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from Psephizo (blog)
Ian Paul: Tom Bowring writes: I fall into writing this piece from a place of unwilling necessity following a period of reflective silence. If you were to ask my wife, she’d tell you I never talk about Afghanistan and, as psychologists do, go on to suggest this is as much about personal growth and transition as it is theological discussion and spiritual conviction. I joined the Royal Air Force in 2004 at the age of 18 and, before my feet hit the ground, my friend and I, who had formed a bond through training and were posted to the same squadron, found ourselves loaded onto a bus to Brize Norton ready for a journey to a place we’d only heard of in the papers. The land of lawless intolerance, murderous Muslims, drug production, dirt, mountains, camel spiders and fundamental Islam—Afghanistan, the heart of the fight of good verses evil, logic verses intolerance, freedom verses terror. And how that rhetoric has stuck.
from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
The lightning-fast changes in Afghanistan are forcing the Biden administration to confront the prospect of a resurgent al-Qaida, the group that attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, at the same time the U.S. is trying to stanch violent extremism at home and cyberattacks from Russia and China. With the rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces and rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, “I think al-Qaida has an opportunity, and they’re going to take advantage of that opportunity,” says Chris Costa, who was senior director for counterterrorism in the Trump administration. “This is a galvanizing event for jihadists everywhere.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is preparing to lay out the Biden administration’s vision for the Indo-Pacific region, an area of growing importance to a government that has made countering China’s influence globally a centerpiece of its foreign policy. The address Tuesday morning at Singapore’s iconic Gardens by the Bay waterfront park is an opportunity for the former state attorney general and U.S. senator to prove her fluidity with diplomatic and security issues.
The U.S. military pulled off its biggest day of evacuation flights out of Afghanistan by far on Monday, but deadly violence that has blocked many desperate evacuees from entering Kabul’s airport persisted, and the Taliban signaled they might soon seek to shut down the airlifts. Twenty-eight U.S. military flights ferried about 10,400 people to safety out of Taliban-held Afghanistan over 24 hours that ended early Monday morning, and 15 C-17 flights over the next 12 hours brought out another 6,660, White House officials said. The chief Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said the faster pace of evacuation was due in part to coordination with Taliban commanders on getting evacuees into the airport.
The messy exit of Western military forces from Afghanistan and the swift takeover of the country by the Taliban has stunned officials in Britain and strained the U.K.’s “special relationship” with its most important ally, the United States. London’s powerlessness, so far, to change Washington’s course also is a blow to U.K. hopes that an assertive “Global Britain” will be a major global player in the wake of its exit from the European Union.
A firefight outside Kabul’s international airport killed an Afghan soldier early Monday, highlighting the perils of evacuation efforts as the Taliban warned that any attempt by U.S. troops to delay their withdrawal to give people more time to flee would “provoke a reaction.” The shooting came as the Taliban moved to shore up their position and eliminate pockets of armed resistance to their lightning takeover earlier this month. The Taliban said they retook three districts north of the capital seized by opponents the day before and had surrounded Panjshir, the last province that remains out of their control.
The U.S. gave full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine Monday, a milestone that could boost public confidence in the shots and spur more companies, universities and local governments to make vaccinations mandatory. The Pentagon immediately announced it will press ahead with plans to require members of the military to get the vaccine as the U.S., and the world, battle the extra-contagious delta variant.
The head of the World Health Organization on Monday called for a two-month moratorium on administering booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines as a means of reducing global vaccine inequality and preventing the emergence of new coronavirus variants. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Hungary’s capital, Budapest, that he was “really disappointed” with the scope of vaccine donations worldwide as many countries struggle to provide first and second doses to more than small fractions of their populations while wealthier nations maintain growing vaccine stockpiles. Tedros called on countries offering third vaccine doses “to share what can be used for boosters with other countries so (they) can increase their first and second vaccination coverage.” Several countries including the United States, Israel, and Hungary, as well as others in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, are already offering or planning to offer their populations COVID-19 booster shots.
Reactions across the Middle East to the stunning Taliban victory in Afghanistan have focused mostly on what it says about the United States. For many, it shows how America’s standing is diminishing; how the United States has betrayed its allies, leaving behind those who believed its promises – yet more proof that “those whose only cover is America are naked,” as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reportedly once said. Some are deliriously convinced the United States “handed over” Afghanistan to the Taliban as part of a plan to use the Sunni Islamists against Iran. Others, including many nationalists and leftists, claimed it as a victory of a national liberation movement against U.S. imperialism. Everyone seems to have something to say about the United States and its failure, but there is little introspection in what the Taliban victory says about the Middle East itself, its societies, states and politics. On this, five things stand out.
Oregon was once the poster child for limiting the spread of the coronavirus, after its Democratic governor imposed some of the nation’s strictest safety measures, including mask mandates indoors and outdoors, limits on gatherings and an order closing restaurants. But now the state is being hammered by the super-transmissible delta variant, and hospitals are getting stretched to the breaking point.
Last week, at least two men fell from a U.S. military plane as it climbed into the skies above Afghanistan. In video taken from the ground, they are so small you almost have to squint to see them. They seem roughly the size of a period, the end to some sentence no one wrote. But no, we are told those figures are Afghan men, plunging to their deaths. One can only marvel at the desperation captured in footage of the chaos at the airport in Kabul as the United States began evacuating its personnel from Afghanistan. People climbed on a jet bridge like ants on sugar. Dozens ran down the runway alongside the taxiing plane. And then there were the men who clung to the airship as it lifted from the ground.
The Spokane, Spangle & Palouse Railway runs on 63 miles of track between Marshall and the Idaho state line, bringing grain and other goods north and taking fertilizer and other supplies south. But that flow was stopped dead in its track on Aug. 16, when a small fire erupted northwest of Spangle in Spokane County and burned a railroad bridge. That set off a scramble to replace the bridge with a culvert. By Friday evening, the SSP was back up and running, said Janet Matkin, communications manager for the Washington State Department of Transportation’s rail, freight and ports division.
Washington residents will be required to wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status, beginning Monday. A masking order issued by Washington Secretary of Health Umair Shah will be in effect indefinitely as COVID-19 case counts continue to rise in the state with the prevalence of the delta variant of the coronavirus. All residents over the age of 5 must wear masks indoors or face a potential criminal misdemeanor, according to the order.
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