Month: August 2021

Biden and Naftali Bennett to Meet, Looking for to Burnish U.S.-Israel Relations

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Post date August 26, 2021

WASHINGTON – When Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett meets President Biden in the White House on Thursday, the two new leaders plan to reshape relations between their countries and strengthen bonds that have shown signs of strain.

Mr Biden, who called Bennett to congratulate him less than two hours after he was sworn in two months ago, has tried to send a clear signal that the United States supports his new, diverse coalition government.

Mr Bennett has said that he would like his administration to be known as the “Government of Good Will” and that he would like to be gentler on the United States than his longtime predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu, who often clashed with Democratic leaders.

But despite the conciliatory style, the challenge can be in the substance. Mr Biden and Mr Bennett, who have never met before, have very different views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and efforts to restore the nuclear deal with Iran.

Mr Bennett has made it clear that there will be no independent Palestinian state during his reign. The Biden government, on the other hand, has been deeply in favor of a two-state solution, which by definition includes an independent Palestinian state.

Mr Bennett is also against the United States’ re-entry into the Iran deal, which the Biden administration is investigating.

“These are two very central issues in US-Israel relations, on which there are radically different positions,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel advocacy group. “The tone and atmosphere cannot replace the fact that there is a fundamental difference in the core issues of US-Israel relations.”

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Mr Bennett said he would expand the settlements in the West Bank, which Biden refuses. And he refused to support the American plans to reopen a consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Still, he made it clear that the meeting wanted to show that relations with the United States were on more solid ground, even if some of its policies were similar to those of Mr. Netanyahu.

“There’s a new dimension here – finding new ways to tackle problems, being very realistic, very pragmatic, and being sensible with friends,” said Bennett.

His visit comes as Mr Biden is wandering through the biggest foreign policy crisis of his young presidency, trying to evacuate all American and Afghan allies before his August 31 deadline for US troops to withdraw from the country after 20 years of war.

At home, Mr Biden has to do with countercurrents across Israel in his own party, as an energetic progressive wing and quiet change among mainstream Democrats have led many lawmakers to be more skeptical of the longtime ally.

Mr. Bennett is also the rare international leader with whom Mr. Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, shares no history, a distinction that even sets Mr. Bennett apart from some of his neighbors. When King Abdullah II of Jordan visited the White House last month as the first Arab leader since Mr Biden took office, the president called him a “loyal and decent friend” and remarked, “We hung out together.” a long time ago.”

Tags Bennett, Biden, Burnish, Meet, Naftali, relations, seeking, USIsrael

Politics

U.S. working to contact most of 1,500 Americans left

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Post date August 26, 2021

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that there may be as many as 1,500 Americans in Afghanistan left to evacuate, a calculation that he described as “difficult to pin down with absolute precision at any given moment.”

Blinken said during a press conference that the U.S. currently is “aggressively reaching out” to about 1,000 contacts “multiple times a day, through multiple channels of communication” to determine if they still want to leave and to give them instructions on how to do so. However, the ultimate number might be lower, Blinken said.

Blinken added that the State Department has been in direct contact with 500 other Americans in the last 24 hours with instructions on how to safely travel to the airport for evacuation.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks about refugee programs for Afghans who aided the U.S. during a briefing at the State Department in Washington, DC, U.S. August 2, 2021.

Brendan Smialowski | Reuters

“The U.S. government does not track Americans’ movements when they travel around the world,” Blinken explained. “There could be other Americans in Afghanistan who never enrolled with the embassy, who ignored public evacuation notices and have not yet identified themselves.”

“We’ve also found that many people who contact us and identify themselves as American citizens, including by filling out and submitting repatriation assistance forms, are not, in fact, U.S. citizens, something that can take some time to verify. And some Americans may choose to stay in Afghanistan,” the nation’s top diplomat said.

The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan early on Thursday issued a security alert on its website urging Americans to avoid traveling to Kabul airport and warned some at certain gates to “leave immediately.”

“U.S. citizens who are at the Abbey Gate, East Gate, or North Gate now should leave immediately.” the alert said.

A State Department spokesperson called it a “dynamic and volatile security environment.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that many of the 1,000 contacts the U.S. is trying to reach are dual citizens who may not want to leave the country.

“Maybe they have extended family there, maybe they’ve spent their entire lives in Afghanistan and they’re not yet ready to depart,” Psaki told reporters during a press briefing. “Maybe they’re working on a range of projects there and aren’t yet ready to leave them. I know that’s hard for us to understand as we’re looking at the images, but for many of these Afghans, this is their home.”

Blinken’s press conference, his first since the collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban more than a week ago, comes as U.S. and coalition forces intensify emergency evacuation flights.

In the past 24 hours, Western forces evacuated 19,000 people out of Kabul on 90 military cargo aircraft flights, a cadence of one departure flight every 39 minutes, according to the Pentagon.

Evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 23, 2021.

Sgt. Isaiah Campbell | U.S. Marine Corps | via Reuters

Since the mass evacuations began Aug. 14, approximately 82,300 people have been airlifted out of Afghanistan. About 87,900 people have been evacuated since the end of July, including about 4,500 U.S. citizens and their families.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that 10,000 people are currently at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul awaiting a flight. About 5,400 U.S. servicemembers are assisting with evacuation efforts, with nearly 200 U.S. military aircraft dedicated to the mission.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday reiterated to leaders of the G-7, NATO, United Nations and European Union that the United States will withdraw its military from Afghanistan by the end of the month.

The president warned that staying longer in Afghanistan carries serious risks for foreign troops and civilians. Biden said that ISIS-K, an Afghanistan-based affiliate of the terror group, presents a growing threat to the airport.

“Every day we’re on the ground is another day we know that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both U.S. and allied forces and innocent civilians,” he said.

In First Interview From Jail, an Upbeat Navalny Discusses Jail Life

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Post date August 26, 2021

MOSCOW — Russia’s most famous prisoner, the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, spends much of his time tidying his cellblock, reading letters and visiting the mess for meals, with porridge often on the menu.

But perhaps the most maddening thing, he suggested, is being forced to watch Russian state TV and selected propaganda films for more than eight hours a day in what the authorities call an “awareness raising” program that has replaced hard labor for political prisoners.

“Reading, writing or doing anything else” is prohibited, Mr. Navalny said of the forced screen time. “You have to sit in a chair and watch TV.” And if an inmate nods off, he said, the guards shout, “Don’t sleep, watch!”

In an interview with The New York Times, his first with a news organization since his arrest in January, Mr. Navalny talked about his life in prison, about why Russia has cracked down so hard on the opposition and dissidents, and about his conviction that “Putin’s regime,” as he calls it, is doomed to collapse.

Mr. Navalny started a major opposition movement to expose high-level corruption and challenge President Vladimir V. Putin at the polls. He was imprisoned in March after he returned to Russia from Germany knowing he was facing a parole violation for a conviction in a case seen as politically motivated. As was well chronicled at the time, he was out of the country to receive medical treatment after being poisoned by Russian agents with the chemical weapon Novichok, according to Western governments.

Mr. Navalny has not been entirely mute since his incarceration in Penal Colony No. 2, just east of Moscow. Through his lawyers, who visit him regularly, he has sent out occasional social media posts.

Nor is he being actively muzzled by the Kremlin. When asked about Mr. Navalny’s social media presence on Tuesday, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that it was “not our business” if Mr. Navalny spoke out.

But the written exchange of questions and answers covering 54 handwritten pages is by far his most comprehensive and wide-ranging account.

In today’s Russia, Mr. Navalny made clear, hours spent watching state television and movies chosen by the warden are the experience of a political prisoner, a status Amnesty International has assigned to Mr. Navalny. Gone are the shifts of heavy labor in mining or forestry and the harrying by criminals and guards alike that was the hallmark of the Soviet gulag for political prisoners.

“You might imagine tattooed muscle men with steel teeth carrying on with knife fights to take the best cot by the window,” Mr. Navalny said. “You need to imagine something like a Chinese labor camp, where everybody marches in a line and where video cameras are hung everywhere. There is constant control and a culture of snitching.”

Despite his circumstances, Mr. Navalny was upbeat about Russia’s future prospects, and he outlined his strategy for achieving political change through the electoral system even in an authoritarian state.

“The Putin regime is an historical accident, not an inevitability,” he wrote, adding, “It was the choice of the corrupt Yeltsin family,” a reference to former President Boris N. Yeltsin’s appointment of Mr. Putin as acting president in December 1999. “Sooner or later, this mistake will be fixed, and Russia will move on to a democratic, European path of development. Simply because that is what the people want.”

As he has before, Mr. Navalny criticized Europe and the United States for the economic sanctions it has imposed on Russia for its meddling abroad and its repression of dissidents, including Mr. Navalny. He said sanctions harmed ordinary Russians and risked alienating a broad constituency inside Russia that is a natural ally.

Sanctions, he said, should target only the top oligarchs who prop up Mr. Putin’s government, instead of the dozens of largely obscure figures who have been hit so far. The truly powerful have largely avoided sanctions, he said, by retaining “an army of lawyers, lobbyists and bankers, fighting for the right of owners of dirty and bloody money to remain unpunished.”

Through the 20th century and earlier, prison in Russia was a crucible that forged or broke dissidents and writers, molded leaders and crushed pluralistic politics.

The modern experience of a Russian political prisoner, Mr. Navalny said, is mostly “psychological violence,” with mind-numbing screen time playing a big role.

Mr. Navalny described five daily sessions of television watching for inmates, the first starting immediately after morning calisthenics, breakfast and sweeping the yard.

After some free time, there’s a two-hour spell in front of the screen, lunch, then more screen time, dinner, and then more TV time in the evening. During one afternoon session, playing chess or backgammon is an acceptable alternative.

“We watch films about the Great Patriotic War,” Mr. Navalny said, referring to World War II, “or how one day, 40 years ago, our athletes defeated the Americans or Canadians.”

During these sessions, he said, “I most clearly understand the essence of the ideology of the Putin regime: The present and the future are being substituted with the past — the truly heroic past, or embellished past, or completely fictional past. All sorts of past must constantly be in the spotlight to displace thoughts about the future and questions about the present.”

The approach of lengthy, enforced television watching, while taken to extremes at Penal Colony No. 2, is not unique to the site, where inmates in politically hued cases have been incarcerated before.

It sprang from a penal reform in Russia begun in 2010 to boost guards’ control over inmates through their day and to reduce the sway of prison gangs. The intent is not so much brainwashing as control, experts on the Russian prison system say.

“Everything is organized so that I am under maximum control 24 hours a day,” Mr. Navalny said. He said he had not been assaulted or threatened by fellow inmates but estimated that about one-third were what are known in Russian prisons as “activists,” those who serve as informants to the warden.

During his first weeks in the penal colony, Mr. Navalny’s limbs numbed, either from lingering effects of the poisoning or from a back injury from riding in a prison van. He also went on a 24-day hunger strike, raising alarms about his health.

His neurological symptoms eased when guards stopped waking him hourly at night, ostensibly to ensure he wasn’t plotting an escape.

“I now understand why sleep deprivation is one of the favorite tortures of the special services,” he said. “No traces remain, and it’s impossible to tolerate.”

He said he gets along well with other inmates, and that they sometimes cook snacks in a microwave.

“When we cook, I always remember the classic scene from ‘Goodfellas’ when the mafia bosses cook pasta in a prison cell,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have such a cool pot, and pasta is forbidden. Still, it’s fun.”

Mr. Navalny, 45, conceded that he has struggled to remain visible in Russian politics through a tumultuous period as the government has clamped down on the opposition and the news media.

The protests that erupted after disputed Belarusian elections last year spooked the Kremlin, he suggested. The Putin government’s other worry, he said, was the electoral strategy he has devised and calls “smart voting.”

Under the strategy, Mr. Navalny’s organization endorses the candidates it thinks have a chance of winning in regional and parliamentary elections, which will be held next month.

The Kremlin was so concerned about the upcoming elections, he said, that it engineered a crackdown this year not just on his group and other activists but on moderate opposition politicians, civil society groups and independent news media outlets like Meduza, Proekt and Dozhd television.

Mr. Navalny suggested that while the crackdown may prove to be a tactical success for Mr. Putin, it may also be a long-term liability.

“Putin solved his tactical question: not allowing us to take away the majority in the Duma,” Mr. Navalny said, speaking of the Russian Parliament’s lower house. “But to achieve this, he had to completely change the political system, to shift to a principally different, far harsher level of authoritarianism.”

Mr. Navalny suggested the move underscored a principal weakness of Mr. Putin’s political system. While leftists and nationalists are represented by parties loyal to Mr. Putin, there is no stable, pro-Kremlin center-right party representing the country’s emerging middle class of relatively prosperous, city-dwelling Russians.

“Opposition exists in Russia not because Aleksei Navalny or somebody else commands it from a headquarters,” Mr. Navalny said, “but because about 30 percent of the country — mostly the educated, urban population — doesn’t have political representation.”

When what he called the reactionary anomaly of Mr. Putin’s rule fades, Russia will revert to democratic governance, Mr. Navalny said. “We are specific, like any nation, but we are Europe. We are the West.”

Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting from Washington.

Tags discusses, interview, Jail, Life, Navalny, Prison, Upbeat

Entertainment

Evaluation: A Residence Supply, Shiny and Vivid

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Post date August 26, 2021

I received a package in the mail last week. Below the contents: pieces of thick, copper-colored foil; Vials of water, air, and gold paint; a booklet with photos of gold-painted dancers amid huge, crumpled pieces of the same foil; and a Google Cardboard viewer to turn my smartphone into virtual reality glasses.

This was all set up for the “home experience” of The Other Shore by Seattle-based dance and arts team Zoe Juniper (led by choreographer Zoe Scofield and visual artist Juniper Shuey).

The booklet proved to be an essential element because it contains QR codes that link to performance videos. On Tuesday evening, after a zoom presentation of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (which commissioned the project from Carolina Performing Arts and shipped the boxes), some of the links became active and some of “The Other Shore” could be explored. (If you haven’t bought a box yet, you’ll have to be content with my report for now.)

Virtual reality experiments are still rare in dance, and for me parts of the “The Other Shore” experience were excitingly new. The work is divided into two sections – Book 1 and 2 – but so far only sections of Book 1 are available. This is a series of 25 minute solos filmed with a 360 degree camera. Seeing them in VR gives new meaning to in-your-face dance.

The instructions recommend a swivel chair – a good idea as your perspective is centered and you often have to keep turning to keep an eye on a dancer circling around you. It really feels like you and the dancer are in the same room, almost touching. The intimacy is intense.

This room is a bit strange, however, littered with huge pieces of crumpled gold foil (a trademark of Zoe Juniper). The three published solos follow the same basic order. The dancer slips out from under the foil, arranges it, gets himself wet with a bowl of water and then pulls a pot of gold paint from a hole in the bottom and smears himself with it all over his body.

As this structure repeats itself using the same music, each dancer becomes differentiated and goes through a distinct transformation that manifests itself physically. In order to further differentiate each performer, we also receive a separate audio track in which the dancer’s birth story is told by his family members.

There is a certain tension between the mundane nature of these stories and the mythical claim of the work, between the everyday materials that are sent to the audience (to make the virtual experience more tangible) and the numinous intention (the title, the mystery of birth, the Suggestion, the divine essence from the navel of the world).

So far, all of the golden packaging promises more than it contains, although the technology does show potential for ritual magic. When I tried to watch without the VR glasses, I was much further from being bewitched.

The previous zoom presentation of various clips and montages was even flatter, almost a disservice to the project. But there was a look at Book 2, a series of group pieces where the viewer’s perspective is below the dance, lying on the floor and looking up. Even without VR glasses, the footage showed some exciting fun house mirror effects.

So there’s more to be expected as more videos will be released in the coming months. A live version will debut in Seattle next year, but Zoe Juniper has already shown that there are other shores of the home dance experience worth exploring further.

Tags Bright, delivery, home, Review, Shiny

Politics

U.S. Says 1,500 People in Afghanistan as Withdrawal Deadline Nears

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Post date August 26, 2021

WASHINGTON – Mindestens 1.500 amerikanische Bürger bleiben nur noch wenige Tage vor dem geplanten US-Abzug aus dem Land in Afghanistan, aber Beamte räumten am Mittwoch die Realität ein, dass Zehntausende afghanische Verbündete und andere, die einem hohen Risiko von Taliban-Repressalien ausgesetzt sind, zurückbleiben würden.

Das Geräusch von Schüssen und Wolken aus Tränengas und schwarzem Rauch erfüllten die Luft um den internationalen Flughafen in Kabul, der Hauptstadt, als sich am Mittwoch Tausende von Afghanen vor den Toren versammelten, um vor dem endgültigen Abflug des amerikanischen Militärs am 8. 31, nach 20 Jahren Krieg.

Als im Rahmen einer Luftbrücke alle 45 Minuten Militär- und Regierungscharterflüge starteten, sagten Beamte der Biden-Regierung, sie hätten seit dem 14. August, dem Tag, bevor Kabul an die Taliban fiel, etwa 82.300 Menschen evakuiert. Rund 4.500 von ihnen waren amerikanische Staatsbürger, 500 weitere sollen bald abreisen.

Außenminister Antony J. Blinken sagte jedoch, die Regierung versuche, rund 1.000 US-Bürger aufzuspüren, die sich immer noch in Afghanistan aufhalten und auf eine hektische Flut von E-Mails, Telefonanrufen oder anderen Nachrichten, die ihre Evakuierung anbieten, nicht reagiert hätten.

„In dieser kritischen Phase konzentrieren wir uns darauf, Amerikaner und ihre Familien so schnell wie möglich aus Afghanistan in Flugzeuge zu bringen“, sagte Blinken vom Außenministerium.

Er versuchte auch, Afghanen, die mit dem US-Militär oder der US-Botschaft zusammengearbeitet hatten, und möglicherweise Hunderttausenden von Menschen, die die extremistische Ideologie der Taliban in Frage stellten, zu versichern, dass „sie nicht vergessen werden“.

Er verglich Bilder und Berichte von Afghanen, die auf dem Flughafen von Kabul im Gedränge zur Evakuierung niedergetrampelt wurden, um „in den Magen geschlagen zu werden“, sagte Blinken, es sei Aufgabe der Taliban, ihre sichere Überfahrt zu gewährleisten.

Er signalisierte, dass eine solche Vereinbarung mit einer Mischung aus wirtschaftlichem und diplomatischem Druck und der Verlockung internationaler Hilfe erreicht werden könnte, aber er würde nicht über sein Vertrauen in die Taliban sprechen, ihr Wort zu halten, außer vage zu zitieren, was er ihre Öffentlichkeit nannte und private Verpflichtungen, um Menschen die Ausreise zu ermöglichen.

„Lassen Sie mich das ganz klar sagen: Es gibt keine Frist für unsere Arbeit, um den verbleibenden amerikanischen Bürgern zu helfen, die sich dazu entschließen, dies zu tun, zusammen mit den vielen Afghanen, die uns in diesen vielen Jahren zur Seite gestanden haben und dies tun wollen gehen und waren dazu nicht in der Lage“, sagte Blinken. „Diese Bemühungen werden über den 31. August hinaus jeden Tag fortgesetzt.“

Ein Taliban-Sprecher, Zabihullah Mujahid, sagte am Mittwoch, Afghanen mit gültigen Reisedokumenten würden nicht daran gehindert, den Flughafen zu betreten, wenn sie dort von amerikanischen und afghanischen Streitkräften eingelassen würden.

In seinem ersten Sit-down-Interview mit einer westlichen Medienorganisation seit der Ankunft der Taliban in Kabul bestritt Mujahid Berichte, wonach die Gruppe beginnen würde, Afghanen vom Flughafen fernzuhalten, die auf seinen Aussagen während einer täglichen Pressekonferenz beruhten früher.

„Wir haben gesagt, dass Leute, die keine richtigen Dokumente haben, nicht gehen dürfen“, sagte er. „Sie brauchen Pässe und Visa für die Länder, in die sie reisen, und können dann mit dem Flugzeug ausreisen. Wenn ihre Dokumente gültig sind, werden wir sie nicht fragen, was sie vorher gemacht haben.“

Er bestand auch darauf, dass die Taliban denen vergeben würden, die gegen sie kämpften, und dass Frauen die Schule und Arbeit besuchen dürfen, im Rahmen dessen, was er als islamische Prinzipien bezeichnete. Menschenrechtsvertreter haben solche Zusicherungen als unaufrichtig abgetan, und viele Afghanen haben sich aus Angst vor Belästigung und Gewalt in ihren Häusern versteckt.

Herr Mujahid räumte ein, dass Frauen auf Reisen von drei Tagen oder länger einen männlichen Vormund brauchen würden. Gerüchte, dass die Taliban Frauen zwingen würden, in ihren Häusern zu bleiben oder ihr Gesicht zu bedecken, seien unbegründet, sagte er, aber er bestätigte, dass Musik in der Öffentlichkeit nicht erlaubt sei.

„Musik ist im Islam verboten“, sagte er, „aber wir hoffen, dass wir die Leute davon überzeugen können, solche Dinge nicht zu tun.“

Beamte des Weißen Hauses sagten am Mittwoch, dass 90 US-amerikanische und alliierte Flugzeuge innerhalb von 24 Stunden schätzungsweise 19.200 Menschen ausgeflogen hätten.

Mindestens 500 waren amerikanische Staatsbürger und ihre Familien, sagte Blinken und schlossen sich Afghanen an, die Angestellte der jetzt geschlossenen US-Botschaft in Kabul waren, und anderen, die für das amerikanische Militär und andere Regierungsbehörden gearbeitet hatten, einige seit 2001, die sich für die Teilnahme qualifizieren ein spezielles Einwanderungsvisum, um in den Vereinigten Staaten zu leben.

Kongressbeamte sagten Anfang dieser Woche, dass die Biden-Regierung schätzungsweise 50.000 Afghanen identifiziert habe, die für das Sondervisum in Frage kommen. Auch ehemalige Sicherheitskräfte, Regierungsbeamte und Menschen, die sich für Frauenrechte, Rechtsstaatlichkeit und andere Säulen der Demokratie einsetzten, wurden evakuiert.

Eine am Mittwoch veröffentlichte neue Schätzung des Verbands der Kriegsverbündeten kam zu dem Schluss, dass mindestens 250.000 Afghanen – und vielleicht mehr als eine Million – Anspruch auf einen beschleunigten Einwanderungsstatus haben könnten. Die Interessenvertretung arbeitete mit der American University zusammen, um Arbeitsverträge und andere Dokumente zu analysieren, die diese Afghanen benötigen, um ihre Berechtigung nachzuweisen.

Herr Blinken konnte keine genauere Zahl nennen und stellte fest, dass es für die US-Regierung schwierig gewesen sei, selbst herauszufinden, wie viele Amerikaner sich in Afghanistan aufhalten könnten.

Er sagte, das Außenministerium habe mindestens 6.000 Amerikaner – viele von ihnen mit doppelter afghanischer Staatsbürgerschaft – durch das Durchsuchen verschiedener Datenbanken identifiziert. Beamte haben mehr als 20.000 E-Mails verschickt und 45.000 Telefonanrufe in ganz Afghanistan getätigt, um US-Bürgern die Möglichkeit zu geben, das Land zu verlassen, sagte er.

Aktualisiert

August 25, 2021, 7:58 Uhr ET

Tausende weitere US-Bürger könnten in Afghanistan leben, hätten sich aber nicht bei der US-Botschaft registriert und könnten sonst nicht gefunden werden, räumte ein hochrangiger Beamter des Außenministeriums später ein.

Stunden bevor Herr Blinken sprach, forderten die Abgeordneten des Kongresses die Biden-Regierung auf, die Frist vom 31. August zu verlängern, um sicherzustellen, dass alle Amerikaner und afghanischen Verbündeten Afghanistan sicher verlassen können.

„Die Berichte, die ich vor Ort bekomme, sind, dass unsere amerikanischen Bürger versuchen, herauszukommen“, sagte der Abgeordnete Michael McCaul aus Texas, der oberste Republikaner im Ausschuss für auswärtige Angelegenheiten des Repräsentantenhauses. „Unsere afghanischen Partner und Dolmetscher, die bei unseren Spezialeinheiten gedient haben, haben ihr Leben aufs Spiel gesetzt. Wir haben die moralische Verpflichtung, sie zu retten.“

Herr Blinken würde nicht diskutieren, ob auch nach dem Militäraustritt nächste Woche der Anschein der US-Botschaft in Kabul – einst eine der größten amerikanischen diplomatischen Vertretungen der Welt – geöffnet bleiben würde. Eine kleine Gruppe von US-Diplomaten bleibt in Afghanistan auf einer sicheren Basis am Flughafen in Kabul, um die Evakuierung zu überwachen und die Verhandlungen mit den Taliban fortzusetzen.

Während die Evakuierungsmission ablief, warteten die Staats- und Regierungschefs der Welt – und Millionen von Afghanen – mit Besorgnis darauf, die wahre Gestalt der Taliban-Herrschaft zu erkennen.

Während der letzten Machtübernahme der Gruppe riskierten afghanische Frauen, geschlagen, gefoltert oder hingerichtet zu werden, wenn sie ihre Häuser verließen. In den zwei Jahrzehnten, seit amerikanisch geführte Kräfte die Militanten von der Macht verdrängt haben, erwarten viele junge Frauen Grundrechte.

In den ersten Tagen, nachdem die Taliban Kabul und die nationale Macht am 15. August erobert hatten, forderten afghanische Demonstranten, dass die Militanten ihre Forderungen nach mehr Freiheit akzeptieren. Zu den Protesten gehörte auch ein Marsch von Frauen, die forderten, dass ihr Recht auf Bildung und Arbeit nicht verletzt wird.

Eine Aktivistin namens Fariha sagte, sie habe letzte Woche an der Demonstration teilgenommen, „um den Taliban zu zeigen, dass sie sich ändern müssen, weil wir es nicht tun werden“.

Die Taliban-Übernahme in Afghanistan verstehen

Karte 1 von 5

Wer sind die Taliban? Die Taliban entstanden 1994 inmitten der Unruhen nach dem Abzug der sowjetischen Streitkräfte aus Afghanistan 1989. Sie setzten brutale öffentliche Strafen ein, darunter Auspeitschungen, Amputationen und Massenhinrichtungen, um ihre Regeln durchzusetzen. Hier ist mehr über ihre Entstehungsgeschichte und ihre Bilanz als Herrscher.

Wer sind die Taliban-Führer? Dies sind die obersten Anführer der Taliban, Männer, die jahrelang auf der Flucht, untergetaucht, im Gefängnis und amerikanischen Drohnen ausgewichen sind. Es ist wenig über sie bekannt oder wie sie zu regieren planen, auch ob sie so tolerant sein werden, wie sie es vorgeben.

Was passiert mit den Frauen Afghanistans? Als die Taliban das letzte Mal an der Macht waren, verboten sie Frauen und Mädchen die meisten Jobs oder den Schulbesuch. Afghanische Frauen haben seit dem Sturz der Taliban viel gewonnen, aber jetzt befürchten sie, dass an Boden verloren wird. Taliban-Beamte versuchen, den Frauen zu versichern, dass die Dinge anders sein werden, aber es gibt Anzeichen dafür, dass sie zumindest in einigen Bereichen begonnen haben, die alte Ordnung wieder einzuführen.

„Wir können nicht atmen, wenn uns unser Recht auf Bildung und Arbeit beraubt wird und wir nicht in der Gesellschaft präsent sind“, sagte sie schluchzend.

„Es gibt Frauen, die nicht nach Europa oder in die USA gegangen sind – sie sind geblieben und bereit, bis zum Tod zu kämpfen“, sagte sie. „Wir haben 20 Jahre lang hart gearbeitet, um Bildung und Arbeit zu erlangen. Wir lassen uns von niemandem ignorieren.“

Trotz der Bemühungen der Taliban, die Afghanen ihrer Sicherheit zu versichern, deuten unheilvolle Anzeichen darauf hin, dass sie ihre brutale Taktik nicht aufgegeben haben. Am Dienstag zitierte der oberste Menschenrechtsbeauftragte der Vereinten Nationen „erschütternde und glaubwürdige“ Berichte, wonach die Taliban Zivilisten und nicht kämpfende Soldaten hingerichtet hätten.

Da die Zukunft der internationalen Hilfe für Afghanistan unklar ist, sagte Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel am Mittwoch, dass ihr Land seine Unterstützung für das afghanische Volk auch nach dem Abzug der US-Truppen beibehalten werde. Sie rief auch zu Gesprächen mit den Taliban auf.

„Unser Ziel muss es sein, so viel wie möglich zu bewahren, was wir in den letzten 20 Jahren an den Veränderungen in Afghanistan erreicht haben“, sagte Merkel in einer Sitzung des Parlaments, in der über die schnelle Übernahme Afghanistans durch die Taliban diskutiert wurde. “Darüber muss die internationale Gemeinschaft mit den Taliban sprechen.”

Deutschland hat im Juni sein letztes Kontingent von rund 570 Soldaten aus Afghanistan abgezogen, aber noch immer waren mehrere hundert Deutsche in der von der Regierung finanzierten Entwicklungsarbeit engagiert.

Zu den Sorgen um Afghanistan trägt auch die untergehende Wirtschaft bei, die für die vergangene Generation durch amerikanische Hilfe gestützt wurde, sich jetzt aber im freien Fall befindet. Banken sind geschlossen. Bargeld wird knapp, Lebensmittelpreise steigen. Kraftstoff wird immer schwerer zu finden. Regierungsdienste sind ins Stocken geraten, da Beamte ihre Arbeit meiden, weil sie Vergeltungsmaßnahmen befürchten.

Menschen, die versuchen zu fliehen, wenn sie es an den Taliban-Checkpoints schaffen, sind auf dem Flughafen von Kabul mit chaotischen Szenen konfrontiert. Mindestens sieben afghanische Zivilisten, darunter ein Kleinkind, wurden zu Tode getrampelt.

Am Mittwoch brachten die Taliban anscheinend etwa 200 Menschen in ein umzäuntes Gebiet, wo sie unter der prallen Nachmittagssonne zusammengepfercht wurden.

Als die Menschenmengen vor dem Flughafen weiter anschwellen, sagten amerikanische Beamte, sie seien besorgt, dass Terroristen, die mit dem Islamischen Staat verbunden sind, das Chaos ausnutzen könnten, indem sie dort einen Bombenanschlag oder einen Mörserangriff auf den Flugplatz veranstalten.

Der Islamische Staat in Afghanistan hat in den letzten Jahren Dutzende von Anschlägen verübt, von denen viele auf ethnische Minderheiten und andere Zivilisten abzielten.

John F. Kirby, der Chefsprecher des Pentagon, sagte Reportern am Mittwoch, dass amerikanische Offiziere in Kabul, darunter Konteradmiral Peter G. Vasely, der oberste Kommandant, und Generalmajor Christopher Donahue, der Chef der 82. Luftlandedivision, im Gespräch seien an ihre Taliban-Kollegen jeden Tag, um die sichere Durchreise von Amerikanern und afghanischen Verbündeten mit den entsprechenden Ausweisen zu Flügen zu gewährleisten, die Kabul verlassen.

Herr Kirby sagte, dass das Pentagon der Evakuierung amerikanischer Truppen und Ausrüstung in den letzten Tagen der Mission Vorrang geben werde. Etwa 5.400 amerikanische Soldaten seien jetzt auf dem Flughafen, nachdem 400 Soldaten, die für die Evakuierung nicht unbedingt erforderlich waren, in den letzten Tagen das Land verlassen hätten, sagte er.

Dennoch gibt es zahlreiche Berichte über Afghanen mit ordnungsgemäßem Papierkram, die an Taliban-Checkpoints und sogar an den Flughafentoren abgewiesen wurden, wo etwa 30 US-Konsularbeamte und Marinesoldaten ihre Ausweise überprüfen. In der vergangenen Woche wurden viele Tore zeitweise geschlossen, um Rückstände zu beseitigen.

Lara Jakes berichtete aus Washington und Michael Levenson aus New York. Die Berichterstattung wurde von Eric Schmitt in Washington, Matthieu Aikins und Jim Huylebroek in Kabul, Sharif Hassan in Kiew, Ukraine, Melissa Eddy in Berlin und Lauren Leatherby in New York beigesteuert.

Tags Afghanistan, Americans, Deadline, Nears, withdrawal

World News

Google, Microsoft plan to spend billions on cybersecurity after assembly with Biden

Post author By
Post date August 25, 2021

Business leaders in sectors ranging from technology to insurance pledged billions of dollars to step up cybersecurity efforts at a White House meeting with President Joe Biden on Wednesday.

The meeting comes in the wake of several high profile cyberattacks, including those on state software company SolarWinds and the Colonial Pipeline, which have made such security issues even more pressing.

Commitments range from working on new industry standards to providing stronger security tools for other companies to training workers to fill the roughly 500,000 vacant U.S. cybersecurity jobs. Biden recently signed an executive order requiring US authorities to use two-factor authentication for logins, which can help prevent cyberattacks.

The White House said Apple will create a program dedicated to improving security in its technology supply chains, including working with suppliers to introduce multi-factor authentication and security training.

Google said it will invest more than $ 10 billion over five years to strengthen cybersecurity and promised to train 100,000 Americans in technical areas like IT support and data analysis as part of its career certificate program. Google’s financial commitment will be used to strengthen the software supply chain and open source security, among other things.

Microsoft has allocated $ 20 billion over five years to provide more advanced security tools, CEO Satya Nadella tweeted after the meeting. He added that Microsoft will invest $ 150 million to help government agencies update their security systems and develop cybersecurity training partnerships. Microsoft has spent $ 1 billion annually on cybersecurity since 2015.

IBM said it will train more than 150,000 people in cybersecurity skills in three years, while working with traditionally black colleges and universities to help diversify its workforce. The company also announced a new data storage solution for critical infrastructure businesses and said it was working to develop secure encryption methods for quantum computing.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told CNBC ahead of the meeting and in front of the White House on Wednesday that cybersecurity was “the topic of the decade”. He said he hoped for better coordination between the public and private sectors emerging from the meeting and said IBM would do its part to support professionals in the field.

Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing division, plans to provide account holders with free multifactor authentication devices to better protect their data. There are also plans to offer “safety awareness training” to organizations and individuals.

A spokesman for financial services firm TIAA pointed to several ongoing initiatives being taken to train more cybersecurity workers. This includes a partnership with New York University that enables TIAA employees to complete a fully reimbursed master’s degree in cybersecurity.

Leaving the White House, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called the meeting “a very productive, collaborative discussion.”

“Hopefully we will follow up and do a good job of protecting our country from a really complex problem,” he said.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the event “brought the right people together to have a good discussion.”

Two water company executives who left the meeting told CNBC that the discussion emphasized collaboration between sectors. American Water CEO Walter Lynch said there was an “understanding that we must work together to tackle the country’s cyber threats.”

– CNBC’s Mary Catherine Wellons and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.

WATCH: Colonial Pipeline hackers reportedly received $ 90 million in bitcoin before being shut down

Tags Biden, Billions, Cybersecurity, Google, Meeting, Microsoft, Plan, Spend

Entertainment

JoJo Siwa Reveals the Candy Means She Requested Out Kylie Prew

Post author By
Post date August 25, 2021

Each new detail we learn about JoJo Siwa and Kylie Prew’s relationship is even cuter than the last. During an appearance on the Success With Jess podcast on Aug. 21, the couple sat down to talk about everything from when they started dating to how they told each other “I love you.” The 18-year-old Dance Moms alum also dished on how they both asked each other to be their girlfriend, and let’s just say, JoJo went big. “I had a whole musical number,” JoJo shared. “I had like word choreography that coordinated to music, and then it went into a song after the word [choreography]. It was magical.”

The adorable duo first went public with their romance in February, shortly after JoJo came out as a part of the LGBTQ+ community on Instagram. During an appearance on The Tonight Show, JoJo shared that Kylie was “super encouraging” about her decision to come out, calling her “the most amazing, wonderful, perfect, most beautiful girlfriend in the whole world.” Learn more about their sweet relationship as you watch the video above.

Tags Asked, JoJo, Kylie, Prew, Reveals, Siwa, sweet

Politics

Fewer than 1,000 Individuals are in search of evacuation from Afghanistan

Post author By
Post date August 25, 2021

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks about refugee programs for Afghans who have helped the US during a briefing at the State Department in Washington, DC, on August 2, 2021.

Brendan Smialowski | Reuters

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that fewer than 1,000 U.S. citizens may be looking for evacuation from Afghanistan.

Blinken said the US is currently “aggressively approaching about 1,000 contacts several times a day through multiple communication channels” to determine if they still wish to leave and give them instructions on how to do so. The final number could be lower, however, Blinken said.

“The US government does not follow the movements of the Americans when they travel around the world,” said Blinken. “There could be other Americans in Afghanistan who have never signed up with the embassy, who ignored public evacuation instructions, and have not yet identified themselves,” he added.

“We have also found that many people who contact us and identify themselves as American citizens, even by filling out and submitting repatriation assistance forms, are in fact not US citizens, which may take some time to decide to verify,” to stay in Afghanistan, “said the country’s top diplomat.

Blinken added that the State Department has been in direct contact with an additional 500 Americans in the past 24 hours to provide instructions on how to safely get to the airport for evacuation.

Blinken’s press conference, his first since the Afghan government collapsed with the Taliban more than a week ago, comes as US and coalition forces step up emergency evacuation flights.

In the past 24 hours, Western forces evacuated 19,000 people from Kabul on 90 military cargo plane flights, which, according to the Pentagon, corresponds to a departure frequency every 39 minutes.

Evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 23, 2021.

Sgt. Isaiah Campbell | US Marine Corps | via Reuters

Since the mass evacuations began on August 14, around 82,300 people have been flown out of Afghanistan. Around 87,900 people have been evacuated since the end of July, including around 4,500 US citizens and their families.

The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that 10,000 people are currently waiting for a flight at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Approximately 5,400 U.S. soldiers assist with evacuation efforts using nearly 200 U.S. military aircraft dedicated to the mission.

President Joe Biden reaffirmed Tuesday to leaders of the G-7, NATO, the United Nations and the European Union that the United States will withdraw its military from Afghanistan by the end of the month.

The president warned that staying in Afghanistan for extended periods of time poses serious risks to foreign troops and civilians. Biden said ISIS-K, an offshoot of the terrorist group based in Afghanistan, posed a growing threat to Hamid Karzai International Airport.

“Every day we are there is another day we know that ISIS-K is trying to attack the airport and target both US and Allied forces and innocent civilians,” he said.

Afghanistan, Biden and the Taliban: Reside Updates

Post author By
Post date August 25, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

U.S. and allied planes have flown an additional 19,200 people out of Kabul in the past 24 hours, officials said on Wednesday, as the Biden administration makes substantial inroads into getting American citizens and Afghans who worked for the United States over the last 20 years out of Afghanistan.

But thousands of U.S. citizens are believed to still be in the country, and President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for the withdrawal of American troops is rapidly approaching. Tens of thousands of Afghans who qualify for special immigration visas are also waiting to be evacuated.

As of 3 a.m. in Washington, the United States had evacuated about 82,300 people from Kabul’s international airport since Aug. 14.

Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of Afghans will be targeted by the Taliban if they stay, including Afghan security forces, government officials, women’s rights advocates and other defenders of democracy. Those Afghans are desperately hoping to join the U.S. military’s airlift before it begins to wind down, potentially as soon as this weekend.

It is not clear how many people want to be evacuated — or can be — by next week’s deadline. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is set to release more details about the effort, potentially including the numbers of Americans who remain in Afghanistan, on Wednesday.

Though Mr. Biden has vowed to stick to the Aug. 31 exit plan, as the Taliban have demanded, he also has instructed Mr. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin to draw up plans to push back the date if necessary.

The Taliban have warned of potential reprisals should the United States renege on its deadline, and Mr. Biden on Tuesday noted the danger to American troops should they remain much longer. Beyond the Taliban, extremists affiliated with the Islamic State are also believed to pose a threat to the evacuation effort that has drawn crowds of people to Kabul’s airport gates, clamoring to be allowed on one of the flights that are departing every 45 minutes.

“I’m determined to ensure that we complete our mission,” Mr. Biden said at the White House on Tuesday. “I’m also mindful of the increasing risks that I’ve been briefed on and the need to factor those risks in. There are real and significant challenges that we also have to take into consideration.”

But the dwindling hours are weighing heavily on the minds of people seeking to flee Afghanistan and members of Congress who want the United States to retain a presence there until Americans and high-risk Afghans can get out.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The Americans are all but gone, the Afghan government has collapsed and the Taliban now rule the streets of Kabul. Overnight, millions of Kabul residents have been left to navigate an uncertain transition after 20 years of U.S.-backed rule.

Government services are largely unavailable. Residents are struggling to lead their daily lives in an ecconomy that, propped up for the past generation by American aid, is now in free fall. Banks are closed, cash is growing scarce, and food prices are rising.

Yet relative calm has reigned over Kabul, the capital, in sharp contrast to the chaos at its airport. Many residents are hiding in their homes or venturing out only cautiously to see what life might be like under their new rulers.

Even residents who said they feared the Taliban were struck by the relative order and quiet, but for some the calm has been ominous.

A resident named Mohib said that streets were deserted in his section of the city, with people hunkering down in their homes, “scared and terrorized.”

“People feel the Taliban may come any moment to take away everything from them,” he said.

Credit…Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Germany will maintain support for Afghans who remain in their country after the deadline for the U.S. troop withdrawal and evacuation mission passes in six days, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday. She also called for talks with the Taliban to preserve progress made in Afghanistan in the last two decades.

Speaking to a session of Parliament convened to discuss the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan, the chancellor defended Germany’s decision to join the international intervention there in 2001.

“Our goal must be to preserve as much as possible what we have achieved in terms of changes in Afghanistan in the last 20 years,” Ms. Merkel told lawmakers. “This is something the international community must talk about with the Taliban.”

She cited changes such as improved access to basic necessities, with 70 percent of Afghans now having access to clean drinking water and 90 percent having access to electricity, in addition to better health care for women.

“But what is clear is that the Taliban are reality in Afghanistan and many people are afraid,” Ms. Merkel said. “This new reality is bitter, but we must come to terms with it.”

Germany pulled its last contingent of soldiers, about 570 troops, out of Afghanistan in June, but several hundred Germans were still engaged in development work funded by Berlin, and the German government believed they would be able to remain in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of U.S. and international forces.

Ms. Merkel defended her government’s decision to leave development workers on the ground, saying that they had hoped to continue to provide essential support for Afghans after the troop withdrawal, and that an earlier retreat could have appeared as if they were abandoning people.

“At that time there were very good reasons to stand beside the people in Afghanistan after the troops were gone,” Ms. Merkel said.

But the opposition leaders criticized her government for not developing a plan to bring people to safety in the spring, when other European countries were evacuating citizens and Afghan support staff.

“The situation in Afghanistan is a catastrophe, but it did not come out of nowhere,” said Christian Lindner, the head of the Free Democratic Party, which together with the Green Party petitioned Parliament in June to begin evacuations of German staff and Afghans who could be in danger.

Ms. Merkel did not apologize, instead calling for a deeper examination of where the West went wrong in Afghanistan and what lessons could be learned. That will be the work of the next government, as she is stepping down after the German elections on Sept. 26.

“Many things in history take a long time. That is why we must not and will not forget Afghanistan,” said Ms. Merkel, who was raised in communist East Germany.

“Even if it doesn’t look like it in this bitter hour,” she said, “I remain convinced that no force or ideology can resist the drive for justice and peace.”

Credit…Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press

Five young women who are part of a famed Afghan robotics team — which had been a symbol of opportunities for women and girls in a post-Taliban Afghanistan — have arrived in Mexico as part of the first group of evacuees to land there.

“They will be received with great affection by the people of Mexico,” Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, said at a news conference at Mexico City’s international airport late on Tuesday. “They are bearers of a dream: to show that we can have an egalitarian, fraternal and gender-equal world.”

Mr. Ebrard has led Mexico’s efforts to evacuate people from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover this month, cutting through a typically lengthy immigration process to provide immediate protection. A group of Afghans who worked for The New York Times, along with their families, also arrived safely in Mexico on Wednesday.

Images shared by the Foreign Ministry showed the group that included the robotics team arriving aboard a Lufthansa plane and being greeted by Mexican officials. Some of the young women, all wearing masks because of the pandemic, put their hands to their hearts and nodded their heads as they disembarked.

▶️ «Serán recibidas con mucho cariño por el pueblo de México […] Ellas son portadoras de un sueño: demostrar que podemos tener un mundo igualitario, fraterno y de igualdad entre los géneros».

Canciller @m_ebrard, en el recibimiento al grupo de mujeres de Afganistán en 🇲🇽. pic.twitter.com/9M4SkMUOsz

— Relaciones Exteriores (@SRE_mx) August 25, 2021

An institution based in Mexico, which was unnamed, has offered accommodations, food and basic services for the young women, according to a statement released by the Foreign Ministry.

Other team members had fled to Qatar earlier in the week, and some remained in Afghanistan, according to a statement issued by the team’s founder, the Afghan tech entrepreneur Roya Mahboob.

Ms. Mahboob said that those who remained behind faced a worrying future under the Taliban, which banned education for girls when the group last ruled the country.

The young women were part of a robotics team that gained international attention in 2017 when they were denied visas to the United States for a competition in Washington.

Members of Congress signed a petition, and President Donald J. Trump intervened to get travel documents for them on humanitarian grounds. Once back in Afghanistan, they were received as icons of progress, though some accused them of dressing immodestly while abroad and said they had compromised their prospects for marriage.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. military undertakes its final withdrawal from Afghanistan, officials are reluctant to offer an estimate of one significant number: how many people ultimately are seeking to be evacuated.

U.S. officials say they believe that thousands of Americans remain in Afghanistan, including some far beyond Kabul, without a safe or fast way to get to the airport. Tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the U.S. government over the past 20 years, and are eligible for special visas, are desperate to leave.

Refugee and resettlement experts estimate that at least 300,000 Afghans are in imminent danger of being targeted by the Taliban for associating with Americans and U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

But administration officials say the numbers are continually changing, especially since other countries have their own evacuation operations. And while the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is contacting Americans who are believed to be in Afghanistan, the alerts are going only to Americans who provided the government their location before Kabul fell or in the week since.

“It’s our responsibility to find them, which we are now doing hour by hour,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on Monday.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States has started to reduce its military presence at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul as President Biden signaled that he will stick to his Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing from Afghanistan.

A Defense Department official said that of the 5,800 Marines and soldiers at the airport, about 300 who were considered not essential to the evacuation operation had left the country.

Mr. Biden has left the door open to maintaining the U.S. military presence — now at 5,800 Marines and soldiers — at the airport beyond the deadline. But he does not want to do so, administration officials said, and the Taliban has warned of “consequences” if the United States military stays beyond the deadline.

The Pentagon will probably add additional military bases in the United States to provide temporary housing for Afghan refugees, the Pentagon press secretary, John F. Kirby, said. Discussing the evacuations, he said, “our plan is to continue this pace as aggressively as we can.”

Still, bottlenecks at the airport and at the bases around the world where the people are being temporarily housed could stand in the way, officials said. In particular, they pointed to the bureaucratic process of vetting people.

Mr. Kirby said Afghan allies of the United States, who fear reprisals from the Taliban, were still being processed at the Kabul airport, although several times over the past week the airport’s gates have been shuttered because of the surge of people.

And a Taliban spokesman said on Tuesday that the group’s fighters would physically block Afghans from going to the airport.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

When the Taliban were last in power, Afghan women were generally not allowed to leave their homes except under certain narrowly defined conditions. Those who did risked being beaten, tortured or executed.

In the days since the Taliban swept back into control, their leaders have insisted that this time will be different. Women, they say, will be allowed to work. Girls will be free to attend school. At least within the confines of their interpretation of Islam.

But early signs have not been promising, and that pattern continued on Tuesday with a statement from a Taliban spokesman that women should stay home, at least for now. Why? Because some of the militants have not yet been trained not to hurt them, he said.

The spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, called it a “temporary” policy intended to protect women until the Taliban could ensure their safety.

“We are worried our forces who are new and have not been yet trained very well may mistreat women,” Mr. Mujahid said. “We don’t want our forces, God forbid, to harm or harass women.”

Mr. Mujahid said that women should stay home “until we have a new procedure,” and that “their salaries will paid in their homes.”

His statement echoed comments from Ahmadullah Waseq, the deputy of the Taliban’s cultural affairs committee, who told The New York Times this week that the Taliban had “no problem with working women,” as long as they wore hijabs.

But, he said: “For now, we are asking them to stay home until the situation gets normal. Now it is a military situation.”

During the first years of Taliban rule, from 1996 to 2001, women were forbidden to work outside the home or even to leave the house without a male guardian. They could not attend school, and faced public flogging if they were found to have violated morality rules, like one requiring that they be fully covered.

The claim that restrictions on women’s lives are a temporary necessity is not new to Afghan women. The Taliban made similar claims the last time they controlled Afghanistan, said Heather Barr, the associate director of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch.

“The explanation was that the security was not good, and they were waiting for security to be better, and then women would be able to have more freedom,” she said. “But of course in those years they were in power, that moment never arrived — and I can promise you Afghan women hearing this today are thinking it will never arrive this time either.”

Brian Castner, a senior crisis adviser at Amnesty International who was in Afghanistan until last week, said that if the Taliban intended to treat women better, they would need to retrain their forces. “You can’t have a movement like the Taliban that has operated a certain way for 25 years and then just because you take over a government, all of the fighters and everyone in your organization just does something differently,” he said.

But, Mr. Castner said, there is no indication that the Taliban intend to fulfill that or any other promises of moderation. Amnesty International has received reports of fighters going door to door with lists of names, despite their leaders’ public pledges not to retaliate against Afghans who worked with the previous government.

“The rhetoric and the reality are not matching at all, and I think that the rhetoric is more than just disingenuous,” Mr. Castner said. “If a random Taliban fighter commits a human rights abuse or violation, that’s just kind of random violence, that’s one thing. But if there’s a systematic going to people’s homes and looking for people, that’s not a random fighter that’s untrained — that’s a system working. The rhetoric is a cover for what’s really happening.”

In Kabul on Wednesday, women in parts of the city with minimal Taliban presence were going out “with normal clothes, as it was before the Taliban,” said a resident named Shabaka. But in central areas with many Taliban fighters, few women ventured out, and those who did wore burqas, said Sayed, a civil servant.

Ms. Barr, of Human Rights Watch, said that in the week since the Taliban said the new government would preserve women’s rights “within the bounds of Islamic law,” the Afghan women she has spoken to offered the same skeptical assessment: “They’re trying to look normal and legitimate, and this will last as long as the international community and the international press are still there. And then we’ll see what they’re really like again.”

It might not take long, Ms. Barr suggested.

“This announcement just highlights to me that they don’t feel like they need to wait,” she said.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

At least 51 people who fled from Afghanistan landed in Uganda on Wednesday, the authorities said, the first to arrive in an African nation amid the race to complete such evacuations before the United States withdraws its military from Afghanistan by the month’s end.

Uganda said last week that it was preparing to temporarily host evacuees from Afghanistan after a request from the U.S. government. The East African nation is Africa’s top refugee-hosting nation — with nearly 1.5 million displaced people living within its borders — and the top fourth refugee host in the world, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency.

The evacuees’ arrival came 10 days after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan and hours after President Biden said the United States was on pace for its withdrawal by the Aug. 31 deadline. Their arrival also came as the Pentagon said it had airlifted its biggest daily number of evacuees from Kabul’s airport on Tuesday. Some of those are now reaching countries that, like Uganda, agreed to serve as temporary transit stops.

In Uganda on Wednesday morning, the evacuees underwent a security screening and were tested for the coronavirus, the Foreign Ministry said. News outlets shared photos on social media of them arriving at a local hotel.

Ugandan officials have said that the United States is paying for the evacuees’ upkeep, with aid groups like Mercy Corps also promising to step in.

The evacuees arrived on a flight privately chartered by The Rockefeller Foundation and other funders, according to Ashley E. Chang, the head of the foundation’s media relations.

The Ugandan Foreign Ministry said there had also been plans to have some Ugandans travel on the chartered flight, but because of “challenges of accessing the airport in Kabul, they were unable to make it.”

Arrangements were being made to evacuate those Ugandan citizens on a subsequent flight, the ministry said.

The authorities did not specify the nationalities of the people who arrived in Uganda on Wednesday. But Okello Oryem, a junior minister in the Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that Afghans and people from other countries, including from Europe and the United States, were expected as part of the evacuation plan.

Ms. Chang also said the flight on Wednesday was carrying at-risk Afghan adults — along with some minors — who worked with U.S.-funded nongovernmental organizations, Special Immigrant Visa applicants, and many others who qualified for P2 visas which are reserved for artists and entertainers.

U.S. officials have been in touch with countries around the world — including Canada, Kuwait, Mexico and Qatar — that have agreed to serve as transit stops or announced an intention to grant refugee status or resettlement for people fleeing Afghanistan.

The United States provides more than $970 million in development and military aid to Uganda annually. It supports education and agriculture, and provides antiretroviral treatment for more than 990,000 Ugandans who are H.I.V.-positive.

President Yoweri Museveni — who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist since 1986 and was re-elected to a sixth term in January after a bloody election — is also a key U.S. military ally, deploying troops to fight the Qaeda-linked group Al Shabab in Somalia.

Uganda now hosts nearly 1.5 million refugees who have fled violence in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan — conflicts that, critics point out, Mr. Museveni’s government has meddled in.

The authorities did not specify how evacuees would be arriving from Afghanistan and when they will come. But Mr. Oryem said the government would not rush them to leave.

“These are people who are traumatized and have gone through difficulties,” he said.

Credit…Azam Ahmed/The New York Times

A group of Afghans who worked for The New York Times, along with their families, touched down safely early Wednesday — not in New York or Washington, but at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City.

Mexican officials, unlike their counterparts in the United States, were able to cut through the red tape of their immigration system to quickly provide documents that, in turn, allowed the Afghans to fly from Kabul’s embattled airport to Qatar.

The documents promised that the Afghans would receive temporary humanitarian protection in Mexico while they explored further options in the United States or elsewhere.

“We are right now committed to a foreign policy promoting free expression, liberties and feminist values,” Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said in a telephone interview.

He cited a national tradition of welcoming people including the 19th-century Cuban independence leader José Martí, German Jews and South Americans fleeing coups, and he said that Mexico had opened its doors to the Afghan journalists “in order to protect them and to be consistent with this policy.”

But the path of the Afghan journalists and their families to Mexico was as arbitrary, personal and tenuous as anything else in the frantic and scattershot evacuation of Kabul.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Just days after the Taliban swept into Kabul and toppled Afghanistan’s government, a group of former mujahedeen fighters and Afghan commandos said they had begun a war of resistance in the last area of the country that is not under Taliban control: a narrow valley with a history of repelling invaders.

The man leading them is Ahmad Massoud, the 32-year-old son of the storied mujahedeen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. And their struggle faces long odds: The resistance fighters are surrounded by the Taliban, have supplies that will soon start dwindling and have no visible outside support.

For now the resistance has merely two assets: the Panjshir Valley, 70 miles north of Kabul, which has a history of repelling invaders, and the legendary Massoud name.

Spokesmen for Ahmad Massoud insist that he has attracted thousands of soldiers to the valley, including remnants of the Afghan Army’s special forces and some of his father’s experienced guerrilla commanders, as well as activists and others who reject the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate.

The spokesmen, some of whom were with him in the Panjshir Valley and some who were outside the country drumming up support, said that Mr. Massoud has stocks of weapons and matériel, including American helicopters, but needs more.

‘‘We’re waiting for some opportunity, some support,” said Hamid Saifi, a former colonel in the Afghan National Army, and now a commander in Mr. Massoud’s resistance, who was reached in the Panjshir Valley by telephone on Sunday. “Maybe some countries will be ready for this great work. So far, all countries we talked to are quiet. America, Europe, China, Russia, all of them are quiet.’’

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Two members of Congress secretly flew to Kabul without authorization on Tuesday to witness the frenzied evacuation of Americans and Afghans, infuriating Biden administration officials and prompting Speaker Nancy Pelosi to urge other lawmakers not to follow their example.

The two members — Representatives Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, both veterans — said in a statement that the purpose of their trip was “to provide oversight on the executive branch.” Both lawmakers have blistered the Biden administration in recent weeks, accusing top officials of dragging their feet on evacuating American citizens and Afghan allies.

“There is no place in the world right now where oversight matters more,” they said.

Credit…Erin Schaff for The New York TimesCredit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Today with @RepMeijer I visited Kabul airport to conduct oversight on the evacuation.

Witnessing our young Marines and soldiers at the gates, navigating a confluence of humanity as raw and visceral as the world has ever seen, was indescribable. pic.twitter.com/bWGQh1iw2c

— Seth Moulton (@sethmoulton) August 25, 2021

But administration officials were furious that Mr. Moulton and Mr. Meijer had entered Afghanistan on an unauthorized, undisclosed trip, arguing that efforts to tend to the lawmakers had drained resources badly needed to help evacuate those already in the country.

The trip was reported earlier by The Associated Press.

Mr. Moulton and Mr. Meijer said that they had left Afghanistan “on a plane with empty seats, seated in crew-only seats to ensure that nobody who needed a seat would lose one because of our presence,” and that they had taken other steps to “minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground.” They were in Kabul for less than 24 hours.

Still, Ms. Pelosi pressed other lawmakers not to do the same.

“Member travel to Afghanistan and the surrounding countries would unnecessarily divert needed resources from the priority mission of safely and expeditiously evacuating Americans and Afghans at risk from Afghanistan,” Ms. Pelosi wrote in a letter. She did not refer to Mr. Moulton and Mr. Meijer by name.

In their statement on Tuesday night, the congressmen sharpened their criticism of the administration’s handling of the evacuation, saying that “Washington should be ashamed of the position we put our service members in” and that the situation they had witnessed on the ground was more dire than they had expected.

“After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late,” they wrote, “that no matter what we do, we won’t get everyone out on time.”

Tags Afghanistan, Biden, Live, Taliban, Updates

Politics

Most Rental Assistant Funds Not But Distributed, Figures Present

Post author By
Post date August 25, 2021

Treasury and White House officials admitted on a conference call Tuesday evening that the program will not ramp up fast enough to completely prevent an eviction wave, even if judges allowed it to remain in effect until its scheduled expiration date on Oct.26 .

[Read more on why it’s been so challenging getting aid to renters.]

But you also mentioned progress. State and local authorities have started steadily increasing payments to hundreds of thousands of households at risk of eviction, most of them going to low-income renters. They also believe the pace of payments accelerated further in August.

On Wednesday, the Treasury Department introduced a series of incremental changes designed to pressure states to act faster. However, administrative officials continue to blame local officials for the program’s struggles, many of whom are reluctant to take advantage of the program’s new expedited application process, which allows tenants to verify their financial information on their own.

In recent weeks, local officials have complained that acting too quickly on aid requests could lead to errors, fraud and audits; The White House countered this by saying these risks are insignificant compared to a wave of evictions hit renters who don’t get their help fast enough to keep a roof over their heads.

“You can and should use simpler applications, faster processes and the ability to self-validate without unnecessary delays,” added Sperling.

Several states, including Texas, have been particularly effective in building their aid distribution systems, officials said. But many others – particularly New York, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, and South Carolina – have been sluggish, making tenants particularly vulnerable to evictions after the moratorium was lifted, they said.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who was sworn in this week, said speeding up the system was one of her top priorities.

Tags Assistant, Distributed, Figures, funds, rental, Show

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Die Taliban-Übernahme in Afghanistan verstehen

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