From an old-style Afghan camera, a new view of life under the Taliban emerges

Associated Press photographer Rodrigo Abd takes a portrait of Taliban fighters with a wooden box camera in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, on June 18, 2023. (AP)
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Updated 22 September 2023
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From an old-style Afghan camera, a new view of life under the Taliban emerges

  • Mamra-e-faoree, or instant camera, was a common sight on Afghan city streets in the last century
  • Tool of a bygone era, the box camera imparts a vintage, timeless quality to the images

KABUL, Afghanistan: The odd device draws curious onlookers everywhere. From the outside, it resembles little more than a large black box on a tripod. Inside lies its magic: a hand-made wooden camera and darkroom in one.
As a small crowd gathers around the box camera, images of beauty and of hardship ripple to life from its dark interior: a family enjoying an outing in a swan boat on a lake; child laborers toiling in brick factories; women erased by all-covering veils; armed young men with fire in their eyes.
Sitting for a portrait in a war-scarred Afghan village, a Taliban fighter remarks: “Life is much more joyful now.” For a young woman in the Afghan capital, forced out of education because of her gender, the opposite is true: “My life is like a prisoner, like a bird in a cage.”
The instrument used to record these moments is a kamra-e-faoree, or instant camera. They were a common sight on Afghan city streets in the last century — a fast and easy way to make portraits, especially for identity documents. Simple, cheap and portable, they endured amid half a century of dramatic changes in this country — from a monarchy to a communist takeover, from foreign invasions to insurgencies — until 21st-century digital technology rendered them obsolete.
Using this nearly disappeared homegrown art form to document life in post-war Afghanistan, from Herat in the west and Kandahar in the south to Kabul in the east and Bamiyan in the center, produced hundreds of black-and-white prints that reveal a complex, sometimes contradictory narrative.
Made over the course of a month, the images underscore how in the two years since US troops pulled out and the Taliban returned to power, life has changed dramatically for many Afghans — whereas for others, little has changed over the decades, regardless of who was in power.
A tool of a bygone era, the box camera imparts a vintage, timeless quality to the images, as if the country’s past is superimposed over its present, which in some respects, it is.
At first glance the faded black-and-white, sometimes slightly out-of-focus images convey an Afghanistan frozen in time. But that aesthetic is deceiving. These are reflections of the country very much as it is now.

AN UNEASY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CAMERA

During their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban banned photography of humans and animals as contrary to the teachings of Islam. Many box cameras were smashed, though some were quietly tolerated, Afghan photographers say. But it was the advent of the digital age that sounded the device’s death knell.




Associated Press photographer Rodrigo Abd takes a portrait of a man and his pack animal with a wooden box camera in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, on June 16, 2023. (AP/File)

“These things are gone,” said Lutfullah Habibzadeh, 72, a former kamra-e-faoree photographer in Kabul. “Digital cameras are on the market, and (the old ones) are out of use.” Habibzadeh still has his old box camera, a relic of the last century passed down to him by his photographer father. It no longer works, but he has lovingly preserved its red leather coating, decorated with sample photos.

On Afghan city streets today, billboard advertisements have faces spray-painted out, and clothing store windows display mannequins with their heads wrapped in black plastic bags, to adhere to the renewed ban on the depictions of faces.

But the advent of the Internet age and of smartphones have made a ban on photography impossible to impose. The novel sight of an old box camera elicits excitement and curiosity – even among those who police the new rules. From foot soldiers to high-ranking officials, many Taliban were happy to pose for box camera portraits.




Associated Press photographer Rodrigo Abd takes a portrait of Lutfullah Habibzadeh, 72, who uses a similar wooden box camera, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 31, 2023. (AP/File)

Outside a warehouse in Kabul, a group of men watch intently as the camera is set up. At first, they seem shy. But as the first portraits emerge, curiosity overtakes their reservations. Soon, they’re smiling and joking as they wait to have their photos taken, pitching in to help when a black cloth backdrop slips off the wall. As each man steps forward for his portrait, set jaws replace tentative smiles. Adjusting their grip on their assault rifles, they look straight into the camera’s tiny lens and hold their poses.
Most of these men joined the Taliban as teenagers or in their early 20s and have known nothing but war. They were drawn to the fundamentalist movement because of their fervent Muslim faith – and their determination to expel US and NATO troops who invaded their country and propped up two decades of Afghan governments that failed to crack down on rampant corruption and crime.
Bahadur Rahaani, a 52-year-old Taliban member with piercing light blue eyes beneath his black turban, says he’s happy to see the Taliban back in power. With them in government, “Afghanistan will be rebuilt,” he says. “Without them, it is not possible.”

PEACE, AT A PRICE

Two years after Taliban militias swept across the country to seize power again, there are strong echoes of life as it was before US-led NATO forces toppled them from government in 2001.
Once more, the country is ruled by a fundamentalist movement that has restored many of the strict rules it imposed in the 1990s. The first Taliban regime was notorious for destroying art and cultural patrimony it deemed un-Islamic, such as the giant ancient buddhas carved into cliffs in Bamiyan. They imposed brutal punishments, chopping off hands of thieves, hanging supposed blasphemers in public squares and stoning women accused of adultery.
Once again, executions and lashings are back. Music, movies, dancing and performances are banned, and women are again excluded from nearly all public life, including education and all but a few professions.
The return to fundamentalist policies has chased away Western donors, aid workers and trade partners. Poverty has spiraled to crisis levels, fueled by the ban on women working, deep cuts in foreign aid and international sanctions. But there is nearly universal relief that the relentless bloodshed of the past four decades of invasions, multiple insurgencies and civil war has largely ceased.
There are still sporadic bombings, most attributed to enemies of the Taliban, the extremist group Islamic State-Khorasan Province, or IS-K. But Afghans interviewed say their country is more peaceful than they’ve known for decades.
The United Nations recorded 1,095 civilians killed in deliberate attacks between Aug. 15, 2021, when the Taliban reclaimed power, through May 30, 2023. That’s a fraction of the annual civilian death toll over two decades of war between US-led NATO forces and insurgents.
Even those who dislike the current regime say banditry, kidnapping and corruption, which were rampant under the previous governments, have been largely reined in.
But less crime and violence does not necessarily translate to prosperity and happiness.

WOMEN, ERASED

In a three-story building tucked in a Kabul alleyway, a group of women work silently at a loom. Zamarod’s hands move swiftly, nimble fingers flitting between strands of yarn as she knots colored wool around them, making a carpet. Her movements are rapid, almost brusque, but her voice is soft and sad. “My life is like a prisoner,” she says. “Like a bird in a cage.”
The 20-year-old had been studying computer science, but the Taliban banned women from universities before she could graduate. Now she and her 23-year-old sister work in a carpet factory, falling back on a skill their mother taught them as children. They are among very few women who can earn money outside the home and, like others, asked that only their first names be used for fear of retribution for speaking out.




Associated Press photographer Rodrigo Abd takes a portrait of a girl in a carpet factory, with a wooden box camera, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 29, 2023. (AP/File)


Women have experienced the starkest changes since the Taliban’s return. They must adhere to a strict dress code, are banned from most jobs and denied simple pleasures such as visiting a park or going to a restaurant. Girls can no longer attend school beyond sixth grade, and women must be escorted by a male relative to travel.
For all intents and purposes, women have been being erased from public life.
Even in this environment, Zamarod hasn’t given up on her dream of graduating. “We have to have hope. We hope that one day we will be free, that freedom is possible,” she says. “That’s why we live and breathe.”
In another room, 50-year-old Hakima is introducing her teenage daughter Freshta to weaving. It is their only way of eking out a living, though she still dreams her 16-year-old daughter will someday become a doctor. “Afghanistan has gone backwards,” she says, donning an all-encompassing burka to pose for a portrait. “People go door to door for a piece of bread and our children are dying.”
While the clock has turned back for women who’ve lost financial independence and a voice in public life and government, in conservative, tribal parts of the country, expectations for women have always been different and have changed little over the years — even during US and NATO military presence.
Even so, education is a priority for many Afghans. In dozens of interviews across the country, nearly everyone — including some members of the Taliban — said they wanted girls and women to be educated. Most said they believed the education ban was temporary, and that older girls would eventually be allowed back into schools. They say keeping girls and women confined at home doesn’t help the country, or its economy.
“We need doctors, teachers,” says Hajji Muhibullah Aloko, a 34-year-old teacher in the village of Tabin, west of Kandahar. Women must be educated “so that Afghanistan improves in every sector.”
The international community has withheld recognition of the Taliban and pressed its leadership to roll back their restrictions on women — to no avail.
“That is up to Afghans and not foreigners, they shouldn’t get involved,” Taliban government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid says during an interview in Kandahar, the birthplace of the movement in southern Afghanistan and a stronghold of conservative values.
“We are waiting for the right moment regarding the schools. And while the schools are closed now, they won’t be forever,” he says. He won’t give a timeline but insists “the world shouldn’t use this as an excuse” not to recognize the Taliban government.

VICTORIOUS INSURGENTS

The village of Tabin lies deep in the Arghandab River valley, a fertile swath of fruit orchards and irrigation canals cutting through Kandahar Province’s dusty desert.
But around it, the remnants of war are everywhere. The derelict remains of American combat outposts have faded warnings of mines and grenades spraypainted on their wind-blown blast walls. Tangles of abandoned razor wire litter the ground. Bombed-out houses lie in ruins. And there’s the ubiquitous presence of armed young men adjusting from a life of fighting to one of living in peace.
The new jobs — policing streets, guarding buildings, collecting garbage — are the mundane, necessary tasks of governing. It’s less dramatic than waging war, but there is palpable relief to be free of the violence.
Without fear of airstrikes or bullets, children shriek in delight as they splash about in an irrigation canal, leaping into the murky water from a bridge.
“Life is much more joyful now. Before there used to be lots of brutality and aggression,” 28-year-old Abdul Halim Hilal says, sheltering from the blazing sun under a mulberry tree before posing for a portrait. “Innocent people would die. Villages were bombed. We couldn’t bear it.”
He joined the Taliban as a teenager, believing it was his moral duty to fight foreign troops. He lost as many as 20 friends to the war, and more were wounded. He’s stung by the memory of his dead brothers-in-arms when he sees their fatherless children, but he’s comforted by an unshakeable belief that their sacrifice was worth it.
“The ones that were killed were fighting to sacrifice themselves for the country,” he says. “It’s because of the blood they gave that we’re now here, giving interviews freely, and the Muslims here are living in peace.”
A villager walks by, glancing at the gaggle of curious children and adults gathered around the box camera. “It’s so strange,” he mutters. “We used to fight against these foreigners, and now they’re here taking pictures.”
Mujeeburahman Faqer, a 26-year-old Taliban fighter, now mans an uneventful security checkpoint in Kabul. Like many others, he’s struggling to adapt to a peacetime mentality, because all he’s ever known was war. “I had prepared my head for sacrifice,” he says, “and I am still ready.”

A FOUNDERING ECONOMY —  AND A STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE

Security has improved since the end of the insurgency against US forces. But with peace came an economy in freefall.
When the Taliban seized power again in 2021, international donors withdrew funding, froze Afghan assets abroad, isolated its financial sector and imposed sanctions.
That squeeze, combined with the near-total ban on women working, has crippled the economy. Per capita income shrank by an estimated 30 percent last year compared to 2020, according to the United Nations Development Program.
Nearly half of Afghanistan’s 40 million people now face acute food insecurity, the UN’s World Food Program says. Malnutrition is above emergency thresholds in 25 of 34 provinces.
Struggling to survive is something Kasnia already knows at age 4. In a brick factory outside Kabul, she scoops out a chunk of mud with her tiny hands, kneading it until it is pliable enough for a brick mold. After countless repetitions, her movements are automatic. She works six days a week from sunrise until sunset, with brief breaks for breakfast and lunch, toiling next to her siblings and her father — one family among many in a sprawling factory where children become laborers at age 3.
“Everyone wishes that their children study and become teachers, doctors, engineers, and benefit the future of the country,” says her father, Wahidullah, 35, who goes by one name, as do his children.
Even with the entire family working, there’s often not enough money for food and they live hand to mouth on credit from shopkeepers. Of his three sons and three daughters, all except the youngest one are brickmakers.
“When I was young, my dream was to have a comfortable life, to have a nice office, to have a nice car, to go to parks, to travel around my country and abroad, to go to Europe,” he recalls. Instead, “I make bricks.” There is no bitterness in his voice, just acceptance of an inevitable fate.
Many Afghans have resorted to selling their belongings — everything from furniture to clothing and shoes — to survive.
When the Taliban banned movies, Nabi Attai had nothing to fall back on. In his 70s, the actor appeared in a dozen television series and 76 films, including the Golden Globe-winning 2003 movie “Osama.” Now he is destitute.
His home, tucked in a warren of steep alleys, is now nearly devoid of furniture, which he sold in the bazaar to feed his extended family. Sold, too, is his beloved TV.
After 42 years of acting, Attai has no work. Neither do his two sons, who were also in the movie and music business. Attai is glad the streets are now safe, but he has 13 family members to feed and no way to feed them.
He asked local authorities for any job, even collecting garbage. There was nothing. So he started selling his belongings. “I have no hope right now,” he says. Even begging is now punished by imprisonment under the Taliban.
Over the past year, he has become frail. His cheeks are sunken, his frame thinner. There’s a sadness in his eyes that rarely leaves, even when he recounts his glory days.
“We made good movies before,” he says. “May God have mercy that music and cinema will be allowed again, and the people will rebuild the country hand in hand, and the government will come closer to the people and embrace each other as friends and brothers.”

PINPRICKS OF GLITZ

The shimmering lights of wedding halls cut through the gloom as night encroaches on Kabul, pinpricks of glitz in the darkness.
Despite the economic slump, wedding halls are doing a brisk trade, buoyed in part by wealthier Afghan emigres returning home for traditional marriage ceremonies now that the security situation has improved.
Weddings are a big part of Afghan culture, and families sometimes bankrupt themselves to ensure a lavish party for hundreds or even thousands of guests.
Construction of the Imperial Continental wedding hall began four years ago but was disrupted by the COVID pandemic and the Taliban takeover. The opulent venue finally opened its doors last year.
Manager Mohammad Wesal Quaoni, 30, cuts a dapper figure in a sharp suit as he sweeps through the glamorous, cavernous halls, juggling four weddings in one night. The former Kabul University lecturer in economics and politics is trying to ensure the business thrives amid the country’s economic woes. It’s not easy.
“Business is weak,” he says, and onerous government rules and regulations don’t help. The Taliban are raising taxes, but he says there isn’t enough commerce to support a healthy tax base.
The ban on music and dancing doesn’t help. Gone are the live musicians and even the DJs who would bring in extra revenue, Quaoni says. Weddings are segregated by gender but, for once, there’s sometimes a bit more fun for the women.
Occasionally women and girls enjoy taped music in the ladies’ section. “If they want, they do it,” restrictions or not, he said. “Women will be women.”
Five hundred miles west of the capital, on the outskirts of the city of Herat, businessman Abdul Khaleq Khodadadi, 39, has an entirely different set of challenges.
Rayan Saffron Company, where he is vice president, exports the prized spice to customers, mainly in Europe and the US But the Taliban takeover and ensuing sanctions left many foreign clients reluctant to do business with an Afghan company – even though it’s one of the few still allowed to employ women, whose hands are deemed more suitable than men’s to extracting and handling the delicate crocus flowers.
The isolation of the banking sector has also left many Afghan companies with no way to trade except through a third country, usually Pakistan, which significantly increases costs. Then there’s drought that has decimated crops, including saffron.
His company had aimed to increase their production this year. Instead, their production fell to half of what it was three years ago, he says.
Khodadadi says he is determined to persevere. For him, successful businesses are the best way to heal Afghanistan’s wounds.
In the chaotic early days of the Taliban takeover, Khodadadi felt intense pressure to join the tens of thousands of people who fled, he says. He had a visa and family and friends urged him to leave, but he refused to go.
“It was very, very hard,” he recalls. “But ... if I leave, if all the talented people, educated people leave, who will make this country? When will this country solve the problems?”


Trump threatens to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on first day in office

Updated 58 min 35 sec ago
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Trump threatens to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on first day in office

NEW YORK: President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as soon as he takes office as part of his efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs.
The tariffs, if implemented, could dramatically raise prices on everything from gas to automobiles. The US is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent Census data.
Trump made the threats in a pair of posts on his Truth Social site Monday evening in which he railed against an influx of illegal migrants, even though southern border crossings have been hovering at a four-year low.
“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25 percent Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” he wrote, complaining that “thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before,” even though violent crime is down from pandemic highs.
He said the new tariffs would remain in place “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! ”
Trump also turned his ire to China, saying he has “had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States – But to no avail.”
“Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10 percent Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America,” he wrote.
It is unclear whether Trump will actually go through with the threats or if he is using them as a negotiating tactic before he takes office in the new year.
Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico have been falling and remained around four-year lows in October, according to the most recent US numbers
The Border Patrol made 56,530 arrests in October, less than one third of the tally from last October.
Much of America’s fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico. Border seizures of the drug rose sharply under President Joe Biden, and US officials tallied about 21,900 pounds (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl seized in the 2024 government budget year, compared with 2,545 pounds (1,154 kilograms) in 2019, when Trump was president.
Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, if confirmed, would be one of several officials responsible for imposing tariffs on other nations. He has on several occasions said tariffs are a means of negotiation with other countries.
He wrote in a Fox News op-ed last week, before his nomination, that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives. Whether it is getting allies to spend more on their own defense, opening foreign markets to US exports, securing cooperation on ending illegal immigration and interdicting fentanyl trafficking, or deterring military aggression, tariffs can play a central role.”
If Trump were to move forward with the threatened tariffs, the new taxes would pose an enormous challenge for the economies of Canada and Mexico, in particular.
They would also throw into doubt the reliability of the 2020 trade deal brokered in large part by Trump, which is up for review in 2026.
Spokespeople for Canada’s ambassador to Washington and its deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, who chairs a special Cabinet committee on Canada-US relations to address concerns about another Trump presidency, did not immediately provide comment.
Trump’s promise to launch a mass deportation effort is a top focus for the Cabinet committee, Freeland has said.
A senior Canadian official had said before Trump’s posts that Canadian officials are expecting Trump to issue executive orders on trade and the border as soon as he assumes office. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department and Economy Department also had no immediate reaction to Trump’s statements. Normally such weighty issues are handled by the president at her morning press briefings.


Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump

Updated 26 November 2024
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Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump

  • Smith cited the long-standing Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president in his motions to have the cases dismissed

WASHINGTON: A judge on Monday granted a request by prosecutors to dismiss the election subversion case against Donald Trump because of a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to the request by Special Counsel Jack Smith to dismiss the case against the president-elect “without prejudice,” meaning it could potentially be revived after Trump leaves the White House four years from now.
“Dismissal without prejudice is appropriate here,” Chutkan said, adding in the ruling that “the immunity afforded to a sitting President is temporary, expiring when they leave office.”
Trump, 78, was accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden and removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House, but the cases never came to trial.
Smith also moved on Monday to drop his appeal of the dismissal of the documents case filed against the former president in Florida. That case was tossed out earlier this year by a Trump-appointed judge on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed.
The special counsel paused the election interference case and the documents case this month after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 presidential election.
Smith cited the long-standing Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president in his motions to have the cases dismissed.
“The Government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed,” Smith said in the filing with Chutkan. “But the circumstances have.”
“It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President,” Smith said.
“As a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”
In a separate filing, Smith said he was withdrawing his appeal of the dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump but pursuing the case against his two co-defendants, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.

Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said the cases were “empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”
“Over $100 Million Dollars of Taxpayer Dollars has been wasted in the Democrat Party’s fight against their Political Opponent, ME,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before.”
Trump was accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding — the session of Congress called to certify Biden’s win, which was violently attacked on January 6, 2021 by a mob of the then-president’s supporters.
Trump was also accused of seeking to disenfranchise US voters with his false claims that he won the 2020 election.
The former and incoming president also faces two state cases — in New York and Georgia.
He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.
However, Judge Juan Merchan has postponed sentencing while he considers a request from Trump’s lawyers that the conviction be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court ruling in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution.
In Georgia, Trump faces racketeering charges over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in office.

 


No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties

Updated 26 November 2024
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No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties

  • Merkel, who speaks Russian, also defends her engagement over the years with Putin, who speaks German — despite her misgivings about the former KGB agent who once allowed a labrador into a meeting between them, apparently playing on her fear of dogs

BERLIN: Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel gives a spirited defense of her 16 years at the helm of Europe’s top economy in her memoir “Freedom,” released in 30 languages on Tuesday.
Since she stepped down in 2021, Merkel has been accused of having been too soft on Russia, leaving Germany dangerously reliant on cheap Russian gas and sparking turmoil and the rise of the far right with her open-door migrant policy.
Her autobiography is released as wars rage in Ukraine and the Middle East, Donald Trump is headed back to the White House and Germany faces snap elections after its ruling coalition collapsed this month.
Merkel, 70, remembered for her calm and unflappable leadership style, rejects blame for any of the current turmoil, in the 736-page autobiography co-written with longtime adviser Beate Baumann.
After years out of the public eye, she has given multiple media interviews, reflecting on her childhood under East German communism and tense encounters with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, who she felt “was captivated by politicians with autocratic and dictatorial tendencies.”
In the full memoir, she gives further insights into her thoughts and actions — including during the 2015 mass refugee influx, which came to define the final years of her leadership.

Critics have charged that Merkel’s refusal to push back large numbers of asylum-seekers at the Austrian border led to more than one million arrivals and fueled the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Merkel, who at the time posed for a selfie with one Syrian refugee, says she “still does not understand ... how anyone could have assumed that a friendly face in a photo would be enough to encourage entire legions to flee their homeland.”
While affirming that “Europe must always protect its external borders,” she stresses that “prosperity and the rule of law will always make Germany and Europe ... places where people want to go.”
In addition, she writes in the French edition of the book, fast-aging Germany’s “lack of manpower makes legal migration essential.”
Her bold declaration at the time — “wir schaffen das” in German or “we can do this” — was a “banal” statement with the message that “where there are obstacles, we must work to overcome them,” she argues.
And on the AfD, she cautions Germany’s mainstream parties against adopting their rhetoric “without proposing concrete solutions to existing problems,” warning that with such an approach mainstream movements “will fail.”

Merkel, who speaks Russian, also defends her engagement over the years with Putin, who speaks German — despite her misgivings about the former KGB agent who once allowed a labrador into a meeting between them, apparently playing on her fear of dogs.
She describes the Russian leader as “a man perpetually on the lookout, afraid of being mistreated and always ready to strike, including by playing at exercising his power with a dog and making others wait.”
Nevertheless, she says that “despite all the difficulties” she was right “not to let contacts with Russia be broken off ... and to also preserve ties through trade relations.”
The reality is, she argues, that “Russia is, with the United States, one of the two main nuclear powers in the world.”
She also defends her opposition to Ukraine joining NATO at a 2008 Bucharest summit, considering it illusory to think that candidate status would have protected it from Putin’s aggression.
After the summit, she remembers flying home with the feeling that “we in NATO had no common strategy for dealing with Russia.”

Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, cut Germany off from cheap Russian gas, with the taps’ closure a key driver of its ongoing economic malaise.
But Merkel rejects criticism for having allowed the Baltic Sea pipelines in the first place, pointing out that Nord Stream 1 was signed off on by her predecessor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder, long a friend of Putin.
On Nord Stream 2, which she approved after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, she argues that at the time it would have been “difficult to get companies and gas users in Germany and in many EU member states to accept” having to import more expensive liquefied natural gas from other sources.
Merkel says the gas was needed as a transitional energy source as Germany was pursuing both a switch to renewable energy and the phase-out of nuclear power following Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster.
On nuclear power itself, she argues that “we do not need it to meet our climate goals” and that the German phase-out can “inspire courage in other countries” to follow suit.

 


Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul

Updated 26 November 2024
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Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul

  • Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar

KABUL: Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu visited Afghan government officials on Monday, assuring them Moscow will soon remove the Taliban from its list of banned organizations, Kabul said.
Since the Taliban surged back to power in 2021 visits by foreign officials have been infrequent because no nation has yet formally recognized the government of the former insurgent group.
Taliban government curbs on women have made them pariahs in many Western nations but Kabul is making increasing diplomatic overtures to its regional neighbors, emphasising economic and security cooperation.
Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar.
He “expressed Russia’s interest in increasing the level of bilateral cooperation with Afghanistan,” Baradar’s office said in a statement released on social media site X.
“He also announced that, to expand political and economic relations between the two countries, the Islamic Emirate’s name would soon be removed from Russia’s blacklist.”
The Islamic Emirate is the name the Taliban government uses to refer to itself.
Russian news agencies quoted Shoigu as saying he wanted “constructive” ties with Kabul, without saying if he had floated Moscow removing the Taliban from its list of banned groups.
“I confirm the readiness to build a constructive political dialogue between our countries, including in order to give momentum to the process of the internal Afghan settlement,” Shoigu said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
He also said Russian companies plan to take part in projects in Afghanistan on extracting natural resources.
Analysts say Moscow may be eying cooperation with Kabul to counter the threat from Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) — the Afghan-based branch of the Sunni militant group.
In March, more than 140 people were killed when IS-K gunmen attacked a Moscow concert hall.
Taliban authorities have repeatedly said security is their top domestic priority and have pledged militants staging foreign attacks will be ousted from Afghanistan.
“The Taliban certainly are our allies in the fight against terrorism,” Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, said in July.
“They are working to eradicate terrorist cells.”


Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal

Updated 26 November 2024
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Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal

  • President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it

WASHINGTON: A Republican senator has blocked the promotion of US Army Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, who commanded the military’s 82nd Airborne Division during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and was the last American soldier to leave the country in 2021.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hold had been placed by Senator Markwayne Mullin, who did not respond to a request for comment on why he blocked the promotion.
The Pentagon on Monday said it was aware of the hold on Donahue, who had been nominated for a fourth star by President Joe Biden to lead the US Army in Europe and Africa.
“We are aware that there is a hold on Lt. Gen. Donahue,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.
President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it. In August, Trump said he would ask for the resignation of every senior official “who touched the Afghanistan calamity.”
“You have to fire people when they do a bad job. We never fire anybody,” Trump has said.
Reuters has reported that Trump’s transition team is drawing up a list of military officers to be fired, in what would be an unprecedented shakeup at the Pentagon.
While the image of Donahue, carrying his rifle down by his side as he boarded the final C-17 transport flight out of Afghanistan on in August 2021, has become synonymous with the chaotic withdrawal, he is seen in the military as one of the most talented Army leaders.
“The finest officer I ever served with, Chris Donahue is a generational leader who is now being held up for political purposes. At the tip of the spear defending this country for over three decades, he is now a political pawn,” Tony Thomas, the former head of US Special Operations Command, posted on X.
Under Senate rules, one lawmaker can hold up nominations even if the other 99 all want them to move quickly.