KABUL: It was a routine check. Two vans, both without license plates, were stopped earlier this month by police in Afghanistan’s eastern Ghazni province, where Taliban hold sway in large swaths of the countryside.
Inside, police found 27 boys between the ages of 4 and 15, all being taken illegally to Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province to study in seminaries called madrassas, according to a police report acquired by The Associated Press.
The authorities told the AP that the children were being taken to Pakistani madrassas to educate a new generation in the ways of the Taliban, with the intention of returning them to Afghanistan to enforce the same rigid interpretation of Islam practiced by the radical religious movement until its ouster by US-led coalition forces in 2001.
The police called it child trafficking and threw the drivers and the only other adults, two men who organized the convoy, into jail.
But the parents said they wanted their children to study in Pakistan and had willingly sent them to Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s sparsely populated Baluchistan province on the border with Afghanistan.
Quetta is significant to Afghanistan’s Taliban, many of whom graduated from madrassas there. It is also considered the headquarters of the Taliban leadership council, which is widely referred to as the “Quetta shura.”
An Afghan counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because revealing his identity could endanger him, said Afghan intelligence has identified 26 madrassas in Pakistan where it suspects future generations of Taliban are being trained and in some cases instructed in carrying out suicide bombings.
Several of the 26 madrassas he identified were in Quetta.
Sheikh Abdul Hakim madrassa was among the Quetta schools the Afghan official identified as a Taliban recruitment center. The AP went to the madrassa and was told the director, after whom the madrassa is named, was on a missionary sabbatical to preach Islam, but a teacher, Azizullah Mainkhail, said some students at the madrassa were from Afghanistan.
The majority, however, he said are Pakistanis from villages throughout Baluchistan. He denied affiliation with the Taliban or Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency known by the acronym ISI and accused by Afghanistan of supporting the Taliban.
The madrassa is massive, surrounded by high walls that shelter several buildings of mud and cement. Mainkhail said 350 students live and study there.
A separate attempt in Ghazni province to move children across the border, also for religious education, was foiled by police about two weeks ago, the Afghan official said. The 13 children, from neighboring Paktika province, were also destined for religious studies, this time in seminaries in Pakistan’s sprawling Arabian Sea port city of Karachi.
Traffickers “wanted to take our innocent children to the terrorist centers on the other side of the border under the pretense of Islamic studies,” Ghazni Police Chief Mohammad Mustafa Mayar said.
War, poverty, insecurity and a lack of understanding by families of the dangers awaiting their children all combine to drive the child trafficking trade in Afghanistan, said Mohammed Musa Mahmoodi of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Each year there are at least three or four cases of children being smuggled from province to province or across the international borders, sometimes to be used as cheap labor, other times to be recruited by the Taliban under the guise of religious education and other times for sexual abuse, says Mahmoodi.
Still, he said the problem is much greater than the few busloads of children intercepted would indicate, but corruption and a lack of training in the ways of child traffickers makes it a lucrative and fairly safe trade in Afghanistan.
Several years ago a child trafficking ring that had taken children to Saudi Arabia to be used as cheap labor was busted, he recalled.
“Parents often agree to send their children but they don’t know what is awaiting the child. Sometimes they are told they will be educated or will get a good job and be looked after,” said Mahmoodi. “But when they get there they are beaten, forced to work as cheap labor, taken by Taliban as new recruits.”
Mohammed Naseer spent several weeks arranging for his son, a nephew and several other children from his district of Ander in Ghazni province to go to Quetta to study the Qur’an. His son Mohammed Yaseen is just 9 years old but he said he was excited to be going to Quetta. His dream: “I want to be a mullah (cleric).”
Naseer, who wore a black turban and a long black unkempt beard, said his son had studied three years in a village school but he still could neither read nor write, not even at a rudimentary level, in his native Pashto language. He said the village school even offers English lessons but the teacher doesn’t speak English.
But even more worrying for Naseer is the lack of a quality Islamic seminary to school his son in Islam’s holy book. Several children from nearby villages were home on vacation from a madrassa in Pakistan and Naseer said he heard them recite the Qur’an and “their words were so sweet.” He decided then to send his son to Pakistan. Naseer said he wanted a madrassa with a dormitory that would house and feed his child. They don’t exist in his area, he said.
He loaded his son along with 26 other children into the two vans, gave his son a change of clothes and gave some money to the men taking his child to Pakistan “but only for transportation.”
But senior police official Fazlur Rahman Bustani in Kabul said the movement of children is a business and a dangerous one, regardless of whether parents willingly send their children.
“Those involved in the transport of children are part of a dangerous network and it is a criminal act,” said Bustani. “It doesn’t matter if the parents approve.”
Officials: Afghan children smuggled to Pakistan seminaries
Officials: Afghan children smuggled to Pakistan seminaries
Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital
- Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were destroyed in the blaze
- The structures housed around 2,000 families, according to the fire department
Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were burned in the blaze that is thought to have started on the second floor of one of the homes.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Drone footage shared online by the city’s disaster agency showed houses in Isla Puting Bato village of Manila razed to the ground.
The structures housed around 2,000 families, according to the fire department.
Village resident Leonila Abiertas, 65, lost almost all her possessions, but managed to save her late husband’s ashes.
“I only got the urn with the ashes of my husband,” a crying Abiertas said.
“I really don’t know how I can start my life again after this fire.”
Fire and disaster services deployed 36 trucks and four fire boats while the country’s airforce sent in two helicopters to help extinguish the fire.
“That area is fire-prone since most of the houses there are made of light materials,” firefighter Geanelli Nunez said.
Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital
- Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were destroyed in the blaze
MANILA: Raging orange flames and thick black smoke billowed into the sky Sunday as fire ripped through hundreds of houses in a closely built slum area of the Philippine capital Manila.
Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were burned in the blaze that is thought to have started on the second floor of one of the homes.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Drone footage shared online by the city’s disaster agency showed houses in Isla Puting Bato village of Manila razed to the ground.
The structures housed around 2,000 families, according to the fire department.
Village resident Leonila Abiertas, 65, lost almost all her possessions, but managed to save her late husband’s ashes.
“I only got the urn with the ashes of my husband,” a crying Abiertas said.
“I really don’t know how I can start my life again after this fire.”
Fire and disaster services deployed 36 trucks and four fire boats while the country’s airforce sent in two helicopters to help extinguish the fire.
“That area is fire-prone since most of the houses there are made of light materials,” firefighter Geanelli Nunez said.
Turkiye’s Erdogan to discuss Ukraine war with NATO chief
ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will discuss the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday during his visit to Ankara, a Turkish official said on Sunday.
Russia struck Ukraine with a new hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile on Thursday in response to Kyiv’s use of US and British missiles against Russia, marking an escalation in the war that began when Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
NATO member Turkiye, which has condemned the Russian invasion, says it supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity and it has provided Kyiv with military support.
But Turkiye, a Black Sea neighbor of both Russia and Ukraine, also opposes Western sanctions against Moscow, with which it shares important defense, energy and tourism ties.
On Wednesday, Erdogan opposed a US decision to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles to attack inside Russia, saying it would further inflame the conflict, according to a readout shared by his office.
Moscow says that by giving the green light for Ukraine to fire Western missiles deep inside Russia, the US and its allies are entering into direct conflict with Russia. On Tuesday, Putin approved policy changes that lowered the threshold for Russia to use nuclear weapons in response to an attack with conventional weapons.
During their talks on Monday, Erdogan and Rutte will also discuss the removal of defense procurement obstacles between NATO allies and the military alliance’s joint fight against terrorism, the Turkish official said.
Blasts heard in Ukraine’s Kyiv, witnesses report
KYIV: Explosions were heard early on Sunday in Kyiv, Reuters’ witnesses and local media in the Ukrainian capital reported.
The blasts sounded like air defense units in operation, Reuters’ witnesses reported. There was no immediate official comment from Ukraine’s military. Kyiv and its surrounding region and most of northeast Ukraine were under air raid alerts, starting at around 0100 GMT.
Meanwhile, Russia’s air defense systems destroyed 34 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 27 over the Kursk region bordering Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry said in a post on its Telegram messaging app on Sunday.
The ministry, in its post, did not mention an earlier statement by the Kursk governor that air defense units had destroyed two “Ukrainian missiles” overnight over the region.
Developing nations slam ‘paltry’ $300 billion climate deal
- Developing countries say finance pact “optical illusion” and “lack of goodwill” from rich countries amid heated negotiations
- Agreement commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies
BAKU: The world approved a bitterly negotiated climate deal Sunday but poorer nations most at the mercy of worsening disasters dismissed a $300 billion a year pledge from wealthy historic polluters as insultingly low.
After two exhausting weeks of chaotic bargaining and sleepless nights, nearly 200 nations banged through the contentious finance pact in the early hours in a sports stadium in Azerbaijan.
But the applause had barely subsided when India delivered a full-throated rejection of the “abysmally poor” deal, kicking off a firestorm of criticism from across the developing world.
“It’s a paltry sum,” thundered India’s delegate Chandni Raina.
“This document is little more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face.”
Sierra Leone’s climate minister Jiwoh Abdulai said it showed a “lack of goodwill” from rich countries to stand by the world’s poorest as they confront rising seas and harsher droughts.
Nigeria’s envoy Nkiruka Maduekwe put it more bluntly: “This is an insult.”
Some countries had accused Azerbaijan, an oil and gas exporter, of lacking the will to meet the moment in a year defined by costly disasters and on track to become the hottest on record.
But at protests throughout COP29, developed nations — major economies like the European Union, United States and Japan — were accused of negotiating in bad faith, making a fair deal impossible.
Developing nations arrived in the Caspian Sea city of Baku hoping to secure a massive financial boost from rich countries many times above their existing pledge of $100 billion a year.
Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, said she would return home with only “small portion” of what she fought for, but not empty-handed.
“It isn’t nearly enough, but it’s a start,” said Stege, whose atoll nation homeland faces an existential threat from creeping sea levels.
Nations had struggled at COP29 to reconcile long-standing divisions over how much developed nations most accountable for historic climate change should provide to poorer countries least responsible but most impacted by Earth’s rapid warming.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell acknowledged the final deal was imperfect and said “no country got everything they wanted.”
“This is no time for victory laps,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he had “hoped for a more ambitious outcome” and appealed to governments to see it as a starting point.
Developed countries only put the $300 billion figure on the table on Saturday after COP29 went into extra time and diplomats worked through the night to improve an earlier spurned offer.
Bleary-eyed diplomats, huddled anxiously in groups, were still polishing the final phrasing on the plenary floor in the dying hours before the deal passed.
UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband hailed “a critical eleventh hour deal at the eleventh hour for the climate.”
At points, the talks appeared on the brink of collapse.
Delegates stormed out of meetings, fired shots across the bow, and threatened to walk away from the negotiating table should rich nations not cough up more cash.
In the end — despite repeating that “no deal is better than a bad deal” — developing nations did not stand in the way of an agreement.
US President Joe Biden cast the agreement reached in Baku as a “historic outcome.”
EU climate envoy Wopke Hoekstra said it would be remembered as “the start of a new era for climate finance.”
The agreement commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies, cut emissions and prepare for worse disasters.
It falls short of the $390 billion that economists commissioned by the United Nations had deemed a fair share contribution by developed nations.
“This COP has been a disaster for the developing world,” said Mohamed Adow, the Kenyan director of Power Shift Africa, a think tank.
“It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries who claim to take climate change seriously.”
The United States and EU pushed to have newly wealthy emerging economies like China — the world’s largest emitter — chip in.
Wealthy nations said it was politically unrealistic to expect more in direct government funding at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and economic belt-tightening.
Donald Trump, a skeptic of both climate change and foreign assistance, was elected just days before COP29 began and his victory cast a pall over the UN talks.
Other countries, particularly in the EU — the largest contributor of climate finance — saw right-wing backlashes against the green agenda, not fertile conditions for raising big sums of public money.
The final deal “encourages” developing countries to make contributions on a voluntary basis, reflecting no change for China, which already provides climate finance on its own terms.
The deal also posits a larger overall target of $1.3 trillion per year to cope with rising temperatures and disasters, but most would come from private sources.