PUL-E ALAM, Afghanistan: Khurma had to borrow her neighbor’s shoes to walk to Pul-e Alam city to collect a cash handout being given to the growing number of vulnerable Afghans who are struggling to survive the winter.
The 45-year-old widow waited in her threadbare blue burqa to receive 3,200 Afghanis ($45) from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in the eastern Afghan city, where temperatures can drop well below freezing.
“We are desperate,” the mother-of-six told AFP. “When we can’t find any bread, we go to bed on an empty stomach.”
She is one of millions facing months of hunger and cold, with natural disasters and displacement putting more Afghans at risk even as funding to one of the world’s poorest countries — wracked by decades of war — has plummeted.
“Things were already quite catastrophic” in Afghanistan, said Caroline Gluck, spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. “But as winter starts we have two massive emergencies.”
Thousands of people are still sleeping in tents in Herat province after successive earthquakes in October destroyed or rendered uninhabitable 31,000 homes.
And around half a million Afghans fleeing deportation from Pakistan have returned in recent months to a country where unemployment is rife, “at the worst possible time of the year,” Gluck said.
Rabbani, 32, is one of them.
As a refugee, he is entitled to WFP aid: 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of flour, six kilograms of red beans, five liters of oil and 450 grams of salt.
But, “there is no work here,” he said.
When freezing temperatures set in, his family of seven abandoned the tent they had occupied since crossing from Pakistan for a shack.
“When there is nothing left to eat, death is better than begging.”
Shakar Gul, 67, had just received the first of six monthly payments of 3,200 Afghanis from the WFP.
“If we adults don’t have enough to eat for several days, that’s okay... but we don’t let our children die of hunger,” she said.
With the money she will be able to buy household essentials — but only enough for 15 days.
This year, there is less assistance, due in part to a spike in humanitarian emergencies around the world and donor fatigue.
“Excluded people still come here and wait, especially women,” said Baryalai Hakimi, director of the WFP’s Pul-e Alam center. “They are upset. We explain to them that the people who get help are more vulnerable than they are.”
Such is the case for Bibi Raihana. Aged 40, she has eight children, a husband in prison, health problems and “not a single Afghani.”
Her eyes were wet with tears behind the mesh of her burqa.
“My name wasn’t on the lists. They didn’t give me anything,” she said.
This winter, 15.8 million Afghans need assistance, with 2.8 million at an emergency level of food insecurity, said Philippe Kropf, spokesperson for WFP, which provides 90 percent of food aid in Afghanistan.
Funding shortages have forced WFP to tighten the criteria for aid handouts, with just six million people eligible for emergency assistance in food, cash or vouchers, Kropf added.
“It leaves a gap of 10 million people.”
Once flush with humanitarian aid following the US-led invasion of the country, funding to Afghanistan has plummeted since the Taliban returned to power in mid-2021, in part over the many restrictions imposed on women.
Today, approximately 85 percent of Afghans live on less than $1 a day, according to the UN, with extreme poverty found in both rural and urban areas.
The poorest are left with distressing choices: fall into debt, take their kids out of school to work in the streets, or marry off young daughters to lessen household expenses.
In a desert an hour’s drive from Pul-e Alam, WFP distributed essentials in the Baraki Barak district.
Hunched in the back of a three-wheeled flatbed, 77-year-old Zulfiqar said his family sometimes goes hungry for days.
“When we have nothing left to eat, we just wrap ourselves in our shawls and sleep,” he said.
In the poverty-stricken Kabul suburbs, thousands of returnees from Pakistan have sought aid.
The Taliban authorities provided assistance at the border to the returnees, but government welfare programs are very limited.
Depending on eligibility, UNHCR distributes a maximum of $375 per person, sometimes much less.
Najiba arrived in Afghanistan two months ago with her husband and three children.
All five sleep on the floor in a room in her brother’s house.
“We fill cans with hot water to keep warm, we don’t have any wood,” she said, rocking her youngest child in the courtyard. Her other children were barefoot nearby, despite the cold.
Benazira’s fate is just as uncertain: at 34, she has eight daughters, a son and a sick husband.
Clutching the money she had just received from UNHCR, she asked for help counting the crisp, unfamiliar US dollars — $340, enough to survive three weeks.
“Only God is with us,” she said, before setting off on the hours-long journey to Nangarhar province, where her family sleeps in a brickyard.
Millions of Afghans go hungry as winter cold bites
https://arab.news/bkzvv
Millions of Afghans go hungry as winter cold bites
- Thousands are still sleeping in tents in Herat province after earthquakes in October destroyed or rendered uninhabitable 31,000 homes
- Around half a million Afghans fleeing deportation from Pakistan have returned in recent months to a country where unemployment is rife
India foreign minister says vandalism of Hindu temples deeply concerning
- Canada has accused the Indian government of conducting a broad campaign against South Asian dissidents in Canada, which New Delhi denies
SYDNEY: India foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Tuesday the vandalism of a Hindu temple in Canada on Monday was deeply concerning.
“What happened yesterday at the Hindu temple in Canada was obviously deeply concerning,” he told reporters in the Australian capital Canberra while on an official visit.
The incident happened weeks after Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats, linking them to the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in 2023 in Canada. Canada has accused the Indian government of conducting a broad campaign against South Asian dissidents in Canada, which New Delhi denies.
The incident has increased tensions between Canada and India, and between Sikh separatists and Indian diplomats.
Two Hindu temples were also vandalized in Canberra last month, which Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said was upsetting for members of the Indian community.
“People across Australia have a right to be safe and respected, people also have a right to peaceful protest, people have a right to express their views peacefully,” she told reporters.
“We draw a line between that and violence, incitement of hatred or vandalism,” she added.
Wong said Australia had expressed its views to India about Canada’s allegations over the targeting of Sikh separatists, and Canberra respected Canada’s judicial process. Jaishankar said it was unacceptable that Indian diplomats had been placed under surveillance by Canada.
“Canada has developed a pattern of making allegations without providing specifics,” he said.
Trump wants the presidential winner to be declared on election night. Why that’s unlikely
Former President Donald Trump is stepping up his demands that the winner of the presidential race be declared shortly after polls close Tuesday, well before all the votes are counted.
Trump set the pattern in 2020, when he declared that he had won during the early morning hours after Election Day. That led his allies to demand that officials “stop the count!” He and many other conservatives have spent the past four years falsely claiming that fraud cost him that election and bemoaning how long it takes to count ballots in the US
But one of many reasons we are unlikely to know the winner quickly on election night is that Republican lawmakers in two key swing states have refused to change laws that delay the count. Another is that most indications are this will be a very close election, and it takes longer to determine who won close elections than blowouts.
In the end, election experts note, the priority in vote-counting is to make sure it’s an accurate and secure tally, not to end the suspense moments after polls close.
“There’s nothing nefarious about it,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The time delay is to protect the integrity of the process.”
Trump’s demand also doesn’t seem to account for the six time zones from the East Coast to Hawaii.
David Becker, an elections expert and co-author of “The Big Truth,” debunking Trump’s 2020 election lies, said it’s not realistic for election officials in thousands of jurisdictions to “instantly snap their fingers and count 160 million multi-page ballots with dozens of races on them.”
Trump wants the race decided Tuesday night
During a Sunday rally in Pennsylvania, Trump demanded that the race be decided soon after some polls begin closing.
“They have to be decided by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock on Tuesday night,” Trump said. “Bunch of crooked people. These are crooked people.”
It was not clear who he was targeting with the “crooked people” remark.
Timing is one example of why Trump’s demands don’t match the reality of conducting elections in the US By 11 p.m. Eastern time, polls will just be closing in the two Western swing states of Arizona and Nevada.
Trump has led conservatives to bemoan that the US doesn’t count elections as swiftly as France or Argentina, where results for recent races have been announced within hours of polls closing. But that’s because those countries tabulate only a single election at a time. The decentralized US system prevents the federal government from controlling elections.
Instead, votes are counted in nearly 10,000 separate jurisdictions, each of which has its own races for the state legislature, city council, school boards and ballot measures to tabulate at the same time. That’s why it takes longer for the US to count votes.
Declaring a winner can take time
The Associated Press calls races when there is no possibility that the trailing candidate can make up the gap. Sometimes, if one candidate is significantly behind, a winner can be called quickly. But if the margin is narrow, then every last vote could matter. It takes a while before every vote is counted even in the most efficient jurisdictions in the country.
In 2018, for example, Republican Rick Scott won the US Senate race in Florida, a state conservatives regularly praise for its quick tally. But the AP didn’t call Scott’s victory until after the conclusion of a recount on Nov. 20 because Scott’s margin was so slim.
It also takes time to count every one of the millions of votes because election officials have to process disputed, or “provisional,” ballots, and to see if they were legitimately cast. Overseas ballots from military members or other US citizens abroad can trickle in at the last minute. Mail ballots usually land early, but there’s a lengthy process to make sure they’re not cast fraudulently. If that process doesn’t start before Election Day, it can back up the count.
Some states, such as Arizona, also give voters whose mail ballots were rejected because the signatures didn’t match up to five days to prove they actually cast the ballot. That means final numbers simply cannot be available Tuesday night.
Election rules are to blame in some states
Some of the sluggishness is due to state-specific election rules. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two of the most important swing states, election officials for years have pleaded with Republican lawmakers to change the law that prevents them from processing their mail ballots before Election Day. That means mail ballots get tallied late, and frequently the results don’t start to get reported until after Election Day.
Democrats have traditionally dominated mail voting, which has made it seem like Republicans are in the lead until the early hours of the next morning, when Democratic mail votes finally get added to the tally. Experts even have names for this from past elections — the “red mirage” or the “blue shift.” Trump exploited that dynamic in 2020 when he had his supporters demand an abrupt end to vote counts — the ballots that remained untallied were largely mail ones that were for Joe Biden. It’s not clear how that will play out this year, since Republicans have shifted and voted in big numbers during early voting.
Michigan used to have similar restrictions, but after Democrats won control of the state Legislature in 2022 they removed the prohibition on early processing of mail ballots. That state’s Democratic Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, said she hopes to have most results available by Wednesday.
“At the end of the day, chief election officials are the folks who have the ability to provide those accurate results. Americans should focus on what they say and not what any specific candidate or folks who are part of the campaign say,” said Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Trump allies urge him to declare victory swiftly
Some of Trump’s allies say he should be even more aggressive about declaring victory this time around.
Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, who in 2020 predicted the then-president would declare victory before the race was called, advocated for a similar strategy during a recent press conference after he was released from federal prison, where he was serving time for a contempt of Congress conviction related to the investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn his loss in 2020.
“President Trump came up at 2:30 in the morning and talked,” Bannon said. “He should have done it at 11 o’clock in 2020.”
Other Trump supporters have taken a darker tone. His former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, suggested during a recent interview on the right-wing American Truth Project podcast that violence could erupt in states still counting ballots the day after Election Day because people “are just not going to put up with it.”
Trying to project a sense of inevitability about a Trump win, the former president and his supporters have been touting early vote data and favorable polls to contend the election is all but over. Republicans have returned to voting early after largely staying away at Trump’s direction in 2020 and 2022. In some swing states that track party registration, registered Republicans are outvoting Democrats in early voting.
But that doesn’t mean Republicans are ahead in any meaningful sense. Early voting data does not tell you who will win an election because it only records who voted, not how they voted.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has been explicitly targeting Republicans disillusioned by Trump. In each of those states where more Republicans have voted, there also are huge numbers of voters casting early ballots who are not registered with either of the two major political parties. If Harris won just a tiny fraction more of those votes than Trump, it would erase the small leads Republicans have.
There’s only one way to find out who won the presidential election: Wait until enough votes are tallied, whenever that is.
‘Panic buttons,’ SWAT teams: US braces for election unrest
WASHINGTON: Panic buttons for poll workers, special weapons teams deployed on rooftops, and hundreds of National Guard personnel on standby.
The 2024 US presidential campaign has been a particularly volatile one, and security for Election Day on Tuesday is being ramped up to unprecedented levels given concerns over possible civil unrest, election chicanery, or violence against election workers.
The states of Oregon, Washington and Nevada have activated the National Guard — and the Pentagon says at least 17 states have placed a total of 600 National Guard troops on standby if needed.
The FBI has set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week, and security has been bolstered at many of the nearly 100,000 US polling stations.
Nineteen states have enacted election security enhancement laws since 2020, the National Conference of State Legislatures says.
With Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump deadlocked at the climax of the 2024 race, authorities are keen to reassure jittery Americans that their votes are secure. But they are also bolstering physical security for election operations nationwide.
Runbeck Election Services, which provides security technology for poll operations, confirmed to AFP Monday it has ordered some 1,000 panic buttons for clients that include election facilities and their workers.
These small devices, worn as a lanyard or held in a pocket, are paired with a user’s cell phone and contact law enforcement or other authorities in case of emergency.
Officials in the seven key swing states are eager to convey confidence in a secure and fair election.
“Here in Georgia, it is easy to vote and hard to cheat. Our systems are secure and our people are ready,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told reporters on Monday.
Fringe activists might bring some “extra drama” to the proceedings, he said.
But Raffensperger added he expects the election to be safe in Georgia, where Trump faces criminal charges over his interference in the 2020 election.
In Arizona, a southwestern swing state that became a fulcrum of election night unrest and conspiracy theories that year, officials have turned the state’s main election and ballot counting facility, in Maricopa County, into a veritable fortress.
It now has wrought-iron fencing, barbed wire, armed guards and a SWAT presence on the roof, according to officials.
“Since January of 2021, our office has increased badge security access, installed permanent barriers, and added additional cybersecurity measures based on the recommendations of law enforcement and other experts,” Taylor Kinnerup, communications director for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, told AFP on Monday.
Pennsylvania’s Department of State, which oversees elections in the nation’s largest swing state, said its preparation includes defenses of infrastructure and partnerships with security and law enforcement agencies, although it did not provide details.
The new layers of security follow the election chaos from 2020, particularly after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021 aiming to halt certification of the election results that confirmed Joe Biden as the winner.
Officials are also warning of major cyber and hacking threats, particularly from abroad.
Russia, Iran and China are conducting influence operations to undermine American confidence in election legitimacy and “stoke partisan discord,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly recently told NBC News.
This “firehose of disinformation,” she added, is “creating very real physical threats to election workers.”
Meanwhile in Washington, high metal fencing has been erected around the vice president’s residence and the White House, and some shopfronts have been boarded up.
“There will be no tolerance for violence in our city,” DC Police Chief Pamela Smith told reporters Monday.
“Should it require additional time to know the results of this election, we want everyone to know that we are ready to handle many different scenarios, and we have the right people in place to keep our city safe,” she said.
Thousands protest alleged election fraud in Georgia
- Protesters have accused Georgian Dream of derailing the country’s goal of joining the European Union
TBILISI: Several thousand Georgians protested in Tbilisi on Monday over alleged election rigging by the governing party and Russian interference in last month’s parliament election, which the opposition denounced as “stolen.”
The pro-Western opposition has refused to recognize the ruling Georgian Dream party’s win in the October 26 election or to enter the newly elected parliament, which it calls “illegitimate.”
The European Union and the United States blasted “irregularities” in the vote, while Georgian Dream’s opponents have accused it of putting the Caucasus country on a pro-Kremlin track.
Protesters gathered outside Georgia’s parliament on Monday evening, blocking traffic on Tbilisi’s main road, after opposition groups called on supporters to take to the streets.
“The Georgian people will never accept falsified election results, an invincible protest movement is rising up and it will sweep away the regime, which has stolen our votes,” the leader of the Akhali party, Nika Melia, told the crowd.
He vowed daily protests, with the next rally set for Tuesday.
Mamuka Khazaradze, leader of the Coalition for Change, said: “We demand a fresh vote, an international investigation into election falsification, and we will not surrender until our objectives are met.”
President Salome Zurabishvili — who is at loggerheads with the governing party — also called the vote “illegitimate” and accused Russia of interference.
Moscow has denied meddling.
“We have no choice but to take to the streets every day to show our government and the world that Georgians will never put up with rigged elections,” one of the demonstrators, 25-year-old shop assistant Lidia Kirtadze, told AFP.
Protesters have accused Georgian Dream of derailing the country’s goal of joining the European Union.
“Russia and its stooges in our government want to steal not only the choice of the Georgian people but also our European future,” said Leo Grigalashvili, a 49-year-old winemaker.
“We will never accept this.”
Ahead of the election, Brussels had warned it would determine Georgia’s chances of joining the bloc.
“The situation following the elections remains concerning,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen told Zurabishvili during a phone call on Monday.
“If Georgia wants to keep a strategic orientation toward the EU, we need concrete actions from the leadership,” she said on X.
On Monday, a court in Georgia’s southern town of Tetritskaro ordered the annulment of election results from several precincts over violations of ballot secrecy.
Georgian rights groups said the ruling sets an important judicial precedent as the same violation had been observed at around 70 percent of polling stations.
A group of Georgia’s leading election monitors said earlier that they had uncovered evidence of a complex scheme of large-scale electoral fraud that swayed results in favor of Georgian Dream.
Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the alleged fraud.
Monday’s protest came after tens of thousands gathered in a demonstration in the capital city last week.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has said the elections were “entirely fair.”
But critics have blamed his increasingly conservative Georgian Dream for bringing Tbilisi back into Moscow’s orbit.
Greek police arrest third suspect over bombing as minister warns of new generation of extremists
- The intended target and timing of the planned attack remain under investigation. All three suspects – as well as the man killed in the blast – are Greek nationals
ATHENS, Greece: Greek police arrested a third suspect Monday in connection with an explosion in central Athens last week that authorities have blamed on an alleged aspiring domestic extremist group.
The 30-year-old woman surrendered to Greek authorities Monday at Athens International Airport after being located in Switzerland, authorities said.
The Oct. 31 blast gutted a third-floor apartment in the central Ambelokipi neighborhood, killing a 36-year-old man believed to have been assembling an explosive device. A 33-year-old woman was severely injured and remains hospitalized under police guard. A 31-year-old male suspect surrendered to authorities.
“It was a monstrous bomb with concentrated explosive material,” Minister of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis told private Skai television. “It would have caused great destruction, because it was very powerful.” The apartment block has been declared uninhabitable due to blast damage.
Chrisochoidis said those allegedly involved were young people who appeared to aspire to become a new generation of domestic terrorists in Greece.
Anti-terrorism units searching the blast site, three additional locations and a vehicle seized two handguns with magazines, digital devices, disguise materials including wigs and rubber masks, and handwritten diagrams.
Greece has a history of far-left extremism dating to the 1970s, with militants carrying out multiple bombings and assassinations, though major groups have been dismantled.
Recent years have seen reduced activity, with the last significant incident occurring in December 2023 when police defused a bomb at riot police headquarters following an anonymous warning.
“I think we are dealing with an attempt of some young people who are aiming to become a third generation of terrorism in Greece,” Chrisochoidis said.
The intended target and timing of the planned attack remain under investigation. All three suspects – as well as the man killed in the blast – are Greek nationals.
