Tangkapan layar sebuah video yang menunjukan sebuah rumah luluh rantak dengan tanah, dan 20-an lainnya rusak parah karena ledakan akibat bubuk petasan yang terjadi di di Dusun Sadeng, Desa Karang Bendo, Kecamatan Ponggok Kabupaten Blitar, Minggu (19/2/2023) malam jelang pukul 23.00 WIB.
Ledakan dahsyat dari bubuk petasan yang terjadi di Dusun Sadeng Desa Karangbendo, Kecamatan Ponggok, Kabupaten Blitar Jawa Timur, menghancurkan 25 rumah dan 4 orang tewas ditemukan dalam kondisi yang mengenaskan.
Korban ledakan dahsyat yang diduga berasal dari bubuk petasan itu merupakan satu keluarga yang terdiri dari ayah dan anak. Selain tertimbun puing bangunan, tubuh tiga korban di antaranya dalam keadaan tercerai berai.
“Ditemukan dalam bentuk potongan-potongan bagian tubuh,” ujar Kapolres Blitar Kota AKBP Argowiyono kepada wartawan pada hari Senin dini hari, 20/2/2023, di lokasi kejadian.
Selain empat korban meninggal dunia, ledakan dahsyat juga mengakibatkan enam orang menderita luka-luka. Saat ini para korban luka-luka tengah menjalani perawatan
Insiden ledakan berlangsung hari Minggu tengah malam, 19/2/2023, sekitar pukul 22.30 Wib. Akibat ledakan sebanyak 25 rumah warga rusak berantakan. Bahkan satu rumah di antaranya, yakni milik korban tewas dalam keadaan rata dengan tanah.
Menurut Argo, dugaan awal ledakan disebabkan oleh bubuk bahan petasan. Dari keterangan yang diperoleh dari keluarga dan tetangga, korban biasa membuat petasan, yakni terutama menjelang bulan puasa.
"Akibat dari ledakan mercon. Tapi untuk memastikan Tim Labfor Polda Jatim yang masih perjalanan sedang menuju kemari untuk memastikan penyebab ledakan," kata Argowiyono mengutip detikcom, pada hari Senin, 20/02/2023.
Berdasarkan data yang dihimpun Radio Suara Surabaya, pada hari Senin dini hari, 20/02/2023, satu rumah warga luluh lantak dengan tanah. Sedangkan, 20-an rumah lainnya dilaporkan mengalami kerusakan, mulai atap rusak hingga kaca pecah.
“Sampai sekarang petugas masih mendata kerusakan di lokasi. Ledakan diperkirakan tejadi Minggu jam setengah 11 malam. Dentuman terdengar 10 kilometer lebih. Sampai pagi ini ada 25 rumah yang rusak berat karena dampak ledakan,” ujar Argo pada Radio Suara Surabaya, Senin.
Kapolres Blitar menambahkan, banyaknya rumah yang rusak karena ledakan tersebut terjadi di daerah padat penduduk. Saat ini, warga yang rumahnya rusak di depan lokasi kejadian telah diungsikan.
“Saat ini tim Labfor Polda Jatim sedang menyelidiki kasus tersebut,” ucap Kapolres Blitar.
Sebelumnya, dalam sebuah rekaman video yang dikirimkan pendengar terlihat puluhan rumah hancur berantakan akibat ledakan tersebut. Laporan pendengar menyebutkan kalau suara ledakan sangat keras, bahkan terasa sampai radius 20 kilometer.
Dilansir dari SuryaMalang.com, potongan tubuh manusia itu bertebaran di atas pohon hingga semak dekat rumah yang hancur diduga akibat ledakan.
Bau belerang sangat menyengat tercium di lokasi ledakan dahsyat dari rumah warga yang diduga menjadi sumber ledakan.
Sejumlah warga menduga, bau belerang itu adalah bahan baku petasan.
Warga juga menduga, korban jiwa mungkin ada tiga orang dalam rumah itu.
Diberitakan sebelumnya, ledakan diikuti sebuah rumah dikabarkan rata dengan tanah.
Bahkan saking kerasnya, suara ledakan terdengar sampai wilayah Kecamatan Nglegok, Garum, Gandusari, bahkan Kecamatan Wlingi.
Jarak Desa Karangbendo sampai pusat Kecamatan Wlingi sejauh sekitar 25 Km.
Belum diketahui pasti penyebab ledakan. Saat ini, Polsek Ponggok Polres Blitar Kota masih melakukan olah TKP di lokasi.
Satu rumah milik Darman warga di RT 1 RW 13 Desa Karangbendo yang diduga menjadi sumber ledakan rata dengan tanah.
Puluhan rumah warga lainnya yang berdekatan dengan sumber ledakan juga ikut rusak. Rata-rata kerusakan terjadi pada atap rumah warga.
Abi, salah warga Desa Karangbedo, mengatakan, suara ledakan terdengar sangat keras.
Afghanistan’s Taliban government has denied banning the sale of contraceptives, dismissing reports of the ban in the British press as “fake news”.
Pharmacies in the country’s capital, Kabul, were freely selling the family planning products when The National visited.
An article published in The Guardian on Saturday morning alleged that the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate has begun to enforce a “blanket ban” on contraceptives in Kabul, as well as the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif.
It follows a report with similar allegations in The Daily Mail, which cited the Afghan outlet Rukhshana Media.
In response to an inquiry from The National, Dr Sharafat Zaman Amar, spokesman for the Taliban-run Ministry of Public Health, called reports of a crackdown “fake”.
“No one has stopped contraceptives,” he said.
Muhajir, told The National he “did not accept” the reports, also referring to them as “fake news”.
Asked specifically whether contraceptives are allowed in Afghanistan, Mr Muhajir replied: “Yes.”
The reports of the contraceptive ban come amid wide-ranging restrictions imposed on women by the Taliban since they returned to power in August 2021.
The British outlets quoted pharmacists and a midwife who had allegedly been told by authorities that contraceptives are a “western conspiracy”.
Oral contraceptives and other family planning methods have been in wide circulation in Afghanistan since the economy reopened to the world after the fall of the previous Taliban regime in 2001. They have been hailed by doctors as a critical tool for the fight against poverty, as well as the protection of women’s health and reproductive rights.
“Currently in Afghanistan, we have a serious problem with maternal mortality, and family planning is one of those ways to help preserve the life of both the mother and the unborn child,” said Dr Najmussama Shefajo, a gynaecologist who manages a maternity clinic in Kabul.
The National visited three pharmacies in Kabul on Saturday. All of them denied being visited by members of the Taliban or being told to stop carrying any specific medications.
One branch of a chain pharmacy based in the city’s Taimani neighbourhood said they had been carrying on with business as usual.
“Sometimes the directorate in charge of pharmaceuticals will send us lists of medicines that should not be sold, but we haven’t received anything like that lately.”
The pharmacist said they had not been visited by any Taliban members inquiring about the drugs they carry. Another pharmacist, who runs a small family-owned outlet in the Shahr-e Now neighbourhood, also refuted any claims of being told what to carry.
“I am not aware of any such restrictions,” the second pharmacist said while helping a young female customer.
Doctors at Dr Shefajo’s maternity clinic, in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood, and another one in the Kartei Seh neighbourhood, also said they had not been contacted by Islamic Emirate authorities about contraception.
“We haven’t receive any instructions [of a ban] up to now,” said a manager at the Wazir Akbar Khan clinic.
A co-owner of the other clinic also said they were not aware of any such searches or confiscations.
The National contacted Doctors Without Borders (MSF), an international NGO that is one of Afghanistan’s longest-standing providers of family planning services, particularly in the provinces of Helmand and Khost — areas considered to be part of the Taliban’s cultural heartland.
In a statement, Noor Ahmad Salim, MSF’s spokesman in Afghanistan, said: “MSF has not been informed by the Afghan authorities about any measure prohibiting the use of contraceptives within the country. All of our activities related to family planning, which we consider to be a vital part of every women’s sexual as well as reproductive health, run unhindered in Afghanistan.”
Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov said on Sunday he plans to set up a private military company after he quits state service.
"It can be said already now that Wagner (a private military company - TASS) has indisputably proved its effectiveness in military terms and has drawn a line under speculations about the its expediency. No doubt, such professional units are necessary and needed. That is why I plan, when I finish my career in state service, to provide competition to our dear brother Yevgeny Prigozhin and set up a private military company. I think I will succeed in it," he wrote on his Telegram channel.
According to Kadyrov, Wagner PMC has achieved impressive results in the zone of the special military operation. "Despite all the difficulties, Wagner attains its goals in any situation," he added.
Ramzan Kadyrov is the son of former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov who was assassinated in a 2004 bombing in Grozny while Prigozhin, who spent the final decade of the Soviet Union in prison, has been a close ally of Vladimir Putin for years.
Ramzan Kadyrov and Prigozhin lead forces in Ukraine largely autonomously of Russia and are staunch allies of Vladimir Putin. Although, they have also spoken out in public against the Russian military leadership.
The Wagner Group played an increasingly prominent role in Russia’s war in Ukraine, spearheading a months-long assault on the Donetsk region town of Bakhmut
Prigozhin, who spent the final decade of the Soviet Union in prison for robbery and fraud, was for years an associate of Putin.
His catering group swept up government contracts, earning him the nickname of “Putin’s Chef,” while he deployed Wagner mercenaries to fight alongside Russian servicemen in Syria and to conflicts across Africa to advance Russia’s geopolitical interests.
After years of denials, he last year admitted his links to Wagner and said he had interfered in U.S. elections.
Mounting evidence suggests the Kremlin has moved to curb what it sees as Prigozhin’s excessive political clout, ordering him to halt his public criticism of the defense ministry while advising state media to stop mentioning him or Wagner by name.
Russia’s MoD briefing on the progress of the special military operation in Ukraine:
▪️ In the Kharkov region, the settlement of Gryanikovka was completely liberated as a result of the offensive actions of the Russian troops.
▪️ In addition, Russian air strikes and artillery fire inflicted a defeat on enemy soldiers and equipment in the LPR and Kharkov region. The losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in this direction amounted to up to 80 troops, three armored combat vehicles, four vehicles, the Msta-B howitzer and the Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer.
▪️ In the LPR, Russian troops inflicted a comprehensive fire defeat on units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. More than a hundred Ukrainian troops, two armored combat vehicles, two vehicles, Akatsia and Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers, as well as D-20 and D-30 howitzers were destroyed in this direction.
▪️ In the DPR, with the support of Russian air strikes and artillery fire, the units continued their offensive. Up to 150 Ukrainian troops, five armored combat vehicles, three other vehicles, a Grad MLRS combat vehicle and a Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer were destroyed. Also, three warehouses of ammunition and rocket and artillery weapons of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroyed.
▪️ In the Zaporozhye region and the DPR, Russian aviation and artillery inflicted damage on enemy troops and equipment. Enemy losses amounted to more than 50 killed and wounded, four armored combat vehicles, two pickup trucks and a D-20 howitzer. In addition, an ammunition depot of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was destroyed near the settlement of Ugledar.
▪️ In the Kherson region, as a result of fire damage, up to 20 Ukrainian troops, as well as four Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers, were destroyed in a day.
▪️ Russian aviation, missile forces and artillery defeated 85 artillery units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at firing positions, troops and military equipment in 112 districts.
▪️ Air defense systems shot down 11 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles per day.
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Syrian security forces members inspect a building damaged in a reported Israeli missile strike in Damascus on February 19, 2023. (AFP)
Israeli airstrikes targeted a residential neighborhood in the Syrian capital of Damascus early Sunday, killing at least five people and wounding 15, Syrian state news reported.
Loud explosions were heard over a central area of the capital around 12:30 a.m. local time, and SANA reported that Syrian air defenses were “confronting hostile targets in the sky around Damascus.”
Syrian state media agency SANA, citing a military source, reported that five people had been killed, among them a soldier, and 15 civilians wounded, along with “destruction of a number of residential buildings.” The news agency also reported that the strikes had damaged buildings connected to a medieval citadel in central Damascus and an applied arts institute housed there.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, reported that 15 people, including a woman, were killed in strikes targeting sites connected with Iranian militias and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. They took place in the Damascus countryside and on an Iranian school in the neighborhood of Kafr Sousa in the capital, it said.
Samer Abdo, an engineer living in an apartment building that was struck in Kafr Sousa on an upscale residential street, was picking through shattered glass and broken wood in his apartment Sunday morning. Abdo told The Associated Press that his family had woken up in terror to the building shaking.
“We thought at first that it was an earthquake like the one that happened two weeks ago,” he said.
Mohamad Dulo, another resident of the neighborhood, said, “All the windows fell into the street, and people ran down to the streets as well.”
Dulo said he did not understand why the area was targeted. “It’s a residential area,” he said. “There is nothing (military) here.”
Director General of Antiquities and Museums Mohamad Awad told the AP that the damaged buildings around the Damascus Citadel were arts and heritage institutes, as well as the offices for managing the citadel.
“It’s without a doubt that it will cost a lot to rebuild or restore some of the buildings that were destroyed in the attack,” Awad said, adding that the strike destroyed “rare and expensive” equipment and machinery that has been hard to obtain due to sanctions and the country’s economic crisis.
There was no immediate statement from Israel on the attack. A spokesperson for the Israeli military declined to comment.
An official with an Iran-backed group denied media reports that the strike on Kafr Sousa targeted Iranian or Palestinian officials.
The strike hit a parking garage under a building and killed 10 civilians and troops all of them Syrians, he said. He denied that there had been any Iranians or Hezbollah members killed.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Israeli airstrikes frequently target sites in the vicinity of Damascus, but it is rare for them to target residential areas in the city. The Saturday night strikes were the first since a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Turkiye and Syria on Feb. 6.
Syria’s foreign ministry condemned the attack, coming “at a time when Syria was healing its wounds, burying its martyrs, and receiving condolences, sympathy, and international humanitarian support in the face of the devastating earthquake.” It called on the United Nations Security Council to condemn it.
Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency Sunday said no Iranian nationals were harmed in Israel’s strike on Damascus. It said one of the rockets hit the same place where former Hezbollah commander Imad Moghnieh was killed in 2008.
The last reported attack on Damascus was on Jan. 2, when the Syrian army reported that Israel’s military fired missiles toward the international airport of Syria’s capital early Monday, putting it out of service and killing two soldiers and wounding two others.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, but rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.
Israel has acknowledged, however, that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
The Israeli strikes come amid a wider shadow war between Israel and Iran. The attacks on airports in Damascus and Aleppo were over fears they were being used to funnel Iranian weaponry into the country.
While he did not directly mention the strikes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting of his Cabinet on Sunday that Israel would continue to defend itself from what it sees as Iran’s aggression.
“Iran’s attacks will not discourage us. We will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and we will not allow it to entrench itself along our northern borders. We are doing everything and we will do everything to protect our citizens and we respond with intensity to the attacks against us,” he said.
In the immediate aftermath of the recent devastating earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, Cuba dispatched medical teams to the affected areas to provide care to victims.
Their departure was marked by a farewell ceremony, which featured a large photo of Fidel Castro. It was quite appropriate, for the international medical solidarity which Cuba regularly extends to countries throughout the world is the brainchild of the late iconic leader himself, who, in 2003, proudly proclaimed that Cuba does not drop bombs on other countries but instead sends them doctors.
Though Castro retired from his official duties as President of Cuba 15 years ago to the day, he has continued to remain a leader in solidarity and in peace. Cuban doctors were sent to more than 70 countries over the years, including nearly 40 different countries in 2020 to help in the fight against Covid-19. In 2010, even the New York Times acknowledged Cuba’s successful campaign against the cholera epidemic which broke out in Haiti after another earthquake. In 2014, the Times similarly gave credit to Cuba’s leadership in successfully fighting Ebola in Africa:
“Cuba is an impoverished island that remains largely cut off from the world and lies about 4,500 miles from the West African nations where Ebola is spreading at an alarming rate. Yet, having pledged to deploy hundreds of medical professionals to the front lines of the pandemic, Cuba stands to play the most robust role among the nations seeking to contain the virus.
Cuba’s contribution is doubtlessly meant at least in part to bolster its beleaguered international standing. Nonetheless, it should be lauded and emulated.”
In addition, patients from 26 Latin American and Caribbean countries have traveled to Cuba to have their eyesight restored by Cuban doctors in what was dubbed “Operation Miracle.” Among them was Mario Teran, the Bolivian soldier who shot and killed Che Guevara.
In 2014, Fidel received the Confucius Peace Award for his efforts in ending tensions with the United States and for his work to eliminate nuclear weapons. In addition, he played a key role in helping initiate, host and mediate the peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC guerillas which resulted in a peace deal in 2016, ending 52 years of brutal civil conflict.
The historic role that Fidel Castro played was always outsized for a country as small as the island nation of Cuba, and as a result, his impact was felt beyond its borders. One of the first countries that Cuba aided, back in the early 1960s, was Algeria, which had recently won its independence from France. As described by Piero Gleijeses, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, in his book Conflicting Missions:
It was an unusual gesture: an underdeveloped country tendering free aid to another in even more dire straits. It was offered at a time when the exodus of doctors from Cuba following the revolution had forced the government to stretch its resources while launching its domestic programs to increase mass access to health care. “It was like a beggar offering his help, but we knew the Algerian people needed it even more than we did and that they deserved it,” [Cuban Minister of Public Health] Machado Ventura remarked. It was an act of solidarity that brought no tangible benefit and came at real material cost.
This can be said of all of Cuba’s acts of international solidarity.
Meanwhile, what very few in the West know is that Cuba, under Fidel’s leadership and with the support of the USSR, played a key role in liberating southern Africa from US and apartheid-era South African domination, and in ultimately ending apartheid in the country itself. It was for this reason that the first nation Nelson Mandela visited after his release from prison was Cuba. While there, Mandela lauded the nation as “a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people.” Even the Washington Post recognized Fidel Castro as a hero of Africa.
After the Chernobyl disaster of 1989, Cuba took in and treated 24,000 affected children. Many of these individuals and their families still live there to this day. This act of solidarity cannot be understated given the economic conditions in the island nation at the time. While Cuba benefited greatly from the support of the USSR and Eastern Bloc after its 1959 Revolution, which Fidel led, by 1989 the Communist governments had fallen and aid from the USSR itself, which would collapse in 1991, was drying up. As a result of all of this, Cuba would enter what it called its “Special Period,” a time of great economic deprivation which many believed would lead to the collapse of the Cuban Revolution as well. But Fidel and Cuba hung on, and they continued to extend help to people around the world even while they were having trouble feeding their own people.
Due to the intensification of US sanctions and the blockade of Cuba under President Donald Trump, and continued under President Biden, Cuba has now entered a time rivaling the “Special Period.” Even before Trump’s tightening of the sanctions – unrelenting US economic war against Cuba, described by Havana as “genocidal,” had cost the country an estimated $1.1 trillion in revenue and had denied the Cuban people “life-saving medicine, nutritious food, and vital agricultural equipment.”
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the US even blocked delivery of critical medical aid, including masks and diagnostic equipment, to Cuba.
The US is punishing Cuba and the Cuban people not for their shortcomings and failures, but because of their very successes. And amongst the successes of the Cuban Revolution which Fidel Castro led even after officially stepping down from power, is Cuba’s unequaled solidarity to the world. Fidel’s “doctors, not bombs” speech implicitly contrasted his country with the US, which is by far the world’s largest arms supplier while helping less and less with humanitarian aid. Indeed, US sanctions are directly standing in the way of humanitarian efforts in countries like Syria – a country the US continues to economically strangle even in the face of the recent earthquake.
Jose Marti, the Cuban revolutionary and poet who inspired Fidel Castro himself, once said that “there are two kinds of people in the world – those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy.” It is evident that Cuba, continuously inspired by the ideas and example of Fidel, is of the former type.
Cuba commemorated the fourth anniversary of Fidel Castro's death Wednesday with homages and media coverage for the man who led the country for almost half a century.
After fighting for the liberation of Cuba from foreign domination, the revolutionary leader died Nov. 25, 2016, from natural causes at the age of 90.
"Fidel Castro became the hero to the oppressed peoples of the world for spearheading Cuba's outstanding internationalism and solidarity," Cuba’s Ambassador to Turkey Luis Alberto Amaros Nunez told Anadolu Agency.
Amaros said Castro will be honored around the globe by those who remember his living legacy.
"All the peace and justice-loving peoples of the world are recalling Fidel’s ideas nowadays. All who are pushing for and spreading solidarity to contain the COVID-19 instead of acting with egoism and cruelty are followers of Fidel. All that are confronting exploitation and hegemonic abuses of the imperialism are supporters of Fidel. All that are fighting for a better world are thinking on Fidel," according to the ambassador.
He said Cuba's move to send more than 3,700 doctors and nurses to 40 countries amid the pandemic is in line with remarks made by Castro in 2003, in which he said, “Our country could send needed doctors to the darkest corners of the world. Doctors, not bombs. Doctors, not smart weapons.”
Thousands across the world have called for the Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded to Cuba's Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade, which was founded by Castro in 2005, for its solidarity in combating the virus globally.
"His thought continues leading us," Amaros said.
The ambassador also thanked Turkey for support against the US blockade against Cuba and Turkish entities for a recent donation of medical supplies in support of combating the coronavirus in the Caribbean nation.
Despite international criticism, the US has maintained a comprehensive economic embargo on Cuba since 1962, first implemented by American President John F. Kennedy.
A pedestrian stands next to women begging as she waits to cross a road outside a pharmaceutical wholesale market in Kabul, Afghanistan, on July 12, 2020. (Jim Huylebroek/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Conspiracy to control Muslim population?
The ban on contraceptives marks the latest attack on women's rights by the Taliban who came to power in August 2021 after US troop withdrawal. Since then, the Taliban has ended higher education for girls, closed universities to women, forced women out of their jobs and restricted their ability to leave their homes.
The Taliban has begun enforcing blanket bans on all forms of contraception in two of Afghanistan's two biggest cities, according to Afghan media, in the latest crackdown on women's rights.
Pharmacies and physicians in the capital Kabul and fourth largest city Mazar-e-Sharif confirmed to women-led Afghan outlet Rukhshana Media that Taliban officials have ordered them not to sell any contraceptives.
Sources living in several cities told Rukhshana that the Taliban has stopped importing contraceptives, and although they can still be bought in secret from private sellers, their price has skyrocketed as a result.
A veteran midwife, who did not want to be named, said she had been threatened several times. She said she was told by a Taliban commander: “You are not allowed to go outside and promote the western concept of controlling population and this is unnecessary work.”
Other pharmacists in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif confirmed that they have been ordered not to stock any birth control medicines.
“Items such as birth control pills and Depo-Provera injections are not allowed to be kept in the pharmacy since the start of this month, and we are too afraid to sell the existing stock,” another shop owner in Kabul said.
Afghanistan's Public Health Ministry has not released any statement on the issue, but a source told The Guardian they were informed by Taliban enforcers in Kabul that 'contraceptive use and family planning is a western agenda'.
'The midwife I always visit said the Taliban has told them not to inject contraceptives because it is haram (forbidden),' one woman told Rukhshana. 'When she said that it was haram, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. When I went to buy tablets instead from outside, the price had doubled.'
When the Taliban swept to power in August 2021 amid the U.S. pull-out from Afghanistan, the fundamentalist group claimed there would not be a return to the hardline policies of their predecessors who ruled from 1996 - 2001.
But in the months that followed, women's rights were gradually rolled back as latest generation of Taliban hardliners ratcheted up restrictions.
In December, the Taliban banned university education for women nationwide when the country's Minister for Higher Education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem, issued a letter to all government and private universities instructing them to refuse entry to female students.
'You all are informed to implement the mentioned order of suspending education of females until further notice,' it read.
The order came less than three months after thousands of women and girls sat university entrance exams across the country at a time when the Taliban said they would allow women to undergo an education, provided that they learned in segregated classrooms and covered themselves according the group's strict interpretation of Sharia law.
Women were also only permitted to be taught by women professors or old men.
But women were quickly banned from attending classes at Kabul University as an 'Islamic environment' had not yet been created.
And young girls were also excluded from returning to secondary school, severely limiting university intake.
While Afghan women had fought for and gained basic rights in the past 20 years, millions have now been forced to stay at home and abandon their ambitions.
Many teenage girls have been married off early - often to much older men of their father's choice.
Women have been pushed out of many government jobs - or are being paid a slashed salary to stay at home.
They are also barred from travelling without a male relative, and must cover up outside of the home, ideally with a burqa.
Journalism student Madina, who wanted only her first name published, struggled to comprehend the weight of the orders banning women and girls from university and secondary schools.
What emerged is a picture of a system that is increasingly unaffordable to the estimated 61% to 72% of Afghan women who live in poverty, and one in which women often have more children than they want because of lack of access to modern contraception; face risky pregnancies because of lack of care; and undergo procedures that could be done more safely with access to and capacity to use more modern techniques,” the report revealed.
Activists called on the Taliban to abide by international agreements which set out universal access to sexual and reproductive health care.
“Access to contraception and the right to family planning is not only a matter of human rights; it is also central to women’s empowerment and lifting a country out of poverty,” said Nasimi.
The Qur’an supports women having a gap between pregnancies to raise their children.
However Ustad Faridoon, a Taliban official based in Kandahar, told the Guardian he did not support a total ban.
“Contraceptive use is sometimes medically necessary for maternal health. It is permissible in the Sharia to use contraceptive methods if there is a risk to the mother’s life. Therefore, a complete ban on contraceptives is not right.”
Some reproductive rights experts in Afghanistan contacted by the Guardian were not willing to comment due to security concerns.
