#noorzay

[mijmerendroom]

[aaustinwrites]

The older protective autistic brother is really becoming a trope with me huh

[mariacallous]

As if Coca-Cola gave up making soft drinks, the Taliban announced to great fanfare last year that they were getting out of the drug business. The group that rode big opium profits to a takeover of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 suddenly, seemingly, swore off the stuff. Poppy planting was banned and drugs were off the menu. Or that, at least, is what they want the world to believe.

And they actually are—sort of. Satellite images seem to show a sharp decline in poppy acreage and methamphetamine manufacture since Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada announced his ban on producing and trading drugs in April 2022. Some Western officials, diplomats, and analysts see it as a welcome counternarcotics move, achieving with a simple decree what billions of dollars in U.S.-funded programs couldn’t do in two decades.

In reality, though, the Taliban haven’t changed their stripes—just their product. The drugs trade was estimated to account for up to 14 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP last year, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). If new figures from the UNODC are to be believed, that’s about to get a lot higher.

The Taliban didn’t curtail the drug trade. They cornered it. And then they branched out. What the Taliban did with heroin was stand on the hose, driving up prices. Since Akhundzada’s decree—which did not apply until this year—opium prices have skyrocketed, rising a hundredfold in local markets in eastern and southern Afghanistan, the main growing regions. Seizures of heroin and meth are up, from Australia to India, the Gulf, Central Asia, and at European ports like Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and Antwerp, in Belgium. Experts say the one-year lag between the decree’s announcement and enforcement gave producers and traffickers time to boost output and stockpiles, while stoking fears of a looming shortage that’s driven an inflationary panic-buying frenzy.

The Taliban are to heroin and meth what the Sinaloa cartel is to cocaine. Southeast Asia still makes a bit, but otherwise, Afghanistan has a stranglehold on the $55 billion-a-year heroin trade. Drug lord Bashir Noorzai, who was a major war financier and a close associate of the supreme leader, was greeted as a hero when he returned to Afghanistan last year upon early release from a life sentence in U.S. prison for heroin smuggling, swapped for an American hostage. Afghan sources say he is back in business.

But the Taliban are upscaling. While they had dabbled—and quite extensively—with meth in the past, they used plant-based precursors. But that takes labor. What’s easier, cheaper, quicker, and more profitable is chemical-based meth.

The UNODC annually assesses Afghanistan’s poppy acreage, opium yield and prices, and heroin production, though since the Taliban regained power, access and visibility, like the reports, are hamstrung. What does seem apparent is that the Taliban have cut down on poppy production. Recent satellite images provided by Alcis show a dramatic reduction in poppy planting. Anecdotal evidence from on-the-ground reporting backs up statements by Alcis researchers that poppy planting could have fallen by as much as 99 percent in some areas.

Afghan journalist Mirwais Khan said his sources in the southern Helmand province, where much of the country’s supply of heroin is sourced, tell him that poppy planting is close to zero for the current season. In the markets, he said, prices have surged from 30,000 Pakistani rupees, or about $100 a kilo a year ago, to 520,000 rupees. (Opium is priced in Pakistani rupees.) Last month, RFE/RL reported opium markets in Helmand and Kandahar operating as usual and said traffickers had amassed “strategic stockpiles” to take advantage of high prices.

Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Berlin- and New York-based Counter Extremism Project, doesn’t believe the ban is genuine, let alone long-term. He regards it as an attempt to maximize profits while lulling the international community into recognizing the Taliban. Or it’s a diversification play.

“If I was a Talib, I’d be getting into meth,” Schindler told Foreign Policy. The raw material for plant-based methamphetamine, ephedra, grows wild in Afghanistan. The Taliban have cracked down on that, too. But the drug can be synthesized simply and cheaply with easily acquired precursor chemicals and cooked in labs that are almost undetectable on satellite imagery. The costs and returns are many times that of heroin.

“They can ramp up meth production. You can tell [on satellite photos], but you have to know what you’re looking for, and at. It will be much harder to prove,” as the labs often look like any other building, Schindler said.

The UNODC agrees, with an assessment released on Sunday describing the illegal manufacture of meth in Afghanistan as a “growing threat” that is “changing illicit drug markets traditionally focused on the trafficking of opiates from Afghanistan.” Chemical precursors have become the main ingredient, the report said, derived from legally available sources like cold medicine or bulk industrial ephedrines that are smuggled into Afghanistan year-round. One kilogram of pure meth can be produced from less than 2 kilos of industrial ephedrine, compared to 200 kilos of ephedra plant that have to be harvested and prepared by human beings who like to get paid.

The Taliban have been moving into meth for some years, building markets by including it in shipments of heroin. Australian media has reported huge seizures of Afghan meth, sent through the mail from Pakistan to motorcycle gangs that dominate the trade. Compared to heroin, a little goes longer, and the UNODC report shows the Taliban are trading it to every corner of the world.

As industrial-scale manufacture of chemical drugs ramps up, the biggest losers are Afghanistan’s farmers, who languish at the bottom of the economic pyramid, among the poorest people in one of the world’s most indigent countries. For decades, they’ve been Taliban serfs, forced to grow poppies to help fund the war against the Western-backed Afghan state. The Taliban provided inputs, including seeds and fertilizer. Farmers found themselves in a debt trap they could and did pay off at times by fighting for the Taliban against Afghan and international coalition forces.

News footage of lathi-armed goon squads destroying poppy fields is a déjà vu of failed counternarcotics programs during the past two decades, which at least offered farmers alternatives, like growing wheat or saffron. Insurgent suicide bombers would destroy seed distribution centers, and Taliban operatives would sometimes even kill farmers who tried to make the switch. The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported that the U.S. government spent, between 2002 and 2017, about $8.6 billion on counternarcotics efforts. Opium remained Afghanistan’s largest cash crop.

But wheat and other crops are just not a viable option. “If they grow grain, they will starve,” Schindler said, as Afghan farmers need cash crops to cover their costs. A long-term drought has cut their ability to grow food. If the ban continues, many men will be forced off the land to look for work elsewhere, adding to the huge numbers of internally displaced and, potentially, to the numbers flooding out of the country—to Pakistan, Iran, and beyond—in search of work.

Little farmers and big landowners both stand to lose from the continued ban, even if that was the endgame of all those years of U.S. and international efforts. Akhundzada seems to have put his prestige on the line with the ban, regardless of the collateral damage.

“The economic shock and human suffering will continue and worsen as long as the ban is implemented,” warned William Byrd, an expert on Afghanistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

[afghanprincess69]

Maryam Noorzai is a self-taught multidisciplinary painter, tattooist and poet of Afghani descent from Vancouver, British Columbia. She declined to go to art school, for fear it would tamper the purity of her expression. Maryam found vocation in tattooing, as a way of sublimating her painting practice, to help clients share their stories through her art. Her distinctive style is in the realm of dark gestural psychedelia. Maryam incorporates Jungian theories of symbolic archetypes in the collective unconscious throughout her work, and lists him as one of her biggest influences. Her work is meant to bring symbolic archetypes, primarily seen in dreams and fairy tales, to the fore by way of tattooing or painting, using intuitive methods of internal screening, the Jungian method of ‘active imagination’ She pioneered a "kaleidoscopic" style of rendering the body, which is meant to evoke time slowed down to where past details can be magnified and scrutinized closely, as in a dream state. Nature is able to go through a myriad of states and evoke a multiplicity of emotions in humans as inhabitants. Whether it’s the wonder of leaves red decay in autumn, or the fear left in a cougar track. However, the bare eye rarely witnesses these transitions. Instead, we react to what has transpired. I find an object in nature to be the site of a host of memories, which is recorded in the piece itself. Similar to tracks left by a deer, that which has passed through it, leaving its print that haunts the ground. Through my explorations, wanderings and meditations on the island terrain, I will bare witness to these “hauntings” to create a body of paintings in dialogue with the ghosts that have passed through, hidden in the scores of nature. I will incorporate organic stains, patterns and textures in order for my experience of these hauntings to be revealed on canvas, to be fused with acrylic paints, charcoal, pastel, pencil and pen. I also plan to create small concrete poems of what I experience on Salt Spring Island, adhered to the wall as part of the body of work, to provide another sensual arena for the onlooker to be immersed in my individuated experience of this island, perhaps as part of the paintings themselves. I may employ different words of past cultures that have had history on Salt Spring, Indigenous, Japanese & English alike. Furthermore, if I can manage my time, I would like to create a three-dimensional object, a kind of effigy out of wood that would be slightly burned as a performance piece during the night of the open studio. I wouldn’t want the effigy burned whole, but I would continue striking fire to it with a flint and stone (or another natural survivalist method of fire) in order to evoke scent and smoke. The smoke of the effigy is the literal ghost of what was there, the substance having been transmuted. During this open studio, I invite guests from the island to come and witness the sensory experience of this, coupled with the rest of my body of paintings and poems, inviting conversation and contemplation alike.

[soclaimon]

‘ธรรมนัส’ถกผู้ประกอบการ พัฒนาเทคโนโลยี-นวัตกรรม

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์แน��หน้า https://www.naewna.com/local/790309 วันศุกร์ ที่ 1 มีนาคม พ.ศ. 2567, 06.00 น. ร.อ.ธรรมนัส พรหมเผ่า รมว.เกษตรและสหกรณ์พร้อมด้วยนายเศรษฐเกียรติ กระจ่างวงษ์ รองปลัดกระทรวงเกษตรฯ และ ผอ.สำนักงานที่ปรึกษาการเกษตรต่างประเทศ ประจำกรุงบรัสเซลส์ เปิดโอกาสให้ นาย Tobias Fausch ประธาน German Agribusiness Alliance (GAA) และ น.ส.Mursal Noorzai…

[ezatkhan]

https://money-easilyflj.buzz/33476158784402

[artsology]

Mixed media stuffed figures by Latefa Noorzai, seen at the Creative Growth booth at last week’s Outsider Art Fair. #latefanoorzai #creativegrowth #art #mixedmedia #outsiderart #outsiderartist #outsiderartfair #afghaniartist #oafnewyork2023 (at Metropolitan Pavilion) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpg94UqMb_f/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bcapnews]

Sınıflara Girmesi Yasaklanan Afgan Kızları Radyo Dinliyor

Sınıflara Girmesi Yasaklanan Afgan Kızları Radyo Dinliyor

Afganistan’daki kızların okullara erişimi engellenirken, Khost vilayetindeki bir radyo istasyonu edebi programlar yayınlamak için devreye girdi. VOA’dan Shaista Lami’nin hikayesi var. Roshan Noorzai katkıda bulundu.

[cheryldunn]

BEYOND I WANNA GO SHOOT #creativeGrowthARTcenter Latefa Noorzai

[artguy]

Oil painting of my hike at Thousand Oaks a trail close to my brothers house! #oiloncanvasboard #noorzay #omarnoorzay #afghanartist #hiking #sunsetpainting # https://www.instagram.com/p/CCKLPqip44q/?igshid=a2r8r74klhxo

[memenewsdotcom]

Mark Frerichs freed in Taliban prisoner swap

[silvershayde]

I’VE FOUND THW BEST SIDE PROFILE IVE EVER DRAWN

LIKE

LOOK AT MY BOY

[wekiaamtoo]

NEEE MN CRUSH

[mariacallous]

The Taliban have detained multiple foreign nationals, including Americans and Europeans, in Afghanistan in what appears to be a systematic roundup by the group, which has a history of holding Westerners hostage to trade for political advantage. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said “several” U.S. citizens are prisoners of the Taliban. Others in Taliban custody include British and Polish citizens, their governments confirmed.

The detention of an unusually large number of Westerners, possibly more than a dozen, comes amid an alarming rise in hostage diplomacy—in which citizens of one state are captured and traded for advantage by another—by countries hostile to the United States. Russia detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in late March and accused him of spying for the United States, an accusation the Biden administration has denied.

The James W.  Foley Legacy Foundation, a media advocacy organization named for a U.S. photographer murdered by the Islamic State in Syria in 2014, found that the number of Americans wrongly held abroad has risen by 580 percent in the past decade, while the length of time they’re held has increased by 60 percent. Its 2022 report said “Iran, China, Venezuela, Syria, and Russia account for 75% of U.S. nationals currently wrongfully detained,” some for as long as four years, and that detentions are outpacing releases. 

“There are rising concerns that U.S. nationals are being increasingly targeted for detention in order to secure political leverage against the United States,” the report said.

There are any number of theories behind the Taliban’s recent dragnet. The sweep could be a sign that the Taliban aim to rid Afghanistan of any Western presence as they impose their extremist values, such as banning girls from post-primary education. Some security sources think the Taliban may be planning to use the foreigners as collateral for prisoner swaps, as they have several times before. Others think it’s a move to pressure the Biden administration to release billions of dollars in foreign reserves frozen by U.S. financial sanctions. Still others believe the hostages are meant to secure, at last, U.S. and Western recognition of an outlaw regime that still is persona non grata a year and half after its violent takeover of Afghanistan.

“The Taliban’s primary objective in abducting and detaining Western civilians is to compel their governments to establish direct communication with the Taliban regime instead of relying on nongovernment organizations,” said Mirwais Naab, a former deputy foreign minister of Afghanistan. The Taliban are also concerned about the potential for NGO workers to conduct espionage for the United States, he said.

Rafi Fazil, a former deputy national security advisor to the Islamic Republic, said this “new wave” of detentions was a reaction to diplomatic isolation “to build pressure on the West because they are not being recognized, and that is taking a huge toll.” De facto Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi has complained that the Taliban have met all conditions for diplomatic recognition and yet remain out in the cold. 

The Taliban have long found hostage-taking to be an expedient method of extracting favors from the United States. U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was held captive for five years by the Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate headed by their current de facto interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, after the soldier deserted his base in southern Afghanistan in 2009. He was swapped in May 2014 for five Taliban operatives who had been in custody at Guantánamo Bay, in what was seen as a huge victory for the Islamists. 

Last year, the Taliban released former U.S. Navy diver Mark Frerichs after more than two years in return for Bashir Noorzai, a drug trafficker who was 17 years into a life sentence in the United States for conspiracy to traffic heroin. Filmmaker Ivor Shearer was released in September after four months’ detention. The Taliban claimed it was a goodwill gesture, and the U.S. State Department said no money or prisoners were exchanged for his freedom.

At the same time, Taliban leaders have been demanding the return of more than $9 billion in Afghanistan’s foreign exchange reserves held in banks in the United States and Europe. U.S. bans on financial transactions with sanctioned terrorists and institutions under their control were triggered when the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. (Many Taliban leaders are listed by the U.N. Security Council as terrorists, though not the group itself.) The resulting cash crisis is contributing to economic disaster. Anger at concerns that they’ll help themselves to the money could conceivably have pushed the Taliban back to their tried-and-tested tactic for getting what they want.

Blinken revealed the presence of Americans in Taliban detention to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month. “There are several Americans who are being detained by the Taliban. We are working to secure their freedom,” he said. “As we speak, American citizens who identified themselves to us who are in Afghanistan—some of whom have been there since the withdrawal, some of whom went back to Afghanistan— … that we’re in contact with, [there are] about 175. Forty-four of them are ready to leave, and we are working to effectuate their departure.” 

In a statement to Foreign Policy, the State Department confirmed that “there are several U.S. nationals who are being detained by the Taliban.” No details were given “due to privacy considerations.” The U.S. government prioritizes the safe return of citizens held abroad and like many governments believes publicity exacerbates danger—which could explain the long silence on the Afghanistan detentions, some of which date back months.

The State Department also reiterated advice against travel to Afghanistan due to the threat of civil unrest, armed conflict, terrorism, and kidnapping: “Travel to all areas of Afghanistan is unsafe. The Dept. of State assesses the risk of kidnapping or violence against U.S. citizens in Afghanistan is high.” 

The number of Americans held by the Taliban could be a lot more than “several,” and perhaps as many as a dozen, according to sources familiar with the state of play.Three British detainees have been confirmed by the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office. Poland’s foreign ministry confirmed one citizen captive. Another Pole who was detained at the same time was released for health reasons, the sources said. French and Australian citizens are also possibly in Taliban custody; this could not be immediately confirmed. It’s not clear when or where all the detentions took place. 

The British government has confirmed the detention of three U.K. citizens, including two men with extensive experience working in Afghanistan on legitimate contracts and another who was traveling independently to make videos for social media. The two men on contracts were taken from a residential compound in Kabul on Jan. 11. One, 53-year-old medic Kevin Cornwell, whose family gave British media permission to name him, was working with a charity called Iqarus International, liaising with U.N. agencies to deliver aid. The man detained with him was the compound manager. Relatives said they were accused of possessing an illegal firearm, though family members say the gun was licensed by the Taliban and never used.

The men are in a wing for foreigners in a Kabul prison operated by the Taliban secret service, the General Directorate of Intelligence. After their detention was reported on April 1, they were allowed phone calls to families. Security sources say they may be moved to Kandahar in a possible first step to their release.

Poland’s foreign ministry said it was “aware of the case” of a citizen detained in Afghanistan, adding in a statement: “We cannot share any details with respect to the privacy and security of the person and their family.” It is believed that two Polish citizens were traveling with the British social media influencer, Miles Routledge, when he disappeared in early March. The British government has confirmed that Routledge is in Taliban custody, though his whereabouts and condition are unknown. 

Throughout the 20 years of the republic, which was propped up by the United States, NATO, and allies until its collapse in August 2021, thousands of foreigners lived in Kabul and elsewhere in the country. Many were diplomats, journalists, aid workers, and military contractors whose major threat was kidnapping for ransom or trade. Purpose-built compounds popped up on the outskirts of the city to provide secure accommodation, catering, and other creature comforts. The Taliban are believed to have targeted these compounds, which still provide services for the many foreigners who have returned to work with humanitarian organizations, as well as some hotels in the capital.

Afghanistan doesn’t have a functional justice system, and all previous laws have been canceled. As the Taliban are not recognized as the legitimate government, there’s no diplomatic representation for foreigners in custody, and they have no access to consular support. Most embassies closed when the republic fell, and many moved to Doha, the capital of Qatar. 

“By taking hostages and applying similar tactics employed by some of Afghanistan’s neighbors in the past, the Taliban hopes to coerce Western countries into engaging with them in a more diplomatic manner,” said Naab, the former deputy foreign minister. He criticized the way that Western governments and the United Nations have done little to actually curtail Taliban excesses, after enabling their takeover with the 2020 Doha peace deal and withdrawal agreement. 

“These developments are the outcome of dealing with terrorists and terrorist group propagators as a legitimate government, reflecting a myopic and poorly defined approach.”

[afghanprincess69]

hihi, it's been exactly one year since I moved to mtl professionally. it's my second home, next to vanc my second home. my first is the vision. it's not a surprise for most you my clients - but i'll make it clear. I suffered a terrible mental//creative burnout about 2 years ago. breakdown. whatever you want to call it. the rate at which I was tattooing, and the long routes I took. a scenic route through hell, to get to some of your beautiful dermis designs, tore me backwards. i've always known myself, but what else is there to know? I broke myself down to put myself back together again. what do you think i gleaned there? i'm compelled to share it with you. here's a piece of what i envision for your animate flesh <3 slow made ps. i'm back to bloodmoth haha. back to myselffff. bibi was an homage to my grandmother RIP RIP RIP maryam noorzai lives on in the crypt (i hold her whole exact name, perhaps the source of my endless existential meta-feedback)

[aaustinwrites]

2 8 18 19 28 37 for the 40 questions!

I think this is fan fiction specific, but I don’t do a lot of fan fiction UNLESS you count my alternative universes of my own series...so a lot of these questions are answered based on a super hero AU I have of my own story.

2. Coffee shop au. But that would probably involve limiting angst and drama, as well as writing romance…

Also, maybe a crossover with The Guardians characters with characters in my other WIPs?

8. This is from my The Guardians super hero AU (where the plot is pretty much the same, it just takes place in a world akin to ours, and a lot of people have superpowers, and super heroes exist):

Anil frowned as he looked the person over: dark and light blue suit, knives in their boots and at their hips, and a mask over their eyes.

“Anil, everything ok?” Asha asked.

Anil stepped back as the person got to their feet. With the suit and mask, they were defiantly a super. He just didn’t know if they were friendly. And pulling a dagger out of one’s boot defiantly did not give that impression.

“You got five seconds to explain why you’re here before I introduce you to this knife,” the super said, pointing the blade at him.

“How can you introduce me to a knife?” Anil said.

“She means she’s going to stab you!” Asha said.

“Oh,” Anil said right as the person lunged for him.

Anil sidestepped the person’s strikes as Asha shouted in his ear, “Who’s attacking you?”

“I-don’t-know,” Anil said between dodges. As the person swung a horizontal strike at him, Anil stepped back, then kicked the knife out of person’s hand before she could strike again…only to have to dodge a new knife from her other hand.

“Why are you after him?” the person said. [Pauses in her striking]

“After who?” Anil said.

“Shadow!”

“Who?” Anil said.

“That might be the dude we’re after!” Asha said. “Does this person work with Shadow?” Asha asked, and Anil passed along her question.

The person scoffed. “No, dude won’t let me get within six feet even if I wanted to work with him. Now, why the fuck are you after him?”

I like this scene because of Jiang and Anil’s interaction, particularly the line about “introducing” Anil to her knife that he took literally and that Asha had to basically translate. 

There’s another snippet that I really like, so here it is:

Li approached the door. His hand raised, but Bora it pulled back.

“This isn’t a good idea,” she said.

“Are they home?” a voice called to him.

Li jumped away from the direction the voice came from. He felt Zhi leave his shoulder for a second before she regained her balance and meowed loudly at him for disrupting her perch.

“Sorry Zhi,” he mumbled while he scratched her under her chin before turning to face Jiang. She wore a denim jacket today that he knew had various queer and punk related pins on the back. One side of her hair was braided, and her braids were pulled into a low ponytail with the other side of her hair.  

Jiang closed the distance between them, but kept her distance at the same time. “They home?” Jiang asked again.

“I…I don’t know,” he said.

Instead of pushing his answer like Li expected, she just knocked on the door.

“Coming!” Li heard through the door, followed quickly by a “Shit!”

The door swung open. Haru broke into a large grin. Behind her, a man called, “Haru, careful! Also, did you check who it was?”

“No…” Haru said.

Li tensed, afraid the man was about to yell at Haru. Instead, he only heard a sigh from the man, followed by a, “Did you at least know you were having guests over?”

“Yes, I did!” Haru said.

“Okay. Well in that case, invite them in!”

I like this scene because this is the first part of the chaotic trio’s first hangout outside of school, as well as characterizes each of the trio a bit.

18. Does music count? But I tend to outline a lot, and I use scrivener to compile the outline.

19. Music. Rain.

28. @abitqueerupinhere He hasn’t written a lot down, but he’s told me about a lot of his ideas and stories, and they each have really, really interesting characters and worlds. He’s also been with me since my very early days of writing, which I really appreciate, cause my early writing days were…not that great.

@wr0temyway0ut I remember reading “Into the Sun” and I freaking loved it. I would love to see it become a movie with a theatrical release one day!! I love his focus on mental health, especially anxiety, in his works because we both be anxious peeps. I can’t wait to see where you go with your works!

37. My current WIP is scripts for my podcast called “Brain Dead.” Basically, zombie outbreak happens, and a college student needs to travel back from her university to her parents. But, she gets roped into government and secret experiments shadiness because she cares about the general well-being of humans, and she counts zombies as humans very much.