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Heartbreak as Afghan girls ordered home just hours
after schools reopen
AFP - Tuesday
The Taliban ordered girls' secondary schools in Afghanistan to shut on Wednesday just hours after they reopened, sparking heartbreak and confusion over the policy reversal by the hardline Islamist group -- and international condemnation.
The U-turn was announced after thousands of girls resumed lessons for the first time since August, when the Taliban seized control of the country and imposed harsh restrictions on women.
The education ministry offered no clear explanation for the shift, even as officials held a ceremony in the capital Kabul to mark the start of the academic year, saying it was a matter for the country's leadership.
Girls had to leave their schools following the Taliban's order to close them
© Ahmad SAHEL ARMAN
"In Afghanistan, especially in the villages, the mindsets are not ready," spokesman Aziz Ahmad Rayan told reporters.
Villagers operating in the 14th century will never be ready for education. It is education that would bring the villages closer to modern times. But then, educated women are less likely to remain invisible in Muslim society.
Chart showing girls' secondary school enrollment in Afghanistan,
in comparison with Iran, India and Pakistan
© Laurence CHU
Wednesday's date for girls to resume school had been announced weeks earlier by the ministry, with spokesman Rayan saying the Taliban had a "responsibility to provide education and other facilities to our students".
"We have some cultural restrictions... but the main spokesmen of the Islamic Emirate will offer better clarifications."
A Taliban source told AFP the decision came after a meeting late Tuesday by senior officials in the southern city of Kandahar, the movement's de facto power centre and conservative spiritual heartland.
IMAGES: Girls resumed classes across much of Afghanistan Wednesday after Taliban authorities announced
the reopening of their secondary schools, more than seven months after seizing power and imposing
harsh restrictions on the rights of women to be educated.
They insisted that pupils aged 12 to 19 would be segregated -- even though most Afghan schools are already same-sex -- and operate according to Islamic principles.
Saudi airstrikes hit Yemen's Houthis after attack on oil depot
7 killed as targets struck in rebel-held cities of Sanaa and Hodeida
The Associated Press ·
Posted: Mar 26, 2022 7:32 AM ET
A cloud of smoke rises from a burning oil depot in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Friday. Yemen's Houthi rebels attacked
the facility on Friday — their highest-profile assault yet that threatened to disrupt the upcoming grand prix in the city.
(Hassan Ammar/The Associated Press)
A Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen unleashed a barrage of airstrikes on the capital and a strategic Red Sea city, officials said Saturday. At least seven people were killed.
The overnight airstrikes on Sanaa and Hodeida — both held by the Houthis — came a day after the rebels attacked an oil depot in the Saudi city of Jeddah, their highest-profile assault yet on the kingdom.
Brig.-Gen. Turki al-Malki, a spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition, said the strikes targeted "sources of threat" to Saudi Arabia, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency.
He said the coalition intercepted and destroyed two explosives-laden drones early Saturday. He said the drones were launched from Houthi-held civilian oil facilities in Hodeida, urging civilians to stay away from oil facilities in the city.
Footage circulated online showed flames and plumes of smoke over Sanaa and Hodeida. Associated Press journalists in the Yemeni capital heard loud explosions that rattled residential buildings there.
Fuel supply station among targets
The Houthis said the coalition airstrikes hit a power plant, a fuel supply station and the state-run social insurance office in the capital.
A Houthi media office claimed an airstrike hit houses for guards of the social insurance office, killing at least seven people and wounding three others, including women and children.
Houthi rebels are seen in Sanaa, Yemen, in November 2021. (Hani Mohammed/The Associated Press)
The office shared images it said showed the aftermath of the airstrike. It showed wreckage in the courtyard of a social insurance office with the shattered windows of a nearby multiple-story building.
In Hodeida, the Houthi media office said the coalition hit oil facilities in violation of a 2018 cease-fire deal that ended months of fighting in Hodeida, which handles about 70% of Yemen's commercial and humanitarian imports. The strikes also hit the nearby Port Salif, also on the Red Sea.
Al-Malki, the coalition spokesperson, was not immediately available for comment on the Houthi claims.
The escalation is likely to complicate efforts by the UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, to reach a humanitarian truce during the holy month of Ramadan" in early April.
Smoke billows from a fire at Saudi Aramco's petroleum storage facility after an attack in Jeddah on Friday. (Reuters)
It comes as the Gulf Cooperation Council plans to host the warring sides for talks late this month. The Houthis however have rejected Riyadh — the Saudi capital where the GCC is headquartered — as a venue for talks, which are expected to include an array of Yemeni factions.
The Houthis also announced Saturday a unilateral initiative that included a three-day suspension of cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia, as well as fighting inside Yemen. They demanded an end to the coalition air and sea blockade on their territories before engaging in negotiations.
Peter Salisbury, Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group, doubted that ongoing efforts will succeed in bringing a peaceful settlement to the grinding war in the near future, given that international attention is now focusing on other crises including the war in Ukraine.
"I really wouldn't buy into any optimism we'll see diplomatic progress in 2022," he said. "It's pretty clear that all parties are still looking for ways to either win outright or cause significant damage to their rivals."
Yemen's brutal war erupted in 2014 after the Houthis seized Sanaa. Months later, Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a devastating air campaign to dislodge the Houthis and restore the internationally recognized government.
The conflict has in recent years become a regional proxy war that has killed more than 150,000 people, including over 14.500 civilians. It also created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
The Houthis' Friday attack came ahead of a Formula One race in the kingdom on Sunday, raising concerns about Saudi Arabia's ability to defend itself against the Iranian-backed rebels.
Jeddah hosting Formula One race
Friday's attack targeted the same fuel depot that the Houthis had attacked in recent days — the North Jeddah Bulk Plant that sits just southeast of the city's international airport and is a crucial hub for Muslim pilgrims heading to Mecca.
In Egypt, hundreds of passengers were stranded at Cairo International Airport after their Jeddah-bound flights were cancelled because of the Houthi attack, according to airport officials.
The kingdom's flagship carrier Saudia announced the cancelation of two flights on its website. The two had 456 passengers booked. A third cancelled flight with 146 passengers was operated by the low-cost Saudi airline Flynas.
Some passengers found seats on other Saudi Arabia-bound flights and others were booked into hotels close to the Cairo airport, according to Egyptian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because there were not authorized to brief media.
Taliban blocks dozens of women from taking flights out of Afghanistan
Women, including some bound for Canada, denied boarding
because they were travelling without male guardians
The Associated Press ·
Posted: Mar 26, 2022 10:12 AM ET
A photo from last November shows planes parked at the Kabul airport. Dozens of women were denied boarding on flights out of Kabul International Airport on Friday, because they were travelling without male guardians, two Afghan airline officials told The Associated Press. (Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images)
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers refused to allow dozens of women to board several flights, including some bound for Canada, because they were travelling without male guardians, two Afghan airline officials said Saturday.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions from the Taliban, said dozens of women who arrived at Kabul's international airport Friday to board domestic and international flights were told they couldn't do so without a male guardian.
Some of the women were dual nationals returning to their homes overseas, including some from Canada, according to one of the officials. Women were denied boarding on flights to Islamabad, Dubai and Turkey on Kam Air and the state-owned Ariana Airline, said the officials.
The order came from the Taliban leadership, said one official.
By Saturday, some women travelling alone were given permission to board an Ariana Airlines flight to western Herat province, the official said. However, by the time the permission was granted they had missed their flight, he said.
The airport's president and police chief, both from the Taliban movement and both Islamic clerics, were meeting Saturday with airline officials.
"They are trying to solve it," the official said.
Women already faced travel restrictions
It was still unclear whether the Taliban would exempt air travel from an order issued months ago requiring women travelling more than 72 kilometres to be accompanied by a male relative.
Taliban officials contacted by The Associated Press did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Since taking power last August, the Taliban leadership have been squabbling among themselves as they struggle to transition from war to governing. It has pit hard-liners — like acting Prime Minister Mullah Hasan Akhund, who is deeply rooted in the old guard — against the more pragmatic among them, like Sirajuddin Haqqani. He took over leadership of the powerful Haqqani network from his father Jalaluddin Haqanni. The elder Haqqani, who died several years ago, is from Akhund's generation, who ruled Afghanistan under the strict and unchallenged leadership of Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Infuriating many Afghans is the knowledge that many of the Taliban of the younger generation, like Sirajuddin Haqqani, are educating their girls in Pakistan, while in Afghanistan women and girls have been targeted by their repressive edicts since taking power.
This latest assault on women's rights in Taliban-run Afghanistan denying women air travel, comes just days after the all-male religiously driven government broke its promise to allow girls to return to school after the sixth grade.
The move enraged the international community, which has been reluctant to recognize the Taliban-run government since the Taliban swept into power last August, fearing they would revert to their harsh rule of the 1990s. The Taliban's refusal to open up education to all Afghan children also infuriated large swaths of the Afghan population. On Saturday, dozens of girls demonstrated in the Afghan capital demanding the right to go to school.
What a shame that Afghanistan is reverting more and more to strict Sharia. Girls, as usual, pay the price for Afghan men's madness.
Muslims spray acid on family for accepting Jesus:
‘You deserve death’
By Anugrah Kumar,
Christian Post Contributor|
Sunday, March 27, 2022
A church bell hangs from a tree branch outside a Catholic church and a school in Odek village, Uganda. |
REUTERS/JAMES AKENA
Radical Muslims in eastern Uganda sprayed acid on their family members during an argument over their conversion from Islam to Christianity and were told, “You deserve death.” The family survived but remain in the hospital where they're being treated for burns.
Reports surfaced last week that Muslim relatives had sprayed acid on three new converts — Juma Waiswa, 38, his 32-year-old wife, Nasimu Naigaga, and their 13-year-old daughter, Amina Nagudi — in Intonko village of Namutumba District, to punish them for putting their faith in Christ, according to Morning Star News.
One of the victims, Waiswa, said they converted to Christianity when a pastor visited their home and shared the Gospel on Feb. 17. When the relatives came to know about their conversion, they called them for a meeting with other clan members on March 8, he said.
“During the meeting, we were asked about our salvation, and we affirmed to them that we had believed in Jesus and converted to Christianity,” Waiswa was quoted as saying. “They told us to renounce Jesus, but we stood by the newly founded faith in Jesus.”
He continued: “When we refused to recant our faith in Jesus, my father, Arajabu, recited some Quranic verses, and after that they forcefully started beating us with sticks as prescribed in the Quran, claiming that we were apostates. As this was not enough, my father went inside the room and picked up a bottle of acid and began spraying it on us while the group started shouting, ‘Allah Akbar [Allah is greater], you deserve death,’ and then disowned us.”
Amina Nagudi, 13, was sprayed with acid in Namutumba District, Uganda, on March 8, 2022. | Morning Star News
This girl needs a lot of prayer!
Please take a moment and pray for her right now.
The three victims didn’t realize initially that they had been sprayed with acid. “But as we were fleeing for our lives, we started feeling some serious itching that continued until the pain intensified,” Waiswa said. “A nearby Christian neighbor called the pastor, who arrived immediately and took us to hospital in Mbale, but our daughter was seriously affected and was referred to a hospital in Jinja.”
On March 9, their home was burned to the ground.
Four days later, in a separate incident, radical Muslim villagers attacked a former mosque leader, identified as Swaleh Mulongo of Bugobi village, for putting his faith in Christ after being evangelized by a pastor in January.
“It was around 8 a.m. when four Muslims stopped me and began asking me so many questions regarding Christianity, but I did not respond,” Mulongo was quoted as saying. “Then the men started beating me up with blows and sticks, but thank God when they saw some people approaching, they fled away.”
Mulongo suffered deep head wounds and his wrist was broken.
The radical Muslims then killed goats and chickens that were owned by the pastor who had led Mulongo to Christ.
Acid can disfigure a victim for life and has been used in revenge attacks mostly by men and particularly in Pakistan, India, the United Kingdom and Uganda, for various reasons, from disloyalty to saying “no” to a romantic relationship, according to the London-based Acid Survivors Trust International.
Under Ugandan law, the assailant in an acid attack can be sentenced up to seven years in prison, but “perpetrators are rarely charged,” said Linnet Kirungi, founder and director of the nonprofit Hope Care Rescue Mission, according to Chimp Reports.
"Of the over 200 acid attack survivors with whom I have worked in Uganda, only 20 percent of their perpetrators were charged or had any legal consequences for perpetrating the attack,” she told the outlet.
While most people in Uganda are Christian, some Eastern and Central regions in the country have higher concentrations of Muslims.
The Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project estimates that about 11.5% of Uganda’s population is Muslim, mostly Sunni. Armed attacks and murders of converts are not uncommon in the region.
“Radical Islam’s influence has grown steadily, and many Christians within the majority-Muslim border regions are facing severe persecution, especially those who convert from Islam,” a Voice of the Martyrs factsheet notes.
“Despite the risks, Evangelical churches in Uganda have responded by reaching out to their neighbors; many churches are training leaders how to share the Gospel with Muslims and care for those who are persecuted after they become Christians.”
