Month: June 2017

Albania Heads to Polls, Vows End to Confrontational Politics

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Albania holds parliamentary elections Sunday after the country’s two largest political parties set aside decades of bitter rivalry and reached a landmark agreement aimed at furthering efforts to eventually join the European Union.

The country of 2.9 million people, slightly smaller than Belgium, joined NATO in 2009 and earned EU candidate status in 2014 but has struggled with key reforms vital for the bid to advance — with the election process at the top of the list.

 

Seeking a second term, 52-year-old Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama argues that Sunday’s vote — closely watched by international observers — could be a pivotal moment in the country’s history.

 

“These elections in Albania will either open the door to the European Union, giving us a seat at the negotiating table, or we can again slam it shut ourselves,” he said.

 

Albania is hoping to launch EU membership talks later this year.

On Friday thousands of supporters gathered in three cities where the three main contending parties or coalitions — Rama’s Socialists, opposition Democratic Party of Lulzim Basha and Socialist Movement for Integration of Petrit Vasili — held their final rallies, peacefully.

Saturday and Sunday are considered are pre-election silent days when politicians must suspend campaigning.

Landmark compromise

Rama’s Socialists and Lulzim Basha’s Democratic party reached agreement in May, ending a three-month parliamentary boycott by the opposition, which charged that election rules had been open to manipulation.

 

The overhauled rules delayed the election date by one week and handed the opposition greater oversight. The move was introduced together with a battery of other legal reforms considered important for European integration.  

 

Not everyone, however, was happy with the compromise.

 

It sparked a heated spat between Rama’s governing party and its ally, the Socialist Movement for Integration, or LSI and its leader Ilir Meta, Albania’s president-elect.

The LSI has been the country’s coalition kingmaker in the past two elections, in 2009 and 2013, first siding with the Democrats and then the Socialists.

 

Both the Socialists and the Democrats insist they will not join the LSI in another coalition.

 

Quiet campaign

All main parties campaigned on a reform agenda, pledging faster economic growth, pay hikes and a further reduction in unemployment, which currently stands at a little over 14 percent.

 

The May compromise produced an unusually quiet election campaign, with parties scaling down budgets and ending a modern tradition of large public rallies and giant banners on buildings.

 

The battle migrated to social media, where campaign events were streamed live.

 

A total of 18 political parties and groups will field candidates for the 140 seats in parliament. Some 6,000 police officers will be on duty for election security, while more 300 international observers will monitor the electoral process. 
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One of China’s Richest Women Hopes to Keep Driving Culture of Philanthropy

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After starting work in a hotel kitchen, Zhai Meiqin began selling furniture and built a billion-dollar conglomerate, but she took great pride in being recognized this week for driving a new phenomenon in China: philanthropy.

Zhai, one of China’s richest women and president of the privately owned HeungKong Group Ltd., said she never forgot her humble upbringing in Guangzhou in southern China, where her father was an architect and her mother worked in a store.

This made her determined to help others, and she started donating to charity shortly after setting up the business with her husband in 1990.

As their business grew, taking in real estate, financial investment and health care, Zhai broke new ground in 2005 by establishing China’s first nonprofit charitable foundation.

Since then, the HeungKong Charitable Foundation has helped an estimated 2 million people, by funding 1,500 libraries, providing loans for women to start businesses, and funding orphans, single mothers, handicapped children and the elderly.

“I realized there were a lot of poor people in China and this drove me to earn more money so I could help them,” said Zhai, 53, who was one of nine philanthropists named Thursday as winners of the 2017 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.

Zhai and her husband, Liu Zhiqiang, whose HeungKong Group with 20,000 staffers has made them worth about $1.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine, are known for being leaders of the culture of philanthropy in China.

Their foundation was listed as number 001 by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Zhai said at the end of 2015 there were 3,300 registered nonprofit charitable foundations in China.

Next generation

“By setting up the foundation, I wanted to encourage other people, other entrepreneurs, to also donate to charity,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview from Guangzhou translated by her daughter.

“Now I want to make sure that the next generation continues this culture of philanthropy in China,” she added, with two of her four children taking an active role in her foundation.

The other philanthropists to win the Carnegie Medal — which was established in 2001 and is awarded every two years — came from around  the globe.

The list included India’s education-focused Azim Premji, Canadian-born social enterprise pioneer Jeff Skoll and American-Australian lawyer and former World Bank Group President James Wolfensohn.

The winners were chosen by a committee made up of seven people representing some of the 22 Carnegie institutions in the United States and Europe.
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Women on the Frontlines of Cambodia Land Fight

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Cambodian activists fighting plans to transform Phnom Penh’s largest lake into a luxury development made a tactical decision when they took to the streets: put women on the frontline to show a “gentle” face and prevent violence.

But it was wishful thinking.

The women of Boeung Kak Lake, once home to a thriving community, have been kicked, manhandled, threatened and jailed, one of many land battles globally where women are bearing the brunt of the crackdown on protesters.

“We are mostly women because we are more gentle so we face less violence. This is our strategy,” said Im Srey Touch, a 42-year-old activist from Boeung Kak Lake.

“If we let men participate in our protests, we let them stand behind us or outside, and we stand in the front to reduce the likelihood of violence.”

​Evictions began in 2007

In fact, as the number of people killed in land conflicts around the world soars, more than half of the dead have been women, rights watchdogs say.

In Phnom Penh the conflict began in 2007 when nearly 4,000 families were stripped of their housing rights after the Cambodian government leased the Boeung Kak Lake area in the nation’s capital to make way for an upmarket mini city.

Since then, the lake has been filled with sand and most of the 4,000 families evicted, with little to no compensation, amid complaints about the social and environmental impact.

Over the years, more than a dozen activists protesting the evictions have been arrested, most of them women through whom land is passed down in many parts of Cambodia.

Whose courts?

In February, a court sentenced Tep Vanny, the most high-profile lake activist, to two and a half years in jail for inciting violence and assaulting security guards.

Rights observers say the government is using the courts and jails to muzzle activists, including those defending their land rights against government officials and their business cronies.

“It is a signal to civil society that ‘We can come after you whenever we want. The courts are ours. We can make anything we say about you stick,’“ said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Asia for New York-based nonprofit Human Rights Watch.

The government of Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) rejects such criticism and says it respects due process.

“The court makes decisions based on the constitution and, like every open society, the court provides justice to everyone no matter who they are,” said government spokesman Phay Siphan.

​Long history of land disputes

Amnesty International has criticized the Cambodian government for “bending the law to their will” to crack down on dissent. It said 42 criminal cases have been brought against the Boeung Kak Lake activists since 2011.

“Nobody believes Tep Vanny was assaulting these security guards,” said Robertson, who accused the judges of being “stooges” of the CPP.

Home to 15 million people, impoverished Cambodia has a long history of disputes over land rights, many dating back to the 1970s when the communist Khmer Rouge regime destroyed property records, and all housing and land became state property.

Cambodia began to privatize land after 1989, when Hun Sen’s CPP-led government shed its communist past and courted foreign investment, paving the way for economic land concessions.

“After privatization, land prices started going up, and people were at risk of land grabbing by companies, the state and well-connected individuals,” said Naly Pilorge, director of the nonprofit Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO).

LICADHO says the lack of a publicly available land register detailing boundaries means authorities could confiscate land, claiming that affected families were living on state property.

Between 2000 and 2014, about 770,000 Cambodians were affected by land conflicts, according to charges presented by lawyers at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

“Because Cambodia is lawless … with close ties between companies, government, the military and police, it’s a recipe for violence,” Pilorge said by phone from Phnom Penh.

A broken family

Despite the court cases and jail time, the Boeung Kak Lake women persist. They protest loudly and lie on the ground when ringed and roughed up by authorities. They are arrested in groups, sometimes just two, and, once, 13 of them.

Pilorge says authorities now appear to be trying a new tack, turning their energies onto Vanny on whom it is taking its toll.

During a brief recess before her guilty verdict Feb. 23, the 37-year-old divorcee who was arrested last August described the impact of her detention on her son, 11, and daughter, 13.

“I lost my role as a mother. I have a broken family. My child is sick,” she said, adding that she could not be there for her daughter’s surgery to remove her appendix.

“During the last hearing, my daughter cried until she fainted … I am a mother but I’m in prison. I can’t take care of her,” she said.

Activists suspect authorities are using her in a bid to silence other activists ahead of local elections this month and next year’s national vote.

A lake activist who was arrested with Vanny last year, Sophea Bov, was convicted for insulting authorities and fined $20. So far Bov has refused to pay the fine, Pilorge said, but no one has come for yet although the judge could imprison her.

“She was hoping that if she refused to pay the fine, she could go to prison to be with Vanny. Imagine where they are now, to think like that,” Pilorge said. “As human beings, we grow and we become stronger with challenges … these women have been tested, and they’ve overcome a lot of obstacles.”

 
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Wildfire in Utah Doubles in Size as Hot Conditions Continue in Western US

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U.S. officials say a wildfire in southern Utah has doubled in size, one of several blazes burning in the Western United States.

An effort to put out the Western fires has been difficult for firefighters because of the extreme heat in the region.

The hot, dry conditions have also raised concerns about the upcoming July Fourth holiday, when fireworks and barbeques are traditions.

Officials say 400 additional homes have been evacuated in Utah, where a fire near a southern ski town has already forced 700 people from their residences. Officials said the fire, which now covers over 100 square kilometers, began when a resident used a torch to burn weeds near the Brian Head Resort.

The fire dangers have prompted officials with the largest Indian reservation in the United States, Navajo Nation, to impose restrictions on fireworks and campfires.

“As the Nation moves closer to the Fourth of July holiday season, we see an urgency to issue this executive order to help suppress human-caused fires and wildfires in our forest lands,” Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said Friday.

Officials said ceremonial fires will be permitted if a registration for them is obtained. The reservation spans parts of Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.
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Military Chiefs Ask for Delay Before Transgender People Enlist

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The U.S. military service chiefs have sought a six-month delay before allowing transgender people to enlist, but no final decision has been made on the issue, Pentagon chief spokesperson Dana White said.

Transgender troops already in the military have been allowed to serve openly since July 2016.

The U.S. armed forces were given until July 1 to develop policies to allow transgender individuals who meet all the standards to join the military.

The Associated Press reported earlier Friday that the chiefs were seeking the delay.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work has received recommendations from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps and is having further conversations before submitting his own recommendation to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

“Different services had different takes,” White said. “Some asked for time.”

White said the recommendation will be made with a focus on how the U.S. military can best achieve lethality and readiness.

Should the deputy secretary approve the delay, Mattis will need to make a final decision. It is unclear whether that will happen before the July 1 deadline.
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Many London High-rise Dwellers Evacuated for Safety

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Several residential high-rise buildings in London are being evacuated because of fire safety concerns following a huge blaze at an apartment building that killed at least 79 people last week.

The London borough of Camden said it was providing hotel rooms for residents of 800 apartments in high-rise buildings in the area known as Swiss Cottage, after fire authorities said they would be unsafe in case of fire. The buildings evacuated Friday are all part of government-run, low-cost public housing developments, as was the one that burned last week.

The Camden buildings have the same combustible exterior insulation that was on the Grenfell Tower, scene of last week’s deadly blaze. The 23-story tower block, in a different neighborhood of London, was quickly covered in flames and choking black smoke after a small refrigerator fire spread to the exterior cladding, fire officials have determined.

The British government estimates up to 600 other high-rise buildings in the country could face the same problem as the Swiss Cottage towers.

Authorities say people displaced from their apartments probably will not be able to return for several weeks, while the buildings’ exterior coatings are removed and replaced.

The Grenfell Tower blaze is the subject of a criminal investigation, London police spokeswoman Fiona McCormack said Friday, with officers “looking at every criminal offense from manslaughter onwards.”

The concrete apartment building had been extensively renovated recently, with the work including a new coating of exterior insulation. Some survivors of the fire claim that cheap materials were used for the cladding; others contend substandard maintenance practices also were responsible for the disaster.

Investigators have traced the source of the fire to a refrigerator in one of the fourth-floor apartments. The particular model of that Hotpoint-branded appliance has not been sold for at least five years; spokesmen for the manufacturer, which is owned by the U.S. firm Whirlpool, said they were addressing the matter and cooperating fully with the official investigation.

Police spokeswoman McCormack said the exterior insulation on the ill-fated building failed safety tests meant to measure its flammability. Investigators also have been checking on companies that installed the material, both at Grenfell Tower and other locations in Britain.
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US Senators Demand Investigation of Reports of Torture in Yemen

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Two senior U.S. senators are asking Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to investigate reports that U.S. military interrogators worked with forces from the United Arab Emirates accused of torturing detainees in Yemen.

Arizona Senator John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the ranking Democrat, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, called the reports “deeply disturbing.”

The reports were revealed in an investigation by The Associated Press published Thursday.

That same day, McCain and Reed wrote a letter to the defense secretary asking him to immediately review the reported abuse and what U.S. forces knew.

“Even the suggestion that the United States tolerates torture by our foreign partners compromises our national security mission by undermining the moral principles that distinguish us from our enemies — our belief that all people possess basic human rights,” the senators wrote Mattis. “We are confident that you find these allegations as extremely troubling as we do.”

The AP’s report detailed a network of secret prisons across southern Yemen where hundreds are detained in the hunt for al-Qaida militants and held without charges. American defense officials confirmed to the AP that U.S. forces have interrogated some detainees in Yemen but denied any participation in, or knowledge of, human rights abuses.

Defense officials told the AP that the department had looked into reports of torture and concluded that its personnel were not involved. The American officials confirmed that the U.S. provides questions to the Emiratis and receives transcripts of their interrogations.

The 18 lockups are run by the UAE and by Yemeni forces it created, according to accounts from former detainees, families of prisoners, civil rights lawyers and Yemeni military officials. At the Riyan airport in the southern Yemeni city of Mukalla, former inmates described shipping containers smeared with feces and crammed with blindfolded detainees. They said they were beaten, roasted alive on a spit and sexually assaulted, among other abuses. One witness, who is a member of a Yemeni security force, said American forces were at times only yards (meters) away.

The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Friday that the allegations are “completely untrue” and a “political game” by Yemeni militias to discredit a Saudi-led coalition that includes the UAE. It says it does not run or oversee any prisons in Yemen, and that any such facilities are under “the jurisdiction of the Yemeni legitimate authorities.”

Most of the clandestine sites are run by either the Hadramawt Elite or Security Belt, Yemeni forces that were created, trained and financed by the UAE. Officially, they are under the authority of Yemen’s internationally recognized government, but multiple Yemeni government officials told the AP they have no control over them and they answer to the Emirates.

At least five of the prisons are located in coalition bases and directly run by the Emirates, according to four senior Yemeni government and military officials, former detainees and families of prisoners.

At Riyan airport prison, six former detainees described hundreds of prisoners held in shipping containers at the site and gave extensive accounts of abuses, saying the officers in charge and conducting interrogations were Emiratis. Families held frequent protests outside Riyan seeking news about loved ones imprisoned there. Several relatives of prisoners told the AP that they spoke repeatedly with the Emirati officer in charge of the site, who identified himself only by a pseudonym, Abu Ahmed, trying to secure their relatives’ release.

The UAE is among the critical allies that the U.S. relies on in the fight against al-Qaida. The U.S. views the militants’ branch in Yemen as a direct terrorist threat to Americans.

“We request that you direct an immediate review of the facts and circumstances related to these alleged abuses, including U.S. support to the Emirati and Yemeni partner forces that were purportedly involved,” the lawmakers wrote. “We also request that you conduct a thorough assessment of what, if anything, U.S. forces knew about these alleged abuses or subsequently learned about them.”

McCain, a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War, was captured after his plane was shot down in 1967. He was imprisoned for more than 5½ years and tortured repeatedly before he was released in 1973. In the Senate, McCain has criticized harsh treatment of terror suspects by the CIA at “black site” prisons and was a key sponsor of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act prohibiting inhumane treatment of prisoners.

The lawmakers requested a Defense Department briefing on its findings as soon as possible.
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US Mayors: Look to Us, Not Washington, for Results

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Think Washington, D.C., and your statehouse are irredeemable and unproductive? Look to city hall for answers. That’s the message from the nation’s mayors six months in to Donald Trump’s presidency.

“We don’t have time to argue about ideological positions. We have to find real solutions for problems,” said New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who will take over this weekend as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors as it convenes in Miami Beach, Florida.

 

Fresh from the national spotlight after taking down his city’s Confederate monuments, Landrieu wants to lead the bipartisan group to a more high-profile role in national affairs. “We see that Washington is stuck,” Landrieu told the Associated Press ahead of the convention. “We want to help get them to a place where they can … help us rebuild this great country.”

Three key issues

Landrieu and his colleagues already are lobbying the Trump administration on infrastructure, immigration and health care. On those issues, mayors highlight local actions and investment, but are asking the federal government for more resources and cooperation. Landrieu said cities — like states — want to avoid a scenario where “they send us the responsibility” but don’t “send us the money.”

On other matters, such as climate science, mayors are going it alone: More than 300 have committed to follow the Paris climate accords that Trump is abandoning.

 

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a frequent Trump critic, said Friday in Miami Beach that meeting in a coastal city affected by rising sea levels underscores the necessity of a national solution for climate change, even if it takes the collective action of local government. “We have to, as mayors, be one of the forces in this country that focuses on actually getting things done,” de Blasio said.  

 

Such efforts, Landrieu and his colleagues say, aren’t about “resistance” to Trump or boosting individual profiles. The point, the mayors argue, is to demonstrate that government can work and, in the process, convince higher-ranking politicians that “compromise” and “problem-solving” can be good politics.

No free lunch

 

Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, the outgoing president of the national mayors’ group, is among the mayors who’ve huddled with the Trump administration on its promised $1 trillion infrastructure plan.

 

The White House makes clear, Cornett said, “that they want us to have some skin in the game” at the local level. But Cornett, a Republican, and Landrieu, a Democrat, emphasized that many cities don’t have the financial standing to do what other cities have done on their own.

 

Cornett noted Oklahoma City has “paid cash” for a series of improvements, while Los Angeles has planned a $120 billion infrastructure plan of its own.  

 

New Orleans is ahead of many cities its size in overhauling aging water and sewer infrastructure, but that came with considerable federal aid after Hurricane Katrina.

 

Landrieu points to estimates that the U.S. has a $5 trillion infrastructure backlog. Trump’s 10-year budget outline proposes just $200 billion in direct spending on infrastructure. “We have to think big,” Landrieu said.

Mayors also are taking aim at proposed cuts to Community Development Block Grants, long a pipeline from Washington to the local level. “All we’re asking the administration is, let us continue to help make America great,” said Elizabeth Kautz of Burnsville, Minnesota.

Health care

 

On health care, mayors have joined many governors to explain to the administration and members of Congress the practical effects of curbing Medicaid funding and private insurance premium subsidies, both anchors of Republican proposals pending on Capitol Hill.

 

“We’ve tried to show them what it’s like in an emergency room … that is overrun by people without insurance” and what that means for state and local budgets, Landrieu said.

 

Nan Whaley, mayor of Dayton, Ohio, makes a similar argument about spending cuts for treating mental illness and drug addiction. Those problems, she said, morph into more expenses for emergency rooms and the criminal justice system.

 

“We’ve got to have better partnerships between state, local and the federal governments” to sustain viable cities, Whaley said.

 

New York’s de Blasio called the bill “a real danger” for cities.

Moving on?

 

Many mayors are trying to parlay their arguments into higher office in 2018.

Whaley is among the Democrats running Ohio governor. Cornett is seeking the Republican nomination for Oklahoma governor. Miami Beach Mayor Phil Levine, the conference’s host mayor, is running for governor in Florida’s Democratic primary, alongside his Tallahassee counterpart, Andrew Gillum. Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles is among many sitting and former mayors who may seek California’s executive seat.

 

“Cities are where people see that action affecting their daily lives,” Whaley said. “We could use more of that in state and national government.”

Of course, Whaley acknowledges, even a wave of mayors storming statehouses and Capitol Hill won’t mean those institutions have to answer calls about pot holes, police response times and garbage pick-up.

 

“They have no repercussions,” Whaley said, “for being dysfunctional.”

 
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Agriculture Group: Drought Has Cost Italian Farmers 1 Billion Euros

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Soaring temperatures and a lack of rainfall across Italy have cost farmers 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion) so far this year, the national agricultural association said on Friday.

The government declared a state of emergency in the gastronomic heartland around the northern cities of Parma and Piacenza, a usually lush valley that produces tomatoes, cheese, and high-quality ham.

Wine grapes growing near Venice will be harvested early, mozzarella makers near Naples have been thrown into crisis, and Sardinian shepherds have taken tractors onto main roads to call for help to save their livelihoods, the Coldiretti group said.

The group’s chairman, Roberto Moncalvo, said the climate was becoming “tropical.”

“If we want to maintain high quality in agriculture we need to organize ourselves to collect water during rainy periods, doing structural work that cannot be put off any longer,” Moncalvo said.

($1 = 0.8935 euros)
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Pessimism About CAR Peace Deal Widespread

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A new peace deal between the Bangui government and 13 major rebel groups in the Central African Republic is being met with criticism and skepticism domestically.

The agreement signed Monday in Rome promised an immediate cease-fire in exchange for political representation for the rebels.

The new accord followed a series of peace deals signed by armed groups in the CAR during 2014 and 2015. All fell apart.

“As one of the armed group representatives said, ‘We have signed a good paper,’ ” said Igor Acko, the U.S. Institute of Peace’s national program specialist in Bangui.  “But the only worry is that it can remain just a ‘good paper.’ ”

Acko received word of the new deal while in Bambari in central CAR, and said he went directly to members of the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic, one of the country’s major armed groups. The militia members told him they were not aware of the deal or its contents.

“So they are waiting for their representative to come back, and they will ask about the content, and they will think [decide] if they fully follow or they don’t,” Acko said.

Battle in Bria

Just hours after the accord was signed, fighting broke out in Bria, the country’s center of diamond mining, nearly 600 kilometers from the capital. The town’s mayor said more than 100 people were killed, and the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said 43 wounded people required hospital treatment.

With dozens of houses burned to the ground in Bria, more than 40,000 people are displaced and are relying on humanitarian assistance. Across the country, more than 100,000 people have been displaced since last month, when violence increased.

Since cycles of inter-religious and intercommunal violence began in 2013, hundreds of thousands of people have been uprooted from their homes in CAR, a former French colony that is one of the world’s poorest nations.

Lewis Mudge, who does research on the Central African Repulic for Human Rights Watch, said the fighting in Bria does not bode well for the accord signed in Rome. He noted that the previous deals all collapsed very quickly.

Members of civil society in CAR are most concerned about the new deal’s failure to discuss issues of justice and accountability arising from the conflict. Some are concerned this could be a first step toward granting amnesty to the rebels, which would be seen as an affront to the victims of months of escalating violence.

Need for justice is ‘clear’

Mathias Barthelemy Marouba, who runs the Central African Human Rights Observatory, said his group does not oppose a peace deal, but does not see the Rome accord as a substitute for justice.

“Those who committed these reprehensible acts must be brought to justice,” Marouba said. “That’s clear.”

The new deal calls for establishment of a truth-and-reconciliation commission, but that assurance failed to sway Mudge of Human Rights Watch.  

“Truth telling is all nice and good, but it can never come in the place of free and fair trials that hold perpetrators accountable,” he said. “If we can stop the fighting, that’s a very good thing, but I’m not convinced that this deal is putting accountability first.”

The only way to break CAR’s cycles of violence, Mudge said, is to “finally hold some of these individuals to account.”  

Marouba criticized U.N. peacekeeping forces in the country for not taking more aggressive action against rebel groups.

“Why aren’t they protecting the civilian population?” he asked. “They have all the means to neutralize these bandits. Why haven’t they done that?”  

On the streets of Bangui, maintenance worker Kevin Vreka, 35, agreed, and said the U.N. force, known as MINUSCA, should be doing much more to stop the rebels’ violent tactics.

U.N. peacekeepers “are there to secure the country,” Vreka said. “They are in the countryside, but they do nothing. The United Nations, what did it come to Bangui to do? They do nothing … except harass our women!”

‘Nothing is going to change’

Carlos Bunju, a translator for a Chinese company in the capital, does not expect the peace deal to accomplish anything.

“Whatever they do, nothing is going to change,” Bunju said. “Because some people, some armed groups, they want some part in the government, but other people, they’re not going to allow them. They’re going to fight over and over.”

The armed groups are battling over CAR’s natural resources, Bunju said: “That’s all they want. They don’t see the people. And even though they come and we allow them to be a part of the government, I don’t think there’s going to be any change. If they love this country, they’re not going to fight anymore.”

Iloua Banoua, 58, a tailor, had not heard about the new accord either, but for him, it’s simple: “We want peace. We don’t want violence. Peace is the purity of each country; without it, we can’t live.”
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Can Flourishing Islamic State Be Stopped in Afghanistan?

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The Islamic State group is rapidly expanding in parts of Afghanistan, advancing militarily into areas where it once had a weak presence and strengthening its forces in core regions, according to Afghan and U.S. officials.

Depending on the location, the proliferation of IS has drawn varied resistance from the Afghan military, U.S. air support and ground troops, local militias, Taliban forces and other militant groups.

Attacking IS has become such a priority in the country, that disparate forces sometimes join together in the ad-hoc fight, with Afghan and U.S. forces finding themselves inadvertently supporting the enemy Taliban in battling IS.

Confusion leads to mistakes

All too often, officials say, mistakes are made due to confusion on the ground.

Afghan army planes on Wednesday night accidentally air dropped vital supplies of food and water to IS militants in the Darzab district of northern Jouzjan province instead of to their own besieged troops, provincial police chief, Rahmatullah Turkistani told VOA. The supplies were meant to help Afghan forces that are countering twin attacks by IS and Taliban militants but were used instead by IS.

“It’s not getting better in Afghanistan in terms of IS,” U.S. Chief Pentagon Spokeswoman Dana White told VOA this week. “We have a problem, and we have to defeat them and we have to be focused on that problem.”

Reinforcements for the IS cause reportedly are streaming into isolated areas of the country from far and wide. There are reports of fighters from varied nationalities joining the ranks, including militants from Pakistan, India, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia and Central Asian neighbors.

Confusing scenarios

Still, the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISK)  as IS is known in Afghanistan  remains a fragmented group composed of differing regional forces with different agendas in different parts of the country.

“IS-K is still conducting low-level recruiting and distribution of propaganda in various provinces across Afghanistan, but it does not have the ability or authority to conduct multiple operations across the country,” a recent Pentagon report said. But where it operates, IS is inflicting chaos and casualties and causing confusing scenarios for disparate opponents.

In the Tora Bora area, where IS has made a strong stand in recent days, local villagers and militias joined with Taliban to rout IS. IS regained ground after a few days, leading to U.S. military air attacks on IS positions in conjunction with Afghan intelligence instructions and army operations.

IS fighters reportedly have fled from mountain caves of Tora Bora, where al-Qaida’s leader Osama bin Laden hid from U.S. attack in 2001.

Families displaced

IS fighters were also reportedly advancing in neighboring Khogyani district, displacing hundreds of families, according to district officials. It is one of several areas in Nangarhar province, near the Pakistani border, where IS has been active for over two years.

Fierce clashes in the Chaparhar district of Nangarhar last month left 21 Taliban fighters and seven IS militants dead, according to a provincial spokesman. At least three civilians who were caught in the crossfire were killed and five others wounded.

“IS has overpowered Taliban in some parts of Nangarhar because the Taliban dispatched its elite commando force called Sara Qeta (Red Brigade) to other parts of the country, including some northern provinces to contain the growing influence of IS there,” Wahid Muzhda, a Taliban expert in Kabul, told VOA.

Recruiting unemployed youths

IS has also expanded in neighboring Kunar province, where, according to provincial police chief, it has a presence in at least eight districts and runs a training base, where foreign members of IS, train new recruits.

Hundreds of miles from Nangarhar, IS is attempting to establish a persistent presence in several northern provinces where it has found a fertile ground for attracting militants and recruiting unemployed youths, mostly between the age of 13 and 20.

IS has been able to draw its members from the Pakistani Taliban fighters, former Afghan Taliban, and other militants who “believe that associating with or pledging allegiance” to IS will further their interests, according to the Pentagon report.

Hundreds of militants have joined IS ranks in northern Jouzjan and Sar-e-Pul province where local militant commanders lead IS-affiliate groups in several districts.

Darzab district

 

Qari Hekmat, an ethnic Uzbek and former Taliban militant who joined IS a year ago, claims to have up to 500 members, including around 50 Uzbek nationals who are affiliated with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) — previously associated with al-Qaida and Taliban in Afghanistan.

IS and Taliban are reportedly fighting over the control of Darzab district in Jouzjan which they stormed this week from two different directions and besieged scores of government forces. The Taliban has reportedly captured the center of the district while IS militants control the city outskirts.

Afghanistan faces a continuing threat from as many as 20 insurgent and terrorist networks present or operating in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, including IS, the Pentagon said.

“In areas where the government has limited influence and control, IS attempts to emerge and expand there,” Ateequllah Amarkhail, an analysts and former Army general in Kabul told VOA.

Hit-and-hide strategy

IS has also claimed responsibility for several recent attacks in urban areas, however, with a hit-and-hide strategy that is proving effective. And it is engaging too in more skirmishes with U.S. forces that initially were sent to the country to help Afghan forces halt the spread of Taliban.

Three American service members based in eastern Afghanistan were killed in April during operations targeting IS militants, according to the Pentagon.

“ISIS-K remains a threat to Afghan and regional security, a threat to U.S. and coalition forces, and it retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks in urban centers,” the Pentagon said.
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US Would Welcome Effective Syrian Effort to Defeat IS, Military Says

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The U.S. military coalition fighting the Islamic State group would welcome a concerted effort by the Syrian government or its Iranian-backed partner forces to defeat IS in its remaining strongholds in eastern Syria, a U.S. spokesman said Friday.

Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the coalition, told reporters at the Pentagon that the U.S. goal is to defeat IS wherever it exists. If others, including the Syrian government and its Iranian and Russian allies, want to fight the extremists as well, then “we absolutely have no problem with that,” he said, speaking from Baghdad.

“If it looks like they are making a concerted effort to move into ISIS-held areas, and if they show that they can do that, that is not a bad sign,” Dillon said, referring to forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “We are here to fight ISIS as a coalition, but if others want to fight ISIS and defeat them, then we absolutely have no problem with that.”

Washington severed diplomatic relations with Syria during the Obama administration, which insisted that Assad “must go.” More recently, Assad has strengthened his position, regaining key territory from weakened opposition forces.

Tight quarters

The battle space in Syria is getting more crowded and complex as IS-held territory shrinks, raising questions about how the various parties will interact with or avoid one another. Syrian government troops, for example, have reached the Iraqi border in an area where IS leaders have been gathering. The area is far from the main battle lines of Syria’s civil war.

The U.S. so far has shunned any cooperation with Assad and has partnered instead with local Arab and Kurdish forces in fighting IS. Those local forces, which the U.S. calls the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, are currently fighting to recapture the extremists’ self-declared capital of Raqqa.

Last weekend, for the first time, the U.S. shot down a Syrian fighter jet that had dropped bombs near the SDF. Two other times this month, the U.S. has shot down Iranian-made drones in southern Syria that were deemed to pose a threat to U.S. and partner forces.

Key remaining IS territory includes the cities of Deir el-Zour and Abu Kamal, along the Euphrates River valley.

Dillon said that as Syrian government forces move toward Abu Kamal, “if they want to fight ISIS in Abu Kamal and they have the capacity to do so, then that would be welcomed. We as a coalition are not in the land-grab business. We are in the killing-ISIS business. That is what we want to do, and if the Syrian regime wants to do that and they’re going to put forth a concerted effort and show that they are doing just that in Abu Kamal or Deir el-Zour or elsewhere, that means that we don’t have to do that in those places.”
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Paris Ups Its Game in 2024 Olympics Bid

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In preparation for a 2024 Olympic bid, Paris transformed the area around the river Seine into an Olympic park, hosting events on Friday and Saturday to make one final push for the rights to host the games.

The last time the French capital hosted the event would be 100 years earlier, in 1924.

Paris and Los Angeles are the only two cities competing to host the games. Los Angeles last hosted the event in 1984.

With the Eiffel Tower in view, Paris residents and Mayor Anne Hidalgo took to the water in canoes and kayaks to showcase what the 2024 games in Paris could look like.

“It’s a way of saying, look, how we want to celebrate with the whole world by hosting the games, we hope, and then Tony and I made a bet a while ago to kayak along the Seine so it will be a big first for me,” Hidalgo said.

Hidalgo kayaked in the river Seine near the Pont Alexandre III Bridge, alongside former Olympic gold medal canoeist Tony Estanguet, who is leading Paris’ bid to host the event.  

“This is a great opportunity for us to give a taster of what the games will be like here in 2024,” Estanguet said.

Paris last attempted to draw a bid for the Olympic Games in 2005, when it lost to Beijing for the rights to the 2008 games, sparking tears in the French camp as results were announced.

The winning city will be announced on September 13, in Lima, Peru.
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US Drops Reward Offer for Former al-Shabab Leader

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The U.S. State Department has withdrawn its reward offer for Mukhtar Robow, a former leader of the Somali militant group al-Shabab.

In June 2012, the State Department offered up to $5 million for information on Robow that brought him “to justice.” At the time, Robow was still considered a top leader of al-Shabab, having served periods as its spokesman, spiritual leader and military commander.

But soon afterward, Robow exiled himself from the group because of long-running disputes with its emir, Ahmed Abdi Godane. He spent recent years living in his hometown of Abal, south of Huddur, in Somalia’s Bakool region.

Robow has his own militias from his own clan in the area.

Godane was killed by a U.S. missile strike in 2014.

VOA State Department correspondent Nike Ching and Harun Maruf of VOA’s Somali service contributed to this report.
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Kenyan Court Says Polling Station Results Final

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A Kenyan appellate court, dismissing a complaint by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, ruled Friday that presidential election results announced at the polling station level are final.  

“The lowest voting unit and the first level of the declaration of presidential election results is the polling station,” said Justice William Ouko of the Kenyan Court of Appeal. “The declaration form containing those results is the primary document, and other forms subsequent to it are only tallies of the original and final result as recorded at the polling station.”

In April, the Kenyan High Court made a similar ruling, but the electoral commission asked the appeals court to overrule the judgment. The electoral commission questioned the integrity of its officers in charge of polling station returns.

Ouko dismissed that argument, calling it “hypocritical” for the commission to doubt its workers.

Disputes over the outcome marred Kenya’s last two presidential elections. The 2007 dispute triggered intercommunal fighting that killed more than 1,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more from their homes.

‘Cure the mischief’

Felix Odhiambo, Kenya country director of the nonprofit Electoral Law and Governance Institute in Africa, said Friday’s ruling discourages tampering with election results.

“It will cure the mischief that has been identified in the past, where the electoral commission unilaterally alters and changes the election results at the national tallying center, and most fundamentally it gives credence to the finality and sanctity of the vote,” Odhaimbo said.

Ouko called on the electoral commission to hold a credible election in line with the country’s Constitution.

“The responsibility of the appellant to deliver a credible and acceptable election in accordance with the Constitution is so great, awesome, and it must approach and execute it with absolute fitness, probity and integrity,” he said.

Kenya is scheduled to hold a general election August 8.  President Uhuru Kenyatta is running for a second term against challengers who include former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
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Analysts: Russia’s Military Threats Mainly Bluster, but Conflict Risk Rising

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A series of close encounters this month over the Baltic Sea and U.S. shoot-downs of Russian allies’ aircraft in Syria have triggered concerns among defense analysts that any direct incident between Russia and the United States, even if accidental, could quickly spiral out of control.

Reports say a Russian fighter jet and a U.S. spy plane on Monday came within two meters of each other, a situation deemed “unsafe” by the U.S. military.

The Russian SU-27 flew at a high rate of closure speed and the pilot exercised poor control, said a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Risk of accidents

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance plane made a provocative move toward the other jet.

Another close encounter came Wednesday. Moscow said a NATO fighter jet buzzed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s plane as he headed to the Russian military enclave of Kaliningrad, nestled between NATO members Poland and Lithuania. Russian state media reported a Russian SU-27 fighter jet “chased away” the Polish F-16 and published video of the incident.

There’s a danger when a plane flies within meters of another, according to defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer.

“But in the Baltics, that’s a kind of pure case of creating tension out of nowhere … by both sides,” he said. “So, it’s a bit of a dangerous game. But, in reality, no one wants to fight anyone.”

New ‘Cold War’

Russian probing of NATO member airspace has increased exponentially since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and ongoing military support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.

“It’s no doubt, at least for me, that Russia and the West are in the situation of [a] new Cold War,” said defense analyst Alexander Golts, deputy editor of Yezhednevny Zhurnal [Weekly Journal] in Moscow.  “[The] Cold War is a situation when you have a problem that cannot be solved … [not] diplomatically [or] militarily. This problem is Ukraine.”

Golts said the issue is that Russia, from its point of view, cannot pull back from its “secret war” in Ukraine, yet until it does so, NATO cannot restore cooperation. Meanwhile, saber-rattling on both sides risks escalation of military conflict.

The United States this week issued new sanctions against Russian entities over their involvement in Ukraine, while the EU agreed to extend its own sanctions against Moscow.

The added sanctions came as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko visited President Donald Trump at the White House. Poroshenko later said the U.S. soon would sign some defense deals with Kyiv, but he gave no details. The U.S. so far has provided only training and nonlethal military equipment to Kyiv in an effort to stay out of any direct military conflict with Russia.  

Military buildup?

Shoigu said Russia would build up its military forces on its western borders, citing a worsening security situation due to what he called NATO’s “anti-Russia course.” The Russian defense chief said its military would form 20 new units on its western front this year in response to NATO drills in the Baltic states and Poland.

The formerly occupied and Soviet states raised concerns about Russian aggression after Moscow’s actions in Ukraine. NATO responded with stepped-up deployment of rotational defense forces. Meanwhile, in September, Russia and Belarus are holding large-scale military exercises that simulate a NATO invasion.

The NATO defense alliance deployment is modest compared with Russia’s response, said Golts. “And, what is real now — there is no gray zone between these forces. They stand up against each other. And, again, it means any accident can be continued with [a] big war.”

Thoughts have turned from potential U.S.-Russia cooperation back to reducing risks of new confrontation, Golts said.

“I think everybody has to forget, for [a] very, very long period of time, the possibility of some kind of cooperation with Russia,” he said. “It’s more or less clear [that] because of all this scandal with Russian interference in [the] American election, Trump will never approach Mr. Putin,” Golts said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Syria bluster

Meanwhile, a proxy war in Syria intensifies as Russia and Iran support their ally in Damascus against U.S.-backed Syrian rebels. All sides claim to be fighting Islamic State terrorists.

The U.S.-led coalition in Syria shot down a Syrian warplane this month, as well as two Iranian-made drones that were nearing American-backed troops. Russia condemned the action and said it would treat any plane or drone from the U.S.-led coalition flying west of the Euphrates River as a target.

Moscow also suspended, again, a memorandum aimed at avoiding accidents in the skies over Syria. The first such announced suspension occurred after a U.S. missile strike in April on a Syrian air base that Washington said Damascus used to launch chemical weapons attacks that had killed more than 80 civilians. Russia condemned the U.S. attack and blamed the chemical weapons on Syrian militants.

While many of Russia’s implied threats against the U.S.-led coalition in Syria appear to be bluster, the risk of direct conflict between the two sides is increasing, Golts said. “If you just repeat your complaints and your threats, sooner or later, nobody will pay attention. So, it’s a problem how to make statements tougher and don’t move at the same time closer to [a] condition of war.”
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