Fighting intensifies for Ukraine’s last bastion in eastern Luhansk province
Fighting intensifies for Ukraine’s last bastion in eastern Luhansk province/node/2115446/world
Fighting intensifies for Ukraine’s last bastion in eastern Luhansk province
A view shows an apartment building heavily damaged during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the city of Sievierodonetsk in the Luhansk Region, Ukraine July 1, 2022. (REUTERS)
Fighting intensifies for Ukraine’s last bastion in eastern Luhansk province
Kyiv says Moscow has intensified missile attacks on cities far from the main eastern battlefields and that it deliberately hit civilian sites
Updated 03 July 2022
Reuters
KYIV/KONSTYANTYNIVKA, Ukraine: Fighting intensified on Saturday for Lysychansk, Ukraine’s last bastion in the strategic eastern province of Luhansk, while blasts shook a southern city after the civilian toll from Russian strikes climbed in towns well behind the front lines.
Rodion Miroshnik, ambassador to Russia of the pro-Moscow self-styled Luhansk People’s Republic, told Russian television that “Lysychansk has been brought under control,” but added: “Unfortunately, it is not yet liberated.”
Russian media showed videos of Luhansk militia parading in Lysychansk streets waving flags and cheering, but Ukraine National Guard spokesman Ruslan Muzychuk told Ukrainian national television the city remained in Ukrainian hands.
“Now there are fierce battles near Lysychansk, however, fortunately, the city is not surrounded and is under the control of the Ukrainian army,” Muzychuk said.
He said the situations in the Lysychansk and Bakhmut areas, as well as in Kharkiv region, were the most difficult on the entire front line.
“The goal of the enemy here remains access to the administrative border of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Also, in the Sloviansk direction, the enemy is attempting assault actions,” he said.
Oleksandr Senkevych, mayor of the southern region of Mykolaiv, which borders the vital Black Sea port of Odesa, reported powerful explosions in the city.
“Stay in shelters!” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app as air raid sirens sounded.
The cause of the blasts was not immediately clear, although Russia later said it had hit army command posts in the area.
Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.
Authorities said a missile slammed into an apartment block near Odesa on Friday, killing at least 21 people. A shopping mall was hit on Monday in the central city of Kremenchuk, leaving at least 19 dead.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the strikes on Friday as “conscious, deliberately targeted Russian terror and not some sort of error or a coincidental missile strike.”
In his nightly television address on Saturday, he said it would be a “very difficult path” to victory but it was necessary for Ukrainians to maintain their resolve and inflict losses on the “aggressor ... so that every Russian remembers that Ukraine cannot be broken.”
“In many areas from the front, there is a sense of easing up, but the war is not over,” he said. “Unfortunately, it is intensifying in different places and we musn’t forget that. We must help the army, the volunteers, help those who are left on their own at this time.”
Kyiv says Moscow has intensified missile attacks on cities far from the main eastern battlefields and that it deliberately hit civilian sites. Ukrainian troops on the eastern front lines meanwhile describe intense artillery barrages that have pummelled residential areas.
Thousands of civilians have been killed and cities levelled since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov repeated Russian denials that its forces targeted civilians.
The Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, inspected Russian troops involved in what Moscow calls its “special military operation,” Russia’s defense ministry said, although it was not clear if he was in Ukraine.
The inspection followed slow but steady gains by Russian forces with the help of relentless artillery in east Ukraine, a focus for Moscow after it narrowed its broader war goals of toppling the government following fierce Ukrainian resistance.
Russia is seeking to drive Ukrainian forces out of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in the industrialized eastern Donbas region where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv since Russia’s first military intervention in Ukraine in 2014.
“Definitely they are trying to demoralize us. Maybe some people are affected by that, but for us it only brings more hatred and determination,” said a Ukrainian soldier returning from Lysychansk.
HOUSES ‘BURNING DOWN’
Russian forces seized Lysychansk’s sister city Sievierodonetsk last month, after some of the heaviest fighting of the war that pounded whole districts into rubble. Other settlements now face similar bombardment.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Telegram shelling had stopped Lysychansk residents dousing fires and added: “Private houses in attacked villages are burning down one by one.”
Ukraine has appealed for more weapons from the West, saying its forces are heavily outgunned by the Russian military.
A war crimes prosecutor (C) and a rescuer (R) and a civil, look at a destroyed building after being hit by a missile strike in the Ukrainian town of Sergiyvka , near Odessa, killing at least 18 people and injuring 30, on July 1, 2022. (AFP)
Troops on a break from the fighting and speaking in Konstyantynivka, a market town about 115 km (72 miles) west of Lysychansk, said they had managed to keep the supply road to the embattled city open, for now, despite Russian bombardment.
“We still use the road because we have to, but it’s within artillery range of the Russians,” said one soldier, who usually lives in Kyiv and asked not to be named, as comrades relaxed nearby, munching on sandwiches or eating ice cream.
“The Russian tactic right now is to just shell any building we could locate ourselves at. When they’ve destroyed it, they move on to the next one,” the soldier said.
Reuters reporters saw an unexploded missile lodged into the ground in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of the Donbas city of Kramatorsk on Saturday evening.
The missile fell in a wooded area between residential tower blocks. Police and military cordoned off an area a few meters around the missile and told onlookers to stand back. Outgoing artillery fire and several large explosions were heard in central Kramatorsk earlier in the evening.
Despite being battered in the east, Ukrainian forces have made some advances elsewhere, including forcing Russia to withdraw from Snake Island, a Black Sea outcrop southeast of Odesa that Moscow captured at the start of the war.
Russia had used Snake Island to impose a blockade on Ukraine, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters and a major producer of seed for vegetable oils. The disruptions have helped fuel a surge in global grain and food prices.
Russia, also a big grain producer, denies it has caused the food crisis, blaming Western sanctions for hurting its exports.
Control of Congress is at stake and with it a president’s agenda
AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide, found a country mired in negativity and desperate for change as Americans faced a stark choice between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris
Updated 5 sec ago
AP
WASHINGTON: Control of Congress is at stake Tuesday, with ever-tight races for the House and Senate that will determine which party holds the majority and the power to boost or block a president’s agenda, or if the White House confronts a divided Capitol Hill.
The key contests are playing out alongside the first presidential election since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but also in unexpected corners of the country after what has been one of the most chaotic congressional sessions in modern times.
In the end, just a handful of seats, or as little as one, could tip the balance in either chamber.
Voters said the economy and immigration were the top issues facing the country, but the future of democracy was also a leading motivator for many Americans casting ballots in the presidential election.
AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide, found a country mired in negativity and desperate for change as Americans faced a stark choice between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the Senate, where Democrats now have a slim 51-49 majority, an early boost for Republicans is expected in West Virginia. Independent Sen. Joe Manchin’s retirement creates an opening that Republican Jim Justice, now the state’s governor, is favored to win. A pickup there would deadlock the chamber, 50-50, as Republicans try to wrest control.
Top House races are focused in New York and California, where in a politically unusual twist, Democrats are trying to claw back some of the 10 or so seats where Republicans have made surprising gains in recent years with star lawmakers who helped deliver the party to power.
Other House races are scattered around the country in a sign of how narrow the field has become. Only a couple of dozen seats are being seriously challenged, with some of the most contentious in Maine, the “blue dot” around Omaha, Nebraska, and in Alaska.
Vote counting in some races could extend well past Tuesday.
“We’re in striking distance in terms of taking back the House,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is in line to make history as the first Black speaker if his party wins control, told The Associated Press during a recent campaign swing through Southern California.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson, drawing closer to Trump, predicts Republicans will keep “and grow” the majority. He took over after Kevin McCarthy was booted from the speaker’s office.
Capitol Hill can make or break a new White House’s priorities, giving Trump or Harris potential allies or adversaries in the House and Senate, or a divided Congress that could force a season of compromise or stalemate.
Congress can also play a role in upholding the American tradition of peacefully transferring presidential power. Four years ago, Trump sent his mob of supporters to “fight like hell” at the Capitol, and many Republicans in Congress voted to block President Joe Biden’s election. Congress will again be called upon to certify the results of the presidential election in 2025.
What started as a lackluster race for control of Congress was instantly transformed once Harris stepped in for Biden at the top of the ticket, energizing Democrats with massive fundraising and volunteers that lawmakers said reminded them of the Obama-era enthusiasm of 2008.
Billions of dollars have been spent by the parties, and outside groups, on the narrow battleground for both the 435-member House and 100-member Senate.
Democrats need to win a handful of House seats to pluck party control from Republicans. In the Senate, the vice president becomes the tie-breaker in a 50-50 split, which would leave control of that chamber up to the winner of the White House.
Senate Republicans launched a wide-open map of opportunities, recruiting wealthy newcomers to put Democratic incumbents on defense across the country.
In Ohio, Trump-backed Republican Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland businessman, is seeking to unseat three-term Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. Some $400 million has been spent on the race.
One of the most-watched Senate races, in Montana, may be among the last to be decided. Democrat Jon Tester, a popular three-term senator and “dirt farmer” is in the fight of his political career against Trump-backed Tim Sheehy, a wealthy former NAVY Seal, who made derogatory comments about Native Americans, a key constituency in the Western state.
And across the “blue wall” battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Republicans are depending on Trump as they try to unseat a trio of incumbent Democratic senators.
Outgoing Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has spent a career focused on seizing and keeping majority power, but other opportunities for Republicans are slipping into long shots.
In the Southwestern states, Arizona firebrand Republican Kari Lake has struggled against Democrat Ruben Gallego in the seat opened by Sen. Krysten Sinema’s retirement. In Nevada, Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen has been holding out against newcomer Sam Brown.
Democrats intensified their challenges to a pair of Republican senators — Ted Cruz of Texas and Rick Scott in Florida — in states where reproductive rights have been a focus in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision rolling back abortion access. Cruz faces Democrat Colin Allred, the Dallas-area congressman, while Scott has poured $10 millions of his own fortune into the race against Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former House lawmaker.
Congress has a chance to reach several history-making milestones as it is reshaped by the American electorate and becomes more representative of a diverse nation.
Not one, but possibly two Black women could be on their way to the Senate, which would be something never seen in the US
Democrat Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware is favored in the Senate race against Republican Eric Hansen.
And in Maryland, Harris-ally Angela Alsobrooks is in a highly competitive race against the state’s popular former governor, Republican Larry Hogan.
Americans have elected two Black women, including Harris, as senators since the nation’s founding, but never at the same time.
House candidate Sarah McBride, a state lawmaker from Delaware who is close to the Biden family, is poised to become the first openly transgender person in Congress.
Fallout from redistricting, when states redraw their maps for congressional districts, leaves Republicans set to gain several seats from Democrats in North Carolina and Democrats picking up a second Black-majority seat in Republican-heavy Alabama.
Lawmakers in the House face voters every two years, while senators serve longer six-year terms.
If the two chambers do in fact flip party control, as is possible, it would be rare.
Records show that if Democrats take the House and Republicans take the Senate, it would be the first time that the chambers of Congress have both flipped to opposing political parties.
‘I feel it’: US voters confident in most pro-Trump town
As Americans voted on Tuesday, this time in the race between Trump and Kamala Harris, the support for the former president seeking an astonishing comeback from political isolation is alive and well
Updated 42 min 45 sec ago
AFP
MIAMI, United States: There are very few lawn signs backing Donald Trump in Miami, Texas. They aren’t necessary.
This speck of a town of around 500 souls — a world away from its glamorous namesake in Florida — is known as the most vehemently pro-Trump town in the United States: 96 percent of its voters backed the Republican in the 2020 election.
And it was about the same proportion in 2016 when Trump won the White House, defeating Hillary Clinton.
As Americans voted on Tuesday, this time in the race between Trump and Kamala Harris, the support for the former president seeking an astonishing comeback from political isolation is alive and well.
“Trump’s going to be the president,” said Julian Huff, 68, a former truck driver who was the fourth person in line to cast his ballot at the local community center.
“I feel it and feel good about it, and everybody I talk to feels the same thing,” said Huff, who in particular likes Trump’s campaign pledge to crack down on people trying to cross the US-Mexico border without documentation.
Miami — pronounced with an “uh” sound at the end — is the only town in Roberts County, in far northwest Texas. The closest city is Amarillo.
On Election Day, the streets of Miami are deathly quiet, interrupted only by the whistles of passing freight trains. The traffic lights are set at a constant blinking yellow.
Miami is surrounded by ranches and its inhabitants make their living from farming, small businesses, or working in oil refineries or gas plants.
Journalists, lured by Miami’s pro-Trump fervor, visited earlier this week but things were back to the normal silence on Tuesday.
Rick Tennant, a 71-year-old retired county judge who now runs an auto repair shop, said he always votes Republican — no matter who the candidate is.
“I’ll be happier if Trump wins. I think my money will be safer if Trump wins,” said Tennant, who voted early this year.
Randy Crismas, a 57-year-old gas station owner, said he likes Trump because of what he called the politician’s Christian values.
“This community is about as tight-knit a community as I’ve ever been in the good lord’s luxury of living in,” said Crismas.
“It’s a fabulous community and we take care of each other.”
Huff’s house is one of the few with a Trump sign outside. “He’s the man for the job and he’s going to get in,” said Huff.
Why the Middle East will weigh heavily on the new US president’s agenda
From Iran to Palestine, the incoming US administration will face a slew of daunting policy challenges
New leadership will have to balance diplomacy with action if it hopes to prevent further regional escalation
Updated 06 November 2024
Jonathan Gornall
LONDON: America has voted and now the Middle East waits to discover who has won — and, crucially, what that victory will mean for a region with which the US has had a complex relationship ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz bin Saud met for historic talks on a US warship in the Suez Canal in 1945.
Whichever way CNN and the other big US channels have called the result of the US presidential election, it could be days, or even weeks, before America’s arcane electoral process reaches its final conclusion and the winner is formally declared.
Although they have ticked the box on their ballot papers alongside their preferred candidate, America’s voters have not actually voted directly for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump or any of the four other runners.
Instead, in proportion to its number of representatives in Congress, each state appoints electors to the Electoral College, the combined membership of which votes for the president and the vice president.
It is rare, but not unknown, for electors to disregard the popular vote. But either way, to become president, a candidate needs the votes of at least 270 of the college’s 538 electors.
Their votes will be counted, and the winner announced, in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. The president-elect is then sworn into office on Monday, Jan. 20 — and, as first days at work go, these promise to be intense.
A poll worker waits for voters at a polling station in New York City on Election Day, November 5, 2024. (AFP)
There will be many issues, domestic and foreign, clamoring for the attention of the new president and their team.
But of all the in-trays jostling for attention, it is the one labeled “Middle East” that will weigh most heavily on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office and on the mind of the incoming president.
Depending on how they are handled, the sum of the challenges contained in that in-tray could add up either to an opportunity to achieve something no American president has achieved before, or an invitation to a disastrous, legacy-shredding encounter with some of the world’s most pressing and intractable problems.
Palestine and Israel
In November 2016, then-President-Elect Donald Trump declared: “I would love to be able to be the one that made peace with Israel and the Palestinians.” A lot of “really great people” had told him that “it’s impossible — you can’t do it.”
But he added: “I disagree … I have reason to believe I can do it.”
As recent history attests, he could not do it.
Every US president since Jimmy Carter, who led the Camp David talks that culminated in a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979, has been drawn inexorably into the maelstrom of Middle East politics — partly through economic and political necessity, but also because of the Nobel-winning allure of going down in history as the greatest peacemaker the world has ever known.
A woman rests with her children as displaced Palestinians flee Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 5, 2024. (AFP)
Not for nothing, however, is the Israel-Palestine issue known in diplomatic circles as “the graveyard of US peacemaking.”
Since Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s onslaught on Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, a crisis long deemed intractable appears to have degenerated even further to a point of no return.
All the talk throughout the election by both of the main candidates, calculated to walk the electoral tightrope between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian voters, will now be forgotten.
All that matters now is action — careful, considered action, addressing issues including the desperate need for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the reopening of the much-cratered pathway to a two-state solution.
Palestinians search through the rubble following Israeli strikes in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on November 1, 2024. (AFP)
Epitomizing the hypocrisy that has so infuriated millions, including the many Arab American voters who have switched their allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans in this election, the Biden-Harris administration has bemoaned the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians while simultaneously supplying Israel with the munitions that killed them.
For Trump, regaining the White House would be a second chance at peacemaker immortality and, perhaps, the Nobel Peace Prize he felt he deserved for his 2020 Abraham Accords initiative.
Last time around, Trump did achieve the breakthrough of establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. The big prize, which eluded him in 2020, was bringing Saudi Arabia on board. The Kingdom has made it clear that for that to happen, one condition must be fulfilled — the opening of a meaningful path to Palestinian statehood. This, therefore, could well be on the to-do list of a Trump administration in 2025.
For Harris, the presidency would be a chance to step out from under the shadow of the Biden administration, which has so spectacularly failed to restrain Israel, its client state, and in the process has only deepened the crisis in the Middle East and undermined trust in the US in the region.
The West Bank
If America has equivocated over events in Palestine and Lebanon, the Biden administration has not turned a blind eye to the provocative, destabilizing activities of extremist Jewish settler groups in the West Bank.
In February, the White House issued an executive order imposing sanctions on “persons undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank.” The order, signed by President Joe Biden, condemned the “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction,” which had “reached intolerable levels” and constituted “a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.”
A wounded Palestinian man arrives for treatment for injuries sustained in clashes with Israeli settlers in the village of Mughayir, at a hospital in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on April 12, 2024. (AFP)
So far, the US, reluctant to act against members of an ally’s government, has stopped short of sanctioning Israel’s far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, the chief settler rabble-rousers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.
Whether Harris would continue with, or even strengthen the sanctions policy, remains to be seen, but the settlers believe that Trump would let them off the hook. “If Trump takes the election, there will be no sanctions,” Israel Ganz, chairman of one of the main settler groups, told Reuters last week.
“If Trump loses the election, we will in the state of Israel … have a problem with sanctions that the government over here has to deal with.”
It was, after all, Trump who recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, undoing decades of US foreign policy, and moved the US Embassy there from Tel Aviv.
Whoever wins, if they are truly interested in peace in the region, they will need to exert pressure on Netanyahu to bring the extremist right-wingers in his government to heel. It was Ben Gvir’s repeated incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound that Hamas cited as the main provocation that triggered its Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year.
Iran
Iran has been a thorn in the side of every US administration since the 1979 revolution, the roots of which can be traced back ultimately to the CIA-engineered overthrow of democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.
The next US president faces two key, interrelated choices, both of which have far-reaching consequences. The first is how to deal with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon who was elected in July and, so far, has given every appearance of being someone who is prepared to negotiate and compromise with the West and its regional allies.
In the hope of lifting the sanctions that have so badly hurt his countrymen, if not their leaders, Pezeshkian has offered to open fresh negotiations with the US over Iran’s nuclear program.
According to a recent Arab News/YouGov poll ahead of the presidential election, this would be appealing to many Arab Americans.
Asked how the incoming US administration should tackle the influence of Iran and its affiliated militant groups in the region, 41 percent said it should resort to diplomacy and incentives, with only 32 percent supporting a more aggressive stance and a harsher sanctions regime.
Here, a Harris victory might pave the way to progress. The Biden presidency has seen some sanctions lifted and moves made toward reopening the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
In a move that infuriated supporters of Israel but brought some relief to a region that appeared to be teetering on the brink of all-out war, in October the Biden administration publicly warned Israel that it would not support a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in retaliation for Tehran’s drone and missile attack on Israel.
Under a Trump administration, however, progress with Iran would seem unlikely. It was Trump who in 2020 ordered the assassination of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Qassem Soleimani, and who in 2018 unilaterally pulled the US out of the JCPOA to the dismay of the other signatories, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is difficult to see how he could revisit that decision.
The Houthis
In many ways, coming to an understanding with Iran could be the greatest contribution any US president could make to peace in the region, especially if that led to a defanging of Iran’s proxies, which have caused so much disruption in the Middle East.
The previous Trump administration backed Saudi Arabia’s war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization. In 2021, however, Biden reversed that decision and withdrew US support for the military interventions of the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen against the rebels, who overthrew Yemen’s internationally recognized government, sparking the civil war, in 2015.
Houthi supporters attend an anti-Israel rally in solidarity with Gaza and Lebanon in the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa on November 1, 2024. (AFP)
Since then, however, Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, and drone and missile assaults on Saudi Arabia, have opened Western eyes to the true nature of the rebel group, to the extent that in October Biden authorized the bombing of Houthi weapons stores by B2 stealth bombers.
For either candidate as president, apart from securing the all-important commercial navigation of the Red Sea, dealing with the Houthis offers the opportunity to mend bridges with Arab partners in the region (only Bahrain joined America’s Operation Prosperity Guardian, a naval mission to protect shipping).
But it is Trump, rather than the Biden-era tainted Harris, who is expected to come down hardest on the Houthis.
Hezbollah
Trump’s grasp of events in the Middle East has at times appeared tenuous. In a speech in October, for example, he boiled down the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon to “two kids fighting in the schoolyard.” As president, though, there seems little doubt that he would, once again, be Israel’s man in the White House.
In a recent call with Netanyahu, he appeared briefly to forget the importance of wooing the all-important Arab American swing-state votes and told the Israeli prime minister to “do what you have to do,” even as innocent civilians were dying at the hands of Israeli troops in Lebanon.
Of course, no American government is going to defend Hezbollah or any of Iran’s proxies. But when Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was targeted in an Israeli airstrike in September, Harris released a statement that outlined a preference for diplomacy over continuing conflict.
Demonstrators celebrate during a rally outside the British Embassy in Tehran on October 1, 2024, after Iran fired a barrage of missiles into Israel in response to the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. (AFP)
She had, she said, “an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel” and would “always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.”
But, she added, “I do not want to see conflict in the Middle East escalate into a broader regional war. We have been working on a diplomatic solution along the Israel-Lebanon border so that people can safely return home on both sides of that border. Diplomacy remains the best path forward to protect civilians and achieve lasting stability in the region.”
The US presence in the Middle East
One of the findings of the recent Arab News/YouGov poll of Arab Americans ahead of the election was that a sizable majority (52 percent) believed the US should either maintain its military presence in the Middle East (25 percent), or actually increase it (27 percent).
This will be one of the big issues facing the next president, whose administration’s ethos could be one of increasing isolationism or engagement.
America still has 2,500 troops in Iraq, for example, where talks are underway that could see all US and US-led coalition personnel withdrawn from the country by the end of 2026 — 23 years since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
A vehicle part of a US military convoy drives in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on September 17, 2024. (AFP)
In April, Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani issued a joint statement affirming the intention to withdraw US troops, who now act mainly as advisers, and transition to a “bilateral security partnership.”
Trump, on the other hand, could go much further, and as president has a record of disengaging America from military commitments. In 2019, to the alarm of regional allies, he unilaterally ordered the sudden withdrawal of the stabilizing US military presence in northeastern Syria, and in 2020 withdrew hundreds of US troops who were supporting local forces battling against Al-Shabaab and Daesh militants in Somalia.
In the wake of his election defeat that year, he ordered the rapid withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan. The order was not carried out, but in September 2021, the Biden administration followed suit, ending America’s 20-year war and leading to the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces and the takeover of the country by the Taliban.
A sharply divided America decides between Trump and Harris
Tens of millions of voters were expected to cast their ballots Tuesday, on top of the 83 million who have already voted early, and both candidates put in a final word to try to sway the last undecided voters
Updated 52 min 2 sec ago
AP
WASHINGTON: A divided America weighed a stark choice for the nation’s future Tuesday as a presidential campaign marked by upheaval and rancor approached its finale.
Voters were deciding whether to send Republican Donald Trump back to the White House or elevate Vice President Kamala Harris to the Oval Office. As the first polls began to close in parts of Kentucky and Indiana, tens of millions of Americans added their ballots to the 84 million cast early as they chose between two candidates with drastically different temperaments and visions for the country.
The economy and immigration are the top issues facing the country, voters said, but the future of democracy was also a leading motivator for many Americans casting a ballot in Tuesday’s presidential election. AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide, found a country mired in negativity and desperate for change.
Those casting Election Day ballots mostly encountered a smooth process, with isolated reports of hiccups that regularly happen, including long lines, technical issues and ballot printing errors.
Harris stands to be the first female president if elected and has promised to work across the aisle to tackle economic worries and other issues without radically departing from the course set by President Joe Biden. Trump has vowed to replace thousands of federal workers with loyalists, impose sweeping tariffs on allies and foes alike, and stage the largest deportation operation in US history.
Harris and Trump entered Election Day focused on seven swing states, five of them carried by Trump in 2016 before they flipped to Biden in 2020: the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as well as Arizona and Georgia. Nevada and North Carolina, which Democrats and Republicans respectively carried in the last two elections, also were closely contested.
Trump voted in Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago club, and said afterward that he was feeling “very confident.”
Harris, the Democratic vice president, did phone interviews with radio stations in the battleground states, then visited Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington carrying a box of Doritos — her go-to snack.
“This truly represents the best of who we are,” Harris told a room of cheering staffers. She was handed a cellphone by supporters doing phone banking, and when asked by reporters how she was feeling, the vice president held up a phone and responded, “Gotta talk to voters.”
The closeness of the race and the number of states in play raised the likelihood that, once again, a victor might not be known on election night.
Trump said Tuesday that he had no plans to tell his supporters not to refrain from violence if Harris wins, because they “are not violent people.” Asked about accepting the race’s results, he said, “If it’s a fair election, I’d be the first one to acknowledge it.” He visited a nearby campaign office to thank staffers before a party at a nearby convention center.
After her DNC stop, Harris planned to attend a party at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington.
Federal, state and local officials have expressed confidence in the integrity of the nation’s election systems. They nonetheless were braced to contend with what they say is an unprecedented level of foreign disinformation — particularly from Russia and Iran — as well as the possibility of physical violence or cyberattacks.
Both sides have armies of lawyers in anticipation of legal challenges on and after Election Day. And law enforcement agencies nationwide are on high alert for potential violence.
Each candidate would take the country into new terrain
Harris, 60, would be the first woman, Black woman and person of South Asian descent to serve as president. She also would be the first sitting vice president to win the White House in 36 years.
A victory would cap a whirlwind campaign unlike any other in American history. Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket less than four months ago after Biden, facing massive pressure from his party after a disastrous debate performance, ended his reelection bid.
In Scranton, Pennsylvania, Liza Fortt arrived at her polling location in a wheelchair and not feeling well. But she said she ventured out anyway to vote for Harris.
“It means a lot to me and my grandkids, my granddaughters, my nieces. ... I was just waiting for this day to come,” said Fortt, who is 74 and Black. She said she never thought she’d have such an opportunity, to cast a ballot for a Black woman in a presidential race.
“I’m proud, to see a woman, not only a woman, but a Black woman,” Fortt said.
Trump, 78, would be the oldest president ever elected. He would also be the first defeated president in 132 years to win another term in the White House, and the first person convicted of a felony to take over the Oval Office.
He survived one assassination attempt by millimeters at a July rally. Secret Service agents foiled a second attempt in September.
A Trump victory would affirm that enough voters put aside warnings from many of Trump’s former aides or instead prioritized concerns about Biden and Harris’ stewardship of the economy or the US-Mexico border.
It would all but ensure he avoids going to prison after being found guilty of his role in hiding hush-money payments to an adult film actress during his first run for president in 2016. His sentencing in that case could occur later this month. And upon taking office, Trump could end the federal investigation into his effort to overturn the 2020 election results.
First-time voter Jasmine Perez, 26, cast her ballot at the Las Vegas Raiders’ stadium in Nevada for Trump, citing his spiritual values.
“What really attracted me to Donald Trump is I’m a Christian,” Perez said, noting of the former president, “I like that he openly promotes Christianity in America.”
Harris, pointing to the warnings of Trump’s former aides, has labeled him a “fascist” and blamed Trump for putting women’s lives in danger by nominating three of the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. In the closing hours of the campaign, she tried to strike a more positive tone and went all of Monday without saying her Republican opponent’s name.
JD Jorgensen, an independent voter in Black Mountain, North Carolina, which was hit hard by Hurricane Helene, said voters should have made up their minds by now.
“I think that the candidates, both being in the public eye as long as they both have been, if you’re on the fence, you hadn’t really been paying attention,” said Jorgensen, 35.
US hails fired Israeli defense chief Gallant as ‘important partner’
Gallant has served as a main pointperson for the United States in the 13-month war in Gaza and now in Lebanon, with US officials seeing him as a professional without the ideological bent of some in Netanyahu’s cabinet
Updated 06 November 2024
AFP
WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday praised sacked Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, a key intermediary with Washington fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Minister Gallant has been an important partner on all matters related to the defense of Israel. As close partners, we will continue to work collaboratively with Israel’s next minister of defense,” a State Department spokesperson said.
Gallant has served as a main pointperson for the United States in the 13-month war in Gaza and now in Lebanon, with US officials seeing him as a professional without the ideological bent of some in Netanyahu’s cabinet.
Just Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by telephone to Gallant to press US demands for greater humanitarian aid into Gaza, with a deadline looming next week in a threat to cut off some US military assistance without progress.
President Joe Biden’s own relationship has deteriorated with Netanyahu, who announced Gallant’s dismissal just as the United States was electing Biden’s successor.
