Must Prevent Forced Displacement of Ethnic, Religious Groups in Afghanistan, Says CSTO

This is the first visit of the UN special coordinator for Afghanistan to Kabul.

According to the Taliban’s Ministry of Economy, during his meeting with Sinirlioğlu, Hanif discussed "strengthening Afghanistan’s ties with the international community and development programmes to improve the economic situation".

The statement of the Taliban’s Ministry of Economy claimed that Sinirlioğlu and his accompanying delegation welcomed the Taliban’s "major achievements in the economic sector".

According to the statement, the UN delegation said that the solution to the current economic situation in Afghanistan is to have mutual cooperation between the Taliban and the United Nations.

On April 25, the United Nations Secretary-General appointed Feridun Sinirlioğlu as the UN special coordinator for Afghanistan.

Sinirlioglu was Türkiye’s foreign minister in 2015 and later became the country's representative to the United Nations.

Over the last two months, little was known about his activities as the UN special coordinator.

Last Saturday, sources confirmed Sinirlioğlu’s meeting with Batur Dostum, the Chairperson of the Central Council of the National Islamic Movement Party of Afghanistan. Dostum had expressed concern about the land grabbing of Uzbek and Turkmen lands by the Taliban and the relocation of the Tahreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) members in northern Afghanistan.

During his meeting with Sinirlioğlu, Batur Dostum had stressed that the settlement of TTP members and extremist groups in northern Afghanistan has increased concerns of people inside Afghanistan and the regional countries and has affected their will to engage with the Taliban.

On the occasion of World Refugee Day on Tuesday, the Taliban embassy had expressed concern about the situation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and stressed that the Pakistani police have been arresting and harassing Afghan refugees.

The Taliban embassy in Islamabad asked the Pakistani police to stop harassing Afghans. The embassy has also asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Islamabad and other refugee organisations to pay attention to the problems of Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Over the past few months, Pakistani police has arrested thousands of Afghan refugees and has deported many of them to Afghanistan.

The Taliban embassy in Islamabad emphasised that they had tried to intervene in the situation and have been able to release around 4,000 Afghan refugees from Pakistani prisons.

In recent days, the Pakistani police has increased crackdown against Afghan refugees in various cities of Pakistan.

Shahir had returned from Iran and was on his way to Kabul when the Taliban forces detained him in the Shahjoy district of Zabul province.

In a statement, Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC) asked the Taliban to release the journalist, but the Taliban in Zabul said that they were not aware of the detention of any journalists on the highway.

Reza Shahir, who had been detained and beaten up twice by the Taliban in Kabul in 2022, had fled to Iran with his family for external relocation to a safe country.

He had returned to Afghanistan due to his visa issues in Iran.

Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, arrests and threats against the journalists have been continuously reported. According to Afghanistan Journalists Center, 94 cases of arrest and torture of journalists were registered by the center in 2022.

Mortaza Behboudi, an Afghan-French journalist, has been imprisoned by the Taliban for the past few months.

According to him, After Afghanistan, citizens of Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain, Pakistan, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, India, Tajikistan, and Saudi Arabia are in the rankings in this order.

Daryabari added that Iran is ranked 46th in the world ranking of health tourism.

He said that these people have mostly been referred to Iran in the fields of gynaecology, eye surgery, orthopaedics, cosmetic surgeries, cardiovascular diseases, general surgery, cancer, and other diagnoses.

Earlier, Iran’s Secretary of Health Tourism Council had said that before the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign patients from Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain spent nearly 1 billion dollars as part of medical tourism in Iran.

He had said that the average expense of medical tourists is between 8 to 13 thousand dollars, and they spend four times more than other tourists in Iran.

This is while earlier Taliban officials in Herat said that on average, 120 to 140 corpses are being transferred to Herat per month from Iran.

According to these Taliban officials, the reason for the death of Afghans in Iran is mostly illness, traffic accidents, falling from buildings, and death as part of illegal border crossing to Iran.

Foreign ministers of Armenia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia are participating in this meeting.

According to the Russian state media, CSTO member countries will probably discuss concerns regarding Afghanistan.

Earlier, Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister, during the CSTO’s defence ministers meeting in Minsk, called Afghanistan one of the hotbeds of instability in the region.

He said that the main source of threat is illegal armed groups which have strengthened their positions in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover of the country.

Recently, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, also said that Washington intends to use “active illegal armed groups” in Afghanistan to push instability in the region.

CSTO member countries have repeatedly raised concerns over the advent of terrorism in Afghanistan. These countries believe that terrorist groups are actively present on the borders of Afghanistan.