The Democratic presidential contenders opened a second round of debates in Detroit, Michigan, Tuesday, with a flurry of attacks on President Donald Trump. But the 10 Democrats also went after each other at times and showed some growing strains between moderate and progressive candidates. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone reports on the first of two nights of debate.
Semenya Out of World Championships After Swiss Court Reverses Reprieve
Double Olympic champion Caster Semenya will not defend her 800-meters title at the World Championships in September after the Swiss Federal Tribunal reversed a ruling that temporarily lifted the IAAF’s testosterone regulations imposed on her, a spokesman for the athlete said Tuesday.
Semenya is appealing the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) ruling that supported regulations introduced by the sport’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
These say that XY chromosome athletes with differences in sexual development (DSDs) can race in distances from 400 meters to a mile only if they take medication to reach a reduced testosterone level.
“I am very disappointed to be kept from defending my hard-earned title, but this will not deter me from continuing my fight for the human rights of all of the female athletes concerned,” Semenya said in a statement from her representative.
CAS is based in Lausanne and comes under the jurisdiction of Switzerland’s highest court.
The IAAF said they would only comment once they have read the full reasoning behind the judgment.
“We understand the Swiss Federal Tribunal will be publishing its full decision on this order tomorrow [Wednesday] and the IAAF will comment once the tribunal makes its reasoning public,” a spokeswoman told Reuters.
The South African had been given a reprieve last month by the Swiss court, which temporarily lifted the IAAF’s regulations from her until the final outcome of her appeal.
“The Supreme Court emphasized the strict requirements and high thresholds for the interim suspension of CAS awards and found that these were not fulfilled,” the statement said.
Lawyer: Still hopeful
Dorothee Schramm, the lawyer leading Semenya’s appeal, says they are still hopeful of a permanent lifting of the regulations.
“The judge’s procedural decision has no impact on the appeal itself. We will continue to pursue Caster’s appeal and fight for her fundamental human rights. A race is always decided at the finish line,” Schramm said.
Semenya ran the quickest-ever 800 meters on United States soil at the Prefontaine Classic Diamond League meeting on June 30 in a time of 1:55.70.
She told reporters afterward that she would not compete at the World Championships in Doha if barred from running her preferred distance, having earlier hinted she could enter longer races in the future that are not covered by the regulations.
What to Know About the Capital One Data Breach
One of the country’s biggest credit card issuers, Capital One Financial, is the latest big business to be hit by a data breach, disclosing that roughly 100 million people had some personal information stolen by a hacker.
The alleged hacker, Paige A. Thompson, obtained Social Security and bank account numbers in some instances, as well other information such as names, birth dates, credit scores and self-reported income, the bank said Monday. It said no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised.
Capital One Financial is just the latest business to suffer a data breach. Only last week Equifax, the credit reporting company, announced a $700 million settlement over its own 2017 data breach that impacted half of the U.S. population. Other companies that have had breaches include the hotel chain Marriott, retail giants Home Depot and Target.
What happened?
Thompson, 33, who uses the online handle “erratic,” allegedly obtained access to Capital One data stored on Amazon’s cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services in March. She downloaded the data and stored it on her own servers, according to the complaint.
Thompson was a systems engineer at Amazon Web Services between 2015 and 2016, about three years before the breach took place. The breach went unnoticed by Amazon and Capital One.
Thompson used the anonymous web browser Tor and a Virtual Private Network in extracting the data — typical methods hackers use to try to mask infiltrations — but she later boasted about the hack on Twitter and a chat group on Slack, posting screenshots as evidence of her exploit.
It was only after Thompson began bragging about her feat in a private group chat with other hackers that someone reached out to Capital One to let them know on July 17.
Once the informant told Capital One, the company closed the vulnerability. The company verified its information had been stolen by July 19 and started tracking Thompson and working with the FBI. The FBI raided Thompson’s residence on Monday and seized digital devices. An initial search turned up files that referenced Capital One and “other entities that may have been targets of attempted or actual network intrusions.”
What did Thompson take?
The data breach involves about 100 million people in the U.S. and 6 million in Canada.
Prosecutors said a misconfigured Capital One firewall let Thompson access folders of data that Amazon Web Services was hosting for the bank. Thompson sent a command that returned a list of more than 700 folders and copied data from an unspecified number of them.
Capital One said the bulk of the hacked data consisted of information supplied by consumers and small businesses who applied for credit cards between 2005 and early 2019. The hacker also was able to gain some access to fragments of transactional information from dates in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
The bank said it believes it is unlikely that the information obtained was used for fraud, but the investigation is ongoing.
Capital One says 140,000 individuals had their Social Security numbers accessed, and another 80,000 had their bank account information accessed.
How did Capital One handle the breach?
Capital One says once it learned of the breach on July 17, it immediately closed the vulnerability, and it was able to figure out what Thompson accessed 36 hours later, on July 19. The company was able to build a profile on Thompson from their internal investigation, and handed that to the FBI, who arrested her 10 days later, the day the bank disclosed the breach.
By contrast, it took Equifax six weeks before it publicly disclose its security incident, which was similar in size.
What to do
Capital One said it will reach out to those affected using “a variety of channels.”
That bank said it will make free credit monitoring and identity protection available to everyone affected. The company also said that consumers can visit www.capitalone.com/facts2019 for more information. In Canada, information can be found at www.capitalone.ca/facts2019.
Consumers should also obtain copies of their credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com. By federal law, consumers can receive a free copy of their credit report every 12 months from each of the three big agencies — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
Look over all of your listed accounts and loans to make sure that all of your personal information is correct and that you authorized the transaction. If you find something suspicious, contact the company that issued the account and the credit-rating agency.
You may also want to consider freezing your credit, which stops thieves from opening new credit cards or loans in your name. This can be done online. Consumers can freeze their credit for free because of a law that President Donald Trump signed last year. Before that, fees were typically $5 to $10 per rating agency.
You’ll need to remember to temporarily unfreeze your credit if you apply for a new credit card or loan. Also keep in mind that a credit freeze won’t protect you from thieves who file a fraudulent tax return in your name or make charges against an existing account.
You should also change your passwords regularly. CreditCards.com industry analyst Ted Rossman recommends using a password aggregator like LastPass that helps create strong, unique passwords for all of your logins.
Canada Police Shift Manhunt for Teen Slaying Suspects
Canadian police said Tuesday they have pulled out of a remote northern town after an intensive search turned up no sign of two fugitive teenagers suspected of killing three people — a college professor, a North Carolina woman and her Australian boyfriend.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police used dogs and drones, helicopters, boats and even a military Hercules aircraft to scour the area around York Landing, Manitoba, but were unable to confirm a possible sighting of the two men reported by members of a neighborhood watch group.
The RCMP tweeted Monday that “the heavy police presence in York Landing has been withdrawn & policing resources in the community will return to normal.”
That shifts the hunt for Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky back toward another remote town, Gillam, where a vehicle that had been used by the suspects was found burned last week.
Nineteen-year-old McLeod and 18-year-old Schmegelsky have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Leonard Dyck, a University of British Columbia professor whose body was found last week in British Columbia.
They are also suspects in the fatal shootings of Australian Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese of Charlotte, North Carolina, whose bodies were found July 15 along the Alaska Highway about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from where Dyck was killed.
A manhunt for the pair has spread across three provinces.
Sherman Kong, whose Maple Leaf Survival company in Winnipeg teaches wilderness and extreme cold weather survival tactics, said the terrain around Gillam — 1,100 kilometers (660 miles) north of Winnipeg — is dense and swampy. It’s inhabited by wildlife like bears, as well as insects “that are relentless and quite abundant.”
There is a possibility the two already may have died from an animal attack, dehydration, a serious injury or other causes, Kong said.
But he said that every year, people without formal training survive being lost in the wilderness.
“If we expect these two gentlemen are motivated, and even if they have a certain level of survival skills, that coupled with their intent on not being captured, can often be enough to allow someone to remain at large in the bush and survive longer,” Kong said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Article Suggests Nuclear Sharing with Japan, S. Korea to Deter N. Korean Threat
Christy Lee contributed to this report which originated on VOA’s Korean Service.
The National Defense University, an institution funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, has published a journal article suggesting Washington should share its nuclear tactical missiles with Japan and South Korea to deter North Korea’s growing nuclear threat to East Asia and the U.S.
“The United States should strongly consider … sharing of nonstrategic nuclear capabilities during times of crisis with select Asia-Pacific partners, specially Japan and the Republic of Korea,” according to “Twenty-First Century Nuclear Deterrence,” published by the university in the current issue of Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ). The Republic of Korea is the official name for South Korea.
Publication guidelines on the university’s site say “The views expressed by this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.”
Sharing American nuclear capabilities with Japan and South Korea would involve deploying its nuclear weapons in the territories of its two allies in East Asia so that the weapons can be used in such time as a nuclear war, as the U.S. does with five member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATO), according to the article.
Japan and South Korea are under the U.S. nuclear umbrella that promises defense against threats. The U.S. maintains military bases in both countries, which are currently embroiled in a trade dispute colored by historical animosities.
The article’s release on July 25 coincided with North Korea’s launch of two short-range missiles. Then, early Wednesday local time, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that North Korea launched multiple unidentified projectiles off the east coast of its Hodo Peninsula.
The four authors, who serve in the U.S. army, navy, and air force, suggest U.S. nuclear weapons deployed in Japan and South Korea would be used for exigent purposes during war but would mainly serve as an extended deterrence against North Korea’s use of nuclear weapons in peacetime, effectively preventing it from launching a nuclear attack.
The article suggests American nuclear sharing with Japan and South Korea could be undertaken in a manner similar to an agreement the U.S. signed with five NATO member states.
US weapons
Currently, the U.S. shares approximately 180 tactical nuclear weapons such as B61 nuclear bombs with Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.
NATO is a multilateral alliance now composed of 29 member-states from North America and Europe established in 1949 by 12 countries to serve as a collective defense against emerging threats in the region.
American nuclear weapons have been deployed to the five NATO countries since the mid-1950s in an arrangement known as nuclear sharing. Nuclear sharing allows these countries without nuclear weapons to use American deployed nuclear weapons in case of war at which time the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) will be disabled.
The NPT, which entered into force in 1970, prohibits signatory states from transferring and accepting direct and indirect control of nuclear weapons.
The JFQ article came out as the process of denuclearization diplomacy with Pyongyang, stalled since the Hanoi summit in February, has started to inch forward.
In June, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump met for an impromptu summit at the inter-Korean border in June where they agreed to resume denuclearization efforts. North Korea has been reluctant to engage in the working-level negotiations since Hanoi where Washington rejected Pyongyang’s demand for sanctions lift.
The JFQ authors highlighted that the U.S. may face “difficulties in shaping [North Korean] behavior” if it does not give up its nuclear program.
“If left unchecked, North Korea will continue to threaten the East Asian region and perhaps one day the United States itself,” they noted.
North Korea threat
On June 25, North Korea fired what South Korea called new types of short-range ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, the body of water between the Korean peninsula and Japan, rattling the East Asian countries.
The next day, Pyongyang said it had tested a new type of “tactical guided weapon” intended to send a “solemn warning” to South Korea to end its joint military exercises with the U.S.
North Korea said the weapons it tested had “rapid anti-firepower capability” and “low altitude gliding and leaping flight orbit…which would be hard to intercept.”
In May, North Korea tested three short-range missiles off its east coast that experts considered to be similar to a Russian Iskander, a nuclear loadable short-range ballistic missile.
The article said, “Considering North Korea’s history of aggressive nuclear rhetoric and recent missile tests,” sharing U.S. nuclear weapons with its regional allies “would provide renewed physical evidence of U.S. resolve.”
The article also stated that nuclear sharing with Japan and South Korea will strengthen a “military partnership through joint-regional exercises” necessary to deter North Korea.
However, according to Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, the time may not be ripe for the U.S. to propose nuclear sharing with Seoul and Tokyo because of an on-going trade row between the two.
“My sense is that [in] both South Korea and Japan, there is very little political support for such a step at this time,” said Samore, currently senior fellow at the Harvard Belfer Center’s Korea Project. “It could change, but, for now, I think it would be very controversial.”
Seoul and Tokyo have been involved in a trade dispute after Japan placed export restrictions on three high-tech items South Korean companies use to manufacture parts used in smart phones and other high-tech devices. The trade dispute is widely seen as rooted in Korean anger at Japan for decades of colonization and occupation from 1910 until Japan’s 1945 surrender to the U.S. to end World War II. During that period, many Japanese companies used Korean forced labor.
Boycotts against Japanese-made products have been widespread in Seoul, and Japan has rejected Seoul’s call for talks to resolve the dispute.
Samore said, “There may come a time when the domestic politics in South Korea and Japan have changed especially when North Korea continues to maintain and advance nuclear weapons and (a) ballistic missile program.” He added, “And then at that point it would make more sense.”
Senators Warren, Sanders Under Attack at Democrats’ Presidential Debate
U.S. health care policies took center stage Tuesday night at the Democratic presidential candidates’ debate, with more moderate challengers attacking Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the leading progressives looking to oust President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Warren and Sanders have both called for a sweeping end to the country’s current health care system centered on private company insurance plans offered to 150 million workers through their employers. But their views were under attack almost from the start of the two-hour debate on a theater stage in Detroit, Michigan, the country’s auto industry hub.
“We don’t have to go around and be the party of subtraction and telling half the country who has private health insurance that their health insurance is illegal,” former Maryland Congressman John Delaney said. “It’s also bad policy. It’ll under-fund the industry, many hospitals will close, and it’s bad politics.”
Often political allies
Warren, a former Harvard law professor, and Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, are friends of long-standing and often political allies. They now are both looking for votes from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Both defended their position calling for a government-run health care system.
“This is not radical,” Sanders of Vermont shouted at one point, noting that numerous other Western societies already have adopted government-run systems. “I get a little tired of Democrats who are afraid of big ideas.”
Warren of Massachusetts rebuffed the critics, saying, “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.”
But their challengers lobbed multiple attacks at the pair, saying their proposals would, over four years or longer, upend the long-standing U.S. health care system, including government-subsidized insurance for moderate and low-income families under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who has called for more incremental health care policy changes, said, “I have bold ideas, but they are grounded in reality.”
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said that Democrats had picked up 40 seats in the House of Representatives in the 2018 mid-term elections and not one of them had pushed for the Warren-Sanders Medicare for All plan.
“I’m a little more pragmatic,” Hickenlooper declared.
Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan called for a plan allowing Americans to buy into government-run insurance if they want to, but said that closing down the insurance industry “is a recipe for disaster,” especially among union members who would face the loss of hard-won health care benefits through collective bargaining.
First of two nights
Tuesday’s debate was the first of two nights with two groups of 10 Democratic candidates sparring with each other over domestic and foreign policy differences, but more importantly trying to make the case that they are the party’s best hope to defeat Trump when he seeks re-election in 2020.
Trump’s relentless attacks on Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings, a prominent African American political leader, and the predominantly black city of Baltimore that he represents, drew sharp criticism from some of the Democratic presidential candidates.
“Donald Trump disgraces the office of the presidency every single day,” Warren said. Klobuchar added: “I don’t think anyone can justify what this president is doing.”
The two debates are occurring six months ahead of the Democratic Party’s first presidential nominating contests. The two-hour debates could prove pivotal in both winnowing the field, forcing the weakest challengers out of the race before the next debate in mid-September, and in solidifying the list of front-runners. It largely depends on who is perceived by pundits in the post-debate analyses as making a plausible case to be the Democratic standard-bearer, or, conversely, flubbing their opportunity on CNN’s nationally televised broadcasts.
On Wednesday, former Vice President Joe Biden, currently the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in national surveys of Democrats and some independents, will be at center stage. Some party stalwarts say he is the more moderate, center-left, politically safe choice to take on the unpredictable Trump, whose populist base of conservative voters remains strong.
But Biden had a shaky first debate performance a month ago, faltering as California Sen. Kamala Harris challenged him to explain his opposition three decades ago to forced busing of schoolchildren to racially desegregate public schools. Harris said that she, as a black woman and the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, benefited from such a busing program to attend a better school while growing up in California.
Biden, a fixture on the U.S. political scene for four decades, and Harris, a former state attorney general before winning election to the Senate, will be standing alongside each other on the debate stage. Biden is promising a more robust performance than in the first debate, saying, “I’m not going to be as polite this time.”
But questions remain about Biden’s standing, whether at 76 he is too old to lead the country, even though Trump is 73, and whether Democratic voters want a candidate with more progressive views than Biden on health care, prevention of crime, migrant immigration at the U.S.-Mexican border and other issues.
Some analysts think Biden’s top standing in national polls is at least partly a reflection of name recognition, from his 36 years as a U.S. senator, two unsuccessful runs for the presidency and two terms as vice president under former President Barack Obama.
Tough-on-crime legislation
On the same stage Wednesday, Biden is also likely to face a challenge from Sen. Cory Booker, an African American former mayor of Newark, New Jersey.
Booker has assailed Biden’s support 25 years ago for get-tough-on-crime legislation that led to the disproportionate imprisonment of black defendants.
Biden recently offered a new criminal justice plan, reversing key provisions of the 1994 measure, such as ending the stricter sentencing for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Booker scoffed that Biden was hardly the best candidate to lay out a new criminal justice plan and has called for slashing mandatory minimum sentences.
Despite Biden’s first debate stumbles, the ranks of the top Democratic candidates have changed little in national surveys.
Biden remains ahead of three challengers, all U.S. senators: Sanders, a democratic socialist lawmaker from the Northeastern state of Vermont; Warren, a former Harvard law professor from neighboring Massachusetts, and Harris. Booker has edged up a bit in the polling, while South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has slipped a notch. The remaining candidates far down the ranks and struggling to gain a foothold.
A new Quinnipiac University national poll this week shows Biden leading the pack with 34% of Democrats and independents leaning Democratic, followed by Warren at 15%, Harris with 12% and Sanders with 11%.
Biden claims he has the best chance of making the Republican Trump the country’s first single-term president in nearly three decades, denying him a second four years in the White House.
National surveys, 15 months ahead of the Nov. 3, 2020, election, consistently show Biden winning a hypothetical match-up over Trump, whose voter approval ratings remain mired in the mid-40% range. Sanders often defeats Trump as well, although not by Biden’s margin, while surveys show the other top Democrats potentially locked in tight, either-or outcomes with Trump.
Aside from Biden, Harris and Booker, the Wednesday debate stage also includes former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, entrepreneur Andrew Yang and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Five other Democratic candidates did not qualify for the Detroit debates, but the 20 who did had to have collected campaign donations from at least 65,000 individuals and hit a 1% threshold in at least three separate polls.
It gets tougher to appear on the stage at the third debate six weeks from now. To qualify then, candidates must have 130,000 campaign contributors and at least 2 percent support in four polls.
Only seven of this week’s 20 debaters have already met the third debate criteria: Biden, Harris, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Booker and former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke.
Rights Advocates Question Myanmar’s Conditions to Repatriate Rohingya Refugees
VOA Asia’s Ira Mellman contributed to this report.
Myanmar is beginning to yield to international pressure to repatriate the more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh, but rights advocates worry its commitment is only surface level.
The country stepped up its efforts over the weekend, when Myanmar permanent foreign secretary U Myint Thu led a 10-member delegation to talks with refugee representatives last weekend at Kutupalong — the largest refugee camp in the world.
Rohingya representatives put citizenship and guaranteed safety up as requirements for the ethnic group’s return, but government representatives only offered a path to naturalized citizenship, beginning with an application for a national verification card.
“[Myanmar] is essentially playing games with the discussions about citizenship,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, told VOA Asia.
Some Rohingya worried that the cards, which the government also proposed in 2018, could be used to further persecute against group members.
Refugees rejected a previous repatriation offer made in October.
International pressure
Myanmar has been hit with increasing international pressure to repatriate the Rohingya, especially from Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Kalam Abdul Momen told VOA Bangla earlier in July that the country expected to hold Rohingya refugees temporarily, as in the past.
“We believed this time they would take them back, because they assured us [they would],” Momen said. “But, they have not created a conducive environment in Myanmar, so that these people feel secure if they go back.”
The two countries signed a repatriation deal in November 2017, but no Rohingya have voluntarily returned. Bangladeshi authorities even gave Myanmar a list on Monday, with the names of 25,000 refugees from 6,000 families for potential repatriation.
Last weekend’s meetings were part of a push by Myanmar to make conditions livable for returning refugees. But after Myanmar’s refusal to grant the Rohingya citizenship and recognize them as an indigenous group, human rights advocates are skeptical.
“We haven’t seen that political commitment, to be honest,” Robertson said. “We have our doubts.”
He pointed at the 120,000 Rohingya displaced in 2012, still living in camps, as evidence of the government’s true intentions.
“These are people who are essentially locked down in camps or unable to move. They’re unable to pursue livelihoods or have access to basic services like health and education. And they haven’t gotten citizenship,” he added.
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh keep in touch with those in Myanmar through WhatsApp and other messaging services, so they know about current conditions, Robertson said. Their awareness of treatment back home could further fuel their distrust of the Myanmar government, he added.
Recent media reports also have shown Myanmar has continued to destroy the remaining Rohingya settlements, further casting doubt on the country’s public statements. Military facilities may now occupy the villages’ locations, a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found.
Rohingya want guaranteed safety
Some Rohingya representatives at Sunday’s talks wanted U.N. peacekeepers to ensure the group’s safety, Robertson said, but it’s unlikely that Myanmar would let U.N. forces in.
Still, Robertson echoed a need for international monitoring, saying without it, Rohingya lives could be at risk.
“The Rohingya are very acutely aware that if they go back without a security guarantee, they’re basically placing their fates back in the hands of the military and the police who two years ago were raping and killing them,” he said.
The Myanmar government has restricted the group’s rights for decades, but the military most recently cracked down in 2017. In reaction to attacks by some Rohingya, the military carried out what it called a cleansing campaign, which included mass killings, rapes and arsons. The U.N. and other human rights advocates have called their actions genocide.
The Rohingya were excluded from a 1982 citizenship law that bases full legal status through membership in a government-recognized indigenous group. The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, effectively rendering the ethnic group stateless.
Lebanon Music Festival Cancels Show After Christian Pressure
A multi-day international music festival in Lebanon said Tuesday that it’s cancelled a planned concert by a popular Mideast rock band whose lead singer is openly gay, apparently caving to pressure after weeklong calls by some Christian groups to pull the plug on the show, as well as online threats to stop it by force.
Festival organizers released a statement saying the “unprecedented step” of cancelling the performance by Mashrou’ Leila was done “to prevent bloodshed and maintain peace and stability.”
”We apologize for what happened, and apologize to the public,” it added.
Some church leaders and conservative politicians set off a storm of indignation on social media this week when they demanded that the Mashrou’ Leila concert be canceled, accusing the Lebanese group of blasphemy and saying some of its songs are an insult to Christianity. The band, known for its rousing music and lyrics challenging norms in the conservative Arab world, soon became the center of a heated debate about freedom of expression.
Online, some groups and users posted threats suggesting they would violently stop the concert.
Mashrou’ Leila was scheduled to perform in the coastal city of Byblos on Aug. 9, marking the third time the group takes part in the annual Byblos International Festival. The other performances will still take place.
The cancellation triggered a storm of protests and a campaign of solidarity with the band on social media by Lebanese who described it as shameful and a dangerous precedent.
”This is a step back for Lebanon, which has always prided itself on embracing diversity and being a center for music, art and culture,” tweeted Aya Majzoub, a Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Amnesty International, in a statement, said the decision to cancel the show is an “alarming indicator” of the deteriorating state of freedom of expression in Lebanon.
”This is the direct result of the government’s failure to take a strong stand against hatred and discrimination and to put in place the necessary measures to ensure the performance could go ahead,” Amnesty International’s Middle East Research Director Lynn Maalouf said.
There was no immediate comment from the band, which last week issued a statement denouncing the “defamatory campaign” and saying that some of the lyrics from their songs were being taken out of context and twisted.
The group has been a champion of LGBT rights in the Arab world and regularly sings about controversial subjects such as sectarianism, corruption and other social and political problems.
The band has previously been banned from performing in Jordan and Egypt, but censorship demands threatening its concert in the more liberal Lebanon — where it has performed on numerous occasions — are new.
On Monday, dozens of Lebanese held a protest in downtown Beirut objecting to the proposed ban and rejecting attempts by Christian clergymen and some right wing groups to ban the group.
”Regardless of our opinion of the songs and the band, we need to defend freedom of expression, because freedom is for everyone and for everybody. The day it stops, it stops for everybody,” said writer and director Lucien Bourjeily.
The band, whose name translates as “Night Project,” was founded 10 years ago by a group of architecture students at the American University of Beirut whose songs challenged stereotypes through their music and lyrics.
Riding on the wave Arab Spring uprisings that swept the Middle East, the band was embraced by Arab youth who see its music as part of a cultural and social revolution. The band members have gone on to gain worldwide acclaim, performing in front of sold-out crowds in the United States, Berlin, London and Paris.
Boston Gang Database Made Up Mostly of Young Black, Latino Men
Boston police are tracking nearly 5,000 people — almost all of them young black and Latino men — through a secretive gang database, newly released data from the department shows.
A summary provided by the department shows that 66% of those in its database are black, 24% are Latino and 2% are white. Black people comprise about 25% of all Boston residents, Latinos about 20% and white people more than 50%.
The racial disparity is “stark and troublesome,” said Adriana Lafaille, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which, along with other civil rights groups, sued the department in state court in November to shed light into who is listed on the database and how the information is used.
Central American youths are being wrongly listed as active gang members “based on nothing more than the clothing they are seen in and the classmates they are seen with,” and that’s led some to be deported, the organizations say in their lawsuit, citing the cases of three Central American youths facing deportation based largely on their status on the gang database.
”This has consequences,” Lafaille said. “People are being deported back to the countries that they fled, in many cases, to escape gangs.”
Boston police haven’t provided comment after multiple requests, but Commissioner William Gross has previously defended the database as a tool in combating MS-13 and other gangs.
One 24-year-old native of El Salvador nearly deported last year over his alleged gang involvement said he was a victim of harassment and bullying by Bloods members as a youth and was never an MS-13 member, as police claim.
The man spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because he fears retribution from gang members.
He said he never knew he’d made the list while in high school until he was picked up years later in a 2017 immigration sweep.
The gang database listed him as a “verified” member of MS-13 because he was seen associating with known MS-13 members, had feuded with members of the rival Bloods street gang, and was even charged with assault and battery following a fight at school, according to records provided by his lawyer, Alex Mooradian.
Mooradian said he noted in immigration court that the man, who was granted special immigrant juvenile status in 2014, reported at least one altercation with Bloods members to police and cooperated with the investigation. Witnesses also testified about the man’s good character and work ethic as a longtime dishwasher at a restaurant.
”Bottom line, this was a person by all metrics who was doing everything right,” said Mooradian. “He had legal status. He went to school. He worked full time. He called police when he was in trouble. And it still landed him in jail.”
Boston is merely the latest city to run into opposition with a gang database. An advocacy group filed a lawsuit this month in Providence, Rhode Island, arguing the city’s database violates constitutional rights. Portland, Oregon, discontinued its database in 2017 after it was revealed more than 80% of people listed on it were minorities.
In Chicago, police this year proposed changes after an audit found their database’s roughly 134,000 entries were riddled with outdated and unverified information. Mayor Lori Lightfoot also cut off U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement access ahead of planned immigration raids this month.
California’s Department of Justice has been issuing annual reports on the state’s database since a 2017 law began requiring it. And in New York City, records requests and lawsuits have prompted the department to disclose more information about its database.
In Boston, where Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh has proposed strengthening the city’s sanctuary policy, the ACLU suggests specifically banning police from contributing to any database to which ICE has access, or at least requiring police to provide annual reports on the database. Walsh’s office deferred questions about the gang database to police.
Like others, Boston’s gang database follows a points-based system. A person who accrues at least six points is classified as a “gang associate.” Ten or more points means they’re considered a full-fledged gang member.
The points range from having a known gang tattoo (eight points) to wearing gang paraphernalia (four points) or interacting with a known gang member or associate (two points per interaction).
The summary provided by Boston police provides a snapshot of the database as of January.
Of the 4,728 people listed at the time, a little more than half were considered “active” gang associates, meaning they had contact with or participated in some form of gang activity in the past five years. The rest were classified as “inactive,” the summary states.
Men account for more than 90% of the suspected gang members, and people between ages 25 and 40 comprise nearly 75% of the listing.
The department last week provided the summary along with the department’s policy for placing people on the database after the AP filed a records request in June.
The ACLU was also provided the same documents in response to its lawsuit as well as a trove of other related policy memos and heavily redacted reports for each of the 4,728 people listed on the database as of January, according to documents provided by the ACLU and first reported Friday by WBUR.
The ACLU has asked the city for less-redacted reports, Lafaille said. It’s also still waiting for information about how often ICE accesses the database and how police gather gang intelligence in schools.
”After all this time, we still don’t have an understanding about who can access this information and how it’s shared,” she said. “That’s something the public has a right to know.”
ACLU Sues Trump Administration for Continued Child Separations
A top human rights group is suing the Trump administration, accusing it of still separating migrant children from their parents despite last year’s court order against it.
The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal judge Tuesday in San Diego to block the practice.
“It is shocking that the Trump administration continues to take babies from their parents. Over 900 more families join the thousands of others previously torn apart by this cruel and illegal policy,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said.
According to the ACLU, nearly 1,000 children have been taken away from their parents since President Donald Trump ordered family separations stopped in June 2018, followed by a court order to reunite the families.
Trump said then that his policy is to “maintain family unity” unless the parent poses a risk to the child.
But the group says border patrol agents are snatching migrant children away from their mothers and fathers because of alleged minor crimes such as traffic tickets.
ACLU filing
The ACLU’s court filing describes how a guard took a little girl away from her father because she had a wet diaper. The guard allegedly called the father a bad parent.
Another toddler was having trouble walking because she was recovering from a fever. She was taken from her parents, who were accused of neglect. Her father was deported.
One father with a speech impediment had trouble answering agents’ questions and lost his 4-year-old son. Other families were torn apart because of clerical errors on paperwork, or parents were accused of having fake birth certificates.
‘Devastating’ toll
Gelernt says agents are using what is supposed to be a genuine concern for child safety as a loophole to separate families.
“What everyone understands intuitively and what the medical evidence shows, this will have a devastating effect on the children and possibly cause permanent damage … not to mention the toll on the parents,” he told The Washington Post.
The Trump administration has not yet responded to the ACLU’s lawsuit.
Testifying before Congress two weeks ago, Acting Homeland Security Chief Kevin McAleenan said family separations are “extraordinarily rare.” He said the separation process is “carefully governed by policy and by court order” and is “in the interest of the child.”
North Korea Launches Multiple Projectiles, Seoul Says
North Korea fired multiple projectiles from its east coast early Thursday, according to South Korea’s military.
The projectiles were launched from near North Korea’s Hodo peninsula in South Hamgyung province, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“Our military will keep monitoring for additional launches,” the message said.
The launch comes six days after North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles, in what it said was a response to South Korea’s decision to purchase U.S. weapons and continue joint military drills with Washington.
North Korea has said it could restart intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests if Seoul and Washington go ahead with the exercises. Pyongyang has also said it may not resume working-level nuclear talks with the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump has not responded to the latest launch, but shrugged off North Korea’s launches last week as short-range missiles that “lots test.”
“I have a good relationship with him. I like him. He likes me. We’ll see what happens,” Trump said earlier Thursday.
North Korea is banned from any ballistic missile activity under United Nations Security Council resolutions.
More Than 12,000 Children Killed or Maimed in 2018 Conflicts
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday he was “appalled” that more than 12,000 children were killed or maimed last year in some 20 countries at war or in a state of conflict.
The unprecedented level of violence against boys and girls was recorded in the U.N.’s annual report naming and shaming countries and armed groups that perpetrate such violence.
In all, the U.N. recorded 24,000 grave violations against children in 2018, including killing, maiming, sexual violence, abductions, recruitment and attacking schools and hospitals.
Worst offender
“But without a doubt, the one situation that really comes to my mind is the worst one — the one we have to do our utmost to reverse — is Somalia,” said Virginia Gamba, U.N. special representative for children in armed conflict, whose office prepares the often-controversial report.
She told reporters that the number of violations across all categories there is very high, providing a worrying picture. She said there is also a lack of engagement with the United Nations to improve protections for children, and she said she hopes to visit Somalia in the next two months to see if there is any possibility to open a dialogue.
Both the Somali National Army and the terrorist group al-Shabab, as well as the Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jama’a (ASWJ), were included in the report’s annex of perpetrators.
Targeting hospitals and schools
One of the more troubling trends emerging in the 2018 report is the growing targeting of schools and hospitals from Yemen and Syria to Afghanistan and South Sudan.
“Here you can actually see the tactics of war, and we are seeing more and more armed groups on purpose destroying schools — and particularly those that engage in girls’ education,” Gamba said. “If you are destroying schools, you are destroying choices.”
She noted that on a recent visit to Mali, she spoke with youth who told her of having no education or vocational opportunities, which means they will have few job prospects.
“It seems to me that there is every intention of armed groups to destroy the possibility of giving an alternative to children outside of war usage,” she said.
Treading lightly with Saudi Arabia
In recent years, Saudi Arabia has rejected its listing for its role in the Yemen war, which has led to the report’s annex being separated into two lists — one for grave violators and another for parties that are perpetrating violations but have put in place measures aimed at improving the safety of children.
Saudi Arabia is not listed by name in the 2018 report but rather as the “Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen.” It is not among the most grave violators, despite the report citing numerous airstrikes that killed or maimed 685 children last year.
The coalition, which has engaged with the U.N. on the issue, is among those parties that have put in place measures to protect children. The Houthi rebels who they are fighting are on the most serious offenders list.
“It’s baffling that the secretary-general’s ‘not-so-bad’ list gives credit to parties that are increasing, not reducing, their violations against children,” said Human Rights Watch children’s rights advocacy director, Jo Becker, in a statement. “Guterres should return to a single list based solely on evidence of violations on the ground.”
Israel vs. Palestinians
Israel was not listed, despite the U.N. verifying the deaths of 57 Palestinian children — 56 were attributable to Israeli forces and one to an Israeli settler — the highest figures since 2014. The report also found that nearly 3,000 Palestinian children were injured during the Great March of Return in March and April of last year, when there were daily protests at the security fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel.
Gamba said the secretary-general ultimately decides who is listed, and that he has directed her office to further examine the killings and maimings of children in the Palestinian territories and to report back to him by the end of December. She is also to look into the recruitment of children by Palestinian militants.
The special representative also noted that she has repeatedly sought to engage with both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities and has been unsuccessful, and hoped that the secretary-general’s new directive would enable her access.
“My office was not born to name and shame and attribute, and that’s it,” Gamba said of the controversies her annual blacklist generates. “The job is to raise awareness on the plight of children and to try to prevent the violations and better protect children.”
Fugitive Salvadoran Former President Given Nicaragua Citizenship
Nicaragua granted citizenship Tuesday to Salvadoran ex-President Mauricio Funes, who has been in the country under political asylum since 2016 and is wanted back home on allegations of illicit enrichment and embezzlement.
The decision by President Daniel Ortega’s government, which took legal effect with its publication in the official Gazette, also made Funes’ wife and two sons citizens.
The move would block current Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele from bringing Funes and his family before that country’s justice system, as Nicaragua’s constitution prohibits extradition of Nicaraguan nationals.
Funes tweeted an image of that constitutional article, saying: “Not today, nor in the first 100 days of [Bukele’s] government, nor in years will extradition be possible.”
Bukele’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Funes, El Salvador’s president from 2009 to 2014, faces four arrest warrants for alleged corruption and the purported diversion of $351 million in state money. He denies the allegations.
The certification of Nicaraguan citizenship was signed by immigration director-general Juan Emilio Rivas Benitez, who said Funes “has fulfilled the requirements and formalities established by Law to acquire Nicaraguan nationality,” taking into account his continued presence in national territory and being a permanent resident of the country.
Rivas added that Funes immediately enjoys all rights, prerogatives and responsibilities established by Nicaragua’s constitution.
Iranians Say US Sanctions Blocking Access to Needed Medicine
Taha Shakouri keeps finding remote corners to play in at a Tehran children’s charity hospital, unaware that his doctors are running out of chemo medicine needed to treat the eight-year-old boy’s liver cancer.
With Iran’s economy in free fall after the U.S. pullout from the nuclear deal and escalated sanctions on Tehran, prices of imported medicines have soared as the national currency tumbled about 70% against the dollar. Even medicines manufactured in Iran are tougher to come by for ordinary Iranians, their cost out of reach for many in a country where the average monthly salary is equivalent to about $450.
Iran’s health system can’t keep up and many are blaming President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign for the staggering prices and shortages. The sanctions have hurt ordinary Iranians, sending prices for everything from staples and consumer goods to housing skyward, while raising the specter of war with the U.S.
Taha’s mother, Laya Taghizadeh, says the hospital provides her son’s medication for free – a single treatment would otherwise cost $1,380 at a private hospital. She adds the family is deeply grateful to the doctors and the hospital staff.
“We couldn’t make it without their support,” says the 30-year-old woman. “My husband is a simple grocery store worker and this is a very costly disease.”
The Iranian rial has plunged from 32,000 to $1 at the time of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers to around 120,000 rials to the dollar these days, highly affecting prices of imported medicines. The nuclear deal had raised expectations of a better life for many Iranians, free of the chokehold of international sanctions.
The landmark accord lifted international sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, but now the deal has all but unraveled and new and tougher U.S. sanctions are in place.
While the United States insists that medicines and humanitarian goods are exempt from sanctions, restrictions on trade have made many banks and companies across the world hesitant to do business with Iran, fearing punitive measures from Washington. The country is cut off from the international banking system.
Last week, Health Minister Saeed Namaki said budget cuts because of the drop in crude exports have dramatically affected his department. The U.S. sanctions have targeted all classes of Iranians, he added.
“The American claims that medicine and medical equipment are not subject to sanctions is a big and obvious lie,” Namaki said.
“Our biggest concern is that channels to the outside world are closed,” said Dr. Arasb Ahmadian, head of the Mahak Children’s Hospital, which is run through charity donations and supports some 32,000 under-16 children across Iran.
The banking sanctions have blocked transactions, preventing donations from abroad, he said. Transfers of money simply fail, including those approved by the U.S. Treasury.
“Indeed, we are losing hope,” said Ahmadian. “Medicines should be purchasable, funding should be available and lines of credit should be clearly defined in the banking system.”
Medicine shortages
Official reports say Iran produces some 95% of the basic medicines it needs and even exports some of the production to neighboring countries.
But when it comes to more sophisticated medication and medicines for costly and rare illnesses and medical equipment, Iran depends heavily on imports. And though the state provides health care for all, many treatments needed for complicated cases are simply not available. Many prefer to go to private hospitals if they can and avoid long waiting lists at state ones.
Long lines form every morning in the 13-Aban Pharmacy in central Karimikhan Street, where people come looking for rare medicines for sick family members.
Hamid Reza Mohammadi, 53, spends much of his free time going in search of drugs for his wife and daughter, both of whom suffer from muscular dystrophy.
“Two, three months ago I could easily get the prescription filled in any pharmacy,” Mohammadi said, reflecting how quickly things have deteriorated.
Pharmacist Peyman Keyvanfar says many Iranians, their purchasing power slashed, cannot afford imported medicines and are looking for domestically manufactured substitutes. “There has been a very sharp increase in the prices of medicines, sometimes up to three to four times for some,” he said.
Those who still have some cash often turn to the black market.
Mahmoud Alizadeh, a 23-year-old student, rushed to the shady Nasser-Khosrow Street in southern Tehran when he got word his mother’s multiple sclerosis drug was available there.
“She is just 45 years old, it’s too soon to see her so badly paralyzed,” he said.
He pays three times more for the drug on the street than he did in May 2018. “I don’t know on whom Trump imposed sanctions except that he is punishing terminally ill people here.”
Many travel from rural areas to bigger cities in search of drugs for their loved ones.
Hosseingholi Barati, a 48-year-old father of three, came to Tehran from the town of Gonbad Kavus, about 550 kilometers (350 miles) to the northeast, looking for medication for his leukemia-stricken wife. He says he has spent $7,700 so far on her illness.
“It’s a huge strain,” he said. “I have sold everything I owned and borrowed money from family and friends.”
Trump Doubles Down on Attacks on Baltimore, Congressman Cummings
Steve Herman contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump defended again Tuesday what critics are characterizing as racist rhetoric, focused on the majority African American city of Baltimore and one of its prominent representatives in Congress, Elijah Cummings, whose powerful committee is trying to obtain communications of White House officials, including the president’s family members.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump defended his recent inflammatory remarks, saying “I think I’m helping myself because I’m pointing out the tremendous corruption that’s taken place in Baltimore and other Democratic-run cities.”
Trump said “Those people are living in hell in Baltimore” and that “largely African American” city residents have let him know “they really appreciated what I’m doing.” He also said he is the “least racist person in the world”
Trump doubled down on his criticism of Cummings, claiming “all that money that’s been spent (in Baltimore) over 20 years has been stolen and wasted by people like Elijah Cummings.”
On Monday, Trump falsely stated Baltimore has nation’s worst crime statistics under Cummings’ leadership.
While Baltimore has a high crime rate, several other cities — including St. Louis, Detroit and Memphis — are ranked more dangerous, according to recent crime statistics
A critical series of tweets targeting Cummings began Saturday and has continued, with Trump referring to the congressman’s district as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
Government statistics show, however, that Cummings’s district, which includes impoverished parts of Baltimore and well-off suburban enclaves adjoining the city, has higher per capita income and higher median home values than the national average.
The focus on the Baltimore area and its congressman comes amid Trump battling over the past week on social media with others he has singled out for criticism, including two friendly nations: France and Sweden.
Trump also recently has been assailing four first-term Democratic lawmakers, all women of color, saying they should “go back” to their home countries, even though all four are American citizens, three of them by birth and the fourth, a Somali refugee, through naturalization.
As Trump unleashed his attacks, Cummings has defended himself.
“Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors. It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents.”
In recent congressional hearings, Cummings, as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, berated Kevin McAleenan, the acting Homeland Security chief, for the condition of the country’s detention facilities at the border and the government’s lax records on tracking the whereabouts of migrant parents it had separated from children at the border.
Cummings’s committee is also investigating Trump’s presidency, but he is not among the more than 100 Democrats calling for impeachment proceedings.
The committee, voting along party lines last Thursday, authorized subpoenas for personal emails and texts used for official business by top White House aides, including Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner.
Cummings said lawmakers had obtained “direct evidence” that the president’s daughter, Kushner and others were using personal accounts for government business in violation of federal law and White House policy.
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney rejects the notion that Trump’s attacks on Cummings are racially motivated.
“The president is attacking Cummings for saying things that are not true,” Mulvaney told the Fox News Sunday interview show. “It has absolutely zero to do with race.”
Iraq: Former Governor Embezzled $10 Million, Fled to Kurdistan
Around $10 million in aid for the displaced in northern Iraq’s Nineveh province, where the Islamic State group was based, has been embezzled by its fugitive ex-governor, the country’s anti-corruption commission said Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the Integrity Commission told AFP that its investigators had uncovered “invoices from developers in Iraqi Kurdistan”.
But, he added, “no receipt was found” for these debited sums, which were meant for the rehabilitation of two hospitals in the northern metropolis of Mosul, capital of Nineveh.
Many of the province’s inhabitants are still displaced as public services have not been fully reestablished.
Currently, 1.6 million Iraqis are still crowded into camps for the displaced, of which 40 percent are originally from Nineveh, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
A total of 11.3 billion Iraqi dinars ($9.4 million) had been allocated to the Provincial Council by the Ministry of Migration and Displaced, according to the commission.
“It has been debited and doesn’t appear in any provincial authorities’ bank accounts or in the Provincial Council funds,” he said.
“It was transferred to Kurdistan,” an autonomous region where the sacked governor of Nineveh, Nawfel Akoub, is thought to be in hiding, along with several other officials wanted by Baghdad.
He has been on the run since a ferry sank in Mosul on Mother’s Day in March, killing 150 people.
In April, the commission said more than $60 million of public funds were diverted by officials close to Akoub from Nineveh’s budget of $800 million.
Graft is endemic across Iraq, which ranks among the world’s worst offenders in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index.
Since 2004, a year after the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, almost $250 billion of public funds has vanished into the pockets of shady politicians and businessmen, according to parliament.
India’s Parliament OKs Ending Instant Divorce for Muslims
Indian lawmakers on Tuesday approved a bill to end the Muslim practice of instant divorce two years after the Supreme Court ruled that it violated the constitutional rights of Muslim women.
Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the bill’s approval by the upper house of Parliament reflects the empowerment of women and India’s changing profile.
The more powerful lower house approved the bill last week. It will become law after India’s president approves it, which is a formality.
Most of the 170 million Muslims in India are Sunnis governed by the Muslim Personal Law for family matters. The law has included allowing Muslim men to divorce their wives by saying “Talaq,” the Arabic word for divorce, three times — and not necessarily consecutively, but at any time, and by any medium, including telephone, text message or social media post.
More than 20 countries, including neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh, have banned the practice.
The 99-84 approval on Tuesday was a victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The opposition had blocked the bill for more than a year, as the ruling party lacked majority support in the upper house. A split in the opposition ranks helped the government cross the line.
Ghulam Nabi Azad, a Congress party leader, said the opposition parties were opposed to a clause providing a three-year jail term for a husband who divorced his wife in such a way, arguing that no other religion has such a punishment. The opposition also said the bill had no clarity on spousal support if men were jailed for an instant divorce.
Both houses of Parliament rejected the opposition stand and also refused to refer the bill to a parliamentary committee to consider those provisions.
UN: Afghan, NATO Forces Killed More Civilians this Year than Insurgent Groups
The United Nations says more Afghan civilians were killed by government and NATO-led troops than by the Taliban and other insurgent groups in the first half of 2019.
The U.N.’s mission in Afghanistan released a report Monday that showed a combined 717 civilians were killed by government and international forces — an increase of 31% from the same period in 2018 — compared to 531 killed by the Taliban and other hardline Islamist groups. Most of the deaths occurred during Afghan and NATO air and ground attacks against insurgents.
The report said a total of 2,446 Afghan civilians were injured at that hands of pro-government and insurgent troops.
“Parties to the conflict may give differing explanations for recent trends, each designed to justify their own military tactics,” said Richard Bennett, the human rights chief of the U.N.’s Afghanistan Mission. He said both sides could improve the situation “not just by abiding by international humanitarian law but also by reducing the intensity of the fighting.”
The United States is negotiating with Taliban on a peace deal to end the 18-year-long war, launched by the U.S. against Afghanistan’s then-ruling Taliban in response to the September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terror attacks on Washington and New York. The Taliban wants the full withdrawal of all U.S. and foreign forces from Afghanistan, while the U.S. is seeking a number of security guarantees from hardline group, including a pledge that Afghanistan will never again be used as a base to launch terror attacks against the U.S.
Pompeo: Trump Wants Forces Reduced in Afghanistan by Next US Election
U.S. President Donald Trump wants combat forces reduced in Afghanistan by the next U.S. presidential election, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday, in comments that underlined the growing pressure from Washington to cut troop numbers there.
Trump’s South Asia strategy, unveiled in August 2017, called for an open-ended deployment of U.S. forces with the goal of compelling the Taliban to negotiate peace with the Kabul government to end nearly 18 years of war.
However, Pompeo’s comments underscored a shift that has apparently taken place since talks with the Taliban opened last year.
“That’s my directive from the president of the United States,” Pompeo told The Economic Club of Washington D.C. when asked whether he expects the United States to reduce troops in Afghanistan before the next election in November 2020.
“He’s been unambiguous: end the endless wars, draw down, reduce. It won’t just be us,” he said, referring to Trump’s directive. “We hope that overall the need for combat forces in the region is reduced.”
The disclosure of a timeline will add to speculation that Trump is prepared to strike any deal with the Taliban that will allow for at least partial U.S. withdrawal before American voters go to the polls, irrespective of the concerns of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul.
“Now suddenly adhering to the date suited to Trump’s election date has become more important than the meticulous task of bringing peace to Afghanistan,” said a senior Afghan official who is also a close aide to President Ashraf Ghani.
“The American haste to pull out foreign troops has only provided more leverage to the Taliban. Afghan forces will be soon abandoned to fight the war alone,” said the official, who declined to be identified.
Pompeo’s comments come at a delicate moment, as Afghanistan prepares for a presidential election of its own in September and the United States prepares to engage in another round talks with the insurgents.
Disclosing Trump’s goal of withdrawing forces could weaken the U.S. negotiating position if the Taliban believe Trump wants to get out, no matter what.
On Friday, the State Department said Pompeo and Ghani agreed in a telephone call to “accelerate efforts” to end the war, and that the United States remained committed to a “conditions-based” drawdown of troops.
Pompeo said he was optimistic about the negotiations with the Taliban to end the nearly 18-year-old war.
Washington wants a deal under which foreign forces would pull out in return for security guarantees by the Taliban, in particular a pledge that the country will not become a safe haven for terror groups.
“We want them to take their country back, and we want to reduce what is, for us, tens of billions of dollars a year in expenditures,” Pompeo said.
More than 20,000 U.S. and other NATO coalition troops are in Afghanistan as part of a mission to train, assist and advise Afghan forces, which remain heavily dependent on U.S. air support, and to carry out counterterrorism operations.
Intra-Afghan talks
While U.S. diplomats say the peace process must be “Afghan owned and led,” senior Afghan officials and Western diplomats said the timetable being imposed by the White House to get U.S. troops out risked overshadowing the wider aim of peace among Afghans.
“Ensuring that the Afghan government and the Taliban hold direct talks has clearly slipped below the radar, the main aim is to cut a deal with the Taliban before Afghan elections in September,” said one European diplomat in Kabul.
While the Taliban have held meetings with Afghan politicians and civil society representatives, they have refused to deal with the Afghan government, which they deride as a U.S. “puppet.”
Some U.S. allies fear that once a timetable for a U.S. pullout is announced, the Afghan government will have little leverage over the militants in their talks about how to run the country.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the veteran Afghan-American diplomat leading negotiations for Washington, expects Ghani to appoint a team of politicians, civil society members and women rights’ activists to meet Taliban leaders, a second European diplomat said.
But those so-called intra-Afghan talks will only come after the United States has struck and announced its troop withdrawal plan with the Taliban.
“The bargaining power to protect democracy and basic freedom will be surrendered once the pullout is announced,” the second diplomat said.
Officials at the NATO’s Resolute Support in Kabul said they were working on a drawdown plan while maintaining support for Afghan forces in their fight against the militants.
“There is a massive churning, some bases could be vacated and some could be merged together but security and counter-terrorism operations are not being compromised,” said a senior NATO officer.
Top Diplomats Gather In Bangkok for Key Asia-Pacific Talks
Top diplomats from the Asia-Pacific region started gathering Tuesday in the Thai capital to discuss issues of concern to the area, including security on the Korean peninsula and China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.
The meetings in Bangkok are hosted by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, chaired this year by Thailand. Thai officials say there will be 27 meetings in all through Saturday, and 31 countries and alliances will participate.
The core ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting brings together the group’s top diplomats, but they are likely to be overshadowed by the big power players attending the adjunct meetings, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.
The heavy-hitters in Bangkok this week include U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Other ASEAN dialogue partners include Australia, India, the European Union, Japan and South Korea.
Most attention will be on these side meetings, in which ASEAN will play a supporting role, if any.
A representative of North Korea will be present in Bangkok, a Thai foreign ministry spokesman said last week, though it is not clear if Pyongyang is sending its foreign minister. Washington has downplayed Pyongyang’s recent launch of medium-range missiles and expressed interest in reviving talks on North Korean denuclearization, so sideline talks are a possibility.
Reports say that the United States is also willing to hold a sidelines meeting with Japan and South Korea to discuss the bitter trade dispute between the two East Asian nations that threatens to disrupt Seoul’s electronics industry by hindering its purchase of semiconductor components.
The dispute also draws on long-standing bitterness over Japan’s actions toward Korea during World War II and threatens to poison relations at a time when Washington would prefer to see a united front in dealing with North Korea.
ASEAN’s own most pressing concern arguably involves Beijing’s expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, which pits it against the claims of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
The dispute is long-running, but flared up again earlier this month when Vietnam accused China of violating its sovereignty by interfering with offshore oil and gas activities in disputed waters.
Vietnam can count on having some allies at this week’s meetings but may have to operate outside the conventional ASEAN framework by forming a de facto maritime bloc with Indonesia, which has aggressively dealt with Chinese poachers in its waters, and the Philippines, still smarting over a June incident in which a Chinese fishing vessel hit a Philippine fishing boat and fled the scene as 22 Filipinos escaped their sinking vessel.
It’s unlikely ASEAN will agree on any major statement against China since it operates by consensus, which in practice means a single member can exercise veto over the group’s decisions and declarations. Beijing can count on the support of allies such as Cambodia and Laos, and reluctance by others to defy Asia’s superpower.
Beijing also is disinclined to flout legal norms that might restrain its actions, say critics, citing as an example the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling on the South China Sea case brought by the Philippines.
The struggle for influence between the U.S. and China looms larger than ever over this year’s meetings, with their trade disputes fueling the rivalry.
Beijing’s attempts to project its influence even further afield through its Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious global development program of major infrastructure projects, has sharpened the sense of unease among some parties.
The U.S. has countered with its own vision strategy for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, which Beijing regards as directed against it.
ASEAN leaders at their summit meeting in June adopted a five-page “ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific” statement that sought to find a middle ground. But some analysts suggest it is less an assertion that the regional grouping is a player in its own right than a weak effort to keep on the good side of both Washington and Beijing.
“Its significance is in the monumental opportunity squandered,” said Benjamin Zawacki, author of “Thailand: Shifting Ground between the U.S. and a Rising China.”
“The increasing tension between Washington and Beijing does afford ASEAN more, rather than less, influence and room to maneuver, but it is influence and room that ASEAN would rather not have and will choose not to use,” he said. “ASEAN is most comfortable when it has the least influence and room to maneuver, for such provides a ready justification for its indecisiveness, inertia, and utter obsession with neutrality.”