Source: CNN
44% of Afghan refugees housed temporarily at eight US military bases are children, according to a letter from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Sen. James Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
34% of the refugee population at the bases are adult men, and 22% are adult women, the letter which is dated October 8 states.
Source: CNN
One of the largest evacuation flights departed Kabul on Sunday with an unknown number of Americans on board and is on its way to Doha, a senior Qatari government official tells CNN.
The ninth evacuation flight from Afghanistan since August 31 is carrying 353 evacuees, including faculty, staff, and students from the American University of Afghanistan, as well as citizens from Afghanistan, the United States, the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia, among others, according to the official.
Source: BBC
The US government has offered financial compensation to the relatives of 10 people mistakenly killed by the American military in a drone strike on the Afghan capital, Kabul, in August.
An aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children, died in the strike.
Source: The Guardian
G20 leaders and ministers have agreed they will have no option but to involve the Taliban in sending humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, but say that this stops short of political recognition of the Taliban as a government.
The consensus view came at a video conference on the Afghan crisis at which the EU stepped up its aid to a total of €1bn (£850m), and it was agreed in principle that the IMF and World Bank could provide aid. Nearly $9bn of Afghan assets in overseas banks have been frozen by the US.
Source: PoliticsHome.com
A woman airlifted out of Afghanistan with her family said the government has abandoned its responsibility to those left behind and must urgently step up efforts to get more people to the UK.
Peymana Assad, who is a Labour councillor in Harrow and the first elected official of Afghan origin in the UK, was evacuated with a family member in August after she visited the country to see relatives.
Source: Associated Press
MADRID (AP) — Spain has started a new evacuation operation to extract more Afghans and their families left behind following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Spain’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that it is working with the foreign ministry on a new evacuation mission.
Source: The Guardian
The United States has agreed to provide humanitarian aid to a desperately poor Afghanistan on the brink of an economic disaster, but refused to give political recognition to the country’s new rulers, the Taliban said on Sunday.
Source: Reuters
DUBAI, Oct 3 (Reuters) – A fifth chartered flight carrying civilians from Afghanistan to Qatar since U.S. forces withdrew in August left Kabul on Sunday with 235 passengers, most of them Afghan citizens, a senior Qatari government official said.
Citizens from several other states were also on the flight, the official said, without identifying them. The passengers will be housed in a compound in Qatar that is hosting evacuees from Afghanistan until departing to their final destinations.
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate narrowly defeated Republican-backed legislation on Thursday that would have curtailed assistance for thousands of Afghans evacuated last month as U.S. forces withdrew and the militant Islamist Taliban took over Afghanistan.
The measure failed on a 50-50 vote because it needed a simple majority to be included in a spending bill that must pass to keep the government open after midnight.
Source: European Council on Foreign Relations
The EU’s approach to foreign policy and economic policy needs to account for the fact that, globally, the space between the two areas is increasingly narrow
The NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan has laid bare several urgent challenges for the European Union.