International troops plan to stay in Afghanistan beyond the May deadline envisaged by the insurgent Taliban’s deal with the United States, four senior NATO officials said, a move that could escalate tensions with the Taliban demanding full withdrawal.
“There will be no full withdrawal by allies by April-end,” one of the officials told Reuters.
“Conditions have not been met,” he said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. “And with the new US administration, there will be tweaks in the policy, the sense of hasty withdrawal which was prevalent will be addressed and we could see a much more calculated exit strategy.”
The administration of then-President Donald Trump signed an agreement with the Taliban early last year calling for the withdrawal of all foreign troops by May in return for the insurgents fulfilling certain security guarantees.
Trump hailed the accord — which did not include the Afghan government — as the end of two decades of war. He reduced US troops to 2,500 by this month, the fewest since 2001.
Plans on what will happen after April are now being considered and likely to be a top issue at a key NATO meeting in February, the NATO sources said.
The positions of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are becoming increasingly important after the alliance was sidelined by Trump, diplomats and experts say.
Peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban began in September in Doha, but violence has remained high.
“No NATO ally wants to stay in Afghanistan longer than necessary, but we have been clear that our presence remains conditions-based,” said NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu. “Allies continue to assess the overall situation and to consult on the way forward.”
She said about 10,000 troops, including Americans, are in Afghanistan. Those levels are expected to stay roughly the same until after May, but the plan beyond that is not clear, the NATO source said.
Kabul and some foreign governments and agencies say the Taliban has failed to meet conditions due to escalated violence and a failure to cut ties with militant groups such as Al Qaeda, which the Taliban denies.
The administration of Joe Biden, who replaced Trump on Jan. 20, has launched a review of his predecessor’s peace agreement.
A Pentagon spokesman said the Taliban have not met their commitments but Washington remained committed to the process and had not decided on future troop levels.
A State Department representative said Biden was committed to bringing a “responsible end to the ‘forever wars’... while also protecting Americans from terrorist and other threats.”
Afghanistan’s presidential palace did not respond to a request for comment.
RISING CONCERN
The Taliban have become increasingly concerned in recent weeks about the possibility that Washington might change aspects of the agreement and keep troops in the country beyond May, two Taliban sources told Reuters.
“We conveyed our apprehensions, but they assured us of honoring and acting on the Doha accord. What’s going on, on the ground in Afghanistan, is showing something else. And that’s why we decided to send our delegations to take our allies into confidence,” said a Taliban leader in Doha.
A Taliban delegation this week visited Iran and Russia, and the leader said they were contacting China.
Although informal meetings have been taking place between negotiators in Doha, progress has stalled in recent weeks after an almost one-month break, according to negotiators and diplomats.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters the insurgents remained committed to the peace process.
“No doubt that if the Doha deal is not implemented there will be consequences, and the blame will be upon that side which does not honor the deal,” he said. “Our expectations are also that NATO will think to end this war and avoid more excuses for prolonging the war in Afghanistan.”
NATO and Washington will have a challenge getting the Taliban to agree to an extension beyond May.
If the situation remains unclear, the Taliban may increase attacks, possibly once again on international forces, said Ashley Jackson, co-director of the Center for the Study of Armed Groups at the British think tank ODI.
The lack of a resolution “gives voice to spoilers inside the Taliban who never believed the US would leave willingly, and who have pushed for a ratcheting up of attacks even after the US-Taliban deal was agreed,” she said.
A Feb. 17-18 meeting of NATO defense ministers will be a chance for a newly empowered NATO to determine how the process would be shaped, said one source, a senior European diplomat.
“With the new administration coming in there will be a more cooperative result, NATO countries will have a say.”
Foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond May deadline — NATO sources
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Foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond May deadline — NATO sources
- A State Department representative said Biden was committed to bringing a 'responsible end to the forever wars'
- Taliban spokesman said group expected NATO would avoid more excuses for prolonging war in Afghanistan
Russia’s UK embassy denounces G7 loans to Ukraine as ‘fraudulent scheme’
- Britain said in October it would lend Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds as part of a much larger loan from the Group of Seven nations backed by frozen Russian central bank assets
Britain said in October it would lend Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds as part of a much larger loan from the Group of Seven nations backed by frozen Russian central bank assets to help buy weapons and rebuild damaged infrastructure.
The loans were agreed in July by leaders of the G7 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US — along with top officials from the European Union, where most of the Russian assets frozen as a result of the war are held.
“We are closely following UK authorities’ efforts aimed at implementing a fraudulent scheme of expropriating incomes from Russian state assets ‘frozen’ in the EU,” the Russian embassy in London said on social media.
British Defense Minister John Healey said the money would be solely for Ukraine’s military and could be used to help develop drones capable of traveling further than some long-range missiles.
The embassy added: “The elaborate legislative choreography fails to conceal the illegitimate nature of this arrangement.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry last week described the US transfer to Ukraine of its share of the G7’s $50 billion in loans as “simply robbery.”
Death toll from German Christmas market car-ramming rises to four, Bild reports
- Death toll rises to 4, small child among the dead
- German media point to anti-Islam, far-right sympathies
MAGDEBURG, Germany: The death toll from a car-ramming at a German Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg rose to four on Saturday, according to German newspaper Bild, after a Saudi man was arrested on suspicion of plowing a car into the crowd.
Scores of people were injured in the attack on Friday evening, which came amid fierce debate over security and migration during an election campaign in Europe’s largest economy in which the far right is polling strongly.
Police were not immediately available to comment on the reported casualty figures. Local officials had initially said at least two people were killed and had warned that the toll could rise.
The Bild report said 41 people were critically injured, 86 were receiving hospital treatment for serious injuries and another 78 sustained minor injuries.
German authorities are investigating a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who has lived in Germany for almost two decades in connection with the car-ramming. Police searched his home overnight.
The motive remained unclear and police have not yet named the suspect. He has been named in German media as Taleb A.
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia had warned German authorities about the attacker after he posted extremist views on his personal X account that threatened peace and security.
Der Spiegel reported that the suspect had sympathized with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The magazine did not say where it got the information.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
Germany’s FAZ newspaper said it interviewed the suspect in 2019, describing him as an anti-Islam activist.
“People like me, who have an Islamic background but are no longer believers, are met with neither understanding nor tolerance by Muslims here,” he was quoted as saying. “I am history’s most aggressive critic of Islam. If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs.”
Andrea Reis, who had been at the market on Friday, returned on Saturday with her daughter Julia to lay a candle by the church overlooking the site. She said that had it not been for a matter of moments, they may have been in the car’s path.
“I said, ‘let’s go and get a sausage’, but my daughter said ‘no let’s keep walking around’. If we’d stayed where we were we’d have been in the car’s path,” she said.
Tears ran down her face as she described the scene. “Children screaming, crying for mama. You can’t forget that,” she said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is scheduled to visit Magdeburg later on Saturday.
His Social Democrats are trailing both the far-right AfD and the frontrunner conservative opposition in opinion polls ahead of snap elections set for Feb. 23.
The AfD has led calls for a crackdown on migration to the country.
Its chancellor candidate Alice Weidel and co-leader Tino Chrupalla issued a statement on Saturday condemning the attack.
“The terrible attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg in the middle of the peaceful pre-Christmas period has shaken us,” they said.
A leading member of Scholz’s Social Democrats in the Bundestag parliament warned against jumping to conclusions and said it appeared the attacker did not have an Islamist motive.
“Now we have to wait for the investigations. It seems that things are different here than was initially assumed,” Dirk Wiese told the Rheinische Post newspaper.
Eight convicted in France over murder of teacher who showed Prophet caricature
- Eight sentenced for roles in hate campaign against teacher
- Two associates of killer sentenced to 16 years for complicity, the father of pupil sentenced to 13 years for inciting hatred
PARIS: A French court sentenced eight people to prison terms ranging from one to 16 years for their roles in a hate campaign that culminated in the murder of a teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class, local media reported.
Days after Samuel Paty, 47, showed his pupils the caricatures in October 2020, an 18-year-old Chechen assailant stabbed and beheaded him outside his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Paris. The assailant was shot dead by police moments after.
Among those convicted on Friday was the father of a student whose false account of Paty’s use of the caricatures triggered a wave of social media posts targeting the middle-school teacher.
The court sentenced Brahim Chnina to 13 years in prison for criminal terrorist association, according to broadcaster Franceinfo. Chnina had published videos falsely accusing the teacher of disciplining his daughter for complaining about the class, naming Paty and identifying his school.
Abdelhakim Sefrioui, the founder of a hard-line Islamist organization, received a 15-year sentence. Both Sefrioui and Chnina were found guilty of inciting hatred against Paty.
Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet Muhammad to be blasphemous. Sefrioui’s lawyer said his client would appeal the decision, according to French media.
Two associates of Paty’s killer, Abdullakh Anzorov, were also convicted. Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov were sentenced to 16 years in prison for complicity in a terrorist killing. Both had denied wrongdoing, according to Franceinfo.
Last year, a court found Chnina’s daughter and five other adolescents guilty of participating in a premeditated conspiracy and helping prepare an ambush.
Chnina’s daughter, who was not in Paty’s class when the caricatures were shown, was convicted of making false accusations and slanderous comments.
French media reported that the 13-year-old made the allegations after her parents questioned why she had been suspended from school for two days.
Pope Francis slams ‘cruelty’ of strike killing Gaza children
- ‘Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war. I want to say it because it touches my heart’
- The Holy See has recognized the State of Palestine since 2013, with which it maintains diplomatic relations
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Saturday condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as “cruelty,” a day after the territory’s rescue agency said an Israeli air strike killed seven children from one family.
Gaza’s civil defense rescue agency reported that an Israeli air strike killed 10 members of a family on Friday in the northern part of the territory, including seven children.
“Yesterday they did not allow the Patriarch (of Jerusalem) into Gaza as promised. Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” he told members of the government of the Holy See.
“I want to say it because it touches my heart.”
Violence in the Gaza Strip continues to rock the coastal territory more than 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war, even as international mediators work to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants.
The Israeli military said it had struck “several terrorists who were operating in a military structure belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization and posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the area.”
“According to an initial examination, the reported number of casualties resulting from the strike does not align with the information held by the IDF,” it added.
Francis, 88, has called for peace since Hamas’s unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli retaliatory campaign in Gaza.
In recent weeks he has hardened his remarks against the Israeli offensive.
At the end of November, he said that “the invader’s arrogance... prevails over dialogue” in “Palestine,” a rare position that contrasts with the tradition of neutrality of the Holy See.
In extracts from a forthcoming book published in November, he called for a “careful” study as to whether the situation in Gaza “corresponds to the technical definition” of genocide, an accusation firmly rejected by Israel.
The Holy See has recognized the State of Palestine since 2013, with which it maintains diplomatic relations, and it supports the two-state solution.
Rival protests in Seoul over South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol
- Yoon Suk Yeol’s presidential powers are suspended but he remains in office
- He has not complied with various summonses by authorities investigating whether martial law
SEOUL: Demonstrators supporting and opposing South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol held rival protests several hundred meters apart in Seoul on Saturday, a week after he was impeached over his short-lived declaration of martial law.
Yoon’s presidential powers are suspended but he remains in office. He has not complied with various summonses by authorities investigating whether martial law, which he declared late on Dec. 3 and rescinded hours later, constituted insurrection.
He has also not responded to attempts to contact him by the Constitutional Court, which decides whether to remove him from office or restore his presidential powers. The court plans to hold its first preparatory hearing on Friday.
Saturday’s pro- and anti-Yoon protests were held in Gwanghwamun in the heart of the capital. There were no clashes as of 4 p.m. (0700 GMT).
Tens of thousands of anti-Yoon protesters, dominated by people in their 20s and 30s, gathered around 3 p.m., waving K-Pop light sticks and signs with sayings such as “Arrest! Imprison! Insurrection chief Yoon Suk Yeol” to catchy K-pop tunes.
“I wanted to ask Yoon how he could do this to a democracy in the 21st century, and I think if he really has a conscience, he should step down,” said 27-year-old Cho Sung-hyo.
Several thousand pro-Yoon protesters, chiefly older and more conservative people opposing Yoon’s removal and supporting the restoration of his powers, had gathered since around midday.
“These rigged (parliamentary) elections eat away at this country, and at the core are socialist communist powers, so about 10 of us came together and said the same thing — we absolutely oppose impeachment,” said Lee Young-su, a 62-year-old businessman.
Yoon had cited claims of election hacking and “anti-state” pro-North Korean sympathizers as justification for imposing the martial law, which the National Election Commission has denied.
