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‘Sanction Pakistan’ hashtag campaign gathers momentum as Afghans speak out
Calls to impose sanctions on Pakistan for their alleged assistance to the Taliban have been mounting in the past week and by Monday, #SanctionPakistan was trending on Twitter.
As Afghan Twitter users rallied behind the sanctions hashtag, #EndProxyWar also started to gather momentum.
This social media movement comes amid the sharp escalation in violence across the country and just days after Afghanistan’s UN ambassador, Ghulam Isaczai, pleaded with members of the UN Security Council to pressure the Taliban to engage in peace talks.
In his address to the meeting on the Afghanistan situation, Isaczai said the attacks launched around the country have been done with the “direct support of more than 10,000 foreign terrorist fighters representing 20 groups”, including Al-Qaeda and ISIS (Daesh).
He stated that the Taliban “continue to enjoy a safe haven in and supply and logistics line extended to their war machine from Pakistan.”
Isaczai also stated that reports and videos show Taliban fighters “congregating close to the Durand Line” frontier to enter Afghanistan.
He said Taliban hold fund-raising events in Pakistan that the dead are transferred over the border for mass burials and fighters wounded are treated in Pakistani hospitals.
His statement added to the growing outcry among Afghans over the ongoing violence and the suffering being inflicted on the people.
Afghanistan’s First Vice President Amrullah Saleh on Monday also used the sanction hashtag in an appeal he put out to the world via Twitter.
He tweeted: “We call on UN & other international organizations to work with us in providing any type of assistance to massive number of people who have sought refuge in Kabul due to brutality, revenge killing, loot & rape by the Talibs. Painful scenes in the streets of Kabul. #SanctionPakistan”
Chris Alexander, a Canadian diplomat and politician, and former ambassador to Kabul, appears to have been one of the first to tweet using the two hashtags.
On August 2 he said: “There will be no permanent ceasefire in Afghanistan without sanctions against Pakistan. Pakistan’s ‘forever war’ must end. #EndProxyWar #SanctionPakistan”
He also tweeted: “Pakistan’s invasion of Afghanistan constitutes an armed attack & act of aggression under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
“Any state that fails to act to end Pakistan’s invasion & prevent further Taliban brutality are betraying the women & girls of Afghanistan & making a complete mockery of their commitment to women’s rights,” he tweeted.
On Monday he retweeted a number of #SanctionPakistan posts after tweeting Sunday “Pakistan’s invasion of Afghanistan today deserves the same response as the disastrous Soviet invasion of 1979: armed resistance, international condemnation & sweeping sanctions. #SanctionPakistan”
Fatima Murchal, President Ashraf Ghani’s deputy spokeswoman, also joined in and raised her voice. “We are burning in the flame of the war imposed on us. This unbearable pain we endure due to Int terrorism requires the world to take a stance. This silence indicates a very high tolerance for terrorism. #SanctionTaliban #SanctionPakistan #EndProxyWarInAfghanistan”
Waheed Omer, Director General, Office of Public and Strategic Affairs, meanwhile said: “Hundreds of TB (Taliban) killed and injured daily. No TB patients in our hospitals. No funerals for them in our villages. No one knows their family, relatives, village. “Bodies transferred to Pak (Pakistan) for mass funerals. Injured taken to Pak hospitals for treatment. It’s PAK. #SanctionPakistan,” he said.
One well known social media activist tweeted Monday that the hashtag campaign was quickly gathering momentum.
He said: “Thank you all for speaking up. The Afghan twitter trend is now global with more than 100k and growing with a fast pace. Afghanistan needs all these voices. Speak louder and defend Afghanistan against Pakistani invasion. #SanctionPakistan”.
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, officials in the local administration of Herat said that due to severe cold along the illegal migration route to Iran, three Afghan migrants have lost their lives in the Kohsan district of the province, and a shepherd has also died there for the same reason.
Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the Herat governor’s office, said that some statistics and images shared on social media regarding the incident are not reliable.
According to him, further investigations are underway to determine whether any individuals have died on the other side of the border.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
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