Pakistan has abruptly become the world’s sixth-largest consumer of solar panels.

Here’s the thing. Pakistan has less than 50 gigawatts of electricity capacity in total! So they are putting in over a third of that in the form of solar just in one year. And this is not being spear-headed by the government, which is in disarray.

What we have to underline is that this remarkable solar gold rush is the work of ordinary consumers and private businesses and not government industrial policy. It shows that governmental inaction, of the sort so starkly on display at COP 29 in Baku and of the sort we may expect from the incoming president, Donald Trump, may not be a fatal obstacle to our saving the earth from a chaotic, torrid climate. The world’s people may demand clean solar, not because they understand climate change or are primarily driven by that consideration but because the cost of solar goes on plunging much faster than most analysts can now imagine. China’s government put $130 billion into its solar industry in 2023, and the technology responds to that kind of R&D money with big strides in efficiency and cost savings. And we are only at the beginning of this transformation.

DW’s Charli Shield tells the story of Shafqat Hussain, whose mother almost died during a summer heat wave — and what else is summer in South Asia? — when their government-supplied power went out. Such outages, called “load shedding” in Pakistan, are common. His mother had to go to hospital with heat stroke.

So the Hussain family put in solar. She quotes Shafqat Hussain as saying, “When you don’t have any electricity, forget about the air conditioning. Your fans are not working. You don’t have refrigerators on. You don’t even have any cold water to drink.”

The family’s energy bill has nose-dived by 80% and they no longer suffer from brown-outs or black-outs of electricity, gaining what she says Hussain called a “sense of safety.”

Pakistan’s politics is messy, dominated by two great political dynasties that are often at daggers drawn, and by a populist insurgent, former cricket star Imran Khan, who was jailed by the corrupt dynasties, throwing the country into turmoil. People have been in the streets this week in large numbers demanding Imran Khan’s release, and the army shot some down, raising the specter of further instability.

Americans don’t hear much about Pakistan, but it is a major player. At 240 million, it is the world’s fifth most populous country. It is the world’s 24th biggest economy by purchasing power GDP, though only the 46th nominally. In nominal terms, its economy is in the same ballpark as Egypt’s and South Africa’s. Its military is ranked 9th in the world, and it is a nuclear power.

In 2020, Chinese solar modules cost $240 per kilowatt, but they plummeted to $110 per kilowatt this year, as the post-COVID polysilicon shortages eased and the industry was hit with overproduction. That translates into about 11 cents per watt. China put out 310 gigawatts of cells in the first half of this year, representing an increase of over a third from the previous year. At the beginning of 2024, China already had 4/5ths of the world’s solar module manufacturing capacity. In general, the cost of solar pv modules has fallen 90% since 2010.

In fact, China is betting the farm on green energy. Wood McKenzie notes, “The government has identified the “new three” export industries – solar, EVs and batteries – as critical for its strategy of strengthening economic growth in the face of headwinds from past over-investment in property and high levels of debt.”

Although tariffs keep Chinese panels out of the US even under Biden, it is a big world out there. If Trump, knee-caps the US solar panel industry and hurts the value of the Chinese yuan, it would have the effect of making China’s panels cheaper and of removing a great deal of competition, cementing Beijing’s continued dominance in this field.

Pakistan imports most of the fuel it uses to generate electricity and after rate hikes this summer it has some of the higher electricity costs in Asia, far more than in neighboring India or in Bangladesh. Costs of electricity to businesses in Pakistan are especially high, giving them an impetus to install solar panels.

There are lots of potential problems with Pakistan’s solar boom. As customers desert the big utilities, they have to raise prices for everyone else, and many installations depend on steady energy generation to work — but some of them are having to shut down and then slowly come on line when needed. The government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif could become sufficiently alarmed to put obstacles in the way of further panel imports. But what the Pakistani public is demonstrating is that people want and need electricity and will find a way to get it cheaply. Coal and fossil gas can no longer provide it. Coal is 9.5 cents a kilowatt hour in a lot of places, and gas is 6.5 cents per KWh. But in Pakistan solar can be 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Ironically, these fossil fuels are heating up the earth so fast that people absolutely need air conditioning, as Shafqat Hussain discovered. And it is increasingly solar and wind that can provide cheap air conditioning that doesn’t just make things worse. I wouldn’t advise governments to stand in the way of families rescuing their grandmas from heat stroke.

—-

Bonus video:

Bloomberg TV: “Pakistan’s Solar Boom Helps Millions, But Harms Grid”

Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –– More than three years have passed since US troops left Afghanistan in August 2021, putting an end to an occupation that lasted two decades. With the Taliban back in power, the rights of women and girls have suffered a severe setback. Under the Taliban’s rule, they are no longer allowed to attend public secondary schools and universities. Last September, the fundamentalist group issued a religious code banning women from raising their voices or reciting the Quran in public.

Political and media freedoms have also been severely restricted, and poverty and unemployment have increased amid a massive withdrawal of foreign aid. The war’s end has brought public security and access to rural areas has improved, but these benefits are often denied to the female half of society. Women are forbidden to travel long distances without a male chaperone.

Amin Saikal, an emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at the Australian National University (ANU), is the author of “How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan”. The US, explains Saikal, had traditionally paid limited attention to Afghanistan. This changed with the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979, after which the Carter administration approached Afghanistan as having ‘strategic importance’. Under Carter’s successor, Reagan, the US lavished Pakistan and the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets with military and financial assistance.

The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 gave way to a period of profound internal strife that culminated with the Taliban’s takeover of the country in 1996. Saikal defines the Clinton administration’s approach to the Taliban as “full of ambiguity.”[1] On the one hand, it maintained informal contact with the group. On the other hand, it feared the Taliban’s alliance with Al-Qaeda, founded by former mujahidin Osama bin Laden. The 9/11 terrorist attacks, organized by bin Laden’s terrorist organization, would put an end to this era of ambiguity.

According to Saikal, the Bush administration’s decision to invade Afghanistan following 9/11 assumed that the Taliban and al-Qaeda could be defeated, and Afghanistan changed, with limited combat and economic investment. The ‘light footprint’ approach, however, soon morphed into a ‘heavy footprint’ one. Saikal lists several reasons for this. First, the US underestimated the complexity of intervening in Afghanistan. Second, the failure to capture or kill bin Laden at the beginning of the war led to an obsession with finding him. Third, the Bush administration greatly expanded its priorities in Afghanistan, where it now wanted to engage in ‘democracy promotion’ and a ‘war on terror.’

Reflecting on two decades of war in Afghanistan, former Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt noted that after the Taliban were overthrown, there would have been a theoretical possibility for a political settlement including the fundamentalist group. But the US would not have accepted this, nor the Northern Alliance armed groups the US had supported to depose the Taliban, remarks Bildt.

It is highly doubtful that the US ever had a real chance at achieving its declared objectives in Afghanistan. Saikal, however, believes this was possible. According to him, a key problem was that “Afghanistan’s conditions required from the outset a much larger appropriate military and reconstruction involvement than what unfolded.”[2] The invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to an opposite trend, as the US transferred resources to the new war theater.

Amin Saikal, How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan< (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024). Click Here to Buy.

Saikal considers that the constitutional structure adopted by Afghanistan in 2004 had profound flaws because it created a system of government that was too centralized. The strong presidency established in the constitution led to the domination of the executive over the legislative and judicial powers. It was also responsible for a winner-takes-all mentality that left many strongmen with little formal power but the capacity to spoil the country’s politics and security. Saikal spares no criticism for the two men who presided over Afghanistan during this period, Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani.

About Karzai, Saikal writes that he “invoked the constitution and stressed the importance of the rule of law only when they suited his political and power needs.”[3] The emeritus professor describes Karzai’s government as highly corrupt, dysfunctional, and lacking a clear ideological project. Initially lauded in Western capitals, Afghanistan’s Western partners were only too happy to see Karzai leave his position in 2014. His successor, Ashraf Ghani, was elected after a voting process that saw even more fraud than the previous presidential election in 2009.

Secretary of State John Kerry engaged in a mediation effort between Ghani, the official winner of the 2014 election, and his opponent Abdullah Abdullah, who also claimed to have won the vote. The impasse was resolved in favor of Ghani, who had better connections in Western countries after having spent more than a decade of his life in the US. Ghani, explains Saikal, sought to present himself as a traditional Muslim and Afghan but “ultimately could not be the man of the people.”[4]

The new president also generated resentment among other ethnic groups when he surrounded himself with fellow Pashtuns. Ghani presided over a continuous loss of territories to the Taliban. Although he had promised never to leave the country, he abandoned Kabul as the Taliban were completing its conquest of Afghanistan in August 2021.  

In his balance of twenty years of US presence in Afghanistan, Saikal notes that the country’s economy remained dependent on foreign aid, opium cultivation, and the black-market sector. Infrastructural projects and investments in the health and education sectors significantly improved the overall situation in the country. Still, the improvements bore no proportion with the money spent — $36 billion was allocated to governance and development, with smaller amounts for humanitarian aid, in a figure that does not include contributions by US allies.

US funds were misappropriated by both Americans and Afghans, while mismanagement, wastage, and corruption resulted in Afghanistan seeing “only artificial, not structural, economic development.”[5] The area where improvements were more significant, especially in comparison to the periods that preceded and followed the US intervention, was women’s rights. Even so, the gains were too often restricted to urban areas.

The 2020 Doha Agreement between the US and the Taliban was the prelude to the US exit from Afghanistan. The negotiations, handled on behalf of the Trump administration by Zalmay Khalilzad (who had played a major role in Bush’s Afghanistan policy), were “disastrous”, in Saikal’s words.[6] The emeritus professor argues that Khalilzad, under Trump’s imperative, was so concerned about reaching a quick agreement that he made too many concessions considering that the Taliban did not have control over many areas of Afghanistan at that time.

Under the terms of the Doha Agreement, the US promised to withdraw from Afghanistan in fourteen months whereas the Taliban committed themselves not to attack US and allied troops. The Taliban also agreed not to allow terrorist groups to operate from Afghanistan after the US withdrawal. That they were not ready to keep this promise became evident when a US drone strike killed al-Qaida’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in central Kabul one year after US troops had left Afghanistan.

“How to Lose a War” is the result of Saikal’s decades-long study of Afghanistan’s history and politics. He had access to some of the most prominent politicians and military men, both Afghan and foreign, who shaped Afghanistan during the last two decades. Saikal combines these insider sources with a clear analytical mind in a text that will prove a fruitful read not only for experts but also for those who have been following international politics less closely.

It would be a positive development if the book contributed to renewing the current conversation on Afghanistan, which has moved to the background since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war on Gaza. One of the current discussions concerning Afghanistan is how foreign governments, NGOs, and multilateral institutions should engage with the Taliban-led country. Saikal pays little attention to the topic in his book, but this is a debate that is likely to stay with us for a long time since there is no realistic chance of the Taliban losing power in the short term.

In his book “The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan after the Americans Left”, Hassan Abbas argues that it is vital “to acknowledge the difference between engagement and endorsement”.[7] Abbas sees engagement as a way to better understand the interests and actions of the other side, in this case, the Taliban. Endorsement, on the contrary, would mean supporting the Taliban’s worldview. Whereas endorsement arises from affinity, engagement is born out of pragmatism. Abbas is convinced that engagement with the Taliban is possible and much-needed, even if the gains to be made are limited.

Graeme Smith, the Afghanistan Senior Analyst for the International Crisis Group, makes a similar argument. He notes that, when engaging the Taliban diplomatically, the rights of women and girls cannot be dropped from the conversation. At the same time, however, the international sanctions regime imposed on Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover has counter-productive results as they “do not have much effect on the Taliban, but they do drive up rates of malnutrition among children and disease among vulnerable families, especially female-headed households that often struggle in a patriarchal society.”

Smith reports that some European countries that publicly chastise the Taliban have sent discreet delegations to Afghanistan to confer about security issues. Calling the Taliban out for their transgressions while seeking to ease the suffering of the Afghan population and limiting the danger of international terrorism emerging from Afghanistan is a very complicated endeavor. It does not need to be hypocritical, though.

 Notes

[1] Amin Saikal, “How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024), p. 61.

[2] Ibid., p. 201.

[3] Ibid., p. 107.

[4] Ibid., p. 129.

[5] Ibid, p. 169.

[6] Ibid., p. 214.

[7] Hassan Abbas, “The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan after the Americans Left” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2023), p. 210.

(The Conversation) – The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 was a blow for education across the country – but especially for girls and women. Since then, the Taliban’s leaders have outlawed education for girls after sixth grade, expanded religious seminaries known as madrasas ninefold and reintroduced corporal punishment in schools.

Now, the Taliban are continuing their assault on education for both boys and girls by changing the curriculum in grades 1-12. They have already revised textbooks up to eighth grade, and they’re on track to finish the rest within months. After completion, the revised curriculum will go up for approval by the Taliban’s supreme leader and will likely be followed by swift implementation. The process is straightforward. The supreme leader of the Taliban controls education policy – including the curriculum. Once submitted to him, he has no reason to reject or delay the implementation.

As an educational policy scholar who pushed for educational progress in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover, I believe these changes echo the tactics of the Soviet-backed regime in the 1980s to impose an ideology through textbooks. They also reflect the stifling climate of the 1990s, which promoted violence and suppressed critical thinking in education. By controlling education, the Taliban aims to instill their totalitarian and extremist religious-based ideology in young minds, ensuring their grip on power for generations to come.

The curriculum changes

Afghanistan’s education system is centralized, meaning all schools follow a single curriculum. The current textbooks are the result of two decades of reforms that followed the country’s recovery from the Soviet invasion and civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s.

Since 2001, when the Taliban’s last regime fell, the Ministry of Education, in collaboration with international developmental agencies, undertook a critical revision of the national curriculum. This initiative aimed to make curriculum and textbooks inclusive, nondiscriminatory and free from promotion of violence – a departure from previous textbooks that included illustrations of tanks, rocket launchers and automatic weapons.

In the last decade before the Taliban regained power, the Ministry of Education was still attempting to reform curriculum to focus on students’ personal and economic growth. Unfortunately, the ministry never completed the reforms.

Embed from Getty Images
Afghan school boys attend their first class following the start of the new academic year, at a private school in Khost on March 20, 2024. Schools in Afghanistan opened for the new academic year on March 20, the education ministry said, with girls banned from joining secondary-level classes for the third year in a row. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

Within a few months after their takeover in August 2021, senior Taliban leaders criticized the previous education system and curriculum, saying it was brainwashing Afghan youth and weakening religious values. They called for a reeducation campaign.

Since then, the Taliban have been revising the curriculum and aggressively rewriting textbooks for grades 1-12. This is based on 26 recommendations from their education commission. Some of the changes approved by the commission include:

1.) Removing subjects like formal art, civil education and culture. Instead, schools are increasing time spent on religious studies.

2.) Removing content about human rights, women’s rights, equal rights, freedoms, elections and democracy.

3.) Removing all images of living beings from textbooks, including pictures of humans, animals, sports and anatomy. The Taliban believe that only God creates living beings, and producing or distributing images of God’s creation is prohibited.

4.) Adding religious material to the curriculum that enforces Taliban narratives. This includes teachings that justify violence against those who resist or oppose the Taliban’s views.

5.) Shaping student behaviors to fit the Taliban’s vision of society, similar to what they defined in recent vice and virtue laws that ban women’s voices and bare faces in public, among other rules.

6.) Requiring schools to teach and assess students on “emirate studies,” which glorify Taliban leaders and their history by characterizing the Taliban takeover as a defeat of secular values, including equal rights, civil society and democracy.

The Taliban have also banned women from studying abroad. In addition, they have prohibited the sale, purchase and reprinting of more than 400 science and philosophy books and confiscated at least 50,000 books on democracy, social and civil rights, art, literature and poetry from publishing houses, bookstores and public libraries.

A 2023 Human Rights Watch report noted an increase in corporal punishment in schools. Even some teachers of nonreligious subjects, like math and science, now have to pass the religious tests to remain employed.

Beyond shaping thought processes, the Taliban aim to influence students’ actions. Through rigid rules and corporal punishments – including humiliation, beating, slapping and foot whipping – they seek to produce immediate behavioral changes that reflect their desired norms. Their ultimate goal is to cultivate individuals who embody the regime’s values and ideologies.

Consequences for Afghan students – and the world

During their first regime from 1995-2001, the Taliban used textbooks with biased content that promoted violent jihad. For example, the alphabet taught to first graders included teachings like “J” stands for jihad and “M” for mujahideen – referring to Islamic guerrilla fighters.

They increased religious education to 50% of the curriculum and banned art, music and photography. They deemed music against God’s will, according to their interpretation of Sharia.

As a result, academic freedom vanished. Student enrollment dropped. Families lost trust in schools, and many teachers left the profession, leading to the eventual collapse of the education system in the 1990s.

The Taliban are threatening to do the same today with their latest curriculum changes. Schools may turn into indoctrination centers instead of places for real learning. I fear that the altered curriculum could breed mistrust in public education. Furthermore, the Taliban removed the 2008 law that made school mandatory. As a result, many parents may pull their kids from schools again.

The ideologically driven curriculum also raises international concerns and has already led to cuts in foreign aid. Donors won’t support institutions that promote discriminatory ideologies. This is straining an already vulnerable education system, threatening its survival.

Ultimately, the Afghan people will bear the brunt of these policies, but the effects could spill beyond the country’s borders and impact the world.

Enayat Nasir, Doctoral Research Assistant in Educational Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – Last month, the Taliban passed a new “vice and virtue” law, making it illegal for women to speak in public. Under the law, women can also be punished if they are heard singing or reading aloud from within their homes.

It was approved by the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, and will be enforced by the Ministry for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice.

Ahead of an international conference on the future of Afghanistan in Doha, Qatar, earlier this year, the United Nations’ mission head for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, said it would “take time” for the Taliban to accept women. The Taliban specifically mandated no women attend the conference, which the UN agreed to.

But as gender experts have been saying for years, Taliban leaders have not – and will not – change. Three years after they regained control of Afghanistan, the Taliban’s efforts to publicly erase women from Afghan society have reached a new low.

Gender apartheid

The Taliban’s burgeoning body of laws and practices restricting the rights of women and girls is a clear case of gender apartheid. Gender apartheid is defined as a regime of systematic gender-based oppression and domination.

Because there is no conventional legal framework in place in Afghanistan, the country is ruled by an increasingly tightly woven patchwork of decrees, policies and systematised practices, some written, others verbal.

Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban has enacted more than 100 edicts, orders and directives restricting the rights of women and girls. These apply in a range of jurisdictions – nationally, provincially and in specific districts.

The most significant of these edicts prevent women and girls from attending school beyond grade six, working in many organisations, and travelling a certain distance to seek health care.

Restricting girls’ education

The ban on education for Afghan girls has had a dire effect on their wellbeing. Modelling from UN Women shows this has correlated with a 25% increase in child marriage and 45% increase in early childbirth. The loss of hope for young women has been profound.

Civil society groups in Afghanistan and around the world have clapped back at the Taliban’s ban on girl’s education with the hashtag “Let Afghan Girls Learn”.

Myriad small organisations are also running underground schools to continue girls’ education. Sometimes these schools operate under the guise of embroidery classes, or something else the Taliban finds acceptable.

But the ongoing lack of funding to women-led organisations has been a serious barrier to these kinds of programs, despite the fact they are primarily Afghan-led.

A range of internationally certified online programs have also been established, providing important educational and employment opportunities for smaller numbers of Afghan women and girls.

But these online options remain limited, and not just by funding. Data shows only 6% of Afghan women have internet access, and the Taliban is making it increasingly difficult for Afghans to access SIM cards for mobile phones.

Hurting women and children’s health

Women’s health has also suffered due to the brain drain of highly-skilled workers fleeing the country and the sharp reduction in international technical and financial assistance to Afghanistan’s public health system.

Human Rights Watch reports “women and girls have been disproportionately affected by the healthcare crisis” in the country, particularly because of the Taliban’s abuses of women’s rights.

For example, restrictions on women’s movement has meant that maternal and infant mortality rates have skyrocketed in recent years as women are prevented from reaching health facilities.

Data published in the British Medical Journal shows that eight in ten women in urban areas have reported symptoms of depression and/or anxiety living under the Taliban.

Fighting against the silence

Over the past year, the Taliban have also increasingly targeted women’s human rights defenders. Activists have been “disappeared”, arbitrarily detained, and egregiously abused in prison.

The Guardian recently published evidence of a woman being raped in prison.

In my own work, I’ve documented a pattern of Talibs using sexual torture against imprisoned women’s human rights defenders in a bid to shame them out of their activism and isolate them from familial and community support.

Yet, Afghan women continue to push back against the draconian authorities ruling the country.

In response to the latest “vice and virtue” law, for example, women all over the country have taken to social media posting videos of themselves singing and reciting poetry to show they cannot be silenced.

Some recite the Quran. Many wear traditional Afghan dress, while others wear the Taliban’s required burka. But they sing to prove they exist. To show they are Afghan, and that they are not impure, regardless of what the Talibs say.

Activists are also continuing to push for the international recognition of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity, and the International Criminal Court continues its investigations into alleged crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Taliban.

But Afghan women cannot be left alone in their struggle. The international community must follow through on its commitments to protect Afghan women’s rights defenders. It must also maintain long-term support, including through funding pathways, for women-led organisations helping women in Afghanistan.

Susan Hutchinson, PhD Candidate, International Relations, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

——

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

‘Becoming a doctor is my dream’: Afghan women continue studies in Scotland | AFP

On Gaza, Harris said, “Well, let’s understand how we got here. On Oct. 7, Hamas, a terrorist organization, slaughtered 1,200 Israelis. Many of them young people who were simply attending a concert. Women were horribly raped. And so absolutely, I said then, I say now, Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it does so matters. Because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end. It must when, end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a cease-fire deal and we need the hostages out. And so we will continue to work around the clock on that. Work around the clock also understanding that we must chart a course for a two-state solution. And in that solution, there must be security for the Israeli people and Israel and in equal measure for the Palestinians. But the one thing I will assure you always, I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel. But we must have a two-state solution where we can rebuild Gaza, where the Palestinians have security, self-determination and the dignity they so rightly deserve.”

But that isn’t how we got there. The Israelis expelled 250,000 Palestinians to Gaza in 1948 from their homes in what became southern Israel, making Gaza a big refugee camp. The population has grown to 2.2 million. They detached from Gaza its agricultural lands and left it cut off from its markets. From 1967 the Israelis came after the Palestinians in Gaza again and occupied them. In 2007 they slapped an economic siege on the Gaza Strip, imposing 55% unemployment and causing children to be malnourished. So Hamas committed horrific terrorism on civilians on October 7 last year, for which there can be no justification. But if it had only attacked the Israeli military it might have had grounds in international law, which permits resistance groups to fight foreign military occupation. Harris left out the Nakbah or Palestinian displacement by Israel, and the long decades of military occupation and siege, so she made the story impossible to understand.

She is much better than Biden in at least expressing some empathy for the tens of thousands of innocent civilians Israel has killed in Gaza. But empathy, while better than nothing, won’t stop the killing, which is daily and directly enabled by US supply of weapons and ammunition (the Israelis ran out months ago).

The cease-fire deal she is touting does not exist. It was just a cheap trick pulled on Biden by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to giving him breathing space to continue the war, Netanyahu has constantly tacked on new conditions, most recently his occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor south of Rafah, which he knows Hamas (and even Egypt) will never agree to.

There is no two-state solution to be had, and politicians should start being honest about it. Gaza is rubble and there are hundreds of thousands of Israeli squatters in the Palestinian West Bank. Where would you put a state?

Trump’s response was to say that the war would not have happened on his watch because he starved Iran of money. That assertion is not true and it isn’t a policy. It is just a narcissistic boast that he can magically control the world. He can’t.

As usual, what he said is arrant nonsense. The CIA assesses that Hamas did not tell Iran it was planning Oct. 7. Iran had nothing to do with it.

Further, Biden has kept all the Trump sanctions on Iran, which is not a good thing. It puts the US on a war footing with Iran. Washington tries to interfere in Iran’s normal commerce such as selling its oil. There are no grounds in international law for this behavior. The US has even sanctioned the Iranian national bank, making all economic transactions with Iran a form of terrorism, including sending food or medicine. It is unprecedented to call the national bank of a country a terrorist organization.

Trump has no policies, just insults, such as that Harris hates Israel and even hates Arabs because her hatred of Israel will get Arabs killed. I couldn’t follow the argument because of that arrant nonsense thing.

CNN: “Watch the full Second Presidential Debate Hosted by ABC”

Afghanistan was the other country in the greater Middle East that came up.

Harris expressed her agreement with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan, noting that four presidents had sought to withdraw, but he was the first to do so, saving the $300 million a day that the fruitless war was costing taxpayers. She said that “And as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.”

Harris blamed the debacle of the withdrawal on the “weak deal” negotiated directly with the Taliban by Don Trump, which she implied rather detracted from his reputation as a deal-maker. She said he by-passed the Afghan government and as part of his deal he released 5,000 Taliban terrorists. She expressed outrage that he would invite the Taliban to Camp David.

Harris is correct about the cost of the Afghanistan War, which came to $2.313 trillion over 21 years. That is $110 billion a year. Divided by 365, it comes to $301 million per day. Although al-Qaeda plotted the 9/11 attacks from Afghanistan, it is not clear that they told the Taliban what they were planning, and it was kind of odd that Afghanistan, rather than the al-Qaeda network, should have been thought the danger to the U.S.

I’d say her account was accurate regarding the favorability of the deal Trump proposed to the Taliban. It is also true that Trump really wanted out of Afghanistan and kept telling his generals to get out, and they slow-rolled him. In some ways the story shows that on this issue Biden and Trump agreed. It isn’t for sure that Biden could have gotten a better deal than Trump on withdrawal. As for leaving the Afghan government out of the negotiations, that was weird. But given the way it collapsed and its top leaders were implicated in large-scale theft, it is not obvious that if Trump had included them in the talks, they could have obtained more favorable terms.

I don’t agree with her allegation that “there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world.” I think the 800 US troops at Tanf in southeast Syria are in a war zone and that they are actively still fighting al-Qaeda, but also Shiite militias. Although the 2,500 US troops in Iraq are now classified as trainers, they do appear to be providing back up to the Iraqi Army in mopping up operations against ISIL in northern Iraq.

But the statement is also a little misleading because so many U.S. military interventions are aerial. The U.S. has been bombing Yemen regularly because the Houthis have been targeting container ships and oil tankers in the Red Sea in support of the people of Gaza. You can’t just make this mini-war disappear because there are no boots on the ground. The US routinely bombs the al-Shabab extremist fundamentalist movement in Somalia.

In fact, in the past year the US has also bombed Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria in reprisal for their attacks on bases housing US troops in those two countries. The Shiite militias struck at the US in Iraq, Syria and Jordan in an effort to punish it for its heavy support to the Israeli total war on Gaza. When you are actively bombing Yemen, Somalia, Syria and Iraq you can’t be said to be entirely at peace.

“Prize Fight,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Trump boasted that in the 18 months after his deal with the Taliban, no US troops were killed in Afghanistan. This is true, but it is because he promised to get out of Afghanistan shortly if the Taliban ceased the attacks.

Trump said that the leader of the Taliban is “Abdul.” He was probably referring to the Taliban political chief in 2020, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Abdul is not a name on its own. It means “servant of” and is followed by a name of God. Abdul-Ghani means “servant of the All-Sufficient” (that is, God does not need anything because his essence is intrinsically rich). Baradar signed the deal for a complete US withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 2020.

Biden essentially followed the Trump treaty, though he delayed the promised US withdrawal from April 2021 to August. Although Trump is correct that the withdrawal was done chaotically, he was the one who guaranteed that it would be by his pledge to completely withdraw by a date certain. Trump’s claim that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is ridiculous.

( RFE/RL ) – The Taliban has attempted to police the public appearances and behavior of millions of Afghans, especially women, since seizing power in 2021.

But the enforcement of the extremist group’s rules governing morality, including its strict Islamic dress code and gender segregation in society, was sporadic and uneven across the country.

Now, the hard-line Islamist group has formally codified into law its long set of draconian restrictions, triggering fear among Afghans of stricter enforcement.

The Law On the Propagation Of Virtue And Prevention Of Vice, which was officially enacted and published on August 21, imposes severe restrictions on the appearances, behavior, and movement of women. The law also enforces constraints on men.

Adela, a middle-aged woman, is the sole breadwinner for her family of 10. She is concerned that the new morality law will erode the few rights that women still have.

The Taliban has allowed some women, primarily in the health and education sectors, to work outside their homes.

“I fear that Afghan women will no longer be able to go to their jobs,” Adela, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

Dilawar, a resident of the capital, Kabul, warned of a public backlash if the Taliban intensified the enforcement of its widely detested restrictions.

“The youth are suffering from extreme unemployment. Oppressing them…will provoke reactions,” the 26-year-old, whose name was also changed due to security concerns, told Radio Azadi.

Long List Of Restrictions

The new morality law consists of 35 articles, many of which target women.

Women are required to fully cover their faces and bodies when in public and are banned from wearing “transparent, tight, or short” clothing. The law also bans women from raising their voices or singing in public.

Women must also be accompanied by a male chaperone when they leave their homes and cannot use public transport without a male companion.

The law forbids unrelated adult men and women from looking at each other in public.

Men must also dress modestly, even when playing sports or exercising. They are prohibited from shaving or trimming their beards. Men are also compelled to attend prayers as well as fast during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan.

“[Men] should not get haircuts, which violate Islamic Shari’a law,” says one of the articles in the law. “Friendship and helping [non-Muslim] infidels and mimicking their appearance” is prohibited.

Afghans are forbidden from “using or promoting” crossses, neckties, and other symbols deemed to be Western.

Premarital sex and homosexuality are outlawed. Drinking alcohol, the use of illicit drugs, and gambling are considered serious crimes.

Playing or listening to music in public is banned. Meanwhile, the celebration of non-Muslim holidays, including Norouz, the Persian New Year, are also prohibited.

The Taliban’s dreaded morality police are responsible for enforcing the morality law. The force, believed to number several thousand, is overseen by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

Under the new law, the powers of the morality police have been expanded.

Members of the force will be deployed across the country to monitor compliance, according to the law. Members of the morality police are instructed to issue warnings to offenders. Repeat offenders can be detained, fined, and even have their property confiscated.

The morality police can detain offenders for up to three days and hand out punishments “deemed appropriate” without a trial.

The Taliban revealed last week that the force detained more than 13,000 Afghans during the past year for violating the extremist group’s morality rules.

‘Hellish Conditions’

The Taliban’s morality law has been widely condemned by Afghans, Western countries, and human rights organizations.

The Taliban has defended the law, which it claims is “firmly rooted in Islamic teachings.”

“This new law is deeply harmful,” said Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “It represents a hardening and institutionalization of these rules by giving them the status of law.”

She said the law is a “serious escalation” and “swift slide to ever more hellish conditions for Afghan women and girls.”

Roza Otunbaeva, head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, on August 25 called the law a “distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future” because of the broad powers the Taliban’s morality police will have “to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions.”

Obaidullah Baheer, a lecturer of politics at the American University of Afghanistan, said that parts of the morality law are “extremely vague.”

Yet, the morality police are given broad powers, including to “arbitrarily” punish people without due process, he said.

“[This is] making them the judge, jury, and executioner,” said Baheer.

Via RFE/RL

Copyright (c)2024 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

“Women banned from speaking in public by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers” | BBC News

India was the world’s fastest-growing economy last year at 7.8%, and is expected to be the world’s third largest economy by 2030, behind the US and China.

As of June 2024, India’s total installed solar capacity was 87.2 gigawatts, and it added 15 gigawatts of solar in the first half of 2024, more than ever before in absolute terms in any 6-month period. But remember that the economy is growing quickly and electricity demand is also growing, so in relative terms solar’s growth this year isn’t that impressive.

Solar accounts for 57.7% of India’s renewable electricity generation, ahead of wind and hydro.

Japan’s solar installations are now slightly behind those of India. The proportion of electricity in Japan coming from wind and solar is 12%, however, whereas in India it is only 10%. The global average is 13%. As a hilly, densely populated country, Japan at least perceives itself to lack places to put big solar farms, and so it is turning to wind energy as its major renewable investment, including offshore wind.

India invested $68 billion in clean energy in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency, an increase of 40% over the average in the teens of this century.

“Brighter than a Thousand Suns,” Digital, Dream / Dreamworld v3/ Clip2Comic, 2024.

Although the spike in solar in India last year was welcome, however, it wasn’t nearly enough. Annual investment in green energy will need to rise by 120% by 2030 if India is to meet its own climate goals, which it is not on track to do. At the moment, the investment is on track only to double, i.e. to increase by 100%.

India is still investing in fossil fuels, including the deadly coal, in a big way, and its carbon dioxide emissions were up. Fossil fuels actually rose from 76% to 77% of India’s electricity last year, going in entirely the wrong direction.

As solar power rapidly falls in price, however, it may prove difficult for coal to compete with it, especially in a sunny country like India, so that renewables may take off in an unexpected way. That development will require India’s government, however, to stop backing coal (India is kind of like a big West Virginia when it comes to coal). Given India’s vulnerability to climate change, it would be better advised to be more ambitious in its renewables goals and to back them with a more robust industrial policy.

(The Conversation) – Until the collapse of Afghanistan’s US-backed government in August 2021, few knew clearly what the Taliban wanted once they had returned to power. Some western officials and observers hoped for a big change from the regime, which had governed the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate in the 1990s.

This time, they hoped, a more sophisticated and pragmatic vision might have replaced the Taliban’s previously extremist approach.

Some also argued that the rest of the world had a moral responsibility to approach Afghanistan’s new rulers with cautious optimism. Engagement should be the key. Anything else risked condemning the country and its population to isolation and economic hardship.

Others weren’t convinced.

During the negotiations that led to the February 2020 Doha agreement, the Taliban’s position on post-settlement Afghanistan’s politics remained ambiguous. The group continued this vague posture during the subsequent intra-Afghan dialogues with the former Afghan government.

Then, appearing in a press conference three days after Taliban forces took control of Kabul, its spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, appeared to give reassurances the new regime would respect women’s rights “within the norms of Islamic law”.

In the ensuing three years, the Taliban’s fundamentalist regime has continued to suffer from weak legitimacy, despite taking pains initially to cultivate a conciliatory image compared to its harsh rule in the 1990s.

However, what had appeared to some be Taliban 2.0 has increasingly looked like the old, harsh and fundamentalist Taliban as the regime has grown more confident in its hold on power.

Since 2021, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the leader of Afghanistan’s Islamic Emirate, has gradually issued more than 50 decrees that affect most areas of society.

Many hard-won achievements under the former republic, such as freedom of expression and the press, have been suppressed. The regime has forced into disappearance, imprisoned or murdered many former government members, despite announcing a general amnesty.

“Burqa,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024

In their treatment of women, including forbidding education after the age of 12, restrictions have become so harsh that the resulting subjugation has been labelled “gender apartheid” by many journalists, academics and activists.

Many female students have had to flee the country. Most recently a group of women medical students made the news after they were granted scholarships to go to UK to complete their studies.

The regime has also revived public executions and flogging reminiscent of their 1990s practices. An edict issued in March 2024 stated the regime will also resume public stoning.

The regime has now introduced a series of new “vice and virtue” laws, to be enforced by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (PVPV).

Until now, government has been mainly by decrees from the Taliban leadership. But these, while giving an indication of the regime’s increasingly extremist and authoritarian nature, have not been accompanied with details of how they should be enforced. This uncertainty could, at times, allow local authorities a degree of leeway, including the ability in some cases to ignore decrees when it suits.

But the recent law chnage removes these ambiguities, empowers the Taliban’s morality police and is enforceable on everyone residing in Afghanistan.

Blueprint for oppression

The new laws are particularly harsh on women. They enforce the wearing of the hijab and stipulate this garment must be made of thick enough material to fully cover a woman’s face and body and avoid offering temptation to men.

Women’s voices are also deemed to be a source of temptation, so women are now not allowed to speak outside the family home. If a woman can be heard singing, even from within her own home, this is considered a violation of the law and can be punished. Women are even forbidden from looking directly at a man who is not their husband or blood relative.

Enforcement can be undertaken by anyone in society “who is capable”. Reports by two “trustworthy” individuals is enough to bring a prosecution. This is a worrying prospect, as it could lead to arbitrary accusations based on personal or political vendettas.

Officially enforcement will be carried out by the ministry’s appointees, the morality police or mohtaseb. “Fairness and kindness” are stipulated as guiding principles for how the new rules should be enforced, although these terms are not defined and the law is replete with subjective terminologies open to interpretation by those enforcing them.

New media laws introduced as part of the package prohibit “un-Islamic content” and empower the morality police to compel media officials to prevent the publication of content deemed contrary to Sharia and images of living beings. This last measure will effectively throw into doubt the future of TV broadcasting in Afghanistan.

The laws also forbid music in public and “un-Islamic” hairstyles. Men must grow beards at least as long as a fist. As a worrying sign for continued humanitarian engagement involving non-Muslim foreign workers, the law prohibits befriending, helping or imitating “nonbelievers”.

Violations will be met with on the spot fines issued by the mohtaseb or imprisonment for one-to-three days and prosecution in the regime’s courts for repeat offenders. The morality police also has the power to compel attendance at the mosque, with prosecution for those who do not obey, regardless of whether they pray at home.

As recently as June, Taliban representatives attended UN-sponsored talks in Doha at which spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid called for funds frozen by the west to be released and for the relaxation of sanctions on the regime. He dismissed western concerns over the regime’s treatment of women as “cultural differences”.

But these new laws have effectively removed any remaining differences between the current regime and its 1990s predecessor, a fundamentalist pariah that turned Afghanistan into an isolated outcast.

Kambaiz Rafi, Teaching Fellow in the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bangladesh is experiencing a seismic shift after 18 years of Awami League rule ended abruptly due to intensive student protests. This upheaval, and the crackdowns that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 protesters, forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee the country and ushered in an interim government.

But amid this recent political turmoil, the fate of the nearly one million Rohingya refugees residing in the Cox’s Bazar camp in southeastern Bangladesh has grown uncertain.

For years, Bangladesh has grappled with deepening domestic challenges, most notably increasing inequality, nepotism and contested elections. However, the current moment offers tentative hope, as the new government seems committed to providing justice to the protesters, to reducing inequality and to adhering to human rights norms.

Substantial challenges

The new government faces a steep challenge.

Rohingya refugees continue to languish in a deteriorating security situation. With reports of kidnappings and forced conscription in neighbouring Myanmar, the arrivals of war-wounded refugees from that country have increased.

Following a military coup in 2021, Myanmar has been embroiled in a civil war that has been particularly pronounced in the multi-ethnic Rakhine state, where the Arakan Army has exacerbated violence against Rohingya people while also fighting the Myanmari military.

This has caused more Rohingya people to flee to Bangladesh in the past year, where they have been met with diminished services due to the sharp decline in funding.

The situation demands explicit commitments from the interim government and international partners to support Rohingya women activists, to protect both Rohingya young men at risk of forcible conscription and acutely vulnerable Rohingya members of the Hijra community, and to direct the military to protect Rohingya refugees as they travel to Bangladesh.

Refugee camp violence

At present, the regime change has set off violence in and around the camps. Rather than being autonomous, refugee camps are affected by a complex combination of local and international politics that impacts both their stability and vulnerability.

After completing my doctoral field work in Bangladesh, I have observed these connections first-hand.

Institutions seen as affiliated with Hasina’s former government are being treated with suspicion. International organizations operating in Cox’s Bazar are on edge. Bangladeshi protesters reportedly targeted the Cox’s Bazar International Organisation for Migration office because of its perceived connection with the ousted government.

Regional security is also wavering. The military and insurgent killings in western Myanmar along the border with Bangladesh, and during attempts to cross to safety to Bangladesh, have raised serious concerns.

Photo by SH Saw Myint on Unsplash

Uncertainty

Pervasive uncertainty is driving this violence.

Bangladeshi bureaucrats, especially those working within the Office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, are unsure of how to proceed. Many top ministry appointees have either gone into hiding or attempted to flee the country. Security forces in the border region are now focused on domestic events, leaving the Bangladesh-Myanmar border less monitored.

Humanitarian organizations and officials have also been impacted. Despite their independence from national governments, humanitarians rely on national entities for permits, supplies and security co-ordination. The current uncertainty has led some humanitarian workers to consider leaving their posts.

As a staff member of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, known as the UNHCR, recently expressed to me: “I just don’t know how we can deliver on services with these constant interruptions and severe stress.”

Tentative hope

Amid the chaos, there is also a feeling of hope. Rohingya activists see potential in this moment of change after years of stagnation.

Amin, a 23-year-old Rohingya activist, told me: “We learned a lot of lessons from the students of Bangladesh. We believe that this new government will do something to help us.”

Rohingya youth have long been denied education and work opportunities. Nonetheless, they’ve been instrumental in creating in-camp educational networks for Rohingya children and documenting evidence about the genocide. Most impressive, they have built a network of committed human rights defenders in the camps.

One such group, the Rohingya Student Network, recently weighed in on the regime change. They published a congratulatory letter to the new government, writing:

“We express our hope that this inclusive government will not only ensure a free and fair future for Bangladesh but will also prioritize the Rohingya crisis.”

Refugees International fellow and Rohingya activist Lucky Karim also praised new Prime Minister Muhammad Yunus. She urged him to bring “positive changes through his leadership for the refugees being gratefully hosted by his people.”

This optimism is fuelled by the unprecedented inclusion for underrepresented groups in Yunus’s interim government, including for student protest movement leaders and women. It also arises from a deeper belief in Yunus himself. Though not without his own controversy, Yunus has remained a long-standing advocate for the world’s most vulnerable communities. “We will wait to see,” said Amin, “because this government gives me some hope.”

Looking ahead

As Rohingya refugees face an uncertain and hostile future, Bangladesh’s rare moment of political change has both exacerbated violence and opened the door to renewed hope for Rohingya refugees.

National governments play a crucial role in securing resources and negotiating political solutions for displaced communities. Bangladesh’s interim government has a complex road ahead that will require balancing the demands for justice from its citizens with the urgent needs of its refugees.

If it can manage to do so, it will truly be an unprecedented moment not only in the history of Bangladesh, but in the global governance of refugees.

Sarah Nandi, PhD Researcher, Political Science, McGill University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.