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Haiti earthquake survivors, stranded by storm, search for shelter

Survivors of a powerful earthquake in Haiti scrambled for shelter, food and medical supplies Wednesday as officials acknowledged that the deadly temblor had disrupted vaccination efforts, and the aftermath of Tropical Storm Grace continued to snarl already feeble relief efforts, worsening a dire humanitarian crisis and fueling anger.

Heavy rainfall Tuesday battered temporary shelters set up since the weekend, drenching people stranded by Saturday’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake. Some slept out in the open. And while the sun was out Wednesday, flooding and mudslides cut off roads, blocking urgently needed aid deliveries and stalling efforts to search for those still missing or trapped beneath the rubble.

Hospitals in the Tiburon peninsula were overwhelmed, struggling to secure sufficient medical supplies, including anesthetics, or to find enough staff members to treat the badly injured. At least 24 health-care facilities were damaged, including several that were destroyed. Other hospitals, USAID said, were effectively rendered “nonfunctional” because they lacked adequate access to electricity and water.

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Haiti’s health ministry urged residents to donate blood. Didier Hérold Louis, the head of Haiti’s national ambulance center, told Haitian radio station Magik9 on Wednesday that it has been inundated with calls, but lacks nurses, drivers and first aid workers.

Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, told reporters at a virtual news conference Wednesday that the needs in Haiti are “immense.” She said that there remained logistical challenges and that a lack of clean drinking water and sanitation increased the risk of diarrhea, respiratory illnesses and skin diseases.

“The earthquake aftermath, combined with the covid-19 pandemic, presents a very challenging situation for the people of Haiti,” Etienne said.

Saturday’s quake has also disrupted vaccination efforts in Haiti, where vaccine doses are limited and just 0.17 percent of people in the country of more than 11 million have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to Oxford University’s Our World in Data.

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Ciro Ugarte, director of health emergencies for the Pan American Health Organization, said that vaccination efforts had been accelerating in recent weeks. Then the earthquake hit, disrupting the vaccine rollout across the country.

“Understandably, the priority of the health personnel and health authorities is to save lives and reduce the impact of the earthquake in many areas,” Ugarte said, “and also, a lot of health-care workers are overwhelmed treating trauma patients … but also treating other diseases and trying to re-establish the health services that have been impacted by the earthquake.”

Officials raised the death toll Tuesday to 1,941, though that figure was expected to rise. Nearly 10,000 people were injured, according to Haiti’s civil protection agency, and more than 83,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.

Saturday’s earthquake compounded woes in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, which was already struggling with a coronavirus outbreak and a scarce vaccine supply, gang violence that aid agencies have warned threatens to imperil relief efforts and political turmoil after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last month.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Tuesday that it was “too early to tell” what impact the earthquake would have on the political disorder in the Caribbean nation. He said that there were no plans to send U.S. military personnel to the country.

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UNICEF has estimated that the powerful earthquake affected about 1.2 million people, including 540,000 children, and damaged or leveled some 84,000 homes. Among those searching for survivors was a 10-year-old boy who pulled three of his aunts from the rubble, it said.

Bruno Maes, UNICEF’s representative in Haiti, said in a tweet that 20 schools in one of the country’s administrative regions were reduced to rubble, while 74 others were partially destroyed. He shared photos of school desks covered in debris and gaping holes in classroom walls mere weeks before the start of the school year.

“Countless Haitian families who have lost everything due to the earthquake are now living literally with their feet in the water due to the flooding,” he wrote in another tweet, sharing a video of a flooded street.

UNICEF estimated that $15 million is needed to respond to the most urgent needs.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said Tuesday that the United Nations set aside $8 million in emergency funds for health care, water and shelter in the country, calling for countries to step up foreign aid to prevent a “humanitarian disaster.”

In L’Asile, a town in the remote region of Nippes near the quake’s epicenter, roughly 90 percent of homes were affected by the quake and about half were reduced to rubble, said Christy Delafield, a spokeswoman for the global aid organization Mercy Corps, who visited the area, at times driving with her team through a foot of water.

Among the challenges, she said, is that the roads leading into the area cannot support large trucks, meaning several smaller vehicles would be needed to shuttle supplies, and that buildings such as churches and schools that might have served as shelters were also damaged.

“There was one school that we visited that was only partially destroyed, where there were about 200 people sheltering there overnight,” Delafield said, “and they said that more people are arriving each night.”

Aid was slowly trickling into the country Wednesday, including from Puerto Rico, but some residents were frustrated by the discrepancy between what Prime Minister Ariel Henry promised over the weekend would be rapid relief efforts and the reality on the ground.

Haiti was still recovering from a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake in 2010 near the capital of Port-au-Prince that killed some 200,000 people when Saturday’s temblor struck.

“It’s just one thing after another,” Delafield said. “Talk about the number of shocks and stresses that Haiti has been though. … It’s devastating and incredibly hard.”

Published : August 19, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Ellen Francis, Amanda Coletta

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U.S. troops to remain as long as needed to evacuate Americans, Biden says

President Joe Biden said Wednesday in an interview with ABC News George Stephanopoulos that U.S. troops will stay in Afghanistan beyond Aug. 31 if necessary to evacuate any remaining Americans who wish to leave the country.

“If there are American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out,” Biden said.

The United States and other countries operated evacuation flights from Afghanistan into Wednesday, though not all those seeking to leave the country were able to reach Kabul’s international airport. The Taliban erected checkpoints throughout the capital and near the airport’s entrance, beating some Afghans who attempted to cross and intimidating others, according to reports and an eyewitness account. In one case, a former interpreter for the Australian army was shot by a Taliban fighter as many Afghans crowded at the airport gates.

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The Biden administration has repeatedly said that all U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of August. But the swift Taliban takeover this week caused a chaotic rush to evacuate foreign nationals and their Afghan allies. Estimates place the number of Americans in Afghanistan between 11,000 and 15,000.Asked whether some troops might stay beyond the end of the month if necessary to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies, Biden said: “It depends on where they are and whether we can ramp these numbers up to five [thousand] to 7,000 a day coming out. If that’s the case, they’ll all be out.”

Biden’s response to whether that applied to Afghans appeared more equivocal. He said an estimated 50,000 to 65,000 Afghan allies of the United States – including people who helped U.S. efforts and their families – remain in the country.

“The commitment holds to get everyone out that, in fact, we can get out and everyone who should come out,” he said. “And that’s the objective. That’s what we’re doing now. That’s the path we’re on. And I think we’ll get there.”

“Americans should understand that we’re going to try to get it done before Aug. 31,” he said.

If that doesn’t happen, however, Biden made clear that the decision to keep troops in the country would hinge on whether American citizens remained there.

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Biden defended his handling of the U.S. withdrawal, arguing that there was no way to pull out of the country without “chaos ensuing.”

“The idea that, somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens,” Biden told Stephanopoulos in his first interview since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, according to an excerpt released by ABC.

The United States has evacuated about 5,000 people from Kabul, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday. The situation at the airport is stable, Milley said. But earlier Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul warned that the U.S. government “cannot ensure safe passage” to the airport. The Taliban has erected checkpoints throughout the capital and beat and harassed some Afghans who had attempted to reach the airport.

The State Department said Wednesday that it is negotiating with the Taliban to ensure safe passage to the airport.

Meanwhile, Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday defended the military’s efforts to secure the Kabul airport and deflected questions about recent decisions at their first public appearance since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.

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“There will be plenty of time for postmortems on this topic,” Milley said. “But right now is not that time.”

“Right now, there are troops at risk, and we in the United States military fully intend to successfully evacuate all American citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan,” he added. “They are our priority number one.”

Milley said the United States will get out as many Afghans who supported the U.S. military “as possible,” a tacit acknowledgment the military knows it may not evacuate them all.

He said the current security situation at the airport is stable, with hundreds of evacuees flowing through airport gates each hour. Milley said the United States has evacuated some 5,000 people from the Kabul airport so far. But threats remain, he said, and the U.S. military will respond if they emerge.

Austin said that the military is sending additional teams to the airport’s gates to assist State Department personnel who are processing evacuees. Asked if the military might extend its security perimeter outside to contend with Taliban checkpoints, Austin indicated such a move is unlikely.

“The forces that we have are focused on securing the airfield,” Austin said. “You know how important that is, and what happens if we lose the ability to provide that security. And so I don’t want to detract from that.”

Instead, State Department officials are negotiating with the Taliban to secure safe access to the airport.

Austin, who previously served as an Army general, also addressed veterans of the war.

“I’m hearing strong views from all sides on … this issue,” Austin said. “And that’s probably the way that it should be. What’s important is that each of us will work our way through this in our own way. And we need to respect that, and we need to give one another the time and space to help do it.”

Also Wednesday, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani surfaced in the United Arab Emirates days after fleeing Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf nation’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. He denied accusations that he fled the country with huge sums of cash.

“The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds,” the statement released Wednesday evening said.

It remains unclear where the 72-year-old Ghani is in the UAE and whether he plans to remain in the country. Previous reports indicated that he had fled the Afghan capital, Kabul, just as the Taliban entered the city, heading with his family and senior officials to neighboring Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, and possibly then to Oman.

Inside Afghanistan, Ghani has been widely condemned by even his staunchest supporters for abandoning the country as the Taliban took control. In a Facebook post Monday, Ghani defended his actions, insisting that he left Afghanistan to prevent “bloodshed.” He described his departure as “a hard choice” and said the Taliban had “won with the judgment of their swords and guns.”

Russian officials in Kabul have charged that Ghani fled with four cars and a helicopter filled with cash, the Russian news agency RIA reported Monday. Ghani has not responded to the allegation.

“Four cars were packed with money, and they tried to cram another bag of cash into the helicopter. Not all the cash managed to squeeze in, and some of the money was left lying on the airfield,” the news agency quoted Nikita Ishchenko, a spokesperson for the Russian Embassy, as saying.

On Wednesday, the Afghan Embassy in Tajikistan urged Interpol to serve an arrest warrant for Ghani and two senior aides, Hamdallah Mohib and Fazal Mahmood Fazli, for allegedly stealing the country’s wealth, according to Afghanistan’s ToloNews network.

Published : August 19, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Rachel Pannett, Erin Cunningham, Jennifer Hassan, Claire Parker, Dan Lamothe

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Taliban shifts focus to governing, but protests, empty coffers and isolation pose challenges

KABUL – Rumbles of resistance to the Talibans grip on Afghanistan emerged Wednesday as protests erupted in at least two cities, drawing a violent response from the militants that laid bare the challenges that await as the group attempts to transform itself from an insurgency into a government.

The crackdown on the protests came as Taliban fighters were again accused of using gunfire and violence during their struggle to control crowds at Kabul’s international airport, where thousands of people have gathered in recent days hoping to find seats on evacuation flights.

And in Bamian province – home of the Buddha statues famously blown up during the Taliban’s last run in power – locals said militants had destroyed the memorial to an anti-Taliban leader, an allegation that undercut the group’s pledges to avoid retribution.

Since Taliban fighters overran Kabul on Sunday, the group has sought to convince audiences at home and abroad that it does not plan a return to the brutal rule imposed in an earlier era, favoring instead inclusivity and peace. The pledges, made in the soft light of victory, have left many unconvinced.

But intentions aside, the Taliban faces myriad challenges with the basics of governing. The group inherits a country struggling with drought, the coronavirus pandemic and unrelenting poverty. The state’s coffers are empty, its overseas funds are frozen and many aid agencies have suspended activities because of the Taliban’s advance.

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Foreign governments, meanwhile, have hedged on whether they will offer the Taliban recognition. At home, officials with the ousted government have pledged to start a campaign of “resistance” to Taliban rule.

“The transition from being a warring group that uses, among other things, terror to achieve its goals to a government that will be held to account and must learn to leave space for a plurality of opinions, politics and lifestyles, will not be easy,” Martine van Bijlert, a researcher and co-founder of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, wrote in an essay this week.

Adding to the uncertainty, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said in a videotaped statement Wednesday that he intended to return to Afghanistan, days after he disappeared from Kabul as the Taliban closed in. Ghani said he was in the United Arab Emirates. A government statement said he been welcomed there on “humanitarian grounds.”

Ghani, 72, denied reports that he had taken large sums of money with him as he left Kabul. He fled, he said, because he feared the Taliban would hang him should he stay, just as the group did to the former Soviet-backed president the last time it conquered Kabul, in 1996.

A day earlier in Afghanistan, Ghani’s former vice president, Amrullah Saleh, declared himself the “caretaker” president and said on Twitter that he was “reaching out to all leaders to secure their support & consensus.”

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“JOIN THE RESISTANCE,” he wrote in another tweet, amid reports he had fled to the Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul, and was joining forces with Ahmad Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the anti-Taliban commander who was assassinated by al-Qaeda two days before 9/11.

Afghanistan’s central bank governor said Wednesday that the Taliban would only have access to a fraction of a percentage of the country’s $9 billion international reserve, most of which is held in banks in the United States. The Biden administration froze Afghanistan’s funds in recent days in an attempt to gain leverage over the militants. But that move also risks strangling the economy of Afghanistan, a deeply impoverished country that is heavily dependent on U.S. and international aid.

In a lengthy thread on Twitter, the central bank governor, Ajmal Ahmady, detailed the location of the reserve funds, because, he said, he had heard that Taliban members were asking staffers at the central bank “about the location of the assets.”

“If this is true – it is clear they urgently need to add an economist on their team,” Ahmady wrote. “Taliban and their backers should have foreseen this result,” he added. “Taliban won militarily – but now have to govern. It is not easy.”

Save the Children said Wednesday that it was “extremely concerned” about the possibility that children in the drought-stricken country would face a severe hunger crisis as aid organizations suspended work after the Taliban assumed control.

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“Even before the Taliban advancement, Afghanistan had the second-highest number of people facing emergency hunger levels in the world. Half of all children under five were expected to suffer from acute malnutrition this year and require specialized treatment to survive,” the group said in a statement.

As the Taliban’s leaders reckoned with the practical complexities of paying government employees and feeding the country, political challenges flared up as well. In Jalalabad, east of Kabul, dozens of people marched Wednesday with Afghanistan’s national flag – a black, red and green banner. The demonstration was a challenge to the Taliban, which fights under its own white banner inscribed in black letters stating the Islamic profession of faith.

Videos of the protest that were circulated on social media showed protesters marching as the sounds of gunfire could be heard. Al Jazeera reported that two protesters were killed. Danish Karokhil, the executive editor of the Pajhwok Afghan News Agency, said Taliban fighters had fired at protesters and beaten one of the agency’s video reporters after asking why he had taken footage of the protests.

Karokhil, in a telephone interview, complained that Taliban officials had not apologized, and he urged them to keep their commitments to respect freedom of speech.

“We want the Taliban to permit us to cover the protest, ordinary life, corruption or any incompetence of the new upcoming government,” he said. Large demonstrations featuring protesters carrying the national flag were also held in Khost, southeast of Kabul, according to local media.

In the capital, another journalist was attacked by Taliban fighters Wednesday at Hamid Karzai International Airport while trying to interview people attempting to flee the country, according to the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association.

The chaos at the airport – where thousands of desperate people have tried to navigate both Taliban checkpoints and a disorganized evacuation effort mounted by the United States and other Western nations – has emerged as another early test of the militants’ ability to manage a crisis.

Ahmadullah Wasiq, a Taliban spokesman, said in a voice message to reporters Wednesday that the movement was “concerned and unhappy” over the alleged attack on the journalist. “We are trying to investigate,” he said. “We want to take legal action against the perpetrators.”

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Wednesday that the United States is “in discussions” with the Taliban “trying to ensure not only safe passage for American citizens, but for everybody trying to get to the airport” to leave the country.

“We have heard all the stories . . . about checkpoints, harassments, difficulties” and are “trying to work through those issues as best we can,” Sherman said at a State Department briefing.

Earlier Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul posted a security alert for Americans trying to get to the airport, instructing them to enter through the military gate controlled by U.S. forces but saying that “the United States government cannot ensure safe passage” to that point.

Although Sherman said the State Department had received no reports of American citizens prevented by the Taliban from reaching the airport, there have been numerous reports of Afghans, with or without the proper documentation, being blocked from reaching the gate.

Locals in Bamian, west of Kabul, said Wednesday that Taliban fighters had blown up a statue of Abdul Ali Mazari, a leader of the Shiite Hazara minority who was executed by the Taliban in 1995.

“They dug a hole in the statue and filled it with explosive devices. The statue was located close to a Taliban headquarters,” said Rajab Ali Balkhshi Nizhad, a resident.

Both the location and target of the attack were symbolic. Two decades ago in Bamian, the Taliban blew up two massive Buddha statues carved into a cliff and dating to the 6th century AD. The Hazaras, who resisted the Taliban in the 1990s, have faced persecution from the Sunni militants.

Nizhad said Taliban fighters had stolen people’s vehicles as well as ancient artifacts kept in a warehouse near the destroyed Buddha statues “These people are all armed and can stop me and take my vehicles away,” he said. “Bamian is very chaotic.”

Mullawi Faroq, a local Taliban official in Bamian, denied that the movement’s fighters had destroyed the statue of the Hazara leader, saying “spoilers” were trying to create division between residents and the Taliban.

But he acknowledged residents’ complaints that there had been chaos and disorder in the days after the Taliban took over Bamian.

“We received many complaints,” he said. But, he added, Taliban fighters who had arrived from outside the province had since been redeployed elsewhere, and the situation had improved.

“We have brought order and security,” he said.

Published : August 19, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Ezzatullah Mehrdad, Kareem Fahim

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South Korea premier sees 70% first-shot vaccination by end of September

South Korea wants to have 70% of its population vaccinated with at least a first shot by the end of September, the premier said, speeding up one of the lowest inoculation rates among major Asian economies as cases surge to record highs.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, at the forefront of the government’s pandemic policy, said Tuesday that South Korea would keep funneling aid to small businesses hurt by strict social distancing measures aimed at stemming a record Covid-19 wave powered by the delta variant. Kim indicated Seoul would do all it can to avoid a lockdown.

“We’re looking at various ways, such as cross-inoculation with other companies, in order to reach a 70% first-shot vaccination rate by the end of September,” Kim said in an interview with Bloomberg, referring to the mix of Covid-19 vaccines from suppliers including Moderna and Pfize.

“If we were to be ambitious, we could reach a 70% rate for second shots by the end of October or at least mid-November,” said Kim, who took office earlier this year and is a key player in virus policy for President Moon Jae-in until his single, five-year term ends in about nine months.

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Daily new virus cases started to surge in July with the emergence of the delta variant while the vaccine rollout was slowed by supply shortages and shipment delays. Inoculations have sped up in recent weeks with about 20% of the population fully vaccinated, up from 15% last week. Previously, it took six weeks to rise from 10% to 15%.

But South Korea lags Japan, which started its inoculations at about the same time and now has 38% of its population fully vaccinated. Singapore leads Asia with 73% fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

South Korea’s once lauded virus containment strategy, which operated without a lockdown, is now facing another major challenge but Kim indicated the country could weather the current storm without turning to lockdowns.

“One of the reasons why we think Korea has succeeded in prevention is because we didn’t turn to extreme measures like lockdowns,” he said, adding the approach has limited the economic damage.

South Korea will also be looking to support its powerful semiconductor industry to help its economy as the pandemic wanes, Kim said. Aid would be extended to other areas, and up to about $17,000 would be provided to small business owners, starting from Tuesday, he added.

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South Korea is willing to stand by its U.S. ally even when it pursues supply chains for components that don’t involve China, Kim said. “It’s impossible for a single country to monopolize the industry, and thus we are happy to participate the U.S.-led global supply chain that excludes China, which America envisioned, as a partner.”

Kim, 63, took part in rallies in the 1980s to bring down authoritarian rule. He became a prominent figure in Moon’s progressive camp and is seen as a moderate. He has not tossed his hat into the ring for the 2022 presidential race and, when asked if he might consider a 2027 run, said: “Maybe I’m too old at that time.”

In the interview, Kim extended an olive branch to North Korea and Japan, and spoke more about the chip industry.

Here are some highlights:

North Korea:

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“I hope that the North Korean leadership makes the right decision to have dialogue when the leaders of South Korea and the U.S. say we could use both diplomatic and engagement methods to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.”

Japan:

“Korea and Japan are countries in Northeast Asia that share the values of human rights, democracy and a market economy. We should overcome the obstacles and should talk for the future. I hope we could have that after the election in Japan.”

China:

“I can tell you clearly that the ROK-U.S. alliance is the most crucial foundation of our foreign strategy and security. However, China is our close neighbor that shares a maritime border with us and is our biggest trading partner. Therefore, we must pursue a pragmatic relation with Beijing. Having said that, we have no intention of making advances that risk our fundamental framework of the ROK-U.S. alliance,’ he said, referring to South Korea by its formal name.

Semiconductors:

“The semiconductor industry has a strategic importance in our economy, thus it would be natural for us to support industry players such as Samsung and SK Hynix, which have market dominance in the semiconductor field.”

Partisanship:

“I’d like to stress to both conservatives and progressives, that a bird can only fly high when it has both wings. I’d like to request our political leaders not to be afraid of making compromises.”

Published : August 19, 2021

By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jeong-Ho Lee, Jihye Lee