Repatriated 19 Refugees To Afghanistan, Says Canada

Lavery had evacuated more than a hundred Afghans from Kabul during the evacuation operation in August 2021.

Canadian media CTV News reported on Saturday, citing its sources, that David Lavery was arrested at the Kabul airport on Monday last week after a flight to Afghanistan.

Lavery has traveled to Afghanistan many times over the years and provides consulting services through his private security company in Kabul.

A source told this Canadian media outlet that the Taliban were aware of Lavery's presence and activities in Afghanistan several years ago.

The Government of Canada's Global Affairs Division, which manages the country's diplomatic and consular relations, confirmed to CTV News that it is "aware of an incident involving a Canadian in Afghanistan and that Canadian officials continue to closely monitor the situation”.

Lavery, known in Afghanistan as the "Canadian Dave", was the only Canadian left at Kabul International Airport when Afghanistan fell in August 2021.

Canadian embassy staff had already left the country on evacuation flights, and after four days, Canadian troops arrived in Kabul to help Lavery.

Lavery was given a list of about a thousand people waiting to be transferred to Canada. His team's mission was to assist in the immediate transfer of people waiting at the airport with valid Canadian documents.

Lavery eventually helped 100 people included in this list to leave Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban.

Mohammad Jalal, a Taliban official, said that this action shows solidarity with Gaza and keeping the struggle of Hamas leaders alive for future generations.

Mohammad Jalal is one of the people close to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban's interior minister. Referring to the naming of this religious school after Yahya Sinwar, he wrote on social media platform X that this action shows solidarity with Gaza and the "heroism" of Hamas leaders.

Jalal wrote that Yahya Sinwar is an inspiration to Palestinian children and naming a religious school in Afghanistan after him will keep the struggles of Hamas leaders alive for generations.

Yahya Sinwar, the former leader of Hamas

Sources in Ghor Province told Afghanistan International that Rahmatullah Hijrat, a Taliban intelligence official in Panjshir, established this religious school in his hometown in the district center of Shahrak in Ghor Province.

This Taliban official has recently changed the name of this school to the "Martyr School of Ummat Yahya Al-Sinwar". On the board of this school, the administration of the Taliban (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) is included, which shows that it operates under the supervision of the Taliban.

Sources said that more than 500 students are studying in this school.

During the last three years, on the one hand, the Taliban has closed girls' schools above the sixth grade and prohibited women from going to university, on the other hand, it has established thousands of religious and jihadist schools throughout Afghanistan.

The Ministry of Education of the Taliban has announced that the number of religious schools is massive now. According to the statistics of this ministry, more than three million students are educated in these religious centres. Social activists and experts have repeatedly expressed concern about the increase in religious schools due to the strengthening of extremism in the country.

Experts say that the Taliban brainwash children and students in religious schools and train them to be extremist and ideological.

In addition to establishing religious schools, the Taliban has also changed the system of education and higher education. Taliban has increased Islamic themes and removed some specialised themes.

"Common goal of Taliban and Hamas"

Although the nature of the war between Hamas and Israel and the bloody war of the Taliban in Afghanistan was different, these two militant groups have inspired each other. Taliban says it has common goals with the Hamas .

After the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, Ismail Haniyeh, the former leader of Hamas, called the group's consolidation and re-domination of the Taliban a "victory over America”. In a phone call with the Taliban's foreign minister, Haniyeh expressed hope that the Taliban would be able to "play a role in supporting their brothers in Palestine for the liberation of Jerusalem”.

During the past year, Ismail Haniyeh was killed, followed by Yahya Sinwar, his successor. The Taliban condemned their killing and the group's officials repeatedly praised Hamas' war.

In the past months, the Taliban has built the symbol of the "Al Aqsa" mosque in several areas of Kabul and in some provinces of Afghanistan. This group has also launched demonstrations in support of Hamas' war against Israel.

At least three sources confirmed that most of them are from Panjshir, Parwan, Kapisa, Baghlan, Takhar and other northern regions of Afghanistan.

Sources said that most of the prisoners were transferred from Pul-e-Charki prison to Bagram.
The number of these prisoners is not yet known, and the Taliban has not yet commented on the transfer of prisoners to Bagram.

Bagram Prison is a part of Bagram Air Base, which had been in the hands of US-led international coalition forces for the past two decades and served as the main centre of the war against the Taliban and ISIS.

Hundreds of "dangerous" prisoners, including commanders and fighters of the Taliban and ISIS, were kept there.

With the withdrawal of international forces and the fall of the Afghan government, the Taliban captured this base and released the prisoners.

This year, sources informed Afghanistan International that the Taliban had activated this prison and transferred a number of prisoners there. A source said that the Taliban has also taken some of the military prisoners of the previous government .

In the past three years, the Taliban has arrested hundreds of people accused of collaborating with anti-Taliban fronts, being members of ISIS, and even critical activities such as journalists, women, and university professors. Numerous reports from human rights organisations have also been published about severe torture and mistreatment of prisoners by the Taliban.

Before the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan, Bagram Airfield was the largest US military base in the country.

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has repeatedly criticised the fact that the Bagram base has been "occupied" by China after the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan. During his election campaigns, he spoke about the recapture of Bagram base.

The organisation called on the Taliban's Ministry of Information and Culture to end the "violation of the right to access information" in Afghanistan.

RSF on Friday (November 15) announced that the reopening of these media outlets was conditional on compliance with "repressive" rules, including not broadcasting music and not entertaining calls from women members of the audience.

"Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban has brutally suppressed the Afghan media, stifled independent voices and plunged the country into a silence of fear," said Célia Mercier, head of RSF's South Asia unit.

The RSF official also described the Taliban's crackdown on the media as worrying and called on the group's officials to stop shutting down the media under various pretexts and respect the right to access information.

The Taliban has exerted enormous pressure on Afghanistan's local media in their efforts to enforce the Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which considers women's voices to be "awrah" and bans the broadcast of images of living beings.

The Afghanistan Journalists Centre (AFJC) reported last week that the Taliban had shut down three local radio stations in Khost province in a week for "playing music in the background of programmes" and "call from women" in social programmes.

The organisation later reported that the Taliban had reopened Radio Zhman and Radio Gharghasht in Khost after obtaining a written commitment not to play music and to abide by the group's restrictions.

Radio Lawang has remained inactive until now.

German media outlets wrote that these refugees were former colleagues of German forces in Afghanistan and were working as translators or drivers.

According to the details provided, these refugees fled after the withdrawal of NATO from Afghanistan and took refuge in Pakistan.

It has been said that there are women among the asylum seekers who were transferred to Germany and they arrived at Erfurt airport in Germany on Thursday evening.

As soon as they arrived, the Afghan refugees were welcomed by the staff of the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.

After the collapse of the previous government in Afghanistan, the German federal government had committed to move 1,000 at-risk Afghans to their country every month. However, the process of transferring Afghans at-risk has been delayed a lot.

Reports show that the German Foreign Ministry had accepted the request of a number of Afghans in danger, but after several security incidents in the country, it sent emails to Afghan immigrants in Pakistan to inform them of the rejection of many of their requests.

According to the announcement of the German Ministry of Interior, there are currently about three thousand Afghans at risk in Pakistan waiting to be accepted by Germany.

When asked whether the government had kept its promises to Afghans at risk, Germany's Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that the number of refugees transferred was lower than promised. Faeser cited the reason for this delay as more security checks.