Taliban bans male government workers from turning up to office without beards
Afghanistan’s Taliban has instructed all government employees to wear a beard and adhere to a dress code or risk being fired, three sources told Reuters, the latest of several new restrictions imposed by the hardline Islamist administration. The sources said representatives from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were patrolling […]
Who are the Taliban?
The Taliban were removed from power in Afghanistan by US-led forces in 2001, but the group has been on the offensive in recent months and is now on the brink of seizing power again. As the US prepared to complete its withdrawal by September 11, after two decades of war, the militants took major cities […]
Uganda to take 2,000 Afghan refugees at U.S. request
Uganda said on it had agreed to a request from the United States to take in temporarily 2,000 refugees from Afghanistan fleeing after the Taliban takeover. On Tuesday, August 17, the East African nation which has a long experience of receiving people escaping conflict and currently hosts about 1.4 million refugees, most from South Sudan […]
Kenya renews its push to add Al-Shabaab to UN sanctions list
Foreign Affairs CS Monica Juma leads calls to add Somalia’s Al-Shabaab group to the same same sanctions list as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Suicide bomb rips through wedding in Afghanistan killing 63 people
A bomb has exploded in a wedding hall in the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing 63 people and wounding more than 180. Witnesses told the BBC a suicide bomber detonated explosives during a wedding ceremony. The explosion happened at around 22:40 local time (18.10 GMT) in an area in the west of the city mostly populated […]