The Taliban’s abrupt return to power has left hundreds of Afghan diplomats overseas in limbo: running out of money to keep missions operating, fearful for families back home and desperate to secure refuge abroad.
The Islamist militant movement, which swiftly ousted Afghanistan’s Western-backed government on Aug. 15, said on Tuesday that it had sent messages to all of its embassies telling diplomats to continue their work.
But eight embassy staff who spoke on condition of anonymity, in countries including Canada, Germany and Japan, described dysfunction and despair at their missions.
“My colleagues here and in many countries are pleading with host nations to accept them,” said an Afghan diplomat in Berlin, who feared what might happen to his wife and four daughters who remain in Kabul if he allowed his name to be used.
“I am literally begging. Diplomats are willing to become refugees,” he said, adding he would have to sell everything, including a large house in Kabul, and “start all over again.”
Afghanistan’s missions overseas face a period of “prolonged limbo” as countries decide whether to recognize the Taliban, said Afzal Ashraf, an international relations expert and visiting fellow at Britain’s University of Nottingham.
“What can those embassies do? They don’t represent a government. They don’t have a policy to implement,” he said, adding that embassy staff would likely be granted political asylum due to safety concerns if they returned to Afghanistan.
The Taliban, who enforced a strict interpretation of Islamic law with punishments like amputations and stonings during their previous rule from 1996 to 2001, have sought to show a more conciliatory face since coming back to power.
Spokespeople have reassured Afghans that they are not out for revenge and will respect people’s rights, including women’s.
But reports of house-to-house searches and reprisals against former officials and ethnic minorities have made people wary. The Taliban have vowed to investigate any abuses.
A group of envoys from the deposed government issued a first-of-its-kind joint statement, calling on world leaders to deny the Taliban formal recognition.
Afghanistan’s acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told a news conference in Kabul on Tuesday that the Taliban had sent messages to all Afghan embassies telling them to continue work.
“Afghanistan invested in you a lot, you are assets of Afghanistan,” he said.
One senior Afghan diplomat estimated there were around 3,000 people either working in the country’s embassies or directly dependent on them.
Ousted president Ashraf Ghani’s toppled administration also penned a letter to foreign missions on Sept. 8 calling the Taliban’s new government “illegitimate” and urging embassies to “continue their normal functions and duties.”
But these calls for continuity do not reflect the chaos on the ground, embassy staff said.
“There is no money. It is not possible to operate in such circumstances. I am not being paid now,” a source at the Afghan embassy in Canada’s capital Ottawa said.
Two Afghan embassy staffers in New Delhi said they were also running out of cash for a mission serving thousands of Afghans who are trying to find ways home to reunite with families or need help applying for asylum in other countries.
Both staffers said they would not return to Afghanistan for fear of being targeted due to their connections to the previous government, but would also struggle to get asylum in India where thousands of Afghans have spent years seeking refugee status.
“I have to just sit tight for now in the embassy premises and wait to exit to any nation that is willing to accept me and my family,” one said.
Some of Afghanistan’s envoys have openly criticized the Taliban.
Manizha Bakhtari, the country’s Austria ambassador, regularly posts allegations of human rights abuses by the Taliban on Twitter, while China envoy Javid Ahmad Qaem warned against believing Taliban promises on extremist groups.
Others are lying low, hoping that their host countries will not rush to recognize the group and put them at risk.
Several Afghan diplomats said they would be closely watching the annual meeting of world leaders at the United Nations in New York next week where there is uncertainty who will fill Afghanistan’s seat.
United Nations credentials give weight to a government, and no one has yet formally claimed Afghanistan’s seat. Any move seen as legitimizing the Taliban might empower the group to replace embassy staff with their own, the diplomats said.
In Tajikistan, some embassy staff managed to bring their families across the border in recent weeks and they are considering converting the embassy into residential premises to house them, a senior diplomat there said.
And, like peers spread out across the globe, they have no plans to return home with the Taliban back in power.
“It’s very clear that not a single Afghan diplomat posted overseas wants to go back,” said a senior Afghan diplomat in Japan. “We are all determined to stay where we are and maybe many countries will accept we are a part of a government that is in exile.”
Afghan envoys marooned abroad after Taliban’s sudden return
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Afghan envoys marooned abroad after Taliban’s sudden return
- The Islamist militant movement had sent messages to all of its embassies telling diplomats to continue their work
Russia captures two villages in eastern Ukraine, defense ministry says, according to agencies
MOSCOW: Russian forces have captured the villages of Makarivka and Leninskoye in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Russian news agencies reported on Saturday, citing the Russian Defense Ministry.
UN climate chief asks G20 leaders for boost as finance talks lag
- Negotiators at the COP29 conference in Baku struggle in their negotiations for a deal intended to scale up money to address the worsening impacts of global warming
BAKU: The UN’s climate chief called on leaders of the world’s biggest economies on Saturday to send a signal of support for global climate finance efforts when they meet in Rio de Janeiro next week. The plea, made in a letter to G20 leaders from UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, comes as negotiators at the COP29 conference in Baku struggle in their negotiations for a deal intended to scale up money to address the worsening impacts of global warming.
“Next week’s summit must send crystal clear global signals,” Stiell said in the letter.
He said the signal should support an increase in grants and loans, along with debt relief, so vulnerable countries “are not hamstrung by debt servicing costs that make bolder climate actions all but impossible.”
Business leaders echoed Stiell’s plea, saying they were concerned about the “lack of progress and focus in Baku.”
“We call on governments, led by the G20, to meet the moment and deliver the policies for an accelerated shift from fossil fuels to a clean energy future, to unlock the essential private sector investment needed,” said a coalition of business groups, including the We Mean Business Coalition, United Nations Global Compact and the Brazilian Council for Sustainable Development, in a separate letter.
Success at this year’s UN climate summit hinges on whether countries can agree on a new finance target for richer countries, development lenders and the private sector to deliver each year. Developing countries need at least $1 trillion annually by the end of the decade to cope with climate change, economists told the UN talks.
But negotiators have made slow progress midway through the two-week conference. A draft text of the deal, which earlier this week was 33-pages long and comprised of dozens of wide-ranging options, had been pared down to 25 pages as of Saturday.
Sweden’s climate envoy, Mattias Frumerie, said the finance negotiations had not yet cracked the toughest issues: how big the target should be, or which countries should pay.
“The divisions we saw coming into the meeting are still there, which leaves quite a lot of work for ministers next week,” he said.
European negotiators have said large oil-producing nations including Saudi Arabia are also blocking discussions on how to take forward last year’s COP28 summit deal to transition the world away from fossil fuels.
Saudi Arabia’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Progress on this issue has been dire so far, one European negotiator said.
Uganda’s energy minister, Ruth Nankabirwa, said her country’s priority was to leave COP29 with a deal on affordable financing for clean energy projects.
“When you look around and you don’t have the money, then we keep wondering whether we will ever walk the journey of a real energy transition,” she said.
Protesters’ biggest day expected at UN climate talks, where progress is slow
- Several experts have said $1 trillion a year or more is needed both to compensate for such damages and to pay for a clean-energy transition that most countries can’t afford on their own
BAKU: The United Nations climate talks neared the end of their first week on Saturday with negotiators still at work on how much wealthier nations will pay for developing countries to adapt to planetary warming. Meanwhile, activists planned actions on what is traditionally their biggest protest day during the two-week talks.
The demonstration in Baku, Azerbaijan is expected to be echoed at sites around the world in a global “day of action” for climate justice that’s become an annual event.
Negotiators at COP29, as the talks are known, will return to a hoped-for deal that might be worth hundreds of billions of dollars to poorer nations. Many are in the Global South and already suffering the costly impacts of weather disasters fueled by climate change. Several experts have said $1 trillion a year or more is needed both to compensate for such damages and to pay for a clean-energy transition that most countries can’t afford on their own.
Panama environment minister Juan Carlos Navarro told The Associated Press he is “not encouraged” by what he’s seeing at COP29 so far.
“What I see is a lot of talk and very little action,” he said, noting that Panama is among the group of countries least responsible for warming emissions but most vulnerable to the damage caused by climate change-fueled disasters. He added that financing was not a point of consensus at the COP16 biodiversity talks this year, which suggests to him that may be a sticking point at these talks as well.
“We must face these challenges with a true sense of urgency and sincerity,” he said. “We are dragging our feet as a planet.”
The talks came in for criticism on several fronts Friday. Two former top UN officials signed a letter that suggested the process needs to shift from negotiation to implementation. And others, including former US Vice President Al Gore, criticized the looming presence of the fossil fuel industry and fossil-fuel-reliant nations in the talks. One analysis found at least 1,770 people with fossil fuel ties on the attendees list for the Baku talks.
Progress may get a boost as many nations’ ministers, whose approval is necessary for whatever negotiators do, arrive in the second week.
US plane hit by gunfire on Dallas runway: aviation agency
WASHINGTON: A Southwest Airlines plane was hit by gunfire while taking off from an airport in the US city of Dallas on Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
“While taxiing for takeoff at Dallas Love Field Airport, Southwest Airlines Flight 2494 was reportedly struck by gunfire near the cockpit,” a statement on the FAA’s website said.
“The Boeing 737-800 returned to the gate, where passengers deplaned.”
The incident happened at around 8:30 p.m. Friday (0230 GMT Saturday), with the flight headed from Dallas, Texas, to Indianapolis, Indiana.
There were no reported injuries, according to a statement from Dallas Love Field Airport on social media platform X.
Investigation reveals a Russian factory’s plan to mix decoys with a new deadly weapon in Ukraine
- Unarmed decoys now make up more than half the drones targeting Ukraine and as much as 75 percent of the new drones coming out of the factory in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone
KYIV: A high-tech factory in central Russia has created a new, deadly force to attack Ukraine: a small number of highly destructive thermobaric drones surrounded by huge swarms of cheap foam decoys.
The plan, which Russia dubbed Operation False Target, is intended to force Ukraine to expend scarce resources to save lives and preserve critical infrastructure, including by using expensive air defense munitions, according to a person familiar with Russia’s production and a Ukrainian electronics expert who hunts them from his specially outfitted van.
Neither radar, sharpshooters nor even electronics experts can tell which drones are deadly in the skies.
Here’s what to know from AP’s investigation:
A deadly mix
Unarmed decoys now make up more than half the drones targeting Ukraine and as much as 75 percent of the new drones coming out of the factory in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, according to the person familiar with Russia’s production, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the industry is highly sensitive, and the Ukrainian electronics expert.
The same factory produces a particularly deadly variant of the Shahed unmanned aircraft armed with thermobaric warheads, the person said.
During the first weekend of November, the Kyiv region spent 20 hours under air alert, and the sound of buzzing drones mingled with the boom of air defenses and rifle shots. In October, Moscow attacked with at least 1,889 drones – 80 percent more than in August, according to an AP analysis tracking the drones for months.
On Saturday, Russia launched 145 drones across Ukraine, just days after the re-election of Donald Trump threw into doubt US support for the country.
Since summer, most drones crash, are shot down or are diverted by electronic jamming, according to an AP analysis of the Ukrainian military briefings. Less than 6 percent hit a discernible target, according to the data analyzed by AP since the end of July. But the sheer numbers mean a handful can slip through every day – and that is enough to be deadly.
The drone lab
Tatarstan’s Alabuga zone, an industrial complex about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) east of Moscow, is a laboratory for Russian drone production. Originally set up in 2006 to attract businesses and investment to Tatarstan, it expanded after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and some sectors switched to military production, adding new buildings and renovating existing sites, according to satellite images analyzed by The Associated Press.
In social media videos, the factory promoted itself as an innovation hub. But David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said Alabuga’s current purpose is purely to produce and sell drones to Russia‘s Ministry of Defense. The videos and other promotional media were taken down after an AP investigation found that many of the African women recruited to fill labor shortages there complained they were duped into taking jobs at the plant.
Russia and Iran signed a $1.7 billion deal for the Shaheds in 2022, after President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine, and Moscow began using Iranian imports of the unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in battle later that year. Soon after the deal was signed, production started in Alabuga.
The most fearsome Shahed adaptation so far designed at the plant is armed with thermobarics, also known as vacuum bombs, the person with knowledge of Russian drone production said.
The plan to develop unarmed decoy drones at Alabuga was developed in late 2022, according to the person with knowledge of Russian drone production. Production of the decoys started earlier this year, said the person, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity. Now the plant turns out about 40 of the unarmed drones a day and around 10 armed ones, which are more expensive and take longer to produce.
The vacuum bomb
From a military point of view, thermobarics are ideal for going after targets that are either inside fortified buildings or deep underground. They create a vortex of high pressure and heat that penetrates the thickest walls and, at the same time, sucks out all the oxygen in their path.
Alabuga’s thermobaric drones are particularly destructive when they strike buildings, because they are also loaded with ball bearings to cause maximum damage even beyond the superheated blast.
Serhii Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian electronics expert and more widely known as Flash whose black military van is kitted out with electronic jammers to down drones, said the thermobarics were first used over the summer and estimated they now make up between 3 percent and 5 percent of all drones.
They have a fearsome reputation because of the physical effects even on people caught outside the initial blast site: Collapsed lungs, crushed eyeballs, brain damage, according to Arthur van Coller, an expert in international humanitarian law at South Africa’s University of Fort Hare.
For Russia, the benefits are huge.
An unarmed drone costs considerably less than the estimated $50,000 for an armed Shahed drone and a tiny fraction of the cost of even a relatively inexpensive air defense missile. One decoy with a live-feed camera allows the aircraft to geolocate Ukraine’s air defenses and relay the information to Russia in the final moments of its mechanical life. And the swarms have become a demoralizing fact of life for Ukrainians.
