Johnson, Biden vow to work together on Afghan situation after Taliban takeover
Just over a week, the Taliban, which the United States overthrew in 2001, went from winning control of its first provincial capital to taking over Kabul, capital of the war-torn Asian country.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.S. President Joe Biden spoke via phone Tuesday evening about the current situation in Afghanistan following Taliban takeover, Downing Street said in a statement.
The two leaders welcomed their countries’ cooperation in recent days to help evacuate their nationals, current and former staff, and others from Afghanistan, it said.
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“They resolved to continue working closely together on this in the days and weeks ahead to allow as many people as possible to leave the country,” it added.
Johnson and Biden also agreed on the need for the global community to come together to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.
Britain’s plans include increased humanitarian aid to the region and resettlement of refugees, it said.
Britain’s Home Office said on Tuesday night that up to 20,000 Afghan refugees will be offered a route to set up homes in Britain over five years.
In their phone conversation, the two leaders also agreed to hold a virtual Group of Seven (G7) leaders’ meeting in the coming days to discuss the Afghanistan situation.
In a televised speech on Monday, Biden stood by his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan while acknowledging Kabul’s collapse to the Taliban came much sooner than Washington had anticipated.
Just over a week, the Taliban, which the United States overthrew in 2001, went from winning control of its first provincial capital to taking over Kabul, capital of the war-torn Asian country.
Johnson said on Sunday that the U.S. decision to pull out of Afghanistan has “accelerated things.”
The floods caused by heavy rainfall have killed 77 people in three Turkish provinces in the northern Black Sea region, and the death toll is expected to rise as rescue workers continue searching for more victims.
The death toll of Turkey’s devastating flash floods rose to 77 on Tuesday as emergency crews were searching for more victims in the country’s northern Black Sea region.
The floods, caused by heavy rainfall on Aug. 11, have killed 77 people in three provinces, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (AFAD) said in a statement.
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The worst-hit province is Kastamonu where at least 62 people have lost their lives in the town of Bozkurt. Fourteen others died in Sinop, along with one more person in Bartin.
Seven people are treated in hospitals while 34 people are still unaccounted for, the AFAD noted.
Rescue and relief efforts are continuing in the flood-hit areas, with some 8,100 personnel, 1,000 vehicles, 21 helicopters and 81 ambulances, the emergency agency added.
Torrential rains caused flooding that demolished homes, collapsed bridges, swept away cars and cut power supplies in the region.
On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Bozkurt and announced that the places affected by the floods had been declared disaster zones and thus are slated for government aid.
The army has also deployed soldiers in the disaster zone to help search and rescue operations while an amphibious construction unit was building bridges, TV footage showed.
Aerial photo taken on Aug. 15, 2021 shows the debris left by flooding in the flood-hit area in the town of Abana, Kastamonu province, Turkey.
Mountainous areas along Turkey’s Black Sea coast are prone to floods in the summer, but this time the damage is worse than that in the previous years.
Some experts in Turkey said that besides climate change, interference with rivers and improper construction on river banks were among the main reasons of the massive damage.
“Buildings have been constructed near the river bank, on the waterfront as well. If you narrow the 400 metres wide bank to 15, waters will mount up to 7-10 metres and you will have this disaster,” paleoseismology specialist Ramazan Demirtas said on his Twitter account.
“Stream beds should not be zoned for construction in any way,” this expert indicated, calling on the government and local authorities not to hand out housing permits in those areas.
Social media users posted videos of the flash floods in Bozkurt showing the swelling Ezine river dragging logs, cars, debris and overflowing roads as citizens were trying desperately to escape the rising waters.
Photo taken on Aug. 14, 2021 shows a damaged house in the flood-hit area in the town of Abana, Kastamonu province, Turkey.
The flash floods brought chaos to Black Sea provinces just as the unprecedented wildfires that had raged through southern touristic coastal regions for two weeks, which killed eight people. Firefighters managed to bring some 275 fires under control in several provinces.
Rescue workers search for survivors in the flood-hit town of Bozkurt, Kastamonu province, Turkey, Aug. 14, 2021.
“We will have to talk with Taliban,” says EU foreign policy chief
EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said on Tuesday that there are many lessons to be learned over Afghanistan and the Talibans takeover, adding that the EU will have to talk with the Taliban.
The European Union (EU) foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said on Tuesday that there are many lessons to be learned over Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover, adding that the EU will have to talk with the Taliban as it has won the war.
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“The Taliban have won the war, so we will have to talk with them,” Borrell said after an emergency video conference of EU foreign ministers Tuesday afternoon, adding that this does not mean moving quickly to officially recognize the Taliban’s government.
“I just said that we have to talk with them about everything, even to try to protect women and girls. Even for that, you have to get in touch with them,” Borrell said.
“We have to get in touch with the authorities in Kabul, whatever they are,” Borrell noted, “in order to engage in a dialogue, as soon as necessary, to prevent a humanitarian and a potential migratory disaster.”
Josep Borrell, the foreign policy chief of the European Union (on screen) addresses a Security Council meeting on UN-EU cooperation via video link at the UN headquarters in New York, June 10, 2021.
Borrell added that any cooperation by the EU with the new government of Afghanistan “will be conditioned on a peaceful and inclusive settlement and respect for the fundamental rights of all Afghans, including women, youth and persons belonging to minorities,” as well as respect for other commitments such as fighting against corruption and preventing the use of Afghan territory by terrorists.
He said the new reality in Afghanistan comes 20 years after the beginning of the military operation launched by the United States with the support of NATO in October 2001. The original military and political commitment, which is to destroy the al-Qaida terrorist group, shifted to the nation-building of a modern state in Afghanistan.
“The first part of the mission succeeded, and the second did not,” he said.
Afghan Taliban fighters are seen in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Aug. 16, 2021.
Trudeau says Canada has no plans to recognize Taliban as Afghan legitimate govt
“Our focus right now is on getting people out of Afghanistan and the Taliban need to ensure free access to people to get to the airport,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday that his government has no plans to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
“Canada has no plans to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan. When they were in government 20 years ago, Canada did not recognize them,” said Trudeau, who is currently campaigning for re-election after he launched the election on Sunday.
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“Our focus right now is on getting people out of Afghanistan and the Taliban need to ensure free access to people to get to the airport,” Trudeau said.
“We’re working with our allies on what Canada as part of the international community can do to stabilize the situation, protect civilians, and put an end to the violence. This includes taking leadership by bringing Afghans to safety in Canada,” he said.
Kabul fell to the Taliban on Sunday.
Two aircraft carrying diplomats, troops and Afghans from Kabul landed in Canada Monday night.
Tuesday morning, the Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed that one flight landed in Toronto carrying Afghans who qualified to come to Canada under the government’s recently announced special immigration measures for former interpreters and embassy staff who helped Canadians in Afghanistan.
The second flight landed in Ottawa and included returning staff from the Canadian embassy in Kabul.
U.S. says Taliban prepared to provide safe passage of civilians to airport
The United States believes the evacuation underway in Kabul could last until the end of this month, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
It is still too early to judge whether the Taliban is the legitimate governing power in the country, he said.
The Taliban told the United States that they would provide safe passage of civilians to Kabul airport, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday.
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“The Taliban have informed us that they are prepared to provide the safe passage of civilians to the airport. And we intend to hold them to that commitment,” Sullivan told reporters in a White House briefing.
He said the United States believes the evacuation underway in Kabul could last until the end of this month. “We’re talking to them (the Taliban) about what the exact timetable is for how this will all play out.”
Sullivan said it is still too early to judge whether the Taliban is the legitimate governing power in the country.
“Right now, there is a chaotic situation in Kabul where we don’t even have the establishment of a governing authority,” he said.
“Ultimately, it’s going to be up to the Taliban to show the rest of the world who they are and how they intend to proceed. The track record has not been good, but it’s premature to address that question at this point,” he added.
Earlier in the day, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said that U.S. commanders on the ground had discussions with the Taliban outside the airport, without providing further details.
Over 4,000 U.S. troops would be on the ground by the end of Tuesday to support the evacuation mission, and U.S. troops had no hostile interactions with the Taliban, according to U.S. Army Major General Hank Taylor.
He said Kabul airport remains secure, and 5,000 to 9,000 people could be evacuated per day.
President Joe Biden, facing mounting criticisms from the public and lawmakers over the chaotic evacuation, said Monday that he stands by his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan while acknowledging Kabul’s collapse came much sooner than Washington had anticipated.
Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani left the country on Sunday, while the Taliban forces entered the capital of Kabul and took control of the presidential palace.
Taliban fighters are seen on a military vehicle in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Aug. 17, 2021.
The number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia crossed 8.86 million, with 84,330 new cases reported on Tuesday, lower than Monday’s tally of 85,308.
There were 2,331 additional deaths, increasing from Monday’s 2,298 and taking total coronavirus deaths in Asean to 193,394.
Indonesia reported 20,741 new cases and 1,180 deaths on Tuesday, bringing cumulative cases in that country to 3,892,479 patients and a total 120,013 deaths so far.
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo proposed a budget of 2,700 trillion rupiah, or THB6.2 trillion, for social and economic recovery while aiming to achieve economic growth of 5.5 per cent in the next fiscal year.
Meanwhile, Vietnam reported 9,605 new cases and 331 deaths, bringing cumulative cases there to 293,301 patients and a total 6,472 deaths so far.
The government has extended lockdown measures in Ho Chi Minh City until at least August 31 to curb the spreading Delta variant.
Many workers in HCM City have been out of their jobs due to business shutdowns, while authorities have been asking them to refrain from leaving the city and going to their hometowns to prevent the virus from spreading to other provinces.
Taliban says to form inclusive govt in Afghanistan
The Taliban spokesman said Afghanistan will have a strong and Islamic government and wants to have good relations with everybody to develop the economy and achieve prosperity.
The Taliban did not want to have any internal or external enemies, and intended to form an inclusive government in Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman said here on Tuesday.
At its first press conference since the Taliban’s takeover of most parts of Afghanistan on Sunday, the group’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said they do not want any internal or external enemies, and they want to have good relations with everybody to develop the economy and achieve prosperity.
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“Afghanistan will have a strong, Islamic government,” he said.
The spokesman promised to ensure the safety of people who worked with the United States and allied forces, adding that those whose families were waiting at the Kabul airport would be safe if they returned homes.
He said Afghanistan’s interactions with foreign countries would continue, and the Taliban would use the country’s natural resources for reconstruction.
Afghanistan will be drug-free if the international community provides alternative crops for the country, he added.
“All borders are under Taliban’s control.”
He also said the Taliban will allow women in Afghanistan to work and study based on the Islamic law, and they will be offered with all rights within the Islamic principles, because women are vital parts of the society.
Afghan Taliban fighters stand on a military vehicle in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Aug. 16, 2021.
“We have registered 1,941 deaths: 1,597 in the South, 205 in GrandAnse, 137 in Nippes and 2 in the Northwest,” said the agency.
The death toll from a powerful earthquake that struck southwest Haiti on Saturday climbed to 1,941, the Caribbean island’s Civil Protection Agency reported on Tuesday.
The 7.2-magnitude quake also left more than 9,900 people injured, the agency said via Twitter, adding that rescue operations continue in the hardest-hit areas.
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“We have registered 1,941 deaths: 1,597 in the South, 205 in Grand’Anse, 137 in Nippes and 2 in the Northwest,” said the agency.
Most of the injuries took place in the South where more than 80 percent of fatalities were concentrated.
The earthquake was one of the strongest to ever hit the country, leaving numerous deaths and injuries in its wake, as well as destroyed houses and buildings, leading to the collapse of the island’s hospital network.
According to the Civil Protection Agency, more than 84,000 homes were damaged or destroyed and some 60,000 people were displaced.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday pledged the world body’s support for Haiti in the aftermath of the massive earthquake.
“I have a message to the people of Haiti: you are not alone. We will stand by your side and support you every step of the way out of this crisis,” Guterres said in a statement.
Taliban says it will be more tolerant toward women. Some fear otherwise.
In some parts of Afghanistan, including Kabul, a generation of girls grew up in a world completely different from the one their parents knew.
The Taliban’s return to the city and consolidation of power this week appeared to bring those nearly two decades of change, including hard-won rights for women, crashing down.
Friba, who fled from Kunduz, a northern provincial capital, to Kabul this month in the face of the Taliban’s rapid advance, only to find herself living under the Taliban anyway, described the whiplash that many women who built lives in a new Afghanistan now face. “You are outside working with the community, with girls, with women – but suddenly, you go in a prison and you can’t do anything for anyone,” she told The Washington Post. “Now every Afghan woman [is] in prison in their room. They cannot go outside. They cannot be like before.”
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The Taliban, wary of once again governing as an international pariah, has tried to strike a more conciliatory tone this time around. “We assure the international community that there will be no discrimination against women, but, of course, within the frameworks we have,” spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said at a news conference in Kabul on Tuesday.
Earlier Tuesday, clips of female journalists for Afghanistan’s ToloNews broadcasting live from a Kabul street and interviewing a Taliban representative circulated around the world – offering an early sign of a Taliban transformed.
Still, accounts of discriminatory practices, and of the militant group resorting to its old, brutal ways, have emerged in recent weeks. Many Afghan women and their foreign allies are waiting nervously.
“They are worried that they will be pushed back at least a century,” said Roya Rahmani, who became Afghanistan’s first female envoy to Washington in 2018.
The last time the Taliban controlled the country, from 1996 to 2001, the group used severe methods to enforce an extreme interpretation of sharia law. Women were forced to wear burqas that covered the entire face and body, and those who went unaccompanied in public places faced beatings. Schools for girls were shuttered.
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Hosna Jalil was 9 when U.S.-led forces invaded and the Taliban fell in 2001.
Images of terror from her early childhood remain etched in her mind: Men accused of crimes, naked, their face painted black, being driven around her village in the back of a pickup truck. Hands being cut off. Women being stoned – for going shopping without a man, for example, or committing adultery, she said. A “sense of ownership” by Taliban members, who could pick out any young girl from any house.
After the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, schools opened to girls. Jalil remembers dancing. “We had the chance to go to school – and to go to school without the fear,” she said.
In the years since, foreign funding poured into Afghanistan for projects to empower women and girls. U.S. politicians often cited the need to protect women’s rights as a justification for continuing to fight, even as the war came under criticism as a costly quagmire.
Though women continued to face discrimination and violence in the war-torn country, freedoms multiplied after 2001. By 2020, about a quarter of Afghan members of parliament were women. Roughly 40 percent of students in Afghanistan were female in 2020, according to USAID figures.
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Jalil attended the American University of Afghanistan, and went on to become a deputy minister of interior affairs and a deputy minister of women’s affairs. She was the first woman elevated to a senior Interior Ministry post.
Especially for urban women such as Jalil, who were the main recipients of newfound freedoms, the future is uncertain.
“We worked, not for ourselves because we believe that our next generations, our little girls – they would have a better childhood,” she said. “But that’s gone.”
While the Taliban has struck a new tone, it has shown little appetite for political freedoms. And a gulf between the pledges of its spokesmen and the actions of fighters on the ground has been on stark display.
In areas under Taliban rule late last year, public beatings and executions remained routine – and women were largely absent from public life. Some provinces in Taliban territory lacked even a single school for girls.
Early Tuesday, Friba, who asked to be identified by her first name out of fear for her safety, stopped sending messages to The Post, saying she had been advised to scrub her phone of English communications in case fighters seized it.
One Afghan women’s rights activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity over safety concerns, said she and others who had been encouraged by the United States to speak their minds were now in danger. “We were the ones who raised our voices for years,” she said.
Some in the capital are uncertain of what the Taliban’s return will mean. On some Kabul streets on Monday, little appeared to have changed, and women walked through the streets in colorful, fashionable clothing. Videos circulated online of a handful of women reportedly protesting, holding up signs on copy paper, for a share in the government.
But Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, founder and chief executive of the International Civil Society Action Network, which has partner organizations in Afghanistan, said she had received reports in recent days that women who tried to go to work at public-facing jobs in the western city of Herat were told to return home.
Reports have emerged in recent days of families being forced to hand over their daughters to marry Taliban fighters in areas controlled by the militant group. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, called the allegations false, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen told the BBC’s Yalda Hakim on Sunday that the group had been allowing women and girls to pursue education in areas they had taken over. Pressed about reports from Herat that Taliban fighters turned away women who tried to enter the university there over the weekend, Shaheen insisted that such behavior violated Taliban policy and individual allegations would be investigated.
In a tweet on Monday, Mohammad Naeem, spokesman for the Taliban’s political office, posted a video he said depicted a Taliban-aligned scholar telling a hospital’s medical staff, including women, to continue working as usual.
Jalil warned observers around the world not to trust the group’s “reassuring messages.”
Aware of the vulnerability of women under Taliban rule, international rights organizations have been pressing the U.S. government to help evacuate Afghan activists and allies.
“Thousands of women put their lives at risk over the last two decades to advance the rights of women and girls across Afghanistan, many of whom helped the U.S. mission,” said Gayatri Patel, vice president for external relations at the Women’s Refugee Commission, in a Sunday statement. “The Biden administration has a moral obligation to ensure they are evacuated and safely resettled.”
Evacuation efforts so far have been a chaotic muddle.
A bipartisan group of 40 senators has asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to form a humanitarian parole category for women activists, journalists and leaders, among others.
On Monday, Biden defended his decision to withdraw from the country and said that the United States would continue to speak out for the “basic rights of the Afghan people, of women and girls, just as we speak out all over the world.”
Jalil said international pressure is the main force holding the Taliban to its word.
“Once Afghanistan becomes irrelevant and it’s dropped from the headlines,” she said, “like it was before 2001,” the Taliban, she predicted, “will start targeting every single individual who has been a vocal voice in the past or whoever has the intention to raise a voice on behalf of herself.”
Published : August 18, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Sammy Westfall, Claire Parker
One virus case puts New Zealand into nationwide lockdown
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put the nation into a three-day lockdown after the discovery of the first community case of Covid-19 since February.
The snap lockdown will begin at midnight tonight as authorities rush to identify the source of a single infection in largest city Auckland, Ardern said at a news conference Tuesday in Wellington. While genome sequencing has yet to be completed, the case is assumed to be the highly infectious delta variant, she said.
“Delta has been a game-changer, we’re responding to that,” Ardern said. “The best thing we can do to get out of this as quickly as we can is to go hard.”
It is New Zealand’s first nationwide lockdown since the initial pandemic response over a year ago. Under so-called Alert Level 4, all schools, public venues and most businesses must close and people are urged to wear a face covering if they need to venture out. Only shops providing essential services such as groceries, gasoline and health products can stay open.
The case is an unvaccinated man in his 50s from Auckland who is deemed to have been infectious since Aug. 12, Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told the news conference. He and his fully vaccinated wife were in the nearby Coromandel region over the weekend, where they visited a crowded pub on Saturday night to watch an All Blacks rugby game, he said.
Because of those movements and the probability of it being delta, officials advised an immediate nationwide response. Auckland and the Coromandel have been placed into lockdown for seven days.
“Going hard and early has worked for us before,” Ardern said. “We want to be short and hard, rather than light and long.”
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New Zealand has so far largely kept the virus out of the community, allowing its economy to recover quickly during the pandemic. But a slow vaccine rollout has left it vulnerable to another outbreak, particularly of the delta strain that is challenging virus containment efforts around the world.
Along with Australia, which has strict border curbs like New Zealand, China is battling a delta-fueled outbreak after the variant got in via cleaners at an airport. It has taken a similarly zero-tolerance approach, testing millions of people and locking down city districts to rein in cases.
It’s a strategy that’s running into resistance in some so-called Covid Zero countries as people tire of restrictions while other parts of the world open up.
Ardern cited Australia’s experience with delta as a reason for swift nationwide action, saying “we don’t want that experience here.”
Australia’s outbreak continues to spread despite more than half the nation’s 26 million people being placed into lockdown. New South Wales state recorded 452 new cases on Tuesday after a record of 478 set the previous day, with the vast bulk of those infections detected in Sydney.
Australia’s most-populous city has been in lockdown for more than seven weeks and some health experts have criticized the New South Wales government for acting too late, after the virus was already seeded in the community.
New Zealand’s case comes on the eve of the Reserve Bank’s review of the official cash rate. Prior to news of the lockdown, a majority of economists were forecasting a quarter percentage point hike in response to an overheating economy.
Those at Westpac and ASB changed their calls after Ardern’s press conference late Tuesday, saying they now expect the RBNZ to keep the OCR on hold at 0.25% on Wednesday.
“It is logical that the RBNZ will pause until more certainty over the extent of the community Covid outbreak and lockdown is established,” said Nick Tuffley, chief economist at ASB in Auckland. Still, “provided the lockdown is short and doesn’t change the underlying economic picture, we would still anticipate the OCR reaching 1.5% by the end of the year,” he said.
Published : August 18, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Tracy Withers
Aerial photo taken on Aug. 15, 2021 shows the debris left by flooding in the flood-hit area in the town of Abana, Kastamonu province, Turkey.
Photo taken on Aug. 14, 2021 shows a damaged house in the flood-hit area in the town of Abana, Kastamonu province, Turkey.
Rescue workers search for survivors in the flood-hit town of Bozkurt, Kastamonu province, Turkey, Aug. 14, 2021.
Josep Borrell, the foreign policy chief of the European Union (on screen) addresses a Security Council meeting on UN-EU cooperation via video link at the UN headquarters in New York, June 10, 2021.
Afghan Taliban fighters are seen in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Aug. 16, 2021.
Taliban fighters are seen on a military vehicle in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Aug. 17, 2021.
Afghan Taliban fighters stand on a military vehicle in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Aug. 16, 2021.
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