KABUL: Booking a ride that picks you up from your doorstep has been a dream for many Afghans for a long time. The dream is now coming true. After the popular ride-hailing services such as Uber and Careem declined to run on Afghanistan’s chaotic and unmapped roads, a private national firm came up with a local solution: Buber.
Currently on its test run, the service will be officially launched in Kabul in January 2019.
Basharmal Dawlatzai, a Buber driver, says the initiative in a congested city where violence and criminal activities have been part of daily life for years, is a relief for both clients and drivers.
“It is very convenient for both sides, the customer does not need to walk to a street, wait for taxi in cold or hot weather and bargain with a taxi he or she does not know,” Dawlatzai told Arab News. “We go to their homes and drop them at their favored destination, which saves both sides time and hassle.”
He has been with Buber for two months and has taken around employees of Afghanistan’s Holding Group (AHG) that owns Buber, which in Dari means “Take me”.
AHG’s headquarters near the ancient Darul-Aman palace is tucked away behind blast walls with a sprawling compound that enjoys far better security measures than many state institutions which are the targets of routine attacks by militants in Afghanistan.
The security precautions at AHG include a series of body searches by armed guards as well as scanners and the layers of checks that make it look as if the compound is in top-secret location.
There is a different world and mood inside, and for a moment you may think that this is not Afghanistan, given the pace of its work and manner of efficiency. Groups of young sleek men and women are busy typing away on computers or discussing their regular daily activities.
AHG hopes to gallop and make Afghanistan catch up with the revolution in the field of technology that has spread across the globe in recent years.
Staff at AHG say that since its launch in 2009 the company has provided professional business services to more than 700 organizations across Afghanistan. Its clients range from small companies, non-profits and corporations to development institutions and government customers. It offers a range of services that include legal and human resources support and assistance with licensing, visas, payroll, taxation, audit and procurement.
Now, AHG is working on its new innovation, Afghanistan Technology Services (ATS), which covers Hesab (accounting) and Buber, online taxi ordering similar to Uber.
The Hesab application allows customers to pay online power and water bills and order goods for home delivery, as well as paying for Buber.
The online car ordering has been operating in Afghanistan for several years, but business is tailing off for the other two firms, which according to officials had not managed to develop an advanced application.
“Technology is taking over each and every thing across the world, we do not want to be behind those guys and we would like to reach somewhere and rebuild Afghanistan. This is our mission, to rebuild Afghanistan,” said Zaheeruddin Naeabkhail, Buber’s senior manager.
Until its launch in January Buber is on a test run to make sure that the application works smoothly. It has enlisted 500 vehicles, with Kabul being the immediate target, and with the intention to expand to other major cities later.
Not many will be able to afford the Buber service: Smart phone owners and literate people are its target.
Even the drivers will have to be literate.
In a country where there is no fixed rate for taxis and customers usually bargain, Buber will have fixed prices and can come to a customer’s desired address for pick up.
In a country riven by violence and crimes, such as abductions, Buber can offer peace of mind to clients as it has a tracking mechanism which clients can share with anyone they want to for their safety, AHG officials said.
“The problem for now in the market is the security concern. We have this facility for the user as well as the driver that allows them to be able to track users through our GPS,” Naeabkhail said.
Drivers will be registered with full details for security measures and they can help the police with information if anything happens to a client between pickup and drop-off.
The application can be a great help for the customer to avoid congested areas and routes where there is protest or there has been an attack, officials said, adding this will save time for the client and money for the driver, as well as reducing pollution.
“This application is very challenging application, nobody else has it, it is not easy for others to build it easily. Afghans have developed the application themselves,” Naeabkhail said.
Roadblocks created by officials, some embassies, foreign troops and factional leaders are the key challenges and Buber hopes to address that with the help of Google, he said.
“The main challenge that we face is the map, because Afghanistan is not mapped very well. We would like the support of Google if they are willing to help us … it is like general support for the public at large and also for any company that comes later and invests.”
Buber picks up the taxi challenge on the streets of Kabul
Buber picks up the taxi challenge on the streets of Kabul
- Popular ride-hailing services such as Uber and Careem declined to run on Afghanistan’s chaotic and unmapped roads
- Buber will be officially launched in Kabul in January 2019
France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia
- The artifacts currently stored at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa will be delivered to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday
ADDIS ABABA: France on Saturday began the return of some 3,500 archeolo-gical artifacts to Ethiopia, which Paris held since the 1980s for study.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot handed over two prehistoric stone axes, bifaces, and a stone cutter to Ethiopia’s Tourism Minister Selamawit Kassa during a visit to the National Museum in Addis Ababa.
The tools are “samples of nearly 3,500 artifacts from the excavations carried out on the Melka Kunture site,” a cluster of prehistoric sites south of the capital excavated under the direction of a late French researcher, Barrot said.
France and Ethiopia hold a longstanding bilateral agreement to cooperate in archeology and paleontology.
The artifacts stored at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa will be delivered to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday.
“This is a handover, not a restitution, in that these objects have never been part of French public collections,” said Laurent Serrano, culture adviser at the French Embassy.
“These artifacts, which date back between 1 and 2 million years, were found during excavations carried out over several decades at a site near the Ethiopian capital,” he added.
Concern grows over rise in fatal migrant shipwrecks in Greece
- UNHCR representative: ‘Counting lives lost at sea cannot become a norm’
ATHENS: The UN refugee agency has voiced concern at a rise in deaths of migrants trying to reach Greece by sea in small boats from Turkiye, following two fatal shipwrecks this week.
The UNHCR said in a statement Friday that 17 people have died in such accidents this month, while the total so far this year is at least 45 deaths.
Some 56,000 people have illegally entered Greece since Jan. 1, mostly by sea. That’s a five-year high, and the number has already exceeded government estimates of some 50,000 arrivals by the year’s end in October.
The UNHCR representative in Greece, Maria Clara Martin, said the migrant deaths “highlight the urgent need for long-term responses and safer and credible alternatives” for people fleeing conflict, persecution, violence, or human rights violations.
“Counting lives lost at sea cannot become a norm — we should not get used to it,” she said.
The UN agency said that this week’s two fatal accidents off the eastern Aegean Sea island of Samos, which is close to the Turkish coast, saw a mother lose three of her children, while another survivor lost his wife and daughter.
Greek authorities have attributed this year’s rise in migrant arrivals to conflicts in the Middle East.
While there’s been a surge in people attempting the long and dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya to the southern Greek island of Crete, most migrants pay smuggling gangs to ferry them from Turkiye to the eastern Aegean islands.
On Friday, the Greek coast guard said it arrested a 17-year-old Turkish youth on suspicion of having landed 16 migrants — including three children — on the eastern island of Chios.
Tunisia and Libya have become vital departure points for migrants, often from other African countries, who risk perilous Mediterranean Sea journeys in the hopes of reaching better lives in Europe.
Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt to make the crossing. Italy, whose Lampedusa island is only 150 km from Tunisia, is often their first port of call.
In the latest incident reported on Friday, two unidentified bodies were recovered off Tunisia’s eastern coast after a migrant boat capsized, with one person still missing and 28 rescued.
The boat had set sail from Teboulba, a coastal town some 180 km south of Tunis.
In late October, the bodies of 15 people believed to be migrants were recovered by authorities in Monastir, eastern Tunisia.
And in late September, 36 would-be migrants — mainly Tunisians — were rescued off Bizerte in northern Tunisia.
Since Jan. 1, at least 103 makeshift boats have capsized, and 341 bodies have been recovered off Tunisia’s coast, according to the Interior Ministry.
Kenyan, Ugandan presidents to mediate Ethiopia-Somalia dispute
- Somaliland has struggled to gain international recognition despite governing itself and enjoying comparative peace and stability since declaring independence in 1991
NAIROBI: Kenya’s President William Ruto said on Saturday he and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni would help mediate a dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia, threatening the region’s stability.
Landlocked Ethiopia, which has thousands of troops in Somalia to fight Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, has fallen out with the Mogadishu government over its plans to build a port in the breakaway region of Somaliland in exchange for possible recognition of its sovereignty.
Somaliland has struggled to gain international recognition despite governing itself and enjoying comparative peace and stability since declaring independence in 1991.
The spat has drawn Somalia closer to Egypt, which has quarreled with Ethiopia for years over Addis Ababa’s construction of a vast hydro dam on the Nile River, and Eritrea, another of Ethiopia’s foes.
Somaliland has struggled to gain international recognition despite governing itself and enjoying comparative peace and stability since declaring independence in 1991.
“Because the security of Somalia ... contributes significantly to the stability of our region, and the environment for investors, business people, and entrepreneurs to thrive,” he told a news conference.
Several attempts to resolve the feud in Ankara, Turkiye, failed to make a breakthrough.
Ethiopia’s government and foreign affairs spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Somalia’s foreign minister could not immediately be reached by Reuters.
The government of Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubbaland state said earlier it was suspending relations and cooperation with the federal government in Mogadishu following a dispute over regional elections.
Jubbaland, which borders Kenya and Ethiopia and is one of Somalia’s five semi-autonomous states, reelected regional president Ahmed Mohammed Islam Madobe for a third term in elections on Monday.
However, the national government based in Mogadishu, led by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, opposed the election, saying it was held without federal involvement.
Russian missile strike on central Ukraine kills 4: Zelensky
- More than a dozen others were wounded, including a child
- “A rescue operation is currently underway in the Dnipro region,” Zelensky said
KYIV: A Russian missile strike on a town in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region on Saturday killed at least four people, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
More than a dozen others were wounded, including a child, while a residential building and shop were damaged, according to officials.
“A rescue operation is currently underway in the Dnipro region after the missile strike. As of now, it is known that four people were killed,” Zelensky said in his evening address.
Tsarychanka is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of the region’s capital Dnipro.
The town had a population of around 7,000 people before the war.
The nearly three-year conflict has seen a sharp escalation in recent days, with Moscow pummelling Ukrainian towns and cities ahead of the winter.
Russia launched more than a hundred drones at Ukraine on Friday, a day after knocking out power to more than a million people with strikes on energy infrastructure.
Zelensky says NATO offer for Ukraine-controlled territory could end ‘hot stage’ of war
- “You can’t give an invitation to just one part of a country,” the Ukrainian president said
- “So legally, by law, we have no right to recognize the occupied territory as territory of Russia”
KYIV: An offer of NATO membership to territory under Kyiv’s control would end “the hot stage of the war” in Ukraine, but any proposal to join the military alliance should be extended to all parts of the country that fall under internationally recognized borders, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a broadcast interview.
Zelensky’s remarks on Friday signaled a possible way forward to the difficult path Ukraine faces to future NATO membership. At their summit in Washington in July, the 32 members declared Ukraine on an “irreversible” path to membership. However, one obstacle to moving forward has been the view that Ukraine’s borders would need to be clearly demarcated before it could join so that there can be no mistaking where the alliance’s pact of mutual defense would come into effect.
“You can’t give an invitation to just one part of a country,” the Ukrainian president said in an excerpt of the interview with Sky News, dubbed by the UK broadcaster. “Why? Because thus you would recognize that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine and the other one is Russia.”
Under the Ukrainian constitution, Ukraine cannot recognize territory occupied by Russia as Russian.
“So legally, by law, we have no right to recognize the occupied territory as territory of Russia,” he said.
Since the start of the war in 2022, Russia has been expending huge amounts of weaponry and human life to make small-but-steady territorial gains to the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it already controls in east and southern Ukraine.
“If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. That’s what we need to do, fast. And then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically,” he said.
An invitation for Ukraine to join NATO is one key point of Zelensky’s “victory plan”, which he presented to Western allies and the Ukrainian people in October. The plan is seen as a way for Ukraine to strengthen its hand in any negotiations with Moscow.
Earlier this week, NATO’s new Secretary General Mark Rutte said that the alliance “needs to go further” to support Ukraine in its fight against a Russian invasion. Military aid to Kyiv and steps toward ending the war are expected to be high on the agenda when NATO members’ foreign ministers meet in Brussels for a two-day gathering starting on December 3.
However, any decision for Ukraine to join the military alliance would require a lengthier process and the agreement of all member states.
There is also uncertainty as to the foreign policy stance of President-elect Donald Trump. While Trump vowed on the campaign trail to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a single day, he has not publicly discussed how this could happen. Trump also announced Wednesday that Keith Kellogg, an 80-year-old, highly decorated retired three-star general, would serve as his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.
In April, Kellog wrote that “bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to a close will require strong, America First leadership to deliver a peace deal and immediately end the hostilities between the two warring parties.”
Meanwhile, during his only campaign debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump twice refused to directly answer a question about whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war — raising concerns that Kyiv could be forced to accept unfavorable terms in any negotiations.
Zelensky’s statement comes as Ukraine faces increasing pressure along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) frontline. In its latest report, the Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said Saturday that Russian forces had recently advanced near Kupiansk, in Toretsk, and near Pokrovsk and Velyka Novosilka, a key logistics route for the Ukrainian military.
Ukraine’s air force announced Saturday that the country had come under attack from ten Russian drones, of which eight were shot down over the Kyiv, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kherson regions. One drone returned to Russian-occupied territory, while the final drone disappeared from radar, often a sign of the use of electronic defenses.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said that 11 Ukrainian drones had been shot down by the country’s air defense systems. Both the mayor of Sochi, Andrey Proshunin, and the head of Russia’s Dagestan region, Sergey Melikov, both in Russia’s southwest, said that drones had been destroyed in their regions overnight. No casualties were reported.
On Friday, the Ukrainian president announced a number of changes to military leadership, saying that changes in personnel management were needed to improve the situation on the battlefield.
General Mykhailo Drapatyi, who led the defense of Kharkiv during Russia’s new offensive on Ukraine’s second-largest city this year, was appointed the new head of Ukraine’s Ground Forces. Oleh Apostol was named as the new Deputy Commander-in-Chief responsible for improving military training.
Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi also announced Friday that he would bolster units in Donetsk, Pokrovsk and Kurakhove with additional reserves, ammunition, weapons and military equipment.
