White House in September called cooperation with the Taliban on counterterrorism “a work in progress.”
After a US drone fired fatal Hellfire missiles at Zawahiri, American officials accused Taliban leaders from the Haqqani network of knowing about Zawahiri’s whereabouts while the Taliban angrily condemned the operation.
“[Cohen] is likely to deliver a firm message that we will conduct more strikes as we did against Zawahiri if we find that al Qaeda members in Afghanistan are supporting operations that threaten the US or its allies,” Sanner said. The Taliban poses a threat to both the Afghan people and the country as a whole, given the focus on killing Shias, but there is some concern that the Taliban could become targets for external attackers if they are unable to contain them.
Mark Frerichs, an American held captive in Afghanistan for more than two years, was released as part of a prisoner swap in September. The Haqqani network is a splinter group of the Taliban. The Secretary of State said that he was back because of intense engagement with the Taliban. Taliban spokesman at the time said the swap was secured through a constructive “dialogue” with the US.
According to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Ivor Shearer and his Afghan producer were arrested in August of this year while in Kabul, but two sources tell CNN that one of the Americans is Shearer. He was filming where al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed.
The Taliban have close ties with al Qaeda, but face a different type of fight from the Islamic State branch known asISIS-K. The group has routinely targeted the Hazara ethnic minority in Afghanistan. A group of young women were killed in a suicide attack at an education center last week in the predominantly-Hazaran neighborhood of Kabul. No one immediately claimed responsibility.
Last month the Biden administration announced it had set up a $3.5 billion “Afghan Fund” with frozen Afghan money to promote economic stability. The US doesn’t think there’s a trustworthy institution to ensure the funds will help the Afghan people, so they are holding them back, two officials tell CNN.
There are clear violations of human rights in Afghanistan, floggings, public executions, and other images that are very concerning to all of us. “No Afghan or Afghans want to return to an Afghanistan that lacks opportunity, that lacks stability, that lacks security, and certainly lacks prosperity,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price. “In every engagement we have with the Taliban, human rights is at the top of the agenda.”
“In no other country have women and girls so rapidly disappeared from all spheres of public life,” Bennett said. Despite this, women and girls are still at the forefront of calls for accountability.
Inmates are tortured to death in Russian prisoner-swap-brittney-griner-explainer: A US marine accused of espionage
Griner’s lawyers told Russian judges during a hearing in July that the cannabis oil was medically prescribed for “severe chronic pain,” and not for recreational use. She was sentenced to nine years in jail after being found guilty of the charges one month after she pleaded guilty. A Russian judge upheld her conviction after she was sentenced, despite her attorneys requesting for a harsher sentence since she had already spent time in jail after her February 17 arrest.
Her release comes nearly eight months after Trevor Reed, a former US Marine who had been detained in Russia since 2019, was released during a prisoner swap for Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko. The Biden Administration was trying to get a release for two Americans, one of whom was held by Russia for alleged espionage. CNN first reported in July that a potential deal for a prisoner exchange of Bout for Griner and Whelan had been offered by the Biden administration.
There had been concern about the health and well being of Griner, who is Black and a lesbian, while detained in Russia. In 1993, homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill that expanded anti-LGBTQ laws.
Conditions vary among Russian penal colonies, but political prisoners are often placed in harsh conditions where they can be subjected to “solitary confinement or punitive stays in psychiatric units,” according to a recent human rights report from the US State Department. The report says that inmates have been tortured to death in Russian Penal colonies because of the law that allows forced labor. There also are reports of prison authorities recruiting inmates to abuse other inmates, the report also says.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/politics/russian-prisoner-swap-brittney-griner-explainer/index.html
The prisoner exchange between the United States and the Sultan of Death: An update on the decision of Bout’s release to the prisoner swap
According to Russian state media, the prisoner exchange was completed successfully at the Abu Dhabi Airport. Saudi Arabia and the UAE said in a joint statement that the two countries were involved in joint mediation efforts leading to the prisoner swap.
An official familiar with the matter told CNN that President joe Biden gave final approval to the prisoner swap over the past week, as well as being updated on it as it happened.
The official told CNN that the only deal they could make at the moment was therelease of Griner, noting it was the right deal.
The decision to swap Griner for the “Merchant of Death” is controversial. The United States sentenced Bout to 25 years in prison for conspiring to kill Americans, acquire anti-aircraft missiles, and provide material support to a terrorist organization. Bout has maintained his innocence.
The White House has said that she is in good spirits, and she is likely to have a medical evaluation. John Kirby said to make sure that she gets the proper care when she’s under intolerable conditions is the first priority right now.
“We suspect that there will be a need here for her to have access to proper health care before she’s ready and fit to get back home. Kirby doesn’t think that will take a long time. “But again, that is going to be up to the doctors to work with the family on. That is going to be the main focus now, is just making sure that we look after her well being before she’s able to, you know, to get on her way.”
Speaking in an exclusive phone call from the penal colony where he is being held in a remote part of Russia, Whelan also told CNN he was surprised not to have been included in the swap with Bout and that he is “greatly disappointed” the Biden administration has not done more to secure his release.
“I am greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four year anniversary of my arrest is coming up. He said he was arrested for a crime that never happened. “I don’t understand why I’m still sitting here.”
The United States is pleased that the two US nationals have been released. We continue to provide all appropriate assistance. We are glad these US nationals will reunite with their families soon,” a senior administration official told CNN. “Out of respect for the privacy of these individuals and their families, we are not going to confirm names.”
It was not immediately clear what spurred the release of the two Americans and if any deal was made with the Taliban to secure it. The State Department did not immediately respond for a request for comment.
The official added that the administration continues to “engage the Taliban in pragmatic ways to advance US interests” but did not provide details as to the efforts it took to secure the America’s release.
According to the CPJ, security guards questioned Shearer and Faizbakhsh about their activities “and checked their work permits, ID cards, and passports.” They kept the journalists under lock and key, and called them American spies for a couple of hours.
A senior administration official told reporters that they were aware of the matter and did not provide more details.
The Taliban put an alleged murderer to death in the first public execution in Afghanistan since the return of power — a critique of the Taliban’s actions
Earlier this month, the Taliban put an alleged murderer to death in the first public execution held in Afghanistan since the Islamist group returned to power. The Biden administration condemned the execution.