Issue 5 · August 12, 2026 · Libera Mondo Newsletter

Taliban orders Hazara township cleared in Kabul

The Taliban's justice ministry has ordered more than 4,000 families out of the Omid-e Sabz township in western Kabul, most of them Hazara Shia, after a special court declared its 1,507 jeribs — about 301 hectares — state land. Residents say they hold valid title deeds. On August 7, Hazara and Shia representatives called the order part of five years of systematic discrimination, listing arbitrary arrests, the closure of a television station and a mosque, an eviction at Darulaman, and the removal of Muharram mourning flags from Kabul mosques. Sources inside the ministry told Afghanistan International that its land-recovery commission will review Hazara and Shia property in Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, and other provinces.

Baloch activist's father shot dead in Khuzdar

Inayatullah Jattak, a retired teacher, was shot dead on his way to a mosque in Khuzdar, Balochistan, on August 5, hours after his daughter, the activist Asma Jattak, released a video appealing for protection and naming the men she said were threatening her family. Asma Jattak was herself abducted in Khuzdar in February 2025. No arrests were reported. Five days later, the rights group Paank identified three of five men killed in what Pakistan's military called an intelligence-based operation in Panjgur as people who had already been forcibly disappeared — one of them since February 2023 — and said the pattern of the disappeared turning up dead is continuing. Pakistan's interior minister praised the operation.

Air strike kills 24 civilians in Kordofan

Warplanes bombed the village of Sharshar, west of Bara in North Kordofan, on July 30, killing at least 24 civilians, most of them women and children, residents told Radio Dabanga; the monitoring group Advocating for Darfur Victims attributed the strike to the Sudanese Armed Forces. Nearby, at El Jamama, Rapid Support Forces fighters killed nine more civilians, wounded 14, and looted the market and the health center, according to the Sudan Doctors Network. Three days later, representatives of the displaced warned that failed rains and record prices could bring famine to Central Darfur, where a sack of millet has reached 20,000 Sudanese pounds. El Obeid is sheltering about 105,000 displaced people, and an RSF siege has cut 70 percent of its drinking water.

Larung Gar demolitions continue into August

Chinese authorities have been tearing down monastic quarters at the Larung Gar Buddhist academy in Serthar, eastern Tibet, since mid-July, and the demolitions were still running daily in the second week of August, Bitter Winter reported, citing documentation by the Central Tibetan Administration. The Dharamshala-based Tibet Times put the number of residences marked for destruction at 1,060 and reported that monks and nuns whose quarters had gone were ordered out at once — those from outside Serthar to their family homes or original monasteries, those from Serthar barred from staying on at the academy. Residents are under movement and communication restrictions, photography is banned, and visitors are turned away. Larung Gar was cut back the same way in 2001, 2016, and 2019.

Twelve years on, 2,820 Yazidis still missing

Yazidi families marked the twelfth anniversary of the Islamic State's assault on Sinjar on August 3. Kurdistan24 reported that 6,417 Yazidis were abducted from 2014 onward, that 3,597 have been recovered, and that 2,820 remain unaccounted for; 97 mass graves have been found in the district, and about 50,000 families are still in displacement camps. Survivors and volunteers set up a memorial tent along the camp roads, hung with photographs of the dead and the missing and with white flags marked 3/8. Displaced Yazidis there said they were still waiting for Baghdad to establish what happened to their relatives. Sinjar was retaken from the Islamic State in November 2015; about 400,000 people had fled the district.

Kawahiva territory demarcated after 27 years

Brazilian government teams have finished the physical demarcation of the Kawahiva do Rio Pardo Indigenous Territory in Mato Grosso, driving boundary posts and putting up warning signs along its edges over about two months, Survival International reported on August 6. The Kawahiva are uncontacted; FUNAI, the federal Indigenous agency, confirmed their presence in 1999, and protection of their land has taken 27 years against land grabbers, loggers, ranchers, and wildcat miners. Jair Candor, who led the field teams, said the posts matter because that is how people begin to understand the territory is real. Full legal recognition now requires only a decree signed by President Lula.

Morocco leaves Tifinagh off new license plates

Morocco's transport ministry has redesigned vehicle registration plates to carry Latin letters alongside Arabic, and left out Tifinagh, the script that Organic Law 26.16, in force since 2019, names as the official script of Tamazight. The National Road Safety Agency said Latin characters are required for vehicles used internationally. Amazigh language campaigners said the omission reproduces a hierarchy between scripts on a public-facing state document, and that public-service reforms should treat Arabic and Tamazight as co-official from the design stage. Tamazight has been an official language of Morocco since the 2011 constitution. On July 29, organizations meeting at the Twiza Amazigh culture festival in Tangier appealed for faster application of the same law in schools, courts, health services, and public signage.