reaction_to_2000

Resolution 1333 in a nutshell

Official Reaction by the Taliban

Reaction by Mullah Omar, Taliban’s reclusive leader

Report from the capital, Kabul

Reaction by the Taliban’s opposition

Official Reaction by Pakistan

Official Reaction by Russia

Reaction by EU

Reaction by China

Reaction by India

Reaction by the UN’s Secretary General

Reaction by the UN’s special envoy to Afghanistan

Reaction by JUI

Reaction by various UN, Human Rights and Relief Organizations

On Tuesday, December 21, 2000, the United Nations’ Security Council adopted resolution 1333 aimed at imposing further sanctions against the Taliban. The resolution, which was co-sponsored by India, Kyrgyzistan, Tajikistan, Russia and the United States, was passed with 13 votes in favor to none against. Both China and Malaysia abstained.
According to Guardian, “Britain privately opposed the fresh round of United Nations sanctions imposed against Afghanistan this week. …Although Britain voted for the sanctions, in private British diplomats in New York worked up until the last minute to try to block them. Britain was joined in its skepticism about the value of the sanctions by
Canada and the Netherlands.” (Dec., 22)

The new sanctions are imposed for a period of one year. They are renewable if the Taliban do not comply with the SC’s resolution. However, the resolution will not come into effect for 30 days to give the Taliban time to hand over indicted terrorist Osama bin Laden and close alleged terrorist training camps.

ISLAMABAD, Dec 20 (Dawn): The Taliban have termed the fresh UN sanctions on Afghanistan as unjust, inhuman, and a violation of human rights and announced in retaliation, the immediate rejection of UN-sponsored Afghan peace talks and closure of all UN special missions in the country.

The Taliban have also announced a ban on US and Russian products in their country to condemn the "selfish and politically motivated sanctions". However, the NGOs and humanitarian organizations would continue to operate in Afghanistan as usual.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, Afghanistan's Ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, reiterated Taliban's stance on Osama's extradition and said that Osama was being used as a pretext for US and Russian intervention in the region where Washington wanted to install its puppet government. "Osama is a Mujahid (Islamic warrior), not a terrorist," Zaeef said.

ISLAMABAD, Dec 20 (NNI): Supreme leader of Taliban Mulla Mohammad Omar Wednesday asked the people not to hold demonstrations against the US, Russian sponsored sanctions, saying the Americans and Russians have no mercy and sympathy for the oppressed people of Afghanistan.

"Demonstrations will not influence those who have committed an oppressive action to subject the poor to inhuman sanctions," Mullah Omar said in a message issued from Taliban headquarters of Kandahar.

KABUL, Dec 20 (AFP) - The streets of the war-ravaged Afghan capital were quiet but tense Wednesday amid fears of reprisals against foreign aid workers due to tougher UN sanctions. The United Nations withdrew its last foreign staff just hours ahead of the announcement in New York that the Security Council had agreed to hit the ruling Taliban militia with more curbs over its alleged support for terrorism. "In effect it is the people who will suffer and not the Taliban. The ta'zeerat (sanctions) have already created a price hike and caused a fall in the local currency," said public servant Khalilullah (eds: one name). Ordinary Afghans said the sanctions were likely to push the country, one of the poorest on the world, deeper into the international wilderness.
"Afghanistan is already like an empty pot," said student Abdul Wali.

Others said the UN was anti-Islam and accused it cow-towing to the United States and Russia, the strongest backers of the new sanctions. "They do not want the rule of Islam in our country," said driver Nasir Ahmad, suggesting sanctions should be imposed on Israel for killing Palestinians.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec 21 (AP) - As the sun rose over the snow-peaked mountains that surround Afghanistan's war-ruined capital, hundreds of people waited in frigid temperatures to catch a bus heading east toward Pakistan, 135 miles away. They were trying to flee their shattered nation – and word of fresh U.N. sanctions did nothing to ease their misery. ``Look at me. I was a teacher before but now I have nothing. I can't feed my children,'' 45-year-old Besmillah Balkhi said as he looked for the bus. ``Why do you think all these people are waiting here in the dark? The children - they are shaking from the cold. It's because this country is destroyed and the United Nations does this. I don't understand.''

DUSHANBE, Dec 22 (The News: Jang) The Afghan opposition on Wednesday welcomed the toughening of UN sanctions against the ruling Taliban but said that more punitive measures were needed to force the Kabul regime to make peace. "The UN Security Council should adopt even tougher sanctions against the Taliban movement so that its leadership sits down at the negotiating table to resolve the conflict through peaceful means," an opposition envoy in the Tajik capital, Shamsul Haq Aryanfar, told AFP.

ISLAMABAD, Dec 20 (AFP)- Pakistan's foreign minister on Tuesday predicted a humanitarian disaster if the UN slaps more sanctions on Afghanistan, but stopped short of withdrawing Islamabad's support for the proposal. Abdul Sattar's comments came as the UN pulled the last of its foreign workers from Afghanistan ahead of imposing the tougher measures. "The additional sanctions envisaged in the draft resolution threaten to trigger a humanitarian disaster comparable to that which followed the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan," he said.

MOSCOW, December 20 (Itar-Tass) - Sanctions against Afghanistan's Islamic militia Taleban will be pinpointed so that not to cause humanitarian consequences, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement on Wednesday. The statement recalled that the U.N. Security Council has adopted Resolution 1333 on Tuesday, imposing more sanctions against the Talebs. The sanctions "are aimed exclusively against the Taleban movement's leaders and not the Afghan population, which is why they will not have humanitarian consequences."

ISLAMABAD, Dec 21 (NNI)- Although the European Union does not believe in the policy of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy but would abide the UN sanctions imposed against Afghanistan. French Ambassador to Pakistan Yannick Jerard, while responding a question on the recent development in Afghanistan, in a press conference said that as far
as the new sanctions are concerned, their main concern is that they would be
not also limited in time but also would avoid to increase the hardship of the population.

BEIJING (Dec. 21) XINHUA - China holds that any decision made by the United Nations Security Council should help resolve the problems in Afghanistan as soon as possible, benefit the efforts on the matter made by the UN secretary-general and relevant parties, and relieve the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue made the statement here this afternoon at a regular press conference.

China has chosen to abstain from the voting for UN Security Council resolution 1333, which, if passed, will impose further sanctions against Taliban, Zhang said, adding that China is firmly opposed to any act of terrorism. Zhang said that China, with a constructive attitude, has joined the consultations about resolution 1333, and as Afghanistan's neighbor, China hopes that Afghanistan will achieve peace as soon as possible.

India urges Taliban to heed "international sentiments"

NEW DELHI, Dec 20 (AFP) - India on Wednesday urged Afghanistan's Taliban Islamic militia to learn a lesson from the widening of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council.

India, one of five co-sponsors of the the UN resolution seeking the sanctions, said the step reinforced New Delhi's assessement that the Taliban promoted cross-border terrorism.

UNITED NATIONS, New York, Dec 20 (Reuters)- The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, criticized Tuesday new proposed sanctions against Afghanistan's Taleban rulers, saying they could hinder peace efforts as well as relief aid in the war-battered country. Mr. Annan spoke at a news conference hours before the United States and Russia prepared to put to a Security Council vote a resolution that would impose an arms embargo and other bans against the Taleban.

ISLAMABAD, Dec 20 (APP): UN Secretary General's special envoy on Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell has said that new UN sanctions would simply give moral encouragement to the Northern Alliance. "I think, it would simply give moral encouragement to Masood and some kind of perhaps - greater military strength. But I do not think that this is going to reverse the trend of the fighting in the sense that you are not going to see the Northern Alliance capturing vast parts of territory." Vendrell said in an interview with the BBC.

ATTOCK, Dec 22 (NNI)- President Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (of Pakistan), Maulana Samiul Haq, on Wednesday termed UN sanction against Afghanistan brutal and gross human rights violations. Speaking to a congregation, in Kamilpur, the Maulana said that UN does not have any right to assert itself a great protector of human rights after its silence on the massacres in Kashmir and Palestine. Criticizing the attitude of foreign minister, he urged the government to stand firmly against UN policies, on Afghanistan instead of giving cowardice statements.

ISLAMABAD, Dec 14 (AFP) - In another sign of mounting opposition to UN sanctions against Afghanistan, British relief agency Oxfam Thursday urged the Security Council to rethink its plans to tighten restrictions. "Oxfam today urges the UN Security Council to reconsider plans to tighten sanctions on Afghanistan, in light of the growing humanitarian
crisis in the country," Oxfam said in a statement received here. "The draft UN proposal ... threatens to deepen this already desperate humanitarian crisis."

The Britain-based Christian charitable organisation is the latest in a series of major relief agencies to protest against the draft sanctions which the United States and Russia tabled with the Security Council last week. "The ability of ordinary Afghans to withstand any kind of deterioration in their situation after twenty years of war is extremely limited, and seemingly innocuous actions can have a serious impact on the lives of millions of people," the UN Coordinator for Afghanistan said in a report released here this week.

UNHCR concerns over sanctions impact on Afghan suffering

ISLAMABAD, Dec 22 (NNI)- United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has expressed concern over the impact of sanctions on Taliban and appealed to the international community to help the UNHCR to deliver basic humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people.

Addressing a joint press conference, Yousuf Hasan, Senior Regiona external relations officer, south west Asia and Montserrat Teixas Vihe, Assistant representative said the UN sanctions would badly affect the activities of the mission in all three countries, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

ISLAMABAD, Dec 22 (AFP) - UN sanctions against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia have come at a "very bad time" for efforts to eradicate the country's massive opium crop, the UN's local drug control chief told AFP Friday. UN Drug Control Programme representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Bernard Frahi said the sanctions had "complicated our dialogue with the Taliban" at a crucial time in the opium season. They had also punished the Taliban for their alleged involvement in drug trafficking despite the Islamic militia's sincere and apparently successful efforts to ban opium cultivation.

ISLAMABAD, Dec 21 (NNI): The Human Rights Watch has said that UN sanctions particularly aviation sanctions on the Taliban would further agonize the Afghan people. "Terrorism could not be made a base for UN sanctions rather curbs should be
slapped on the basis of human rights abuses," a member of Human Rights Watch, Vikram Parik told the VOA. He said that both the Taliban and opposition Northern Alliance have seriously violated human rights and sanctions should be imposed on both the warring factions.

NGOs oppose new sanctions on Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD, Dec 18 (NNI)- Non-Governmental Organizations have opposed imposition of fresh sanctions on the war-shattered Afghanistan, arguing they will have negative humanitarian impact on the Afghan people. In a statement read out at the Afghanistan Support Group's (ASG) meeting at the Montreux, representatives of the NGOs said that the new sanctions will have a further destabilizing effect on the economy and cost of living for ordinary Afghans.

Monday, Dec 18 (Guardian)- Aid agencies in Afghanistan warned last night that proposed new sanctions against the Taliban will provoke a humanitarian disaster and could result in bakeries that provide food for more than 500,000 people closing. Staff in Kabul and other cities say they will almost certainly be evacuated on security grounds if the sanctions, to be debated by the UN security council tomorrow, are approved. "We will pull our people out," a senior aid worker said last night. That will mean that food stocks that supply as many as 5m people affected by Afghanistan's worst drought in 30 years will run out in three weeks. Bakeries in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif will close, the aid workers said. "The threat of sanctions has already led to aid operations in some parts of the country being halted, and food supplies being interrupted," an Oxfam spokesman, Phil Bloomer, said last night. "Further reaction against sanctions inside Afghanistan will make it difficult or impossible for humanitarian agencies such as Oxfam to continue their work."

New Sanctions Against the Taliban and World Reaction