KABUL: Afghan authorities on Tuesday vowed to retake all the districts lost to the Taliban as hundreds of commandos deployed to counter the insurgents’ blistering offensive in the north.
This come after more than 1,000 government troops fled into neighboring Tajikistan.
Fighting has raged across several provinces, but the insurgents have primarily focused on a devastating campaign across the northern countryside, seizing dozens of districts in the past two months.
Last week, all US and NATO forces left Bagram Air Base near Kabul — the command center for anti-Taliban operations — effectively wrapping up their exit after 20 years of military involvement that began in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
“There is war, there is pressure. Sometimes things are working our way. Sometimes they don’t, but we will continue to defend the Afghan people,” National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib told reporters.
“We have plans to retake the districts,” he added.
Troops and pro-government militiamen were deployed in the northern provinces of Takhar and Badakshan where the Taliban have captured large swathes of territory at lighting speed, often with little resistance.
Afghan defense officials have said they intend to focus on securing major cities, roads and border towns in the face of the Taliban onslaught, launched as US and NATO troops pressed ahead with their final withdrawal in early May.
The militants’ rapid gains have spurred fears that Afghan forces are facing a spiralling crisis, particularly now vital US air support has been massively curtailed by the handover of Bagram Air Base.
Mohib acknowledged that the Afghan air force was stretched and largely unable to support bases that were in remote districts.
But he said the air force was now being reorganized and would offer the needed back-up support to troops on the ground.
“We had some glitches as a result of the (US) retrograde... (that put) additional pressure on the Afghan air force, he said.
On Monday, more than 1,000 Afghan troops fled into Tajikistan, forcing the neighboring country to bolster the frontier with its own soldiers.
Several hundred Afghan troops had already crossed into the country in recent weeks, in the face of an advancing Taliban.
Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon has ordered “the mobilization of 20,000 reserve troops to further strengthen the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan,” a statement from the presidency said late on Monday.
“We had to abandon our base because there was no coordination or interest among our commanders to counter the attack,” said Mohammad Musa, a soldier who had fled to Tajikistan after his base in Kunduz province fell to the Taliban last week.
The fighting in the north has also forced Moscow to close its consulate in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province and one of Afghanistan’s largest urban centers near the border with Uzbekistan.
“The situation is changing rapidly. The Afghan forces, as they say, have abandoned too many districts. This logically creates nervousness,” Moscow’s envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov told the state-run TASS news agency on Monday.
Mohib said the soldiers who fled were returning and rejoining the security forces.
“They may have abandoned their posts because they ran out of ammunition or they ran out of supplies, but by no means has anyone defected to the Taliban,” he said.
The speed and ease of the Taliban’s effective takeover of swathes of areas in Takhar, Badakhshan and Kunduz represent a massive psychological blow to the Afghan government.
The area once served as the stronghold for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance during the gruesome civil war in the 1990s and was never routed by the militants.
A psychological war has also been taking shape online.
The Taliban has marshalled its forces on social media, with insurgent-affiliated accounts providing live updates of the fall of districts and posting numerous videos of Afghan soldiers surrendering and handing over weapons caches and equipment to the group.
The Afghan government in turn has been releasing its own footage on social media — mostly grainy black and white videos of airstrikes obliterating alleged Taliban positions, while boasting of inflicting heavy casualties on the jihadist group.
Back on the ground, Afghan commander General Mirassadullah Kohistani, who is now in charge of Bagram Air Base following the US exit last week, put on a brave face when asked about the insurgents rapid advances.
“We are trying to do the best and as much as possible secure and serve all the people,” he said.
Afghan forces vow to retake districts lost to Taliban
https://arab.news/gw3ht
Afghan forces vow to retake districts lost to Taliban
- Insurgents have primarily focused on a devastating campaign across the northern countryside
- Afghan defence officials said they intend to focus on securing major cities, roads and border towns in the face of Taliban onslaught
Croatian health minister arrested and sacked over alleged graft
The prime minister’s comments came after Croatia’s Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK) said it was conducting several arrests
SARAJEVO: Croatian Health Minister Vili Beros was sacked on Friday after being arrested on suspicion of corruption, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said.
Beros’ lawyer Laura Valkovic told local media that he denied any criminal responsibility. The health ministry declined to comment.
The prime minister’s comments came after Croatia’s Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK) said it was conducting several arrests.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office also said it had initiated an investigation against eight people, including Beros and the directors of two hospitals in Zagreb, over alleged bribery, abuse of authority and money laundering.
Croatia’s State Attorney Ivan Turudic, whose office works closely with USKOK, said there were two parallel investigations into the alleged crimes and that EPPO has not informed his office nor USKOK about its investigation.
Turudic said Beros was accused of trade of influence. He said two other individuals had been arrested and one legal entity would be investigated on suspicion of the criminal act of receiving a bribe.
The people detained will be brought before an investigative judge who will decide on any pre-trial detention, Turudic told a news conference.
The EPPO said that a criminal group seeking to secure financing for the sale of medical robotic devices in several hospitals was suspected of giving bribes to officials to try to win contracts for projects, including EU funded ones.
“What is obvious is that this is about criminal acts of corruption,” Plenkovic said. “On behalf of the government, I want to say that agencies authorized for criminal persecution should investigate everything.”
Protesters storm parliament in breakaway Georgian region Abkhazia over deal with Russia
- Eshsou Kakalia, an opposition leader and former deputy prosecutor general, said the parliament building was under the control of the protesters
- “We will now seek the resignation of the current president of Abkhazia,” he was quoted by Russia’s Interfax news agency as saying
TBILISI: Protesters stormed the parliament of the Russian-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia on Friday and opposition politicians demanded the resignation of the self-styled president over an unpopular investment agreement with Moscow.
Protesters used a truck to smash through the metal gates surrounding the parliament in the capital Sukhumi. Video from the scene then showed people climbing through windows after prying off metal bars and chanting in the corridors.
Eshsou Kakalia, an opposition leader and former deputy prosecutor general, said the parliament building was under the control of the protesters.
“We will now seek the resignation of the current president of Abkhazia,” he was quoted by Russia’s Interfax news agency as saying. Protesters also broke into the presidential administration offices located in the same building as the parliament.
Emergency services said at least eight people were taken to hospital.
The presidential administration said in a statement that authorities were preparing to withdraw the investment agreement with Russia that some Abkhaz fear will price them out of the property market.
Russia recognized Abkhazia and another breakaway region, South Ossetia, as independent states in 2008 after Russian troops repelled a Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia in a five-day war.
Most of the world recognizes Abkhazia as part of Georgia, from which it broke away during wars in the early 1990s, but Russian money has poured into the lush sub-tropical territory where Soviet-era spa resorts cling to the Black Sea coast.
RUSSIAN MONEY
Abkhazian lawmakers had been set to vote on Friday on the ratification of an investment agreement signed in October in Moscow by Russian Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov and his Abkhazian counterpart, Kristina Ozgan.
Abkhazian opposition leaders say the agreement with Moscow, which would allow for investment projects by Russian legal entities, would price locals out of the property market by allowing far more Russian money to flow in.
The opposition said in a statement that the protesters’ actions were not against Russian-Abkhazian relations.
“Abkhazian society had only one demand: to protect the interests of our citizens and our business, but neither the president nor the parliament have heard the voice of the people until today,” Interfax cited the statement as saying.
Earlier this week Abkhazia’s self-styled president, Aslan Bzhania, held an emergency security council meeting after protesters blocked a key highway and rallied in central Sukhumi to demand the release of four activists.
The activists, who were subsequently freed, had been detained for opposing the passage of a law regulating the construction industry which references the Russian-Abkhazian agreement.
In 2014, demonstrators stormed the presidential headquarters, forcing then-leader Alexander Ankvab to flee. He later resigned over accusations of corruption and misrule.
Opposition leader Raul Khadzhimba, elected following the unrest in 2014, was himself forced to step down in 2020 after street protests over disputed election results.
Pakistani province declares health emergency due to smog and locks down two cities
- Smog has choked Punjab for weeks, sickening nearly 2 million people and shrouding vast swathes of the province in a toxic haze
- Average air quality index readings in parts of Lahore exceeded 600 on Friday
LAHORE, Pakistan: A Pakistani province declared a health emergency Friday due to smog and imposed a shutdown in two major cities.
Smog has choked Punjab for weeks, sickening nearly 2 million people and shrouding vast swathes of the province in a toxic haze.
A senior provincial minister, Marriyum Aurangzeb, declared the health emergency at a press conference and announced measures to combat the growing crisis.
Time off for medical staff is canceled, all education institutions are shut until further notice, restaurants are closing at 4 p.m. while takeaway is available up until 8 p.m. Authorities are imposing a lockdown in the cities of Multan and Lahore and halting construction work in those two places.
“Smog is currently a national disaster,” Aurangzeb said. “It will not all be over in a month or a year. We will evaluate the situation after three days and then announce a further strategy.”
Average air quality index readings in parts of Lahore, a city of 11 million, exceeded 600 on Friday. Anything over 300 is considered hazardous to health.
The dangerous smog is a byproduct of large numbers of vehicles, construction and industrial work as well as burning crops at the start of the winter wheat-planting season, experts say.
Pakistan’s national weather center said rain and wind were forecast for the coming days, helping smoggy conditions to subside and air quality to improve in parts of Punjab.
Dr. Muhammad Ashraf, a professor at Jinnah Hospital Lahore and Allama Iqbal Medical College, said the government must take preventative measures well before smog becomes prevalent.
“It is more of an emergency than COVID-19 because every patient is suffering from respiratory tract infections and disease is prevailing at a mass level,” he said earlier this week.
Sri Lankan president’s leftist coalition secures landslide election win
- National People’s Power alliance wins 159 seats in the 225-member parliament
- First time in history, election is won by representatives of Sri Lanka’s poor
COLOMBO: The coalition of Sri Lanka’s new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake won a landslide victory in a snap parliamentary vote, results from the election body showed on Friday, giving the left-leaning leader a mandate to fight poverty and corruption in the crisis-hit island nation.
Dissanayake’s alliance, the National People’s Power, secured 159 seats in the 225-member assembly, according to the results released by the Election Commission.
The United People’s Power of Sajith Premadasa retained its role from the previous parliament as the largest opposition party, winning 40 seats.
When Dissanayake won the presidential vote in September, he had only three members of his party in parliament, which limited his ability to realize his campaign promises.
To boost the NPP’s representation — as government ministers can be appointed only from among lawmakers — he dissolved the parliament and cleared the way for the polls that took place on Thursday, a year ahead of schedule.
While ahead of the poll, the president expressed optimism that the 42 percent of the vote he received in the presidential election showed the NPP was “a winning party,” the landslide win came with a surprise.
“It’s a historic election,” Lakshman Gunasekara, a political analyst in Colombo, told Arab News. “The result has gone far beyond the expectations of analysts ... I did not expect them to win a total majority, but they have done so.”
Dissanayake and his coalition took over control of Sri Lanka as the nation continued to reel from the 2022 economic crisis — its worst since independence in 1948. The austerity measures imposed by his predecessor, Ranil Wickremesinghe — part of a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund — led to price hikes in food and fuel and caused hardship to millions of Sri Lankans.
Dissanayake said during his campaign that he planned to renegotiate the targets set in the IMF deal, as it placed too much burden on the ordinary people.
More than half of former lawmakers chose not to run for re-election. No contenders were seen from the powerful Rajapaksa family, including former president Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, also former president, Gotabaya — who was ousted in 2022 and largely blamed for the crisis.
Sri Lanka People’s Front, the party loyal to the Rajapaksa family, secured only three seats in the new parliament.
Sri Lankans decided to choose the NPP, a movement that until now would never win more than 4 percent, as there was a general “anti-incumbency kind of mood, but also tiredness among the voters of the same old parties alternating and doing political mismanagement, whipping up ethnic chauvinism, encouraging attacks on minorities to cover up for their own corruption,” Gunasekara said.
He explained that even more voted for the NPP than for Dissanayake in the presidential vote, as during slightly over one month of his and his three-member cabinet’s rule, they “realized that this new leadership is very fresh in their style of governance, very collective ... not personality-oriented, and also did not resort to violence or bullying or thuggery.”
Both Dissanayake and most of his party members come from the poorest segments of Sri Lankan society.
“He’s a son of a farmer, benefited from free education ... He’s an educated person, but coming from the lowest classes, not from the urban elite, not the urban middle class, the Westernized people, fashionable people, not at all,” Gunasekara said.
“It will be a new entrant into the South Asian political arena ... For the first time, we have subalterns who have arrived in power. And they have arrived with a huge majority.”
Primary schools empty as smog persists in India’s capital New Delhi
- New Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, consistently tops world rankings for air pollution in winter
- The smog is blamed for thousands of premature deaths each year and is an annual source of misery for residents
NEW DELHI: Residents in India’s capital New Delhi again woke under a blanket of choking smog on Friday, a day after authorities closed primary schools and imposed measures aimed at alleviating the annual crisis.
Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, consistently tops world rankings for air pollution in winter.
The smog is blamed for thousands of premature deaths each year and is an annual source of misery for residents, with various piecemeal government initiatives failing to measurably address the problem.
All primary schools were shut by government order on Thursday night with young pupils – particularly vulnerable to smog-related ailments due to their age – instead moving to online lessons.
“I have an eight-year-old kid and he has been suffering from a cough the past couple of days,” Delhi resident Satraj, who did not give his surname, said on the streets of the capital.
“The government did the right thing by shutting down schools.”
Thursday’s edict also banned construction work, ordered drivers of older diesel-powered vehicles to stay off the streets and directed water trucks to spray roads in a bid to clear dust particles from the air.
Delhi’s air quality nonetheless deteriorated to “hazardous” levels for the fourth consecutive day this week, according to monitoring firm IQAir.
Levels of PM2.5 pollutants – dangerous cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs – were recorded more than 26 times above the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum shortly after dawn on Friday.
Critics have consistently said that authorities have fallen short in their duty to tackle a crisis that blights the city each year.
“We haven’t responded to the emergency with the same intensity with which we are facing this crisis,” Sunil Dahiya of New Delhi-based advocacy group Envirocatalysts said.
The acrid smog over New Delhi each year is primarily blamed on stubble burning by farmers in nearby states to clear their fields for plowing.
A report by broadcaster NDTV on Friday said that more than 7,000 individual farm fires had been recorded in Punjab state, to the capital’s north.
Emissions from industry and numerous coal-fired power stations ringing the city, along with vehicle exhaust and the burning of household waste, also play a part.
“Since we haven’t yet carried out any systemic long-term changes, like the way we commute, generate power, or manage our waste, even the curtailed emissions will be high,” Dahiya said.
Cooler temperatures and slow-moving winds worsen the situation by trapping deadly pollutants each winter.
A study in The Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths to air pollution in the world’s most populous country in 2019.
