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Baby handed to US soldiers in Kabul evacuation chaos still missing

A two-month old baby handed over to US soldiers during the chaotic withdrawal process in Kabul in August is still missing.
In an exclusive interview with Reuters, the baby’s father Mirza Ali Ahmadi said it was a split second decision to hand baby Sohail to the soldier over a high fence near the gates of the airport as he feared the infant might get crushed in the chaos.
After handing over Sohail, it took the rest of the family more than a half hour to get to the other side of the airport fence.
Once they were inside, Sohail was nowhere to be found.
Mirza Ali, who said he worked as a security guard at the U.S embassy for 10 years, began desperately asking every official he encountered about his baby’s whereabouts, Reuters reported.
He said a military commander told him the airport was too dangerous for a baby and that he might have been taken to a special area for children. But when they got there it was empty.
“He walked with me all around the airport to search everywhere,” Mirza Ali said in an interview through a translator. He said he never got the commander’s name, as he didn’t speak English and was relying on Afghan colleagues from the embassy to help communicate.
Three days went by.
“I spoke to maybe more than 20 people,” he said. “Every officer – military or civilian – I came across I was asking about my baby.”
He said one of the civilian officials he spoke to told him Sohail might have been evacuated by himself. “They said ‘we don’t have resources to keep the baby here.'”
Mirza Ali, 35, Suraya, 32, and their four other children, were put on an evacuation flight to Qatar and then to Germany and eventually landed in the United States.
The family is now at Fort Bliss in Texas with other Afghan refugees waiting to be resettled somewhere in the United States.
Mirza Ali said he saw other families handing their babies over the Kabul airport fence to soldiers at the same time.
Mirza Ali said every person he comes across – aid workers, U.S. officials – he tells them about Sohail. “Everyone promises they will do their best, but they are just promises,” he said.
An Afghan refugee support group created a “Missing Baby” sign with Sohail’s picture on it and are circulating it among their networks in the hopes that someone will recognize him, Reuters reported.
A U.S. government official familiar with the situation said the case had been flagged for all the agencies involved, including the U.S. bases and overseas locations. The child was last seen being handed to a U.S. soldier during the chaos at the Kabul airport but “unfortunately no one can find the child,” the official said.
A State Department spokesperson said the government is working with international partners and the international community “to explore every avenue to locate the child, which includes an international amber alert that was issued through the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”
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27% of Afghans regularly use tobacco: health ministry

Marking World No Tobacco Day, Public Health Ministry officials said on Wednesday that 27% of Afghans regularly use tobacco, of which 2.7% are women.
Mohammad Hassan Ghiyasi, Deputy Minister of Policy and Planning of the Ministry of Public Health, said that tobacco kills eight million people worldwide every year and tobacco smoke is one of the main causes of air pollution, which causes dangerous diseases such as lung cancer and heart diseases.
Citing a national survey conducted in collaboration with the World Health Organization, he added that nearly 20 percent of Afghan people use smokeless tobacco, mainly Naswar.
A number of other officials of the Ministry of Public Health also said that the number of patients with mouth cancer due to the use of tobacco has increased recently in the country.
“Tobacco not only causes respiratory or heart diseases, but also mouth cancer, which has been observed among young people who use Naswar and Paan (both smokeless tobacco) in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The number of people suffering from this disease is increasing day by day,” Haider Khan Haider, Director General of Disease Prevention and Control of the Ministry of Public Health, said.
Meanwhile, a representative of the World Health Organization said that 80% of tobacco cultivation and processing takes place in countries that are poor.
“The World Health Organization wants the honorable Ministry of Public Health to continue its technical support in the area of tobacco control, like other areas,” Naeemullah Safi, representative of WHO, said.
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Muttaqi urges foreign nations to refuse sanctuary to Afghan migrants

The Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Amir Khan Muttaqi said on Tuesday that security in the country has been restored and Afghans should not leave the country under the pretext that their lives are in danger.
Speaking to family members of the 18 deceased migrants, whose remains were returned from Bulgaria last week, Muttaqi also called on the international community not to take in Afghans who say their lives are in danger.
“The world should not harm Afghanistan’s talents, talents and honor and should not expel them from this country under the name that their lives are in danger,” he said adding: “Don’t oppress them [Afghans] anymore, 20 years of war is enough, they have martyred countless Afghans.”
Muttaqi also expressed his condolences and promised the families of the deceased he would cooperate with them.
The bodies of the 18 migrants were returned to the country last week, three months after they were found dead in an abandoned van outside Sofia in Bulgaria.
Muttaqi raised the issue of the delay in repatriating the bodies and said sanctions were to blame. “The process faced many obstacles and the reason for the delay in the transfer of bodies was this issue (international sanctions).”
He said however that all Afghans are free to travel abroad but they should not use the system to secure asylum.
Family members of the deceased migrants meanwhile said that many young people are deceived by human traffickers who get them to Europe via dangerous routes.
These families called on the IEA to stamp out the issue and end human trafficking in the country.
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Qatar prime minister, IEA supreme leader hold secret talks

The Qatari prime minister held secret talks with the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan this month on resolving tension with the international community, a source briefed on the meeting told Reuters.
The May 12 meeting in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar between Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and Hibatullah Akhundzada is the first the reclusive IEA leader is known to have held with a foreign leader.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration was briefed on the talks and is “coordinating on all issues discussed” by the pair, including furthering dialogue with the IEA, the source told Reuters.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said other issues Sheikh Mohammed raised with Hibatullah included the need to end IEA bans on girls’ education and women’s employment.
The meeting represents a diplomatic success for Qatar, which has criticized IEA restrictions on women while using its long-standing ties to push for deeper engagement with Kabul by the international community.
Reuters reported that the source’s comments suggested that Washington supported elevating what have been unproductive lower-level talks in the hope of a breakthrough that could end the world’s only bans of their kind and ease dire humanitarian and financial crises that have left tens of millions of Afghans hungry and jobless.
The White House declined to comment on the talks. The State Department and the Qatar embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson of the Islamic Emirate, told Ariana News that the purpose of the Qatari Prime Minister’s visit to Kandahar was to meet Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the Prime Minister of the Islamic Emirate.
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