WASHINGTON, 13 October 2021, (TON): US Vice President Kamala Harris said that the European explorers who first landed on US shores had "ushered in a wave of devastation for tribal nations, perpetrating violence, stealing land and spreading disease."

She told the National Congress of American Indians, the largest US organisation for native peoples “we must not shy away from this shameful past, and we must shed light on it and do everything we can to address the impact of the past on native communities today.”

The Biden administration would renegotiate a memo of understanding about federal funding for job training on tribal lands with tribal nations, she said. It was renegotiated in 2018 between 12 federal agencies but without input from the tribal nations affected.

She spoke the day after Columbus Day, which marks the landing of explorer Christopher Columbus, and the newly recognised Indigenous Peoples' Day.

SANAA, 13 October 2021, (TON): Yemen has been devastated by a seven-year conflict pitting the Shia rebels against the government supported by a Saudi-led military coalition.

The Saudi-led coalition said “more than 130 Yemen rebels have been killed in air strikes south of Marib, a flashpoint of the civil war.”

Dozens of strikes were carried out in the Abdiya district of Marib province. Marib city is the internationally recognised government's last outpost in northern Yemen.

A coalition statement carried by official Saudi media said "we targeted nine military vehicles of the Houthi militia in Abdiya, and their losses exceeded 134 members.”

Hundreds of Houthi rebels and military have died since fighting for the strategically vital city flared anew last month.

WASHINGTON, 13 October 2021, (TON): The United States said that the weekend talks with the Taliban were candid and professional.

During the weekend, the Biden administration held their first face-to-face meeting with the Taliban in Doha since the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in late August.

A State Department official told journalists in Washington that on Oct 9 and 10, an interagency US delegation travelled to the Qatari capital to meet senior Taliban representatives.

The department’s spokesperson Ned Price said “The US delegation focused on security and terrorism concerns and safe passage for US citizens, other foreign nationals and our Afghan partners.”

He said “US officials also focused on human rights, including the meaningful participation of women and girls in all aspects of Afghan society.”

Mr Price said “the two sides also discussed the provision of robust US humanitarian assistance, directly to the Afghan people.”

“The discussions were candid and professional with the US delegation reiterating that the Taliban will be judged on its actions, not only its words.”

ROME, 13 October 2021, (TON): Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi will host a special summit of the Group of 20 major economies on Tuesday to discuss Afghanistan, as worries grow about a looming humanitarian disaster following the Taliban's return to power.

Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan on Aug 15, the country, already struggling with drought and severe poverty after decades of war — has seen its economy all but collapse, raising the spectre of an exodus of refugees.

The video conference, which is due to start, will focus on aid needs, concerns over security and ways of guaranteeing safe passage abroad for thousands of Western-allied Afghans still in the country.

An official with knowledge of the G20 agenda said “providing humanitarian support is urgent for the most vulnerable groups, especially women and children, with winter arriving.”

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is due to join the summit, underlining the central role given to the United Nations in tackling the crisis, in part because many countries don't want to establish direct relations with the Taliban.

Italy, which holds the rotating presidency of the G20, has worked hard to set up the meeting in the face of highly divergent views within the disparate group on how to deal with Afghanistan after the chaotic US withdrawal from Kabul.

“The main problem is that Western countries want to put their finger on the way the Taliban run the country, how they treat women for example, while China and Russia on the other hand have a non-interference foreign policy,” said a diplomatic source close to the matter.

BRUSSELS, 13 October 2021, (TON): The European Union (EU) pledged a one billion euro aid package for Afghanistan “to avert a major humanitarian and socio-economic collapse” the bloc's chief Ursula von der Leyen said.

A statement said “the money adds 250 million euros to a 300m euro sum the EU previously announced for urgent humanitarian needs, with the remainder going to Afghanistan's neighbouring countries taking in Afghans fleeing Taliban rul.”

Von der Leyen made the pledge at a virtual G20 summit hosted by Italy, dedicated to discussing the humanitarian and security situation in Afghanistan.

Her statement stressed that the EU funds are “direct support” for Afghans and would be channelled to international organisations working on the ground, not to the Taliban's interim government which Brussels does not recognise.

Meanwhile, EU development aid different from humanitarian aid remains frozen.

TRIPOLI, 13 October 2021, (TON): The UN refugee agency said it had recovered the bodies of 15 migrants and 177 survivors from two coastguard boats returning to Libya people who had sought to cross the Mediterranean.

Attempted crossings from North Africa have surged this year, with more than 23,000 migrants or refugees reported as having been intercepted by the Libyan coastguard by September.

Migrants and refugees in Libya face detention and abuse, and more than 5,000 were arrested in a crackdown during the past week.

Guards killed at least six migrants in a detention centre as overcrowding led to chaos, the UN migration agency IOM said, and scores managed to flee the area before being detained again.

KABUL, 13 October 2021, (TON): Dozens of Afghan students gathered in front of Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul to protest the recent shutting of Torkham Gate.

Most of protestors, who are studying in Pakistan, declared that they will miss a semester if the gate remains closed, adding that border area tensions should not affect their learning.

A protestor said “it is now four weeks that the gate is closed. We will miss the current semester if we don’t get there in four days.”

Another protestor said “it is a month since the universities started and we are stranded here. Some have visa problems, there are many difficulties.”

After media reporters were forbidden from covering today’s protest, the protestors filmed the gathering and sent it to the media.

In the meantime, officials at the Ministry of Information and Culture announced that some efforts are underway to reopen Torkham and Spin Boldak’s gates.

NAYPYITAW, 13 October 2021, (TON): People’s Defence Force (PDF) chapters in Magway and Sagaing regions ambushed the junta’s armed forces, in neighbouring Yesagyo and Chaung-U townships, respectively.

A leader of the anti-junta resistance group told media “the Chaung-U PDF planted landmines in the township to target a military column traveling from Monywa on the Chaung-U-Pakkoku road just past Mahn Cho village.”

Two military vehicles were reportedly destroyed in the blasts, but the number of soldiers killed in the incident was unconfirmed at the time of reporting.

A leader within the Chaung-U PDF said “they came to carry the bodies of their people back and then blocked the road so that we wouldn’t see how many of them died.”

He added that the army vehicles crashed into one another due to the explosion, likely causing what he described as “many casualties.”

The junta’s roadblock went up to the Sin Phyu Shin bridge crossing the Chindwin River to Magway’s Yesagyo Township.

NAYPYITAW, 13 October 2021, (TON): Sources told media “the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) special envoy’s meeting with members of Myanmar political parties, in Naypyitaw, was postponed as he had not yet arrived in the country.”

The junta’s election commission initially invited at least eight political parties to its Naypyitaw office to meet with ASEAN’s special envoy to Myanmar Erywan Yusof on Tuesday.

Local media reports later said the meeting was postponed until Wednesday. The invited parties did not include representatives from the National League For Democracy (NLD), the ruling party ousted in the country’s February 1 military coup.

In a statement released on Tuesday, special envoy Yusof said “he looks forward to a visit to Myanmar in accordance with the five-point consensus agreed to by ASEAN leaders in April. “

In August, ASEAN selected Yusof, Brunei’s second foreign minister, as its special envoy to the country to help resolve the political crisis that has followed the coup.

The political parties invited by the junta’s election commission to the meeting include the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP); the Union Betterment Party (UBP) of ex-general and parliamentary speaker Thura Shwe Mann; the Democratic Party of National Politics (DNP) founded by ex-general and known ultranationalist Soe Maung; the National United Democratic Party (NUD) started by a former NLD lawmaker and his family; the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP), and three other ethnic state-based parties.

ISLAMABAD, 12 October 2021, (TON): Prime Minister Imran Khan has urged the United States to deliver an aid package to Afghanistan to prevent the collapse of the Afghan state so that it does not turn into a safe haven for global terrorists, particularly the Islamic State.

In an interview with Middle East Eye, broadcasted on Monday, the premier said “the US has no other option but to support the new Taliban regime because a failure to do so will result in a humanitarian disaster as well.”

He said in reference to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban forces in August “it’s a really critical time and the US has to pull itself together because people in the United States are in a state of shock.”

“They were imagining some sort of democracy, nation-building or liberated women, and suddenly they find the Taliban are back. There is so much anger and shock and surprise. Unless America takes the lead, we are worried that there will be chaos in Afghanistan and we will be most affected by that.”

Imran said that the support to the Taliban will also keep in check the rise of the Islamic State in Afghanistan and the US should do everything to support a stable government in the country.

The premier added “the world must engage with Afghanistan because if it pushes it away, within the Taliban movement there are hardliners, and it could easily go back to the Taliban of 2000 and that would be a disaster.”