KABUL: The Taliban appeared on Friday to have shut down the government’s ministry of women’s affairs and replaced it with a department notorious for enforcing strict religious doctrine during their first rule two decades ago.
And in a further sign the Taliban’s approach to women and girls had not softened, the Education Ministry said only classes for boys would restart on Saturday.
In Kabul, workers were seen raising a sign for the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice at the old Women’s Affairs building.
Several posts have appeared on Twitter in the last 24 hours showing women workers from the ministry protesting outside the building, saying they had lost their jobs.
No official from the Taliban responded to requests for comment.
Also on Friday, the Education Ministry issued a statement ordering male teachers back to work and said secondary school classes for boys would resume on Saturday.
Despite insisting they will rule more moderately this time around, the Taliban have not allowed women to return to work and introduced rules for what they can wear at university.
The UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution saying that the Taliban need to establish an inclusive government that has “the full, equal and meaningful participation of women” and upholds human rights.
The resolution adopted by the UN’s most powerful body also extends the current mandate of the UN political mission in Afghanistan for six months and delivers a clear message that its 15 members will be watching closely what the Taliban do going forward.
The resolution also calls for strengthened efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to some 14 million Afghans needing aid and demands “unhindered humanitarian access” for the UN and other aid agencies. It also reaffirms “the importance of combating terrorism in Afghanistan ... and ensuring that the territory of Afghanistan should not be used to threaten or attack any country, to plan or finance terrorist acts, or to shelter and train terrorists” in the future.
Russian and China’s leaders urged the Taliban government to remain peaceful to their neighbors and combat terrorism and drug trafficking.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke via video link at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Putin said the organization, holding its meeting in Tajikistan, should “use its potential” to “stimulate the new Afghan authorities” in fulfilling their promises on normalizing life and bringing security in Afghanistan.
Xi said it was necessary to “encourage Afghanistan to put in place a broad-based and inclusive political framework” and to “resolutely fight all forms of terrorism” and live in peace with its neighbors.
Taliban shut down ministry for women
https://arab.news/wm4qb
Taliban shut down ministry for women
- Militia bring back vice department
Indian forces clash with Maoist rebels, five dead
- Over 10,000 people have died in the insurgency by Naxalite rebels who say they are fighting for rights of marginalized people
- Government forces stepped up efforts last year to crush the long-running armed conflict, with some 287 rebels killed in 2024
NEW DELHI: Indian security forces on Sunday battled with Maoist rebels in their forested heartland, police said, with at least four guerillas and one policeman killed.
More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by Naxalite rebels, who say they are fighting for the rights of marginalized indigenous people in India’s resource-rich central regions.
Government forces stepped up efforts last year to crush the long-running armed conflict, with some 287 rebels killed in 2024, according to government figures.
Clashes broke out late Saturday in Abujhmarh district of Chhattisgarh state, a key battleground in the insurgency.
“Four bodies of Maoists, who were in their battle uniform, have been recovered after an encounter with police forces,” police inspector general P. Sunderraj told AFP, adding one police constable had also been killed.
“Action is still on,” he said.
Around 1,000 suspected Naxalites were arrested and 837 surrendered during 2024.
Amit Shah, India’s interior minister, warned the Maoist rebels in September to surrender or face an “all-out” assault, saying the government expected to quash the insurgency by early 2026.
The insurgency has been drastically restricted in area in recent years.
The Naxalites, named after the district where their armed campaign began in 1967, were inspired by the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.
They demanded land, jobs and a share of the region’s immense natural resources for local residents, and made inroads in a number of remote communities across India’s east and south.
The movement gained in strength and numbers until the early 2000s when New Delhi deployed tens of thousands of security personnel against the rebels in a stretch of territory known as the “Red Corridor.”
Authorities have since invested millions of dollars in local infrastructure and social projects to combat the Naxalite appeal.
Israel blocks food supply to northern Gaza’s Indonesian hospital to force out doctors
- Patients, doctors forced out from Kamal Adwan hospital are sheltering in Indonesia Hospital
- The facility has been sheltering critically ill patients with no electricity, water, UN says
JAKARTA: Israeli forces have blocked food and water supply to the Indonesia Hospital in northern Gaza to force out the doctors who are refusing to leave their patients behind, the nongovernmental organization that funded it said on Sunday.
The hospital in Beit Lahiya, a four-story building located near the Jabalia refugee camp, was built from donations organized by the Jakarta-based Medical Emergency Rescue Committee.
It has been sheltering more than a dozen patients, caregivers and health workers from Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, which was destroyed in December after months of relentless Israeli attacks.
The remaining doctors are defying orders to leave the Indonesia Hospital, MER-C said, adding that they last received food aid from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“They are still holding out. The condition is deteriorating, there’s a lack of water and food,” Marissa Noriti, a MER-C volunteer in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, told Arab News via WhatsApp.
“The Israeli occupation forces are blocking supply … The doctors are staying for the patients. They refuse to leave them behind.”
Indonesia Hospital is no longer in service after it was severely damaged by frequent Israeli attacks since October 2023. But the facility was still sheltering critically ill patients, despite not having electricity, water or supplies, according to UNOCHA.
The hospital operated under limited capacity last year, but Israeli bombardments forced the patients and medical staff to transfer to the Al-Shifa hospital in southern Gaza last December, with only a few doctors staying behind.
On Friday, as the hospital was surrounded by Israeli forces attacking the area, the doctors were ordered to leave the facility and the patients.
“We are monitoring the situation. Israel’s occupation forces are cutting off all supplies to force them out; this is their strategy to empty north Gaza, to empty all the hospitals in the north so the people have no place to go to seek help,” Sarbini Abdul Murad, chairman of MER-C’s board of trustees in Jakarta, told Arab News.
“We ask that the international community act by any means to save Palestine from the crimes of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces).”
Israel has frequently targeted medical facilities in the Gaza Strip, saying that they are used by Palestinian armed groups. The attacks have pushed the enclave’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians and wounded over 108,000 since Oct. 7, 2023. The real death toll is believed to be much higher, with estimates published by medical journal The Lancet indicating that, as of July, it could be more than 186,000.
France’s ex-president Sarkozy on trial over alleged Qaddafi pact
- The career of Nicolas Sarkozy has been shadowed by legal troubles since he lost the 2012 presidential election
- Latest trial is the result of a decade of investigations into accusations that Sarkozy accepted illegal campaign financing
PARIS: Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, already convicted twice in separate cases since leaving office, on Monday goes on trial charged with accepting illegal campaign financing in an alleged pact with the late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
The career of Sarkozy has been shadowed by legal troubles since he lost the 2012 presidential election. But he remains an influential figure for many on the right and is also known to regularly meet President Emmanuel Macron.
The fiercely ambitious and energetic politician, 69, who is married to the model and singer Carla Bruni and while in power from 2007-2012 liked to be known as the “hyper-president,” has been convicted in two cases, charged in another and is being investigated in connection with two more.
Sarkozy will be in the dock at the Paris court barely half a month after France’s top appeals court on December 18 rejected his appeal against a one year prison sentence for influence peddling, which he is to serve by wearing an electronic bracelet rather than in jail.
The latest trial is the result of a decade of investigations into accusations that Sarkozy accepted illegal campaign financing — reportedly amounting to some 50 million euros — from Qaddafi to help his victorious 2007 election campaign.
In exchange, it is alleged, Sarkozy and senior figures pledged to help Qaddafi rehabilitate his international image after Tripoli was blamed for bombing attacks on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie in Scotland and UTA Flight 772 in 1989 that killed hundreds of passengers.
Sarkozy has denounced the accusations as part of a conspiracy against him, insisting that he never received any financing for the campaign from Qaddafi and that there is no evidence of any such transfer.
At a time when many Western countries were courting Qaddafi for energy deals as the maverick dictator sought to emerge from decades of international isolation, the Libyan leader in December 2007 visited Paris, famously installing his tent in the center of the city.
But France then backed the UN-sanctioned military action that helped in 2011 oust Qaddafi, who was then killed by rebels. Sarkozy has said allegations from former members of Qaddafi’s inner circle over the alleged campaign financing are motivated by revenge.
If convicted, Sarkozy faces up to 10 years in prison under the charges of concealing embezzlement of public funds and illegal campaign financing. The trial is due to last until April 10.
Sarkozy “is awaiting these four months of hearings with determination. He will fight the artificial construction dreamed up by the prosecution. There was no Libyan financing of the campaign,” said his lawyer Christophe Ingrain.
Among 12 others facing trial over the alleged Libyan financing are heavyweights such as Sarkozy’s former right-hand man, Claude Gueant, his then-head of campaign financing, Eric Woerth, and former minister Brice Hortefeux.
“Claude Gueant will demonstrate that after more than ten years of investigation, none of the offenses he is accused of have been proven,” said his lawyer Philippe Bouchez El Ghozi, denouncing the cases as amounting to “assertions, hypotheses and other approximations.”
For the prosecution, the pact started in 2005 when Qaddafi and Sarkozy, then interior minister, met in Tripoli for a meeting ostensibly devoted to fighting illegal migration. But Sarkozy’s defense counters that no trace of the illegal financing was ever found in the campaign coffers.
The scandal erupted in April 2012, while Sarkozy was in the throes of his re-election campaign, when the Mediapart website published a bombshell article based on a document purportedly from December 2006 it said showed a former Libyan official evoking an agreement over the campaign financing.
Sarkozy has long contended that the document is not genuine.
An embittered Sarkozy would later narrowly lose the second round of the election to Socialist Francois Hollande.
Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, a key figure in the case, had claimed several times that he helped deliver up to five million euros ($5.4 million at current rates) in cash from Qaddafi to Sarkozy and his chief of staff in 2006 and 2007.
But in 2020, Takieddine suddenly retracted his incriminating statement, raising suspicions that Sarkozy and close allies may have paid the witness to change his mind.
In a further twist, Sarkozy was charged in October 2023 with illegal witness tampering while Carla Bruni was last year charged with hiding evidence in the same case.
Sarkozy’s second conviction, in another campaign financing case, was confirmed last year by a Paris appeals court which ruled he should serve six months in prison, with another six months suspended. This verdict can still go to a higher domestic appeals court.
Indian forces clash with Maoist rebels, five dead
- More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by Naxalite rebels
- Rebels demand land, jobs and share of central India’s natural resources for local residents
New Delhi: Indian security forces on Sunday battled with Maoist rebels in their forested heartland, police said, with at least four guerillas and one policeman killed.
More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by Naxalite rebels, who say they are fighting for the rights of marginalized indigenous people in India’s resource-rich central regions.
Government forces stepped up efforts last year to crush the long-running armed conflict, with some 287 rebels killed in 2024, according to government figures.
Clashes broke out late Saturday in Abujhmarh district of Chhattisgarh state, a key battleground in the insurgency.
“Four bodies of Maoists, who were in their battle uniform, have been recovered after an encounter with police forces,” police inspector general P. Sunderraj told AFP, adding one police constable had also been killed.
“Action is still on,” he said.
Around 1,000 suspected Naxalites were arrested and 837 surrendered during 2024.
Amit Shah, India’s interior minister, warned the Maoist rebels in September to surrender or face an “all-out” assault, saying the government expected to quash the insurgency by early 2026.
The insurgency has been drastically restricted in area in recent years.
The Naxalites, named after the district where their armed campaign began in 1967, were inspired by the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.
They demanded land, jobs and a share of the region’s immense natural resources for local residents, and made inroads in a number of remote communities across India’s east and south.
The movement gained in strength and numbers until the early 2000s when New Delhi deployed tens of thousands of security personnel against the rebels in a stretch of territory known as the “Red Corridor.”
Authorities have since invested millions of dollars in local infrastructure and social projects to combat the Naxalite appeal.
Indian forces clash with Maoist rebels, five dead
- More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by Naxalite rebels
- Government forces stepped up efforts last year to crush the long-running armed conflict
NEW DELHI: Indian security forces on Sunday battled with Maoist rebels in their forested heartland, police said, with at least four guerillas and one policeman killed.
More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by Naxalite rebels, who say they are fighting for the rights of marginalized indigenous people in India’s resource-rich central regions.
Government forces stepped up efforts last year to crush the long-running armed conflict, with some 287 rebels killed in 2024, according to government figures.
Clashes broke out late Saturday in Abujhmarh district of Chhattisgarh state, a key battleground in the insurgency.
“Four bodies of Maoists, who were in their battle uniform, have been recovered after an encounter with police forces,” police inspector general P. Sunderraj said, adding one police constable had also been killed.
“Action is still on,” he said.
Around 1,000 suspected Naxalites were arrested and 837 surrendered during 2024.
Amit Shah, India’s interior minister, warned the Maoist rebels in September to surrender or face an “all-out” assault, saying the government expected to quash the insurgency by early 2026.
The insurgency has been drastically restricted in area in recent years.
The Naxalites, named after the district where their armed campaign began in 1967, were inspired by the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.
They demanded land, jobs and a share of the region’s immense natural resources for local residents, and made inroads in a number of remote communities across India’s east and south.
The movement gained in strength and numbers until the early 2000s when New Delhi deployed tens of thousands of security personnel against the rebels in a stretch of territory known as the “Red Corridor.”
Authorities have since invested millions of dollars in local infrastructure and social projects to combat the Naxalite appeal.
