KABUL: Taliban security forces in the Afghan capital on Wednesday enforced a higher education ban for women by blocking their access to universities, with video obtained by The Associated Press showing women weeping and consoling each other outside one campus in Kabul.
The country’s Taliban rulers a day earlier ordered women nationwide to stop attending private and public universities effective immediately and until further notice. The Taliban-led administration has not given a reason for the ban or reacted to the fierce and swift global condemnation of it.
Journalists saw Taliban forces outside four Kabul universities Wednesday. The forces stopped some women from entering, while allowing others to go in and finish their work. They also tried to prevent any photography, filming and protests from taking place.
Rahimullah Nadeem, a spokesman for Kabul University, confirmed that classes for female students had stopped. He said some women were allowed to enter the campus for paperwork and administrative reasons, and that four graduation ceremonies were held Wednesday.
Members of an activist group called the Unity and Solidarity of Afghanistan Women gathered outside the private Edrak University in Kabul on Wednesday morning, chanting slogans in Dari.
“Do not make education political!” they said. “Once again university is banned for women, we do not want to be eliminated!”
Despite initially promising a more moderate rule respecting rights for women and minorities, the Taliban have widely implemented their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, since they seized power in August 2021.
They have banned girls from middle school and high school, barred women from most fields of employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms.
A letter shared by the spokesman for the Ministry of Higher Education, Ziaullah Hashmi, on Tuesday told private and public universities to implement the ban as soon as possible and to inform the ministry once the ban is in place.
The move is certain to hurt efforts by the Taliban to win international recognition for their government and aid from potential donors at a time when Afghanistan is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis. The international community has urged Taliban leaders to reopen schools and give women their right to public space.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan, all Muslim countries, have expressed their disappointment at the university ban and urged authorities to reconsider their decision.
Qatar played a key role in facilitating the negotiations that led to the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan last year. It called on the “Afghan caretaker government” to review the ban in line with the teachings of Islam on women’s education.
Neighboring Pakistan said its position on the issue of women’s education has been “clear and consistent.”
US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said late Tuesday that no other country in the world bars women and girls from receiving an education.
“The Taliban cannot expect to be a legitimate member of the international community until they respect the rights of all in Afghanistan,” he warned. “This decision will come with consequences for the Taliban.”
Abdallah Abdallah, a senior leader in Afghanistan’s former US-allied government, described universal education as a “fundamental” right.
“Depriving girls of this right is regrettable,” Abdallah said in a Tweet. He urged the country’s Taliban leadership to reconsider the decision.
Afghan political analyst Ahmad Saeedi said that the latest decision by the Taliban authorities may have closed the door to winning international acceptance.
“The issue of recognition is over,” he said. “The world is now trying to find an alternative. The world tried to interact more but they (the Taliban) don’t let the world talk to them about recognition.”
Saeedi said he believes most Afghans favor female education because they consider learning to be a religious command contained in the Qur’an.
He said the decision to bar women from universities was likely made by a handful of senior Taliban figures, including the leader Hibatullah Akhunzada, who are based in the southwestern city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement.
He said the main center of power is Kandahar, rather than the Taliban-led government in Kabul, even if the ministers of justice, higher education and so-called “virtue and vice” would also have been involved in the decision to ban women from universities.
UN experts said last month that the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan may amount to a crime against humanity and should be investigated and prosecuted under international law.
They said the Taliban actions against females deepened existing rights violations — already the “most draconian globally” — and may constitute gender persecution, which is a crime against humanity.
The Taliban authorities have rejected the allegation.
Afghan women weep as Taliban fighters enforce university ban
https://arab.news/4mvf9
Afghan women weep as Taliban fighters enforce university ban
- Taliban forces stopped some women from entering, while allowing others to go in and finish their work
- Women are also banned from parks and gyms
ICE detains Marine Corps veteran’s wife who was still breastfeeding their child
- The husband says Paola Clouatre accompanied her mother illegally into the country from Mexico more than a decade ago
- Trump administration pushes for immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day
When his nearly 2-year-old son Noah asks for his mother before bed, Clouatre just tells him, “Mama will be back soon.” When his 3-month-old, breastfeeding daughter Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He’s worried how his newborn will bond with her mother absent skin-to-skin contact.
His wife, Paola, is one of tens of thousands of people in custody and facing deportation as the Trump administration pushes for immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day.
Even as Marine Corps recruiters promote enlistment as protection for families lacking legal status, directives for strict immigrant enforcement have cast away practices of deference previously afforded to military families, immigration law experts say. The federal agency tasked with helping military family members gain legal status now refers them for deportation, government memos show.
To visit his wife, Adrian Clouatre has to make an eight-hour round trip from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a rural ICE detention center in Monroe. Clouatre, who qualifies as a service-disabled veteran, goes every chance he can get.
Paola Clouatre, a 25-year-old Mexican national whose mother brought her into the country illegally more than a decade ago, met Adrian Clouatre, 26, at a southern California nightclub during the final months of his five years of military service in 2022. Within a year, they had tattooed each other’s names on their arms.
After they married in 2024, Paola Clouatre sought a green card to legally live and work in the US Adrian Clouatre said he is “not a very political person” but believes his wife deserved to live legally in the US
“I’m all for ‘get the criminals out of the country,’ right?” he said. “But the people that are here working hard, especially the ones married to Americans — I mean, that’s always been a way to secure a green card.”
Detained at a green card meeting
The process to apply for Paola Clouatre’s green card went smoothly at first, but eventually she learned ICE had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing.
Clouatre and her mother had been estranged for years — Clouatre cycled out of homeless shelters as a teenager — and up until a couple of months ago, Clouatre had “no idea” about her mother’s missed hearing or the deportation order, her husband said.
Adrian Clouatre recalled that a US Citizenship and Immigration Services staffer asked about the deportation order during a May 27 appointment as part of her green card application. After Paola Clouatre explained that she was trying to reopen her case, the staffer asked her and her husband to wait in the lobby for paperwork regarding a follow-up appointment, which her husband said he believed was a “ploy.”
Soon, officers arrived and handcuffed Paola Clouatre, who handed her wedding ring to her husband for safekeeping.
Adrian Clouatre, eyes welling with tears, said he and his wife had tried to “do the right thing” and that he felt ICE officers should have more discretion over arrests, though he understood they were trying to do their jobs.
“It’s just a hell of a way to treat a veteran,” said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who is now representing the couple. “You take their wives and send them back to Mexico?”
The Clouatres filed a motion for a California-based immigration judge to reopen the case on Paola’s deportation order and are waiting to hear back, Holliday said.
Less discretion for military families
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that Paola Clouatre “is in the country illegally” and that the administration is “not going to ignore the rule of law.”
“Ignoring an Immigration Judge’s order to leave the US is a bad idea,” US Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a June 9 post on X which appeared to refer to Clouatre’s case. The agency added that the government “has a long memory and no tolerance for defiance when it comes to making America safe again.”
Prior to the Trump administration’s push to drive up deportations, USCIS provided much more discretion for veterans seeking legal status for a family member, said Holliday and Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.
In a Feb. 28 memo, the agency said it “will no longer exempt” from deportation people in groups that had received more grace in the past. This includes the families of military personnel or veterans, Stock said. As of June 12, the agency said it has referred upward of 26,000 cases to ICE for deportation.
USCIS still offers a program allowing family members of military personnel who illegally entered the US to remain in the country as they apply for a green card. But there no longer appears to be room for leeway, such as giving a veteran’s spouse like Paola Clouatre the opportunity to halt her active deportation order without facing arrest, Stock said.
But numerous Marine Corps recruiters have continued to post ads on social media, geared toward Latinos, promoting enlistment as a way to gain “protection from deportation” for family members.
“I think it’s bad for them to be advertising that people are going to get immigration benefits when it appears that the administration is no longer offering these immigration benefits,” Stock said. “It sends the wrong message to the recruits.”
Marine Corps spokesperson Master Sgt. Tyler Hlavac told The Associated Press that recruiters have now been informed they are “not the proper authority” to “imply that the Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.”
Paris’ iconic cauldron from the Olympic Games returns to light up summer nights
- The helium-powered balloon rose again into the air on Saturday, lifting off over the Tuileries Garden just as the sun was about to set
- After Saturday’s flight, the balloon will lift off into the sky each summer evening from June 21 to Sept. 14, for the next three years
The helium-powered balloon rose again into the air on Saturday, lifting off over the Tuileries Garden just as the sun was about to set
After Saturday’s flight, the balloon will lift off into the sky each summer evening from June 21 to Sept. 14, for the next three years
PARIS: A year after it captivated crowds during the Paris Olympics, a centerpiece of the summer Games made a comeback Saturday to light up the French capital’s skyline.
The iconic helium-powered balloon that attracted myriads of tourists during the summer Games has shed its Olympic branding and is now just called the “Paris Cauldron.” It rose again into the air later Saturday, lifting off over the Tuileries Garden just as the sun was about to set.
Despite the suffocating hot weather in Paris, around 30,000 people were expected to attend the launch, which coincided with France’s annual street music festival — the Fete de la Musique, the Paris police prefecture said.
And it won’t be a one-time event. After Saturday’s flight, the balloon will lift off into the sky each summer evening from June 21 to Sept. 14, for the next three years.
The cauldron’s ascent may become a new rhythm of the Parisian summer, with special flights planned for Bastille Day on July 14 and the anniversary of the 2024 opening ceremony on July 26.
Gone is the official “Olympic” branding — forbidden under International Olympic Committee reuse rules — but the spectacle remains.
The 30-meter (98-foot) -tall floating ring, dreamed up by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur and powered by French energy company EDF, simulates flame without fire: LED lights, mist jets and high-pressure fans create a luminous halo that hovers above the city at dusk, visible from rooftops across the capital.
Though it stole the show in 2024, the cauldron was only meant to be temporary, not engineered for multi-year outdoor exposure.
To transform it into a summer staple, engineers reinforced it. The aluminum ring and tether points were rebuilt with tougher components to handle rain, sun and temperature changes over several seasons. Though it’s a hot-air-balloon-style, the lift comes solely from helium — no flame, no burner, just gas and engineering.
The structure first dazzled during the Olympics. Over just 40 days, it drew more than 200,000 visitors, according to officials.
Now anchored in the center of the drained Tuileries pond, the cauldron’s return is part of French President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to preserve the Games’ spirit in the city, as Paris looks ahead to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Hundreds protest in The Hague against NATO, days before the Dutch city hosts alliance summit
- The Netherlands is hosting the annual meeting of the 32-nation alliance starting Tuesday
- NATO members want to hammer out an agreement on a hike in defense spending demanded by Trump
THE HAGUE, Netherlands: Hundreds of people protested Sunday against NATO and military spending and against a possible conflict with Iran, two days before a summit of the alliance in The Hague that is seeking to increase allies’ defense budgets.
“Let’s invest in peace and sustainable energy,” Belgian politician Jos d’Haese told the crowd at a park not far from the summit venue.
Although billed as a demonstration against NATO and the war in Gaza, protesters were joined by Iranians who held up banners saying “No Iran War,” the day after the United States launched attacks against three of Iran’s nuclear sites.
“We are opposed to war. People want to live a peaceful life,” said 74-year-old Hossein Hamadani, an Iranian who lives in the Netherlands.
“Look at the environment. “Things are not good. So why do we spend money on war?” he added.
The Netherlands is hosting the annual meeting of the 32-nation alliance starting Tuesday, with leaders scheduled to meet Wednesday.
The heads of government want to hammer out an agreement on a hike in defense spending demanded by US President Donald Trump.
The deal appeared largely done last week, until Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte that committing Madrid to spending 5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense “would not only be unreasonable, but also counterproductive.”
US allies have ramped up defense spending since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, but almost a third of them still don’t meet NATO’s current target of at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product.
The summit is being protected by the biggest ever Dutch security operation, code named “Orange Shield,” involving thousands of police and military personnel, drones, no-fly zones and cybersecurity experts.
Wartime NATO summits have focused on Ukraine. With Trump, this one will be different
- Then at the Group of Seven summit in Canada, Trump called for Russia to be allowed back into the group; a move that would rehabilitate Putin on the global stage
- Zelensky had traveled to Canada to meet with him. No meeting happened, and no statement on Russia or the war was agreed
BRUSSELS: At its first summits after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NATO gave President Volodymyr Zelensky pride of place at its table. It won’t be the same this time.
Europe’s biggest land conflict since World War II is now in its fourth year and still poses an existential threat to the continent. Ukraine continues to fight a war so that Europeans don’t have to. Just last week, Russia launched one of the biggest drone attacks of the invasion on Kyiv.
But things have changed. The Trump administration insists that it must preserve maneuvering space to entice Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, so Ukraine must not be allowed steal the limelight.
In Washington last year, the military alliance’s weighty summit communique included a vow to supply long-term security assistance to Ukraine, and a commitment to back the country “on its irreversible path” to NATO membership. The year before, a statement more than twice as long was published in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. A new NATO-Ukraine Council was set up, and Kyiv’s membership path fast-tracked. Zelensky received a hero’s welcome at a concert downtown.
It will be very different at a two-day summit in the Netherlands that starts Tuesday. NATO’s most powerful member, the United States, is vetoing Ukraine’s membership. It’s unclear how long for.
Zelensky is invited again, but will not be seated at NATO’s table. The summit statement is likely to run to around five paragraphs, on a single page, NATO diplomats and experts say. Ukraine will only get a passing mention.
If the G7 summit is anything to go by ...
Recent developments do not augur well for Ukraine.
Earlier this month, frustrated by the lack of a ceasefire agreement, US President Donald Trump said it might be best to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace.
Last weekend, he and Putin spoke by phone, mostly about Israel and Iran, but a little about Ukraine, too, Trump said. America has warned its allies that it has other security priorities, including in the Indo-Pacific and on its own borders.
Then at the Group of Seven summit in Canada, Trump called for Russia to be allowed back into the group; a move that would rehabilitate Putin on the global stage.
The next day, Russia launched its mass drone attack on Kyiv. Putin “is doing this simply because he can afford to continue the war. He wants the war to go on. It is troubling when the powerful of this world turn a blind eye to it,” Zelensky said.
Trump left the G7 gathering early to focus on the conflict between Israel and Iran. Zelensky had traveled to Canada to meet with him. No meeting happened, and no statement on Russia or the war was agreed.
Lacking unanimity, other leaders met with Zelensky to reassure him of their support.
Questions about US support for Ukraine
Trump wants to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. He said he could do it within 100 days, but that target has come and gone. Things are not going well, as a very public bust up with Zelensky at the White House demonstrated.
Trump froze military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine’s armed forces for a week. The US has stepped back from the Ukraine Defense Contact Group that was set up under the Biden administration and helped to drum up weapons and ammunition.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth skipped its last meeting; the first time a Pentagon chief has been absent since Russian forces invaded in February 2022.
Addressing Congress on June 10, Hegseth also acknowledged that funding for Ukraine military assistance, which has been robust for the past two years, will be reduced in the upcoming defense budget.
It means Kyiv will receive fewer of the weapons systems that have been key to countering Russia’s attack. Indeed, no new aid packages have been approved for Ukraine since Trump took office again in January.
“The message from the administration is clear: Far from guaranteed, future US support for Ukraine may be in jeopardy,” said Riley McCabe, Associate Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US-based policy research organization.
Cutting aid, McCabe warned, could make the Kremlin believe “that US resolve is fleeting, and that time is on Russia’s side.”
“Putin has less incentive to negotiate if he believes that US disengagement is inevitable and that Russia will soon gain an advantage on the battlefield,” he said.
What the summit might mean for Kyiv
Trump wants the summit to focus on defense spending. The 32 allies are expected to agree on an investment pledge that should meet his demands.
Still, the Europeans and Canada are determined to keep a spotlight on the war, wary that Russia could set its sights on one of them next. They back Trump’s ceasefire efforts with Putin but also worry that the two men are cozying up.
Also, some governments may struggle to convince their citizens of the need to boost defense spending at the expense of other budget demands without a strong show of support for Ukraine — and acknowledgement that Russia remains NATO’s biggest security threat.
The summit is highly symbolic for Ukraine in other ways. Zelensky wants to prevent his country from being sidelined from international diplomacy, but both he and his allies rely on Trump for US military backup against Russia.
Concretely, Trump and his counterparts will dine with the Dutch King on Tuesday evening. Zelensky could take part. Elsewhere, foreign ministers will hold a NATO-Ukraine Council, the forum where Kyiv sits among the 32 allies as an equal to discuss its security concerns and needs.
What is clear is that the summit will be short. One working session on Wednesday. It was set up that way to prevent the meeting from derailing. If the G7 is anything to go by, Trump’s focus on his new security priorities — right now, the conflict between Israel and Iran — might make it even shorter.
Trump’s go-it-alone strategy on Iran risks dividing an already split Congress
- Democrat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, said Trump’s actions are “clearly grounds for impeachment”
- The Iran military campaign threatens to splinter Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, which powered his return to the White House
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites without fully consulting the US Congress layered a partisan approach onto a risky action, particularly because the White House briefed top Republican leaders beforehand while leaving Democrats with little information.
While House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Republican leader John Thune and the GOP chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee all were briefed before the action, their counterparts were not. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer was given a perfunctory heads-up by the White House shortly before the strikes were made public. And House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries’ office received a “courtesy call” before Trump announced it. The so-called Gang of Eight congressional and intelligence leaders were not notified before the mission, according to two people familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.
One, Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he learned of the strikes on social media, which he said “is an uncomfortable thing for the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.”
“Bad enough that we weren’t informed,” Himes, of Connecticut, said Sunday on CNN, “but unconstitutional that we didn’t have the opportunity to debate and speak, as the representatives of the people, on what is one of the more consequential foreign policy things that this country has done in a long time.”
It’s a highly unusual situation that is complicating the difficult politics ahead for the president and his party as the US enters an uncertain national security era with the surprise military attack on the nuclear facilities, an unprecedented incursion in Iran.
Trump faces a vote in Congress as soon as this week on a war powers resolution from Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, that would “direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.” Another resolution has been introduced by lawmakers from both parties in the US House. And at least one Democrat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, said Trump’s actions are “clearly grounds for impeachment.”
At the same time, the Trump administration is expecting Congress to send an additional $350 billion in national security funds as part of the president’s big tax breaks bill also heading soon for a vote. Senators are set to be briefed Tuesday behind closed doors on the situation in Iran.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Sunday that the White House made “bipartisan courtesy calls” to congressional leadership. She said in a social media post that the White House spoke to Schumer “before the strike” but that House leader Jeffries “could not be reached until after, but he was briefed.”
While the president has authority as the commander in chief of the US armed forces to order specific military actions, any prolonged war-time footing would traditionally need authorization from Congress. The House and Senate authorized actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.
“Congress should be consulted,” Kaine said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We were not.”
As soon as Trump announced the actions late Saturday, he won swift support from the GOP leadership in Congress. Johnson, Thune and the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, were all briefed ahead of time and sent almost simultaneous statements backing the military campaign, as did the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Rick Crawford, also of Arkansas.
But by apparently engaging with only one side of the political aisle, Trump risks saddling his Republican Party with political ownership of the military action against Iran, which may or may not prove popular with Americans. Rather than rally the country to his side, Trump risks cleaving its already deep divisions over his second term agenda.
Johnson, who praised Trump’s action against Iran as “the right call,” said the president’s targeted strike was within his authority and in line with past presidential actions.
“Leaders in Congress were aware of the urgency of this situation and the Commander-in-Chief evaluated that the imminent danger outweighed the time it would take for Congress to act,” Johnson, R-Louisiana, said on social media.
Trump himself has shown little patience for political dissent from within his party, even as criticism rolls in from among his most trusted backers.
The Iran military campaign threatens to splinter Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, which powered his return to the White House. Many Trump supporters aligned with his campaign promises not to involve the United States in overseas actions and instead to be a peace-making president.
“I think I represent part of the coalition that elected Trump,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, on CBS. “We were tired of endless wars in the Middle East.”
Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California have introduced their own war powers resolution in the House, a sign of how close the far left and far right have bonded over their opposition to US campaigns abroad, particularly in the Middle East.
The Trump administration insisted Sunday the US is not seeking a war with Iran. “We’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program,” said Vice President JD Vance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
And Trump swiftly attacked Massie, who is one of the most steadfast non-interventionist GOP lawmakers in Congress — along with Sen. Rand Paul, also of Kentucky — and the president suggested he would turn his Republican Party against the congressman.
“MAGA should drop this pathetic LOSER, Tom Massie, like the plague!” the president said on social media. “The good news is that we will have a wonderful American Patriot running against him in the Republican Primary, and I’ll be out in Kentucky campaigning really hard.”
