World News Random, Random

[ponchi101]

$85 BN in military equipment. Wonder how much will Vlad and Xi pay for that.

[ti-amie]

Biden doesn't waste time bloviating.

[ti-amie]

Biden to the world: FAFO

Eff around and find out

[ti-amie]

I understand what the General is saying but the political optics of the situation required that this be done.

[ti-amie]

[MJ2004]

Grinding my teeth as I post this.

Fears grow for Afghan refugees stuck in ‘Kafkaesque’ Poland-Belarus standoff
Lukashenko accused of encouraging refugees to come to Belarus in retaliation for Brussels sanctions

Fears are growing for a group of Afghan refugees who fled their country last month and made their way to Europe, only to find themselves marooned on the border between Poland and Belarus in a “Kafkaesque” political standoff.

The 32 refugees – women, men, and a child of 15 years old – have been stuck in a small, muddy patch of land between the two countries for almost three weeks with no access to clean water, insufficient shelter and intermittent food supplies, according to a Polish NGO.

Despite seeking international protection in Poland, they are not being allowed in, with border guards preventing them from entering. Neither are they being allowed back into Belarus, where they came from in the hope of being able to cross into the European Union.

According to the Ocalenie Foundation, which has been monitoring the situation for the past week, one member of the group, a 53-year-old woman, is ill and urgently needs medical assistance. Mariana Wartecka, a spokesperson for the NGO, said border guards had refused her access to health professionals.

“It’s a humanitarian crisis right now,” she said. “They don’t have proper shelter. They don’t have access to clean water. They are drinking water from a stream near them that is really dirty.”

EU countries have accused the authoritarian leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, of seeking to destabilise the bloc by encouraging refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere to come into the country on tourist visas. Then, they say, he is sending them to the border with Poland and the Baltic states in retaliation for the sanctions imposed by Brussels in June.

The group of Afghans stuck near the village of Usnarz Górny, about 55km east of Białystok, find themselves in the crosshairs of this clash, say human rights observers.

“They’re a victim of the political game between countries,” said Aleksandra Fertlińska, a campaigner at Amnesty International Poland. “But what is the most important is that it doesn’t matter what is the source of this political game. They are refugees, and they are protected by [the] Geneva convention and what we need to do is … accept them.”

Last week, the European court of human rights ordered Poland and Latvia to help refugees and migrants gathered on their borders by providing them with “food, water, clothing, adequate medical care and, if possible, temporary shelter.” It was not, it added, requiring that either country “let the applicants enter their territories”.

A group of Iraqi Kurds is in similar limbo on the border between Latvia and Belarus.

In response to the court’s interim, Poland’s rightwing government said its foreign ministry had repeatedly offered to take humanitarian assistance intended for the refugees into Belarus. A spokeswoman for the interior ministry said: “These people are on the Belarusian side of the border.”

Agnieszka Kubal, a migration scholar at UCL, said the offer was disingenuous at best.

“We’re in a situation where Polish border guards are standing literally metres from these people in a tight cordon and Polish authorities are sending a truck to Belarus to reach those people from the other side. It’s a Kafkaesque situation. It’s so ridiculous that I’m lost for words.”

As the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan prompts hundreds of thousands of people to flee to neighbouring countries, the EU – still reeling from its failure to manage the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis – is braced for a fresh influx of refugees.

Fertlińska urged Warsaw to be prepared to accept refugees fleeing their crisis-hit country and “not to close the borders and not to build the fences, because we [saw] that in 2015 this kind of politics didn’t make any change in terms of the numbers of people who were trying to get to Europe”.

But, when visiting the border last week, the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, struck a hardline note, accusing the Belarusian regime of exploiting the refugees and insisting: “Poland must protect its border.”

“I truly sympathise with the migrants who have been in an extremely difficult situation but it should be clearly stated that they are a political instrument,” Morawiecki said.

Belarus has denied it is sending refugees to the border. In May, Lukashenko told the EU that if it imposed new sanctions it would find itself with more “drugs and migrants” that his country would once have stopped.

[Suliso]

It's all Lukashenko asymmetric warfare against Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. Many of these people flew directly from Baghdad to Minsk on "tourist" visas.

[MJ2004]

In today's news of the Afghanistan debacle, the US intercepted five rockets targeting airplanes flying out. Which made me wonder, how do the final airplanes leave? With no rocket interception coverage? Do they blow up the tech or take it with them, or leave it in place for the Taliban? Do they fly out with no coverage and hope for the best?

[ponchi101]

The Taliban are firing at planes just like that?

[Suliso]

The Taliban are firing at planes just like that?

Taliban are not firing at anything. It's ISIS who's doing that. There is a big difference.

[JazzNU]

[MJ2004]

Yes, ISIS was firing at the planes. Not the Taliban. Rather a moot point now that evacuation is complete, I was just curious about the logistics of the final transfer/withdrawal.

US withdraws from Afghanistan bringing end to 20-year war
Top commander says ‘every single service member’ has left country as evacuation effort concludes

The US commander responsible for troops in Afghanistan announced the final American withdrawal from the country, as the military wrapped up its massive airlift from Kabul’s airport and brought the country’s involvement in the 20-year war to a formal end.

General Kenneth McKenzie, the head of US central command, announced the end of the evacuation operation at a Pentagon news conference on Monday afternoon, which coincided with Tuesday morning in Kabul — the deadline President Joe Biden had set for a full withdrawal.

“I’m here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan,” McKenzie said at a Pentagon briefing, adding that the last military plane had left Kabul airport with the US ambassador aboard. “Every single US service member is out of Afghanistan.”

“Tonight’s withdrawal signifies both the end of the military component of the evacuation, but also the end of the nearly 20 year mission that began in Afghanistan shortly after September 11, 2001,” McKenzie said.

The US had dramatically scaled back its evacuation mission in Afghanistan in the days leading up the end of the operation, with the number of civilians being airlifted out of Kabul falling sharply on Monday.

Ahead of the last flight leaving Kabul, military commanders were sharing some drawdown logistics with Taliban commanders to “deconflict and prevent miscalculations and misunderstandings”, said John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman. He added: “So far that communication has been effective.”

The pace of the airlift slowed significantly as the US switched its focus from evacuating civilians to withdrawing its troops and equipment.

On Monday, the US said its military had evacuated approximately 1,200 people over the previous 24 hours, compared with 6,800 on Friday and almost 13,000 a-day at the peak of the operation last week.

The Taliban on Monday told Afghans they would be blocked from going to the airport even if they had visas and documents.

“While the military evacuation is complete, the diplomatic mission to ensure additional US citizens and eligible Afghans who want to leave continues”

The final push to conclude the evacuation took place against the backdrop of an increasingly dangerous security situation in Kabul, where the airport had been the target of a successful suicide bombing and unsuccessful rocket attacks.

Qatar, meanwhile, urged the Taliban to accept foreign security help to keep the airport running.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Doha’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times that the Gulf state, a point of contact between the west and the Taliban, was urging Afghanistan’s new rulers to accept outside assistance to operate Kabul airport.

“What is a clear [Taliban] objection is that they don’t want to see a foreign security presence in their airport or their territory,” Sheikh Mohammed said. “What we are trying to explain to them is that airport safety and security requires a lot more than securing the perimeters of the airport.”

Isis claimed responsibility for rockets fired at the airport on Monday, although no casualties were reported. US defence officials said five rockets were fired, one of which was intercepted by US rocket defence systems. 

That attack follows a deadly suicide bombing on Thursday that killed 13 US service personnel, injured 14 more, and killed more than 100 civilians who were near the Abbey gate of the airport. 

The US has launched at least two drone strikes in retaliation after Biden vowed to “hunt down” those responsible.

The Pentagon said on Monday it was “assessing and investigating” reports it had killed about 10 civilians with a drone strike on Sunday. “We are not in a position to dispute it,” said Kirby. 

He added: “Make no mistake, no military on the face of the earth works harder to avoid civilian casualties than the US military, and nobody wants to see innocent life taken.”

The drone strike, which hit a crowded Kabul neighbourhood, has sparked controversy. The US said it “successfully hit the target” and had destroyed an explosives-laden vehicle that was to be used in a second airport attack, and that “significant secondary explosions from the targeted vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material”.

But in Kabul, news reports said a former US army interpreter and several of his children were killed in the strike.

-FT

[JazzNU]

By the way, those of us that were wondering why Americans didn't leave well ahead of all this? We're going to remain wondering, but they were given increasingly dire warnings and still decided to remain. So we right in thinking they had to know this was getting much worse.

[ti-amie]

Meanwhile this is happening.

[JazzNU]

And by the way, that doesn't count the California students that thought it was a good idea to plan a vacation to Afghanistan in the middle of all this if you missed that story. I have no words, can't make this ish up.