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Tag: afghanistan

  • Guantanamo Bay prisoners show signs of ‘accelerated ageing’: ICRC

    Guantanamo Bay prisoners show signs of ‘accelerated ageing’: ICRC

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    The Guantanamo prison camp has come to symbolise the brutality of the US’s so-called ‘war on terror’.

    Prisoners who have been held for years by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility are showing signs of “accelerated ageing”, a senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said.

    Patrick Hamilton, the ICRC’s head of delegation for the US and Canada, said on Friday that the “physical and mental health needs are growing and becoming increasingly challenging” for those still imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

    “We’re calling on the US administration and Congress to work together to find adequate and sustainable solutions to address these issues,” Hamilton said in a statement.

    “Action should be taken as a matter of priority.”

    The Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba was established by US Republican Party President George W Bush in 2002 to house foreign suspects following the 2001 plane attacks on New York and the Pentagon, which killed some 3,000 people.

    The camp came to symbolise the brutality of the US’s so-called “war on terror” because of harsh interrogation methods that critics have said amounted to torture.

    Hamilton’s comments on the health of the prisoners came after a visit to the facility in March following a 20-year hiatus. He said he was “struck by how those who are still detained today are experiencing the symptoms of accelerated ageing, worsened by the cumulative effects of their experiences and years spent in detention”.

    He called for detainees to receive adequate mental and physical healthcare as well as more frequent family contact.

    The US defence department “is currently reviewing the report”, a Pentagon spokesperson told the Reuters news agency.

    There were 40 detainees at Guantanamo when US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, took office in 2021. The Biden administration has said it wants to close the facility but has not presented a plan for doing so. About 30 detainees remain at the prison.

    Two Pakistani brothers held at Guantanamo Bay without trial for more than 20 years were freed by the US in February and returned home. Abdul, 55, and Mohammed Rabbani, 53, were reunited with their families after a formal questioning by Pakistani authorities.

    Hamilton called on Washington to resolve the fate of the detainees, urging action to transfer out those eligible.

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  • U.S. taxpayers helping fund Afghanistan’s Taliban? Aid workers say they’re forced “to serve the Taliban first”

    U.S. taxpayers helping fund Afghanistan’s Taliban? Aid workers say they’re forced “to serve the Taliban first”

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    Aid workers at non-profit organizations in Afghanistan that receive financial support from the U.S. government say they’re being forced to pay fees and provide services to the Taliban. They spoke to CBS News days after the head of a U.S. government oversight office tasked with monitoring how U.S. tax dollars are spent in Afghanistan told lawmakers that his staff “simply do not know” the extent to which the American people may unknowingly be funding the terrorist group.

    “Since the Taliban takeover, the U.S. government has sought to continue supporting the Afghan people without providing benefits for the Taliban regime,” Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John F. Sopko said Wednesday in testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. “However, it is clear from our work that the Taliban is using various methods to divert U.S. aid dollars.”

    Dire circumstances since Taliban takeover

    “Unfortunately, as I sit here today I cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer, we are not currently funding the Taliban,” Sopko told the lawmakers. “Nor can I assure you that the Taliban are not diverting the money we are sending for the intended recipients, which are the poor Afghan people.”

    US Afghanistan
    Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko (right), speaks during a hearing of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee concerning the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, on Capitol Hill, April 19, 2023, in Washington.

    Alex Brandon/AP


    Since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban took back control of the country in August 2021, the country has spiralled into an economic and humanitarian crisis. International donors suspended most funding that wasn’t for humanitarian aid, and billions of dollars in Afghan government assets were frozen. Now, almost the entire population is at risk of poverty, with over 91% of the average Afghan household’s income spent on food. An estimated 24.4 million Afghans are in need of humanitarian support.

    Sopko presented SIGAR’s list of the greatest sources of risk that could expose continued U.S. financial assistance to Afghanistan to abuse, fraud, waste or mission failure.

    He said the U.S. had made $8 billion in aid available to Afghanistan since the military withdrawal, including around $2 billion in humanitarian aid, a level of assistance he said was “little changed from before the withdrawal.”

    Taliban “taxes and fees”

    At the top of the list of the risks to U.S. funding identified by SIGAR was the Taliban’s interference with the work of local NGOs and United Nations aid agencies on the ground.

    “The Taliban generate income from U.S. aid by imposing customs charges on shipments coming into the country and charging taxes and fees directly on NGOs,” Sopko said, adding that if NGOs don’t pay the Taliban’s fees, they can have their offices closed and their bank accounts frozen.

    taliban-afghanistan-aid-ap22145329808459.jpg
    A Taliban fighter stands guard as people receive humanitarian aid food rations in Kabul, Afghanistan, April 30, 2022.

    AP/Ebrahim Noroozi


    The previous Afghan government also did this, Sopko noted, and the Taliban has imposed taxes on aid in areas it has controlled for years, even before 2021. But Sopko said the Islamic hardliners were going further now, including by imposing fees on vendors that do business with NGOs, such as landlords and cell phone companies.

    Sopko said the Taliban was also diverting funds away from groups it does not support, including the ethnic minority Hazara community and, in certain instances, requiring NGOs to work with them, such as by insisting they rent vehicles only from the Taliban or Taliban-linked groups.

    Aid workers on the ground in Afghanistan have told CBS News that the interference goes beyond all of that, however, and includes the Taliban demanding services directly from the groups that receive U.S. funding. They said those demands have increased since the group retook power almost two years ago.

    “The Taliban first”

    “We have to serve the families of the Taliban police commanders, governors and other people who they ask us to serve specifically,” one aid worker at UNHCR told CBS News on the condition of anonymity. “Once a Taliban governor told one of our subcontracted aid agencies that 15% of the aid must go toward his guards and other Taliban personnel, and it is now a norm to serve the Taliban first and then serve the ordinary civilians.”

    Afghanistan
    A Taliban fighter secures the area as people queue to receive cash at a money distribution site organized by the World Food Program (WFP) in Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov. 17, 2021.

    Petros Giannakouris/AP


    Hamid Khan, an aid worker with a local NGO that’s subcontracted by the United Nations’ World Food Program in Afghanistan, told CBS News that Taliban interference had made it increasingly difficult for the organization to determine on its own who to help.

    He said his NGO aims to assist “people who need the aid the most, such as pregnant women, orphans, widows and other highly in need people, but the Taliban also make their own list of selected people.”

    “If we do not serve them first, then we would be banned from working and dozens of excuses will be made preventing the NGO from working altogether, and the others will also not receive their much needed aid,” Hamid Khan told CBS News.

    “We have to work with them”

    Abdullah Khan, who works for a U.N. agency in Afghanistan, told CBS News that Taliban members position themselves to get access to international aid by becoming partners or shareholders in local non-profit groups, which often work as partners or subcontractors for larger aid organizations.

    “The Taliban can’t dictate to the U.N. directly, but the U.N., the World Food Program, and even the International Committee of the Red Cross-subcontracted NGOs can’t resist Taliban pressure,” said Abdullah Khan. “In one meeting with the provincial governor that we had, we were informed by the Taliban that we must give aid to the families of the suicide bombers who have died and to injured Taliban soldiers who are alive but unable to work. We are facing severe Taliban interference in our aid operations, but to help the poor, we have to work with them.”


    Many Afghans living in fear, one year after U.S. troops withdrew from America’s longest war

    09:12

    A staff member at a regional NGO in northern Afghanistan who asked to remain anonymous told CBS News that the organization was forced to “hire at least 70% of local staff [based] on the wish and will of Taliban members. If we don’t do it, then we are not allowed to operate. We have about 50 employees in each province, and roughly 35 of them are their [the Taliban’s] preferred locals who agreed to share their salaries with the Taliban’s members. We are forced to hire them.”

    He said the work of the NGO was being severely limited by the Taliban’s demands, which he called “cruel.”

    “The ones who need the aid do not get the aid, as it is diverted to the families of Taliban members,” said the aid worker.

    Asked about Taliban interference in aid delivery in Afghanistan, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General, told CBS News that all of the global body’s “humanitarian operations work on the basis of serving people according to need, and we ensure in all our work that aid goes to those who need it and is not diverted.”

    Roza Otunbayeva, the U.N. Secretary-General for Afghanistan and Head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, acknowledged to the Security Council in March, however, that “in some provinces we have had to temporarily suspend providing assistance because local officials have placed unacceptable conditions on its distribution. In general, there has been a recent deterioration of the humanitarian space.”

    CBS News correspondent Pamela Falk contributed to this report.

    Haley Ott


    haley-ott-cbs-news.jpg

    Haley Ott is an international reporter for CBS News based in London.

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  • U.N. to review presence in Afghanistan after Taliban bars Afghan women workers

    U.N. to review presence in Afghanistan after Taliban bars Afghan women workers

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    The United Nations said Tuesday it is reviewing its presence in Afghanistan after the Taliban barred Afghan women from working for the world organization — a veiled suggestion the U.N. could move to suspend its mission and operations in the embattled country.

    Last week, Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers took a step further in the restrictive measures they have imposed on women and said that Afghan women employed with the U.N. mission could no longer report for work. They did not further comment on the ban.

    The U.N. said it cannot accept the decision, calling it an unparalleled violation of women’s rights. It was the latest in sweeping restrictions imposed by the Taliban since they seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were withdrawing from the country after 20 years of war.

    The 3,300 Afghans employed by the U.N. — 2,700 men and 600 women — have stayed home since last Wednesday but continue to work and will be paid, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The U.N.’s 600-strong international staff, including 200 women, is not affected by the Taliban ban.

    The majority of aid distributed to Afghans is done through national and international non-governmental organizations, with the U.N. playing more of a monitoring role, and some assistance is continuing to be delivered, Dujarric said. There are some carve-outs for women staff, but the situation various province by province and is confusing.

    “What we’re hoping to achieve is to be able to fulfill our mandate to help more than 24 million Afghan men, women, and children who desperately need humanitarian help without violating basic international humanitarian principles,” Dujarric told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.

    In a statement, the U.N. said it “will endeavor to continue lifesaving, time-critical humanitarian activities” but “will assess the scope, parameters and consequences of the ban, and pause activities where impeded.” 

    Regional political analyst Torek Farhadi told CBS News earlier this month that the ban on women working for the U.N. likely came straight from the Taliban’s supreme leader, who “wants to concentrate power and weaken elements of the Taliban which would want to get closer to the world community.”

    “This particular decision hurts the poor the most in Afghanistan; those who have no voice and have the most to lose.”

    The circumstances in Afghanistan have been called the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis, and three-quarters of those in need are women or children. Female aid workers have played a crucial role in reaching vulnerable, female-headed households.

    The Taliban have banned girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade and women from most public life and work. In December, they banned Afghan women from working at local and nongovernmental groups — a measure that at the time did not extend to U.N. offices.

    Tuesday’s statement by the U.N. said its head of mission in Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, has “initiated an operational review period” that would last until May 5.

    During this time, the U.N. will “conduct the necessary consultations, make required operational adjustments, and accelerate contingency planning for all possible outcomes,” the statement said.

    It also accused the Taliban of trying to force the U.N. into making an “appalling choice” between helping Afghans and standing by the norms and principles it is duty-bound to uphold.

    “It should be clear that any negative consequences of this crisis for the Afghan people will be the responsibility of the de facto authorities,” it warned.

    Aid agencies have been providing food, education and health care support to Afghans in the wake of the Taliban takeover and the economic collapse that followed it. But distribution has been severely affected by the Taliban edict banning women from working at NGOs — and, now, also at the U.N.

    The U.N. described the measure as an extension of the already unacceptable Taliban restrictions that deliberately discriminate against women and undermine the ability of Afghans to access lifesaving and sustaining assistance and services.

    “The Taliban is placing medieval misogyny above humanitarian need,” the U.K.’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward told diplomats last week after a closed Security Council meeting.

    –Ahmad Mukhtar and Pamela Falk contributed reporting.

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  • UN tells Afghan staff to stay home after Taliban bans women from working with the organization | CNN

    UN tells Afghan staff to stay home after Taliban bans women from working with the organization | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The United Nations has instructed all of its personnel in Afghanistan to stay away from its offices in the country, after the Taliban banned Afghan women from working with the organization.

    “UN national personnel – women and men – have been instructed not to report to UN offices, with only limited and calibrated exceptions made for critical tasks,” the organization said in a statement.

    It comes after Afghan men working for the UN in Kabul stayed home last week in solidarity with their female colleagues.

    The UN said the Taliban’s move was an extension of a previous ban, enforced last December, that prohibited Afghan women from working for national and international non-governmental organizations.

    The organization said the ban is “the latest in a series of discriminatory measures implemented by the Taliban de facto authorities with the goal of severely restricting women and girls’ participation in most areas of public and daily life in Afghanistan.”

    It will continue to “assess the scope, parameters and consequences of the ban, and pause activities where impeded,” the statement said, adding that the “matter will be under constant review.”

    Several female UN staff in the country had already experienced restrictions on their movements since the Taliban seized power in 2021, including harassment and detention.

    Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN Deputy Special Representative, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, called the Taliban’s decision an “unparalleled violation of human rights” last week.

    “The lives of Afghanistan women are at stake,” he said, adding, “It is not possible to reach women without women.”

    The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, is engaging with the Taliban at the highest level to “seek an immediate reversal of the order,” the UN said last week.

    “In the history of the United Nations, no other regime has ever tried to ban women from working for the Organization just because they are women. This decision represents an assault against women, the fundamental principles of the UN, and on international law,” Otunbayeva said.

    Other figures within the organization also condemned the move, with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights calling it “utterly despicable.”

    After the Taliban banned female aid workers in December, at least half a dozen major foreign aid groups temporarily suspended their operations in Afghanistan – diminishing the already scarce resources available to a country in dire need of them.

    The Taliban’s return to power preceded a deepening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, worsening issues that had long plagued the country. After the takeover, the US and its allies froze about $7 billion of the country’s foreign reserves and cut off international funding – crippling an economy heavily dependent on overseas aid.

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  • State Department review of US withdrawal from Afghanistan includes far more findings than White House document | CNN Politics

    State Department review of US withdrawal from Afghanistan includes far more findings than White House document | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The State Department’s review of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan has far more findings in it than the document about the withdrawal that the White House released Thursday afternoon, according to a source familiar with the report.

    While the White House’s document focused on President Joe Biden having been “severely constrained” by the conditions created by former President Donald Trump, the State Department report has more than two dozen recommendations – some specifically related to how the department could have better prepared, including during the Biden administration, the source said.

    “The Biden administration inherited a deadline without a clear plan of how to get there, but they then undertook their own review. And in April, Biden decided to go ahead with it and delayed the withdrawal timeline. So they did not exactly take the blueprint they were given in that regard. So some of that is a bit disingenuous to say that their hands were completely tied,” the source said, explaining their view on the need for the Biden administration to take some ownership for the conduct of the withdrawal.

    The White House document does note that upon reflecting on the withdrawal, the State Department and the Pentagon “now prioritize earlier evacuations” when faced with a degrading security situation. But the document also defends the time for when the evacuation from Afghanistan occurred, citing interagency meetings and decision-making at the time.

    The White House document also says that the US government now errs “on the side of aggressive communication about risks” when there is a destabilizing security environment.

    But it is unclear why the White House document assessing the challenges and decisions surrounding the withdrawal did not cite the wide number of recommendations from the State Department report, which was the result of an intensive 90-day review. A spokesperson for the National Security Council, or NSC, said the document was a “separate product” that was “informed” by the various departments’ reviews.

    The State Department’s much more detailed after-action report was sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday, but otherwise the department has not widely released any of the findings more than a year after the report’s completion. The report itself was launched by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in December 2021. Employees who worked on the chaotic evacuation have clamored for details as to what the department learned from the after-action report.

    An NSC spokesperson said the department’s reviews “were not undertaken for public release but to improve internal processes.”

    On Thursday, the department scrambled to put together a town hall for employees to discuss the report with Blinken and Undersecretary for Management John Bass, who was a key official in the Afghanistan withdrawal, according to three employees who attended the event.

    Blinken described the report to employees without sharing it. He said that it detailed the processes, systems and mindsets that could have been improved, including the need for more urgent preparations for worst-case scenarios, employees said.

    Blinken said contingency preparations were inhibited by concerns that they would be too visible and would prompt concerns by Afghan officials, employees told CNN. The top US diplomat also pointed to competing and conflicting views in Washington about how to prioritize categories of evacuees, and he acknowledged that the department’s database technology and communications infrastructure were inadequate.

    The employees said that, according to Blinken, the report makes 34 recommendations. They include strengthening the department’s crisis-response capabilities, appointing a single senior official for future complex crises, enhancing crisis communications such as call centers, building a so-called red team to challenge assumptions and running more tabletop exercises, employees said.

    But for many employees, the town hall only led to more frustrations about a lack of full transparency. The source familiar with the full report explained that the findings were purposefully not classified so they could be widely shared if the department chose to do so, but so far that has not happened.

    At least one employee was emotional during the town hall, criticizing how hastily it was arranged and the decision not to share the full report. Blinken cited concerns about politicizing the report and looking backward instead of forward, employees said.

    The State Department did not respond to a request for comment regarding the town hall or any plans to share parts of the department’s report more widely.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Taliban close women-run Afghan station for playing music

    Taliban close women-run Afghan station for playing music

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    Malala Yousafzai on Taliban’s education ban


    Education activist Malala Yousafzai on the Taliban banning women from universities

    04:23

    A women-run radio station in Afghanistan’s northeast has been shut down for playing music during the holy month of Ramadan, a Taliban official said Saturday.

    Sadai Banowan, which means women’s voice in Dari, is Afghanistan’s only women-run station and started 10 years ago. It has eight staff, six of them female.

    Moezuddin Ahmadi, the director for Information and Culture in Badakhshan province, said the station violated the “laws and regulations of the Islamic Emirate” several times by broadcasting songs and music during Ramadan and was shuttered because of the breach.

    “If this radio station accepts the policy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and gives a guarantee that it will not repeat such a thing again, we will allow it to operate again,” said Ahmadi.

    Afghanistan
    FILE – Afghan worshippers attend Friday prayer during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, March 31, 2023. A women-run radio station in Afghanistan’s northeast has been shut down for playing songs and music during the holy month of Ramadan, a Taliban official said Saturday, April 1.

    Ebrahim Noroozi / AP


    Station head Najia Sorosh denied there was any violation, saying there was no need for the closure and called it a conspiracy. The Taliban “told us that you have broadcast music. We have not broadcast any kind of music,” she said.

    Sorosh said at 11:40 a.m. on Thursday representatives from the Ministry of Information and Culture and the Vice and Virtue Directorate arrived at the station and shut it down. She said station staff have contacted Vice and Virtue but officials there said they do not have any additional information about the closing.

    Many journalists lost their jobs after the Taliban takeover in August 2021. Media outlets closed over lack of funds or because staff left the country, according to the Afghan Independent Journalists Association.

    The Taliban have barred women from most forms of employment and education beyond the sixth grade, including university. There is no official ban on music. During their previous rule in the late 1990s, the Taliban barred most television, radio and newspapers in the country.


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  • US Marine’s adoption of Afghan war orphan voided

    US Marine’s adoption of Afghan war orphan voided

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    The rare ruling is the latest twist in an ongoing legal battle between Afghan and US couples for three-year-old girl.

    In a highly unusual ruling, a state court judge in Virginia has voided a United States Marine’s adoption of an Afghan war orphan more than a year after he took the three-year-old girl away from the Afghan couple raising her.

    But the girl’s future remains uncertain. For now, she will stay with Marine Major Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie, under a temporary custody order they obtained before the adoption. The Masts will have to re-prove to the court that they should be granted a permanent adoption.

    Despite the uncertainty, Thursday’s ruling was a welcome move for the Afghan couple, who had been identified by the Afghan government as the child’s relatives in February 2020 and had raised her for 18 months.

    The Masts quickly left the court after the hearing, flanked by their attorneys. The parties are forbidden from commenting by a gag order.

    The ongoing dispute raised alarms at the highest levels of government – from the White House to the Taliban – after an Associated Press news agency investigation in October revealed how Mast became determined to rescue the baby and bring her home as an act of Christian faith.

    But until now, the adoption order has remained in place.

    “There’s never, ever been a case like this,” Judge Claude V Worrell Jr said on Thursday.

    The girl, who will turn four this summer, was an infant when she was found injured in the rubble after a US-Afghan military raid in a rural part of the country in September 2019.

    She spent more than five months in a US military hospital before the Afghan government and the International Committee of the Red Cross determined she had living relatives and united her with them.

    Unbeknown to them, Mast learned about the baby while she was hospitalised and decided that he and his wife should be her parents.

    The Masts previously told Virginia Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore that she was the daughter of transient “terrorists” who died in the fight and thus a stateless orphan.

    Mast claimed that the Afghan government was prepared to waive jurisdiction over her, though it never did. Moore granted him the adoption.

    The Masts first contacted the couple in Afghanistan and offered to help with the girl’s medical treatment. After the US military withdrew from Afghanistan, which fell to the Taliban in 2021, the Masts helped the couple evacuate to the US.

    Once they arrived, Mast used the adoption order to take the child and the Afghan couple have not seen her since.

    The Masts claim in court filings that they legally adopted the child and that the Afghan couple’s accusations that they kidnapped her are “outrageous” and “unmerited”. They have repeatedly declined to comment to the AP.

    Judge Worrell, who took over the case after Judge Moore retired in November, said the Afghan couple “were the de facto parents when they arrived in the US” and their due process was violated.

    Worrell also said from the bench that the Masts knew things that they never told the court, particularly about what was happening in Afghanistan at the same time the judge in Virginia was granting the adoption.

    He said he was not sure it was intentional but “the fact of the matter is that the court did not have all the information known to [the Masts] at the time the order was entered”.

    The ruling is one more twist in what is already a standout case.

    “Once an adoption is final, it is extremely difficult and rare for it to be overturned,” a lawyer in Virginia, Stanton Phillips, said.

    “This is really, really unusual,” adoption lawyer Barbara Jones said. “You just don’t hear about this happening.”

    A US Defense Department spokesperson told the AP on Thursday the department was aware of the ruling and referred the news agency to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.

    Another hearing is scheduled for June.

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  • ‘Legend Day’ Declared Honoring Afghan Who Saved Americans From Taliban

    ‘Legend Day’ Declared Honoring Afghan Who Saved Americans From Taliban

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    The City Council of Irvine, California, Proclaimed March 21, 2023 ‘Legend Day’ Honoring an Afghan American for His Efforts to Save Americans and Allies in Afghanistan.


    IRVINE, Calif., March 30, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    In America’s safest city, one U.S. Army combat veteran is making big waves around the world. His callsign is “Legend,” and he’s the only Afghan-American to be awarded his own holiday in the United States. 

    At 3:30 PM PST, Mayor Farah Khan of Irvine, California, proclaimed March 21, 2023 #LegendDay on behalf of the Irvine City Council. She was joined by former Mayor Christina Shae, current City Council Member Larry Agran, as well as U.S. Military veterans and members of the Afghan and Iranian communities of Irvine. 

    “Thank you for your brave leadership in this humanitarian crisis,” Agran said to Legend. “I stand with you to do whatever we can for the Afghan people.”

    Legend Group Spokesperson Jazz Cannon received the award on Legend’s behalf. 

    “By proclaiming March 21, 2023 #LegendDay,” Cannon said, “Irvine is sending a powerful message of unity and solidarity to the world with the occupied people of Afghanistan.” 

    Legend was deeply moved by the gesture. 

    “I want everyone, whether friend or enemy, to remember this honor given to a person from Afghanistan the next time you hear the harsh words that Americans have abandoned Afghanistan,” Legend said upon hearing about the proclamation. “This holiday is proof that the American people stand with the freedom-loving people of Afghanistan.“

    “I dedicate this holiday to the 40 million victims of the Taliban regime,” Legend continued. “I dedicate this to the 800,000 American veterans of the Afghanistan War, and our vocal supporter United States Congressman Mike Waltz. I dedicate this to the Afghan soldiers who are continuing the war against terrorism. And I dedicate this proclamation and this honor to my brother Commander Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, who is fighting against our common enemy.“

    It all started on Aug. 15th, 2021, when Legend, a retired U.S. Army Staff Sergeant, single-handedly went behind enemy lines to rescue American citizens, Afghan allies, and religious minorities from the clutches of the Taliban. 

    For him, it’s personal: he escaped the Taliban days before 9/11, and served his new nation honorably in the U.S. Army, deploying with former CENTCOM Commander General Joseph Votel to his former homeland during the War on Terror. Legend frequently returns to Afghanistan to continue helping those left behind. 

    Today, Legend Group’s extensive on-the-ground team provides evacuations, medical support, prenatal care, food, safe houses, and counter-human trafficking support for at-risk Afghan allies and their families in need. 

    Legend Group Foundation is a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization solving the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. For media queries or to support their work, contact Jazz Cannon at (321) 418-5253.

    Source: Legend Group Foundation

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  • Thousands Of Detained Afghan Evacuees Are Living In Prison-Like Conditions In UAE

    Thousands Of Detained Afghan Evacuees Are Living In Prison-Like Conditions In UAE

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    More than 2,000 Afghans who fled their country after the Taliban took power are being detained indefinitely in the United Arab Emirates, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch.

    An estimated 2,400 to 2,700 Afghans have been “arbitrarily detained” in a housing facility dubbed “Emirates Humanitarian City” for more than 15 months, the organization said in its report, released Tuesday. Having no idea what their future holds and being confined to a prison-like facility for months has taken a severe toll on their physical and mental well-being.

    “We are not criminals,” Ahmad, who resides in the facility and asked to be identified by a pseudonym because he feared for his safety, told HuffPost. “We had to leave because our lives were in danger, and we shouldn’t be treated like prisoners.”

    The majority of the people who remain detained lack status. They are ineligible for immigrant visas, are not considered refugees since UAE is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, and cannot request asylum in a third country. But they’re also typically not aware of these complications, as they have no access to legal assistance, according to the HRW report.

    “We are completely in the dark about this whole thing,” Ahmad said. “We don’t know why some got flights while we didn’t. We have no idea what comes next, and we don’t know who to go for help.”

    Some 12,000 Afghan evacuees were initially brought to the facility after Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021. Some were airlifted by the U.S. military aircrafts as part of “Operation Allies Welcome,” and some U.S. veterans and non-governmental groups arranged civilian-chartered flights to bring more people to the UAE after the airlift operation ended. Many of the evacuees had fled Afghanistan because they feared being persecuted or killed as ethnic or religious minorities, LGBTQ people, journalists, activists or judges.

    People have repeatedly protested the slow and ambiguous process, including the lack of clarity over who is given priority for onward flights. The U.S. has mainly focused on relocating those who had ties to the U.S. and had been flown in under government operations.

    As of September 2022, the United States had granted entry to over 88,000 Afghans, but thousands are still awaiting admission into the country due to pending statuses, including through the special immigrant visa and the refugee admissions program, a type of visa issued to those who served with U.S. military and diplomatic missions. Other countries, including Canada, Australia and Germany, have also taken some evacuees.

    The evacuees who remain in the UAE have been left to their own fate, often consoled with false assurances.

    “They’ve been promising us flights for months and nothing has happened yet,” Ahmad said.

    Afghans rallied in an Afghan refugee camp in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, to protest the non-transfer to the United States on Feb. 13, 2022.

    NurPhoto via Getty Images

    “Governments should not ignore the shocking plight of these Afghans stranded in limbo in the UAE,” Joey Shea, UAE researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in the report. “The U.S. government in particular, which coordinated the 2021 evacuations and with whom many evacuees worked before the Taliban takeover, should immediately step up and intervene to provide support and protection for these asylum seekers.”

    Mara Tekach, the coordinator of the State Department’s Afghan relocation effort, said in a letter to the HRW that the U.S. is still committed “to relocate and resettle all eligible Afghans” including those “eligible Afghans” located at the UAE facility.

    Afghans are being held in apartment buildings located in an industrial district of Abu Dhabi that has been turned into a temporary refugee housing facility. The facility’s management and provision of essentials like food, health care and education are under the control of the UAE government.

    Families are provided with one small room, according to the HRW report, while single men are kept in separate halls and in shared rooms with other single men.

    Human Rights Watch spoke with 16 Afghan detainees, who all complained about the facility’s poor condition, including food quality and schooling options for children.

    The report also lists overcrowding, infrastructure decay and bug infestation complaints. Movement is severely restricted. Only some necessary hospital visits and rare group shopping — under careful supervision — are allowed outside the complex. The building is also off-limits to outside visitors.

    People with severe health conditions who need specialized care have had trouble getting medical care, according to the report. Many adults and children suffer from mental health conditions like depression, but they do not receive sufficient psychosocial support.

    “Some people even have suicidal thoughts,” Ahmad said. “Even children are depressed and don’t know what to do with their daily lives.” He said his daughter, who can’t make new friends or try new activities, has lost all her motivation, gone completely quiet, and has no interest in school.

    “I am more concerned about my children and their future,” Ahmad said. “We can’t go back, and there is no way forward either.”

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  • After a tragic shipwreck, no peace for the dead or living | CNN

    After a tragic shipwreck, no peace for the dead or living | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two weeks after a boat packed with migrants sank off the coast of southern Italy, there is still no peace for the living or the dead, and the missing – mostly children – continue to wash up on the beaches.

    The latest – a girl aged five or six – was discovered on Saturday morning, bringing the toll from when the ill-fated boat broke apart on the rocks on February 26 off the village of Cutro to 74. Nearly half were minors.

    The local coroner’s office provided names for many of the dead including Torpekai Amarkhel, a 42-year-old female journalist from Afghanistan, who was killed along with her husband and two of their three children.

    Her other child, a seven-year-old daughter, is among the approximately 30 people still missing, presumed dead, from the tragedy.

    Amarkhel had fled Afghanistan with her family following the clampdown on women, her sister Mida, who had emigrated to Rotterdam, told Unama News radio, a United Nations project Amarkhel was involved in.

    Shahida Raza, who played football and hockey for Pakistan’s national team, was also among the dead. A friend said she was traveling in the hope of securing a better future for her disabled son.

    Initially, those found were given alphanumeric code numbers, rather than names. When first responders found the corpse of 28-year-old Abiden Jafari from Afghanistan, they identified her only as KR16D45 – KR for the nearby city of Crotone, 16 because she was the 16th victim found, D for donna or woman, and 45, her estimated age.

    But after taking her to the morgue, they discovered she was a women’s rights activist who had been threatened by the Taliban, likely causing her to risk her life at sea.

    The body of a six-year-old boy, first identified as KR70M6, was named by his uncle as Hakef Taimoori.

    The uncle had a family photo showing the young boy wearing the same shoes as he had on when he washed up on the beach. His parents and two-year-old brother also died in the disaster. A third brother remains among the missing.

    The dead have also been caught in a struggle between the Italian state and family members.

    The Interior Ministry ordered that all bodies be transferred from Calabria where the caskets have been on display in an auditorium, to the Islamic cemetery of Bologna for burial, in keeping with Italy’s protocol for irregular migrants who die attempting to enter Italy.

    Family members who either survived the wreck or came from other parts of Europe to claim their loved ones’ remains protested with makeshift signs and a sit-in in front of the auditorium on Wednesday.

    After a tense negotiation, the Prefecture of Crotone confirmed to CNN that 25 families, mostly Afghan and Syrian, agreed to have their loved ones buried in Bologna,.

    All those who have not been identified will also be buried in Bologna along with the remains of a Turkish national who has been identified as one of the human traffickers.

    Pieces of wood wash up on a beach, two days after the boat carrying migrants sank off Italy's southern Calabria region.

    Many of those who died will not be returned home to be buried.

    The fate of the rest remains a point of negotiation, but the mayor of Crotone Vincenzo Voce said the Italian state would pay for any repatriations either to countries of origin or to be buried with family members in other parts of Italy.

    The Italian Interior Ministry told CNN it could not comment on what would happen to the victims’ remains, but confirmed that past protocol is not to pay for repatriating anyone who died attempting to enter Italy as an irregular migrant but to make the country of origin pay costs. In the last decade, no repatriations have taken place, the ministry said.

    Of the 82 survivors, three Turkish citizens and one Pakistan citizen have been arrested for human trafficking, and eight people are still hospitalized.

    Most of the survivors were moved this week to a Crotone hotel after human rights advocates led by Italian leftist politician Franco Mari protested the conditions in which they were being kept, which included one shared bathroom for men and another for women near sleeping quarters that included only benches and mattresses on the floor to sleep.

    Mari, who visited the reception center, tweeted that none of the survivors had sheets, towels or pillows. Twelve others were moved to a reception center for unaccompanied minors.

    Against the backdrop of the saga about what to do with both the survivors and the victims, there is a growing firestorm about the rescue itself.

    A surveillance plane for European border control Frontex had identified the ill-fated vessel the day before it sank and had alerted the Italian Coast Guard.

    The Coast Guard said in a statement that the vessel was not identified as a migrant boat, and that, at any rate, it did not seem in distress.

    Heat sensing surveillance images released by the Coast Guard show that only one person was visible on board the ship when they flew over it.

    Survivors recounted to media and human rights groups that they were locked in the hull of the ship and allowed to come up for air at intervals during the four-day journey from Turkey.

    The Crotone public prosecutor’s office confirmed to CNN that it had opened a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the failed rescue after more than 40 human rights associations and NGOs signed a petition to demand all records be made public to determine if anyone failed to provide assistance to the boat in accordance with maritime law.

    On Thursday, the Council of Ministers led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met on the disaster in Cutro and said they would focus on targeting trafficking rings and increasing jail time for human traffickers to 30 years.

    Protests broke out against Italy's government, who have made stopping migrant boats a priority.

    Many of the government cars were pummeled with stuffed animals by protesters in Cutro who held signs that said “not in my name” to protest against blocking migrants and refugees from entering Europe through Italy.

    The ministers also discussed “speeding up the mechanism for applying for asylum” rather than increasing the quota, which stands at accepting 82,700 migrants who qualify for asylum in 2023. So far this year, more than 17,600 people have reached Italy by sea.

    In 2022, 105,131 people entered the country by sea. The process to apply for asylum often takes between three and five years, depending on the country of origin. People who are not from asylum-producing countries, but are economic migrants, are repatriated back to their countries of origin.

    Italian President Sergio Mattarella said the Afghanistan citizens who survived would be prioritized for asylum. It is yet unclear if those who do not qualify will be repatriated to their countries of origin.

    Meloni’s right-leaning government has vowed to clamp down on human traffickers and NGO rescue vessels. But the boats keep coming – hundreds of migrants were rescued this weekend – and signs are that they arriving earlier than ever. This tragedy is unlikely to be the last.

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  • Blast kills Taliban governor in his office in Afghanistan | CNN

    Blast kills Taliban governor in his office in Afghanistan | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Taliban governor in northern Afghanistan has been killed by an explosion in his office, police officials have told CNN.

    Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, the governor of Balkh province, died along with two others in the blast on Thursday, said the provincial police force’s spokesman Asif Waziri.

    The cause of the explosion remains unclear, but Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said the men had been killed “by the enemies of Islam.”

    However, he did not identify the suspects and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

    “An investigation into the incident is underway,” Mujahid said.

    The governor is one of the most senior officials to have been killed since the radical Islamist group retook control of the country in August 2021 following the withdrawal of US forces.

    Since then, the Islamic State militant group and its affiliates have claimed a series of deadly attacks in Afghanistan both on civilians and members of the Taliban.

    These have included an attack at a Sikh temple that killed at least two people, a string of incidents in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, and a suicide bomb blast at Kabul airport.

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  • Marine injured in Kabul airport bombing recounts ‘catastrophic’ US withdrawal from Afghanistan at House hearing | CNN Politics

    Marine injured in Kabul airport bombing recounts ‘catastrophic’ US withdrawal from Afghanistan at House hearing | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    US Marine Corps Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews can remember in specific detail the moment that a suicide bomber attacked Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate in August 2021 amid the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    “A flash and a massive wave of pressure. I’m thrown 4 feet onto the ground but instantly knew what had happened. I opened my eyes to Marines dead or unconscious lying around me. A crowd of hundreds immediately vanished in front of me. And my body was catastrophically wounded with 100 to 150 ball bearings now in it,” he recalled.

    Vargas-Andrews, 25, offered emotional and detailed testimony of the days leading up to the bombing, which took the lives of 13 US service members and more than 100 Afghans, as part of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the evacuation from Afghanistan.

    The Biden administration’s frenzied withdrawal after two decades of US involvement in the war has come under immense scrutiny by Republican lawmakers, including the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, who has vowed to investigate the matter.

    However, those accusations in Congress about who is responsible for the chaotic final weeks of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan have fallen largely along party lines, with Republican lawmakers pointing fingers at the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers casting blame on the Trump administration for the deal that set the US withdrawal into motion.

    In a statement to CNN Wednesday, White House spokesperson for oversight Ian Sams also pointed to the deal President Joe Biden “inherited” from Trump and said the last administration “failed to establish an evacuation plan and slowed down processing of special visas for our Afghan allies.”

    “Instead of returning the U.S. to active combat with the Taliban and putting even more of our troops’ lives at risk, President Biden made the tough decision to finally end the 20-year war in Afghanistan, bring our troops home, and safely evacuate tens upon tens of thousands of Americans and Afghan allies,” Sams said. He added that the withdrawal put “the U.S. in a stronger position to lead the world and address the challenges of the future, while continuing to welcome our Afghan allies and maintaining our ability to deal with terrorist threats in the region.”

    Wednesday’s hearing featured the testimonies of two service members who were on the ground in Afghanistan during those final weeks: Vargas-Andrews and US Army Specialist Aidan Gunderson. In addition, three people involved with groups who worked to evacuate Afghans – Francis Hoang from Allied Airlift 21, retired Lt. Col. David Scott Mann from Task Force Pineapple and Peter Lucier from Team America Relief – and immigration lawyer Camille Mackler, who worked to try to get the administration to begin relocating vulnerable Afghans well before the fall of Kabul, all served as witnesses.

    Vargas-Andrews described the withdrawal as a “catastrophe,” telling lawmakers that “there was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence.” He painted a picture of days of chaos and violence toward Afghans who were trying to flee the Taliban, described the US State Department as “not prepared to be at” the Kabul airport, claimed that threat warnings were disregarded by higher command on the day of the attack.

    Vargas-Andrews described the horrific scenes he witnessed from his post at Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), telling lawmakers that “Afghans were brutalized and tortured by the Taliban.”

    “Some Afghans turned away from HKIA tried to kill themselves on the razor wire in front of us that we used as a deterrent,” he said. “Countless Afghans were murdered by the Taliban 155 yards in front of our position day and night.”

    “We communicated the atrocities to our chain of command and intel assets but nothing came of it,” he said.

    Vargas-Andrews said on the day of the August 26 suicide attack, he spotted a man in the crowd who fit the description of “a suicide bomber in the vicinity of and nearing Abbey Gate.”

    “Over the communication network we passed that there was a potential threat and an IED attack imminent. This was as serious as it could get,” he said, noting that he asked for permission to shoot, but “our battalion commander said, and I quote, ‘I don’t know,’ end quote.”

    “Myself and my team leader asked very harshly, ‘Well, who does? Because this is your responsibility, sir.’ He again replied he did not know but would find out. We received no update and never got our answer. Eventually the individual disappeared. To this day, we believe he was a suicide bomber,” he said.

    “Plain and simple, we were ignored. Our expertise was disregarded. No one was held accountable for our safety,” he said.

    Beyond the suicide attack, witnesses spoke about the mental health toll that the botched evacuation has had on US veterans of the war in Afghanistan.

    Mann, the retired lieutenant colonel, said he had a friend who took his own life, whose wife said “that the Afghan abandonment reactivated all the demons that he had managed to put behind him from hard time and Afghanistan together.”

    “And he just couldn’t find his way out of the darkness of that moral injury,” he said.

    They also spoke broadly about their work to try to aid the Afghans who worked alongside US troops during the war, the “majority” of whom were left behind in the evacuation, and the need to continue to work to help them.

    “I and thousands of others received frantic pleas for help from our Afghan allies whose lives were in peril,” said Hoang from Allied Airlift 21. “Thousands of us guided tired and scared Afghan families through crowds and Taliban checkpoints. The weight of this work was crushing. We left jobs, drained savings, reopened old wounds.”

    “We looked in horror as our screens filled with images of violence and desperation outside the gates of Kabul airport. We wept as we listened to messages left by children pleading for our help. Nine times out of 10 our efforts failed. But every success was a family saved, a promise kept,” he said.

    “It is our turn to summon the courage to fill our commitment to the Afghan allies still left behind,” Hoang said.

    Mackler, the immigration lawyer, told lawmakers that “what happened in August of 2021 was the product of decades long of inaction and systemic failures that we can no longer ignore.”

    “To ensure that the actions we heard today were not in vain, we must use this moment to create and implement better solutions,” she said, and called on Congress to take steps like passing the Afghan Adjustment Act.

    “After all, as we’ve been told, those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. We saw that in Afghanistan. We tried to learn the lessons from Vietnam and we were ignored, and we cannot allow a future generation to go through this as well,” Mackler said.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Fact check: Trump delivers wildly dishonest speech at CPAC | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Trump delivers wildly dishonest speech at CPAC | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    As president, Donald Trump made some of his most thoroughly dishonest speeches at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

    As he embarks on another campaign for the presidency, Trump delivered another CPAC doozy Saturday night.

    Trump’s lengthy address to the right-wing gathering in Maryland was filled with wildly inaccurate claims about his own presidency, Joe Biden’s presidency, foreign affairs, crime, elections and other subjects.

    Here is a fact check of 23 of the false claims Trump made. (And that’s far from the total.)

    Crime in Manhattan

    While Trump criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has been investigating Trump’s company, he claimed that “killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan.”

    Facts First: It isn’t even close to true that Manhattan is experiencing a number of killings that nobody has ever seen. The region classified by the New York Police Department as Manhattan North had 43 reported murders in 2022; that region had 379 reported murders in 1990 and 306 murders in 1993. The Manhattan South region had 35 reported murders in 2022 versus 124 reported murders in 1990 and 86 murders in 1993. New York City as a whole is also nowhere near record homicide levels; the city had 438 reported murders in 2022 versus 2,262 in 1990 and 1,927 in 1993.

    Manhattan North had just eight reported murders this year through February 19, while Manhattan South had one. The city as a whole had 49 reported murders.

    The National Guard and Minnesota

    Talking about rioting amid racial justice protests after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Trump claimed he had been ready to send in the National Guard in Seattle, then added, “We saved Minneapolis. The thing is, we’re not supposed to do that. Because it’s up to the governor, the Democrat governor. They never want any help. They don’t mind – it’s almost like they don’t mind to have their cities and states destroyed. There’s something wrong with these people.”

    Facts First: This is a reversal of reality. Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, not Trump, was the one who deployed the Minnesota National Guard during the 2020 unrest; Walz first activated the Guard more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself. Walz’s office told CNN in 2020 that the governor activated the Guard in response to requests from officials in Minneapolis and St. Paul – cities also run by Democrats.

    Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that he was the one who sent the Guard to Minneapolis. You can read a longer fact check, from 2020, here.

    Trump’s executive order on monuments

    Trump boasted that he had taken effective action as president to stop the destruction of statues and memorials. He claimed: “I passed and signed an executive order. Anybody that does that gets 10 years in jail, with no negotiation – it’s not ’10’ but it turns into three months.” He added: “But we passed it. It was a very old law, and we found it – one of my very good legal people along with [adviser] Stephen Miller, they found it. They said, ‘Sir, I don’t know if you want to try and bring this back.’ I said. ‘I do.’”

    Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. He did not create a mandatory 10-year sentence for people who damage monuments. In fact, his 2020 executive order did not mandate any increase in sentences.

    Rather, the executive order simply directed the attorney general to “prioritize” investigations and prosecutions of monument-destruction cases and declared that it is federal policy to prosecute such cases to the fullest extent permitted under existing law, including an existing law that allowed a sentence of up to 10 years in prison for willfully damaging federal property. The executive order did nothing to force judges to impose a 10-year sentence.

    Vandalism in Portland

    Trump claimed, “How’s Portland doing? They don’t even have storefronts anymore. Everything’s two-by-four’s because they get burned down every week.”

    Facts First: This is a major exaggeration. Portland obviously still has hundreds of active storefronts, though it has struggled with downtown commercial vacancies for various reasons, and some businesses are sometimes vandalized by protesters. Trump has for years exaggerated the extent of property damage from protest vandalism in Portland.

    Russian expansionism

    Boasting of his foreign policy record, Trump claimed, “I was also the only president where Russia didn’t take over a country during my term.”

    Facts First: While it’s true that Russia didn’t take over a country during Trump’s term, it’s not true that he was the only US president under whom Russia didn’t take over a country. “Totally false,” Michael Khodarkovsky, a Loyola University Chicago history professor who is an expert on Russian imperialism, said in an email. “If by Russia he means the current Russian Federation that existed since 1991, then the best example is Clinton, 1992-98. During this time Russia fought a war in Chechnya, but Chechnya was not a country but one of Russia’s regions.”

    Khodarkovsky added, “If by Russia he means the USSR, as people often do, then from 1945, when the USSR occupied much of Eastern Europe until 1979, when USSR invaded Afghanistan, Moscow did not take over any new country. It only sent forces into countries it had taken over in 1945 (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968).”

    NATO funding

    Trump said while talking about NATO funding: “And I told delinquent foreign nations – they were delinquent, they weren’t paying their bills – that if they wanted our protection, they had to pay up, and they had to pay up now.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that NATO countries weren’t paying “bills” until Trump came along or that they were “delinquent” in the sense of failing to pay bills – as numerous fact-checkers pointed out when Trump repeatedly used such language during his presidency. NATO members haven’t been failing to pay their share of the organization’s common budget to run the organization. And while it’s true that most NATO countries were not (and still are not) meeting NATO’s target of each country spending a minimum of 2% of gross domestic product on defense, that 2% figure is what NATO calls a “guideline”; it is not some sort of binding contract, and it does not create liabilities. An official NATO recommitment to the 2% guideline in 2014 merely said that members not currently at that level would “aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade.”

    NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg did credit Trump for securing increases in European NATO members’ defense spending, but it’s worth noting that those countries’ spending had also increased in the last two years of the Obama administration following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the recommitment that year to the 2% guideline. NATO notes on its website that 2022 was “the eighth consecutive year of rising defence spending across European Allies and Canada.”

    NATO’s existence

    Boasting of how he had secured additional funding for NATO from countries, Trump claimed, “Actually, NATO wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t get them to pay up.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense.

    There was never any indication that NATO, created in 1949, would have ceased to exist in the early 2020s without additional funding from some members. The alliance was stable even with many members not meeting the alliance’s guideline of having members spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

    We don’t often fact-check claims about what might have happened in an alternative scenario, but this Trump claim has no basis in reality. “The quote doesn’t make sense, obviously,” said Erwan Lagadec, research professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and an expert on NATO.

    Lagadec noted that NATO has had no trouble getting allies to cover the roughly $3 billion in annual “direct” funding for the organization, which is “peanuts” to this group of countries. And he said that the only NATO member that had given “any sign” in recent years that it was thinking about leaving the alliance “was … the US, under Trump.” Lagadec added that the US leaving the alliance is one scenario that could realistically kill it, but that clearly wasn’t what Trump was talking about in his remarks on spending levels.

    James Goldgeier, an American University professor of international relations and Brookings Institution visiting fellow, said in an email: “NATO was founded in 1949, so it seems very clear that Donald Trump had nothing to do with its existence. In fact, the worry was that he would pull the US out of NATO, as his national security adviser warned he would do if he had been reelected.”

    The cost of NATO’s headquarters

    Trump mocked NATO’s headquarters, saying, “They spent – an office building that cost $3 billion. It’s like a skyscraper in Manhattan laid on its side. It’s one of the longest buildings I’ve ever seen. And I said, ‘You should have – instead of spending $3 billion, you should have spent $500 million building the greatest bunker you’ve ever seen. Because Russia didn’t – wouldn’t even need an airplane attack. One tank one shot through that beautiful glass building and it’s gone.’”

    Facts First: NATO did spend a lot of money on its headquarters in Belgium, but Trump’s “$3 billion” figure is a major exaggeration. When Trump used the same inaccurate figure in early 2020, NATO told CNN that the headquarters was actually constructed for a sum under the approved budget of about $1.18 billion euro, which is about $1.3 billion at exchange rates as of Sunday morning.

    The Pulitzer Prize

    Trump made his usual argument that The Washington Post and The New York Times should not have won a prestigious journalism award, a 2018 Pulitzer Prize, for their reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election and its connections to Trump’s team. He then said, “And they were exactly wrong. And now they’ve even admitted that it was a hoax. It was a total hoax, and they got the prize.”

    Facts First: The Times and Post have not made any sort of “hoax” admission. “The claim is completely false,” Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said in an email on Sunday.

    Stadtlander continued: “When our Pulitzer Prize shared with The Washington Post was challenged by the former President, the award was upheld by the Pulitzer Prize Board after an independent review. The board stated that ‘no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.’ The Times’s reporting was also substantiated by the Mueller investigation and Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the matter.”

    The Post referred CNN to that same July statement from the Pulitzer Prize Board.

    Awareness of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline

    Trump claimed of his opposition to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany: “Nord Stream 2 – Nobody ever heard of it … right? Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along. I started talking about Nord Stream 2. I had to go call it ‘the pipeline’ because nobody knew what I was talking about.”

    Facts First: This is standard Trump hyperbole; it’s just not true that “nobody” had heard of Nord Stream 2 before he began discussing it. Nord Stream 2 was a regular subject of media, government and diplomatic discussion before Trump took office. In fact, Biden publicly criticized it as vice president in 2016. Trump may well have generated increased US awareness to the controversial project, but “nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along” isn’t true.

    Trump and Nord Stream 2

    Trump claimed, “I got along very well with Putin even though I’m the one that ended his pipeline. Remember they said, ‘Trump is giving a lot to Russia.’ Really? Putin actually said to me, ‘If you’re my friend, I’d hate like hell to see you as my enemy.’ Because I ended the pipeline, right? Do you remember? Nord Stream 2.” He continued, “I ended it. It was dead.”

    Facts First: Trump did not kill Nord Stream 2. While he did approve sanctions on companies working on the project, that move came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already around an estimated 90% complete – and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said shortly after the sanctions that it would complete the pipeline itself. The company announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced that it had renewed permission for construction in its waters.

    The pipeline never began operations; Germany ended up halting the project as Russia was about to invade Ukraine early last year. The pipeline was damaged later in the year in what has been described as an act of sabotage.

    The Obama administration and Ukraine

    Trump claimed that while he provided lethal assistance to Ukraine, the Obama administration “didn’t want to get involved” and merely “supplied the bedsheets.” He said, “Do you remember? They supplied the bedsheets. And maybe even some pillows from [pillow businessman] Mike [Lindell], who’s sitting right over here. … But they supplied the bedsheets.”

    Facts First: This is inaccurate. While it’s true that the Obama administration declined to provide weapons to Ukraine, it provided more than $600 million in security assistance to Ukraine between 2014 and 2016 that involved far more than bedsheets. The aid included counter-artillery and counter-mortar radars, armored Humvees, tactical drones, night vision devices and medical supplies.

    Biden and a Ukrainian prosecutor

    Trump claimed that Biden, as vice president, held back a billion dollars from Ukraine until the country fired a prosecutor who was “after Hunter” and a company that was paying him. Trump was referring to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, who sat on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.

    Facts First: This is baseless. There has never been any evidence that Hunter Biden was under investigation by the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who had been widely faulted by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and European countries for failing to investigate corruption. A former Ukrainian deputy prosecutor and a top anti-corruption activist have both said the Burisma-related investigation was dormant at the time Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin.

    Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, told The Washington Post in 2019: “Shokin was not investigating. He didn’t want to investigate Burisma. And Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation.” In addition, Shokin’s successor as prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, told Bloomberg in 2019: “Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws – at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing.”

    Biden, as vice president, was carrying out the policy of the US and its allies, not pursuing his own agenda, in threatening to withhold a billion-dollar US loan guarantee if the Ukrainian government did not sack Shokin. CNN fact-checked Trump’s claims on this subject at length in 2019.

    Trump and job creation

    Promising to save Americans’ jobs if he is elected again, Trump claimed, “We had the greatest job history of any president ever.”

    Facts First: This is false. The US lost about 2.7 million jobs during Trump’s presidency, the worst overall jobs record for any president. The net loss was largely because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but even Trump’s pre-pandemic jobs record – about 6.7 million jobs added – was far from the greatest of any president ever. The economy added more than 11.5 million jobs in the first term of Democratic President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

    Tariffs on China

    Trump repeated a trade claim he made frequently during his presidency. Speaking of China, he said he “charged them” with tariffs that had the effect of “bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our Treasury from China. Thank you very much, China.” He claimed that he did this even though “no other president had gotten even 10 cents – not one president got anything from them.”

    Facts First: As we have written repeatedly, it’s not true that no president before Trump had generated any revenue through tariffs on goods from China. In reality, the US has had tariffs on China for more than two centuries, and FactCheck.org reported in 2019 that the US generated an “average of $12.3 billion in custom duties a year from 2007 to 2016, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb.” Also, American importers, not Chinese exporters, make the actual tariff payments – and study after study during Trump’s presidency found that Americans were bearing most of the cost of the tariffs.

    The trade deficit with China

    Trump went on to repeat a false claim he made more than 100 times as president – that the US used to have a trade deficit with China of more than $500 billion. He claimed it was “five-, six-, seven-hundred billion dollars a year.”

    Facts First: The US has never had a $500 billion, $600 billion or $700 billion trade deficit with China even if you only count trade in goods and ignore the services trade in which the US runs a surplus with China. The pre-Trump record for a goods deficit with China was about $367 billion in 2015. The goods deficit hit a new record of about $418 billion under Trump in 2018 before falling back under $400 billion in subsequent years.

    Trump and the 2020 election

    Trump said people claim they want to run against him even though, he claimed, he won the 2020 election. He said, “I won the second election, OK, won it by a lot. You know, when they say, when they say Biden won, the smart people know that didn’t [happen].”

    Facts First: This is Trump’s regular lie. He lost the 2020 election to Biden fair and square, 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. Biden earned more than 7 million more votes than Trump did.

    Democrats and elections

    Trump said Democrats are only good at “disinformation” and “cheating on elections.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. There is just no basis for a broad claim that Democrats are election cheaters. Election fraud and voter fraud are exceedingly rare in US elections, though such crimes are occasionally committed by officials and supporters of both parties. (We’ll ignore Trump’s subjective claim about “disinformation.”)

    The liberation of the ISIS caliphate

    Trump repeated his familiar story about how he had supposedly liberated the “caliphate” of terror group ISIS in “three weeks.” This time, he said, “In fact, with the ISIS caliphate, a certain general said it could only be done in three years, ‘and probably it can’t be done at all, sir.’ And I did it in three weeks. I went over to Iraq, met a great general. ‘Sir, I can do it in three weeks.’ You’ve heard that story. ‘I can do it in three weeks, sir.’ ‘How are you going to do that?’ They explained it. I did it in three weeks. I was told it couldn’t be done at all, that it would take at least three years. Did it in three weeks. Knocked out 100% of the ISIS caliphate.”

    Facts First: Trump’s claim of eliminating the ISIS caliphate in “three weeks” isn’t true; the ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency, in 2019. Even if Trump was starting the clock at the time of his visit to Iraq, in late December 2018, the liberation was proclaimed more than two and a half months later. In addition, Trump gave himself far too much credit for the defeat of the caliphate, as he has in the past, when he said “I did it”: Kurdish forces did much of the ground fighting, and there was major progress against the caliphate under President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016.

    IHS Markit, an information company that studied the changing size of the caliphate, reported two days before Trump’s 2017 inauguration that the caliphate shrunk by 23% in 2016 after shrinking by 14% in 2015. “The Islamic State suffered unprecedented territorial losses in 2016, including key areas vital for the group’s governance project,” an analyst there said in a statement at the time.

    Military equipment left in Afghanistan

    Trump claimed, as he has before, that the US left behind $85 billion worth of military equipment when it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. He said of the leader of the Taliban: “Now he’s got $85 billion worth of our equipment that I bought – $85 billion.” He added later: “The thing that nobody ever talks about, we lost 13 [soldiers], we lost $85 billion worth of the greatest military equipment in the world.”

    Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan government forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of about $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.

    As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress has appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A minority of this funding was for equipment.

    The Afghanistan withdrawal and the F-16

    Trump claimed that the Taliban acquired F-16 fighter planes because of the US withdrawal, saying: “They feared the F-16s. And now they own them. Think of it.”

    Facts First: This is false. F-16s were not among the equipment abandoned upon the US withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan armed forces, since the Afghan armed forces did not fly F-16s.

    The border wall

    Trump claimed that he had kept his promise to complete a wall on the border with Mexico: “As you know, I built hundreds of miles of wall and completed that task as promised. And then I began to add even more in areas that seemed to be allowing a lot of people to come in.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that Trump “completed” the border wall. According to an official “Border Wall Status” report written by US Customs and Border Protection two days after Trump left office, about 458 miles of wall had been completed under Trump – but about 280 more miles that had been identified for wall construction had not been completed.

    The report, provided to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, said that, of those 280 miles left to go, about 74 miles were “in the pre-construction phase and have not yet been awarded, in locations where no barriers currently exist,” and that 206 miles were “currently under contract, in place of dilapidated and outdated designs and in locations where no barriers previously existed.”

    Latin America and deportations

    Trump told his familiar story about how, until he was president, the US was unable to deport MS-13 gang members to other countries, “especially” Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras because those countries “didn’t want them.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that, as a rule, Guatemala and Honduras wouldn’t take back migrants being deported from the US during Obama’s administration, though there were some individual exceptions.

    In 2016, just prior to Trump’s presidency, neither Guatemala nor Honduras was on the list of countries that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considered “recalcitrant,” or uncooperative, in accepting the return of their nationals.

    For the 2016 fiscal year, Obama’s last full fiscal year in office, ICE reported that Guatemala and Honduras ranked second and third, behind only Mexico, in terms of the country of citizenship of people being removed from the US. You can read a longer fact check, from 2019, here.

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  • Seattle Opera puts story of Afghan women center stage

    Seattle Opera puts story of Afghan women center stage

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    As the Taliban once again assert control of Afghanistan and push women further out of public view, a female Afghan filmmaker is working thousands of miles away to help bring to life a wildly popular tale of two heroines living in her homeland, including under the group’s first reign.

    The world premiere of Seattle Opera’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns” opens Saturday evening. It is based on a novel by Kabul-born author Khaled Hosseini that explores the inner worlds of Mariam and Laila over decades of Afghan history, some with stark parallels to the present.

    The women, born nearly two decades apart, forge an unlikely bond as they share an abusive husband and navigate struggles facing them and their country. It’s a story of hardships, injustices and loss, but also of deep love, endurance and one big decision that, ultimately, alters both their lives and leads to the survival of only one.

    It was supposed to be a story of a bygone era — until the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 dramatically changed that.

    For the opera’s stage director, Roya Sadat, who lived under Taliban’s first rule and made a professional name for herself after the group’s 2001 ouster, that reversal is deeply personal.

    Born in the city of Herat, she happened to be in America when she learned that her birthplace had fallen to the Taliban in 2021. Just like other historic events in Afghanistan colored Mariam’s and Laila’s lives, that takeover has once again reshaped Sadat’s country and, this time, turned her into an asylee in the United States.

    “I was actually never thinking that one day I will leave Afghanistan,” the 39-year-old said. “When I heard this news, I was in shock. And I just said: ‘no, no, no, it’s not possible.’… It was like watching a terrible movie.”

    In that moment, Sadat added, directing “A Thousand Splendid Suns” took on a new meaning.

    “Suddenly, the topic changed in my mind, that ‘Oh my God, now this story is going to repeat again. Now, maybe, a thousand Laila and Mariam are going to be in the same situation,’” she said.

    In her director’s statement, Sadat writes about becoming “homeless” in the blink of an eye and describes how the goal of her work has evolved.

    “My task was no longer to simply portray the universal pain, struggle, and perseverance of women through the story of two Afghan women,” she said. “It became a duty to convey an unparalleled injustice to which my countrywomen are condemned.”

    Mariam and Laila have captured the imagination of composer Sheila Silver for a long time. She felt like she knew them and wanted to tell their story. She listened to the book in 2009 and recalled tears streaming down her face as one of the women faced her death.

    “This is what heroes are made of, people who make sacrifices for others that they love and so that was what drew me in,” Silver said. “It was about the love and bonding and resilience and strength of these two women.”

    And in that sense, she found their tales universal. “It’s their humanity that we’re celebrating,” she said. “It’s a story of that time with incredible parallels to this time today.”

    Hosseini, the book’s author who lives in California, wishes that wasn’t the case.

    He had hoped the story of “A Thousand Splendid Suns” would become a relic of the past, maybe a “cautionary tale.” But instead, he said, “what’s going on with women today is a cruel deja vu.”

    He lamented that the international spotlight on Afghanistan seemed to have faded. He hopes the opera’s audience will be moved by the music, but also that the production, even if in limited ways, can spark conversations about the situation there.

    “I’ve always thought of the arts as our most powerful … teachers of empathy,” he said. “I hope that this opera is an expression of the collective struggles and sacrifices of Afghans over the last four decades, particularly Afghan women.”

    Despite initial promises, the Taliban have increasingly imposed restrictions on women and girls with an expanding list of bans that included barring them from universities and schools beyond the sixth grade. That has sparked an international uproar, deepening Afghanistan’s isolation at a time of severe economic turmoil.

    The crackdown on women’s freedoms harkens back to when the Taliban ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 — and to a somber part of Sadat’s own life under the group.

    She no longer could attend school. She turned to books, sometimes borrowed from relatives or friends, to expand her world. Home doubled as a school of sorts, where her mother and an aunt would teach her different subjects.

    Through it all, she clung to hope.

    It was under the Taliban, that, sitting on her family’s kitchen floor, Sadat started writing a script that later turned into her first movie. At the time, she said, she didn’t have electricity; the kitchen fire provided the light she needed to write.

    Toward the end of the Taliban’s reign, a relative helped her get a spot in a class that trained women in nursing. There, Sadat said she helped organize small cultural groups that produced theater critical of the Taliban’s treatment of women; to avoid getting caught, classmates would be on the lookout inside a stairwell to alert others if Taliban members approached.

    After the Taliban’s fall, Sadat and her sister co-founded Roya Film House, a company that has produced films and TV dramas.

    Working on the Seattle opera, she said, has been of special significance.

    “In creating the atmosphere of this work, I have tried to show the people the beauty of Afghan women’s lives — the parts of that world they do not know and the people they have not seen,” she said. “I want to evoke Kabul in the old years, full of songs, poetry, music, color, and joy. Throughout Afghanistan’s history, even on the path of pain and suffering, is the radiant face of a woman who shines.”

    ___

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • Pakistan, Afghanistan reopen main border crossing, trade resumes

    Pakistan, Afghanistan reopen main border crossing, trade resumes

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    The closure of the key transit point between the countries left people and trucks carrying essential supplies stranded.

    The usual trade and movement of people between Pakistan and Afghanistan has fully resumed after the two sides reopened a key border crossing that was closed nearly a week ago by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, stranding people and thousands of trucks carrying food and essential items.

    The Afghan embassy in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, announced the reopening of the Torkham border on Saturday on Twitter. Pakistani officials and Afghanistan’s Taliban-appointed administrator in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province also confirmed that the border crossing was open to passengers and trade, according to AP news agency.

    “Last evening, we temporarily opened the border for Pakistanis who were stuck on the Afghan side. Finally, we fully reopened the border for trade, transit, and pedestrian movement from both sides this morning (Saturday),” a Pakistani border official, who didn’t want to be named, told Anadolu Agency.

    Disputes linked to the 2,600km (1,615-mile) border have been a bone of contention between the neighbours for decades. The Torkham crossing is the main point of transit for travellers and goods between Pakistan and landlocked Afghanistan.

    A Taliban security guard watches as young Afghan boys help elderly men in wheelchairs near the Torkham border crossing in Nangarhar province [Shafiullah Kakar/AFP]

    The announcement sparked joy and relief among those who had been waiting for the reopening of the international trade route since Sunday, when the Taliban shuttered it, alleging that Islamabad was denying Afghan migrants entry into Pakistan for medical care.

    Last Monday, Afghan Taliban forces and Pakistani border guards exchanged fire, wounding a Pakistani soldier. Since then, officials from the two sides were in talks to resolve the issue amid demands from people on both sides to immediately reopen the crossing.

    On Wednesday, Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif and secret service chief Nadeem Anjum travelled to Kabul and met senior Taliban officials to discuss the closure and other issues.

    After the visit, the crossing was briefly reopened by the Afghan Taliban to allow some of the thousands of trucks that had lined up for days at the border – many with vegetables, fruits and other perishable food items – to cross and ease the backlog.

    But Pakistan shut the border on Thursday, saying it needed an explanation from the Afghan side about the abrupt closure on Sunday.

    Pakistani and Taliban officials on Friday held talks and finally agreed to reopen the crossing.

    On Saturday, Ziaul Haq Sarhadi, a director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: “We are happy to confirm that Torkham is fully open for trade and movement of people.”

    Jubilant Afghan and Pakistani truck drivers were crossing the key trade route with supplies, he added.

    Meanwhile, the Pakistani government has accused the Taliban of sheltering armed attackers belonging to the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also sometimes referred to as the Pakistan Taliban. The Afghan Taliban has rejected the accusation.

    In recent months, the TTP has been blamed for a spike in violent attacks across Pakistan, killing dozens of people.

    The TTP is a separate armed group allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It has been waging a rebellion against the state of Pakistan for more than a decade.

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  • Dozens dead in migrant shipwreck off Italian coast

    Dozens dead in migrant shipwreck off Italian coast

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    At least 43 migrants drowned on Sunday after the fishing boat on which they were traveling sank off the coast of the Italian region of Calabria.

    According to local authorities, some 250 migrants were crammed aboard the ship, which broke in two about 20 kilometers from the city of Crotone. Over 100 passengers have been rescued, but at least 70 of the people who were aboard the ship remain missing.

    Over the course of the morning, bodies, including those of children and at least one newborn baby, have washed ashore in the resort town of Steccato di Cutro, according to local reports.

    Although the ship’s port of origin was in Turkey, authorities say the majority of the migrants that have been rescued are from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the disaster was “a huge tragedy that demonstrates how necessary it is to oppose the chains of irregular migration,” adding that more needed to be done to clamp down on “unscrupulous smugglers” who, “in order to get rich, organize improvised trips with inadequate boats and in prohibitive conditions.”

    Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her “deep sorrow” for the shipwreck and pledged to stop irregular sea migration in order to prevent more tragedies. “The government is committed to preventing [migrant] departures, and with them the unfolding of these tragedies,” she said in a statement.

    “It is inhumane to trade the lives of men, women and children for the price of the ‘ticket’ they have paid with the false prospect of a safe journey,” Meloni said.

    Calabrian President Roberto Occhiuto slammed EU authorities for their inaction in addressing the migration crisis and asked “what has the European Union been doing all these years?”

    “Where is Europe when it comes to guaranteeing security and legality?” he asked, adding that regions like his were left on their own to “manage emergencies and mourn the dead.”

    Opposition parties said the tragedy indicated the flaws in Italy’s migration policy. “Condemning only the smugglers, as the center-right is doing now, is hypocrisy,″ said Laura Ferrara, a European Parliament lawmaker from the 5-Star Movement. “The truth is that the EU today does not offer effective alternatives for those who are forced abandon their country of origin; there are no real alternatives to smugglers and traffickers,″ Ferrara said in a statement.

    According to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, at least 2,366 migrants lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean last year; at least 124 have been reporting missing in its waters since the beginning of this year.

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    Aitor Hernández-Morales

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  • Afghanistan’s women: Life under Taliban restrictions

    Afghanistan’s women: Life under Taliban restrictions

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    From: UpFront

    ‘Everybody is trying to grasp something that gives them hope, and that hope is getting eliminated on a daily basis.’

    When the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in August 2021, it sought to reassure Afghans and the international community that the rights of women and girls would be respected and that they would remain active members of Afghan society.

    Nearly a year and a half later, however, the situation for women and girls in the country is dire.

    The Taliban has effectively barred women and girls from secondary schools and universities. It has restricted their employment, and even altogether banned their presence in many public spaces.

    But as former Afghan ambassador to the United States, Adela Raz, tells Marc Lamont Hill, Afghan families are still “trying”.

    “Each single family inside the country are still trying, and knocking every single door to find a way for their daughters to go and study,” Raz says.

    So, what does this mean for the future of Afghanistan? And is there any hope in sight for Afghan women?

    On UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks to Raz, the current director of Princeton University’s Afghanistan Policy Lab.

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  • Pervez Musharraf, Former Military Ruler Of Pakistan, Dies At 79

    Pervez Musharraf, Former Military Ruler Of Pakistan, Dies At 79

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    ISLAMABAD (AP) — Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup and later led a reluctant Pakistan into aiding the U.S. war in Afghanistan against the Taliban, has died, officials said Sunday. He was 79.

    Musharraf, a former special forces commando, became president through the last of a string of military coups that roiled Pakistan since its founding amid the bloody 1947 partition of India. He ruled the nuclear-armed state after his 1999 coup through tensions with India, an atomic proliferation scandal and an Islamic extremist insurgency. He stepped down in 2008 while facing possible impeachment.

    Later in life, Musharraf lived in self-imposed exile in Dubai to avoid criminal charges, despite attempting a political comeback in 2012. But it wasn’t to be as his poor health plagued his last years. He maintained a soldier’s fatalism after avoiding a violent death that always seemed to be stalking him as Islamic militants twice targeted him for assassination.

    “I have confronted death and defied it several times in the past because destiny and fate have always smiled on me,” Musharraf once wrote. “I only pray that I have more than the proverbial nine lives of a cat.”

    Musharraf’s family announced in June 2022 that he had been hospitalized for weeks in Dubai while suffering from amyloidosis, an incurable condition that sees proteins build up in the body’s organs. They later said he also needed access to the drug daratumumab, which is used to treat multiple myeloma. That bone marrow cancer can cause amyloidosis.

    Shazia Siraj, a spokeswoman for the Pakistani Consulate in Dubai, confirmed his death and said diplomats were providing support to his family.

    The Pakistani military also offered its condolences as did Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, the younger brother of the prime minister Musharraf overthrew in 1999.

    “May God give his family the courage to bear this loss,” Sharif said.

    Pakistan, a nation nearly twice the size of California along the Arabian Sea, is now home to 220 million people. But it would be its border with Afghanistan that would soon draw the U.S.′s attention and dominate Musharraf’s life a little under two years after he seized power.

    Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden launched the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks from Afghanistan, sheltered by the country’s Taliban rulers. Musharraf knew what would come next.

    “America was sure to react violently, like a wounded bear,” he wrote in his autobiography. “If the perpetrator turned out to be al-Qaida, then that wounded bear would come charging straight toward us.”

    By Sept. 12, then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told Musharraf that Pakistan would either be “with us or against us.” Musharraf said another American official threatened to bomb Pakistan ”back into the Stone Age” if it chose the latter.

    Musharraf chose the former. A month later, he stood by then-President George W. Bush at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to declare Pakistan’s unwavering support to fight with the United States against “terrorism in all its forms wherever it exists.”

    Then-U.S. President George W. Bush, right, shakes hands with then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf at a news conference at New York’s Waldorf – Astoria Hotel, on Nov. 10, 2001. (AP Photo/Ed Bailey, File)

    Pakistan became a crucial transit point for NATO supplies headed to landlocked Afghanistan. That was the case even though Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency had backed the Taliban after it swept into power in Afghanistan in 1994. Prior to that, the CIA and others funneled money and arms through the ISI to Islamic fighters battling the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

    The U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan saw Taliban fighters flee over the border back into Pakistan, including bin Laden, whom the U.S. would kill in 2011 at a compound in Abbottabad. They regrouped and the offshoot Pakistani Taliban emerged, beginning a yearslong insurgency in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    The CIA began flying armed Predator drones from Pakistan with Musharraf’s blessing, using an airstrip built by the founding president of the United Arab Emirates for falconing in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The program helped beat back the militants but saw over 400 strikes in Pakistan alone kill at least 2,366 people — including 245 civilians, according to the Washington-based New America Foundation think tank.

    Though Pakistan under Musharraf launched these operations, the militants still thrived as billions of American dollars flowed into the nation. That led to suspicion that still plagues the U.S. relationship with Pakistan.

    “After 9/11, then President Musharraf made a strategic shift to abandon the Taliban and support the U.S. in the war on terror, but neither side believes the other has lived up to expectations flowing from that decision,” a 2009 U.S. cable from then-Ambassador Anne Patterson published by WikiLeaks said, describing what had become the diplomatic equivalent of a loveless marriage.

    “The relationship is one of co-dependency we grudgingly admit — Pakistan knows the U.S. cannot afford to walk away; the U.S. knows Pakistan cannot survive without our support.”

    But it would be Musharraf’s life on the line. Militants tried to assassinate him twice in 2003 by targeting his convoy, first with a bomb planted on a bridge and then with car bombs. That second attack saw Musharraf’s vehicle lifted into the air by the blast before touching the ground again. It raced to safety on just its rims, Musharraf pulling a Glock pistol in case he needed to fight his way out.

    It wasn’t until his wife, Sehba, saw the car covered in gore that the scale of the attack dawned on him.

    “She is always calm in the face of danger,” he recounted. But then, “she was screaming uncontrollably, hysterically.”

    Born Aug. 11, 1943, in New Delhi, India, Musharraf was the middle son of a diplomat. His family joined millions of other Muslims in fleeing westward when predominantly Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan split during independence from Britain in 1947. The partition saw hundreds of thousands of people killed in riots and fighting.

    Musharraf entered the Pakistani army at age 18 and made his career there as Islamabad fought three wars against India. He’d launch his own attempt at capturing territory in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir in 1999 just before seizing power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

    Sharif had ordered Musharraf’s dismissal as the army chief flew home from a visit to Sri Lanka and denied his plane landing rights in Pakistan, even as it ran low on fuel. On the ground, the army took control and after he landed Musharraf took charge.

    Yet as ruler, Musharraf nearly reached a deal with India on Kashmir, according to U.S. diplomats at the time. He also worked toward a rapprochement with Pakistan’s longtime rival.

    Then-President of Pakistan Gen. Pervez Musharraf salutes on April 9, 2002 at a public rally in Lahore, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Zia Mazhar, File)
    Then-President of Pakistan Gen. Pervez Musharraf salutes on April 9, 2002 at a public rally in Lahore, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Zia Mazhar, File)

    AP Photo/Zia Mazhar, File

    Another major scandal emerged under his rule when the world discovered that famed Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, long associated with the country’s atomic bomb, had been selling centrifuge designs and other secrets to countries including Iran, Libya and North Korea, making tens of millions of dollars. Those designs helped Pyongyang to arm itself with a nuclear weapon, while centrifuges from Khan’s designs still spin in Iran amid the collapse of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

    Musharraf said he suspected Khan but it wasn’t until 2003 when then-CIA director George Tenet showed him detailed plans for a Pakistani centrifuge that the scientist had been selling that he realized the severity of what happened.

    Khan would confess on state television in 2004 and Musharraf would pardon him, though he’d be confined to house arrest after that.

    “For years, A.Q.’s lavish lifestyle and tales of his wealth, properties, corrupt practices and financial magnanimity at state expense were generally all too well known in Islamabad’s social and government circles,” Musharraf later wrote. “However, these were largely ignored. … In hindsight that neglect was apparently a serious mistake.”

    Musharraf’s domestic support eventually eroded. He held flawed elections in late 2002 — only after changing the constitution to give himself sweeping powers to sack the prime minister and parliament. He then reneged on a promise to stand down as army chief by the end of 2004.

    Militant anger toward Musharraf increased in 2007 when he ordered a raid against the Red Mosque in downtown Islamabad. It had become a sanctuary for militants opposed to Pakistan’s support of the Afghan war. The weeklong operation killed over 100 people.

    The incident severely damaged Musharraf’s reputation among everyday citizens and earned him the undying hatred of militants who launched a series of punishing attacks following the raid.

    Fearing the judiciary would block his continued rule, Musharraf fired the chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court. That triggered mass demonstrations.

    Under pressure at home and abroad to restore civilian rule, Musharraf stepped down as army chief. Though he won another five-year presidential term, Musharraf faced a major crisis following former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007 at a campaign rally as she sought to become prime minister for the third time.

    The public suspected Musharraf’s hand in the killing, which he denied. A later United Nations report acknowledged the Pakistani Taliban was a main suspect in her slaying but warned that elements of Pakistan’s intelligence services may have been involved.

    Musharraf resigned as president in August 2008 after ruling coalition officials threatened to have him impeached for imposing emergency rule and firing judges.

    “I hope the nation and the people will forgive my mistakes,” Musharraf, struggling with his emotions, said in an hourlong televised address.

    Afterward, he lived abroad in Dubai and London, attempting a political comeback in 2012. But Pakistan instead arrested the former general and put him under house arrest. He faced treason allegations over the Supreme Court debacle and other charges stemming from the Red Mosque raid and Bhutto’s assassination.

    The image of Musharraf being treated as a criminal suspect shocked Pakistan, where military generals long have been considered above the law. Pakistan allowed him to leave the country on bail to Dubai in 2016 for medical treatment and he remained there after facing a later-overturned death sentence.

    But it suggested Pakistan may be ready to turn a corner in its history of military rule.

    “Musharraf’s resignation is a sad yet familiar story of hubris, this time in a soldier who never became a good politician,” wrote Patterson, the U.S. ambassador, at the time.

    “The good news is that the demonstrated strength of institutions that brought Musharraf down — the media, free elections and civil society — also provide some hope for Pakistan’s future. It was these institutions that ironically became much stronger under his government.”

    Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report. Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

    Follow Jon Gambrell and Munir Ahmed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP and www.twitter.com/munirahmedap.

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  • US imposes visa restrictions on Taliban members involved in repression of women and girls | CNN Politics

    US imposes visa restrictions on Taliban members involved in repression of women and girls | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The United States is imposing new visa restrictions on certain current and former Taliban members, non-state security group members and others who are believed to be involved in repressing the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Wednesday.

    The announcement comes more than a month after the Taliban announced bans on women attending universities and working with non-governmental organizations. Blinken cited those decisions as contributing to the new visa bans and said the US condemns the actions in “the strongest of terms.”

    “The Taliban’s most recent edicts ban women from universities and from working with NGOs, and further the Taliban’s previous measures that closed secondary schools to girls and limit the ability of women and girls to participate in the Afghan society and economy,” Blinken said in a State Department statement.

    “Through these decisions, the Taliban have again shown their disregard for the welfare of the Afghan people,” he added.

    The State Department statement did not name those who are impacted by the move.

    Blinken referenced other actions by the Taliban that have undermined the rights of women and girls since the group took control of the country after the chaotic US military withdrawal in 2021.

    “So far, the Taliban’s actions have forced over one million school-aged Afghan girls and young women out of the classroom, with more women out of universities and countless Afghan women out of the workforce. These numbers will only grow as time goes on, worsening the country’s already dire economic and humanitarian crises,” Blinken said.

    Deeming equal access to education and work an “essential component to the vitality and resiliency of entire populations,” Blinken said these steps will hurt the Taliban’s standing globally.

    “The Taliban cannot expect the respect and support of the international community until they respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Afghans, including women and girls,” Blinken said.

    Blinken committed once again to working alongside allies to impose “significant costs” on the Taliban’s actions.

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  • Pakistan mosque blast death toll rises to 92 as country faces ‘national security crisis’ | CNN

    Pakistan mosque blast death toll rises to 92 as country faces ‘national security crisis’ | CNN

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    Islamabad, Pakistan
    CNN
     — 

    The death toll from a suspected suicide bomb that ripped through a mosque in northwestern Pakistan Monday has risen to at least 92, marking one of the deadliest attacks in the country in years as it faces what one analyst described as “a national security crisis.”

    Peshawar deputy commissioner Shafiullah Khan on Tuesday confirmed the fatalities and said more than 80 victims were still being treated in hospital following the blast at the mosque in a police compound in the city.

    Nasarullah Khan, a police official who survived the explosion, said he remembered seeing “a huge burst of flames” before becoming surrounded by a plume of black dust.

    Khan said his foot broke in the blast and he was stuck in the rubble for three hours.

    “The ceiling fell in… the space in between the ceiling and wall is where I managed to survive,” he said.

    Meanwhile, hope was fading in the search for survivors as rescue workers sifted through the rubble of the mosque that was all but destroyed Monday, when worshipers – mainly law enforcement officials – had gathered for evening prayers.

    Photos and video show walls of the mosque reduced to fragments, with glass windows and paneling destroyed in the powerful blast.

    “We are not expecting anyone alive to be found. Mostly dead bodies are being recovered,” Bilal Faizi, a rescue spokesperson, said Tuesday.

    The blast Monday is the latest sign of the deteriorating security situation in Peshawar, capital of the restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan and the site of frequent attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP).

    The TTP is a US-designated foreign terrorist organization operating in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    Last year, the breakdown of an already shaky year-long ceasefire between the TTP and Pakistan’s government threatened not only escalating violence in that country but potentially an increase in cross-border tensions between the Afghan and Pakistani governments.

    Initially on Monday, TTP officials Sarbakaf Mohmand and Omar Mukaram Khurasani had claimed the blast was “revenge” for the death of TTP militant Khalid Khorasani last year.

    But the TTP’s main spokesperson later denied the group was involved in the attack.

    “Regarding the Peshawar incident, we consider it necessary to clarify that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has nothing to do with this incident,” TTP spokesperson Muhammad Khorasani said in a statement late Monday. “According to our laws and general constitution, any action in mosques, madrasas, funerals grounds and other sacred places is an offense.”

    Pakistan authorities say an investigation is underway and have not confirmed either claim.

    On Monday, Peshawar Police Chief Mohammad Aijaz Khan said the blast inside the Police Lines Mosque was “probably a suicide attack,” echoing a statement from Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

    “The brutal killing of Muslims prostrating before Allah is against the teachings of the Quran,” Sharif said, adding that “targeting the House of Allah is proof that the attackers have nothing to do with Islam.”

    Soldiers and police officers clear the way for ambulances rushing toward the explosion site in Peshawar, Pakistan, January 30, 2023.

    Security officials and rescue workers gather at the site of a suspected suicide bombing, in Peshawar, Pakistan, January 30, 2023.

    Rights groups have condemned the deadly attack, which has raised fears of fresh violence amid a deteriorating security situation in the country.

    The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in a statement Monday said the attack could have been avoided if the “state heeded earlier warnings from civil society about extremist outfits in the province.”

    “Ill-equipped law enforcement personnel continue to be targeted in incidents that dearly cost civilian and police lives. We demand the state take action now,” the statement said.

    Madiha Afzal, a fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the 2021 Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has “emboldened” the TTP and other terror groups.

    “The TTP has also been emboldened by a Pakistani state that has had a shaky, uncertain response to the group in the last couple of years,” she said, adding a “sloppy policy toward terrorist groups has been more or less consistent across governments in Pakistan since the mid-2000s.”

    Negotiations with the militants have “failed repeatedly because these groups are existentially opposed to the Pakistani state and constitution,” she added.

    “This is now a national security crisis for Pakistan once again. The solution has to be a concerted military operation (against the TTP),” she said. “But that is now complicated by the fact that the TTP can go across the border into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.”

    The attack also comes at a fragile time for Pakistan, which has been grappling with a cost of living crisis as food and fuel shortages wreak havoc in the country of 220 million.

    Sharif’s government has struggled to revive the country’s economy, further devastated by deadly floods last year that killed more than 1,500 people and submerged entire villages.

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