Afghanistan

Less than a month after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, a United Nations-sponsored donor conference was held in Geneva on Monday for the humanitarian-stricken country.   It has raised a billion dollars, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday evening. About forty ministers took part in the consultations in Geneva. Others followed online. Guterres said at the start of the conference: "This is a precarious moment for Afghanistan. The Afghans face the collapse of their country," he said. The Secretary-General called on the participating countries to pledge money to avoid a food crisis. Many countries want to give financial aid, but at the same time wonder what will happen to the money. They, therefore, want to attach conditions to the aid. According to UN calculat...

More countries have decided to take measures for their embassies in the Afghan capital, Kabul, as the radical Islamist Taliban movement advances rapidly.   Denmark is closing its embassy due to the deteriorating security situation and is evacuating its staff, Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said. According to Minister Heiko Maas, Germany has decided to limit the number of staff at the embassy to the "absolute minimum". Security is tightened. The United States has already announced that it will evacuate a significant number of its embassy employees in Kabul. The British have announced similar measures. The London government will hold emergency talks on Friday. NATO ambassadors also hold consultations. With the withdrawal of international troops, the Taliban can retake the country. Of ...

Ten employees of a British-American demining service have been killed in an attack in Afghanistan. Sixteen others survived the violence but were injured.   The extremist terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the attack. This is reported by SITE Intelligence Group, an American NGO that monitors the online activities of jihadist organizations. Earlier, the government pointed to the armed rebel group Taliban. Ten employees of the British-American charity HALO Trust have been killed in an attack in the Afghan province of Baghlan, north of the capital Kabul. HALO Trust is an international NGO that carries out mine clearance actions in Afghanistan, among other places. On Tuesday evening, an "unidentified armed group" stormed a HALO Trust camp and opened...

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has deposed his cabinet chief and rival Abdullah Abdullah on Wednesday, two days after both were inaugurated.   The office of the head of government no longer exists in the structure of the government, Ghani's spokesperson said. Abdullah responded through his Facebook page with the announcement that Ghani is no longer president and that his decrees have no legal validity. "We ask civilian and military staff from the former government to take on their daily duties and responsibilities and to continue as before," said Abdullah. Abdullah does not recognize the results of last September's elections and was sworn in as Monday as Ghani as head of state. In 2014, the two were already upset for months about the result of the polls. As a compromise, a unitary...