The setbacks come at a harrowing moment for Afghanistan, just as American and international troops are set to leave the country in coming weeks.
The Taliban entered two provincial capitals in northern Afghanistan Sunday, local officials said, the culmination of an insurgent offensive that has overrun dozens of rural districts and forced the surrender and capture of hundreds of government forces and their military equipment in recent weeks.
The Afghanistan government’s top peace negotiator has voiced concern that the withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan could cause a “security vacuum, an increased level of fighting and perhaps a slower pace of negotiations,” saying the solution “has to be through negotiations, not through battle.”
Every few hours this weekend, the Taliban released videos of triumphant insurgents inspecting yet another Afghan district headquarters that had been lost in battle by government forces or surrendered without a fight.
Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MoRR) says that an estimated 6.5 million Afghans are living as migrants or asylum seekers in about 70 countries.
Addressing a press conference on the occasion of World Refugee Day (June 20), Abdul Basit Ansari, a spokesman for the MoRR, said that Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey host the largest number of Afghan refugees.
“Currently, about 6.5 Afghans are living as migrants in more than 70 countries, and that most of them have migrated to Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey,” Ansari said.
He added that more than four million Afghans, have been forced to flee their homes due to ongoing clashes across the country.
Meanwhile, at an event organized by the Afghan government and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to mark World Refugee Day, President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, reaffirmed the government’s strong commitment to enabling voluntary repatriation in safety and dignity, and sustainable reintegration of Afghan refugees.
“They are an integral part of Afghanistan and without them, the Afghan nation is incomplete”, Ghani said.
The UNHCR in a statement stated that Afghans constitute the world’s largest protracted refugee situation around the globe, with millions displaced at different time intervals.
According to the statement 2020 recorded about 132,700 Afghan refugees, though an overall reduction in numbers in 2020, Afghans still remain the third-largest population displaced across borders with a total of about 2.6 million refugees.
More than 85 percent of Afghan refugees are hosted in Iran and Pakistan, the statement noted.
“Afghan refugees and diaspora abroad have accumulated a wealth of human capital, skills, and assets with which they can play an important role in the nation-building, and reconstruction and development of Afghanistan,” President Ghani said.
Speaking on the occasion of World Refugee Day, Caroline Van Buren, UNHCR’s Representative in Afghanistan commended Government’s efforts in including returnees and displaced Afghans in the national priority programs particularly health, education, and livelihood sectors.
“Inclusion and addressing the vulnerabilities of returnees displaced population through coordinated and comprehensive area-based humanitarian and development investments to build the resilient communities is at the heart of our (government and UNHCR’s) strategies in Afghanistan,” she said.
Syrians are eagerly awaiting the humanitarian outcome of Wednesday’s summit between US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, and its impact on the flow of aid to several opposition-held areas.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Syrians hoped the two leaders would have discussed the Bab al-Hawa border crossing.
The Danish authorities rejected an appeal of a deportation decision against Omar al-Natour and his wife Asma. The Syrian couple started a new life in Denmark six years ago.
The Danish authorities told the couple that they had 30 days to leave for Syria or they would be detained at a deportation camp, although the husband suffers from health problems and is wanted by the security services in Syria, Asma told Zaman al-Wasl. Nevertheless, the Danish Immigration Department refused to renew their residency.
On Wednesday, German interior ministers held a meeting to discuss the deportation of some Syrian refugees to their homeland, as human rights organizations issue warnings against such deportations.
According to the European website InfoMigrants, German interior ministers will discuss several issues at their three-day meeting. Most notably, they will discuss the option of deporting refugees to Syria and Afghanistan, based on the individual case of each refugee. Refugees who are “dangerous criminals” or “posing a threat” could therefore be deported.
US President Joe Biden was confused between Syria and Libya multiple times in a G7 media conference on Sunday, as he spoke of possible points of collaboration between the US and Russia, beyond the long-standing tensions between them.
“In Libya, we should be opening up the passes to be able to go through and provide… food assistance and economic – I mean vital assistance – to a population that’s in real trouble,” Biden said.
Analysts cannot offer any definitive indications about the fate of the Syrian issue after the summit between president Joe Biden, and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Reports hinted, however, at the possibility of cooperation between the two countries.
Some reports described the Biden-Putin meeting as a pragmatic summit, while other analysts described the meeting as a “red line summit” that was demanded by the two presidents, asserting that the Syrian issue was at the bottom of the agenda.
When U.S. President Joe Biden participates in his first summit between the United States and the European Union tomorrow in Brussels, he should keep the focus on the big picture.
