With the Loya Jirga set to convene, the Kabul Polytechnic University announced on Sunday its closure until July 3. The closure was announced in a statement on the official page of the university, with the stump and signature of its chancellor. It said: “The day and night Master’s programme students and boarders are informed that to convene the Loya Jirga, […]

India has dispatched a new shipment of 3,000 metric tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan through the Pakistani land route, says a media report. With the latest shipment, India has completed sending 33,500 metric tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan in partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP). External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi tweeted: “India sent on Saturday the next shipment […]

China’s permanent representative to the United Nations has again asked the US to immediately return Afghanistan its foreign assets. Zhang Jun, addressing a UN Security Council session, lamented that no progress had been made in unfreezing Afghanistan’s reserves. “The Afghan people need every bit of these resources. That’s why it’s unjustified to freeze Afghanistan’s foreign assets,” the diplomat quoted as […]

India has reopened its embassy in Kabul following the arrival of a “technical team” in Afghanistan’s capital. The Indian embassy in Kabul was shut down almost 10 months ago in the wake of the Taliban’s quick takeover of Afghanistan. New Delhi said the team was sent to the Indian embassy to monitor the delivery of humanitarian assistance to needy Afghan […]

Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi has welcomed Iran’s timely relief for earthquake victims in southeastern Afghanistan. At the moment, providing shelter for the quake survivors was the top priority of the Islamic Emirate, Muttaqi said in a phone conversation with his Iranian counterpart. Mehr News Agency quoted Muttaqi as commending Iran for offering broad services to the Afghan nation under […]

Turkmenistan’s new president should deliver on his pledge to ‘’humanise’’ government policies and ensure that citizens are not imprisoned for voicing concerns and communicating with independent media, human rights groups, and opposition movements based abroad, Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights (TIHR) and International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) have today said. The two organisations urged Turkmenistan’s international partners to demand […]

In no other part of the Russian Federation has the FSB generated positive statistics for itself by arresting or more often killing those it targets than in the North Caucasus, where for more than 20 years, it has gone after those it has identified as Islamist radicals. Rights activists say that the FSB has often made that charge on the […]

With reports of dozens killed as well as hundreds injured and detained in recent weeks, the Tajik government tried to settle a long-standing conflict in its Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) with forceful and repressive measures in a crackdown that has shocked the remote region. In the process, Dushanbe has seemingly destroyed any hope of regaining support in GBAO, where the […]

India had become Afghanistan’s biggest regional donor over the past two decades, having committed about $3 billion toward humanitarian assistance, infrastructure development, and capacity building of various state institutions. India had a stable relationship with the civilian Afghan government over the last two decades and provided development assistance for different projects in Afghanistan. New Delhi had long been staunchly anti-Taliban, […]

Afghan authorities struggled on Thursday to reach a remote area hit by an earthquake that killed some 1,000 people but poor communications and a lack of proper roads hampered their efforts, officials said, as the country’s supreme leader pleaded with the international community for help. The magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck early on Wednesday about 160 kilometres (100 miles) southeast of […]