STOCKHOLM: Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven of the Social Democrats party, on Sunday, announced that he will step down as party leader in November.

A year ahead of Sweden’s next election, Lofven announced his resignation at his annual summer speech, held in Akersberga near Stockholm, reported a Swedish local daily. “The decision has matured over time. I have been party chairman for ten years, prime minister for seven. These years have been amazing. But everything comes to an end. I want to give my successor the best of conditions,” he said.

Former trade union chief Lofven took the reins of the Social Democrats in 2012 and led his party to two successful elections in 2014 and 2018. Lofven came into politics after heading up one of Sweden’s most powerful trade unions, IF Metall, following a career as a welder. He is known for his negotiation skills, and has had ample opportunity to flex them during his tenure but the party has been struggling in the polls. Just months after taking power, his party failed to push its budget through, and Lofven called a snap election, but this was cancelled after crisis talks, reported the local newspaper.

In the next election in 2018, his party got its worst result in over a century, and it took four months of negotiations before a new government was put together. Earlier this summer, he became Sweden’s first Prime Minister in history to lose a no-confidence vote, following a row over rent controls. However, the opposition was unable to form a viable coalition to take over, and so Lofven returned to the helm again, only two weeks later.

NEW DELHI: The Afghan special cell established by India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) received more than 2000 calls in five days, it answered around 6000 queries over WhatsApp and have replied to over 1200 emails, sources informed.

MEA has set up a special Afghanistan cell to coordinate repatriation and other requests from the war-ravaged country, where the security situation deteriorates after Kabul fell to the Taliban. In another recent development, a special Indian Air Force repatriation flight ferrying 168 evacuees from Kabul landed at the Ghaziabad Hindon airbase here on Sunday.

The flight had 107 Indian nationals among those evacuated from Afghanistan, which has been overtaken by the Taliban a week ago. Passengers who arrived here will first undergo a Covid RT PCR test.

India has been allowed to operate two flights per day from Kabul to evacuate its nationals stranded in Afghanistan, government sources told ANI.  

China is clearly positioning itself to be a major international partner to the Taliban after the fall of Kabul as it is eyeing Afghanistan’s $1-2 trillion worth of rare Earth materials— most notably lithium. James Stavridis — 16th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, wrote in Nikkei Asia said that China seeks to consolidate as much control as they can over strategic supply chains for everything from microchips to electric car batteries, they want primacy in Kabul —and will be the first major nation to recognise the new regime. Following the spectacular collapse of the American-trained Afghan army, the triumph of the Taliban, and the humiliating withdrawal under combat conditions of the remnants of the US diplomatic mission, Afghanistan seemingly reverts to 2001 — run by hardline religious zealots determined to follow strict Sharia law.

However, many warlords in Afghan won’t be ready to bend their knees to the terrorist outfit. Moreover, there are Tajiks and Hazaras who have traditionally opposed the Taliban — who have no love for what they see as Pashtun fanatics from Kandahar.

Afghanistan has a long and rich tradition of internal squabbling once an external foe is ejected, says Stavridis. The notable exception, who will benefit from the Taliban, is Pakistan which trained the group in the early 1990s. “For Pakistan, this is a moment of triumph. They have assiduously supported the Taliban for the past two decades, both to control terrorist groups that occasionally threaten Pakistan and to deny India a foothold in a country on the other side of their border,” Stavridis outlined. Closely aligned with China internationally, Pakistan will seek to partner with the Chinese in exploiting the mineral wealth and blocking India from a role with the Taliban regime. Pakistan also wants a certain level of stability to avoid mass illegal migration, something they have dealt with repeatedly from Afghanistan, reported Nikkei Asia.

For most of the 19th century, the Russian and British empires contended over Afghan. The geopolitical competition recognised the strategic position of Afghan, and its potential to influence South Asia. Both the Brits and the Russians were defeated over time in Afghan. But for the moment, the dominant force in Afghan now is China.

The White House, on Sunday informed that President Joe Biden has met his national security team to discuss the security situation in Afghanistan.

The meeting also discussed counterterrorism operations, evacuation efforts, and intensive diplomatic efforts to finalise agreements with additional third-party country transit hubs. “This morning, the President met with his national security team to discuss the security situation in Afghanistan, counterterrorism operations, evacuation efforts, and intensive diplomatic efforts to finalize agreements with additional third-party country transit hubs,” the White House said in a tweet.

At a massive rally in Covid-19 hit Alabama, former US President Donald Trump ripped into his successor Joe Biden for the Kabul crisis, saying that recent developments in Afghanistan are a “major failure” of the current US administration’s foreign policy. Addressing a ‘Save America’ rally in Cullman, Trump on Saturday said that the situation in Afghanistan will go down as “one of the greatest embarrassments” and the “greatest foreign policy humiliation” in the history of the US, Sputnik reported. Trump’s rally comes despite Cullman City Council declared a state of emergency in the city due to the rising number of Covid-19 cases.

Trump accused Biden of surrendering the US military bases in Afghanistan, stressing that American troops are leaving behind $83 billion worth of military equipment. “This will go down as one of the great military defeats of all time,” Trump said, calling the troop withdrawal a “total surrender” and a “gross incompetence by a nation’s leader,” Trump emphasised that under his presidency, this would never have happened. The former President told the massive crowd gathered in the deep-red state that “this would have never happened if I was president.”

 Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday hit out at the US President Joe Biden for the current instability in Afghanistan and handling of the evacuation process from the country, calling it “a debacle of significant proportion”.

“Today, what President Biden said frankly made it worse. I didn’t hear a single thing from him today that would have given comfort to those families. There’s still no plan to get these Americans back. I didn’t hear a single thing that would give comfort to the very allies you spoke about,” The Hill quoted Pompeo as saying with Fox’s Sean Hannity on Friday. 

“This is a debacle of significant proportions. We haven’t seen anything like this, the United States, in an awfully long time. America has the tools to fix this, our military could certainly figure out a way to go get these folks back and to destroy some of these billions of dollars in equipment that we left behind, but it’s going to take American resolve and leadership, and President Biden has refused to show this for the entire time,” he added.

After the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan Ambassador to India, Farid Mamundzay, on Sunday, appreciated the kind words of sympathy and support messages from all Indian friends and the diplomatic missions in New Delhi over the suffering of Afghans in the past few weeks.

“I appreciate the kind words of sympathy and support messages from all Indian friends and the diplomatic missions in New Delhi over the suffering of Afghans in the past few weeks, particularly the last 7-8 days. The avoidable suffering of #Afghanistan is man-made and at a scale beyond all civilised contemplation,” tweeted Mamundzay. A humanitarian crisis has been unfolding in the war-torn country. The recent regime change has forced many Afghans and citizens of other countries to flee the country, fearing an oppressive Taliban rule.

“Afghanistan is going through a difficult time, and only good leadership, compassionate attitude and international support to the Afghan people would somewhat bring an end to these miseries #kabulairport #PeaceForAfghanistan,” tweeted the Afghan envoy.

India evacuated about 300 people from Kabul on Sunday after the Taliban seized control of most parts of Afghanistan. The terror group overtook the power throne on August 15 as the Aghanistan government collapsed and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.

According to reports, tens of thousands of people have been flocking to the Kabul airport desperate to flee the country that has been overtaken by the Taliban after 20 years. They fear a return to the Taliban’s brutal rule and a threat of reprisal killings.

Taliban ideology has neither reformed nor changed in any form, said Fabien Baussart, the President of Centre of Political and Foreign Affairs (CPFA), highlighting the recent incidents of targeted murders, assassinations and punishments meted out to women in Afghanistan.

In an opinion piece in Times of Israel, Baussart writes Afghanistan is witnessing one of the most brutal and worst humanitarian crises imposed by the Taliban and it would be so naive of the international community to take the Taliban’s words seriously when it comes to peace. Ever since Kabul fell to the Taliban, several rights experts have raised concerns regarding the safety of women under Taliban-led Afghanistan

Nishank Motwani, deputy director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, a think tank in Kabul, says that “they are exactly how they were when the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan in the 1990s: Women can’t go to school. They can’t go outside to buy medicine without a male chaperone. They are watched. It’s that climate of fear.” He noted that Afghan women feel deeply threatened for their life by the prospect of the Taliban gaining national power. 

Wazhma Sahel, 22, a military officer who works as a criminal investigator in the Kabul police department mentioned that in addition to regular threats she receives on social media, the Taliban had started sending written death threats to the office where she works. She says, that, “if the Taliban returns to power, I along with other women who work in the government’s military and security forces will either be stoned to death or executed in a public space in front of a crowd.”

Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) during a press briefing stated, “When you take away a woman’s freedom of movement you are limiting her ability to be of use to her family. Even when you’ve got family members who have been critically injured in the course of the conflict, being able to take a wounded child to a hospital without a male escort is not possible, this is unacceptable.”

“Since the year 2020 began, the Taliban have targeted women professionals at an alarming rate,” writes Baussart.

Police officer Fatima Rajabi, who worked in a special anti-narcotics division, died at the age of 23 in July 2020 after the Taliban stopped the vehicle she was travelling home in and took her captive.

Her remains, which had gunshot wounds and signs of torture, were sent to her family. In May 2020, Maryam Noorzad, a midwife, was murdered in a Kabul hospital after three Taliban gunmen attacked the maternity ward.

Noorzad refused to leave her patient, who was in labour. So, she, her patient and the newborn baby were all killed in the delivery suite. In June 2020, Fatima Natasha Khalil, an official with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission died at the age of 24. She was killed by a roadside explosive device planted by the Taliban in Kabul on her way to her office.

“In view of the recent incidents of targeted murders, assassinations and punishments meted out to women in public spaces, it is amply clear that the Taliban ideology has neither reformed nor changed in any form. Against this background, it would only be naive of the international community to take the Taliban’s words seriously when it comes to peace, more so in the case of women and young girls,” he writes.