Mourners were set to offer their final farewell to Haiti’s slain president Jovenel Moise under tight security on Friday, just over two weeks after his assassination rattled a country mired in poverty, corruption, and political instability.

Moise, who was 53 when he was shot dead in his home in the early hours of July 7, is set to be interred in Cap-Haïtien, the main city in his native northern region.

According to the official program, the funeral is due to begin in the morning and last for several hours, with large screens set up for mourners to follow the event.

Moise’s widow is expected to be joined at the event by the late president’s relatives, cabinet members, and current and former senior government officials, as well as religious figures and representatives of trade unions and civil society groups.

Cap-Haitien was calm Thursday, but a day earlier clashes broke out when police chief Leon Charles visited. He was booed and heckled while inspecting security arrangements for the funeral.

Local residents blame the police chief for not protecting Moise, whose wife Martine was seriously wounded in the gun attack seemingly carried out by a group of mainly Colombian retired soldiers – with no injuries to the presidential guard.

So far, more than 20 people have been arrested, most of them Colombians, and police say the plot was organized by Haitians with political ambitions and links outside the country.

But the case remains murky, with many unanswered questions.

Haitians have expressed shock that those tasked with protecting the president and his home failed him so abjectly. The impoverished Caribbean nation is riddled with crime and powerful gangs – problems that were exacerbated during Moise’s presidency.

His death has rekindled long-standing tensions between the north of Haiti and the west, which in part stems from historic racial divisions dating back to French colonialism between northern blacks who are descendants of slaves and lighter-skinned Haitians of mixed race living in the south and west.

Some residents have even set up barricades on roads leading to Cap-Haitien to keep people from the capital Port-au-Prince from attending the funeral.

“We are going to do everything we can to honor him the way he deserves, in line with his importance for our city,” said Cap-Haitien Mayor Yvrose Pierre.

Praying for justice

A Catholic mass was held for Moise Thursday at the city’s cathedral, followed by a procession in his honor.

“His assassination saddened me very much. I prayed for his soul. I prayed that justice will be rendered,” said a woman standing near the cathedral, who only gave her first name Carine.

Memorial ceremonies in honor of Moise have been held this week in Port-au-Prince as well.

Attending one of them was new Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who was sworn in Tuesday and vowed to restore order and organize long-delayed elections as sought both by Haitians and the international community.

The US State Department on Thursday named a new special envoy to Haiti tasked with helping to usher along the organization of elections.

Haiti currently has no working parliament and only a handful of elected senators. The interim government installed this week has no president.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Henry on Thursday to express Washington’s “commitment to supporting the Haitian people following the heinous assassination” of Moise.

Blinken also “emphasized the importance of establishing the conditions necessary for Haitians to vote in free and fair legislative and presidential elections as soon as feasible.”

Washington earlier said those elections should be held later this year.

France on Thursday called for legislative and presidential elections to be held “as soon as conditions allow it.”

Moise had ruled Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, by decree after legislative elections due in 2018 were delayed in following multiple disputes.

As well as presidential, legislative and local elections, Haiti had been due to have a constitutional referendum in September after it was twice postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Source: AFP

US President Joe Biden said Friday that social media misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccinations is “killing people” and the White House said Facebook needs to clean up its act.

“They’re killing people. The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people,” Biden told reporters at the White House, as he left for a weekend at the presidential retreat in Camp David.

The White House is turning up the pressure on social media companies to weed out what officials say is widely spread misinformation on coronavirus vaccinations.

According to US health officials, a current spike in Covid-19 deaths and illnesses around the country is almost exclusively hitting people who remain unvaccinated.

“There is a clear message that is coming through: this is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky told reporters on Friday.

President Joe Biden said social media platforms ‘are killing people’ after the White House criticized Facebook for allowing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to be posted on its platform

Many of those refusing vaccinations, despite the ease of availability throughout the United States, have said they do not trust the shots.

Skepticism is being fueled both by false posts spread by anti-vaccine activists online and by Republican politicians claiming the vaccinations are part of attempts at government control.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that Facebook and others are not doing enough to push back.

“Everybody has a role to play in making sure there’s accurate information,” she said.

Psaki said the White House was taking a more active approach in calling out what it sees as misinformation but insisted that Facebook in particular should react more quickly in taking down problematic posts.

Prolific fake news posters 

“There’s about 12 people who are producing 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms,” Psaki said, without identifying those dozen posters.

The White House has “proposed that they create a robust enforcement strategy that bridges their properties and provides transparency about the rules,” she said.

The turning up of the volume against fake news immediately drew accusations from right-wing media that Biden was installing a “Big Brother” type surveillance over citizens’ opinions.

Facebook, which has contracted an army of independent outside fact checkers, including from AFP, to try and clean up its content, pushed back at the White House claims.

“We will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts,” a Facebook spokesperson told AFP.

“The fact is that more than two billion people have viewed authoritative information about Covid-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet. More than 3.3 million Americans have also used our vaccine finder tool to find out where and how to get a vaccine. The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period.”

Earlier, Facebook said it was taking “aggressive action against misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines to protect public health,” and that it had removed “more than 18 million pieces of Covid misinformation,” and disabled accounts spreading false information.

The CDC reported more than 33,000 new cases in the United States on Thursday, bringing the seven-day average up to 26,306, a 70 percent rise on the week before.

The seven-day average of hospital admissions is about 2,790 per day, an increase of 36 percent. And after weeks of declines, the seven-day average of deaths was 211, an increase of 26 percent.

The spikes are focused in communities with low vaccination rates and “unvaccinated Americans account for virtually all recent Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths,” said Jeff Zients, White House coronavirus response coordinator.

The new wave is driven by the Delta variant, which now accounts for more than 80 percent of new cases, according to the covSpectrum tracker.

Source: AFP

One person died and more than 100 others, including independent journalists and dissidents, have been arrested after unprecedented anti-government protests in Cuba, with some remaining in custody on Tuesday, observers and activists said.

A 36-year-old man named by the state news agency as Diubis Laurencio Tejeda died during an anti-government protest on the outskirts of Havana on Monday, the interior ministry said.

The ministry said it “mourns” his death while the news agency said he had taken part in “disturbances.”

Relatives and friends of those detained during and after Sunday’s historic demonstrations engaged in a desperate search on Tuesday for news on their whereabouts.

“They took him from the house handcuffed and beaten, without a shirt, without a mask,” said a 50-year-old woman who did not wish to give her name, enquiring about her 21-year-old son at a police station in the capital.

“They took many from the neighbourhood, young and old,” she said, before leaving empty-handed.

Cuba’s San Isidro free speech protest movement published late on Monday a list on Twitter of 144 people held or reported as disappeared after thousands of Cubans took to the streets in dozens of cities and towns in a spontaneous outburst of public anger.

Droves of demonstrators chanted “Down with the dictatorship” in protests dispersed by police in some 40 different locations Sunday.

About 100 protesters again gathered in Havana Monday evening, shouting “Down with communism.”

The rallies were unlike any seen since the Cuban revolution. They came as the country endures its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with chronic shortages of electricity, food and medicine and a recent worsening of the coronavirus pandemic.

But Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez denied on Tuesday there had been a “social outbreak” on Sunday, insisting that the people still support “the revolution and their government.”

‘Economic suffocation’

Havana blamed the show of discontent on the United States pursuing a “policy of economic suffocation to provoke social unrest in the country.”

Cuba has been under US sanctions since 1962.

But Washington pointed the finger at “decades of repression” in the one-party communist state.

Cuba’s Catholic church called for “understanding” in a statement published on the Bishops Conference website, adding that “the people have the right to express their needs, desires and hopes.” The bishops also criticised the government’s “immobility that contributes to giving continuity to the problems, without solving them.”

Many Cubans were looking for loved ones.

“They took my daughter yesterday (Monday) and I have no news of her,” said a woman at a Havana police station.

A young man said his brother, 25, was taken from a neighbor’s house. “They gave him a tremendous blow, unjustly, and took him away,” he said.

A police official told worried family members that those arrested were taken to different detention centers, without providing details of who went where.

Julie Chung, acting assistant secretary in the US State Department’s Bureau for Western Hemisphere affairs, called in a tweet Monday for the “immediate release” of the detainees.

“Violence and detentions of Cuban protesters & disappearances of independent activists… remind us that Cubans pay dearly for freedom and dignity,” she said.

Those held included dissident Guillermo Farinas, former political prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer and artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara.

‘Counterrevolutionary elements’

Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba’s governing Communist Party, said Tuesday that President Miguel Diaz-Canel had met with his retired predecessor Raul Castro and the rest of the communist party politburo on Sunday to discuss the protests.

They “analysed the provocations orchestrated by counterrevolutionary elements, organized and financed from the United States for destabilisation purposes,” Granma said.

Mobile internet was down in Cuba for much of Sunday and on Monday the authorities cut access to major social media platforms, according to London-based group NetBlocks.

The United States on Tuesday urged Cuba to end the internet restrictions and demonstrate “respect for the voice of the people by opening all means of communication, both online and offline.”

‘Treated like rubbish’

Among those arrested was theatre director Yunior Garcia, a leader of the 27N movement which was born after a much smaller protest by members of the art community on November 27 last year to demand free speech.

Garcia said on Facebook that he and a group of friends were beaten “and forcefully dragged and thrown into a truck.”

“We were treated like rubbish,” he said, adding they were taken to a detention center in Havana where they saw “dozens of young people” arrive.

He was released on Monday afternoon.

Also arrested on Monday was Camila Acosta, a Cuban correspondent for the Spanish newspaper ABC, its foreign editor said.

Spain’s foreign ministry on Tuesday urged the Cuban authorities to respect the right to protest and demanded that Cuba “immediately” release Acosta.

The last major protests, and the first since the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959, were in 1994.

Those were also against economic hardship but were limited to the capital and quickly put down by police.

(AFP)

The Taliban do not want to battle government forces inside Afghanistan’s cities, a senior insurgent leader said Tuesday, as the militants also warned Turkey against extending its troop presence.

The insurgents have swept through much of northern Afghanistan in recent weeks, and the government now holds little more than a constellation of provincial capitals that must largely be reinforced and resupplied by air.

On Tuesday, the head of a Taliban commission that oversees government forces who surrender to the insurgents urged the residents of cities to reach out to them.

“Now that the fighting from mountains and deserts has reached the doors of the cities, Mujahiddin don’t want fighting inside the city,” Amir Khan Muttaqi said in a message tweeted by a Taliban spokesman, using another term for the group.

“It is better… to use any possible channel to get in touch with our invitation and guidance commission,” he said, adding this would “prevent their cities from getting damaged”.

The strategy is one well-worn by the Taliban — particularly during their first rise to power in the 1990s — cutting off towns and district centres and getting elders to negotiate a surrender.

In a separate statement Tuesday, the Taliban said Turkey’s decision to provide security to Kabul airport when US-led forces leave was “reprehensible”.

“We consider stay of foreign forces in our homeland by any country under whatever pretext as occupation,” the group said, days after Ankara agreed with Washington to provide security for Kabul airport.

– Rapid changes –

As foreign forces wind up their withdrawal — due to be completed by August 31 — the situation on the ground is changing rapidly.

The top US general in Afghanistan relinquished his command Monday at a ceremony in the capital, the latest symbolic gesture bringing America’s longest war nearer to an end.

The pace of the pullout — and multiple offensives launched by the Taliban — have raised fears that Afghanistan’s security forces could be swiftly overwhelmed, particularly without vital US air support.

Around 650 American service members are expected to remain in Kabul, guarding Washington’s sprawling diplomatic compound.

But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday he had agreed with the United States on the “scope” of how to secure Kabul airport.

Peace talks between the insurgents and the government supposedly taking place in Doha have largely fizzled out, and the Taliban now appear set on a complete military victory.

But claims by the hardline group to control 85 percent of the country are impossible to verify independently — and strongly disputed by the government.

Last week in Moscow, a visiting Taliban delegation said the group now controls more than half the country’s near-400 districts — a claim steadfastly rejected by security forces spokesman Ajmal Omar Shinwari.

Still, the situation has alarmed foreign nations, and on Sunday India became the latest country to evacuate some of its diplomats.

On Monday, Russia announced it was relocating some diplomats to Uzbekistan, while China also evacuated 210 nationals from Afghanistan.

Source: AFP

The Taliban claimed Friday to be in control of 85 percent of Afghanistan after seizing key border crossings with Iran and Turkmenistan, part of a sweeping offensive launched as US troops pull out of the war-torn nation.

Hours after President Joe Biden issued a staunch defence of the US withdrawal, the Taliban said its fighters had seized the two vital crossings in western Afghanistan – completing an arc of territory from the Iranian border to the frontier with China.

In Moscow, a delegation of Taliban officials said they controlled about 250 of Afghanistan’s nearly 400 districts – a claim impossible to independently verify and disputed by the government.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid separately told AFP their fighters had captured the border town of Islam Qala on the Iranian frontier and the Torghundi crossing with Turkmenistan.

Afghanistan’s interior ministry spokesman Tareq Arian said efforts were under way to dislodge the insurgents from their positions.

The Afghan government has repeatedly dismissed the Taliban’s gains as having little strategic value, but the seizure of multiple border crossings along with mineral-rich areas will likely fill the group’s coffers with several sources of new revenue.

Hours earlier, Biden said the US military mission would end on August 31 – nearly 20 years after it began – having “achieved” its goals.

But he admitted it was “highly unlikely” Kabul would be able to control the entire country.

“The status quo is not an option,” Biden said of staying in the country. “I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan.”

With the Taliban having routed much of northern Afghanistan in recent weeks, the government holds little more than a constellation of provincial capitals that must largely be reinforced and resupplied by air.

The air force was under severe strain even before the Taliban’s lightning offensive overwhelmed the government’s northern and western positions, putting further pressure on the country’s limited aircraft and pilots.

Biden said the Afghan people alone should determine their future, but he acknowledged the uncertainty about what that would look like.

Asked if a Taliban takeover was inevitable, the president said: “No, it is not.”

But, he admitted, “the likelihood there is going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely”.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday called for international pressure to force a deal between Kabul and the Taliban to end the conflict in the country.

“The security situation in Afghanistan only argues more for international pressure to have a negotiated political settlement to end this conflict, and give the Afghan people [the] government they want and they deserve,” Austin said in a tweet.

“The entire world can help by continuing this push,” Austin added.

US exit ‘positive step’

The Taliban, for their part, welcomed Biden’s statement.

“Any day or hour that US and foreign troops leave earlier is a positive step,” spokesperson Suhail Shaheen told AFP.

Afghan commandos clashed with the insurgents this week in a provincial capital, with thousands of people fleeing Qala-i-Naw in northwest Badghis province.

On Friday the Afghan defence ministry said government forces had “full control” of the city.

“They have retreated from the city and the fighting has stopped inside for now,” Badghis provincial council chief Abdul Aziz Bek told AFP.

Hours later a group of Taliban fighters attacked a prison on the edge of Kandahar city, the capital of their former bastion of Kandahar province.

“The Taliban … tried to get to the prison there. Fighting continues and we have deployed reinforcements including special forces to clear the area,” said Kandahar police spokesman Jamal Naser Barekza.

President Ashraf Ghani said the government could handle the situation, but admitted difficulties lay ahead.

“What we are witnessing is one of the most complicated stages of the transition,” he said in a speech in Kabul on Thursday.

Ismail Khan, a veteran warlord whose militia helped US forces topple the Taliban in 2001, vowed to back government forces in fighting against the insurgents.

“We will soon go to the front lines and with the help of God change the situation,” Khan told reporters in the western city of Herat.

As the Afghan military struggled to hold its ground against the Taliban, the country’s leadership also appeared to be enveloped in chaos.

In a leaked audio call published on social media, Vice President Amrullah Saleh could be heard issuing a death threat to a parliamentarian after accusing the official of encouraging security forces to surrender to the Taliban in Badghis.

The Taliban have been emboldened by the troop withdrawal and – with peace talks in Doha deadlocked – appear to be pressing for a full military victory.

Still, on Thursday, Shaheen, who is also a member of the Taliban negotiating team in Doha, insisted the insurgents were seeking a “negotiated settlement”.

In Moscow, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said the Taliban controlled about two-thirds of the Afghan-Tajik border as a delegation from the insurgents wound up a visit.

About “85 percent of Afghanistan’s territory” was under the group’s control, said Taliban delegate Shahabuddin Delawar, who added that the group was committed to preventing other jihadists from using Afghanistan as a base for their operations.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

A heavily armed commando unit that assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was composed of 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans, authorities said on Thursday, as the hunt went on for the masterminds of the killing.

Moïse, 53, was fatally shot early on Wednesday at his home by what officials said was a group of foreign, trained killers, pitching the poorest country in the Americas deeper into turmoil amid political divisions, hunger and widespread gang violence.

Authorities tracked the suspected assassins on Wednesday to a house near the scene of the crime in Pétionville, a northern, hillside suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince. A firefight lasted late into the night and authorities detained a number of suspects on Thursday.

Police Chief Charles Leon paraded 17 men before journalists at a news conference late on Thursday, showing a number of Colombian passports, plus assault rifles, machetes, walkie-talkies and materials including bolt cutters and hammers.

“Foreigners came to our country to kill the president,” Charles said. “There were … 26 Colombians, identified by their passports … and two Haitian Americans as well.”

He said 15 Colombians were captured, as well as two Haitian Americans. Three of the assailants were killed and eight remained on the run, Charles said.

Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano said in a statement that preliminary information indicated that Colombians involved in the attack were retired members of the country’s military. He said Bogota would cooperate in the investigation.

Haiti’s minister of elections and interparty relations, Mathias Pierre, identified the Haitian-American suspects as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55.

A State Department spokesman could not confirm if any U.S. citizens were among those detained, but U.S. authorities were in regular contact with Haitian officials, including investigative authorities, to discuss how the United States could provide assistance.

Officials in the mostly French- and Creole-speaking Caribbean nation had said on Wednesday the assassins appeared to have spoken in English and Spanish.

“It was a full, well-equipped commando, with more than six cars and a lot of equipment,” Pierre said.

Officials have not yet given a motive for the killing. Since taking office in 2017, Moïse had faced mass protests against his rule — first over corruption allegations and his management of the economy, then over his increasing grip on power.

An angry crowd gathered on Thursday morning to watch the police operation unfold, with some setting fire to the suspects’ cars and to the house where they had hunkered down. Bullets were strewn in the street.

“Burn them!” shouted some of the hundreds of people outside the police station where the suspects were being held.

Charles said the local population had helped police track down the suspects, but he implored residents in the sprawling seafront city of 1 million people not to take justice into their own hands.

Residents of Brooklyn’s ‘Little Haiti’ react to Moise assassination

A 15-day state of emergency was declared on Wednesday to help authorities apprehend the killers. But interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said on Thursday it was time for the economy to reopen and that he had given instructions for the airport to restart operations.

Vacuum of power

Moïse’s death has generated confusion about who is the legitimate leader of the country of 11 million people, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

Haiti has struggled to achieve stability since the fall of the Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986, grappling with a series of coups and foreign interventions.

A U.N. peacekeeping mission – meant to restore order after a rebellion toppled then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 – ended in 2019 with the country still in disarray.

“I can picture a scenario under which there are issues regarding to whom the armed forces and national police are loyal, in the case there are rival claims to being placeholder president of the country,” said Ryan Berg, an analyst with the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Haiti’s 1987 constitution stipulates the head of the Supreme Court should take over. But amendments that are not unanimously recognized state that it be the prime minister, or, in the last year of a president’s mandate – the case with Moïse – that parliament should elect a president.

The head of the Supreme Court died last month due to COVID-19 amid a surge in infections in one of the few countries yet to start a vaccination campaign.

There is no sitting parliament as legislative elections scheduled for late 2019 were postponed amid political unrest.

Moïse just this week appointed a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, to take over from Joseph, although he had yet to be sworn in when the president was killed.

Joseph appeared on Wednesday to take charge of the situation, running the government response to the assassination, appealing to Washington for support and declaring a state of emergency.

Henry – considered more favorably by the opposition – told Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste that he did not consider Joseph the legitimate prime minister and he should revert to the role of foreign minister.

“I think we need to speak. Claude was supposed to stay in the government I was going to have,” Henry was quoted as saying.

The United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti said on Thursday Joseph would remain leader until an election was held, urging all parties to set aside their differences.

Moïse, backed by the international community, had been pushing to hold both elections and a constitutional referendum in September, efforts that were vehemently opposed by Haitian civil society, which had called first for a transitional government to guide the country to a vote.

Pierre told Reuters the Cabinet intended to guide the country to elections in two months’ time as planned.

“There are many unknowns about what happens next,” said Jake Johnston, a senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “But it is important to remember that that was also the case before the assassination of Moïse.”

(REUTERS)

The US military mission in Afghanistan will end on August 31, President Joe Biden announced Thursday, as Afghan commandos battled the Taliban for control of a provincial capital in the most brazen assault by the militants since Washington stepped up its troop withdrawal.

Nearly 20 years after it invaded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the US military has “achieved” its goals in the country, killing Osama bin Laden, degrading Al-Qaeda and preventing more attacks on the United States, Biden said in a White House speech.

“We are ending America’s longest war,” he said.

“The status quo is not an option,” Biden said of staying in the country. “I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan.”

“The United States cannot afford to remain tethered to policies created to respond to a world as it was 20 years ago,” he said. “We need to meet the threats where they are today.”

We are repositioning our resources to meet terror threats where they are now: across South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

But make no mistake: we have the capabilities to protect the homeland from any resurgent terrorist challenge emanating from Afghanistan.

Biden said the United States “did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build” and that the Afghan people alone should determine their future.

But he acknowledged the uncertainty about what that future would look like.

Asked if a Taliban takeover was “inevitable,” the president said: “No, it is not.”

But, he admitted, “the likelihood there is going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely.”

“The Afghan government… has to come together,” the president said. “They clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place. The question is, will they generate the kind of cohesion to do it?”

He expressed faith in Afghan forces, who for years have been trained by and received equipment from the United States, against the resurgent Taliban.

“I do not trust the Taliban,” Biden said, “but I trust the capacity of the Afghan military.”

And he flatly rejected comparisons with the US experience in Vietnam.

“The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army,” Biden said. “They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability.”

“There’s going to be no circumstance where you are going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan,” he added. “It is not at all comparable.”

Fighting rages

Biden’s address came as fighting raged for a second straight day in the capital of Afghanistan’s Badghis province, with residents either fleeing the city or barricading themselves in their homes.

Plumes of smoke billowed over Qala-i-Naw, soundtracked by gunfire as the insurgents fought hundreds of Afghan commandos rushed to the city overnight.

Qala-i-Naw resident Aziz Tawakoli said Taliban fighters were still roaming the city.

“You can see them going up and down the streets on their motorcycles,” he said.

Badghis health official Abdul Latif Rostaee said at least 10 civilians had been taken to hospital since the fighting erupted.

“Our security forces are bravely fighting them and the enemy is being pushed back,” Badghis Governor Hessamuddin Shams told AFP on Thursday. “They are fleeing. We will give a hard blow to the enemy.”

Badghis provincial council member Zia Gul Habibi said the Taliban had suffered casualties, but also surrounded the city.

“All districts are under their control… People are really in fear,” she said. Afghan civilians have long paid an outsized price in the fighting.

Since the US ramped up its withdrawal—which the Pentagon has said is 90 percent complete—the Taliban have launched a blistering campaign to capture new territory, and fears are mounting that Afghan forces will collapse without vital American air support.

President Ashraf Ghani said the government had the capacity to handle the situation, but admitted difficulties lay ahead.

“What we are witnessing is one of the most complicated stages of the transition,” he said in a speech in Kabul.

“Legitimacy is ours; God is with us.”

Taliban victory?

In London, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said most British troops had left Afghanistan, as part of a NATO withdrawal in parallel to the US pullout.

The Taliban, meanwhile, appear to be pressing for a full military victory.

Supposed peace talks between the insurgents and the government in Doha have largely fizzled out after months of deadlock, and the Taliban have captured dozens of new districts since early May. Human Rights Watch said the insurgents were forcing people from their houses in northern areas that they had captured.

Biden pledged to continue supporting the Afghan government and security forces and said thousands of Afghan translators who worked for US forces and face threats from the Taliban would be able to find refuge in the United States.

“There is a home for you in the United States, if you choose,” he said. “We will stand with you, just as you stood with us.”

(AFP)

Iran has begun the process of producing enriched uranium metal, the U.N. atomic watchdog said on Tuesday, a move that could help it develop a nuclear weapon and that three European powers said threatened talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Iran’s steps, which were disclosed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and which Tehran said aimed to develop fuel for a research reactor, also drew criticism from the United States, which called them an “unfortunate step backwards.”

U.S. and European officials made clear that Iran’s decision would complicate, and potentially torpedo, indirect U.S.-Iranian talks seeking to bring both nations back into compliance with the 2015 deal, which was abandoned by former President Donald Trump.

The deal imposed curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme to make it harder for Tehran to develop fissile material for nuclear weapons in return for the lifting of economic sanctions. After Trump withdrew, Iran began violating many of the restrictions.

Tehran has already produced a small amount of uranium metal this year that was not enriched. That is a breach of the deal, which bans all work on uranium metal since it can be used to make the core of a nuclear bomb.

“Today, Iran informed the Agency that UO2 (uranium oxide) enriched up to 20% U–235 would be shipped to the R&D laboratory at the Fuel Fabrication Plant in Esfahan, where it would be converted to UF4 (uranium tetrafluoride) and then to uranium metal enriched to 20% U–235, before using it to manufacture the fuel,” an IAEA statement said.

A confidential IAEA report seen by Reuters said the agency had confirmed that Iran had taken steps to begin the process of producing enriched uranium metal.

Britain, France and Germany said on Tuesday they had “grave concern” about Iran’s decision, which violates the nuclear deal, formally named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“Iran has no credible civilian need for uranium metal R&D and production, which are a key step in the development of a nuclear weapon,” they said in a joint statement issued by Britain’s foreign ministry.

“With its latest steps, Iran is threatening a successful outcome to the Vienna talks despite the progress achieved in six rounds of negotiations,” they said, and urged Iran to return to the talks in the Austrian capital, which began in April and adjourned on June 20. No date has been set for a next round.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Washington was not setting a deadline for the talks, but noted “that as time proceeds Iran’s nuclear advances will have a bearing on our view of returning to the JCPOA.”

Price said the United States found it “worrying” that Iran was continuing to violate the agreement “especially with experiments that have value for nuclear weapons research.

“It’s another unfortunate step backwards for Iran,” he said. Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to the IAEA, noted the agency’s report on Iran’s latest violation of the 2015 deal as well as the Biden administration’s decision to maintain the Iran sanctions reimposed by Trump, also violations of the accord.

“The only way out of this vicious circle is resumption of #ViennaTalks without delay and full restoration of #JCPOA,” he wrote on Twitter.

Source: REUTERS

After American troops withdrew without notifying them, Afghan soldiers guarding the Bagram Air Base have been left with thousands of Taliban prisoners and a fear that the enemy will attack.

The sprawling military complex about 60 kilometres north of the capital, Kabul, was at one point home to tens of thousands of US and allied soldiers, and one of the most important military sites of the two-decade war in Afghanistan.

But the last of the US soldiers quietly left the base last week, effectively completing their withdrawal from Afghanistan and leaving a massive security vacuum that the Afghan military will struggle to fill.

The new commander of the Bagram base, General Mirassadullah Kohistani, on Monday spoke candidly about the challenges ahead, as reporters were given a tour of the largely deserted base.

“You know, if we compare ourselves with the Americans, it’s a big difference,” Kohistani said, admitting his forces could not be as “powerful” as the Americans.

“But according to our capabilities … we are trying to do the best and as much as possible secure and serve all the people.”

The lack of a clear handover or transition plan appears to have made the task even more challenging.

Kohistani said he only knew of the foreign forces’ exit after they had left.

“We did not know of their timeline for departure. They did not tell us when they left.”

The US announced Friday it had completely vacated its biggest airfield in the country in advance of a final withdrawal the Pentagon says will be completed by the end of August.

“We [heard] some rumour that the Americans had left Bagram … and finally by seven o’clock in the morning, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram,” said Kohistani.

Rotting food where restaurants once bustled

The Bagram base is key to the security of the Afghan capital while also providing strategic cover to much of the country’s rugged north, where the Taliban have focused their recent offensives.

Kohistani insists his troops can hold the base from the Taliban and that he has “quite enough” soldiers.

But with roughly 3,000 troops under his command, the figure is a tiny percentage of the number of American and allied forces during its US-led heyday.

For US troops, morale was kept up in the then-buzzing mini-city with swimming pools, cinemas, spas and fast food outlets like Burger King and Pizza Hut.

For Kohistani’s men, the entertainment venues are closed, the warehouses are locked and the shuttered dining facilities offer only the stench of rotten food from boxes of expired meal packs.

In a sign of the challenges the Afghan military faces without US backing, 1,000 troops fighting the Taliban in the country’s north fled into neighbouring Tajikistan on Monday.

Taliban ‘will definitely try to attack here’

At Bagram, Kohistani said he was already receiving reports that the Taliban were making “movements in rural areas”.

One soldier, a private named Rafiullah, offered a clear picture of what he expected would come.

“The enemy are determined and will definitely try to attack here,” Rafiullah said as two Afghan military helicopters took off behind him.

“But we will not give them the chance.”

If or when the Taliban do mount an offensive to take Bagram, one of their targets will undoubtedly be a huge prison that holds up to 5,000 Taliban inmates.

“We haven’t come here to sleep. Everybody here is prepared to secure Bagram. Our morale is high,” insisted Rafiullah.

Another soldier also defiantly said he was ready to fight the Taliban but nevertheless signalled a feeling of unease over a lack of firepower and leadership.

“We will not surrender but we need weapons and strong backing from our leaders,” he said.

Witnessing history since the start of Cold War

If the Taliban do seize control of Bagram, it will be part of a longstanding pattern. The airfield was first built by the Americans for its Afghan ally during the Cold War in the 1950s.

The Soviet Union vastly expanded it after the Red Army invaded Afghanistan in 1979. After their withdrawal, the base was controlled by the Moscow-backed government and later by the shaky mujahideen administration during the 1990s civil war.

It was reported that at one point the Taliban controlled one end of the three-kilometre runway, and the opposition Northern Alliance the other.

Bagram ultimately fell into the Taliban’s hands after they overran large swaths of the country in the mid-1990s.

Following the September 11 attacks and the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Americans took control of the base and used it as the launching pad for air strikes against the Taliban and to protect Afghan forces.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)

Donald Rumsfeld, a forceful U.S. defence secretary who was the main architect of the Iraq war until President George W. Bush replaced him when the United States found itself bogged down after three years of fighting, has died at age 88, his family said in a statement on Wednesday.

“It is with deep sadness that we share the news of the passing of Donald Rumsfeld, an American statesman and devoted husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather,” the statement said. “At 88, he was surrounded by family in his beloved Taos, New Mexico.”

The statement did not say when Rumsfeld died.

Rumsfeld, who ranks with Vietnam War-era defense secretary Robert McNamara as the most powerful men to hold the post, brought charisma and bombast to the Pentagon job, projecting the Bush administration’s muscular approach to world affairs.

With Rumsfeld in charge, U.S. forces swiftly toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein but failed to maintain law and order in the aftermath, and Iraq descended into chaos with a bloody insurgency and violence between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims. U.S.  troops remained in Iraq until 2011, long after he left his post.

Rumsfeld played a leading role ahead of the war in making the case to the world for the March 2003 invasion. He warned of the dangers of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction but no such weapons were ever discovered.

Only McNamara served as defence secretary for longer than Rumsfeld, who had two stints – from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, for whom he also served as White House chief of staff, and from 2001 to 2006 under Bush.

Rumsfeld was known for imperious treatment of some military officers and members of Congress and infighting with other members of the Bush team, including Secretary of State Colin Powell. He also alienated U.S. allies in Europe.

In 2004, Bush twice refused to accept Rumsfeld’s offer to resign after photos surfaced of U.S. personnel abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. The scandal triggered international condemnation of the United States.

The United States faced global condemnation after the photos showed U.S. troops smiling, laughing and giving thumbs up as prisoners were forced into sexually abusive and humiliating positions including a naked human pyramid and simulated sex. One photo showed a prisoner forced to stand on a small box, his head covered in a black hood, with wires attached to his body.

Lightning rod for criticism

Rumsfeld personally authorized harsh interrogation techniques for detainees. The U.S. treatment of detainees in Iraq and foreign terrorism suspects at a special prison set up under Rumsfeld at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, drew international condemnation, with human rights activists and others saying prisoners were tortured.

He was a close ally of Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, who had worked for Rumsfeld during the 1970s Republican presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ford.

Rumsfeld became a lightning rod for criticism and, with the Iraq war largely a stalemate and public support eroding, Bush replaced him in November 2006 over Cheney’s objections.

Days after vowing Rumsfeld would remain for the rest of his term, Bush announced his departure a day after mid-term elections in which Democrats took control of Congress from Bush’s Republicans amid voter anger over the Iraq War.

Robert Gates, a soft-spoken but demanding former CIA director, took over from Rumsfeld in December 2006 and made sweeping strategic and military leadership changes in Iraq.

Many historians and military experts blamed Rumsfeld for decisions that led to difficulties in Iraq. For example, Rumsfeld insisted on a relatively small invasion force, rejecting the views of many generals. The force was then insufficient to stabilize Iraq when Saddam fell.

Rumsfeld also was accused of being slow to recognize the emergence of the insurgency in 2003 and the threat it posed.

The U.S. occupation leader under Rumsfeld, L. Paul Bremer, quickly made two fateful decisions. One dissolved the Iraqi military, putting thousands of armed men on the streets rather than harnessing Iraqi soldiers as a reconstruction force as originally planned.

The second barred from Iraq’s government even junior members of the former ruling Baath Party, essentially emptying the various ministries of the people who made the government operate.

Afghanistan invasion

Rumsfeld also oversaw the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban leaders who had harbored the al Qaeda leaders responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. As he did in Iraq two years later, Rumsfeld sent a small force to Afghanistan, quickly chased the Taliban from power and then failed to establish law and order.

U.S. forces during Rumsfeld’s tenure also were unable to track down Osama bin Laden. The al Qaeda chief slipped past a modest force of U.S. special operations troops and CIA officers along with allied Afghan fighters in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in December 2001. U.S. forces killed him in 2011.

Critics argue that had Rumsfeld devoted more troops to the Afghan effort, bin Laden may have been taken. But as he wrote in “Rumsfeld’s Rules,” his compilation of truisms dating to the 1970s: “If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.”

Another quote from “Rumsfeld’s Rules” was equally apt: “It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.”

Rumsfeld was known for his rollicking news conferences in which he sparred with reporters and offered memorable quotes.

Speaking in 2002 about whether Iraq would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, he said: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Rumsfeld later titled his memoir “Known and Unknown.”

“Stuff happens,” he told reporters in April 2003 amid rampant lawlessness in Baghdad after U.S. troops captured the Iraqi capital.

During his time away from public service, Rumsfeld became wealthy as a successful businessman, serving as chief executive of two Fortune 500 companies. In 1988, he briefly ran for the Republican U.S. presidential nomination.

Rumsfeld also served as a Navy pilot, U.S. NATO ambassador and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He and wife Joyce had three children.

(REUTERS)