Need ‘safe zone’ in Kabul, France, UK to tell UNSC
Proposed safe zone to be under UN control and would primarily offer shelter to people who are seeking to leave Afghanistan
KABUL/MOSUL: France and Britain will on Monday urge the United Nations to work for the creation of a “safe zone” in the Afghan capital Kabul to protect humanitarian operations, French President Emmanuel Macron has said.
“This is very important. This would provide a framework for the United Nations to act in an emergency,” Macron said in comments published in the weekly Journal du Dimanche.
Such a safe zone would allow the international community “to maintain pressure on the Taliban”, who are now in power in Afghanistan, the French leader added. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) - France, Britain, the US, Russia and China - will meet on Monday to discuss the Afghanistan situation.
Paris and London will take the opportunity to present a draft resolution that “aims to define, under UN control, a safe zone in Kabul, that will allow humanitarian operations to continue”, Macron said.
“This project is completely feasible,” he said on a visit to Mosul in Iraq, after vowing to keep troops in the country. “I am very hopeful that it will be successful, I don’t see who could be against making humanitarian projects secure.”
His comments come as international efforts to airlift foreign nationals and vulnerable Afghanis out of the country come to an end on Tuesday.
France ended its evacuation efforts on Friday and the United Kingdom followed suit on Saturday. US troops have been scrambling in dangerous and chaotic conditions to complete a massive evacuation operation from the Kabul airport by an August 31 deadline.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said that some 300 American nationals still in Afghanistan were seeking to leave the country.
In another development, the UNSC has dropped a reference to the word “Taliban” from its Friday’s statement on Thursday’s deadly terror strike near Kabul airport that urged all Afghan entities to avoid backing terrorists “operating on the territory of any other country”.
According to Reuters, the 15-member UN Security Council agreed on the statement after the reference to the Taliban group was removed following a request from China, diplomats said.
Did Taliban kill a folk singer in Andarabi?
The family of a folk singer in north of Kabul say the Taliban killed him. The shooting of Fawad Andarabi came in the Andarabi valley, an area of Baghlan province some 100km north of Kabul. The Taliban say they have retaken those areas, though neighbouring Panjshir in the Hindu Kush mountains remains the only one of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces not under its control.
Afghan women allowed to attend university
Afghan women will be allowed to study at university, but there would be a ban on mixed classes under their rule, the Taliban’s acting higher education minister said on Sunday.
“The people of Afghanistan will continue their higher education in the light of sharia law in safety without being in a mixed male and female environment,” Abdul Baqi Haqqani, the Taliban’s
acting minister for higher education, said following a meeting with elders, known as a loya jirga.
He said the Taliban want to “create a reasonable and Islamic curriculum that is in line with our Islamic, national and historical values and, on the other hand, be able to compete with other countries”.
Girls and boys will also be segregated at primary and secondary schools, which was already common throughout Afghanistan. The group has pledged to respect progress made in women’s rights, but only according to their strict interpretation of Islamic law.