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UN split over ban on IEA officials’ travel

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(Last Updated On: August 23, 2022)

Members of the United Nations Security Council remained divided Monday over whether to exempt some of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s (IEA) officials from a travel ban, diplomatic sources said.

Under a 2011 Security Council resolution, 135 IEA leaders are subject to a sanctions regime that includes asset freezes and travel bans.

Thirteen of them benefited from an exemption from the travel ban, renewed regularly, to allow them to meet officials from other countries abroad, AFP reported.

But this exemption ended last Friday, after Ireland objected to its automatic renewal for another month.

In June, the Sanctions Committee in charge of Afghanistan, comprised of the Security Council’s 15 members, had already removed from the exemptions list two IEA ministers responsible for education, in retaliation for the drastic reduction in the rights of women and girls, AfP reported.

Several Western countries would like to further reduce the list, according to diplomatic sources.

China and Russia, however, supported a regular extension of exemptions list.

“These exemptions are still just as necessary,” the Chinese presidency of the Security Council said last week, deeming it “counterproductive” to link human rights to travel issues for IEA officials.

Since last week, and again Monday, several compromise proposals that would more or less shrink the list of officials concerned, or the number of authorized destinations, have been rejected on both sides, according to diplomatic sources.

Discussions are expected to continue.

Pending a possible decision, none of the IEA officials on the sanctions list can travel, AFP reported.

That was of particular concern to the IEA’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, who has visited Qatar several times in recent months for diplomatic discussions and who was among the 13 exemptions.

In a statement posted Saturday on Twitter, a foreign ministry spokesman called on the Security Council “not to use sanctions as pressure tool” and said all sanctions against IEA officials should be lifted.

“If the travel ban is extended, it will create distance instead of promoting dialogue & engagement, an outcome that must be prevented,” the spokesman said.

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US urges IEA to fulfill counter-terrorism commitments

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(Last Updated On: March 29, 2024)

The US State Department said on Thursday that Washington is committed to ensuring that Afghanistan can never again be a launching pad for terrorism.

“We remain committed to ensuring that Afghanistan can never again be a launching pad for terrorism, and we continue to push the Taliban (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) to fulfill all of their counterterrorism commitments to the international community,” the department’s spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a news briefing in Washington.

He reiterated that the United States had clearly communicated to the IEA that it’s their responsibility to ensure that “they give no safe haven to terrorists, whether it be Al Qaeda or ISIS-K or any other terrorist organization”.

Miller also reassured US allies that Washington was closely watching the developments in Afghanistan and was ready to deal with any threat emerging from the region.

“We remain vigilant against the evolving threat of these terrorist groups, and our global coalition to defeat ISIS and the C5+1 help intensify our efforts to monitor terrorist threats from the region and prevent their ability to raise funds, travel, and spread propaganda,” he said.

C5+1 refers to a diplomatic platform involving the five Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgy­zstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) and the United States. It serves as a forum for discussing and addressing regional issues such as security, economic development, and cooperation.

“The United States remains vigilant against the evolving threat posed by terrorist groups, including ISIS-K, and has maintained an unwavering focus on terrorism since President Joe Biden took office three years ago,” Miller said.

The US, he said, was “working both unilaterally and with its partners to successfully disrupt threats across the globe and degrade ISIS”.

“We will continue to work to hold ISIS accountable for its actions and to prevent terrorist attacks against the United States and other Western countries,” Miller said.

This comes as IEA has repeatedly said that it is committed to not allowing anyone to use Afghanistan soil against any other country.

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IEA condemns Israel for confiscating 800 hectares of land in West Bank’s Jordan Valley

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(Last Updated On: March 29, 2024)

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) strongly condemned on Thursday Israel’s decision to seize 800 hectares of land in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan Valley region.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said that the recent actions by “the Zionist regime demonstrate that it does not to adhere to international laws, especially international humanitarian law.”

“Continuation of such unilateral actions and ignoring the rights of Palestinian people will further deteriorate the situation,” the statement said.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan expects international actors, particularly influential regional Muslim countries to fulfill their legitimate, human and moral responsibilities in supporting the oppressed people of Palestine and prevent the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied territories,” it added.

Israeli media have reported that Israel seized 800 hectares of land in the Jordan Valley region of the occupied West Bank, claiming it as “state land.”

It is reported the seized land could be used for the construction of illegal Jewish settlements.

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ISIS-K leader reportedly living in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Sanaullah Ghaffari, also known as Shahab al-Muhajar, is reportedly the ISIS-Khorasan (Daesh) branch leader and is holed up in Pakistan, Reuters reports.

The 29-year-old took over as leader in 2020 and under his leadership the group has carried out extreme attacks as a means of recruiting, Reuters reported.

Reuters noted that little was known about Ghafari before the deadly 2021 ISIS attack on Kabul Airport, which killed 170 Afghan civilians and 13 American soldiers.

But after Friday’s deadly attack in a concert hall in Moscow, which left 139 people dead, Ghaffari’s group has come under intense scrutiny.

Reuters reports that Ghaffari is said to have been involved in several attacks in Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan.

Pakistani officials said months ago that Ghaffari had been killed in Kunar province in Afghanistan in June last year, but Reuters has reported that he did not die and instead fled to Pakistan and lives in the border province of Baluchistan.

Abdul Matin Qani, the spokesman of the Ministry of Interior of Afghanistan, says that Daesh has been suppressed in Afghanistan for more than two years and has lost its operational capacity.

The last attack carried out by Daesh in Afghanistan was the attack on the Kabul Bank office in Kandahar last week which left three dead and 12 wounded.

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